Academical Heritage Review

The Academical Heritage Review

The Academical Heritage Review Vol 2 l No 2

The University

Volume 2 Number 2

of

Virginia’s Undergraduate History Journal

THE ACADEMICAL HERITAGE REVIEW PUBLISHED BY THE

UNIVERSITY HISTORICAL SOCIETY VOL

2 l

NO

2

The University Historical Society Editorial Board Thomas Howard Owen Gallogly Win Rutherfurd Justin Pierce

Editor-In-Chief Managing Editor Managing Editor Senior Copy Editor

Copy Editors Matt Pesesky Conor Mackenzie Catherine Creighton Liam Duffy Eric Morris Michael Alerhand Claire Cororaton Nick Deaton Aaron Way

Editorial Policy The Academical Heritage Review is published by the University Historical So-

ciety, a completely student-run Contracted Independent Organization at the University of Virginia devoted to promoting the study of history at U.Va. as well as showcasing its rich history. We strive to publish work that displays originality of thought as well as depth of research. AHR is published bi-annually, and there is an open application process each semester for the composition of the Editorial Board. Every submission is independently reviewed by at least two editors, and final decisions regarding the content of the Review are made by the full Editorial Board at a table read. All submissions are reviewed anonymously by the editors in order to ensure the fairest evaluation on the merits of the work. The Editorial Board retains full discretion to edit works that are published. The views expressed in this publication are not necessarily those of the University Historical Society, the Academical Heritage Review or the editors. Inquiries about obtaining copies of the Review, submitting to future issues, or concerning subscriptions should be directed to: ahr@virginia.edu The University Historical Society PO Box 400701, SAC Box 90 Charlottesville, VA 22904

Table of Contents Crown-Colonial Conflict in the Early French and Indian War

16

Matthew Welsh

Jes’

so much meal to make bread fum’:

Food and Foodways of African-American

Slaves

in the

Virginia Piedmont, 1760-1840

Christina Regeleski

Preserving

the

38

‘Natural Order’:

Social Motivations for the Creation of Colonial ‘Otherness’ in 19th Century Britain

62 Revising

6

Whit Booth

The Foundations of African Slavery in Native American Slavery Michael Warburton and

Collective Memory of 1871

100

82

Recreating Revolution: in the

Beyond

Paris Commune

Kelly Snow the

Dark Valley

The Japanese Position in Manchuria and the Foundation of the Manchuko Nation-State

Joan Martinez

Editor’s Note

April 14th, 2011

My 8th grade history teacher was a crafty man. His favorite thing to do was to send the class home with an article to read for the next day. He would hand it to us as we walked out the door, admonishing each of us: “Now read this carefully, I want us to get excited talking about it tomorrow. And we did get excited. The next day, we would dutifully recite the facts of the article, convinced that was exactly what happened, how it happened, why it happened, and what it meant. Then he would do it again, another article to read and get excited about on the same subject.

We came back, singing the tune of the new article as if we had been there ourselves, but by the end of the second class the teacher had caught us in a devious trap. The two articles had different stories to tell, different interpretations, and different context for the same events, and yet we had agreed whole-heartedly to both of them. “How can that be?” the teacher would ask. “Now, tell me what you really think.”

My fourteen-year-old self could only appreciate a fraction of what he had to teach us that year. I walked away feeling that if I could just remember not to take things at face value, I would be the brightest student around. But in reality, there is much more to it than simply learning the facts and knowing there is more than one way to interpret them. History teaches us how to think. To be sure, the actual events of the past are important, but the events themselves are all but meaningless without a reasoned, thoughtful interpretation. The same holds true for the world around us today. History helps us understand why we are the way we are, and how we got to where we are today.

As historians, we often deal with a lot of “tough stuff.” We study wars, genocide, generations of slavery, racism, and persecution. These subjects are difficult to treat and call for a response from us on multiple levels: not only analytically, but also emotionally and morally. Just as when we read about making of the Constitution and it conjures up strong feelings of national pride, when we read of years of mistreatment or violence in any society, it elicits an negative emotional response that is just as strong, if not stronger. But History is inherently a science, using observations about people and events to deduce conclusions. Where do those powerful and very valid emotional responses come in?

It is, in fact, our job as historians to explain what we study, not purely to react. In that sense we are storytellers, and the best of us

can evoke the emotions we feel while researching a subject first hand as we turn around and share it with others.

This, the third successful issue of the Academical Heritage Review, doubtless represents our strongest showing yet. We have strived to maintain the high standard of undergraduate scholarship for which we have gained a reputation, as well as present a diverse selection of articles representative of the wide interests of history students at the University of Virginia. As the Academical Heritage Review grows, the articles that appear in its pages for you to read represent the best of a submission pool that improves dramatically with each passing semester. In following pages, you will be treated to scholarship that provides fresh perspectives of a wide range of topics, from American slave food systems, to dynastic Japan. Some of the selections provide a crystallization of a topic not before extensively researched, while others challenge existing scholarship. All of them bring something unique to the table. It is my hope that you find what they have to say engaging and rewarding.

Producing the Academical Heritage Review continues to be a richly rewarding experience for everyone involved. I would like to thank the entire Editorial Board for their invaluable help and effort throughout this semester’s production process. Theirs is a labor of love, with only the satisfaction of a job well done as their reward. In particular, I would like to thank Managing Editors Owen Gallogly and Win Rutherfurd for their constant support and contributions to the vision of this publication. Win is now in his last semester and he will be sorely missed in the future. I would also like to thank the Undergraduate Research Network for their support and collaboration; the Vice President for Research; and Daniel Garner, who provided the cover art.

With that, it is my pleasure to present to you Volume 2, Number 2 of the Academical Heritage Review.

Thomas L. Howard III Editor in Chief

Crown-Colonial Conflict in the Early French and Indian War

Matthew Welsh= The very name, The French and Indian War, is misleading. A proxy conflict of the Seven Years’ War (1756-1763), the French and Indian War pitted France and her Native American allies against Great Britain and her American colonies. Yet when the Crown named the French and Indian War after its opponents in the conflict, in many respects Virginians proved lucky not to make the list. In the subsequent decade, Britain rapidly reversed its colonial policy of “salutary neglect” and launched a series of economic and political assaults upon the sovereignty of Virginia and her soon-to-be sister states.1 In his book Tobacco Culture, historian T. H. Breen argued that falling tobacco profits and rising debts exacerbated “planter-merchant tensions” and, in the wake of mounting colonial defense costs, prompted the increasingly restrictive relationship.2 But this tobacco-centric rationale for the erosion of Crown-colonial relations ignores a crucial aspect of the French and Indian War. As Britain waged an expensive war to defend her colonies, Virginians demonstrated indifference and even blatant insubordination toward the Crown’s wartime military measures.

Had British officials noted America’s inter-colonial differences before the French and Indian War, they might well have levied the Intolerable Acts of 1774 upon the less pugnacious Old Dominion instead of Massachusetts.3 While Virginians reaped the rewards of their plantation-based political economy, New Englanders – despite enjoying an average of almost 60 percent less wealth than their Southern counterparts – fought hard for their estates.4 Massachusetts, Matthew S. Welsh is a member of the Class of 2012. He wrote with the guidance of Professor George H. Gilliam.

1 The American Pageant, 124.

2 T. H. Breen, Tobacco Culture,147.

3 The American Pageant, 133.

4 History of the American Economy, 90. =

Crown-Colonial Conflict in the Early French and Indian War

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for example, provided 700 men in both King William’s War and Queen Anne’s War and over 4,000 men during King George’s War in the 1740s.5 Even Salem, Massachusetts native Nathaniel Hawthorne characterized the citizenry of the province as “a martial people [where] every man was a soldier.”6 As historian John Ferling noted, the same could not be said of Virginia, where “war was a virtual stranger to its inhabitants.”7 Virginia, Ferling wrote, “contributed only financial assistance” to Britain’s wars between 1689 and 1713, and in King George’s War the colony provided “just one company of 136 men.”8 Enter Robert Dinwiddie, the Lieutenant Governor of Virginia from 1751 to 1758.

Historians hold Dinwiddie chiefly responsible for precipitating the French and Indian War through his frontier brinksmanship with France. Upon sounding the call to arms in 1754, Dinwiddie began an ill-fated, four-year crash course in Old Dominion military obstinacy. In 1756 Dinwiddie complained, “The N. Eng’d People behave with a fine martial spirit while the People here are very backw’d and unactive.”9 Virginia’s historical aversion to arms persisted throughout the French and Indian War, undermined troop recruitment and military discipline, and ultimately drove Dinwiddie back to Britain to retirement.

Even before the fighting began, Virginians had already given Dinwiddie his first bitter taste of what he called their “ill-time’d deficiency of Spirit and lethargic insensibility.”10 In 1754, Dinwiddie called a small Virginia army consisting of frontier militia from Frederick and Augusta counties and supplemental volunteers from the rest of the colony.11 But the frontiersman received little volunteer support and refused to fight beyond Virginia borders, a condition about which Dinwiddie grumbled that “there never was such monstrous ill-conduct from any set of People in Time of so great Danger.”12 In a subsequent address to the Virginia General Assembly, Dinwiddie stressed the “considerable Expence” of Britain’s colonial defense efforts and demanded “Men and Money to reinforce and support our pres’t Forces.”13 In reply, the House of Burgesses promptly acknowledged the “Expence of the Crown sending a Body of regular Forces, Artillery, [and] an Experience’d Gen’l” and promised to give Dinwiddie’s demands “our utmost Considerat’n.”14 Virginian inactions spoke louder than the Burgesses’ words, however.

The small, voluntary militias proved increasingly undependable for guarding the frontier and supplying military provisions, and Dinwiddie lamented 5 6 7 8 9

8

John Ferling, “Soldiers for Virginia: Who Served in the French and Indian War?,” 316.

Ibid.

Ibid.

Ibid.

Governor Robert Dinwiddie [hereafter ‘GD’] to the Earl of Halifax (June 23, 1755) from “The Official Records of Robert Dinwiddie, Lieutenant-Governor of the Colony of Virginia, 1751-1758.” (All letters hereafter come from this collection unless otherwise noted.)

10 Letter to GD by the Earl of Halifax (July 6, 1754), University of Virginia Special Collections.

11 Ferling, “Soldiers for Virginia: Who Served in the French and Indian War?,” 308.

12 GD to Lord Halifax (April 30, 1755).

13 GD Address to the General Assembly (May 5, 1755).

14 Address of the House of Burgesses to GD (May 5, 1755).

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that this “greatly retarded Gen’l Braddock’s March” into Ohio Territory.15 Furthermore, heightened incidents of Indian raids necessitated tighter frontier security and supply lines.16 In July of 1755, Dinwiddie responded by enacting a new draft policy through the Assembly which aimed to meet militia quotas by conscripting men from the lowest socio-economic rungs of the colony.17 But the problems of Frederick and Augusta persisted, despite Dinwiddie’s assertion that “if the Militia w’d only in small Numb’s appear with proper Spirit, the Banditti w’d not face them.”18 His army mustered only one-fourth of expected troop numbers and ultimately proved a fiasco.19 Two notable war-related setbacks exacerbated the recruitment struggles.

Dinwiddie relayed news of General Braddock’s July 9 defeat “on the Banks of the Monongahela,” where Braddock and “many gallant Officers” perished when “our 1300 well arm’d men were immediately struck with a deadly panic, that confusion and disobedience of orders prevail’d amongst them.”20 Among the hundreds dead and wounded, Dinwiddie wrote that “scarcely 30 of the poor Virginians were left alive [from] the dastardly behavior of the English soldiers.”21 Dinwiddie then recounted that Colonel Dunbar departed from Fort Cumberland in early August, “carrying all His M’y’s Forces with him,” which “occasioned a great Desertion [of colonials] thinking the Colo. Had left them to be destroy’d by the Enemy.”22 These military miscues added more fuel to the fiery conflict between Crown and colonial troops, and both episodes undoubtedly damaged Dinwiddie’s next attempt to increase enlistment in Virginia.

Beginning in 1756, this effort incentivized military volunteerism with promises of postwar land bounties – land titles presented to soldiers upon completion of their term of service.23 Dinwiddie also passed a mutiny bill with strict punitive provisions and bolstered the colony’s 1755 conscription legislation.24 When more recruiting shortfalls occurred as expected, the new law filled the gaps by conscripting colonial militia aged 18 to 50, with deserters, the unemployed and other ne’er-do-wells also eligible for conscription.25 Despite these stricter measures, however, a clause in the new draft law enabled conscripts to purchase exemption from service.26 In 1756, Dinwiddie lamented 15 GD to Lord Halifax (June 6, 1755).

16 GD to General Braddock (July 4, 1755).

17 GD to Colonel Jefferson, County Lieutenant of Albemarle (July 8, 1755); Ferling, “Soldiers for Virginia: Who Served in the French and Indian War?,” 308.

18 GD to Colonel William Byrd, Lieutenant of Halifax (July 22, 1755).

19 Ferling, “Soldiers for Virginia: Who Served in the French and Indian War?,” 308.

20 GD to Governor Sharpe (July 29, 1755); Letter from GD to the Lords of the Treasury (Nov. 15, 1755), UVA Special Collections.

21 Letter from GD to the Lords of the Treasury (Nov. 15, 1755), University of Virginia Special Collections.

22 GD to Sir Thomas Robinson (Aug. 20, 1755); GD to Governor Morris (Aug. 25, 1755).

23 Ferling, “Soldiers for Virginia: Who Served in the French and Indian War?,” 308.

24 GD to Governor Morris (Jan. 2, 1756) 25 Ferling, “Soldiers for Virginia: Who Served in the French and Indian War?,” 308-9.

26 GD to the Earl of Halifax (Feb. 24, 1756); Ferling, 309.

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that “the Draught from the Militia [is] much short of my Expectation; and indeed the laying of the fine of ten Pounds on those that w’d not march out entirely defeated the Law.”27 Ferling’s compilation of the numerical evidence of Dinwiddie’s recruitment returns – based on the annual size rolls submitted by company commanders – paints a bleak picture.28 The Virginia armies of 1756-1757 collectively consisted of just 1,261 soldiers, and only 76 served for both years.29 Even the initial recruiting push flopped, as only 96 of the 459 men in the 1756 army had served previously.30 In January of 1758, Dinwiddie conceded defeat and fled for England.

In the few short years of the French and Indian War, Virginia added numerous, new chapters to her history of what Dinwiddie diagnosed as “Indolence, indifference, and want of martial Spirit.”31 Despite increased efforts to bolster the size and discipline of Old Dominion volunteers, still-sinking recruitment returns necessitated stricter conscription policies. From 1756 to 1757, 25 percent of Virginia’s soldiers were conscripts; in stark contrast, just 2.2 percent of the Massachusetts army had been drafted during the same time period.32 Perhaps Nathaniel Hawthorne correctly identified the Puritan work – and war – ethic as a missing ingredient in the Old Dominion. Nevertheless, Virginians chose to resist both recruitment and right military conduct during the French and Indian War for much more concrete reasons.

The reluctance of the elected legislators in the Virginia General Assembly to comply with Dinwiddie’s wartime wishes profoundly illustrated the unpopularity of the war.33 Dinwiddie grew exhausted by the colonial government’s wanton indifference toward collecting men and materiel for the war effort, and on more than one occasion he wished “the Crown w’d… take the Rules of Gov’t into their own hands.”34 In letters to his superiors, Dinwiddie may have exaggerated local transgressions to save his own skin.

Nevertheless, the governor did not lack company when he railed upon the Virginia administrators’ ineptitude. George Montagu-Dunk, the Earl of Halifax, wrote Dinwiddie: The supply granted in [Virginia] has been given in a manner derogatory of the prerogative of the Crown, and inconsistent with its governor’s instructions... If Virginia would only have executed her own laws, all possibility of danger would have been removed.”

1 1

27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34

GD to Colonel George Washington [hereafter ‘GW’] (Aug. 19, 1756).

Ferling, “Soldiers for Virginia: Who Served in the French and Indian War?,” 309.

Ibid.

Ibid.

GD to the Earl of Halifax (Feb. 24, 1756).

Ferling, “Soldiers for Virginia: Who Served in the French and Indian War?,” 321.

Ibid., 316-7.

GD to Lord Halifax (April 30, 1755).

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Even King George II understood the difficulties of waging war with lukewarm support from an important colony like Virginia. In his private instructions to General Braddock, the King acknowledged the likelihood that Virginia would “not contribute a sufficient sum… to deploy the charge of raising troops” and authorized Braddock to “exceed the sum” of levies “as far as you shall find necessary.”35

When the Virginia General Assembly addressed Dinwiddie in May of 1755, both houses expressed appreciation for their British protectors and willingness to comply with Dinwiddie’s demands. The Council patriotically affirmed that Virginians “have always considered the Business of the Ohio” in a national light – not as Virginians, but as Britons – and the Burgesses echoed the sentiment.36 Yet their words did not translate into deeds in the Old Dominion.

With several socio-political factors pulling Virginians away from volunteer service, serious support for effective recruitment efforts equated to political suicide for Virginia legislators.

Sectionalism and special interests constituted the first of these pull factors. As historian Sean Patrick Adams summarized in his introduction to Old Dominion, Industrial Commonwealth, Eastern Virginians dominated Old Dominion affairs, courtesy of a legislature apportioned on the basis of the free and slave population and powerful local institutions staffed by great landholders.37 This regional bias routinely came at the expense of western Virginians, as was the case during the French and Indian War. Because westerners bore the brunt of Indian raids and frontier skirmishes, eastern legislators and their constituents had little incentive to mandate colony-wide contributions to Virginia’s war effort.38 Westerners – disillusioned and distrustful of politicos across the Blue Ridge – denounced the war as what Ferling called a “get-rich-quick scheme contrived by Dinwiddie and a coterie of powerful men.”39 Eastern elites simply balked at the idea of diverting resources from their Tidewater cash cow. For decades, Virginia legislators had championed a constituency that reaped the rewards of a hands-off Britain and hoarded the spoils from their lesser western brothers; they weren’t about to stop now.

Other socio-political factors in both regions of the Old Dominion also turned Virginians against the Crown’s military directives. Burgesses feared the political repercussions of coerced recruitment in the wake of a poor harvest in 1755, not to mention the economic shortfalls such a measure would precipitate in Virginia’s agri-centric economy.40 The widespread absence of fathers and sons from households also threatened to expose women and children to slave 35 King George II Private Instructions to General Braddock (Nov. 25, 1754), University of Virginia Special Collections.

36 Address of the Council to GD (May 5, 1755); Address of the House of Burgesses to GD (May 5, 1755).

37 Sean Patrick Adams, Old Dominion, Industrial Commonwealth: Coal, Politics, and Economy in Antebellum America. (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004),10.

38 GD to Earl of Halifax (June 23, 1755).

39 Ferling, “Soldiers for Virginia: Who Served in the French and Indian War?,” 316-7.

40 Ibid., 317.

Crown-Colonial Conflict in the Early French and Indian War

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insurrections, and Dinwiddie acknowledged that “The Villany of the Negroes on any Emergency of Gov’t is always fear’d.”41 Whatever the reason, Colonel George Washington frequently informed Dinwiddie that local militia recruiters found it “impossible to get above 20 or 25 Men” because the rest “refus’d to stir, choosing, as they say, to die with their Wives and Family’s.”42

Given Virginia’s tepid tradition of military service, the war’s limited popular approval, and a plethora of factors pulling potential recruits away from service, Dinwiddie struggled to secure voluntary enlistments in the early years of the conflict.43 Yet this does not explain why a subsequent series of forced conscription policies similarly failed to produce a sufficient supply of Virginia militiamen. The answer lies in two crucial flaws of the conscription process. First, while the 1755-1756 recruitment laws broadened the range of Virginians liable for conscription, draft-ditching only increased due to a paid exemption provision. Despite a bigger pool of potential troops, now recruits could simply buy their way out of armed service. While the provision required a sizeable sum, the effect nonetheless proved catastrophic and drove Dinwiddie to declare that it “entirely defeated the Law.”44 Second, as the aforementioned figures of 1755-1756 re-enlistment can attest, Virginians lacked any reason to remain in the service. Dinwiddie’s later policies incentivized recruits with land bounties, but those who had joined for this purpose in 1755 already had earned their reward by the following year’s muster.45 With farms to till and families to nurture, thousands of Virginians exploited flawed conscription laws and thus undermined the war effort from the sidelines.

Those Virginians that did not – or could not – avoid recruitment into the Virginia Regiment fell under the command of Colonel Washington; nevertheless, they continued to undermine the French and Indian War effort, albeit not from the safety of the sidelines. Besides the clear perils of combat, several aspects of military service exacerbated the anti-war actions and attitudes of the Old Dominion populace.46 The flawed conscription process meant that many enlisted men arrived at camp embittered that their neighbors circumvented armed service by virtue of their superior wealth or connections.

Even volunteers envied the land bounties conferred on troops in later years, especially those that managed to ‘take the bounties and run.’ Despite such incentives, however, militiamen earned precious little compensation for their service. Privates in neighboring North Carolina and Pennsylvania received more than double the pay of Virginia’s soldiers.47 Worse, New England soldiers earned approximately 60 percent more than their Southern counterparts.48 Braddock degradingly described the Virginians in his expedition as “a half-

1 1

41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48

GD to Colonel Chas Carter (July 18, 1755).

GW to GD (Oct. 11, 1755).

Ferling, “Soldiers for Virginia: Who Served in the French and Indian War?,” 321.

GD to GW (Aug. 19, 1756).

Ferling, “Soldiers for Virginia: Who Served in the French and Indian War?,” 309.

Ibid., 310.

GD to James Abercromby (June 10, 1756) Ferling, “Soldiers for Virginia: Who Served in the French and Indian War?,” 314-6.

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starved, ragged, dirty set,” but with troop pay low and frequently weeks in arrears, Virginia troops had no alternative to poor diet and tattered clothing.49 Coping with poor pay and deleterious living conditions proved hard enough without the mutual distrust and resentment that festered between the Crown and colonial troops. Virginians understandably erupted over their heavy losses at Braddock’s defeat in 1755 and feared that future episodes of English cowardice could compromise their safety.50 Faced with haughty British officers, poor tactics, and a strong sense of self-preservation, Braddock reported that the “Braggadocio Virginians” reacted in kind by “exposing the king’s troops” and refusing to contribute to the general fund of provisions.51 Even Washington acknowledged, “My order’s are only conditl and always confysd.”52 Given such counterproductive conditions, and with rapid recruit turnover and over 60 percent of conscripted Virginians aged 24 or younger, bad behavior inevitably seeped into the ranks.53 This disobedience often involved disputes over rank and occurred at all levels of Virginia’s military hierarchy. Dinwiddie’s concern over one such “unhappy Dispute in Fort Cumb’l’d between C’t Dagworthy [and] Colo. Washington” in 1756 suggests that it may have inspired Virginia “Provincials not Joining w’th ye Regulars.”54 Virginia’s soldiers also engaged in myriad indiscretions including drunkenness, brawling, swearing, and gambling, and many even dared the ultimate act of disobedience – desertion.55 On the march, Braddock recalled that Virginians would “clamour against the General,” and in the heat of battle, “numbers ran away, nay fired on us.”56 Under military law, unruly colonial troops faced heavy fines and harsh punishments including execution, but these measures failed to deter others from committing offenses.57 After Braddock’s defeat, Colonel Dunbar’s departure from Fort Cumberland prompted a colonial desertion en masse that left the valued outpost vulnerable to attack.58 The following year, Dinwiddie welcomed the stricter provisions of a new mutiny bill after Washington reported that “the practice is continued with greater spirit than ever” and when few deserters were ever caught and punished.59 Insubordinate Virginians exacted a heavy toll on the money, manpower, 49 The Expedition of Major General Braddock to Virginia (May 29-July 9, 1755), University of Virginia Special Collections. 22-3.

50 Letter from GD to the Lords of the Treasury (Nov. 15, 1755), University of Virginia Special Collections.

51 The Expedition of Major General Braddock to Virginia (May 29-July 9, 1755), University of Virginia Special Collections, 16-25.

52 Letter to GD by GW (Oct. 17, 1753), University of Virginia Special Collections.

53 Ferling, “Soldiers for Virginia: Who Served in the French and Indian War?,” 322.

54 GD to Governor Dobbs (Feb. 5, 1756).

55 Ferling, “Soldiers for Virginia: Who Served in the French and Indian War?,” 310.

56 The Expedition of Major General Braddock to Virginia (May 29-July 9, 1755), University of Virginia Special Collections, 25-9.

57 GW to GD (Oct. 11, 1755); GD to GW (May 27, 1756).

58 GD to Sir Thomas Robinson (Aug 20, 1755).

59 GW to GD (Jan. 13, 1756); Journal of Colonel Charles Lewis (Oct. 10 & Dec. 6, 1755), University of Virginia Special Collections.

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and morale of the British war effort. Beyond the “immense Sum [of] money expended in Recruiting, Cloathing, Arming, Maintaining and Subsisting Soldiers who have deserted” noted by Washington, this disobedience had a negative, self-perpetuating ‘domino effect’ that proliferated backwardness in colonial recruiting and regulation.60 In a letter to Dinwiddie, the Earl of Halifax best expressed the magnitude of Virginia’s inaction relative to the other colonies: “If the militia regulations in the other provinces are the same [as] in Virginia, I think a man would not hazard too much if he declared that 500 French might safely march from east to west through the heart of his Majesty’s American Dominions.”61 Virginians’ prejudices against military service did not cost the Crown a victory in the French and Indian War, but they set the stage for a different British defeat at the turn of the century.62

On August 17, 1755, renowned colonial preacher Samuel Davies gave one of his many inspiring sermons to the Virginia Regiment. In patriotic and spiritually-tinged oratory, Davies called on Virginia’s soldiers to “defend the territories of the best of kings… preserve your estates… [and] secure the inestimable blessings of British Liberty against the oppression and tyranny of French slavery.”63 Dinwiddie frequently enlisted Davies’ services as a motivational speaker for the Virginia war effort. Unfortunately for Dinwiddie, Davies had “as much success as if [he] had attempted to stop the wild bears of the mountains,” to borrow Dinwiddie’s vivid simile.64 Before British merchants betrayed the tobacco culture of the Old Dominion, Virginians’ actions – and inactions – during the early years of the French and Indian War had already laid a foundation for the argument for the “language of planter protest” and the onset of the American Revolution.65 In the short term, obstinate Virginians finally – and perhaps mercifully – drove Dinwiddie back across the Atlantic. With respect to long run Crown-colonial relations, however, Virginia’s legislative and military defiance of Britain during the French and Indian War sowed the first seeds from which Breen’s “spirit of rebellion could grow.”66

60 61 62 63

1 1

GW to GD (Oct. 11, 1755).

Letter to GD by the Earl of Halifax (July 6, 1754), University of Virginia Special Collections.

Ferling, “Soldiers for Virginia: Who Served in the French and Indian War?,” 309.

Samuel Davies, Religion and Patriotism the Constituents of a Good Soldier (Aug. 17, 1755), University of Virginia Special Collections, 19.

64 Letter from Robert Dinwiddie to the Lords of the Treasury (Nov. 15, 1755), University of Virgina Special Collections.

65 Breen, Tobacco Culture,158.

66 Breen, Tobacco Culture, 203.

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Bibliography Primary Sources Davies, Samuel. “Religion and Patriotism the Constituents of a good soldier: A sermon preached to Captain Overton’s independent company of volunteers, raised in Hanover County, Virginia, August 17, 1755” (Aug. 17, 1755). University of Virginia Special Collections.

Dinwiddie, Robert. “Letter to the Lords of the Treasury” (Nov. 15, 1755).

University of Virginia Special Collections.

King George II of Great Britain, “Private Instructions to General Braddock relating to his command in North America” (Nov. 25, 1754). University of Virginia Special Collections Library. Accessed October 19, 2010.

Lewis, Charles. “Journal of Colonel Charles Lewis, for an expedition of Virginia troops on the frontier in the French and Indian War” (Oct. 10 & Dec. 6, 1755). University of Virginia Special Collections.

Mantagu-Dunk, George, Earl of Halifax. “Letter to Robert Dinwiddie” (July 6, 1754). University of Virginia Special Collections.

“The Official Records of Robert Dinwiddie, Lieutenant-Governor of the Colony of Virginia, 1751-1758.” Introduction by R. A. Brock. Virginia Historical Society.

“The Expedition of Major General Braddock to Virginia.” (May 29-July 9, 1755). University of Virginia Special Collections Library.

Washington, George. “Letter to Robert Dinwiddie” (Oct. 17, 1753). University of Virginia Special Collections.

Secondary Sources Adams, Sean Patrick. Old Dominion, Industrial Commonwealth: Coal, Politics, and Economy in Antebellum America. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004.

Bailey, Thomas A., Kennedy, David M., and Cohen, Lizabeth. The American Pageant, Eleventh Edition. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1998.

Breen, T. H. Tobacco Culture: The Mentality of the Great Tidewater Planters on the Eve of Revolution. Princeton. NJ: Princeton University Press, 1985.

Ferling, John. “Soldiers for Virginia: Who Served in the French and Indian War?” The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography Vol. 94 No. 3 (July, 1986): 307-328.

Walton, Gary M. and Rockoff, Hugh. History of the American Economy, Eleventh Edition. Mason, OH: Cenage Learning, 2005.

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Jes’

so much meal to make bread fum’

Food and Foodways of AfricanAmerican Slaves in the Virginia Piedmont, 1760-1840

Christina Regeleski=

By the mid-eighteenth century, black slaves in North America created a new and vibrant culture, in spite of their bondage, which could not singularly be called either “African” or “American.” Based on both old traditions and new adaptations, slaves developed a rich African-American culture that shaped their day-to-day lives, affecting their own communities as well as their relationships with their masters. Much of the recent historiography of early America attempts to combat previous prejudice and inattention to the existence of a slave culture that was both complex and unique from that of their white masters. Broad studies on slave language, clothing, labor, religion, music and other cultural aspects prove that a vibrant and original community did indeed exist across America’s plantations. The study of food and foodways, or all activities related to food such as procurement, preparation, and consumption, of African Americans contribute considerably to our understanding of this original culture, its formation, and its implications.1

Because food is so ingrained into the consciousness of peoples in a community, “to understand food and its distribution is to gain insight into the operations of society.”2 The food and foodways of African-American slaves provide a critical insight into daily, indirect resistance and bargaining slaves engaged in despite their social, economic, and political oppression. = Christina Regeleski is a member of the class of 2011. She wrote with the guidence of Nicholas P. Wood.

1 Theresa A. Singleton, “Archaeology of Slavery in North America,” Annual Review of Anthropology 24, 1995: 124-125.

2 Herbert C. Covey and Dwight Eisnach, What the Slaves Ate: Recollections of African American Foods and Foodways from the Slave Narratives (Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, LLC, 2009) 1.

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Food could also influence status, as masters were forced to concede remarkable responsibility and trust to their slave cooks due to cooks’ highly valued skills and proximity to the mansion. Needed for everyday sustenance, food, its procurement, and its preparation shaped slaves’ experience and relationships while acquiring meanings of status, skill, and spirituality. For slaves in the Piedmont region of Virginia, food was a significant element of daily life but the diversity of their food culture between different communities and individuals demonstrates that the experience of African-American slaves defies generalization.

The Virginia Piedmont during the late eighteenth century and early nineteenth century was home to three American Presidents—Thomas Jefferson at Monticello, James Madison at Montpelier, and James Monroe at Ash Lawn-Highland—who, separate from their numerous political offices and public lives, each ran and owned plantations worked by slave labor. These men corresponded frequently as friends, as neighbors, and as fellow planters to discuss and share advice concerning agriculture and plantation management.3 The slave communities at these three plantations varied despite slaves’ similar ancestral traditions, identical environments and comparable masters.

Each slave community developed their own unique forms of food culture.

Food was used by both slaves and their masters to create an intricate network of bargaining and resistance that reflects the development of a new AfricanAmerican culture and demonstrates the strength of enslaved peoples.

Concentrating on the enslaved laborers of Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe allows the actions of particular slave communities and individuals to be considered in-depth. Letters, diaries, recipes and plantation records all provide an insight into food, its significance, and how it both affected and was affected by African-American slaves. Due to a lack of slave manuscripts for these specific communities, narratives of former Virginia slaves compiled by the Federal Writer’s Project in the 1930s are used to add a crucial primary perspective to the study of food culture in the area during this period.4 Archaeology provides further evidence of food and foodways. The archaeological record is helpful because it is often created unintentionally and can provide insight into daily life and habits that were not transcribed.5 Like all forms of historical evidence, however, even the most specific interpretations remain subject to certain biases. “Thomas Jefferson bequeathed to posterity ‘the richest storehouse of historical information ever left by a single man’” due to his relentless record-keeping so available information is largely biased towards the slave communities and individuals at Monticello.6 Alternatively,

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3 The Papers of James Madison Digital Edition, ed. J. C. A. Stagg (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, Rotunda, 2010) 4 Slave Narratives: A Folk History of slavery in Virginia from Interviews with Former Slaves (Bedford: Applewood Books).

5 Barbara Heath, Hidden Lives: The Archaeology of Slave Life at Thomas Jefferson’s Poplar Forest (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1999), 28.

6 Rayford W. Logan, ed. Memoirs of a Monticello Slave: as dictated to Charles Campbell in the 1840’s by Isaac, one of Thomas Jefferson’s slaves (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1951), 3.

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the archaeological record is affected by various degrees of preservation that could favor certain elements over others, creating misleading results. Many activities and forms of resistance pertaining to food that slaves could have performed, such as destruction of crops, leave behind no material remains, so it is likely slave food culture is even more complex than the evidence it left behind.7

While exact numbers varied, about 100 to 120 slaves lived at Montpelier, 50 at Ash Lawn-Highland, and 50 to 200 at Monticello at any one time. During this time period, over 100,000 slaves lived in Virginia by the late 1750s and increased to about 450,000 slaves by 1840.8 Historians believe the slave populations at these three plantations were largely descended from the Igbo peoples of West Africa- modern day Nigeria-and the Igbo’s “ancestral tradition served as the basic course for the common tradition which Afro-Virginian slaves forged over the course of the long eighteenth century,” particularly in relation to food.9 When they were first brought to colonial Virginia, Western Africans were “operating within a basically familiar agriculture” since many of the foods available from their homeland were also grown in the American colonies—such as black-eyed peas, okra, spinach, squash, yams, and corn—and, since many American plants had been already incorporated into African agriculture since the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the enslaved peoples would have been very familiar with Virginia’s resources.10 The first Western Africans in Virginia did not have to adapt to different natural resources or edible materials upon their enslavement but, over generations, had to adjust their practices to the new, oppressive social environment imposed upon them.

The food culture of the slaves living at Monticello, Montpelier, and Ash Lawn-Highland was highly dependent on what foods they were given access to. The most common way a slave procured food for their families and themselves was through the rations allotted to them by the overseer and determined by the master of the plantation. Madison and Jefferson took a very particular interest in slaves’ rations, realizing that the health of their workforce was a crucial responsibility of a dutiful planter. In 1790, Madison wrote to his overseer, Mor7 Charles E. Orser and Pedro P. A. Funari, “Archaeology of Slave Resistance and Rebellion,” World Archaeology 33.1, June 2001: 62.

8 A. Marshall, “The North Kitchen 2008-2009 Final Report,” James Madison’s Montpelier Archaeology Department (2006): 50; Gerard W. Gawalt, “James Monroe, Presidential Planter,” The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 101.2 April 1993, 252; “Crops at Monticello,” Monticello, 30 Oct. 2010. <http://www.monticello.org/site/house-andgardens/crops-monticello>; Herbert S. Klein, Slavery in the Americas: A Comparative Study of Virginia and Cuba (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967) 177; (2004).

Historical Census Browser. Retrieved 22 Nov. 2010, from the University of Virginia, Geospatial and Statistical Data Center: http://fisher.lib.virginia.edu/collections/stats/ histcensus/index.html.

9 Douglas Brent Chambers, ‘He Gwine Sing He Country’: Africans, Afro-Virginians, and the Development of Slave Culture in Virginia, 1690-1810, (PhD diss., University of Virginia, 1996), 5.

10 Frederick Douglass Opie, Hog and Hominy: Soul Food from Africa to America (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008) 1-3.

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decai Collins, very specific instructions on the rations his slaves were to receive and implied these practices and rules had been in place for a number of years: To chuse out one of the milch cows for his [Mordecai Collins] own use, and let the rest be milked for the negroes. To keep the Negroes supplied with meal to be kept in a barrel apart for themselves: the barrel now there holding 13 pecks to be filled three time every two weeks. To receive from Sawney’s [a slave overseer] 400 lb. of Pork for himself; one half of the remainder to be for the Negroes at B. [Black] Meadow, as was the case last year.11 Jefferson kept diligent records of the rations the slaves of Monticello received, along with the numbers of blankets, beds, shoes, linens, and clothing he distributed to his slaves. In 1796, Jefferson created a bread list and ration list which allotted a peck of bread per week per family, which is about two gallons, and one-half to three fish per family.12 In addition to continued lists of bread and fish rations in 1799, 1810, 1815 and 1817, in which the quantities generally remain the same, Jefferson also provided his slaves with 4 ½ barrels of corn for 90 people in 1819 and 5 barrels of corn for 86 people in 1821.13 Archaeological excavations of slave dwellings on Mulberry Row at Monticello reflect a significant presence of domestic pork and beef in slave diets that equaled to about one-half to five pounds of meat per week per slave, which suggests slaves were given rations from the sizeable livestock populations occupying Monticello.14 While currently there are no records for rationing at Ash Lawn-Highland available, Monroe’s Oak Hill Plantation located near Leesburg, Virginia had stores that would have provided each slave with an average of three pounds of salted pork and 1 ¾ pecks of corn per week and it can be assumed Monroe would desire similar provisions for the slave population at Ash LawnHighland. 15 The prevalence of pork in the diet was typical of all southerners, both black and white, in the antebellum period.16 These Virginia planters, all elite, “always considered the profit line first when they rationed” and strictly followed a rising emphasis on pure efficiency

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11 James Madison, Jr. to James Madison, Sr., November 1790, The Papers of James Madison Digital Edition, ed. J. C. A. Stagg (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, Rotunda, 2010).

12 Thomas Jefferson’s Farm Book with Commentary and relevant extracts from other writings, ed. Edwin Morris Betts (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1976), 50.

13 Edwin Morris Betts, 171.

14 Diana C. Crader, “Slave Diet at Monticello,” American Antiquity 55.4, Oct. 1990: 690717.

15 Gerard W. Gawalt, “James Monroe, Presidential Planter,” The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 101.2, April 1993, 267.

16 Herbert C. Covey and Dwight Eisnach, What the Slaves Ate: Recollections of African American Foods and Foodways from the Slave Narratives (Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, LLC, 2009), 105.

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that was gaining ground in intellectual circles in the early nineteenth century.17 These propertied men with a large slave labor force could afford to establish “virtual factories on their farms, utilizing slaves as operatives,” where reasonable nutrition and the diet of slaves were considered necessary investments into their workforce, not a moral obligation.18 Masters did use food, however, to support their paternalistic ideals and encourage a productive, loyal workforce.

Writing to Edward Coles in 1814, Jefferson believed that “until more can be done for them [slaves], should we endeavor, with those whom fortune has thrown on our hands, to feed and clothe them well, protect them from ill usage, require such reasonable labor only as is performed voluntarily by free men” which indicates that the master-slave relationship, however grossly unequal and forced, was a conceived to be an exchange of provision and protection for labor.19 Masters also considered adequate treatment of slaves as a point of personal pride and allowed them to justify slavery as beneficial. Madison, defending slavery to a Philadelphia journalist, argued that African-American slaves have better diets than free European laborers after the American Revolution: They are better fed, better clad, better lodged, and better treated in every respect…With respect to the great article of food particularly it is a common remark among those who have visited Europe, that it [slave diet] includes a much greater proportion of the animal ingredient, than is attainable by the free labourers even in that quarter of the Globe.20 The differences in rations, however, were not only dependent on the whim of masters but the success of the plantations. Like other farms, plantations were subject to a variety of economic and environmental factors that could force rations to be reduced and limit the accessibility slaves had to food. Struggling with early debts, Thomas Jefferson wrote that “I am miserable till I shall not owe a shilling: the moment that shall be the case I shall feel myself at liberty to do something for the comfort of my slaves” and indicates how intensely slaves depended on their master’s success.21 For the slaves at Monticello, this moment of comfort never arrived as Jefferson spent the remainder of his life in serious debt.

The slaves at Ash Lawn-Highland had particularly difficult access to foodstuffs and their rations, as well as to adequate farming of the plantation, 17 Ibid., 379.

18 Stephen B. Hodin, ”The Mechanisms of Monticello,” 387.

19 Edwin Morris Betts, ed. Thomas Jefferson’s Farm Book with Commentary and relevant extracts from other writings, 50.

20 James Madison, Jr. to Robert Walsh, Jr., March 2, 1819, The Papers of James Madison Digital Edition, J. C. A. Stagg, editor. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, Rotunda, 2010.

21 Thomas Jefferson to Nicholas Lewis, December 19 1786, The Papers of Thomas Jefferson Digital Edition, ed. Barbara B. Oberg and J. Jefferson Looney. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, Rotunda, 2008.

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because they were often dependent on negligent overseers. James Monroe was generally an absentee planter, typically spending a maximum of four to six weeks at Ash Lawn-Highland a year due to his numerous public offices, and depended on his neighbors and friends Jefferson and Madison, as well as other family and overseers to manage the plantation for him.22 His neighbors had their own troubles, as Madison complained to Jefferson in 1826 that “since my return to private life (and the case was worse during my absence in Public) such have been the unkind seasons, and the ravages of insects, that I have made but one tolerable crop of Tobacco, and but one of Wheat….I have been living very much throughout on borrowed means.”23 African-American slaves in the Virginia Piedmont, however, descended from West Africans who “came from regions where there was feast and famine” regularly so dynamic agricultural environments were familiar to them and these enslaved peoples were able to craft a dynamic food culture despite severe limitations and oppressions.24 Despite being given cheap and minimal sustenance based on masters’ agendas, slaves resisted this control and maintained an active food culture that reflects imprints of African traditions as well as reveals remarkable ingenuity in creating new foods and techniques. At these plantations, pork and beef were the most accessible sources of protein for slaves but, similar to a traditional Igbo diet, there was also an abundance of vegetable and grains present in African-American cooking.25 At Monticello and Jefferson’s other Virginia plantation Poplar Forest, slaves received the less desirable and less meaty parts of domesticated pigs and cattle, such as the heads, backbones, and feet.26 It is also probable that slaves received organs such as hearts, livers, and lungs but there is no actual recorded evidence of this at these plantations and these foodstuffs would not leave anything behind in the archaeological record. 27 Slaves took these less desirable cuts and combined them into a one-pot stew, which would ensure that all meat was used and could slowly cook over the fire during the day while they were occupied with their other duties.28 These stews received added flavor through the use of salt and other spices, including red pepper, of which, through traditional West African knowledge, slaves had great expertise.

They acquired techniques “that transformed simple and sometimes bland foods into more zesty meals.”29

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22 Gerard W. Gawalt, “James Monroe, Presidential Planter,” 253-254.

23 The Papers of James Madison Digital Edition, J. C. A. Stagg, editor. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, Rotunda, 2010.

24 Frederick Douglass Opie, Hog and Hominy, 24.

25 Damon Lee Fowler, ed, Dining at Monticello: in good taste and abundance (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005), 43; Frederick Douglass Opie, Hog and Hominy, 20.

26 Barbara Heath, Hidden Lives: The Archaeology of Slave Life at Thomas Jefferson’s Poplar Forest, 58-61.

27 Herbert C. Covey and Dwight Eisnach, What the Slaves Ate,, 97.

28 Ibid., 62.

29 Ibid., 43.

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Slaves used salt, of which a pint a month was rationed to each of Jefferson’s slaves, to preserve their meat for later use. 30 “The use of salt and drying to preserve food would have been practiced in many African societies and thus would have been passed on to later generations of slaves” but some slaves would also have learned new techniques from the smokehouses present on each of these Virginia plantations.31 Pork and ham were important to the diets on the plantations themselves, but also had distinct social and cultural roles in antebellum society. Sally McKean praised Dolley Madison in a letter “for the nice hams you have had the goodness to send me; I prize them not only for their good quality and fine flavor but above all…the assurance that you love me and are my friend” and, to return a gift of spun wool, Madison went to “Mrs M[adison]’s Smokehouse from which are forwarded a few Virginia Hams.” 32 As such a prevalent social tool and status symbol in Virginian culture, the production of these hams in the smokehouses would not have been taken lightly— Jefferson specifically instructed his overseer at Monticello that “the smoking and other attentions to the meat must be very exact”—and greatly depended on slaves mastering techniques that would then have been brought back to their own homes and cooking styles. 33 Smoking hams was along and precise process—the meat at Ash Lawn-Highland’s smokehouse would immediately be placed into tubs of salt after slaughter, which would also be performed by slaves, to soak for three weeks and then removed to be smoked for another week.34 Slaves also adapted unique methods for cooking and eating with limited resources and with limited time in the fields. Field hands were often not allowed to return to their homes to prepare their meals because it was considered by the masters and overseers as wasted production time so these laborers adapted their diets to these limitations.35 Using the common rations of cornmeal, slaves created types of bread, described as ash-cakes, hoe cakes, or spoon bread, that could be easily cooked over an open fire on stones or the blade of a hoe with limited ingredients and could be eaten immediately without use of utensils in the field. The way ash cakes were made was similar to the West African method of baking fufu which was a mixture of yams, plaintains, and cassava cut into pieces and boiled together which shows the persistence of African 30 Damon Lee Fowler, ed, Dining at Monticello: in good taste and abundance, 44.

31 Herbert C. Covey and Dwight Eisnach, What the Slaves Ate, 53.

32 Sarah (Sally) McKean Maria Theresa Martinez de Yrujo to Dolley Payne Todd Madison, [1801-1807], The Papers of Dolley Madison Digital Edition, ed. Holly C. Shulman.

(Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, Rotunda, 2008); James Madison to Robert R. Livingston, July 3 1810, The Papers of James Madison Digital Edition, J. C. A. Stagg, editor.(Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, Rotunda, 2010).

33 Thomas Jefferson to Richard Richardson, Dec. 21, 1799, The Papers of Thomas Jefferson Digital Edition, ed. Barbara B. Oberg and J. Jefferson Looney. (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, Rotunda, 2008).

34 Kay Collins Chretien, The Smokehouse at Ash-Lawn Highland: It’s History and Restoration (Ash-Lawn Highland: College of William and Mary, 1996).

35 Herbert C. Covey and Dwight Eisnach, What the Slaves Ate, 68.

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influence in slaves’ diets.36 Jefferson even noted the developing culinary tastes of enslaved peoples on his plantation, recording that “the laborers prefer receiving 1 peck of flour to 1 ½ peck of Indian meal” which implies slaves had already created a standard for these breads in their communities and recipes that they refused to compromise.37 Often considered to be the predecessors of modern southern hotwater cornbread and pancakes, these breads reflect the active role slaves took in combining new forms of cooking with traditional knowledge in order to combat their oppressive social and economical status in antebellum America.38 At each of these plantations, Monticello in particular, slave communities resisted their master’s complete control over their diets by supplementing their rations through gardening and hunting. After already full days of labor from sun up to sun down with only special holidays and Sundays off, slaves would use their limited leisure time to work their own plots of land or hunt for wild game to add to their household diets. Next to the Smokehouse at Montpelier, archaeological excavations have produced evidence for the presence of numerous small garden plots that would have been operated by the slave community. Slaves living at Monticello and Montpelier also grew a variety of vegetables in personal garden plots that could include cabbage, white and sweet potatoes, beans, greens, and cucumbers.39 Unlike Jefferson’s experimental and gourmet garden, slave gardens at Monticello were dedicated to everyday staples, showing how slaves used their own judgment and made their own decisions about what they grew for themselves. 40 Sweet potatoes, for example, had been incorporated into African agriculture since the nineteenth century and became a large staple of African diets so the selection of these specific vegetables by slaves at both Monticello and Montpelier could show that their own culinary preferences or those of their relatives were represented in these gardens.41 In addition to providing extra nutrition, gardening gave slaves an opportunity to work their own land, to provide for their families, and to reap the rewards of their labor all of which were denied them by their masters in the fields. Both the Jeffersons and the Madisons purchased surplus goods from their slaves, which created an internal economy within the slave community that gave them the power to be both producers and consumers.42 Dolley and Nelly Madison, James Madison’s wife and mother, even participated in this

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36 Ibid., 154.

37 Edwin Morris Betts, ed. Thomas Jefferson’s Farm Book with Commentary and relevant extracts from other writings, 77.

38 Herbert C. Covey and Dwight Eisnach, What the Slaves Ate, 154.

39 “The Enslaved Community,” Montpelier, 26 Oct. 2010. <http://www.montpelier.org/ explore/community/enslaved.php>; A. Marshall, “Initial Archaeological Investigations of the East Smokehouse in the South Yard,” James Madison’s Montpelier Archaeology Department (January 2009); Damon Lee Fowler, ed, Dining at Monticello: in good taste and abundance, 44.

40 Damon Lee Fowler, ed, Dining at Monticello: in good taste and abundance, 63.

41 Frederick Douglass Opie, Hog and Hominy, 4.

42 Barbara Heath, Hidden Lives: The Archaeology of Slave Life at Thomas Jefferson’s Poplar Forest, 50.

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economy and purchased produce, eggs, and chickens from a Montpelier slave named Sawney.43 Martha Jefferson, in a single six-month period, bought a variety of eggs, chickens, cherries, peas, potato seeds, butter, hops and other goods from different slaves for prices of up to 7 ½ dollars which exemplifies how active and successful slaves were in producing and marketing a variety of goods to the household.44 “In 1780, Jefferson the master either paid or entrusted funds with some of his slaves forty-seven times” and this practice continued throughout his life at Monticello and Poplar Forest.45 This economy, despite operating between two unequal parties, reflects how slaves were able to demand professional levels of exchange from their masters and resist masters’ complete economic control over slaves’ lives, quality of living, and material culture. Jefferson noted in 1781 that he “P[ai]d Jupiter 28…Still owe him 6” which demonstrates a respect for prices and the due slaves’ labor deserved for specialized goods. 46 This was most likely encouraged by the trust the slaves themselves would respect when Jefferson would give them money to purchase goods on his behalf. As an example of this, Jefferson recorded a 1782 transaction where he gave Jupiter money to purchase goods in Richmond and Jupiter returned the surplus cash to Jefferson upon his return, which illustrates how slaves had a sense of responsibility when entrusted with funds so they could expect that courtesy to be returned when they were selling their own goods.47 “The existence of an internal economy testified to the determination of Virginia slaves to exact concession from their owners for their productive labor, to enlarge their personal independence and to seize opportunities for individual advancement,” actively pushing the boundaries of their dependence on their masters.48 In 1798 while he was in Philadelphia, Thomas Jefferson expressed his gratitude to Thomas Mann Randolph, who kept watch over the plantation in Jefferson’s stead, for halting slave gardening practices that he deemed inappropriate: I thank you for putting an end to the cultivation of tobacco as a peculium of the negroes. I have found it ever necessary to confine them to such articles as are not raised on the farm. There 43 “The Enslaved Community,” Montpelier.

44 James A. Bear, Jr. and Lucia C. Stanton, eds. Jefferson’s Memorandum Books: Accounts, with Legal Records and Miscellany, 1767-1826. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), 299-301.

45 Philip J. Schwarz. Review of Bear, James A. Jr..; Stanton, Lucia C., eds., Jefferson’s Memorandum Books: Accounts, with Legal Records and Miscellany, 1767-1826. H-Pol, H-Net Reviews. April, 1998.

46 James A. Bear, Jr. and Lucia C. Stanton, eds. Jefferson’s Memorandum Books: Accounts, with Legal Records and Miscellany, 1767-1826., 504.

47 Ibid., 521.

48 John T. Schlotterbeck, “The Internal Economy of Slavery in Rural Piedmont Virginia,” The Slaves’ Economy: Independent Production by Slaves in the Americas, Ira Berlin and Phillip D. Morgan, ed (London: Frank Cass and Co, ltd., 1991), 170-171.

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is no other way of drawing a line between what is theirs and mine.49 Jefferson, as with other plantation masters, refused to have their own product indistinguishable from those of their slaves or allow the slaves’ internal economy to develop in ways that could challenge their own power and dominance.50 There were limitations imposed on what slaves could grow in their gardens and sell but, as evident from the problems at Monticello, slaves directly attempted to expand their freedoms without permission or assistance from the plantation administration and created new boundaries in the master-slave relationship, even to the point of sacrificing land that could be used to grow food. 51 Gardening, however, was not the only way slaves expanded their diet and would use their leisure time to hunt and trap wild game to supplement their meat rations.

When “hunting game, slaves…denied the totality of their owners’ control over their labor” and hunting reflects the role food had in socializing individuals in the slave community.52 Slaves at Montpelier fished, hunted, and trapped wild game such as squirrels, rabbits and raccoons that could add meat and flavor to the rations provided to them. Small animal remains, such as squirrel and rabbit, also appear at the slave quarters at Monticello which reflects the presence of hunting in these slave communities though, according to a 1996 study, wild game represented less than 5% of the meat consumed by slaves at Monticello.53 Slaves most often hunted small animals, relying upon the opossums, raccoons, and rabbits that frequented the Virginia landscape and could be caught close to home during the limited leisure time slaves had to dedicate to hunting. 54 Opossum, which are nocturnal, “were an ideal animal for slaves to hunt because they came out when slaves were home from the fields” so slaves deftly tailored their hunting skills, and indirectly their culinary skills, to their restricted environment.55 Isaac Jefferson, a Monticello slave whose oral history was transcribed recalled that they ate rabbits, which were very abundant at Monticello, and even kept in a stone rabbit house, or warren, so slaves had variety of ways to seek small game.56 Though it was less significant to slaves’ diets than gardening, hunting still allowed slaves to provide for their families on their own terms, during their

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49 Thomas Jefferson to Thomas Mann Randolph, June 14, 1798, Edwin Morris Betts, ed.

Thomas Jefferson’s Farm Book with Commentary and relevant extracts from other writings, 16.

50 John T. Schlotterbeck, “The Internal Economy of Slavery in Rural Piedmont Virginia,” 174, 178.

51 Ibid., 178.

52 Nicolas W. Proctor, Bathed in Blood: Hunting and Mastery in the Old South (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 2002), 149.

53 Diana C. Crader, “Slave Diet at Monticello”; Herbert C. Covey and Dwight Eisnach, What the Slaves Ate, 114.

54 Nicolas W. Proctor, Bathed in Blood: Hunting and Mastery in the Old South, 150.

55 Herbert C. Covey and Dwight Eisnach, What the Slaves Ate, 120.

56 Rayford W. Logan, ed. Memoirs of a Monticello Slave: as dictated to Charles Campbell in the 1840’s by Isaac, one of Thomas Jefferson’s slaves, 33.

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own leisure time, and resisted the master’s role as the sole source of food. The job of hunting was usually left to slave men, who learned to hunt during boyhood from play, observation, or even assisting their owners, which reflects how procuring food and providing for one’s family was a gendered activity in the enslaved community.57 Isaac recalled that “Mr. Jefferson used to hunt squirrels and partridges, kept five or six guns, [and] oftentimes carred Isaac wid him” which indicates that some of the male Monticello slaves would have had the opportunity to bring back hunting skills to their own families after being introduced to them through Jefferson.58 Simon Stokes, a former slave from Mathew County, Virginia, remembers his childhood play where “in de fall wen de simmons wuz ripe, me and de odder boys sho’ had a big time possum huntin’, we all would git two or three a night” which shows that hunting not only procured food for the family but was an important social activity for young boys.59 The discovery of lead shot at slave quarter excavations indicates that slaves had access to firearms, most likely for hunting, which is shows a remarkable level of trust considering whites’ high fear of slave revolt at this time period and this dynamic will need to be explored in further scholarship.60 Masters, like Jefferson, took advantage of slaves’ hunting abilities by purchasing wild game, like venison and partridges, from them so hunting also provided slaves with an opportunity to earn income.61 Hunting and trapping, requiring specialized skill, could also have been used as a way to gain favor or status since “slaves who shared their kills with their friends and family strengthened the power and cohesion of the slave community as a whole.”62

Slaves could also engage in stealing in order to procure food, either as a protest against inadequate rations or as an act of pure defiance against their enslavement. Most thefts were primarily protests against short rations and may have been based on the belief that they had a moral right to a fair share of the products of their labor but, also, “stealing food from owners gave slaves access to a variety of foods that normally would not have been available.”63 There is not an abundance of written record that refers to stealing at these plantations or any punishments, but it could be attributed either to the commonality or the triviality of stealing on plantations, so it would not be thought significant enough to write down. Despite the lack of evidence, stealing did exist in some form and concern about stealing was present in slaveholders’ minds. Jefferson took particular precautions with many of his stores, ordering Randolph to keep 57 Nicolas W. Proctor, Bathed in Blood: Hunting and Mastery in the Old South, 145.

58 Rayford W. Logan, ed. Memoirs of a Monticello Slave: as dictated to Charles Campbell in the 1840’s by Isaac, one of Thomas Jefferson’s slaves, 29.

59 Slave Narratives: A Folk History of slavery in Virginia from Interviews with Former Slaves, 45.

60 Barbara Heath, Hidden Lives: The Archaeology of Slave Life at Thomas Jefferson’s Poplar Forest, 61.

61 James A. Bear, Jr. and Lucia C. Stanton, eds. Jefferson’s Memorandum Books: Accounts, with Legal Records and Miscellany, 1767-1826., 767.

62 Nicolas W. Proctor, Bathed in Blood: Hunting and Mastery in the Old South, 144.

63 John T. Schlotterbeck, “The Internal Economy of Slavery in Rural Piedmont Virginia,” 175; Herbert C. Covey and Dwight Eisnach, What the Slaves Ate, 32.

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two new casks of wine “in the Dining room cellar, and that secured by double locks.”64 Jefferson noticed alcohol abuse amongst slaves, referring to a runaway slave as “greatly addicted to drink, and when drunk is insolent and disorderly” and also ordered John off a task because “he must have nothing to do with drink,” which shows slaves managed to acquire or create drinks that might have been forbidden.65 In 1821, Jefferson also mentions he caught Nace, a slave at Montpelier, stealing vegetables from the garden to sell locally which demonstrates how some slaves stole food to support their economic ventures, not just to supplement unjust rations, and would have made Jefferson aware of slaves’ abilities to steal.66 Orchards, present on all of these plantations, were especially tempting to slaves because they were very open and available and, if these orchards were targeted, slaves were not easily caught.67 By stealing food, slaves participated in active daily resistance against the controls and rule their owners’ attempted to maintain over rations and property.

African-American slaves did not only test limitations on type of foods and food procurement methods but used food to challenge their master’s control and dominance over their personal space. While the proximity of some of garden plots at Montpelier to the main house suggests a higher level of surveillance, Monticello and other Montpelier gardens were located in the individual yards of slaves’ homes and quarters and at Jefferson’s Poplar Forest the slave quarters had enclosed yards that suggest slaves had the freedom to organize the space around their own homes.68 Also, storage pits appear in slave homes at Poplar Forest and Monticello that could have possibly been used to store food or hide stolen goods, which would imply that slaves acknowledged a right to personal property in their quarters that included foodstuffs.69 At Mulberry Row at Monticello, six of the excavated slave cabins there include root cellars and 9% of the buildings’ faunal assemblages came from these cellars, indicating they played a crucial part in how slaves stored, protected, or discarded their food.70 An English sea captain recalled seeing Igbo peoples store valuable objects in pits in Africa, and it is possible that this storage method reflects how slaves of Igbo descent at Monticello, whether as a conscious or unconscious form of

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64 Thomas Jefferson to Thomas Mann Randolph, Jan. 29, 1801, The Papers of Thomas Jefferson Digital Edition, ed. Barbara B. Oberg and J. Jefferson Looney. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, Rotunda, 2008.

65 Advertisement for a Runaway Slave, Sept. 14, 1769, The Papers of Thomas Jefferson Digital Edition, ed. Barbara B. Oberg and J. Jefferson Looney. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, Rotunda, 2008; Thomas Jefferson to Thomas Mann Randolph, Feb. 4, 1800, The Papers of Thomas Jefferson Digital Edition, ed. Barbara B. Oberg and J. Jefferson Looney. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, Rotunda, 2008.

66 Barbara Heath, Hidden Lives: The Archaeology of Slave Life at Thomas Jefferson’s Poplar Forest, 38.

67 Herbert C. Covey and Dwight Eisnach, What the Slaves Ate, 171.

68 Barbara Heath, Hidden Lives: The Archaeology of Slave Life at Thomas Jefferson’s Poplar Forest, 33.

69 Ibid., 37-38.

70 Diana C. Crader, “Slave Diet at Monticello,” American Antiquity 55.4 Oct. 1990: 690-717.

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cultural resistance, continued this practice.71 Living in quarters designed and determined by their European-American owners and overseers, African-American slaves’ storage pits show how slaves maintained an active ownership and organization of their space and food despite these impositions.

“Pottery used for preparing, serving, and storing food is the most frequently recovered artifact found in association with enslaved African Americans” and reveals how slaves both adapted familiar forms of pottery to develop a unique culture and skills.72 Ceramics of various kinds were found at slaves’ quarters, including Chinese porcelain and British stoneware, which many slaves at Monticello and Montpelier bought for themselves or received from the main house when they were discarded.73 The high presence of these professional wares at slave quarter site show that slaves were part of a local trade that had ties to international commerce and were exposed to a variety of objects from outside Virginia that African-American material and food culture adopted.

At other sites in Virginia slaves made colonoware, defined as low-fired hand-built pottery from the colonial era, but these wares have not been found at Montpelier or Monticello so these slave communities had their own distinct material culture affected by their unique customs, skills, practices, or access.

Whether purchased by slaves themselves or gathered after the big house abandoned them, these wares satisfied whatever functional, social, or spiritual need slaves desired from the food preparation, presentation, and storage these ceramics performed. Thomas Jefferson, in order to encourage marriages that limited separation, gifted an iron pot to slave women at Poplar Forest who married men who also lived within the plantation community and, since ironware is highly desirable for boiling because it can effectively adapt to heat changes, this type of pot had a specific role and meaning to slave women about to become wives, charged with preparing food for their family.74 It is important to remember, however, that “how enslaved peoples acquired food and household items may have implications for what these aspects of material life meant to them but it should not be assumed that these materials meant the same to enslaved people as they did to planters.”75 Certain roles were also associated with food in the slave community which shows how African-Americans adapted cultural traditions. In Western African culture, “among commoners, female elders put a premium on teaching young girls within their families how to cook…a girl’s mastery of cooking improved a common family’s chances of obtaining a prosperous marriage alliance” and there is evidence that the gendered role of cooking was retained 71 Theresa A. Singleton, “Archaeology of Slavery in North America,” 124.

72 Ibid.,131.

73 Artifact Query 4, November 3, 2010. The Digital Archaeological Archive of Chesapeake Slavery (http://www.daacs.org/); Damon Lee Fowler, ed, Dining at Monticello: in good taste and abundance, 44.

74 Barbara Heath, Hidden Lives: The Archaeology of Slave Life at Thomas Jefferson’s Poplar Forest, 55; Leland Ferguson, Uncommon Ground: Archaeology of early African America, 103.

75 Theresa A. Singleton, “Archaeology of Slavery in North America,” 128.

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in African-American communities.76 Minnie Fulkes, a former slave from Chesterfield County, remarked that “I married when I wus 14 years old…I didn’t know what marriage meant, I had an idea when you loved de man you an’ he could be married an’ hist wife had to cook, clean up, was, an iron for him was all” which reflects how cooking was entrenched in the expectations the slave community had for women.77 Instead of assisting her in preparing meals, Isaac Jefferson remembers toting wood for his mother, who was also the pastry cook at Monticello, for her to use for the fire when she cooked which implies distinct spheres for men and women in domestic food culture.78 “The role of cook in the big house was frequently performed by older slave women…they were viewed by owners as nonthreatening, skilled and knowledgeable in food preparation and service” so these slave women were able to hone their skills as well as form new skills in the master’s house that they could bring back to their families and pass on to the next generation.79 Edith Fossett, who was an enslaved cook at Monticello, exemplifies the role of an expert teacher to her family as she passed on her culinary skills to her two children so successfully that they became caterers in Cincinnati after they gained their freedom.80 Elderly men at Monticello were the carriers of agricultural knowledge as they were often designated as gardeners as they became older and less able to work in the fields. Jefferson refers to the slaves who worked with Goliah, the head gardener, as “his veteran aids” and “his senile corps,” which characterizes the garden laborers as primarily older persons who could teach the skills they learned to younger slaves to use on their personal gardens and yards.81 While slaves could use their roles within the plantation system and personal communities to shape traditions concerning food and foodways, the acquisition of different skills could also create differences in access to food.

Slaves’ different skills and roles within the plantation community varied their access to certain foods and levels of rations, creating a range of individual experiences. Plantation management often used food to reward or to serve as an incentive for slaves who had particular skills and were therefore more highly valued by their owners. Archaeological excavations at Mulberry Row at Monticello, reveal that “the quality of meat difference among slave quarters, suggesting the high-status slaves ate better than lower status slaves” with high status slaves defined by plantations masters as skilled laborers, like nailery

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76 Frederick Douglass Opie, Hog and Hominy, 6.

77 Slave Narratives: A Folk History of slavery in Virginia from Interviews with Former Slaves, 14.

78 Rayford W. Logan, ed. Memoirs of a Monticello Slave: as dictated to Charles Campbell in the 1840’s by Isaac, one of Thomas Jefferson’s slaves, 11.

79 Herbert C. Covey and Dwight Eisnach, What the Slaves Ate, 55.

80 Damon Lee Fowler, ed, Dining at Monticello: in good taste and abundance, 45.

81 Thomas Jefferson to Mary Jefferson Eppes, April. 11, 1801, The Papers of Thomas Jefferson Digital Edition, ed. Barbara B. Oberg and J. Jefferson Looney. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, Rotunda, 2008; Thomas Jefferson to Thomas Mann Randolph, Jan. 29, 1801, The Papers of Thomas Jefferson Digital Edition, ed. Barbara B. Oberg and J. Jefferson Looney (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, Rotunda, 2008).

The Academical Heritage Review

workers, and lower status slaves as unskilled laborers, like field hands.82 Jefferson assigned different families, according to their skills or work status, various quantities of fish and meal for bread. While most families would only receive a peck of bread a week, “a woman suckling a child has 1 ¼ peck [and] a man having neither wife nor mother 1 ¼ peck” which shows how rations could also change independent of skills.83 George, who was the only slave to ever become an overseer at Monticello, and his wife Ursula, who was the pastry cook and laundress, always received the highest fish rations along with other domestic and skilled servants; they received 12 fish as a family while some laborers received only 2 fish.84 Isaac Jefferson, who was a nail worker and George and Ursula’s son, recalled the rations Jefferson provided for him and his colleagues: [Jefferson] gave the boys in the nail-factory a pound of meat a week, a dozen herrings, a quart of molasses, and a peck of meal [and] give them that wukked the best a suit of red or blue: encouraged them mightily. Isaac calls him a mighty good master.85 Isaac refers to Jefferson as a “good master” because of the rations he received and clothes he could earn but his higher status gave him a different lifestyle and access to foodstuffs that others on the Monticello plantation may not have shared. Candis Goodwin, a former slave from Cape Charles, Virginia, remembers that “muh mommer, she muck in de quarter kitchen, she ain’ ha’tuh wuck hawd lak some, had it kinder easy too” which shows a distinct difference in experience and status between domestic and high status workers versus field and low status workers.86 The masters consequently created a hierarchy within the slave community that placed value on food as a status symbol. These slaves could also take back food to their families and communities to redistribute. John Randolph, another Piedmont region plantation owner, noted the culture of sharing within the slave community at Roanoke: [My slaves are] not very scrupulous perhaps in distinguishing betweed meum and tuum [mine and yours] but this ought not surprise us. The resources of fraud and overreaching is shut to them—they have none other than the breach of the 8th Com-

82 Herbert C. Covey and Dwight Eisnach, What the Slaves Ate, 97.

83 Edwin Morris Betts, ed. Thomas Jefferson’s Farm Book with Commentary and relevant extracts from other writings, 156.

84 Ibid., 51.

85 Rayford W. Logan, ed. Memoirs of a Monticello Slave: as dictated to Charles Campbell in the 1840’s by Isaac, one of Thomas Jefferson’s slaves, 35-36.

86 Slave Narratives: A Folk History of slavery in Virginia from Interviews with Former Slaves, 17.

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mandment—but they are eminently Liberal in sharing what they have one with another.87 High-skilled workers and “slaves who cooked and served in the big house typically fared better than those who worked in the fields by occasionally being able to eat the same foods as the master” and gained greater access to foods by their proximity to the big house. 88 At both Ash Lawn-Highland and Montpelier, slaves’ quarters were in the direct vicinity of the smokehouse which provided easy access to its foods and supplies. Jefferson also liked to keep his cooks close, ordering that “it will be necessary that one of them [the cooks] should have his room next to the kitchen” and often entrusted them with keys to storage rooms or recording inventories of the kitchen which would have increased their ability, with or without permission, to obtain food and materials otherwise inaccessible to the slave community.89 Slave cooks blurred the boundaries of control in the master-slave relationship and actively contribute to the function and culture of the big house.

Domestic cooks, due to their important role and skills in food preparation, had unique interactions with masters and mistresses that operated on a delicate balance of trust and mistrust. By virtue of being charged with such a critical component of daily life, slave cooks subverted their masters’ attempts to maintain complete control over them and masters were forced to allocate certain freedoms which altered the boundaries that existed between the two classes and cultures.

On a daily basis, slave cooks had constant interaction with the mistresses of the household, whose duties included maintaining an efficient and proper kitchen. According to the popular manual The Virginia Housewife, written by Mary Randolph in 1834, “we have no right to expect slaves or hired servants to be more attentive to our interest than we ourselves are” in the kitchen, showing how nineteenth century Southern culture expected elite white women to control and maintain dominance in the domestic sphere.90 Isaac recalled that “Mr. Jefferson had a clock in his kitchen at Monticello, [but he] never went into the kitchen except to wind up the clock” exemplifying how masters expected an efficient and organized household but left the direct, day-to-day administration to women.91

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87 John Randolph to Harmanus Bleeker, July 26, 1814, John Randolph of Roanoke, Russel Kirk, (Liberty Press: Indianapolis, 1978, 247.

88 Herbert C. Covey and Dwight Eisnach, What the Slaves Ate, 65.

89 Thomas Jefferson to Thomas Mann Randolph, June 14, 1798, Edwin Morris Betts, ed.

Thomas Jefferson’s Farm Book with Commentary and relevant extracts from other writings, 27-28; James Heming’s Inventory of Kitchen Utensils at Monticello, Feb. 20, 1796, The Papers of Thomas Jefferson Digital Edition, ed. Barbara B. Oberg and J. Jefferson Looney.

Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, Rotunda, 2008.

90 Barbara Burlison Mooney, Prodigy Houses of Virginia: Architecture and the Native Elite (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2008) 250.

91 Rayford W. Logan, ed. Memoirs of a Monticello Slave: as dictated to Charles Campbell in the 1840’s by Isaac, one of Thomas Jefferson’s slaves, 23.

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The Madison women, including: Nelly, James Madison’s mother, and Dolley, his wife, imposed their control over the Montpelier household by holding charge of separate North and South kitchens, each maintaining their own strict schedules.92 Mistresses not only ordered rigorous meal schedules but also directly supervised their cook’s recipes and cooking methods. “Mrs. Jefferson would come out there [to the Monticello kitchen] with a cookery book in her hand and read it out to Isaac’s mother [Ursula, the cook] how to make cakes, tarts, and so on,” enforcing strict surveillance over the slave cooks and suggesting a mistrust in their culinary abilities.93 Despite these intrusive practices and mistrust, however, slave cooks also received certain powers and provided remarkable, expert skills in their positions.

Slave cooks were able to bargain for particular rights from their masters, due to the high demand and need for their culinary skills. Dining at the big house was an elaborate affair that had to be prepared daily and required trained knowledge of recipes and cooking styles that slave cooks were able to perfect.

Awed by the dinner presentation, a visitor to Montpelier in 1825 described it as “not only abundantly but handsomely provided; good soups, flesh, fish, and vegetables, well cooked—desert and excellent wines of various kinds…the table is very ample and elegant, and somewhat luxurious.” This speaks not only to the Madisons’ wealth but also to the skill of the cooks.94 The elite kitchens of these plantation houses exposed these cooks to the very finest kitchen utensils in order to refine their skills and prepare these extensive meals as shown by a survey of the Monticello kitchen in 1796 which includes numerous copper and iron pots and pans, baking moulds, coffee pots, kettles, waffle irons, cleavers, rollers, ladles, and dutch ovens.95 The expertise slaves developed in food preparation made masters particularly attentive to their skill development and health. Ursula, the pastry cook, is one of the few slaves that Jefferson expressed concern for in his letters and Thomas Mann Randolph provided Jefferson with frequent updates of Ursula’s declining health in 1800 which shows how important she and her talents were to Jefferson.96 Ursula earned a large amount of responsibility from Jefferson, who earlier that year noted that “there is nobody there [at Monticello] but Ursula who unites trust and skill to do it [bottle cider], she may take anybody she pleases to aid her,” due to her skills with food even to the point of being en-

92 A. Marshall, “The North Kitchen 2008-2009 Final Report,” 56.

93 Rayford W. Logan, ed. Memoirs of a Monticello Slave: as dictated to Charles Campbell in the 1840’s by Isaac, one of Thomas Jefferson’s slaves, 11.

94 Ralph Ketcham, The Madisons at Montpelier: Reflections on the Founding Couple (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2009) 25-26.

95 James Heming’s Inventory of Kitchen Utensils at Monticello, Feb. 20, 1796, The Papers of Thomas Jefferson Digital Edition, ed. Barbara B. Oberg and J. Jefferson Looney (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, Rotunda, 2008).

96 Thomas Mann Randolph to Thomas Jefferson, April 18, 1800, The Papers of Thomas Jefferson Digital Edition, ed. Barbara B. Oberg and J. Jefferson Looney (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, Rotunda, 2008).

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trusted to choose and manage her own task force for project.97 James Hemings, another cook at Monticello, also obtained a remarkable level of talent and independence gained from his mastery of French cuisine, a passion of Jefferson’s.

James accompanied Jefferson to France in 1787 to receive professional training in French cooking and was Jefferson’s cook until 1796.98 James’s skills were so important and prized by Jefferson that Jefferson, in a signed and witnessed document, agreed to free him after he trained a replacement cook at Monticello: Having been at great expence in having James Hemings taught the art of cookery, desiring to befriend him, and to require from him as little in return as possible, I do hereby promise and declare, that if the said James shall go with me to Monticello… and shall there continue until he shall have taught such person as I shall place under him for that purpose to be a good cook, this previous condition being performed, he shall be thereupon made free.99 By gaining his freedom, James exemplified how slaves were able to use their skills to bargain particular rights from their masters and actively contribute to the definition of the relationship between master and slave. Their highly desirable skills did not only allow them to resist domination of their master and mistresses but provided slaves with the opportunity to creatively and vigorously contribute to the food culture of the big house and the South.

African American slaves, while creating a new food culture within their own communities, also influenced the palettes and daily eating habits of the main house during this period in such ways that these traditions have continued into modern Southern cooking. “Products and dishes introduced from Africa or the slave trade are those that came to characterize southern cookery as different from northern cookery…such as okra, black-eyed peas, and red peas, which are from Africa, among others” and it is during this period in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries that enslaved persons incorporated their own food culture into those of the dominant, white Southern culture.100 By developing their skills and being expected to prepare a variety of foods every day, slave cooks demonstrated significant creativity and cultural influence on the dishes of these Virginia households. Even though recipes and ingredients were often carefully supervised and dictated, the cooking was still performed by enslaved African-American men and women so certain transformations took place.101 Slave cooks were able to develop new skills in the house kitchens but

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97 Thomas Jefferson to Thomas Mann Randolph, Feb. 4, 1800, The Papers of Thomas Jefferson Digital Edition, ed. Barbara B. Oberg and J. Jefferson Looney (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, Rotunda, 2008).

98 Damon Lee Fowler, ed, Dining at Monticello: in good taste and abundance, 42.

99 Agreement with James Hemings, 1796, The Papers of Thomas Jefferson Digital Edition, ed. Barbara B. Oberg and J. Jefferson Looney. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, Rotunda, 2008.

100 Damon Lee Fowler, ed, Dining at Monticello: in good taste and abundance, 69.

101 Ibid., 69.

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also demonstrate their traditional knowledge by adding new ingredients and recipes to their masters’ tables.

Okra is an African vegetable that was a staple of Western African cooking, often used to thicken soups, which enslaved African-Americans cooks incorporated into the dishes of the main house.102 In the Jefferson family manuscripts, there is a recipe for okra soup which is a traditional African dish and Jefferson began cultivating okra in his gardens in 1809.103 The record of the recipe proves its frequent use in the Jefferson household and Jefferson would not provide the land or the effort to grow okra if it was not a prevalent vegetable on the plantation which reflects the extent to which African influence integrated itself into the dominant Southern culture. Okra also appears in the Monroe family recipes, most predominately in the recipe for Gumbo which is a distinct, one-pot meal of African origin exemplifying how cooks not only contributed new ingredients but new dishes to the household based on their own culture and experience.104 Other notable recipes of the Monroe family are those for egg bread and spoon bread whose methods of cooking and ingredients mirror those for the ash-cakes African-Americans would prepare for the field.105 Calling for more rare ingredients, such as milk or butter, these recipes show how cooks could take advantage of the food materials they had access to in the main kitchen to experiment with African-American dishes and create popular meals that were incorporated into mainstream food culture. At Monticello, the family recipes for snow eggs and three types of creams are attributed to James Hemings, who permeated Jefferson’s strict and traditional French taste with his own remarkable creativity and success in the kitchen. By being active in the kitchen and interacting with the main house and its inhabitants on a daily basis, enslaved cooks were given unique opportunities to insert their own culture and presence into the dominant Virginian community. The ability of slave cooks to impart their influence on their masters and their families despite surveillance and oppression is a testament to the strength of enslaved African-American individuals and culture.

The enslaved communities at these three plantations created a new culture that appears in their practices of food and foodways. By claiming control of food both in their own communities and in masters’ homes, enslaved African Americans carried out daily resistance against the plantation hierarchy through their diets, leisure time, consumerism, familial roles, space, and experimentation. The unique food culture African-Americans developed during this period continues to affect modern Southern cuisine and has left a permanent imprint on American culinary tradition that stands as a testimony to the remarkable will of these communities and individuals.

102 Ibid., 7.

103 Damon Lee Fowler, ed, Dining at Monticello: in good taste and abundance; Herbert C. Covey and Dwight Eisnach, What the Slaves Ate, 85.

104 Judith E. Kosik, ed, Monroe Family Recipes: Used at Ash-Lawn Highland Home of James and Elizabeth Monroe (Ash-Lawn Highland: College of William and Mary, 1999) 5; Herbert C. Covey and Dwight Eisnach, What the Slaves Ate, 85.

105 Ibid., 20.

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Bibliography Bear, James A. and Lucia C. Stanton, eds. Jefferson’s Memorandum Books: Ac

counts, with Legal Records and Miscellany, 1767-1826. Princeton: Princ

eton University Press, 1997.

Betts, Edwin Morris, ed. Thomas Jefferson’s Farm Book with Commentary and

relevant extracts from other writings. Charlottesville: University Press of

Virginia, 1976.

Chambers, Douglas Brent.‘He Gwine Sing He Country’: Africans, Afro-Virginians,

and the Development of Slave Culture in Virginia, 1690-1810,PhD diss.,

University of Virginia, 1996 .

Chretien, Kay Collins Chretien. The Smokehouse at Ash-Lawn Highland: It’s His

tory and Restoration. Ash-Lawn Highland: College of William and

Mary, 1996.

Covey, Herbert C. and Dwight Eisnach. What the Slaves Ate: Recollections of

African American Foods and Foodways from the Slave Narratives. Santa

Barbara: ABC-CLIO, LLC, 2009.

“Crops at Monticello,” Monticello, 30 Oct. 2010. <http://www.monticello.org/ site/house-and-gardens/crops-monticello> Digital Archaeological Archive of Chesapeake Slavery <http://www.daacs. org/> Ferguson, Leland. Uncommon Ground: Archaeology of early African America.

Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1992.

Fowler, Damon Lee, ed, Dining at Monticello: in good taste and abundance. Cha

pel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005.

Gawalt, Gerard W. “James Monroe, Presidential Planter,” The Virginia

Magazine of History and Biography 101.2 April 1993.

Heath, Barbara. Hidden Lives: The Archaeology of Slave Life at Thomas Jefferson’s

Poplar Forest. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1999.

Historical Census Browser. Retrieved 22 Nov. 2010, from the University of

Virginia, Geospatial and Statistical Data Center <http://fisher.lib. virginia.edu/collections/stats/histcensus/index.html.> Hodin, Stephen B., ”The Mechanisms of Monticello: Saving Labor in Jeffer

son’s America.” Journal of the Early Republic 26.3 Fall 2006.

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Ketcham, Ralph. The Madisons at Montpelier: Reflections on the Founding Couple.

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Kirk, Russel. John Randolph of Roanoke. Liberty Press: Indianapolis, 1978.

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Klein, Herbert S. Slavery in the Americas: A Comparative Study of Virginia and Cuba. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967.

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University of Virginia Press, 1951.

Marshall, A. “Initial Archaeological Investigations of the East Smokehouse in

the South Yard.” James Madison’s Montpelier Archaeology Department.

January 2009.

Marshall, A. “The North Kitchen 2008-2009 Final Report.” James Madison’s

Montpelier Archaeology Department. 2006.

Mooney, Barbara Burlison. Prodigy Houses of Virginia: Architecture and the Native Elite. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2008.

Oberg, Barbara B. and J. Jefferson Looney, ed. The Papers of Thomas Jefferson

Digital Edition. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, Rotunda, 2008.

Opie, Frederick Douglass. Hog and Hominy: Soul Food from Africa to America.

New York: Columbia University Press, 2008.

Orser, Charles E. and Pedro P. A. Funari, “Archaeology of Slave Resistance

and Rebellion,” World Archaeology 33.1 June 2001.

Proctor, Nicolas W. Proctor, Bathed in Blood: Hunting and Mastery in the Old South. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 2002.

Schlotterbeck, John T. “The Internal Economy of Slavery in Rural Piedmont Virginia,” The Slaves’ Economy: Independent Production by Slaves in the Americas, Ira Berlin and Phillip D. Morgan, ed. London: Frank Cass

and Co, ltd., 1991.

Schwarz, Philip J. Review of Bear, James A. Jr..; Stanton, Lucia C., eds., Jeffers

on’s Memorandum Books: Accounts, with Legal Records and Miscellany, 1767-1826. H-Pol, H-Net Reviews. April, 1998.

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“The Enslaved Community,” Montpelier, 26 Oct. 2010. <http://www.montpe lier.org/explore/community/enslaved.php> Food and Foodways of African-American Slaves in the Virginia Piedmont, 1760-1840

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Preserving

the

‘Natural Order’

Social Motivations Creation

of

for the

Colonial ‘Otherness’

in

Nineteenth-Century Britain

Whit Booth= By infusing the masses with expectations of equality and democratic governance, the Enlightenment and French Revolution helped start England on a steady process of liberal reform in a time when the nation’s imperial expansion intensified the question of how to treat colonial subjects during the nineteenth century. Though the Reform Acts of 1832, 1867 and 1884 that ended the aristocracy’s monopoly over political power in England suggest a general acceptance of liberal political and social reform, England did not continue the same pattern of inclusionary reform when it came to the rule of its colonies. Rather, in holdings like India, “non-white” colonial subjects were effectively cast as racially inferior ‘others’ who fell outside the jurisdiction of the liberal reforms taking place at home in the metropole. At a basic level, this construction of the colonial ‘other’ provided a seemingly necessary justification for the economic exploitation that many historians cite as the primary driving force behind British imperialism. However, this explanation for the creation of ‘otherness’ neglects the social motivations English elites had for creating the idea of colonial ‘otherness.’ By looking at the relationship between what English elites stood to lose in light of the nineteenth-century reforms and what elites stood to gain with the creation of a colonial social hierarchy, this paper will explore the social motivations behind the creation of the colonial ‘other’ in Great Britain. Ultimately, the creation of the colonial ‘other’ corresponded to the empowerment of the middle and working classes in a manner that suggests an attempt by elites to reposition themselves at the top of a social hierarchy.

This system retained an exploitable lower class, and aristocratic attempts to create and reinforce the idea of colonial ‘otherness,” thus resulting in a certain causality between the liberal reforms in the metropole and the creation of the ‘other’ in the colonial periphery.

Social Motivations for the Creation of Colonial ‘Otherness’ in Nineteenth-Century Britain

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Despite a long imperial history, the British did not, by the turn of the nineteenth century, have a unified understanding of their colonial subjects due in large part to the immense size and variety of their colonial holdings. Rather, the British outlook towards colonial subjects evolved during the nineteenth century in response to a variety of stimuli resulting ultimately in a solidified understanding that native Indian subjects were racially inferior ‘others’.

The rising popularity of the British abolitionist movement during the first half of the century resulted in a more clarified pronouncement of England’s civilizing mission that suggested that the creation of ‘otherness’ was not an inevitable consequence of imperialism. By recognizing the moral imperative to improve colonial subjects with British rule, imperialism’s civilizing mission also recognized that colonial subjects were not immutably inferior and could become civilized, which was in direct opposition to how many English would later view colonial ‘others.’ Though his sermon was meant to inspire potential missionaries, Birmingham preacher John Angell James captured the idea behind imperialism’s civilizing mission in an address from the 1820s: The heathen nations of the present day are a mighty wilderness of mind, a great desert in the moral world ... an immense extent, as it were, of sand or swamp ... Melancholy spectacle! But yours is the task, the glorious, the immortal work of enclosing, and draining, and cultivating this mental waste, of sowing it with the seeds of thought, and causing it to bring forth and blossom, and of adding it to the territory of mind, from which it now seems almost entirely cut off. Your object is compassionate.1 While this sentiment appeared to be taking hold as the English recognized the moral stain slavery cast on their empire, it did not last. As Frederick Cooper explains, “The uncertainties revealed in these debates… gave rise to some efforts to clarify the mission of ‘civilized’ powers,” as James had done with his sermons, “and other efforts to patrol the boundary between a racially and culturally defined society and those under its control, who might serve its national interest but had no claims to it.”2 Ultimately, British imperial experience and the social context within the metropole during the nineteenth century would result in the success of those efforts to define social classification more carefully with the creation of the ‘other.’

The growing tolerance towards colonial subjects during the beginning of the nineteenth century was soon overshadowed by the rising tide of intolerance caused by events in the colonies as the century progressed. The sharp drops in plantation productivity in the Caribbean after emancipation discouraged elites from accepting further colonial reforms on economic grounds, and,

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Whit Booth is a member of the Calss of 2011. He wrote with the guidence of Mr. Gavin Murray-Miller.

1 Catherine Hall, Civilising Subjects: Metropole and Colony in the English Imagination, 18301867 (Oxford: Polity, 2002), 302.

2 Frederick Cooper, Colonialism in Question: Theory, Knowledge, History (Los Angeles: University of California, 2005), 173.

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as Cooper states, caused “increasingly harsh views of racial immutability and inferiority [to develop] in the postemancipation encounter itself.”3 The perceived atrocities of the 1857-1858 Sepoy Rebellion or Indian Mutiny led to a similarly less-tolerant stance towards Indian subjects that would continue to intensify after authority shifted from the East India Company to the Crown in 1858. Thomas Macaulay recognized the significant change in outlook brought on by the Mutiny explaining the following: The cruelties of the sepoys have inflamed the nation to a degree unprecedented within my memory. Peace Societies, Aborigine Protection Societies, and Societies for the Reformation of Criminals, are silenced. There is one terrible cry for revenge!

The account of that dreadful military execution at Peshawur – forty men blown at once from the mouths of cannon, their heads, legs, and arms flying in all directions – was read with delight by people who three months ago were against all capital punishment. 4 The heightened intolerance associated with this desire for revenge was further fueled by popular understanding of what caused the Mutiny. A letter to the editor of The Times from an anonymous source claiming to have spent nearly twenty-five years in India cited an underlying cause of the Mutiny noting, “The extreme delicacy of our Government in all matters, not only of religion, but of custom… has been looked upon in some degree as an admission of weakness, and of our dependence on the natives of the country for our supremacy.”5 This delicacy and consideration of the Indians’ wellbeing under the civilizing mission, repeatedly listed as a cause of the Mutiny, would not be a problem with the new Crown government in India. During the Government of India Bill’s Third Reading in the House of Commons in summer 1858 that would eventually dissolve the East India Company and place India under Crown control, Sir Erksine Perry remarked, “It was singular that the Bill did not contain a single allusion to the native interests of India.”6 Indeed, the “native interests,” formerly considered part of Britain’s imperial civilizing mission, were, under Crown Rule, to be largely overlooked and ignored as the century progressed despite the continuing façade of the civilizing mission. Mark Paffard has assessed the changing mentality toward Indians that the Mutiny brought about by claiming, “It was immediately and from then on perceived as, in the popular phrase, the ‘Epic of the Race’. It created a distrust and dislike of ‘natives’, and a withdrawal from all but official and the most superficial contact with them that 3 Ibid., 181.

4 Mark Paffard, Kipling’s Indian Fiction (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1989), 7.

5 “Future Policy of Government as Regards India,” The Times, 24 September 1857, online archives, <http://infotrac.galegroup.com>, accessed on 24 December 2010.

6 “HC Deb 08 July 1858 vol 151 cc1086-96,” British Parliamentary Papers, 8 July 1858, online archives, <http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1858/jul/08/third-reading>, accessed on 26 December 2010.

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was to last, sometimes with increased intensity, as long as the Raj itself.”7 In this fashion, the Indian Mutiny and other events in the colonies that took place early in the century highlighted imperialism’s racial undertones and drew greater lines of separation between the colonizer and the colonized.

The rise of scientific racism in the mid to late-nineteenth century explained and reinforced the notions of racial superiority that many Victorians had begun to accept through colonial experience, contributing to an entrenched understanding of inferior colonial ‘otherness’. As G. K. Chesterton explains, “Under the shock of Darwinism all that was good in the Victorian rationalism shook and dissolved like dust. All that was bad in it abode and clung like clay.

The magnificent emancipation evaporated; the mean calculation remained.”8 Racial distinctions became the subject of scientific inquiry, and were used not only as proof of European superiority, but increasingly as evidence that colonial subjects were inherently ignorant and could not be improved through the civilizing mission. Paffard notes, “The almost universal belief in innate racial characteristics, to be rendered more ‘scientific’ by Social Darwinism, meant that the traits of character that Indians were considered to possess – these almost invariably being effeteness, sloth, barbarism, and cunning – had to be regarded as fixed quantities.”9 Coupled with colonial experiences like the Indian Mutiny, Social Darwinism helped solidify native Indians’ position as racially inferior ‘others’, neither ready for nor worthy of the liberal reforms taking place within the metropole. Sir William Thomas Denison captured this firm, immutable sense of ‘otherness’ saying, “I do not put the least faith in the statement that they were, at one time, a truth-loving people, and have been made liars by oppression; the character is bred in the bone and is indelible….

All talk of educating them, of fitting them for liberty, of teaching them to govern themselves, is veriest twaddle.”10 The spread of this notion that colonial subjects were racially and immutably inferior then allowed imperialists to overlook their former focus on imperialism’s “civilizing” intentions and concentrate more acutely on pragmatic financial gain. Sean Purchase identifies the role scientific racism and ‘otherness’ played in justifying imperialism, explaining, “Spencerian ideas about the ‘survival of the fittest’ and the notion of superiority/inferiority they led to, were then used to legitimate the cycle of ‘inevitable’ and ‘natural’ inequalities established by British capitalism – as well as its expansion throughout the world – as a means of legitimating colonial and imperial conquest.”11 By casting Indians as racial inferiors, ‘otherness’ thus helped justify British imperialism in accordance with Social Darwinism. However, while colonial experience, Social Darwinism and the apparent need for imperial justification certainly aided in the creation of ‘otherness’, these factors, taken alone, fail to provide a sufficient

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7 Paffard, Kipling’s Indian Fiction, 6.

8 G.K. Chesterton, The Victorian Age in Literature (Oxford: University Press, 1913), 94.

9 Paffard, Kipling’s Indian Fiction, 7.

10 Edward Beasley, Mid-Victorian Imperialists: British Gentlemen and the Empire of the Mind (New York: Routledge, 2005), 83-84.

11 Sean Purchase, Key Conceptions in Victorian Literature (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), 61-62.

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explanation of the motivating factors behind the creation of the inherently inferior ‘other’ at the bottom of the colonial social hierarchy.

The role that ‘otherness’ played in helping justify and enable British imperial activity during the second half of the nineteenth century ties the creation of the ‘other’ to the larger historical debate over motivations behind British imperialism. Though the idea that elites created the ‘other’ in an attempt to retain their position in society appears to garner support from those scholars who find imperial motivations beyond profit, the argument that economics provided the primary motivation for imperial activity has recently gained more widespread acceptance. Scholars like P.J. Cain and A.G. Hopkins have emphasized the importance of “gentlemanly capitalism” – the common interests held and acted on by both government officials and British capitalists – to cite economic causes as the driving force behind imperialism.12 In doing so, Cain, Hopkins, and others who focus predominately on the economic causes of imperialism also explain the creation of the ‘other’ in economic terms as mere justification for economic exploitation in the colonies. Though this view has become increasingly prominent in historical debates, there also exists significant support for the idea that imperial activity simply cannot be whittled down to a single, economic cause.

England’s steadfast determination to retain its colonies despite the tremendous cost and effort severely limits the accuracy of a solely economic explanation for imperialism. While addressing his constituency during the Indian Mutiny in 1857, Lord Brougham shed light on the elites’ imperial resolve noting, “Never let if for a moment be supposed that we dare abandon our hold of India though upon that neither our wealth nor power in the slightest degree depends.”13 Stalwart imperialist Arthur Mills echoed this sentiment when he rejected economics as the sole imperial motivation saying, “It is not for the sake of tribute, or glory, or commerce, or in any interest that can properly be called ‘Imperial’ that we retain our colonies,” but rather for “national honour.”14 Though modern historians have identified imperial motivations outside Mills’s “national honour,” they have nonetheless joined him in rejecting economics as the crux of the imperial system. E.J. Hobsbawm discredits Cecil Rhodes’ attempt to connect imperialism’s economic development to social improvements in noting, “Cecil Rhodes’ version of social imperialism, which thought primarily of the economic benefits that empire might bring, directly or indirectly, to the discontented masses, was the least relevant.

There is no good evidence that colonial conquest as such had much bearing on the employment or real incomes of most workers in the metropolitan countries.”15 Additionally, Edward Beasley and Edward Said agree that the role race ultimately played as a motivating factor for imperialism further discredits a strictly economic reading of Britain’s imperial impetus. In tying imperialism 12 Beasley, Mid-Victorian Imperialists, 1-2.

13 “Lord Brougham on Popular Education and the Mutiny in India,’ The Times, 5 November 1857, online archives, <http://infotrac.galegroup.com/>, accessed on 24 December 2010.

14 Beasley, Mid-Victorian Imperialists, 18.

15 E.J. Hobsbawm, The Age of Empire 1875-1914 (New York: Pantheon, 1987), 69.

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back to the creation of the ‘other’ by focusing on the peculiarity of imperialism’s racial context, Said denounces the economic motivation’s centrality, stating There was a commitment to [imperialism and colonialism] over and above profit, a commitment in constant circulation and recirculation, which, on the one hand, allowed decent men and women to accept the notion that distant territories and their native peoples should be subjugated, and, on the other, replenished metropolitan energies so that these decent people could think of the imperium as a protracted, almost metaphysical obligation to rule, subordinate, inferior, or less advanced peoples.16 Through the lens of a solely economic interpretation of imperialism, the creation of the ‘other’ simply becomes a means of justifying economic exploitation, and, as Said suggests, this sort of interpretation oversimplifies issues such as race and ethnicity. By moving away from the economic interpretation of imperialism, a better understanding of the various social motivations that gave rise to the creation of the ‘other,’ can be reached.

In looking beyond imperialism’s economic causes, some scholars have alluded to the idea that English elites felt threatened by nineteenth-century reforms and took action to maintain their position atop the social hierarchy by more carefully defining social status in the colonies. Frederick Cooper and Ann Laura Stoler identify the important impact that the extension of suffrage in England had on encouraging imperial activity when noting, “To some, colonies were a domain of exploitation where European powers could extract land, labor, and produce in ways that were becoming economically less feasible and politically impossible at home.”17 They recognize that liberal reforms had, by the mid nineteenth century, made the aristocracy’s former exploitation of the masses in England “politically impossible.” As such, imperialism provided a logical means for elites to exploit a new class of subjects with the creation of the ‘other’ in the colonies. Cooper refines this relocation of an exploitable class from the formerly unheard middle and working classes at home to colonial subjects on the periphery in asserting, “The assault on hierarchy within European polities led some political thinkers to make sharper distinctions between who was in and who was out.”18 In England, elites’ determining of “who was in and who was out” took the form of including the middle and working classes by extending voting rights, while solidifying colonial subjects’ status as outsiders.

This process of social change recognizes political reform at home as a significant cause for the creation of colonial ‘otherness.’

A picture of the power, both social and political, that English elites wielded over society leading up to the mid-nineteenth century helps explain what elites stood to lose in light of liberal reform, and why they were naturally

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16 Edward W. Said, Culture and Imperialism (New York: Knopf, 1993), 10.

17 Frederick Cooper and Ann Laura Stoler, Tensions of Empire: Colonial Cultures in a Bourgeois World (Berkeley: University of California, 1997), 4.

18 Cooper, Colonialism in Question, 172-173.

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disposed to resist change. Perhaps the most striking aspect of the British social hierarchy leading into the nineteenth century presented itself not as the aristocracy’s tremendous power and influence over society, but instead as the servant, and the working, even educated, middles classes’ acceptance of their lower status and willingness to pay reverence to their ‘betters.’ American Adam Badeau brought this rigid hierarchy into greater focus with the social commentary he provided during his extensive travels in England between 1869 and 1881. Badeau marveled at the rigid social hierarchies found in England, noting, When one considers the character and history of the race, the groveling Englishman before a lord is one of the marvels of modern times. There is nothing like it in any civilized nation on the globe. Neither the peasant of France or Spain, nor the private soldier of Germany, nor the lazzarone of Naples, nor even the emancipated Russian serf manifests in the presence of a superior that conviction of the existence of a caste composed of his ‘betters,’ which marks the educated Briton of the middle class…. The very word ‘betters’ has a meaning that is shocking to think of.19 As the centuries passed, this was the social arrangement – aristocratic ‘betters’ and the reverent masses – that both elites and non-elites agreed upon and grew accustomed. Foreshadowing elements of the colonial ‘other,’ Badeau alluded to understandings of racial differences between classes within the metropole leading up to the nineteenth century when describing the servant class as, “Descended often from a long line of ancestral menials… the spirit of servility is innate and ingrained. They firmly believe that the purpose of their creation was to provide proper attendance for the aristocracy,” adding that the servants who comprised this class “regard the lords as beings of a different race from themselves.”20 Not only did elites believe they deserved to be stationed atop the social hierarchy, but their subordinates, by and large, consented to this view. Contrasting the English understanding and acceptance of social hierarchy with American social norms, Badeau used an interesting anecdote to clarify the expectations of English elites leading into the mid-nineteenth century: A woman of rank once asked me what, of all I had seen in England, struck me most forcibly. I had no doubt whatever, and answered: “The distinction of classes, the existence of caste.” “But,” she inquired, “do you really mean to say that in America the great merchant’s daughter does not look down on the little grocer’s daughter?” “Perhaps,” Said I, “the great merchant’s daughter does look down, but very certainly the little grocer’s daughter does not look up;” and the whole 19 Adam Badeau, Aristocracy in England (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1886), 155-156.

20 Badeau, Aristocracy in England, 162, 174.

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company was horrified at the idea of a country where the little grocers’ daughters “don’t look up.”21 This “horrification” the aristocracy felt at the thought of lower classes no longer recognizing elites’ superior station in society is indicative of how fundamentally unsettling the nineteenth-century reform movements were for elites to comprehend and accept.

Complementing and protecting their social dominance, elites enjoyed a similar monopoly over political power leading up to the mid-nineteenth century.

Badeau explains, “In all the circles that make up English high society, aristocratic politics are predominant. What the Lords think and wish is all-important there.”22 This remained the case despite the rise of the House of Commons’ power in relation to the Peerage leading up to the extension of suffrage. As their direct political power waned in the House of Lords, the aristocracy maintained firm control over the Commons. In the early part of the century, almost all members of the House of Commons had been directly nominated by the Peerage, and could be returned without election leading Badeau to assert, “Seats were thus held in both Houses by hereditary right, and the control of the Peers over the constitution and proceedings of the Commons was direct and flagrant.”23 However, the loss of direct political power in the House of Lords indicated to many elites that more drastic political concessions were on the horizon. Yet acknowledging impending change did not signify acceptance.

Badeau built a relationship with one Peer who “often said to me he was a sorry legislator. He believed, indeed, that the peerage was doomed… But he was in no haste to bring out the broom, and very well content that the institution should last his time.”24 This aristocratic preference for the maintenance of the status quo is understandable. Calling for reform would have, in effect, been calling for the revocation of the privileges and condemnation of country estates traditionally enjoyed by prominent elites, leading another American observer, C. Edwards Lester, to question, “Why should they not cling to that which gives them rank and wealth?” 25 As the reform movements progressed, elites acted on this desire to maintain the status quo – an objective shared by even the more liberal-minded elites – by resisting political and social changes to preserve what the aristocracy had come to understand as the natural social order leading up to the nineteenth century.

Though the English reform movements were marked by a more sedated and systematic progression than their continental counterparts, each reform act, passed in response to mounting pressure from the masses, represented fundamental change that steadily chipped away at elites’ political power. The first concession to liberal demands sent shock waves through the standing social order as elites understood the dire political implications

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21 22 23 24 25

Ibid., 156.

Ibid., 281.

Badeau, Aristocracy in England, 222-223.

Ibid., 194.

C. Edwards Lester, Glory and Shame of England, Volume I (New York: Bartram and Lester, 1866), 249.

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of extending voting rights. Badeau explained the great impact of the Reform Act of 1832, noting that after the Act’s passage, “It was known then that the aristocracy of England would never again be able seriously to withstand the will of the people. The knell of their political power had sounded.”26 With their political power steadily declining, elites endeavored to slow the process of liberalization but found their ability to block reform through Parliamentary means further impaired as the century progressed. Badeau witnessed firsthand the elites’ steadfast determination to stop the progression of political reform, observing, “While I was in England the Lords, as a body, resisted every step in the direction of progress or reform. They opposed the ballot, the educational system now in force, the disestablishment of the Irish Church, the abolition of purchase in the army, and every measure calculated to extend the suffrage… yet in every case they were obliged to yield.”27 This frustrating inability to preserve the familiar political order through the typical parliamentary channels consequently compelled elites to search for other means of stemming the tide of political and social reform.

As the maintenance of the aristocracy’s political power became an even greater impossibility through the Reform Acts of 1867 and 1884, elites endeavored to preserve the existing social order that had been compromised by the empowerment of the middle and lower classes. Hobsbawm clarifies the critical question faced by elites: “Could the regimes of states and ruling classes be given a new legitimacy in the minds of democratically mobilized masses? … The task was urgent, because the ancient mechanism of social subordination were often clearly breaking down.”28 To generate this continued legitimacy in light of social reformation, elites pushed for a renewed focus on the importance of English tradition and looked largely to imperial grandeur as a means of making tradition attractive to the masses. As Hobsbawm explains, This was consequently the moment when governments, intellectuals and businessmen discovered the political significance of irrationality…. Political life thus found itself increasingly ritualized and filled with symbols and publicity appeals, both overt and subliminal. As the ancient ways – mainly religious – of ensuring subordination, obedience and loyalty were eroded, the now patent need for something to replace them was met by the invention of tradition, using both old and tried evokers of emotion such as crown and military glory and, … new ones such as empire and colonial conquest.29 Notions of imperial grandeur were conveyed through a variety of mediums including elaborate public ceremonies towards the end of the nineteenth century. As a result, they became a way of encouraging the newly empowered classes’ acceptance of tradition and, more subtly, cultivating a 26 27 28 29

Badeau, Aristocracy in England, 115.

Ibid., 122.

Hobsbawm, The Age of Empire 1875-1914, 104.

Ibid., 105.

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conservative disposition that gave elites a sense of social reassurance in a time when their political power was waning. It was in this fashion that the relationship between social change at home and imperialism abroad evolved during the mid to late-nineteenth century with social reform providing new motivations for both the activity behind, and comprehension of imperialism. Said remarks on this relationship between social reform and imperialism, suggesting that perhaps imperialism’s causes “are to be found less in tangible material wants than in the uneasy tensions of societies distorted by class division.”30 Certainly the heightened focus on the glory of the empire during the late-nineteenth century could be seen as a mechanism to sooth social tension in the metropole.

And with this heightened focus on imperial activity came an increased need to more carefully define relationships with colonial subjects in distant holdings like India. As such, it seems only logical that elites would cast Indian subjects as racially inferior ‘others’ to not only explain their rule over colonial subjects, but also reaffirm their position on top of the empire’s social hierarchy during a time when the masses were calling for greater equality within the metropole.

Before determining the extent to which the aristocracy actively attempted to create and spread the idea of ‘otherness,’ one should first look at what the creation of the colonial ‘other’ and its incorporation into the British social hierarchy offered elites whose political and social prominence was on the decline during mid to late-nineteenth century. Simply put, ‘otherness’ acted in many ways as a comforting counterbalance to the social and political anxieties caused by liberal reform. For instance, the void created by the loss of an exploitable class within the metropole was filled by the creation of the exploitable class of ‘others’ in the colonial periphery. As democratic reform limited elites’ political influence at home, ‘otherness’ prevented additional democratic reform abroad. Further exploration of these relationships suggests that elites did in fact have substantial motivation to actively pursue the creation of a class of colonial ‘others.’

At a basic level, the creation of ‘otherness’ provided elites with a means of sorting and comprehending an overwhelming amount of information in an age of unprecedented change. Scholars have associated Victorian society with an elevated sense of proper decorum and social values. Purchase asserts that in Victorian society, “Sense of ‘self’ is bound up with those important categories which are nowadays stereotypically associated with ‘the Victorians’. These include, but are not limited by, Protestantism, masculinity, heterosexuality, whiteness, rationality, sanity, moral and sexual temperance, propriety, industry, purpose, invention and endeavor.” 31 This entrenched notion of proper Victorian character found itself threatened by the stark differences and oddities seen in colonial life. Laurence Kitzan claims, “India in many ways was disturbing….

Indian religions were strange, and could be set down as ignorant and gross superstition…. They reeked of mystery, suggesting strange and perhaps perverted rites, even human sacrifices, and the atmosphere made the British

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30 Said, Culture and Imperialism, 11.

31 Purchase, Key Conceptions in Victorian Literature, 106.

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uneasy.”32 The interaction with such a seemingly backwards culture caused anxiety among elites who sought to preserve the status quo in the face of nineteenth-century changes, and this anxiety became more pronounced as news filtered into the metropole at an extraordinary rate. The drastic increase in the number of books, journals and newspapers, along with the proliferation of information technology, meant Victorian elites were inundated with news and information both domestic and from the colonies. As a result, the degree to which elites were forced to cope with change and perceived social threats was drastically increased. Beasley explains why the British then logically turned to generalizations like the ‘other’ noting, Generalization came from the fundamental problem that many Victorians had in trying to make sense of all the information flowing about at the apex of the world’s first industrial worldsystem. Victorian generalization was one face of Victorian modernity, the search for meaning within multiplicity. One outcome of that search was (and is) to impose imperial categories on the world.33 Casting Indian subjects as ‘others’ thus became means of both comprehending a strange and threatening culture, and consigning that culture to an utterly inferior status, not worth further study or consideration. In this fashion, British elites sought comfort from their nineteenth-century social anxieties by generalizing Indian subjects as ‘others’ and entirely outside the metropole.

In addition to helping elites better comprehend their changing world, the ‘other’ provided a means of counterbalancing the democratic reforms taking place within the metropole. Many British elites vehemently detested Americanstyle mass democracy not only because it meant giving up political power, but because it also represented a threat to their sense of a proper, patriarchal society.

According to Beasley, elites felt that their limited democracy preserved “a special kind of fellow-feeling and family values” that American-style democracy destroyed, and goes on to explain the English readers’ favorable opinion of Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America saying, “Many people simply liked the fact that Tocqueville pointed to a roughness in American society, and to the dangers inherent in the ‘tyranny of the majority.’”34 Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton, who wrote extensively on the idea of proper English society in his many novels like The Caxtons in addition to serving in the House of Lords and a term as Colonial Secretary in 1858, expressed his great apprehension over the enormous changes to come with passage of the Reform Bill of 1867 in a letter to his private secretary Drummond Wolff: “Remember my words. From this day dates a change that in a few years will alter the whole face of England. From this day the extreme Liberals are united; the great towns will be banded for Democracy, 32 Laurence Kitzan, Victorian Writers and the Image of Empire: The Rose-Colored Version (London: Greenwood, 2001), 50.

33 Ibid., 166.

34 Beasley, Mid-Victorian Imperialists, 27, 99.

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and Democracy in England is as sure as that we are in this room. Nothing like this day since Charles I did much the same as we are doing.”35 As the masses pushed for the passage of another reform bill in the early 1880s, Lord Salisbury expressed similar concern over the rise of massdemocracy. In his 1883 article entitled ‘Disintegration’ that David Cannadine calls, An outspoken attack on the evils of unbridled democracy, which seemed poised to overwhelm the propertied, patrician polity in which he so ardently believed, and to the maintenance of which he had devoted his public life. Salisbury deeply distrusted the hasty clamour of the popular will, and feared that government in the interests of the working class was the inevitable prelude to anarchy and despoliation.36 By threatening elites’ political power, continued democratic reform compromised British society’s patriarchal composition that had formerly allowed elites to set the proper, moral example for the lower classes. For that reason, elites believed that with each passing of a new reform bill, as Beasley asserts, “The chance to make decent, balanced, familial societies had been lost.

Now there was no avoiding the age of the overgrown mass democracy,” and thus, “The only question, but it was a burning question, was how to manage democracy’s arrival.”37 The answer presented itself as elites looked increasingly to the governance of the colonies.

The creation of colonial ‘otherness’ provided elites with a way to both slow the democratic reforms’ political effects and counterbalance the reforms’ social effects. Because the series of nineteenth-century reform bills were passed only when the masses campaigned hard enough that elites feared denying a reform bill any longer might result in revolution, diminishing the lower classes’ demand for change by alleviating their grievances was understood by many elites as a way to slow the progression of democratic reform. This was, in part, the reasoning behind Cecil Rhodes’ conception of ‘social imperialism,’ defined

by Hobsbawm as “the attempt to use imperial expansion to diminish domestic discontent by economic improvements.”38 Though historians have proven the inaccuracy of the economic aspect of Rhodes’ ‘social imperialism’ as the masses did not enjoy any real economic benefits derived from imperialism, the same logic behind ‘social imperialism’ could be applied using the creation of ‘otherness’ as the way to “diminish domestic discontent” and the resultant demand for democratic reform. Demand for democratic reform was fueled largely by feelings of exclusion by the middle and working classes. The creation of an inferior class of colonial ‘others’ allowed for a degree of perceived inclusion among the lower classes as they were then included into the racially

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35 Ibid., 99.

36 David Cannadine, The Decline and Fall of the British Aristocracy (New Haven: Yale, 1990), 28.

37 Beasley, Mid-Victorian Imperialists, 106, 99.

38 Hobsbawm, The Age of Empire 1875-1914, 69.

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superior class of colonizers, while Indian subjects were excluded as the inferior class of ‘others’. Hobsbawm explains, It is impossible to deny that the idea of superiority to, and domination over, a world of dark skins in remote places was genuinely popular, and thus benefited the politics of imperialism…. The sense of superiority which thus united western whites, rich, middle-class, and poor, did so not only because all of them enjoyed the privileges of the ruler…. The white worker was a commander of blacks.39 This perceived inclusion into the superior class then served to limit the lower class sense of exclusion and the demand for more democratic reform. In this fashion, ‘otherness’ provided elites with a means of slowing the process of democratic reform that threatened their political authority by stemming the demand for political reform within the metropole.

Additionally, the creation of the ‘other’ helped offset the social changes brought on by democratic reform. Beasley explains that while many elites believed that democratic reform was compromising their patriarchal society, “Perhaps in the colonies it was not too late to preserve the family feeling and the smaller scale of society.”40 The creation of ‘otherness’ allowed for this preserving of the “family feeling” of patriarchal society by denying Indian subjects suffrage during a time when the lower classes were gaining the vote causing the loss of the patriarchal “family feeling” within the metropole. Democracy in the colonies was replaced with what Arthur Mills termed ‘paternal despotism’ to rule ‘coloured people’ abroad.41 The creation of ‘otherness’ that allowed the British to deny Indians suffrage thus became a means of counterbalancing democratic reform at home with less democracy abroad thereby helping preserve a sense of patriarchal society in the colonies.

More important than simply preserving the “family feeling” of British society in the colonies, however, the creation of ‘otherness’ replaced the exploitable class within the metropole with an exploitable class of racial inferiors in the colonial periphery, and consequently reaffirmed elites’ position atop the Empire’s social hierarchy. While elites had historically enjoyed a mutually agreed upon superiority over the middle and lower classes, the series of nineteenth-century reforms called into question elites’ formerly secure status above the masses and greatly diminished the degree to which elites could exploit the lower classes within the metropole.42 The argument that elites used colonial ‘otherness’ as a tool to replace exploitable classes at home suggests the existence of definite similarities between the ‘other’ and the middle and working classes before they gained a political voice. Though historians like Rogers Brubaker deny that European elites viewed lower classes in a manner comparable to how 39 40 41 42

Ibid., 70-71.

Beasley, Mid-Victorian Imperialists, 99-100.

Ibid., 17.

Cooper, Colonialism in Question, 172-173.

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they viewed colonial subjects after the rise of Social Darwinism,43 firsthand accounts tend to disagree. Badeau mentioned that even after political reforms were under way, the English aristocracy’s understanding of racial divisions within the metropole remained pronounced, and seemed in many ways similar to the racial lines drawn between Englishmen and colonial ‘others.’ He notes, The hinds, as they are still called, the helots on the estates, are as stolid and brutish a race as any peasantry in the world, and seem, like the slaves at the South before emancipation, content with their condition, because they have never known or conceived any other. They are bred to suppose that what they see as the natural order of things, and that change is not only wrong but impossible; that their lot is ordained of God, as inevitable as death, and deliverance as far off as the stars.44 Though less the case as political reforms progressed during the nineteenth century, Badeau confirmed that in the past, English elites had a firm sense of racial superiority over the lower classes. As racial lines became an increasingly outdated concept at home in England, elites then found a new class of exploitable ‘others’ in colonial holdings like India as greater lines of racial separation were constructed between the English and their Indian subjects. In light of liberal reform at home that placed elites and the masses on a more level playing field, “The British”, as Hobsbawm explains, “[were] convinced of the essential and permanent non-Englishness of the Bengalis and Yoruba.”45 This then allowed for the continued exploitation of this class of colonial ‘others’ when exploitation of the working classes at home was becoming less feasible.

Furthermore, the relocation of the British social hierarchy’s exploitable class from the lower classes in England to the colonial ‘others’ on the periphery served, at a fundamental level, to reaffirm British elites position atop a colonial social hierarchy while that hierarchy was being flattened in the metropole by the nineteenth-century reforms. Purchase clarifies the role ‘otherness’ played in England’s social hierarchy in the time leading up to the reforms saying, There persisted within England an all-pervasive Victorian hierarchy of otherness. This hierarchy placed the Victorian lower classes at the bottom, with their women members and those of the underclass even lower and more ‘other’, particularly prostitutes, criminals and lunatics. At the top were those men of industrial and professional middle and upper classes, with their women below them although still above the lower classes.46

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43 44 45 46

Cooper and Stoler, Tensions of Empire, 10.

Badeau, Aristocracy in England, 285-286.

Hobsbawm, The Age of Empire 1875-1914, 71.

Purchase, Key Conceptions in Victorian Literature, 106.

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As the ‘otherness’ of the lower classes within England diminished with the masses gaining a stronger political voice, elites found their station atop the social hierarchy seriously threatened for the first time. Cooper and Stoler then conclude that social reform and democratization “prompted Europe’s ruling classes to reaffirm their own distinctiveness at the very moment when European states were emphasizing incorporation of parts of the popular classes into some form of citizenship and recognition of their accepted place in the polity.”47 This “distinctiveness” took the shape of creating a new sense of superiority over racially inferior ‘others’ in the colonies. The creation of ‘otherness’ can thus be seen a coping mechanism used by elites in light of the nineteenth-century reforms to reaffirm their position above the masses on top of an elongated colonial social hierarchy.

The nineteenth-century reforms certainly gave British elites significant cause to fear for the future of their position on top of the social hierarchy and the motivation to search for new ways to preserve their long-held social status.

The creation of ‘otherness’ fit the aristocracy’s needs by offering elites a possible means of limiting democratic concessions to the masses and preserving a familiar social order. But to what extent did elites take identifiable action to create a class of colonial ‘others’ in Victorian society? Though this question was not the primary focus of his work, Said delves into the process through which the imperial disposition and idea of ‘otherness’ became engrained in British culture with his studies on Orientalism. Said states his objective saying he wishes to examine “how the process of imperialism occurred beyond the level of economic laws and political decisions, and – by predisposition, by the authority of recognizable cultural formations, by continuing consolidation within education, literature, and the visual and musical arts – were manifested at another very significant level, that of the national culture.”48 He thus recognizes the role that “education, literature, and the visual and musical arts” played in solidifying imperial support, and in so doing presents these mediums as possible means used by British elites to create the concept of the colonial ‘other’ in English culture. An analysis of elites’ political power and the aristocracy’s influence over those mediums like literature and newspapers that shape public outlook suggests that elites did use their power and perhaps more importantly their influence over the middle class in an effort to construct the idea of colonial ‘otherness’.

At the most direct level, British elites used their political influence to both maintain the rigid hierarchy already in place in India and draw stronger barriers between the English within the metropole and the Indian ‘others’. Cooper and Stoler recognize the rigidness of the Crown rule over India that contributed to the creation of ‘otherness’ noting, “A large colonial bureaucracy occupied itself, especially from the 1860s, with classifying people and their attributes, with censuses, surveys, and ethnographies, with recording transactions, marking space, establishing routines, and standardizing practices.”49 This activity in classifications and ethnographies, performed as part of the rise of 47 Cooper and Stoler, Tensions of Empire, 10.

48 Said, Culture and Imperialism, 13.

49 Cooper and Stoler, Tensions of Empire, 11.

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scientific racism, reinforced Indians’ status as inferior beings, distinct from their English colonizers, and was largely a result of what politicians in England wanted to see. In a debate over the Government of India Bill in 1858, the Earl of Ellenborough expressed his desire that elites, rather than commoners, comprise the bureaucracy in India as they would better understand how do deal with racial inferiors in India than the lower classes. The Parliamentary Debate recorded, The moral superiority of Englishmen enabled us to keep that country…. [Lord Ellenborough] had always been most desirous that we should retain the highest gentlemen we could procure at the head of affairs in India, and therefore he was particularly anxious that in this case the son of a grocer or a tailor… should not, though being highly crammed for an open competitive examination, be preferred before the son of a country gentleman.50 By keeping men with some ties to the aristocracy involved in the bureaucracy in India, elites at home hoped that civil service officials working in India would understand and maintain not only the sense of ‘otherness’ in the colonies, but also preserve the social hierarchy already in place there to further hinder Indians from climbing the colonial social hierarchy. In another debate over the Government of India Bill in the House of Lords, the Parliamentary Debate recorded the Earl of Derby: To say that you will not recognize caste at all in India is to say that you will not recognize that which is intimately interwoven with all the cherished feelings, habits, associations, and most vital principles of the people. Therefore, my Lords… I say it is the bounden duty of the Government to pay that attention to caste which even in this country we pay, though not in the same degree, to the different ranks of society, and which any Government must, more or less, respect, if it would not be brought into constant collision with all classes of its subjects.51 By keeping elites involved in the direct governance of India and by recognizing the existence of the entrenched Indian caste structure, English politicians hoped to put in place a system that maintained the growing sense of Indians’ colonial ‘otherness’. Coupled with the increased use of ethnographic studies that, under Social Darwinist principles, highlighted different traits among Indians as proof of racial inferiority, elites thus strove to wield their political influence to solidify the idea of ‘otherness’, but still needed to convey this message to the masses in the metropole.

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50 “HL Deb 19 July 1858 vol 151 cc1679-99,” British Parliamentary Papers, 19 July 1858, online archives, <http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/lords/1858/jul/19/committee-1>, accessed on 26 December 2010.

51 Ibid.

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Though elites had an undeniable influence over society, the growing middle class played a more direct hand in composing the literature and producing the newspapers that helped construct public opinion, and as such, an understanding of the strong relationship between the aristocracy and middle class is required to see role elites had in creating the ‘other’. Rather than causing animosity among the bourgeoisie, the privileges enjoyed by English elites often made ascension into the aristocracy a sought after goal shared by many middle class professionals which thereby limited tension between the classes. Badeau recalls “that the middle class – comprising those who live by the aristocracy – the tradesmen, the domestic servants, and the farmers, and higher still, those who aspire to enter the aristocracy, or, at least, to associate with it, were unwilling to disturb that order which is their support and their pride.”52 This drastic difference between the bourgeoisie-aristocracy dynamic in England and on the continent was largely responsible for the relatively smooth progression of liberal reform in Britain, and suggests that elites and the middle class were both content with the status quo. Chesterton emphasizes the closeness of this relationship between the classes in noting, The fundamental fact of Early Victorian history was this: the decision of the middle classes to employ their new wealth in backing up a sort of aristocratical compromise, and not (like the middle class in the French Revolution) insisting on a clean sweep and a clear democratic programme. It went along with the decision of the aristocracy to recruit itself more freely from the middle class.53 As part of this “aristocratical compromise”, elites allowed increasing numbers of the middle class to join the aristocracy, and in return for this hope of entry into the aristocracy, the middle class, by and large, supported the status quo by aiding in the elites’ attempts to preserve the familiar social hierarchy.

Highlighting how elites leveraged this relationship to slow liberal reforms, Chesterton clarifies the effect of this relationship saying, “The treaty between the rich bourgeoisie and the old aristocracy, which both had to make, [was made] for the common and congenial purpose of keeping the English people down.”54 Though middle class support for the aristocracy was certainly not uniform, the trend where the two classes worked in cahoots to preserve the existing social hierarchy had a significant effect on the mediums like literature that helped shaped the outlook of the masses.

Producing the majority of writing during the mid to late-nineteenth century, the middle class created a vast body of literature with aristocratic interests in mind. Badeau summarizes the elites’ power over literature noting, “The influence of the aristocracy upon literature and the press is too important a theme to be discussed in a paragraph. But there are many of the learned and intellectual men of England so affected by the splendor and pageantry of rank 52 Badeau, Aristocracy in England, 286-287.

53 Chesterton, The Victorian Age in Literature, 9.

54 Ibid., 44.

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that their reason is subdued by their imagination; or else they are so constituted by nature that they prefer stability to progress.”55 It is not surprising then, as Kitzan notes, that during the Victorian age, “Most of the better-known writers came from moderately well-off middle-class families,”56 and thus tended to support the aristocracy under the aforementioned agreement between the two classes. Beasley’s research further suggests that Victorian writers supported the aristocracy when he describes the membership of the pro-imperial Colonial Society created in 1868 saying, “The category that fits the largest number of members the best was not ‘businessman’ or ‘official’ or ‘traveller’, but ‘writer’.”57 Writers thus took a very active role in supporting those imperial policies – which in many ways helped preserve the social hierarchy – preferred by elites during an age of relative political and social upheaval. Purchase explains the increased activity from Victorian writers, that resulted in a rise from 2,000 to 8,000 new book titles annually during the Victorian period,58 saying, “The most significant reason, however, for the sheer quantity of novels published in the mid-Victorian years is the fact that they grew up in response to an historical period of unprecedented change and upheaval in the so-called ‘Condition of England’ crisis.”59 The social changes underway during the nineteenth century that threatened elites’ social position thus influenced the writing middle class as well. The middle class, who, like the elites, felt they had a vested interested in maintaining the status quo, wrote to comprehend and explained the changes taking place in a manner that preserved the familiar social hierarchy.

Ultimately, this resulted in their direct contribution to the creation of the ‘other’ in accordance with aristocratic interests.

As the nineteenth century progressed, the Victorian novel became an increasingly important medium through which writers gradually constructed and solidified the concept of colonial ‘otherness’ in Victorian society. Said identifies an important role played by the novel as a medium saying, “In the main, though, the nineteenth-century European novel is a cultural form consolidating but also refining and articulating the authority of the status quo.”60 As such, Victorian authors followed the elites in looking more and more towards imperialism to reassert the aristocracy’s authority in society. While imperialism provided only a “shadowy presence” in the background of earlier writers’ work like Dickens, Purchase explains Towards the end of the century… imperialism began to resonate more and more in Victorian society and literature. By the 1880s-90s, when it had reached the height of its popularity in Britain, places such as Africa and India found a series of complex representations in the popular novels and poetry of the

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55 56 57 58

Badeau, Aristocracy in England, 285.

Kitzan, Victorian Writers and the Image of Empire, 38.

Beasley, Mid-Victorian Imperialists, 3.

John Sutherland, Victorian Fiction: Writers, Publishers, Readers (New York: St. Martin’s, 1995), 151.

59 Purchase, Key Conceptions in Victorian Literature, 169.

60 Said, Culture and Imperialism, 77.

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day. These reaches of empire became especially prevalent in the work of writers who seemed to take the cultivation of imperial attitudes, Englishness and the idea of colonial adventure as their starting point, rather than their background.61 As the reforms represented a growing threat to elites’ social position as the century progressed, writers turned increasingly to imperial subjects to find new sources of legitimacy for the aristocracy, and found them not only in imperial grandeur and tradition, but also in the creation of ‘otherness’. An underlying theme in Victorian novels thus became lines of separation between classes and races resulting ultimately in a focus on the creation of ‘otherness’.

Chesterton asserts that the increases in novel output represented “an increase in the interest in the things in which men differ… And this intense interest in variety had its bad side as well as its good; it has rather increased social distinctions in a serious and spiritual sense.”62 These increases in social distinctions found in Victorian novels that coincided directly with the elites’ increased anxiety over social reform helped popularize the notion of ‘otherness’ in a way that both the aristocracy and middle class hoped might preserve the standing social order.

Perhaps the most interesting and effective tactic used by Victorian writers to spread the idea of ‘otherness’ was their construction of the idea that that English society as a whole was seriously threatened by its interaction with native colonial subjects like Indians, thereby extending the elites’ anxiety over social changes to the masses. Purchase locates the underlying sense of danger posed by interaction with colonial culture saying, “In the Victorian novel, most conspicuously, the East is frequently described as a distinctly different, irrational and ‘other’ space in relation to England. The literary Orient is an alluring place of mystery, enchantment, excitement, adventure and colour, but also one of sex, sensuality, and danger for Europeans.”63 Writers recognized colonial holdings like India not only as backwards, but also as threatening to Western colonizers who might be tempted to forsake civilization for the allure of an exotic colonial culture. In this fashion, writers portrayed English society as under siege by the backwardness and ignorance of colonial subjects. Said suggests how writers created this sense of danger posed by imperial subjects, claiming, “What appears stable and secure – the policeman at the corner, for instance – is only slightly more secure than the white men in the jungle, and requires the same continuous (but precarious) triumph over an all-pervading darkness, which by the end of the tale is shown to be the same in London and in Africa.”64 By creating this anxiety over the “all-pervading” darkness that threatened the civilized metropole, Victorian writers depicted ‘otherness’ as a necessity and the best defense against the allure of native culture; ‘otherness’ made Indian subjects more untouchable thereby mitigating the risk associated with ruling seemingly backwards societies and cultures. With this focus on the threat caused by native culture, Purchase notes, “Victorian literature [was] 61 62 63 64

Purchase, Key Conceptions in Victorian Literature, 59.

Chesterton, The Victorian Age in Literature, 42.

Purchase, Key Conceptions in Victorian Literature, 103.

Said, Culture and Imperialism, 29.

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obsessed with others and images of otherness,” and thus aided directly in the construction of a class of racially inferior colonial ‘others’.

The infiltration of imperialist themes into educational mediums like children’s literature and textbooks further suggests that aristocratic influence resulted in the solidification of Indian ‘otherness’ in Victorian society. Accepting the aristocracy-middle class compromise as true, British authors strove to reach younger audiences with messages of imperial grandeur and colonial ‘otherness’ in accordance with what elites wanted. Kitzan explains the educational function of Victorian literature on young readers noting, “Teaching was a major intention of a great many of the writers of imperial fiction. The teaching function was intended to extend to both adult and youthful readers, though this was most obvious with the children’s literature.”65 The portrayals of Indian ‘otherness’ that reached the adult masses through Victorian novels also reached younger, more malleable minds through children’s books like Kipling’s Jungle Book.

Children were thus exposed, as Paffard notes, to the “well-worked parable of Indian barbarism – ignorance, lust and gluttony – set against the inevitable white superiority. When the white men shoot the crocodile at the end of his tale the Indian villagers are rescued from the image of their former selves.”66 This sense of racial superiority formed early through children’s books was reinforced through more formal education which featured text-books saturated in notions of ‘otherness’. J.A. Mangan explains the role of late-Victorian textbooks, Above all, text-books reinforced the concept of ‘distance’ between whites and non-whites... Such texts were consistent, throughout the period, in their repetition of continuing imperial racist themes: first, the British empire as a moral enterprise; secondly, an imperial ethic constructed around the notion of ‘character’; thirdly, an emphasis on the moral deficiency of subject peoples; fourthly, the categorisation of superior and inferior into a ‘hierarchy of ‘race.’67 Acting to placate aristocratic interests, Victorian authors and publishers extended their images of ‘otherness’ from the Victorian novel to children’s literature and textbooks. In this fashion, the sense of ‘otherness’ became engrained in English minds at an early age thereby helping solidify its conception among the masses.

Newspapers provided yet another medium that, while run predominately by the middle class, were used to disseminate aristocratic messages of imperial glory and colonial ‘otherness’ to the masses. England’s more reputable publications like The Times and cheaper, local newspapers both helped craft public opinion in the elites’ favor. An 1866 Letter to the Editor of The Times entitled “Mr. Mason Jones on Reform” recognized the strong connection between The Times and elites:

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65 Kitzan, Victorian Writers and the Image of Empire, 41.

66 Paffard, Kipling’s Indian Fiction, 9-10.

67 J.A. Mangan, Making Imperial Mentalities: Socialisation and British Imperialism (Manchester: University Press, 1990), 14.

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The influence of your journal over the ruling classes in England is so immense, they so implicitly adopt your opinions and unhesitatingly follow your guidance, that any mistake on your part respecting our home affairs or foreign policy is little short of a national calamity…. There can be very little doubt that the defeat of Mr. Gladstone’s Reform Bills and the overthrow of the late Government were mainly owing to the persistent, able, and overwhelming opposition of The Times.68 While Mr. Mason identified the link and influence between The Times and elites, he misplaced the line of causality. Rather than The Times convincing elites to oppose Mr. Gladstone’s Reform Bills in 1866, the elites, with their longstanding conviction to oppose further reforms, used their social power over the middle class to influence The Times which subsequently featured enough articles opposing reform to warrant Mr. Mason’s letter to the editor. In this fashion, elites’ views, including their views on colonial ‘otherness’, were published in newspapers like The Times, and distributed to the masses shaping public opinion. Robert H. MacDonald explains a similar effect among England’s lesser publications: Cheap popular newspapers pioneered by Alfred Harmsworth in his Daily Mail catered to and in a sense created an expanded reading public; the Empire was a topical subject. In John MacKenzie’s words ‘popular’ imperialism did matter, in that it supported ‘a world view embracing unique imperial status, cultural and racial superiority and a common ground of national conceit on which all could agree’.69 Imperial elements like racial superiority and ‘otherness’ were thus fed to the masses as part of an attractive picture of British imperialism. Like novels, newspapers thus catered to elites and popularized ‘otherness’ that ultimately helped reaffirm the elites’ station in the social hierarchy.

Ultimately, while elites may have used their political power to directly contribute to the creation of ‘otherness’, their strong influence over the middle class – derived from their historic social station and the cooperation between the classes – did the most to propagate the construction of ‘otherness’ through popular mediums like the Victorian novel. As Badeau explained, “Public opinion often does not penetrate to the Peers, but their opinions always filter outward and downward.”70 So while the middle class composed the novels and newspapers that dispensed the idea that Indians comprised a class of colonial ‘others’, their writing, by and large, reflected aristocratic interests and outlooks.

68 Mason Jones, “Mr. Mason Jones on Reform,” The Times, 6 August 1866, online archives, <http://infotrac.galegroup.com>, accessed on 20 November 2010.

69 Robert H. Macdonald, The Language of Empire: Myths and Metaphors of Popular Imperialism, 1880-1918 (New York: St. Martin’s, 1994), 3.

70 Badeau, Aristocracy in England, 282.

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Some scholars maintain that the creation of ‘otherness’ was motivated by the need to justify imperialism and economic exploitation. However, as Kitzan suggests, the British were, for the most part, content with their imperial activity despite its immoral elements. He notes, There is no evidence that the people engaged in gaining or in administering the colonies had severe doubts about what they were doing, or that most of the people who directed their activities from London had qualms about the morality of the enterprise. Whatever the private doubts the British might have about their religion, the advantages of colonies seemed to be less questionable. Even when an imperial policy did come into question, the most searching doubts concerned its practicality and its cost in men and money. A Gladstone might have his doubts about the propriety of one nation ruling another, but this, like his salvation work among prostitutes, was more of an indication of eccentricity than a generally accepted trend of thought.71 Imperialism did not require the creation of ‘otherness’ as a means of justification. Rather, the underlying motivation behind the creation of ‘otherness’ can be placed more precisely in the anxiety elites felt about the maintenance of their position on top of the social hierarchy in light of the nineteenthcentury liberal reforms. As Chesterton notes, “It is no idle Hibernianism to say that towards the end of the eighteenth century the most important event in English history happened in France.”72 The French Revolution awakened British masses to the potential for political change, and while no revolution occurred, the progression of nineteenth-century reforms shook the foundation of elites’ political and social power in a manner that prompted the aristocracy to find new means of reaffirming its position on top of the social hierarchy.

Leveraging their significant political power and influence over the middle class, elites played a key role in the construction of ‘otherness’ as this class of inferior colonial ‘others’ stemmed the demand for more liberal reform, and provided comforting social reassurance in an age of unprecedented change.

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71 Kitzan, Victorian Writers and the Image of Empire, 40.

72 Chesterton, The Victorian Age in Literature, 3.

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Bibliography

Badeau, Adam. Aristocracy in England. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1886.

Beasley, Edward. Mid-Victorian Imperialists: British Gentlemen and the Empire of the Mind. New York: Routledge, 2005.

British Parliamentary Papers, 8 July 1850-1875. Accessed 26 December 2010. http:// hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/.

Cannadine, David. The Decline and Fall of the British Aristocracy. New Haven: Yale, 1990.

Cooper, Frederick. Colonialism in Question: Theory, Knowledge, History. Los Angeles: University of California, 2005.

Cooper, Frederick and Ann Laura Stoler. Tensions of Empire: Colonial Cultures in a Bourgeois World. Berkeley: University of California, 1997.

Chesterton, G.K. The Victorian Age in Literature. Oxford: University Press, 1913.

“Future Policy of Government as Regards India,” The Times, 24 September 1857.

Accessed 24 December, 2010. http://infotrac.galegroup.com/itw/ infomark.

Hall, Catherine. Civilising Subjects: Metropole and Colony in the English Imagination, 1830-1867. Oxford: Polity, 2002.

Hobsbawm, E.J. The Age of Empire 1875-1914. New York: Pantheon, 1987.

Jones, Mason. “Mr. Mason Jones on Reform,” The Times, 6 August 1866, Accessed 26 December 2010. http://infotrac.galegroup.com/itw/infomark/.

Kitzan, Laurence. Victorian Writers and the Image of Empire: The Rose-Colored Version.

London: Greenwood, 2001.

Lester, C. Edwards. Glory and Shame of England, Volume I. New York: Bartram and Lester, 1866.

“Lord Brougham on Popular Education and the Mutiny in India,’ The Times, 5 November 1857. Accessed 24 December 2010. http://infotrac.galegroup. com/itw/infomark/, Macdonald, Robert H. The Language of Empire: Myths and Metaphors of Popular Imperialism, 1880-1918. New York: St. Martin’s, 1994.

Mangan, J.A. Making Imperial Mentalities: Socialisation and British Imperialism.

Manchester: University Press, 1990.

Paffard, Mark. Kipling’s Indian Fiction. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1989.

Purchase, Sean. Key Conceptions in Victorian Literature. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006.

Said, Edward W. Culture and Imperialism. New York: Knopf, 1993.

Sutherland, John. Victorian Fiction: Writers, Publishers, Readers. New York: St. Martin’s, 1995.

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The Foundations of African Slavery as found in Native American Slavery

Michael Warburton= A myriad of prominent historians aptly document the use of African slave labor in the North American colonies as an unmistakable facet in the evolution of American society. Native American slavery, on the other hand, has received comparatively less analysis despite its significant impact on the laboring institutions that helped form the colonial societies. Native American slave labor never constituted a majority of laboring populations in either the Slave South or New England, but many historians neglect its importance. The “inevitable…natural shift”1 to African slavery originated, not only because Africans were available and because whites were racist toward blacks, but because of the precedent of Indian slavery promoted the transition to African slavery. English colonies’ economic, religious and social interference played a crucial role in developing Indian slavery and promoted the changeover to African slave labor in the early American colonies.

Occurring before the onset of African slavery in the British American colonies, Native American servitude dramatically affected the colonies’ transition into African slave labor by laying the foundations of racial prejudices and dependence on forced labor. These two factors are integral to understanding the history of slavery in English colonies. Although there are distinctions to be found between Indian and African slavery in English forced labor, they are not easily separated in eras of colonial history because of the transitional nature. African slaves and Indian servants—some of which were servants for

= 1

Michael Warburton is a member of the Class of 2011. He wrote with the guidence of Mr. Nicholas P. Wood.

James Walvin, “The Origins of Atlantic Slavery,” in A Short History of Slavery (London: Penguin, 2007), 40.

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life—worked beside each other for a period in early America. 2 Portions of Colonial America evolved into different societies, but all colonies adopted non-white, forced labor workforces and followed the trend from Indian to African enslavement. This common denominator makes the shift applicable to the English colonies as a whole.

Historians in years past focused on the Northeast Indian slave trade in contrast with the African Slave South. This dichotomy is misleading. Throughout the colonies in the 17th and early 18th centuries, the Indian slave trade, both domestic and international, was integral to all North American colonies. The dependence on forced labor in all the colonies cultivated a community prone to perpetuate slavery based on the continuation of racial oppression. Even before the settlers founded the New England Colonies—Plymouth in 1620 and the Massachusetts colony in 1628—Indian enslavement and kidnapping occurred in coastal Virginia colonies.3 Growing demand for labor-heavy industries like tobacco called for large work forces. Planters utilized white labor in the form of indentured servants for a limited time in Colonial America until masters recognized the advantages of life-long slavery. The decrease in the Native American population due to disease, constant warring, and enslavement necessitated slave labor to replace Indians, a craving only satisfied by Africans, the most easily accessible culture the English felt justified in enslaving. This conversion of slave labor is not unique to New England or the southern societies and is part of the larger trend in the history of America that began amongst the first settlers.

By demonstrating the evolution of Indian slave labor from its primary institutionalization at the beginning of English colonization to the 18th century, during which African slave labor begins to dominate slave societies and Indian tribes begin moving into towns or spreading into the West made possible by treaties with different colonies, the scope of colonial slavery becomes explicit. Was there a basis for African slavery in the English colonies by the time Africans began showing up in remarkable numbers and was this basis connected to the use of non-whites as laborers, specifically indigenous workers? By showing the progression of slavery in English colonies, beginning with the foundations of Indian slavery, the obvious importance of Indian enslavement in the justification and legitimization of African slave labor shines through and contributes to American slave history of current academia.

The use of both Indians and Africans as slaves in English colonies followed Spanish precedence in North America. South American enslavement followed the same trend from Indians to a more prominent African slave base. However, indigenous forced labor in South America faced more public scrutiny than in North America with the works of Bartolomé de las Casas in 1542 and similar contemporary outcries emitted from Europe. This is not to say that clergy or other North American 2 Alan Gallay and Margaret Newell, “Indian Slavery in Colonial New England,” in Indian Slavery in Colonial America (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2009), 34.

3 Ibid., 35.

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denizens did not criticize North American slavery, just that North American slave societies passively viewed literature on the horrors of slavery.

Indians across the North American continent had reason to fear enslavement from the very beginning of colonization. From the earliest moments of European settlement, colonists captured Indians to display in England as proof of settlement or for later trips to serve as translators.4 Philip Amadas and Arthur Barlowe took from the coast of North America “two Indians, a bag of pearls, and stories,” signifying a sense of European ownership towards all property in North America.5 Manteo and Wanchese are probably the most famous Native Americans forced to return to England as trophied property, a way to manipulate support for exploration by stimulating intrigue with cultural oddities.6 From colonial inception, English settlers and leaders viewed the Indians as societal ‘others’ who inspired interest because they were so different from Europeans.

John Smith, the leader of the Virginia colony from 1608-1609, wanted to integrate the Native Americans into the colony along the lines of “something close to slavery,” mainly as a method of quelling fears of Indian attack and creating sustainable agriculture through indigenous knowledge.7 Instead of fostering friendship with the Indians to gain their agricultural insight, John Smith forced slavery on the Indians because they were a threat to the English.

Since this required dangerous and constant work, he must have done so for a specific reason. It is not a large hurdle to guess that the superiority of Indian agriculture and sustenance required John Smith to actively subjugate them in order to reassert regional dominance. A shortage of white colonists in the beginning years encouraged power demonstrations by whites but also encouraged reliance, and therefore utilization, of Indians as facilitators of English settlement. To the North, the Plymouth Council ordered in 1675, “that Indian children under English jurisdiction be removed from their families and forcibly apprenticed to white families.”8 The following year, Daniel Gookin sold off 50 Nipmuc Indian Children up to age 24 to white northern settlers.9 The colonists consistently purchased Indians for labor from the inception of colonization.

European literati documented the distaste for native people in North America. Rhetoric of cultural “otherization” applied to the Native Americans shared characteristics of style with that used against the Irish in England only a few years prior to colonization of North America.10 European notions of genetic superiority were commonplace among the post-Enlightened Anglo-Saxon colonists who colonized North America and this certainly influenced their 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Edmund S. Morgan, American Slavery, American Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia (New York: Norton, 1975), 33.

Ibid., 26.

Henry Howe, Historical Collections of Virginia (Charleston, SC: Babcock & Co., 1845), 18.

Morgan, American Slavery, American Freedom, 77.

Gallay and Newell, “Indian Slavery in Colonial New England,” 47.

Daniel Gookin, “Indian Children Put to Service, August 10 1676,” New England Historical and Genealogical Register 8 (1954): 270-273.

Morgan, American Slavery, American Freedom, 20.

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ideological manifestations into condoning slavery.11 John Smith commented that the Indian “women be verie painefull [industrious] and the men often idle.” 12 This implication that the men forced the women to do most of the work—despite Indian males going on exhausting hunting and fishing expeditions to supply families with meat—contradicted England’s genteel notions of ‘proper’ gender roles in which women did little to no work.

Nomenclature of the Indians by colonial era writers and painters generally portrayed the indigenous as savages and barbarians. After the 1622 Powhatan War, Virginia issued a decree calling for awareness of the “perfidious treachery of the halfe-hearted people” and suppression of those “rude, barbarous, and naked people.”13 In a famous picture of Jane McCrea, Indians from 1777 are depicted in loincloths about to tomahawk a beautiful woman. This picture served as incredible propaganda against the Indians, showing them as barbaric militants who attacked innocent white women and were therefore enemies of the colonists. This strategy of portraying the Indians as barbaric and therefore acceptably enslaved occurred throughout the colonies from the very beginning. The subjugation and oppression of humane characterization of the Native American people dehumanized them and allowed colonists to accept the justification that it was acceptable to enslave those with whom they shared no values.

Indians had traditions of enslavement before colonial interventions.

Historian Christina Snyder recognized this trend and stated, “Among Native Americans, captivity was a normal accompaniment to warfare and the practice forced people to define themselves and others during crucial historical moments.”14 The Tuscarora tribe, well known for their participation in the Iroquois Confederacy, were “quite willing to engage in the wholesale enslavement of other Indians” as a method of maintaining power.15 Tribal conflicts that resulted in warfare usually consisted of a primary war and a mourning war that followed to recuperate populations of Indians lost in the preliminary scuffle. Indian captivity from these types of wars ranged “from death to adoption to slavery.”16 Most frequently, male warriors were targeted for death while women and children were captured and either adopted into the tribe to replace lost members or sold to the English or other external economic markets into slavery.

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11 Ibid., 56.

12 John Smith, Travels and works of Captain John Smith, Edward Arber, ed. (Edinburg, John Grant, 1910), 67; Phillip L Barbour, The Jamestown Voyages under the First Charter, 1606-1609, II, Publications of the Hakluyt Society, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969), 357; Morgan, American Slavery, American Freedom, 56.

13 Edward Waterhouse, “A Declaration of the State of the Colony and Affaires in Virginia,” (1622).

14 Christina Snyder, Slavery in Indian Country: The Changing Face of Captivity in Early America (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2010), 4.

15 Alan Gallay and C.S. Everett, “They Shall be Slaves for their Lives,” in Indian Slavery in Colonial America (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2009), 95.

16 Snyder, Slavery in Indian Country, 5.

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Warring between tribes for dominance was not intra-racial fighting in the minds of the discrete Indian tribes. Indians of various tribes were a community of kinship that defined itself as a unique group of people, and did not make this definition based on innate differences, but rather by regions and languages.17 Each European colony devised distinct strategies to pit regional tribes against one another, sometimes undoubtedly causing wars between Indian groups that would ultimately garner slaves for all participating colonies; a comprehensive victory for Europe and a complete loss for all Native Americans. By generalizing Indian races and manipulating tribes to fight, the colonists created a hierarchy that used Indians as pawns to further the hold on North American soil. Racial distinctions in America changed from tribal differentiations to Indian and White. This preliminary exploitation of Indians laid the groundwork for later manipulation of the Indians by Whites in the form of slavery.

The purpose of the wars was to establish, challenge, or maintain dominance of a particular tribe or, in many cases, as a reaction to a previous war.

These conflicts were reactionary and emotional. As colonists began an internal Indian slave trade, slavery of indigenous people became practical, economical, and insensitive. Tribes across the North American landscape practiced enslavement well before European interactions, though on a smaller scale and for different reasons. The idea of slavery was not new to the Indians, but the implications and severity of slavery changed with the first colonial interaction.

The Indian slave trade had its foundation in the enslaving of Indians by Indians.

English colonists placed regional and racial labels on different Indian tribes no matter what the Indians viewed as appropriate distinctions. With this mindset, the colonists manipulated the Yamasee, Creeks, and Tuscarora into fighting each other, furthering the argument that colonists’ conception of race and economic dominance drastically changed Indian perception of race.18 These Indian tribes now saw previously friendly tribes as enemies and completely different from their race because white interactions usurped traditional distinctions between tribes.

Due to the disastrous diseases brought by the English to North America, Indian populations quickly dwindled. R.J. Rummel estimated that 13,778,000 American Indians died between the 16th and 19th centuries.19 This population disaster is likely a conglomerate of many factors in Indian deaths including disease, warfare, natural causes, and United States’ treatment of Indians, but the staggering estimate shows the devastation caused by colonization. Tribes reacted quickly in an attempt to maintain power hierarchies and allegiances based on strength in numbers ideology. By doing so, Indians began enslaving their previous allies and potential current allies against the English invasion.

European diseases indirectly caused a dramatic increase in warfare—which only furthered the population decrease—and consequently promoted Indian enslavement by producing a weak indigenous population yearning for anything other than death and vulnerable to attack and capture. Enslavement was a 17 Ibid., 55.

18 This listing could very well contain other additional Native American Indian tribes.

19 R. J. Rummel, Statistics of Democide, Genocide and Mass Murder Since 1900 (Charlottesville, Virginia: University of Virginia Press, 1997), Table 2.1A. The Foundations of African Slavery as found in Native American Slavery

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viable option for Indians, specifically when reinforced by cultural factors such as economic dependence and colonial growth into the interior, which pressured Indians towards integrating with the white community in any way possible.

Slave Economy Economies in New England and Virginia used indentured whites and Indians as laborers during the first few decades of colonization. Working side by side, some as day laborers, others indentured servants, others servants for life, this was a unique moment in history that defied the later racial hierarchy.20 Whites—albeit poorer—worked in the fields for other socially superior whites. European colonization was originally based on economic primacy. The Virginia Company, the joint-stock company created by entrepreneurs who received the charter to Virginia in 1606, focused on economic strength as the principal tenet to colonization. This mindset of monetary efficiency and slashing of the bottom line encouraged forced labor by eliminating costs associated with indentured servants or day laborers, thereby causing a reduction of white laborers and increasing populations of non-white laborers, in most early cases Indians. In addition, potential indentured servants increasingly opted against traveling to America.

High death rates and labor abuses decreased the supply of white workers, encouraging a turn to forced labor of cultural and racial others.

After the successful southern experimentation with tobacco in 1615, along with farming and lumber for shipping in the North, land was an increasingly desirable commodity. Both legislatively and by gubernatorial decree, battles against Indian tribes became more about obtaining slaves and land in one fell swoop than in times past.21 There was a financial incentive to going to war with their neighbor—if that neighbor had a different concept of land possession or skin color and settlers could quickly subject Indians to intense labor at little or no cost.

Indians and colonists in the Anglo-Powhatan Wars (1622 and 1644), Pequot War (1634-38), King Phillips War (1675-76), and Bacon’s Rebellion (1676) fought over dominion rights, which have their basis in procuring economic advantages over other areas and economic interests. Governor of Virginia William Berkeley said “I thinke [sic] it is necessary to Destroy all these Northern Indians,” although he planned to spare the women and children to sell as slaves to offset the cost of war.22 Indian participation in wars increased Indian death and Indian enslavement, ironically while fighting for and against the English. The act of war and enslavement of Indians in postwar negotiations is a crux to the racialization of Native American slavery.

Europeans did not consider enslavement in their continental wars in the

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20 Gallay and Newell, “Indian Slavery in Colonial New England,” 34.

21 The Records of the Virginia Company of London, 558-559. Cited in Gallay and Newell.

“Indian Slavery in Colonial New England.” 34; Morgan, American Slavery, American Freedom, 99-100.

22 Morgan, American Slavery, American Freedom, 233.

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homeland, at least in the 17th century, so the fact that Indian enslavement was justified by war implies a different legitimization: racial differences. By not differentiating between tribes, a blanket hierarchy began to take shape and the slaving of Indians became commonplace because of notions of white superiority and a craving for economic dominance.

A small case study of the Pequot War illustrates the ironically unfortunate circumstances that weaved Indians, warfare, and economics. The Pequot War (1634-38) began after Captain Stone “procured some of those Indians to go as Pilots with two of his men to the Dutch,”23 traders in the North, during which the Indians murdered their captors. Connections between these two Indians and the neighboring Pequot tribes caused major tensions between colonists in New England and supporting tribes who feared further European dominance.

One of the tribes that sided with the English, the Mohegan, joined battalions to fight the Pequot, as both tribes continually fought over local superiority. The colonists, in retaliation to the murder of one of their own set out “about eight of the Clock in the morning, they marched thence towards Pequot, having about five hundred Indian with them.” 24 The significance of this extended war is multi-fold. Firstly, the use of Indians as allies and as military replacements for white settlers indicates a preliminary use of indigenous slavery in warfare. In addition to risking their own lives, colonists utilized Indian warriors to carry out the tragedies of war.

Massachusetts passed a law in 1652 that required Indian workers to receive military training only two years after becoming the first state to officially legalize Indian slavery.25 The use of Indians as soldier substitutes indicates a notion of superiority among settlers in that Indians were replaceable and were not subject to the same humanitarian ideals that caused settlers to opt out of war. The regiment makeup is important for another reason in that it was a period in which whites and Indians, to a certain degree, worked in the same field of war, yet still under the premise of white dominance. Secondly, stealing of slaves proved causal of the war. If not for the “procurement” of the two Indians slaves and subsequent forced navigational and maritime labor, the original murders probably would not have occurred, thus erasing the war or, in the least, postponing the inevitable conflict.

The economic background of the war also merits discussion. The reasoning behind Indian support for the English, in the case of the Mohegan, derived its foundations from trade alliances. The Connecticut River provided major economic advantages to both the traditional markets of the Indians and the new markets introduced by the European settlers. The Pequot and the Mohegan tribes had “come amongst them [settlers], in the way of trade” and the colonists “fairly traded with them.”26 The Mohegan people selected the English 23 Increase Mather, A Relation of the Troubles Which Have Hapned In New England (Boston: John Foster, 1677), 24.

24 Ibid., 30.

25 “Slavery and the Making of America.” Educational Broadcasting Corporation. <http://www. pbs.org/wnet/slavery/timeline/1641.html> accessed November 8, 2010.

26 Benjamin Church, The History of Philip’s War, Commonly Called the Great Indian War, of 1675 and 1676 (Boston: Thomas B. Wait, and Son, 1827), 303.

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as their trading partners after splitting from the Pequot tribe and about “70 Mohegan Indians, under Uncas their Sachem, embarked” alongside the Connecticut troops ready to fight the Pequot.27 Economic interests played a crucial role in developing and supporting the war, but it also played a role in relationships after the war. Israel Stoughton and Samuel Davenport, two honored generals from the Pequot War, sent approximately 250 Indian captives to Connecticut and Massachusetts and in their own words asked that the Indian captives “be disposed aboute in the townes,” working for free after purchase by whites.28 This example of pure chattel mindsets towards humans indicates the key similarity that validates the comparison between African and Indian slavery. The pattern of property-minded individuals that sold and traded humans is not unique to the Pequot War or New England and occurred across the colonies in the English colonies and even into the post-Revolutionary states.

It is important to distinguish between domestic Indian slave markets and international Indian slave markets that developed in early Colonial America.29 William Byrd and Nathaniel Bacon—prominent elites in colonial Virginia—instigated proprietary corporations that advocated for Indians trafficking.30 While these particular men were both Virginians, the financial enticement that domestic and international slave trade offered spread across the colonies. Domestic slave use in the era prior to African slave dominance obviously revolved around Indians. Slavery, due to its lack of humanity and kindness, was cheaper than paid labor, specifically white labor because indentured servants only worked for limited periods and slaves would work for life. Slaves became even cheaper when those enslaved do not require transportation to the field across an ocean. The total slave price dwindled as supply remained constant and agents and masters paid very little to utilize Indian labor. In order for this economic model to gain ground, social powers must condone the use of slavery, or at least turn a blind eye, which is exactly how the Indian slave trade grew in importance before African slavery became the preferred alternative.

Indians from different regions of America were transported to different areas of the colonies that had the higher demand. In 1711, sixtysix Indians were imported to the Upper District of the James River from South Carolina on twelve different ships.31 This is important for many reasons. Primarily, the documented proof of importing Indian slaves shows a governmental recognition and support of the trade by providing documentation to the Crown. Secondly, the connection to South Carolina

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27 Sigourney Fay Nininger, Jr., “Colonial Wars in Connecticut,” The Society of Colonial Wars in Connecticut, <http://www.colonialwarsct.org/1637.html>, accessed November 8, 2010; Church, The History of Philip’s War, 306.

28 Israel Stoughton to John Winthrop, (c. June 28, 1637); John Winthrop to William Bradford, July 28, 1637, in Papers of John Winthrop III (Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society, 1929) 435-36, 456-58; Gally and Newell, “Indian Slavery in Colonial New England.” 34.

29 Morgan, American Slavery, American Freedom, 233-234.

30 Gallay and Everett, “They Shall be Slaves for their Lives,” 80, 84.

31 Alexander Spotswood to the Board of Trade, June 28, 1726, Public Record Office.

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provides some evidence of an international slave trade that included Indian slaves because of South Carolina’s ties with the West Indies and intense African slavery later in colonial life. Leading South Carolina at its founding in 1663, Sir John Yeamans, a powerful plantation owner on Barbados, undoubtedly owned slaves.32 Barbados, the West Indies and South Carolina created a triangle trade that developed with Indian slavery to include the importation of Africans into South Carolina and the exportation of Indians.

The international slave trade—the economic routes and transactions caused by enslaved Indians sold as property to external markets in exchange for importation of goods or direct monetary compensation—seems like the direct opposite of the African slave trade. In reality, the circumstances of each era of slave trade are remarkably similar. Increase Mather, in his 1677 documentation of the problems in the northeastern sections of the American colonies stated, “in stealing and selling the Indians to the Spaniards, as hath been expressed, laid the foundation to great troubles which did after that befall the English, especially in the North-east parts of the land.”33 Mather indicated that the international trade with the Spanish led to the problems in the Northeast, probably from disputes of loyalties and market monopolies. Those troubles, about which Increase speaks, definitively relate to the increased warfare. More importantly, they indirectly hint to the growing hatred and blame placed on the Indians, which helped to justify Indian slavery.

In another part of the North American Colonies, the Powhatan War of 1644, which directly paralleled the original attacks against colonists in 1622, produced copious amounts of literature about the dangers of Indians and the true intentions of those at war with the Powhatan. After the Anglo-Powhatan War (1644-46,) Governor William Berkeley declared that those Indians captured in the conflicts would be sent to the West Indies to be sold as laborers.34 These transactions created a direct economic link between Indian slaving industries and fostered economic and social relationships that later encouraged the African slave trade by complimenting prior operations and establishing markets for slavery to prosper.

Economic dependence was a major factor in enslavement of Indians.

They depended on the English for certain goods like guns and alcohol; “warriors, in particular, favored Caribbean rum for the bold recklessness it seemed to impart.”35 Predisposal to some products like alcohol forced Indians to make unconscionable decisions with their lives. At times, when they wanted alcohol so badly or their debts from purchasing alcohol from whites were so great that repayment was impossible, Indians would barter their labor or their children’s labor away in exchange for clearing of their debts. As economic scarcity encompassed the Indian tribes, “Tuscaroras were willing to enslave Tuscaroras” to offset pressure from English lenders.36 This scene played out 32 “13 Originals.” The TimePage - Cycles in U.S. History, <http://www.timepage.org/ spl/13colony.html#socarolina>, accessed November 28, 2010.

33 Mather, A Relation of the Troubles Which Have Hapned In New England, 27.

34 Gallay and Everett. “They Shall be Slaves for their Lives,” 70.

35 Snyder, Slavery in Indian Country, 52.

36 Gallay and Everett, “They Shall be Slaves for their Lives,” 95.

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on multiple fronts and caused brethren to turn on each other to satisfy debts of the white world. “The greatest traffic between the English and the savages [Chickasaw] is the trade of slaves which the nations take from their neighbors whom they war with continuously…each person being traded for a gun.”37 The conscious decision to indebt the Indians in the English market system was another method of manipulation to have control over the Indians, ultimately leading to enslavement.

Economic incentives like war to provide land and captive slaves along with a burgeoning trade program between the West Indies and the colonies produced a setting that consciously turned towards Indians for slavery. Easily accessible and cultural others, the profitability of possessing forced laborers created a seaboard of colonies that relied on slavery. As slavery grew alongside profitability, there was no turning back. Indian slavery was now an integral market feature that fostered higher yields for farmers and incorporated Indians into English economic structures. Once participating, Indians at times had no choice but to bend to debtor pressure and enslave their own children. By being forced to participate in English markets, both as workers and traders, many Indians eventually perpetuated their own membership in the slave economies.

This involvement laid the groundwork for future African slavery by introducing markets, trade routes and a culture that desired slavery for economic purposes. Tariffs introduced in the early 1700s demonstrate the importance of economics and the unity of Indian and African slavery. The Virginians imposed a duty of “20 s[hillings] on Indian slaves imported by land” but Alexander Spotswood “soon perceived that the laying so high a duty on negros was intended to discourage the importation” thereby encouraging Indian slavery before the population dwindled enough to justify the switch to African labor.38

Slave Society Bacon’s Rebellion in 1676 was the epitome of societal subjugation of Indians for selfish purposes supported for financial reasons and is a great example of racial distinction as a methodology to create a non-slave and slave race. Using racial division along with economic opportunity Nathanial Bacon garnered impressive support for his cause; “he was out to enslave” the Indians.39 In order to get supporters, Bacon also made claim to the Indians’ land and by enslaving them, he prevented claims against his right to their land. Nathaniel Bacon himself owned seven Indian slaves and stock in Indian

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37 Vernon J. Knight and Sheree L. Adams, “A Voyage to the Mobile and Tomeh in 1700, with Notes on the Interior of Alabama,” Ethnohistory 28 (1981): 182; Snyder, Slavery in Indian Country, 55.

38 Cal. S. P. Col., 1710-1711, 415-415; Virginia Historical Society, Collections, I. 52, and VI. II, Recorded June 8th 1711.

39 Morgan, American Slavery, American Freedom, 328.

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slaving companies, 40 making his retaliation against the government’s lack of protection from Indians personal and well-planned. The members of Bacon’s Rebellion, one of the most notorious rebellions in early Virginia, based their actions on the inferiority of Indians and lack of British support in quelling the dangers of the “cruelties of the barbarous heathen.”41 Prior resentment and bigotry towards Indians affected the actions of Bacon and his crew during the rebellion. “For Bacon, having done his business against the Indians… killing some and taking others prisoners,”42 this was a vendetta against all non-whites and specifically against subjugating Indians. William Berkeley, the governor of Virginia viewed the Indians as “barbourous enemies” who “committed many horrible mur[d]ers,” but wanted Nathaniel Bacon to cease his rebellion because it “prevented & disappointed those good intentions”43 of the government to try and peacefully push the Indians off their land. All whites, no matter their impression of the rebellion, understood and agreed with the hatred towards Indians and the desire to steal their property and force them into slavery.

Edmund Morgan’s book American Slavery, American Freedom claimed Bacon’s Rebellion as the turning point for whites of all classes because it was a wake-up call for elites as to what the poorer white farmers in the West were capable of doing. According to Morgan, white elites banded with poorer elites after Bacon’s Rebellion in order to completely and clearly make the distinction between slave and free. While this is arguably true, Morgan does not adequately make it clear that African and Indian slaves were those now forced to work the fields. Bacon’s Rebellion did not invent Indian subjugation or indigenous slavery. What it did do, was to solidify the distinctions between whites and others and reinforce the societal slave role of Indians in the evolving Virginia—and on a larger scale all the colonies’—economies.

Without society condoning Indian slavery on the foundations of racial inferiority and economic necessity, slavery, specifically Indian slavery, would have no footholds on which to support itself. A major contribution to the perpetuation of the notion of inferiority came from captivity diaries of those whom the Indians captured. Elizabeth Hanson wrote that her captors “would often look upon [her baby] and say it when it was fat enough, it should be killed, and he could eat it.”44 The accusation of cannibalism ran rampant throughout colonies and the label allowed some justification for taking in Indians to ‘civilize’ them through work and societal participation or as retribution for capturing colonists. Colonist quickly accepted far-reaching 40 British Public Records Office, colonial office, series I, Box I, fol. 24, 25, transcripts, Colonial Records Project, Library of Virginia, Richmond. 5/1371: 220 [455]; Gallay and Everett, “They Shall be Slaves for their Lives,” 84.

41 G.P. Humphrey, A Narrative of the Indian and Civil Wars In Virginia, In the Years 1675 and 1676 (Rochester: Massachusetts Histroical Society, 1898), 8.

42 Ibid., 25.

43 Warren M Billings and Maria E. Kimberly, The Papers of Sir William Berkeley, 16051677. “Proclamation Suspending Nathanial Bacon from Office,” (Richmond, Va.: Library of Virginia, 2007).

44 Samuel Bownas and Elizabeth Hanson, An Account of the Captivity of Elizabeth Hanson (London: James Phillips, 1787).

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claims such as cannibalism based on many factors, including the notion that not all Indians were Christians.

Society’s involvement was both complicit and implicit. Outward actions of subjugation like Bacon’s Rebellion conveyed white dominance to Indians and other whites and undoubtedly reinforced the superiority complex of Virginians. Other, more personal accusations against Indians such as the Indian captivity diaries, allowed all literate whites to racially differentiate Indians and have supposedly accurate proof of their subhuman attributes. Individual actors did not create the colonial society’s acceptance of indigenous slavery. Society worked as a conglomerate of active and passive participants that caused racial subjugation and otherization of Indians that eventually transferred to Africans.

Slave Religion Religious justification is another example of the similarities between Indian and African slavery and understandably fostered the transition between labor forces. Richard Hakluyt wrote in 1585 of the Indians in North America, “so savaged is this people, and deprived of the true knowledge of god,” implying a distinct reason for English superiority to the Indians: lack of civility and lack of Christianity.45 This document influenced Queen Elizabeth I and other English elites to consider colonization in America, and undoubtedly affected their presuppositions about the Indians they encountered. Even in 1685, the trend to propagate “Christianity among their domestick [sic] slaves and vassals; (together with the other numerous Heathen in your Majesty’s Colonies)” continued to mark attitudes of Englishmen towards those who were at the whim of the “suitable Inclinations in their Owners, so as to afford it to them.”46 Morgan Godwyn, an Anglican minister who served in Virginia and Barbados, went on to say that this was “a trouble my self to preach against Negro’s and Indians, for that he said, there none of that Religion in this Nation.”47 The fear of non-Protestant/Christian workers spanned the spectrum from monarchs to ministers and spread across the oceans. No matter the race of the laborer, they were inferior due to their lack of particular religion. This charge spanned centuries and work forces, thus demonstrating one of the consistent aspects of enslavement that helped justify both Indian and African enslavement.

Another important justification to the wars and subsequent enslavement of Native American captures is the idea of ‘Just War.’ Just War theory dictates that there is a right and wrong side to each war, and if you are victorious, you are able to decide whether to kill the ‘wrongdoers’ or enslave them. Christianity presupposed ‘rightness’ making the settlers those that

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45 Theodor de Bry, Thomas Harriot, Richard Hakluyt, and John White. A briefe and true report of the new found land of Virginia (Francofurti: sumtibus T. de Bry :, 1590).

46 Morgan Godwyn, Trade Preferr’d Before Religion: and Christ Made to Give Place to Mammon: Represented In a Sermon Relating to the Plantations. First Preached At Westminster-abby, and Afterwards In Divers Churches In London. (London: B. Took, 1685), 1.

47 Ibid., 4.

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decided the future of captives. 48 In the 1622 Powhatan War, many people felt as though “the sinnes of these wicked infidels, have made them unworthy of enjoying him [God], and the eternall good that he most zealously alwayes intended for them.”49 Cotton Mather advocated for the concept of Just War to legitimize fighting against the Indians in the Northwest and their consequent capture and enslavement. Mather wanted the soldiers in King Philips War (1675-1677) to “fulfill their destiny” in “the war of the Lord” against “a Treacherous, Barbarous, Dangerous Enemy.” Thomas Jefferson stated his disapproval of “the usual circumstances of barbarity practiced by the Indians” in a letter to Colonel Theodorick Bland in 1779. He goes on to say the “cruel and Cowardly warfare of the savage, whose object in war is to extinguish human nature” is a price that honorable white soldiers must face.

50 Just War ideology was another method to justifying Indian enslavement and creating a culture that worked together to universally label Indians as unworthy recipients of English religion and therefore acceptable to enslave.

In New England, religious vigor played a major role in defining their community. Strict, precise regulations on community interactions with Indians created an interesting relationship that blossomed for New Englanders and subjugated the local Indian tribes. The religious fervor of the Puritans dictated little acceptance of differences, especially lack of Christianity. This pillar of humanity the Puritans enforced required nonChristian Indians—the super majority of Indians—to be inferior to Christians, only able to enter society once converted to Puritanical Christianity.

In Latin American countries to the south, writers like Bartolomeu De Las Casas argued that Indians had never heard Christian ideals and were therefore unable to be suppressed into slavery until they had the opportunity to convert. Once the Indians refused conversion, then they could properly be otherized. In the English colonies, conversion was only sometimes enough to save an Indian from slavery. In 1667, Virginia passed a law that “enacted and declared by this grand assembly, and the authority thereof, that the conferring of baptisme doth not alter the condition of the person as to his bondage or ffreedome.”51 To ensure superiority, Virginians in 1705 passed legislation that “All servants imported and brought into the Country...who were not Christians in their native Country...shall be accounted and be slaves. All Negro, mulatto and Indian slaves within this dominion...shall be held to be real estate.”52 In stopping the ‘Christianity 48 Cotton Mather, Souldiers Counselled and Comforted: a Discourse Delivered Unto Some Part of the Forces Engaged In the Just War of New-england Against the Northern & Eastern Indians, Sept. 1, 1689 (Boston: Samuel Green, 1689).

49 Waterhouse, “A Declaration of the State of the Colony and Affaires in Virginia.”

50 Letter from Thomas Jefferson to Colonel Theodorick Bland June 8, 1779. University of Virginia Special Collections.

51 Andreas Vicklund, “Excerpt from Virginia Slave Laws, 1667,” RCC Honors History Project, <http://rcchonorshistory.wordpress.com/2008/09/29/excerpt-from-virginiaslave-laws-1667/>, accessed November 12, 2010.

52 “Slave Law in Colonial Virginia: A Timeline,” Study The Past, <www.studythepast.com/ vabeachcourse/ bacons_rebellion/slavelawincolonialvirginiatimeline.pdf > accessed November 8, 2010.

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loophole,’ colonists were able to prevent legislatively the acceptance of slaves as equals in some ways and they regained a sense of superiority.

According to historian Edmund Morgan, the English perceived the lifestyle of Indians as idle, and therefore the antithesis of Protestants.53 Protestantism grew in popularity against the established Anglican Church in early Virginia and other English colonies and was already instituted in the North with the Puritans, making the differentiation between hard-working Protestants and idle, lazy Indians a stance of pointed generalization of inferiority. This allowed for blanket subjugation and a dichotomous relationship between Protestants and everyone else.

Specifically in the Northeast, French interaction with Indians automatically placed them as conspirators with Catholics, forcing a presupposition about their humanity and societal worth. The capacity to generalize a group of people, which by design permitted New England residents to justify their own superiority towards Indians, roots itself in religion among other factors. By creating a religious barrier between settlers and Indians, the implementation of slavery was simplified; the Indians were not the same as settlers.

Foundations and Transitions The transition between Indian and African slavery was a gradual shift that did not happen overnight. “Blacks and Indians worked together” on the plantations of early Englishmen.54 Surely, both races recognized the perils of slavery for both themselves and their fellow slaves. Ironically, Indians would later capture Africans and return them to slavery, a circular history that began with Indians enslaving other Indians and ending with the further subjugation of Africans in the United States.

Indians themselves certainly did not believe they were equivalent to Africans. They were a separate people. The differences between African, Indian, and English pervaded society usually by sorting whites against all other races. Eventually, Americans minimized the importance of Indians and societies became predominately African and English denizens. One of the largest factors in this change was the importance of skin color in distinguishing a person as a slave. Because only some Indians were slaves, determining status purely based on skin hue and clothing proved inadequate. By making every slave black, and every black a slave, societies ran smoother by decreasing racial ambiguity.

Beginning in 1682, Virginia passed a law that included both Indians and African slaves. The 1682 law declared “Negroes, Moors [Muslim North Africans], mulattoes or Indians who and whose parentage and native countries are not Christian at the time of their first purchase by some Christian. . . and all Indians, which shall be sold by our neighboring Indians, or any other trafficking [sic] with us for slaves, are hereby adjudged, deemed and taken to be slaves to all intents and purposes any

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53 Morgan, American Slavery, American Freedom, 61.

54 Snyder, Slavery in Indian Country, 207.

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law, usage, or custom to the contrary notwithstanding.”55 The wide-ranging groups make it difficult to determine the extent of each races’ enslaved populations, but undoubtedly, there was a noticeable amount of each. By making all non-whites slaves, the distinction between Indian and African was blurred and in fact erased, creating a society of racial distinctions based on a white or non-white.

The hereditary aspect of servitude that usually distinguishes slavery from life-long servitude was brought into question when Indians married Africans before, during, and after the transition between Indian and African slaves. The offspring of these couples were inevitably determined to be slaves because of their enslaved African parent, indicating the hereditary nature definitively established for African children.56 Sources from 1784 indicate that a slave named “George claim[ed] his Freedom as descended from a free Indian women.” This, despite laws, indicated a growing distinction between Indian and black; one free and one trapped in a system that oppressed because of skin color. Indian responses to the new colonial governments divided into two factions: those that drove deeper into the west fleeing out of fear, and those that joined colonial governments and attempted to become members of a society that has previously shunned and subjugated them. This transformation was a transition; it took time and was slow to progress.

Indian slavery differed from subsequent African slavery. Perhaps Indian slavery served as the segue into African slavery by creating a transitional status between white indentured servitude and permanent African slavery. In 1763, the Massachusetts’ legislature allowed Indian tribes to “bind out to Service, all such Orphan Children, until they arrive at the Age of Twenty-one Years.”57 This important distinction late into the initiation of slavery in the colonies and later United States denied hereditary status of slavery to Indians. Hereditary enslavement is not synonymous with all African slavery however. The Rhode Island Act of the General Court on May 19, 1652 “ordered that no blacke mankind or white being [be] forced by covenant bond, or otherwise, to serve any man or his assighnes longer than ten years, or until they come to bee twentie four years of age.”58 Rhode Island is a temporary anomaly in that African and Indian slaves both were enslaved for limited periods and African slavery did not obtain the extra burden of hereditary enslavement. This law was never enforced and African slaves suffered severely under later Rhode Island legislation that reversed the previous law due to the demand for cheap labor.59 Hereditary slavery 55 “Slave Law in Colonial Virginia: A Timeline.”

56 Gallay and Newell, “Indian Slavery in Colonial New England,” 30.

57 Journals of the House of Representatives of Massachusetts, 29: 1762-1763 (Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society, 1969), 176, 184, 271; Colin G Calloway, The Scratch of a Pen: 1763 and the Transformation of North America (Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 2006).

58 “Acts and Orders made at the Generall Court of Election held at Warwick,” Rhode Island Colonial Records, I. 243.

59 John Carter Brown Library. “JCBL_Exhibitions.” Brown University. http://www.brown. edu/Facilities/John_Carter_Brown_Library/jcbexhibit/Pages/exhibSlavery.html>, (accessed December 6, 2010).

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pushed onto African slaves differentiated them from Indian slaves, although in practice it is safe to assume that some Indian children continued in slavery after their parents’ death. Informal indications of hereditary status of some Indian slaves are presented in wills of former owners. Daniel Coggeshall of Kingstown, Rhode Island left his “Indian woman and her sucking child Jeffery” to his wife and children “during the terms of their natural lives.” 60 The American Revolution did as little for Indian slaves as it did for African slaves. The concept of pure liberty and the inalienable assertion that “all men are created equal” equated to nothing for non-white, landless inferiors and buttressed white elite power in North America. The Declaration of Independence also referred to Indians as “merciless Indian savages,” creating a precedent for future Indian relations. Lacking clear distinctions between Africans and Indians and their role as slaves or free laborers, Indians continued to be enslaved—despite legislative preventions—while Africans inherited the pains of slavery.

Traditional presuppositions that Indian slavery died out quickly with the inception of African based slave labor are inaccurate. On April 17, 1752, the Virginia Gazette produced a wanted ad for a “young Indian fellow named Ned” who “pretends to pass for a free man.”61 Additionally in 1768 an “Indian slave, aged about 40 years, r[a]n away” and in 1773 a slave named David ran away who “says he is of the Indian breed.”62 In 1774, according to the Rhode Island census 50 percent of all Indians in Rhode Island lived with white families; an indication that Indian slavery continued to thrive.63 These references are over 100 years after Edmund Morgan claimed that it was more advantageous to buy African slaves and racism had engulfed the slave trade towards Africans.64 African slavery was without a doubt the dominant form of slavery in Virginia and the South as a whole. However, historians continue to overlook the importance and length of Indian slavery in the colonies.

Indian capture and enslavement produced a culture of racial dominance with whites at the top of the hierarchy and caused a clear dependence on forced labor that encouraged the conscious decision to enslave Africans.

The generalized notion of race towards Indians parallels the African slave trade, which begs the question “Did the colonists use the same enslavement techniques when they began to infiltrate the African slave market?” Whites rarely went into the interior of Africa to capture slaves and mainly purchased slaves from Africans who captured rival African tribesman in exchange for economic advantages with the whites. Very similarly, Indians captured rival Indians and brought them to the colonists for purchase or trade. The Bight of Benign and Congo region of Africa supplied most of the

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60 Jan Fletcher Fiske, Gleaning from Newport Court Files, 1659-1783 (Boxford, MA, 1999), #658; Boston News-Letter, March 3-10, 1718.

61 The Virginia Gazette, Hunter, April 17, 1752. <http://research.history.org/>, accessed September 3, 2010.

62 The Virginia Gazette Purdie and Dixon, April 14, 1768, <http://research.history.org/ DigitalLibrary>, accessed September 3, 2010.

63 Jan Fletcher Fiske, Gleaning from Newport Court Files, 1659-1783 (Boxford, MA, 1999), #658; Boston News-Letter, March 3-10, 1718.

64 Morgan, Edmund S. American Slavery, American Freedom, 328.

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slaves for deportation by consolidating slavery into select ports. Similarly, Indian tribes that tried to stifle European dominance by allying with select European colonies generally fought weaker tribes in adjacent regions, only to return to established markets for the sale of Indians captured in these battles.

At the turn of the 19th century, African slavery dominated any form of slavery in the United States. Indian slaveryâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s prime presented the problems with Indian slavery that eventually forced colonists to transition to Africans.

The high availability of Indians for enslavement in Colonial America and the tradition of inter-tribal enslavement encouraged the use of Indians for labor. Since Indians were not universally enslaved, distinguishing free from enslaved Indian frustrated masters. Africans were more easily identified and less prone to disease because of previous European interaction. Thus, Africans provided equal labor as Indians, but did not threaten the institution of slavery as much as their slave predecessors. Indian enslavement encouraged the transition to African slavery by creating a society that justified slavery of others based on economic, social, and religious values.

7 7 The Foundations of African Slavery as found in Native American Slavery

Bibliography “Acts and Orders made at the Generall Court of Election held at Warwick” Rhode Island Colonial Records.

Alexander Spotswood to the Board of Trade, June 28, 1726, Public Record Office.

Barbour, Philip L. The Jamestown Voyages under the First Charter, 1606-1609, 2 vols. Publications of the Hakluyt Society. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969.

Billings, Warren M and Kimberly, Maria E. The Papers of Sir William Berkeley, 1605-1677. “Proclamation Suspending Nathanial Bacon from Office” May 1676. Richmond, Va.: Library of Virginia, 2007.

Bownas, Samuel and Hanson, Elizabeth. An Account of the Captivity of Elizabeth Hanson: Late of Kachecky In New-england: Who, with Four of Her Children, and Servant-maid, Was Taken Captive by the Indians, ... A New Edition.

Taken In Substance From Her Own Mouth, by Samuel Bownas. London: James Phillips, 1787.

British Public Records Office, colonial office, series I, Box I, fol. 24, 25, transcripts, Colonial Records Project, Library of Virginia, Richmond.

Calloway, Colin G. The Scratch of a Pen: 1763 and the Transformation of North America. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006.

Church, Benjamin. The History of Philip’s War, Commonly Called the Great Indian War, of 1675 and 1676. Boston: Thomas B. Wait, and Son, 1827.

Daniel Gookin, “Indian Children Put to Service, August 10 1676,” New England Historical and Genealogical Register 8 (1954): 270-273.

De Bry, Theodore, Thomas Harriot, Richard Hakluyt, and John White. A briefe and true report of the new found land of Virginia: of the commodities and of the nature and manners of the naturall inhabitants. Francofurti: sumtibus T. de Bry :, 1590.)

Educational Broadcasting Corporation. “Slavery and the Making of America.”

Accessed November 8, 2010. http://www.pbs.org/wnet/ slavery/ timeline/1641.html.

Howe, Henry. Historical Collections of Virginia. Charleston, SC: Babcock & Co., 1845.

Gallay, Alan, and C.S. Everett. “They Shalbe Slaves for their Lives.” In Indian Slavery in Colonial America. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2009.

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Gallay, Alan, and Margaret Newell. “Indian Slavery in Colonial New England.” In Indian Slavery in Colonial America. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2009.

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Godwyn, Morgan. Trade Preferr’d Before Religion: and Christ Made to Give Place to Mammon: Represented In a Sermon Relating to the Plantations. First Preached At Westminster-abby, and Afterwards In Divers Churches In London.

London: B. Took, 1685.

Jefferson, Thomas, and Merrill D. Peterson. Writings. New York: Literary Classics of the United States, 1984.

Journals of the House of Representatives of Massachusetts: 1762-1763. Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society, 1969.

Knight, Vernon J. and Sheree L. Adams. “A Voyage to the Mobile and Tomeh in 1700, with Notes on the Interior of Alabama,” Ethnohistory 28 (1981): 179-194.

Letter from Thomas Jefferson to Colonel Theodorick Bland. June 8 1779.

University of Virginia Special Collections.

Mather, Cotton. Souldiers Counselled and Comforted, 1689.

Mather, Increase. A Relation of the Troubles Which Have Hapned In New England.

Morgan, Edmund S. American Slavery, American Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia. New York: Norton, 1975.

Rummel, RJ. Statistics of Democide, Genocide and Mass Murder Since 1900.

Charlottesville, Virginia: University of Virginia Press, 1997.

Smith, John. Travels and works of Captain John Smith. Edward Arber, ed. Edinburg, John Grant, 1910.

Snyder, Christina. Slavery in Indian Country: the Changing Face of Captivity in Early America. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2010.

Study The Past. “Slave Law in Colonial Virginia: A Timeline.” Accessed November 8, 2010. www.studythepast.com/vabeachcourse/bacons_ rebellion/slavelawincolonial virginiatimeline.pdf.

The Society of Colonial Wars in Connecticut. “The Society of Colonial Wars in Connecticut - Home Page.” Accessed November 8, 2010. http://www. colonialwarsct.org/1637.html.

The TimePage - Cycles in U.S. History. “13 Originals.” Accessed November 28, 2010. http://www.timepage.org/ spl/13colony.html#socarolina.

The Virginia Gazette, April 17, 1752. Accessed September 3 2010. http://research. history.org/DigitalLibrar /VirginiaGazette.

Viklund, Andreas. “Excerpt from Virginia Slave Laws, 1667 “RCC Honors History Project.” Accessed November 12, 2010. http://rcchonorshistory. wordpress.com/2008/09/29/excerpt-from-virginia-slave-laws-1667.

Walvin, James. “The Origins of Atlantic Slavery .” in A Short History of Slavery.

London: Penguin, 2007.

Waterhouse, Edward. “A Declaration of the State of the Colony and Affaires in Virginia.” (1622).

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Revising and Recreating Revolution: Collective Memory in the Paris Commune of 1871

Kelly M. Snow=

The end of the Franco-Prussian War came only after the collapse of the Second French Empire, the tumultuous establishment of a Third Republic in defeat, and a devastating and shameful Prussian siege of Paris, which ended with Paris’ capitulation on January 28, 1871. Incited by economic hardship and perceived failures of the new republican government, the city’s humiliated and enraged workers and citizens staged an armed uprising just two months later against the National Assembly, which relocated to Versailles as a result of the threatening socio-political environment of Paris. On March 28, they established their own independent government, the Paris Commune, which would rule the city until May 28, 1871. During its short existence, the Commune passed (or showed intentions to pass) progressive legislation aimed at improving workers’ rights, educational reform, feminist initiatives, secularization, and other wide-ranging social reforms. Ultimately, after a protracted siege by the Versailles government, the Commune came to a violent and bloody end as Government forces ruthlessly crushed it and Communards were executed by the thousands.

Until recently, the majority of historical study on the Paris Commune was interested almost exclusively in the role socialist, and to an extent, anarchist, thought played in the uprising. This research was conducted largely to determine its influence on future socialist, communist, and anarchist political movements. In fact, as Edward S. Mason writes, this was initially a positive trend, as the Commune was in fact “rescued” from its prior place of insignifi-

8 8 Revising and Recreating Revolution: Collective Memory in the Paris Commune of 1871

cance in the eyes of historians by the activity of intrigued socialists.1 Examining the role socialist thought played in the Paris Commune is undoubtedly very significant. However, it is a fundamentally forward-looking historiography, and one which was quickly recognized as insufficient in scope and therefore inappropriate as a holistic approach. Soon, as Mason explains, it more accurately began to be held that, as opposed to solely socialist factors, “the loss of the war, the misery of the four-month siege of Paris, the struggle of republicanism against monarchy [and] socialist desires and aspirations… all mingled inextricably in the causes of the revolution.”2 Indeed, historians today recognize that, as with most historical events, no simple explanation exists that accounts for and interprets the rise and actions of the Paris Commune. Some causes are addressed at greater length than others, however, and when specifically examining the Commune’s significance as part of France’s long “struggle of republicanism,” the approach and conclusions again seem insufficient. As evident in the work of James Friguglietti and Emmet Kennedy, historians tend to succinctly summarize or even occasionally dismiss it, writing simply that for the Communards “the Great Revolution had not brought the liberty, equality, and fraternity it had so proudly proclaimed,” and such was the only significance of 1789, a failure to be remedied in new ways.3 Once again, we are left with a generalized and ultimately unsatisfactory conclusion.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between the Paris Commune and France’s “Great Revolution,” approaching the Commune with a specific focus on its connection with the Revolution as it was revealed and understood in the collective memory of the Communards. I mean to explore the manner in which Communards, both the leaders of the Parisian government and the individuals who followed it, remembered the French Revolution, specifically its revolutionary nature and legacy, and subsequently how that memory impacted their socio-political ambitions and shaped their actions. This is not meant to be merely a study of revolutionary ideology or tradition as presented or embodied by the Communards, rather an exploration of how the memory of the French Revolution itself, as shared and disputed by the Communards, proceeded to impact their revolutionary movement. I begin by addressing the concept of collective memory as a historical subject and its specific place in French history. Delving into the Commune itself, I proceed to examine the Communard memory of two connected, yet distinctly significant, historical concepts: the year 1789 as the heralded beginning of the Revolution on one hand, and the Revolution as a whole event, on the other, characterized by the Communards as a class struggle with an antagonistic bourgeoisie. Next, I explore revolutionary discourse, specifically the great

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✝ Kelly M. Snow is a member of the Class of 2012. She wrote with the guidance of Mr. Gavin Murray-Miller, as well as Professors Sophia Rosenfeld and Alon Confino.

1 Edward Mason, The Paris Commune: An Episode in the Socialist Movement (New York: Fertig, 1967), viii.

2 Ibid., viii.

3 Friguglietti and Kennedy, The Shaping of Modern France: Writings on French History Since 1715 (London: The MacMillan Company, 1969), 334.

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slogan of 1789, “Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité,” and its significance as an illustration of circumstance and agenda-shaped memory construction. Subsequently I examine three significant targets of Communard recollection: the Paris Commune of 1792, the 1793 Jacobin Committee of Public Safety, and the fédérés of the National Guard, and the manner in which the memories of these aspects of the Revolution were both unifying and dividing factors in the Commune’s ranks. Then, temporarily departing from my established approach, I investigate the unique relationship between the women of the Commune and Versaillese collective memory of the radical role of women in the Great

Revolution, taking the opportunity to illustrate the duplicitous nature of revolutionary memory during the period. Lastly, before concluding I stress the nature of collective memory in the Commune as a goaloriented construction, examining the attempt of the Commune to alter collective memory through symbolic destruction.

Collective Memory and French History

In the long past of historical research the study of collective memory is a relatively new field, naturally posing certain inherent challenges and risks. It is necessary, therefore, to first establish the significant features of collective memory as a concept and subject for historical study, before specially examining its role in the French past. This exploration of the Paris Commune’s memory of the French Revolution is rooted in the concept of collective memory established by French sociologist Maurice Halbwachs. He described collective memory as a recollection and understanding of the past that is jointly constructed and shared by a group, community, or society, and then ultimately passed down to subsequent generations.4 This description presents the key characteristics of collective memory: its nature as a jointly-constructed understanding of the past by a group that is subsequently shared across and beyond that group. German cultural historian Alon Confino, a pioneer of memory study in his own right, emphasizes the first part of this description, that as a construction, collective memory is decidedly not fact but rather myth, designed in order to serve the interest of a particular community.”5 This mythical past is constructed by groups through the process of “commemoration,” which Robert Gildea defines as “remembering in common.”6 In his expansive work The Past in French History, Gildea elaborates on the idea of commemoration, describing how it can take such contrasting forms as massive festivals or simple cultural and political discourse.7 A key quality of the methods of commemoration, therefore, is the actual or potential engagement of the entire group; the sharing of experience is crucial.

4 See Halbwachs, M., & Coser, On Collective Memory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992).

5 Alon Confino, “Collective Memory and Cultural History: Problems of Method,” The American Historical Review, 102 (December 1997): 1387.

6 Robert Gildea, The Past in French History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994), 10.

7 Ibid., 10.

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Regardless of the manner in which they are created, however, collective constructions of the past have three central characteristics: first, communities campaign for the dominance of their specific interpretation of the past; second, different constructions, as mythical creations, can present and interpret the same events or figures in extremely different and opposing ways; and third, and most importantly, collective memory is entirely dependent on the present; a past “reworked in the light of new events.”8 However, even given an understanding of both the nature of collective memory and principle components of its historical study, one may still feel compelled to ask: Why study collective memory? Alon Confino answers this question by asserting, “The crucial issue in the history of memory is not how a past is represented but why it was received or rejected, for every society sets up images of the past. Yet to make a difference in a society, it is not enough for a certain past to be selected.

It must… become a socio-culture mode of action.”9 In other words, the true value in studying collective memory is what it reveals about the shaping of attitudes and actions in the historical present.

Modern French History provides a fascinating and potentially illuminating historical narrative for the study of collective memory due to the paramount historical significance of the French Revolution of 1789. David Shafer writes, “In its ideals and its modes of action, the French Revolution established a staggering array of precedents that would soon resonate through the succeeding century…[it] forged the modern understanding of revolution.”

Ultimately, Shafer summarizes, the Revolution “established the parameters of political culture” in France.10 The subsequent revolutions in France, in 1830 and 1848, held closely to the precedents of 1789 – possibly too closely. Karl Mark famously asserted in his historical work The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon that the Revolution of 1848 was simply a perfunctory parody of the Great Revolution, which was the source of their failure. He wrote of these revolutionaries that, “In such epochs of revolutionary crisis they anxiously conjure up the spirits of the past to their service, borrowing from them names, battle slogans, and costumes…in time-honored disguise and borrowed language…[T]he Revolution of 1848 knew nothing better to do than to parody, now 1789, now the revolutionary tradition of 1793-95.”11 However, the revolutionaries of 1871 were different than their predecessors in terms of their relationship with the Great Revolution for one simple yet immensely important reason: They had not experienced the Revolution first-hand. They were part of post-Revolution generations, at most having been small children during the crucial stages, whereas some revolutionaries of 1848, and certainly those of 1830, had experiential knowledge of the Revolution, both on an individual level and as a group consciousness. At a very fundamental

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8 Ibid., 11.

9 Confino, “Collective Memory and Cultural History,” 1390.

10 David A. Shafer, The Paris Commune (Houndsmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire; New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), 1, 27.

11 Karl Marx, “The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon,” Marx/Engels Internet Archive, 1995 <http://www. marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/pdf/18th-Brumaire.pdf>, accessed 6 December 2010.

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level, therefore, the Communards of 1871 were separated from France’s revolutionary past. Peter Fritzsche, in his fascinating work Stranded in the Present, writes that for individuals such as these, “The disconnection from the past… prompted a search for new ways to understand…The distant past no longer offered a complete and visible account of itself, it was therefore available for reinterpretation.”12 This reinterpretation of the past took place in the context of the construction of collective memory. The Communard construction of collective memory of the Great Revolution provided a basic way of connecting with France’s revolutionary past, presented the opportunity for ideology and goalmotivated revision and reinterpretation, and ultimately offered a means to embed their actions in the existing revolutionary narrative that had begun in 1789.

Recalling the Revolutionary Sprit of 1789

In the minds of Parisian Communards, 1789 was not the celebrated year of the Great Revolution – that honor belonged to 1793.13 However, 1789 marked the very beginning of the historic, unprecedented Revolution and therefore held an important place in the collective memory of the Commune. Eugene Kamenka writes, “1789 became the birth date, the year zero of a new world…”14 From 1789 onward, a revolutionary spirit and tradition was been firmly and irrevocably established in France. The Communards imagined themselves as heirs of this tradition, as “apostles of liberty, equality and fraternity,” the apogee of 1789 discourse.15 References to both the legacy and tradition of 1789 consistently permeated revolutionary messages on posters and in articles during the Commune.16 In fact, Ernest Alfred Vizetelly, Communard and memoirist, attributes the rise of the Commune chiefly to the survival of this revolutionary spirit among France’s workers from 1789 onward.17 However, the Communards drew even stronger connections between 1789 and their revolutionary endeavors of 1871. Lissagaray, in his well-known memoir of the uprising of the Commune, references a fairly prevalent self-conceptualizing of the revolutionaries as “faithful children of 1789,” in their own memories – their “fathers” were those who had initiated the Great Revolution.18 12 Peter Fritzsche, Stranded in the Present: Modern Time and the Melancholy of History (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2004), 5.

13 Ernest Alfred Vizetelly, My Adventures in the Commune: Paris, 1871 (New York: Duffield, 1914), 8.

14 Eugene Kamenka, “Revolutionary Ideology and ‘The Great French Revolution of 1789?,’” in Geoffrey Best, ed., The Permanent Revolution: The French Revolution and its Legacy 1789-1989 (London: Fontana Press, 1988), 77.

15 Eugene Kamenka, Paradigm for Revolution? The Paris Commune 1871-1971 (Canberra: Australian National University Press, 1972), v.

16 “The ‘Red Poster,’ January 6, 1871” and “The Socialism of the International,” in “Eugene Schulkind, ed., The Paris Commune of 1871: A View From the Left (London: Cape, 1972), 69,86.

17 Vizetelly, My Adventures in the Commune, 16.

18 Prosper Olivier Lissagaray, History of the Commune of 1871 (London: Reeves and Turner, 1886), 7.

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More specific, even, was a September 1870 decree sent to “the People of Paris” from Delegates of the Twenty Arrondissements, which asked, “Has the government which was charged on September 4 with national defense fulfilled its mission? No!...Will the great people of ‘89, which destroys bastilles and overthrows thrones, wait in inert despair?... No!”19 The year 1789 held a significant place in the minds of professional revolutionaries and socio-political theorists such as Louis Auguste Blanqui, who defined their political ideology and ultimate ambition in terms of 1789. The year was a thus a significant defining year in the popular revolutionary memory of the Commune.20 As asserted earlier, it was not, as Friguglietti and Kennedy propose, merely a year representing revolutionary failure. Rather, 1789, in the collective memory of the Communards was both the inspirational source of revolutionary spirit and tradition, but also a year defined by the now-legendary revolutionary actions of their forebears. However, Friguglietti and Kennedy were not entirely incorrect in their initial claim. The Communards of Paris also “’were quite consciously setting to work to complete the unfinished business of 1789,” which, they believed, had been left incomplete because of the actions of an antagonistic and counter-revolutionary bourgeoisie.21 The Communards, then, began their revolution in 1871 determined to prevent such bourgeois suppression of their revolutionary goals.

The Great Revolution: A Struggle Against the Bourgeoisie

The Parisian revolutionaries that brought about and led the Commune found themselves in a unique position in French revolutionary history. At a basic level, the Commune “represented a revolt against one of the foundations of republicanism: a legally elected government,” in the form of the National Assembly, which was moved to Versailles in the face of Parisian unrest.22 This was a fundamentally different situation than republican revolutions in 1789, 1830, and 1848, in which republican forces were opposing monarchical regimes, whether the absolutist system of the Ancien Régime, the Restoration-empowered Charles X, or the constitutional July Monarchy. In response to the political circumstance of the uprising, the Communard collective memory of the Revolution of ‘89 was consciously constructed to redefine the opposing forces of the Revolution. The Great Revolution became a social class struggle, and the French bourgeoisie were remembered as standing in the way of the revolutionary republican efforts of the sans-culottes, the French “proletarian” workers of

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19 “Make Way for the People!,” Documents of the Paris Commune, Marxists.org, <http:// www.marxists.org/ history/france/paris-commune/documents/index.htm>, accessed on 7 November 2010.

20 Alan B. Spitzer, The Revolutionary Theories of Louis Auguste Blanqui (New York: Columbia University Press, 1957), 121.

21 R.B. Rose, “The Paris Commune: The last episode of the French Revolution or the first dictatorship of the proletariat?,” in Eugene Kamenka, ed., Paradigm for Revolution? The Paris Commune 1871-1971 (Canberra: Australian National University Press, 1972), 13.

22 Shafer, The Paris Commune, 80.

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1792 and 1793.23 In this re-tooled memory of the Revolution, the revolutionary endeavors of the Liberal republican bourgeoisie were not seen as a part of a revolutionary progression that enabled subsequent radicalization on the part of France’s lowest classes. Rather, the bourgeois revolution was remembered as a distinct and opposing movement that inhibited real revolutionary change, a movement directly responsible for the ultimate failure of the Revolution to radically change France. This memory of the Revolution, decidedly shaped by contemporary socio-economic conditions and the political reality of the Commune’s rise, allowed the Communards to justify their uprising and frame it as the continuation of what had been started in 1789.

The reconstructed narrative of the French Revolution of 1789 in the Communard collective memory was clearly espoused in an April 1871 newspaper article, describing the path of the Revolution. The author, J.B. Milliere, writes: The Third Estate made a revolution in 1789 which had the effect of destroying a political regime based upon the privileges of the aristocracy, and of substituting for it another regime based upon the privileges of capital. This was the coming to power of the bourgeoisie. This class absorbed the debris of the nobility that is today assimilated within its ranks. However, after having used the proletariat as a stepping-stone, the bourgeoisie then rejected it…Of the three classes existing at the time the Revolution of 1789 abolished one – the nobility – and allowed two others to subsist: the bourgeoisie and the proletariat.24 Communard writers, in their reconstruction of the past, even went so far as to introduce the historical existence of a “Fourth Estate,” composed entirely of the workers of France.25 Describing the workers as an Estate group naturally called to mind the Estates-General of the Ancien Régime, under which system the bourgeoisie, the workers, and the peasants were grouped into one social class. Such discourse was a conscious attempt to alter the collective memory of the revolutionaries of 1871 to draw more concrete similarities between the revolutionary struggle of 1789 and that of the present.

Both Vizetelly and Lissagaray depict the bourgeoisie of the Great Revolution as the enemy, opposed to revolution and opposed to republicanism.26 Lissagaray illustrates a bourgeoisie thoroughly disinterested in the wellbeing of France, rather singularly concerned with their own wealth and success. He writes, “The great bourgeois…like him of 1790, had but one thought – to gorge himself with privileges, to arm the bulwarks in defense of his domains, to per23 Ibid., 27.

24 J.B. Milliere, “The Revolution of 1871,” in Eugene Schulkind, ed., The Paris Commune of 1871: A View From the Left (London: Cape, 1972), 82.

25 George Bertin, “The Fourth Estate,” in Eugene Schulkind, ed., The Paris Commune of 1871: A View From the Left (London: Cape, 1972), 114.

26 Vizetelly, My Adventures in the Commune, 35, 70.

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petuate the proletariat.”27 The bourgeoisie, as it began to be depicted by Communards, increasingly resembled the aristocracy of the Ancien Régime. A blurring of the lines between the bourgeoisie and nobility served a great purpose for the Communards, who constantly struggled to justify and reconcile their uprising against a republican government. Ultimately, in the reconstructed revolutionary memory of the Communards, “the result of the French Revolution was to position the Parisian bourgeoisie and working class at opposite ends of the social axis, viewing each other with undisguised suspicion from vastly different existences.”28 The corruption and tyranny of the bourgeoisie that the proletarian Communards stood against in 1871 was the same that confronted the proletarian sans-culottes during the Great Revolution.

Revolutionary Discourse: Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité

One of the most significant and lasting legacies of the French Revolution of 1789 was the powerful revolutionary slogan “Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité,” or “Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity.” It expressed the most fundamental goals of the Revolution on the part of the Third Estate and came to represent the ideological foundations of the Revolution, emerging again during the revolutionary movements of 1830 and 1848. Those three words reemerged in 1871 on Parisian posters, in governmental decrees, and in the popular discourse of revolutionary Paris.29 However, in subtle yet significant ways, the meaning of the individual words in the slogan changed in the Commune of 1871. Due to the specific socio-political circumstances of the uprising itself, the nature of contemporary society, and the ultimate goals the Communards hoped to achieve in their socialist-republican revolution, the Communards altered the meaning of the revolutionary slogan, not only in its application in 1871, but also retroactively in their collective memory, once again out of a political desirability of a consistent revolutionary narrative.

There is, for the most part, agreement on the part of historians as to the meaning of “Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity” in the Revolution of ’89. The Third Estate desired liberty from the tyranny of the absolutist monarchy and aristocratic excess that characterized the Old Regime; it wanted an equality of political representation in governmental bodies such as the Estates-General; and finally it celebrated the fraternity of a newly-constituted French nation in which the foundation of political power was vested in the people themselves, not a King.30 The slogan in 1789 was representative of a revolution aimed at gaining new political rights for a people that was in the process of consolidating a national identity.

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27 Lissagaray, History of the Commune, 4.

28 Shafer, The Paris Commune, 27.

29 Eugene Schulkind, ed., The Paris Commune of 1871: A View From the Left (London: Cape, 1972), 79, 92.

30 Jeremy D. Popkin, A History of Modern France (Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Pearson/ Prentice Hall, 2006), 42-51.

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The revolutionary slogan again emerged as a significant component of revolutionary rhetoric early in the Commune’s rise, in March of 1871.31 The new meanings of the slogan’s terms indicated not only the present ideological character of the Commune and the socio-political environment, but also the Communard’s historical memory of the failures of the 1789 Revolution and the negative role of the bourgeoisie, as previously discussed. First, the concept of “Liberty,” associated with political liberation in 1789, was now called for the economic liberation of the proletariat from under the oppression of the bourgeoisie, which would lead to its liberation from the concurrent social oppression of the bourgeoisie. An April 1871 Commune newspaper stated that although the revolution proclaimed three rights, the revolution “in reality achieved no more than political emancipation…The Revolution is not yet finished…Even though feudalism has been overthrown in the political sphere, it still remains to be overthrown in the economic one.”32 The concept of “Equality” as heralded in the slogan also took on an economic rather than political meaning. Here, Louis Auguste Blanqui’s assessment of the term’s significance is representative of the popular understanding in the Commune. Alan Spitzer writes, “In Blanqui’s evaluation of the revolutionary trinity…the outlines of one road from Jacobinism to socialism can be clearly discerned. On this road the signpost is ‘Equality’- for Blanqui, ‘the sublime revelation’ which was the absolute condition for the existence of Liberty and Fraternity.”33 For Jacobin socialists such as Blanqui, economic equality and the resulting social equality were the only means of achieving liberty. The different strands of socialist thought that influenced the Commune all stressed this type of socio-economic equality and liberation – they simply disagreed on the means of accomplishing it, from Proudhon’s mutualism to Blanqui’s Neo-Jacobinism.34 Whereas “Fraternity” in the Revolution of ’89 referred to the unity of the newly defined French nation as a whole, the concept took on a distinctly socialist meaning in 1871. First, the concept of fraternity referred to the powerful bond of the workingmen of France. The concept of worker allegiance to an international proletariat of workingmen, celebrated by influential socialist leaders, coincided with the traditional central role of the French state. Popular decrees and posters produced by labor organizations stressed the significance of the concept of worker fraternity. A March 1871 election wall poster of the International and the Federation of Trade Unions, for example, emphasized labor unity and fraternity, as the first step in achieving subsequent liberty and equality. However, in Patrick Hutton’s book The Cult of the Revolutionary Tradition, which examines the experience of Blanquists in French politics, the author looks at a different notion of “Fraternity.” He writes that the goal of Blanqui’s followers was to “translate the ideal of fraternity which they had experienced in their own circle into a wider vision of community, first for the people of Paris, even31 William Gibson, Paris During the Commune (New York: Haskell House, 1974), 144.

32 Albert Grandier, “The Emancipation of the Working Class,” in Eugene Schulkind, ed., The Paris Commune of 1871: A View From the Left (London: Cape, 1972), 79, 92.

33 Spitzer, Revolutionary Theories, 65-66.

34 Shafer, The Paris Commune, 12.

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tually for the people of France.”35 Their inspiration and model for this concept of fraternity was none other than a collective recollection of the revolutionary ancestor of the uprising of 1871, the radical municipal government of Paris during the Great Revolution, Paris Commune of 1792.

The Paris Commune of 1792

Preserving its traditional status as a center for political unrest and radical excitement, the city of Paris played a crucial role in the radicalization of the originally-bourgeois Revolution of 1789. In August of 1792, the sections of Paris, feeling threatened by foreign powers as well as the possibly complicit role of Louis XVI, voted for the formation of a Commune which would be given the authority to direct popular insurrection and the defense of the city. A massive army composed of sans-culottes then attacked the Tuileries Palace in which the King was being held and ended the brief period of constitutional monarchy in France. The Commune, a city government supported by the most radical of revolutionary forces, wielded significant power for the next two years. Peter McPhee writes, “Paris in 1792-4 was the pulsating, tumultuous center of the Revolution…the political participation of Parisian working people reached its zenith, [which]…was reflected in an unprecedented leveling in the social composition of local government.”36

It is unsurprising, then, that a myth was created around the 1792 Commune in the collective memory of the revolutionaries that would establish its heir.37 As revolutionary activity began to ferment in the weeks leading up to March 1871, calls for a revival of the ’92 Commune were heard throughout Paris. Lissagaray writes, “The same thought occupies all minds. Let the skeptics make room for those that believe in the Defense; let Paris regain possession of herself; let the Commune of 1792 be revived to again save the city and France.”38 In the revolutionary memory of the soon-to-be Communards, the Commune represented the path not only to a military victory but also to a transformative climax of revolutionary spirit and participation.39 In fact, according to R.B. Rose, the analogies between the Commune of 1792 and Commune of 1871 were so strong in the collective memory of the Communards that “it was inevitable that some of the leading participants in the Commune of 1871 should have spoke and acted as if time had stood still since 1794, and if the Commune was neither more nor less than the completion of a continuous revolution begun in 1789.”40

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35 Patrick H. Hutton, The Cult of the Revolutionary Tradition: the Blanquists in French Politics, 1864-1893 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981), 162.

36 Peter McPhee, The French Revolution 1789-1799 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 125.

37 R.D Price, “Ideology and Motivation in the Paris Commune of 1871,” The Historical Journal, (15 March 1972): 76.

38 Lissagaray, History of the Commune, 20.

39 Shafer, The Paris Commune, 36.

40 R.B. Rose, “The Paris Commune,” 18.

The Academical Heritage Review

Ultimately the radicalization of the revolution that accompanied the rise of the Commune in 1792 peaked in 1793; the “Bourgeois Revolution” that had begun in July of 1789 had been drastically transformed by an explosion of popular participation. As Shafer writes, “1793 was the historical fault line that separated revolutionary from parliamentary republicans.”41 The year 1793 was the central year of the Revolution remembered by the Communards of 1871, due not only to the ’92 Commune’s radicalizing role and the end of the Bourgeois Revolution, but also because of the legacy of the most infamous organization of the Great Revolution: the 1793 Committee of Public Safety.

Recreating Revolution: The Committee of Public Safety

The Paris Commune’s establishment of a Committee of Public Safety in May of 1871 was “the Commune’s most direct, and some might argue most pathetic, imitation of the French Revolution.”42 The 1793 Committee was established during a tumultuous and unstable period of the Revolution, during which military losses in the Revolutionary Wars, the War in the Vendée region, and the constant fear of internal counter-revolutionary movements encouraged moderates to support such a proposal.43 In 1871 the circumstances were very similar, as the forces of Versailles grew increasingly close to overwhelming the Commune’s Parisian barricades. The creation of the Committee divided the Commune, and the arguments of both sides were fundamentally grounded in their memory of the first Committee and its role in the Great Revolution.

A socialist article written in support discussed the devotion of the individuals who were given dictatorial powers to the cause of the revolution, and the manner in which the Committee prevented the loss of political and social rights that had been won by the people in 1793.44 The natural implication was that the new Committee would function in the same way. The 1793 Committee’s close relationship with mass popular violence was decidedly not forgotten by the advocates of the Committee. In contrast, many members of the Commune, such as the Neo-Jacobin Blanquists, held to a political ideology rested in their collective memory of the most radical phase of the Revolution, taking the lesson “that political violence was a legitimate, honorable, and peculiarly effective mode of social change.”45 A positive collective memory of the Committee’s period in power and the impact of Reign of Terror, along with a memory-shaped Jacobin-leaning ideology, led them to support an all-powerful body that could, once again, as it had done in 1793, ensure the defense of the city and stabilize the socio-political environment, removing dangerous dissent.

Lissagaray presented the development of the opposing view. Calling it a “parody of the past,” he remarked that during the Great Revolution the creation of such a Committee fundamentally clashed with the proletarian Shafer, The Paris Commune, 23.

Ibid., 139.

McPhee, The French Revolution, 116.

“The Committee of Public Safety,” in “Eugene Schulkind, ed., The Paris Commune of 1871: A View From the Left (London: Cape, 1972), 185.

45 Spitzer, Revolutionary Theories, 121.

41 42 43 44

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revolution of that had been ignited in 1792, executing the “best friends of the people.”46 A public declaration by the minority, published after the successful vote to establish the Committee, stressed similarly its inherent objection to “hiding behind a dictatorship” instead of pushing for political and social reform through more republican means.47 However, even with strong opposition based in both socialist ideology and the knowledge of the Committee’s history, concern regarding the immediate threat of Versailles and social unrest succeeded in convincing the Commune to establish the powerful body. Ultimately the recreation of the Committee of Public Safety in May of 1871 illustrated both the significance of the memory of the French Revolution in the decision-making process of members of the Commune, as well as the fundamental multiplicity of revolutionary memory; the same event of the Revolution was remembered in fundamentally different ways by different groups within the Commune.

Municipal Defense and the Legacy of the Fédérés

Up to this point, predominant focus has been placed upon the influence of collective memory of the French Revolution with regard to both its impact on socio-political ideology and the decision-making process of the leaders of the Paris Commune. It is useful to turn to “average Communards,” those citizens of Paris tasked with the city’s defense. Historian and sociologist Roger Gould is one who argues that, for these individuals, neither political ideology nor a conception of class struggle was significant in the uprising. Rather, common Parisians were fighting for the simple preservation of local governance and the protection of their neighborhoods. Gould writes, “The ‘communal’ uprising of March 18, 1871, is best understood as a movement in which the city of Paris as a whole acted collectively to defend its municipal liberties…the reasons for taking part in the fighting…involved membership in an urban community.”48 Gould draws evidence from contemporary statements of members of the local National Guard units who composed the military force of the Commune. He recounts officers from the 148th Battalion who shared their strong preference “’to perform no service but that of their own arrondissment,’ arguing that this was the only way to ensure the protection of their neighborhood from reactionary forces.”49 David Shafer disagrees, arguing that the typical Communard was familiar with socialist rhetoric and had “imbibed the same general principles expressed by the elected Communards.”50 R.D. Price, in turn, supports Gould’s general perspective, writing:

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46 Lissagaray, History of the Commune, 241.

47 “Public Declaration…Against Existence of Committee of Public Safety,” in Eugene Schulkind, ed., The Paris Commune of 1871: A View From the Left (London: Cape, 1972), 187.

48 Roger V. Gould, Insurgent Identities: Class, Community, and Protest in Paris from 1848 to the Commune (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 153.

49 Roger V. Gould, “Multiple Networks and Mobilization in the Paris Commune, 1871,” American Sociological Review, 56 (December 1991): 717.

50 Shafer, The Paris Commune, 115.

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Motivation was not ideological but practical. Brutality and narrowness were quite likely to be answered in kind. Most of those who fought did so reluctantly, with desperation, nagged by wives or friends rather than with enthusiasm. These were, in general, neither the heroes of the socialist legend nor the bandits of the conservative, although both existed, but ordinary men reacting as they had to, to a situation from which they could not find an escape.51 While political ideology, if we are to accept Gould’s and Rice’s arguments, may have not played a essential role in the actions of average Communards in the defense of Paris, their collective memory of Paris’ revolutionary past decidedly did. At a fundamental level average Parisian citizens were cognizant of the instrumental role played by Paris throughout France’s revolutionary history. Shafer asserts that Parisians consistently reaffirmed the radical and republican nature of their city, which could be traced back to the problematic Paris Parlement that troubled the French monarchs. He writes, “The distinctly Parisian complexion of republicanism and the latter’s inextricable connection with political violence and revolution further reinforced…the capital’s disorderly image.”52 This proud collective memory, on the municipal level, of Paris’ position in France’s revolutionary history encouraged the consciously political participation of average Communards, even if unaffected by raw socio-political ideology, whether socialist, anarchist, or Jacobin.

Aanother revealing characteristic of the experience of the average Communard was the application of the term fédérés to the Commune’s municipal National Guard units. The fédérés were volunteers from the rural provinces of France that were put into service to fight in France’s Revolutionary Wars against the monarchies of Europe. In August of 1792, however, these fédérés joined with the massive army of sans-culottes to assault the Tuileries Palace.53 Roger Gould discusses the prevailing use of the term fédéré during the Commune, writing that its use “reflected not just nostalgia for the National Guard Federation of 1792 but also a clear awareness on the part of Parisians that the conflict in which they were implicated embraced the entire city.”54 Central to this “nostalgia” was a collective memory of not only specific events of the Great Revolution but also an implicit connection between Parisian revolutionaries past and present.

A Counter-Revolutionary Perspective: Women and the Paris Commune

This paper has been centrally concerned with the nature and impact of collective memory in the revolutionary experience of the insurgents themselves. However, collective memory of the Revolution of 1789 was not restrict51 52 53 54

Price, “Ideology and Motivation in the Paris Commune,” 86.

Shafer, The Paris Commune, 4.

McPhee, The French Revolution, 97.

Gould, Insurgent Identities, 182.

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ed to the Communards alone. It is worth restating that no single group has a monopoly on historical memory; this was certainly true for the events of 1871.

An exploration of collective memory of the Revolution from the perspective of groups opposing the Commune reveals an interesting and decidedly different relationship between past and present revolution.

One of the most striking features of the Paris Commune was the scale of women’s participation.55 Over the short life of the Commune, thousands of women participated in some way or another, whether in the public sphere or in the armed defense of the Commune.56 It is very likely that many of these women recalled the vibrant role of women in France’s revolutionary past, whether the October 1789 March to Versailles or the significant participation of women during the Assault on the Tuileries in August of 1792.57 Gay L. Gullickson writes, in Unruly Women of Paris, that “Although imagery from the French Revolution was available to both sides [of the Commune uprising] it never worked as well for the Communards as it did for the bourgeoisie.”58 In the minds of counter-insurgency groups during the uprising of 1871, the women of the Commune provoked a special degree of fear; women were seen to threaten the social order in a way different and more destabilizing than men.59 To anti-Communards, the Communard women inspired memories of the tricoteuse, or “female knitter,” who would sit at the guillotine watching mass executions during the Terror, eventually immortalized in Charles Dickens’ character Madame Defarge. Gullickson continues, writing that “The tricoteuse embodied in Madame Defarge had become the image of the female revolutionary by 1871,” an image that reemerged with the uprising of the Commune.60 Subsequently, as the political and military situation of the Commune became more desperate in the latter weeks of May 1871 and women became more prominent in the armed defense of the barricades, images of the Communarde as abnormal, violent, perverted, and bloodthirsty became increasingly common.61 Ultimately, by imagining the contemporary Communarde as a revolutionary tricoteuse, the concept prevalent in the anti-Commune collective memory, the counter-insurgency was able to approach Communard women as inhuman, guilty in a bloody revolutionary past, and therefore undeserving of any pity or mercy.62 Collective memory of the French Revolution was prevalent and equally practical on both sides of the Parisian barricades during the Commune.

55 56 57 58

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59 60 61 62

Popkin, A History of Modern France, 146.

Shafer, The Paris Commune, 146.

McPhee, The French Revolution, 60, 97.

Gay L. Gullickson, Unruly Women of Paris (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1996), 73.

Ibid., 58.

Ibid., 71.

Ibid., 72.

Ibid., 73.

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Conclusion: Altering Collective Memory On April 1, 1871 the Commune decreed to demolish the Column in the Place Vendôme, recognizing the tribute to Napoleon I’s military victories as “a moment of barbarism…and a perpetual attack upon one of the three great principles of the French republic.”63 The order was carried out on 16 May, though not to unanimous popular praise; complicating the Column’s destruction was that it ultimately constituted more than metal and stone. David Shafer explains that “its obliteration was a passion play resonant with themes of destruction, resurrection, forgetting, and remembering.”64 In destroying the Vendôme Column, “the Commune had consciously endeavored to alter national memory… an attempt at reshaping how the nation remembers and commemorates its past.”65 The conscious manipulation and exploitation of collective memory, therefore, was attempted not only intangibly, in the minds of Communards, but also through concrete physical means, in the streets of Paris.

However, the tangible destruction of symbolic monuments was decidedly not the central way in which the Commune interacted with collective memory. Communard leaders and followers alike looked to their shared memories of the French Revolution of 1789 as a source of a revolutionary spirit, a detailed revolutionary guide, a radical model to be avoided, and as the first stage in an uncompleted process of France’s political, social, and economic development. Memories of the Revolution were shared, reestablished, recreated, and reconstructed – processes fundamentally shaped by the historical present. The Paris Commune of 1871 can be seen neither as yet another imitative, procedural revolution along France’s journey to stable liberal democracy, nor as an event that completely broke with France’s revolutionary past. It can, however, be studied as a turbulent, controversial, and challenging period in French History, one which led both Communards and their fellow Frenchman to seek guidance, understanding, and assistance in their collective memory of the singularly defining event of their nations’ history, the French Revolution.

63 “Decree of the Commune to Demolish the Column…,” Eugene Schulkind, ed., The Paris Commune of 1871: A View From the Left (London: Cape, 1972), 159.

64 Shafer, The Paris Commune, 170.

65 Ibid., 169.

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Bibliography Best, Geoffrey, ed. The Permanent Revolution: The French Revolution and its

Legacy 1789-1989. London: Fontana Press, 1988.

Confino, Alon. “Collective Memory and Cultural History: Problems of Method,” The American Historical Review, 102 (December 1997): 1386-

1403.

“Documents of the Paris Commune,” Marxists.org, <http://www.marxists.

org/ history/france/pariscommune/documents/index.htm>, ac

cessed on 7 November 2010.

Friguglietti, James and Kennedy, Emmet. The Shaping of Modern France: Writings on French History Since 1715. London: The MacMillan Company, 1969.

Fritzsche, Peter, Stranded in the Present: Modern Time and the Melancholy of History.,Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2004.

Gibson, William, Paris During the Commune, New York: Haskell House, 1974.

Gildea, Robert, The Past in French History, New Haven: Yale University Press,

1994.

Gould, Roger V, Insurgent Identities: Class, Community, and Protest in Paris from

1848 to the Commune, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995.

Gould, Roger V, “Multiple Networks and Mobilization in the Paris Commune, 1871,” American Sociological Review, 56 (December 1991): 716-729.

Gullickson, Gay L, Unruly Women of Paris, Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University

Press, 1996.

Halbwachs, Maurice an, Coser, Lewis. On Collective Memory, Chicago:

University of Chicago Press, 1992.

Hutton, Patrick H, The Cult of the Revolutionary Tradition: the Blanquists in

French Politics, 1864-1893. Berkeley: University of California Press,

1981.

Kamenka, Eugen , Paradigm for Revolution? The Paris Commune 1871-1971,

Canberra: Australian National University Press, 1972.

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Lissagaray, Prosper Olivier. History of the Commune of 1871, London: Reeves

and Turner, 1886.

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Marx, Karl, “The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon,” Marx/Engels

Internet Archive. 1995 <http://www. marxists.org/archive/marx/

works/download/pdf/18th-Brumaire.pdf>, accessed 6

December 2010.

Mason, Edward, The Paris Commune: An Episode in the Socialist Movement.

New York: Fertig, 1967.

McPhee, Peter. The French Revolution 1789-1799, Oxford: Oxford University

Press, 2002.

Popkin, Jeremy D. A History of Modern France. Upper Saddle River, N.J.:

Pearson/Prentice Hall, 2006.

Price, R.D. “Ideology and Motivation in the Paris Commune of 1871,” The

Historical Journal, 15 (March 1972): 75-86.

Schulkind, Eugene ed. The Paris Commune of 1871: A View From the Left,

London: Cape, 1972.

Shafer, David A, The Paris Commune, Houndsmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire;

New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005.

Spitzer, Alan B, The Revolutionary Theories of Louis Auguste Blanqui. New York:

Columbia University Press, 1957.

Vizetelly, Ernest Alfred, My Adventures in the Commune: Paris, 1871. New

York: Duffield, 1914.

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Beyond the Dark Valley: The Japanese Position in Manchuria and the Foundation of the Manchuko Nation-State

Joan Martinez= On March 1, 1932, the new state of Manchukuo announced its birth and shortly thereafter, it sought recognition from other countries as an independent sovereign state. However, the international community quickly caught on that the new “nation-state” was in reality, a mere puppet state of the Empire of Japan. Over the course of its existence, Manchukuo never gained widespread recognition of its sovereignty nor acceptance into the international framework as a nation-state. In August of 1945, Manchukuo vanished into memory when it collapsed, together with the Kwantung Army that was responsible for its creation, after the Japanese defeat that ended the Second World War. This essay will explore the history of the Japanese occupation of Manchuria, beginning with the sphere of influence they acquired in South Manchuria in the Russo-Japanese War, to the Manchurian Incident in 1931, and the subsequent creation of the Manchukuo state a year after. While outlining these events, this essay further aims to elucidate on several questions concerning the relationship between Manchuria and Imperial Japan, as well as the creation of Manchukuo and its claims of sovereignty. First, how did Japan establish and frame its “special position” in Manchuria in the years prior to the creation of Manchukuo, and how did this region fit into the Japanese Empire and its vision of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere? Furthermore, what was the reasoning behind the Japanese imperialists’ decision to establish Manchukuo, and fashion it as a nation-state of its own instead of as a colony, and how did it try to prove to the rest of the world the legitimacy of its claims?

Lastly, what were the implications of this decision in the international arena, specifically for the League of Nations, and why did Japan fail to acquire widespread recognition of the sovereignty of Manchukuo?

The Japanese Position in Manchuria and the Foundation of the Manchuko Nation-State

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This essay will argue that the Japanese saw Manchuria, as the proclaimed economic “lifeline” of Japan, at the center of their envisioned antiWestern, pan-Asianist sphere of self-sufficiency. When the state of Manchukuo announced its birth, Japan regarded it as an “ideal” state, both culturally and economically, that was to be under its aegis. Japan quickly sought recognition of Manchukuo’s nation-statehood and independent sovereignty with these ideological factors in mind, as well as several pragmatic considerations they had to take into account, such as the domestic environment in both Japan and Manchukuo, and the pending backlash of the international community.

However, their efforts failed when the Japanese conception of a “nation-state” under Japan’s guidance clashed with the Wilsonian ideals championed by the League of Nations, and the rest of the world would see Manchukuo as but a mere puppet state of Japan for as long as it existed.

Manchuria The Chinese call it Dongbei, the Northeast, but to the rest of the world it was known as Manchuria, the region to the north of the Great Wall and home to the frontier people that ruled China during the Qing (or Manchu) Dynasty, its final imperial dynasty, from 1644 to 1912.1 In the latter half of the nineteenth century, the Han people from north China rapidly settled into the region, which integrated Manchuria more closely with China, and consequently, by the end of the century Manchu rule became increasingly “Sinicized.” However, as a borderland of the Chinese Empire, the area was subject to the encroachment of several colonial powers, especially Russia, which was situated north of the region and laid claim to Outer Manchuria. Thus, although the area was demographically Sinicized, which would have greatly supported the political claim of Chinese nationhood over the area, it was “precisely the historical image of Manchuria as a frontier, a virgin land of ‘primitive’ and martial peoples unrelated to Chinese,” that was to underscore imperialist claims to the area.2 During the first half of the twentieth century, the Russians, Japanese, as well as the historical peoples of the region continually challenged the question as to whether Manchuria was to remain autonomous or be fully incorporated into China proper.3 For the Japanese, the region represented a legitimate target and opportunity to counter Russia because of the many casualties they suffered, regardless of the Japanese military’s victorious results, during the Russo-Japanese War in 1904-05, which was born out of the imperial ambitions of both empires over Manchuria and Korea. Furthermore, Manchuria’s spacious plains were sparsely populated, rich in resources, and “encompassed an area

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✝ Joan Martinez is a member of the Class of 2011. She wrote with the guidance of Professor Robert Stolz.

1 Kenneth Pyle, Japan Rising: The Resurgence of Japanese Power and Purpose (New York: Public Affairs, 2007), 186.

2 Prasenjit Duara, Sovereignty and Authenticity: Manchukuo and the East Asian Modern (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003), 49.

3 Ibid., 41.

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four times larger than the cramped Japanese home islands,”4 and the Japanese national economy itself also came to be heavily dependent on Manchuria for raw materials and a market outlet.

Thus, although the state of Manchukuo was formally created in 1932, its roots go back to 1905 when Japan acquired a sphere of influence in the southern half of Manchuria from their victories in the Russo-Japanese War. In the following decades, Japan employed a mix of formal and informal elements to establish and anchor its hold over South Manchuria.5 Japan built a formal colonial apparatus where it ruled directly, which spanned the Leased Territory of Kwantung, located at the southern tip of the Liadong Peninsula, as well as the South Manchurian Railway (SMR) Zone, which was the area held by Japan’s colonial railway company.6 Although this area as a whole represented a small fraction of South Manchuria, over the rest of the region, Japan exerted indirect influence “through the relationship with local Chinese rulers, through economic dominance of the market, and through the constant threat of force by its garrison army.”7 Together, the Kwantung Leasehold and the SMR Zone served as the axle of Manchuria, with profits from the widely successful soybean production allowing the SMR to “function as a dynamic developmental colonial corporation-state.”8 The South Manchuria Railway Company exerted great influence and control over its territory with its extensive activities, subsidiaries and dependent businesses, which led to its image as “Mantetsu okoku, the realm of the South Manchuria Railway.”9 However, throughout the decades, after Russia ceded its rights to South Manchuria in 1905 until the Manchurian Incident in 1931, Japan’s “special position” in Manchuria proved to be very dynamic. According to C. Walter Young, writing prior to the Japanese occupation of Manchuria, a “decided change in the Japanese conception of the term came about with the negotiations preliminary to the formation of the International Banking Consortium during 19181920.”10 In the Washington Naval Conference in 1922, the United States secured the unanimous pledges of the colonial powers to respect the territorial integrity and sovereignty of China, initiating an Open Door Policy that led Japan to reevaluate how it conceived its position in Manchuria. Thus, Japan’s dilemma during this period was “to maintain in fact a paramountcy of economic interest and at the same time to give the appearance of welcoming the introduction of non-Japanese capital and enterprise in Manchuria.”11 4 Pyle, Japan Rising, 186.

5 Louise Young, Japan’s Total Empire: Manchuria and the Culture of War Imperialism (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1999), 3.

6 South Manchuria Railway Company, Answering Questions on Manchuria (Tokyo: The Herald Press, 1939), 5.

7 L. Young, Japan’s Total Empire, 3.

8 David Tucker, “Colonial Sovereignty in Manchuria and Manchukuo” in The State of Sovereignty: Territories, Laws, Populations, ed. Douglas Howland and Luise White (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2008), 79.

9 Ibid.

10 Carl Walter Young, Japan’s Special Position in Manchuria (Baltimore: The Lord Baltimore Press, 1931), XXX. 11 Ibid.

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Japanese statesmen and writers pronounced that, given the dependence of the Japanese national economy on Manchuria for its raw materials, food products, and as a market outlet, Manchuria was Japan’s “lifeline,” and thus Japan had a right to exploit its resources “on the abstract ethical, presumed to be legal, right of a state, comparatively poor in natural resources, to live and to develop on the resources of another state.”12 Ishiwara Kanji, a senior officer of the Imperial Japanese Army and “perhaps the single most forceful figure behind the creation of Manchukuo,”13 initially saw the Japanese sphere of influence in Manchuria as necessary for the survival of Japan, as well as for its continued control over Korea. Thus, the arguments for “Japan’s lifeline” or strategic autarky placed Manchuria at the center of a sphere of self-sufficiency that would be vital to the present and future interests of Japan in the area. However, the belief in a Japanese “right” in Manchuria to tightly link both economies, although possibly ethically justified, was continually challenged in the international realm during this time, and later especially upon the establishment of the Manchukuo.

Although the Japanese wielded considerable economic and political power in the region, for as long as they had no sovereignty in Manchuria, they were caught in a precarious position. Their informal alliances with local Chinese elites began to falter with the rise of Zhang Zuolin and his political ambitions to control Beijing and unite Manchuria with China proper, thereby clashing with Japanese interests in the area. By 1928, his son Zhang Xueliang declared his allegiance to the Kuomintang government of a unified China, and thus, the Japanese military believed that it now needed to become the main political power in Manchuria. Furthermore, as Prasenjit Duara argues, two other major issues contributed to this turnaround, aiming to quell Chinese nationalist feelings. The first issue concerned Zhang Xueliang’s continued development of railway lines that competed with the SMR lines, and the other was the denial of landownership to Japanese nationals living in Manchuria.14 These issues led to several violent encounters between the Chinese nationalists and the Kwantung Army, the Japanese unit designed to protect Japanese concessions in Manchuria, which contributed to the turbulent political environment in Manchuria.

On the night of September 18, 1931, with the implicit consent of members of the Army General Staff, the field grade officers of the Kwantung Army ignited a small explosion on the tracks of the SMR line outside of Mukden.

Accusing the Chinese nationalists and military for setting the bomb, this “Manchurian Incident” provided sufficient pretext for attacking the Chinese troops and expanding Japanese control in the next several months until all of Manchuria was conquered by the end of 1932. Furthermore, because the international community provided insufficient initial opposition to the Japanese occupation of Manchuria, the Kwantung Army presumed in its “Situational Analysis” that the United States was “not likely to plunge into war with Japan.”15 The United States itself was preoccupied domestically with the consequences of the stock market crash in 1929 and the onset of the Great Depression, and further lacked sufficient naval strength to effectively combat the Japanese forces. As long as 12 13 14 15

Ibid., xxxi.

Duara, Sovereignty and Authenticity, 61.

Ibid., 51.

Pyle, Japan Rising, 186.

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the open door for American business and thereby their economic interests remained intact in Manchuria, the recent events in the area would not warrant strong disapproval. The Manchurian Incident was a critical moment for the Japanese military, which “now drew confidence from its success and from the lack of effective resistance on the part of the powers.”16 Thus, as long as international opposition remained indecisive and ambiguous, the Japanese officials found that they possessed a safe margin to consolidate and expand their formal control over the whole of Manchuria. Writing through the point of view of the Japanese people during the lifetime of the Manchukuo, K. K. Kawakami expresses the perspective that the Manchurian Incident was “an explosion of the whole of Manchuria and Japan—Manchuria because of its deliberate policy of courting trouble with Japan, Japan because of general discontent, restlessness, resentment, and desperation” that arose from the turbulent environment in the region, meriting the actions of Japan in Manchuria.17 Kenneth Pyle argues that the Japanese military abstracted itself from ideological fervor and was mainly driven by cost-benefit analyses of the situation in Manchuria.18 However, although the Kwantung Army may have adhered to pragmatic and calculated goals, their actions were also in line with the greater ideological claims for “anti-Western pan-Asianism” that was argued to be partly driving Japanese imperialism.

Imperial Japan The Empire of Japan existed as a political entity beginning with the Meiji Restoration in 1868 until the fall of the Empire after the Axis defeat in the Second World War. After having rapidly industrialized and militarized, in a defense-oriented and Westernized manner under the slogan Fukoku Kyohei (“Rich Country, Strong Army”),19 Japan’s emergence as a great power culminated in its conquest of vast areas in the Asia-Pacific Region, including British Malaya, Hong Kong, and the Philippines, among others. However, in contrast to the first phase of Japanese imperialism from the late nineteenth century to the end of the First World War, when imperialism itself “had constituted a recognizable system with its own rules and mores among the imperial powers,”20 Japan’s external environment in the following decades seemed anarchic, where rules or enforcers were close to nonexistent.

In the domestic economic realm, there was no “roaring 20’s” in Japan after World War I. Japan had suspended gold convertibility of its currency during the war along with the rest of the world, but the wartime boom caused a speculative bubble in the economy, and consequently, the prosperity and expansion of the Japanese industrial base were impossible to maintain. The de16 Ibid., 188.

17 K. K. Kawakami, Manchoukuo: Child of Conflict (New York: The MacMillan Company, 1933), 47.

18 Pyle, Japan Rising, 188-89.

19 David Howell, “Visions of the Future in Meiji Japan” in Historical Perspectives on Contemporary East Asia, ed. Merle Goldman and Andrew Gordon (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000), 92.

20 Pyle, Japan Rising, 191.

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cade following the war was marked by trade deficits and banking crises, among other unstable economic forces. At this time, militarism, which would later herald the merits of a centralized planned economy, developed side by side with liberalism in an increasingly uneasy socio-economic environment. Inoue Junnosuke, governor of the Bank of Japan during this period, restored the Japanese currency to the gold standard at the 1898 parity, but his austerity policies came at the time of the stock market crash in New York, and they pushed the Japanese economy further into a violent and unexpected deflationary spiral. This led to a shift to Keynesian, inflationary policies that would later help lead Japan out of the Great Depression, but create the foundations for a new state-led industrial policy, while a militarist policy of expansion in Asia was in its beginning stages.21 E.H. Norman argues that the dominating position held by finance capital in Japan, when coupled with the engineered deflation in the 1920’s, led to the expropriation of peasant farmers and overpopulation in the rural countryside.

Furthermore, the relatively narrow home market, with its high rent, limited separation of industry and agriculture, and large surplus population led to an accumulation of unsold goods that necessitated a market outlet like Manchuria.

As a result of the continuing rural and economic turmoil at home, Japan needed to look to the foreign market for future immigration, expansion and progress.22 While imperialism could be seen as a pragmatic consequence and necessary outgrowth of finance capitalism, Japanese ideology was also heavily influential in shaping the nature of this imperialism. The leadership ranks and scholars of Japan advocated for the idea of an “Asian Monroe Doctrine,” declaring Japan’s rightful place to take responsibility for order in Asia apart from the Western powers of the day. In China and Manchuria, especially, the Japanese were to assume the leading role in diplomacy, having “usually looked with decided disfavor upon other powers launching either individual diplomatic programs or proposing international cooperation without first consulting Japan.”23 Furthermore, their successes in expanding their military and industrial power continually fed Japan’s ambition for leadership in the region, and now that Japan had broken out of the Western-imposed East Asian order with their triumphant endeavors in Manchuria, the realization of this goal was in sight.

Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere

In line with their imperialist ambitions, the Japanese government and military during the Showa era promulgated the ideas of the East Asian League (Toa renmei), the East Asian Community (Toa kyodotai), and still later the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere (Dai-Toa Kyoeiken), which essentially represented their desire to create a bloc of pan-Asian countries that was self-sufficient and free from Western influence.24 Japan’s desire and position in this sphere became more than a pursuit for economic and political autonomy in East Asia,

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21 Mark Metzler, Lever of Empire: The International Gold Standard and the Crisis of Liberalism in Prewar Japan (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2006).

22 E. Herbert Norman, Japan’s Emergence as a Modern State: Political and Economic Problems of the Meiji Period, 60th Anniversary Edition (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2001).

23 C.W. Young, Japan’s Special Position in Manchuria, 328.

24 Duara, Sovereignty and Authenticity, 62.

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and instead extended into the “deeply felt pursuit of cultural autonomy that harkened back to Japan’s struggle for status and stature in a system that was made and dominated by Western powers.”25 In the middle of the nineteenth century, the world that Japan entered as a burgeoning power, in forcing the country to suffer unequal treaties, had required it to give up much of its cultural heritage and autonomy to effectively pursue national power. Now, Japan could determine for themselves their place in the world, which was to be at forefront of the new East Asian order.

Thus, while German geopolitical thinking and Leninist discourse on global re-division and the struggle for supremacy among several regions heavily influenced Japanese leaders, these ideas of economically and strategically autarkic blocs came to be penetrated by anti-Western, pan-Asianist ideology.26 Even Ishiwara Kanji, who was highly influential in the Japanese occupation of Manchuria, was motivated by Japanese nationalism that was “framed by a vision of the inevitable confrontation between East and West.”27 Other figures that propagated the vision of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, such as Kada Tetsuji, Ozaka Hotsumi, and Shinmei Masamichi, were heavily critical of the Nazi German ideas of racial superiority, and instead, vouched for cooperation with the East Asian nations, especially China and Manchuria, in a regional alliance under Japanese leadership.28 This alliance could be further viewed as the struggle between East and West, between Asian ideals and Western imperialism, and could be used as a tool for eventual global dominance. Of course, this commitment to the idea of an alliance was juxtaposed to the belief that the Japanese were intrinsically superior and that the Asian nations must accept the leadership of Japan, but the pan-Asianist idea of formal equality among Asian nations under a regional alliance is necessary to understand why Japan even committed to encouraging the rapid industrial buildup and modernization in Manchuria.

The argument for Manchuria as “Japan’s lifeline” underscored the importance of the region as the proposed center of the bloc of self-sufficiency under the guise of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. Thus, Manchuria was a vital component to the present and future interests of Japan in the area, which would crumble if Japan were not to intervene to cease the turbulent environment that plagued it. With the establishment of Manchukuo, K. K. Kawakami, a Japanese journalist and author educated in the United States, defends the reconstructive efforts of Japan in the region in the 1930s, invoking the rationale that it was Japan’s place to lead Manchuria into salvation: …To some of her neighbors she may be an enfant terrible, even a nightmare… For good or ill, the advent of Manchoukuo has registered a radical change in the Far Eastern situation. Certainly it is one of the most significant developments in the present century—a great experiment in the reorganization, regeneration and rejuvenation of an ancient nation long wallowing in chaos and maladministration so serious as to have become a menace to 25 26 27 28

Pyle, Japan Rising, 192.

Duara, Sovereignty and Authenticity, 61-62.

Ibid., 62.

Ibid.

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her neighbors. If it succeeds, the whole world will gain. If it fails, the failure will be due, not entirely to Japan’s own incapacity, but largely to the interference of third parties. For the first time in history, a non-white race has undertaken to carry the white man’s burden, and the white man, long accustomed to think the burden exclusively his own, is reluctant to commit to the young shoulders of Japan, yellow and an upstart at that…29 At the end of the First World War in 1919, the Japanese Empire spanned “Taiwan, Korea, the Pacific island chains the Japanese called Nan’yo, the southern half of Sakhalin, as well as participation in the unequal treaty system in China.”30 The Japanese sphere of influence in Manchuria from 1905 to 1931, when placed within the backdrop of the rapidly expanding Japanese empire, occupied a rather peripheral position within this wider empire. Furthermore, although Manchuria was later believed to be the “lifeline” of Japan, with both its economies becoming increasingly interdependent, at the time it was “neither the strategic focus of foreign policy nor the site where key innovations in imperial management took place.”31 After the Manchurian Incident in 1931, however, the Japanese refocused their energies into a second phase of involvement in the area, constructing a new kind of empire in the Dongbei.

Enter Manchukuo In March of 1932, the Kwantung Army proclaimed the independent Republic of Manchukuo, with formal recognition from Japan coming a few months later. The new state extended its sovereignty over the region enclosed by the Amur River and the border of Soviet Siberia in the north, and the Great Wall of China in the south.32 To create a veil of legitimacy, Pu-Yi, the former (and last) Emperor of China was installed as the new head of state of Manchuria and later declared Emperor of Manchutikuo, or the Great Manchurian Empire in 1934. The Kwantung Army used the Manchukuo state as a cover to begin developing Manchuria thoroughly according to their will. Nevertheless, the Manchukuo government backed by the Japanese government and the Kwantung Army, “steadily insisted that the Manchukuo state was the authentic and legitimate expression of the (newly created) Manchukuoan people,”33 and continuously worked for international recognition of the new nation-state. Furthermore, the Japanese builders of the Manchukuo state claimed that the sovereignty of the new state was separate from Japan, and that by employing the rhetoric of anti-imperialist nationalism, Manchukuo “was not merely a nation, but one that embodied utopian ideals.”34 To the rest of the world, it was apparent that the new state was merely a disguised imperialist power structure, that Manchukuo was a creature and

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29 30 31 32 33 34

Kawakami, Manchoukuo, v-vi.

L. Young, Japan’s Total Empire, 3-4.

Ibid., 4.

Ibid.

Tucker, “Colonial Sovereignty in Manchuria and Manchukuo,” 75.

Duara, Sovereignty and Authenticity, 60.

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puppet state of Japan and that its sovereignty was false. Morgan Young writes in the 1930’s that, …while the Mukden railway incident and the seizure of the strategic points were all carefully planned, there was no very definite plan as to what was to happen after that, except that throughout Manchuria Japan was to rule and that Manchurian resources should enrich Japan. The spiriting away of Henry Pu Yi from Tientsin to Mukden pointed to a definite idea not merely of creating a new State with a puppet ruler, but also to the possibility of eventually placing that ruler on the throne of his ancestors at Peking.35 The common historical narrative of Manchukuo, in the eyes of the world outside of Japan and Manchukuo itself, has always acknowledged that it was a mere “puppet state” that served as the military and economic base for the envisioned Japanese invasion of the Asian mainland that was to follow, and that although Pu-Yi was made nominal ruler, the Kwantung Army held all real power in the government and in national defense.36 If the term “puppet state” were to be defined as one in which, despite notions of formal independence as a nation and international representation, “its government rules not on behalf of the people of that nation but in accordance with the purposes of another country,”37 then for all intents and purposes, Manchukuo was indeed a puppet state. The Chinese often refer to it in historical texts as “wei Manzhouguo,” or illegitimate Manchukuo. However, despite the imperialist intentions of its builders, to fully understand Manchukuo, it is first important to grasp why Manchukuo was not developed as a colony, one whose territory and top-level administration is under the immediate political control of a metropolitan state and has no independent international representation, such as Korea or Taiwan; but as a nation-state, with its own geopolitical and ethno-cultural sovereignty and deserving of recognition from the international community.38 However, for the Japanese builders, Manchukuo was more than the puppet state that the Chinese and the West believed it was. It represented their conception of an ideal state in Asia, an Atlantis or “paradise on earth… under the aegis of the gallant and chivalrous Japanese Army.”39 Furthermore, according to documents published by the South Manchurian Railway Company, after the emergence of Manchukuo, “a new era dawned over Manchuria,”40 ushering in internal order, as well as rapid reforms and development. Japan, through the 35 Morgan Young, Imperial Japan, 1926-1938 (London: William Morrow & Company, 1938), 122.

36 Yamamuro Shin’ichi, Manchuria Under Japanese Dominion, trans. Joshua A. Fogel (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996), 5.

37 Ibid., 3.

38 Duara, Sovereignty and Authenticity, 33.

39 The North-Eastern Affairs Research Institute, How “Manchukuo” Came Into Being (Beijing (Peiping), China, 1932), 12.

40 South Manchuria Railway Company, Answering Questions on Manchuria (Tokyo: The Herald Press, 1939), 62.

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Manchukuo government, committed itself to strengthening the state industry and economy as well as promoting “internal peace” in Manchukuo society. For example, with the mass migrations from Korea (Chosen) and Japan, designed to alleviate the rural crisis at home as well as to “create a new generation of ‘continental Japanese’ who would secure a more thorough domination of… society,”41 that occurred before and after Manchukuo was established, images depicting racial harmony among Japanese, Koreans and Manchurians proliferated during this period.

The notion of the “ideal state” would further highlight the importance of Manchuria to Japan as it extended into the economic realm, with the Japanese builders heralding Manchukuo as the antithesis to Western finance capitalism. The state itself would embark on a bold experiment in establishing state capitalism and planned economic development that epitomized the later fascist structures to be found in Japan itself, promising to be “the only economic structure of its kind in the world.”42 Under a controlled economy, the creation of a Japan-Manchuria bloc economy would be pivotal to the relations between the two nations, wherein the two economies would become integrated and mutually dependent, and development in Manchukuo would be tied to the domestic production goals of Japan. Indeed, Manchukuo served as the “lifeline” of Japan during this period, used to enliven the stagnant domestic economy through the development of industry and infrastructure in Manchuria that were financed by formerly idle public and private capital, as well as serving as a market outlet for Japanese exports that helped put Japan’s factories back in full swing.43 Furthermore, the Japanese relied on Manchukuo for raw materials and resources, with 36,620,000 tons of grains exported to Japan in the six years following the birth of Manchukuo, as noted in Pu-Yi’s autobiography.44 At this time, several forces were shaping the Empire of Japan with the rise of militarism, nationalism, and state capitalism, as championed in the works of Kita Ikki. As the turmoil of the rural and economic crises at home pushed imperialism into new markets and territories such as Manchuria, the idea of a centralized planned economy as a solution and antithesis to Western finance capitalism became prevalent in Japanese economic and political thought, influencing their decision to fashion an “ideal” economic system in the “ideal” state of Manchukuo. In this new economic order, the market disappeared as the “steering wheel” of production and is replaced by the centrally planned state, which essentially aimed to achieve full employment, non-dependence on imports, and thus Japan’s imperialist goal of a self-sufficient bloc, and production at physical maximum capacity. Frederick Pollock argues that because this system relied on economic efficiency and the iron necessity of full employment, state capitalism would be sustainable and in no danger economically, as long as there was an adequate supply of raw materials and foodstuffs, which Manchukuo could provide. The turbulence under the boom and bust trade cycles would disappear, and the instability of excessive profiteering, guesswork and impro-

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41 42 43 44

L. Young, Japan’s Total Empire, 4.

Ibid., 200.

Ibid., 183.

Shin’ichi, Manchuria Under Japanese Dominion, 187.

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visation under finance capitalism would be replaced by an all-comprehensive technological rationality.45 Thus, as the arguments for Manchuria as “Japan’s lifeline,” and Manchukuo as the embodiment of the “ideal nation-state” in Asia gained widespread currency, the Japanese military saw Manchuria and China as necessary for the future of Japanese interests in the region, especially with the envisioned sphere of Japanese self-sufficiency under the idea of the Greater East Asia CoProsperity Sphere, whether “through voluntary cooperation or, if necessary, occupation and coercion.”46 Accordingly, if an imperialist intent distinctly pervaded the enterprise in Manchuria, the question as to why Manchukuo was established as an independent, civilian nation-state rather than a colonial and military state merits a closer look.

With regards to Manchukuo’s nation-statehood, the common belief is that these claims were an avenue to fend off Chinese nationalism that was becoming increasingly disruptive to Japanese institutions in Manchuria such as the Leasehold and the SMR, as well as the Manchurian society in general, or to appease the League of Nations who staunchly condemned Japanese actions in Manchuria and refused to recognize Manchukuo. However, even with the withdrawal of Japan from the League and even as other colonial powers remained ascendant in the international arena, Manchukuo remained a formally independent nation. In truth, the Kwantung Army could only effectively work towards its goals with the consent and help of the Chinese and Japanese elites in Manchukuo, who continually believed in the framework of a sovereign state.

Prasenjit Duara argues that Ishiwara Kanji and his associates in the Kwantung Army, Doihara Kenji and Seishiro Itagaki, “recognized that they could ignore the new discourse of rights and autonomy only at their own peril.”47 When Manchuria was formally occupied in 1931, the framework of imperialism was very different from the period wherein Japan acquired Korea and Taiwan at the turn of the twentieth century. After the First World War ended, the international community largely dispelled the imperialism that was characterized by the political and economic competition of states resulting in the victimization of the many colonial subjects. Instead, “anti-imperial nationalism” was now the driving force behind imperialism, and Manchukuo was a product of this era.48 Furthermore, the ideals of liberalism came to pervade international relations as a result of the atrocities of the Great War, and through the Washington Naval Conference, Japan became a signatory of the Nine Power Treaty in 1922, which committed the countries involved to respect China’s independence, as well as its territorial and administrative integrity. Thus, when the time came to expand Japanese involvement in Manchuria, rather than annex and rule the area as a colony, the Kwantung Army declared the independent nation-state of Manchukuo with the help of a committee of local elites.49 Following the formal declaration of the Manchukuo state in 1932, the government 45 Frederick Pollock, “Is National Socialism a New Order?” in Studies in Philosophy and Social Science, Volume IX (New York: Institute of Social Research, 1941).

46 Duara, Sovereignty and Authenticity, 61.

47 Ibid.

48 Ibid., 1.

49 Tucker, “Colonial Sovereignty in Manchuria and Manchukuo,” 75.

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insisted on its independent sovereignty apart from Japan, and quickly sought recognition from the internationally community, especially those countries in the League of Nations.

Meanwhile, K.K. Kawakami argues that the potent reasons on why Japan did not want to annex Manchuria unlike Korea, and instead establish it as a nation-state independent from Japan are two-fold: firstly, Japan had to be cognizant of the repeated attempts in Korea to assassinate its Japanese leaders, and the virile Chinese nationalists in Manchuria would prove to be just as troublesome; and secondly, for fear of unrestricted Chinese immigration into Japan not unlike Korean immigration, which may worsen the rural crisis and replace Japanese unskilled laborers.50 Thus, many different factors affected Japan’s decision to construct Manchukuo as a nation-state and not as a colony, with either ideological or pragmatic considerations coming into play, or because of the domestic and international framework of the period.

After the success of the Manchurian Incident in 1931 and the establishment of the Manchukuo state in 1932, but prior to Japanese formal recognition of the new nation, the Western powers turned to the League of Nations to settle the Manchurian issue through a commission of inquiry headed by Lord Lytton of the United Kingdom, instead of determinedly opposing Japan on its violation of the Nine Power Treaty.51 The Lytton report, in striving to be impartial to the conflicting views of China and Japan on the issue, did not effectively convey to the Japanese Foreign Ministry that the League was trying to find a middle ground for constructive peace. Thus, although the Commission “was at pains to recognize Japan’s rights and interests in Manchuria, the misgovernment of warlord rule in Manchuria, and the general absence of law and order in China proper,” the nuances of the report were lost on Japan.52 Over the decades, Japan had not made a great commitment to the League of Nations even though it was a founding member, because it saw the League as immensely Western-centric when it rejected Japan’s proposal for a clause on racial equality, and doubted whether the organization could serve Japan and its interests, which mainly focused on the Asia-Pacific region. Morgan Young, writing during this period, explains that the entirety of how the League of Nations handled the Manchurian issue caused irreparable damage to the League. Criticizing the way it handled international issues by force and by economic pressure, he explains that the Manchurian problem “left a feeling that the helpless had been tricked by clever people who could have saved them but thought the expense too great.”53 When the Lytton report on the Manchurian issue was later referred to the General Assembly at Geneva, the Japanese Foreign Ministry tried to present the country as an upstanding international citizen, arguing that because China was plagued with international strife, Japan needed to intervene for the benefit of everyone’s interests.54 However, Japan poorly defended itself and its actions to the other countries in the League, and was not able to court favorable public

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50 51 52 53 54

Kawakami, Manchoukuo, 190-191.

Pyle, Japan Rising, 189.

Ibid., 189-190 M. Young, Imperial Japan, 167.

L. Young, Japan’s Total Empire, 150.

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opinion in the international arena. The Japanese diplomat Matsuoka Yosuke even “compared Japan to the crucified Christ, saying its just cause would one day be universally acknowledged,” undermining any conciliation between Japan and the League.55 The Assembly condemned Japan in a near unanimous vote for its actions in Manchuria and for violating the Nine Power Treaty. Japan thereby announced its withdrawal from the League in 1933.

Thus, because of the legacies of the Lytton Commission and the reciprocal negative reactions of the League of Nations and Japan on the Manchurian issue and how it was handled, the international community would always be hesitant in recognizing the independent sovereignty of Manchukuo for as long as it was in existence, however much autonomy it may have gained from Japan in the years after the fallout with the League. However, the international backlash against Japan was not the sole reason for Japan’s failure to acquire widespread recognition of Manchukuo as a nation-state, despite eventual recognition from several trade partners as well as the Axis powers and their colonial holdings as the decade progressed. Key attributes of Manchukuo itself would have been enough to underscore the argument that Manchukuo was not a legitimate sovereign state, and was indeed merely a puppet state.

The form that Manchukuo took, or perhaps the form that Japan constructed in establishing Manchukuo, undermined its own credibility as a sovereign nation-state to the international community. Prior to the proclamation of Manchukuo as a nation-state in 1932, Japan had already extended far-reaching control, both formal and informal, over all of Manchuria. The Kwantung Army and the SMR maintained their colonial presence and authority over the area, and furthermore, Japan managed Manchukuo in the 1930’s the same way it did the Kwantung Leasehold in the preceding decades following the RussoJapanese War, thus adding to the “layers of disguise”. Just as cession and occupation of Manchuria was disguised in the form of a Leasehold, Manchukuo was disguised by the claims of nation statehood, secession and independence.56

Despite the rhetoric of Manchukuo as an “ideal state” or “earthly paradise,” as well as Japan’s claims that it was an independent nation-state, Japan fashioned Manchukuo in a way that revealed its puppetry to the outside world.

For example, according to a report from the North-Eastern Affairs Institute in Beijing (Peiping) published in 1932: “Instead of preparing the people of the Northeast for self-government it would be more correct to characterize it as an instrument used by the Japanese for the subjugation of the 30 million inhabitants in that region.”57 Furthermore, although the new state was to become the bulwark of peace, co-existence and co-prosperity in East Asia, founded on the wishes of the governed and thoroughly following the open door principle, it was heavily apparent that Manchukuo was a mere puppet state, with its government and military acting under the instruction of, as well as for the benefit of Japan.

Thus, because the colonial structures in Manchuria remained in place with the establishment of Manchukuo, and were “important components of its operational and ideological structures,”58 Manchukuo closely resembled Japa55 56 57 58

Pyle, Japan Rising, 190.

Tucker, “Colonial Sovereignty in Manchuria and Manchukuo,” 84-85.

The North-Eastern Affairs Research Institute, How “Manchukuo” Came Into Being, 12.

Tucker, “Colonial Sovereignty in Manchuria and Manchukuo,” 76.

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nese colonial Manchuria in its territory, sovereignty and government, and Japan itself undermined its own claims that Manchukuo was an independent sovereign state. Furthermore, as Japan proclaimed to the world the independence of Manchukuo, it could not conceal the struggle among the different groups holding power in the new empire, such as the Kwantung Army and the SMR, which revealed that Japanese authority was still prevalent in the area.59 The Japanese presentation of the sovereignty of Manchukuo was also very ambiguous, as exemplified in the way that Japan treated Pu-Yi as chief executive and later Emperor of Manchutikuo, who was forced to bow toward Japanese battlefields and even pay respects to the Meiji Emperor who oversaw the initial Japanese occupation of Manchuria.60 Additionally, the commanding officer in the Kwantung Army, also serving as the Japanese ambassador to Manchukuo, had veto power over his decisions. Thus, Pu-Yi’s denigration at the hands of his Japanese handlers serves as an appropriate analogy to the Japanese treatment of Manchukuo as a whole, since Pu-Yi as emperor was the symbol of the sovereignty of the state.

One other example that underscores the ambiguity of the Manchukuo statehood is the Japan-Manchukuo Protocol that Japanese officials and Pu-Yi signed in September of 1932 that gave far-reaching powers to the Japanese military stationed in the area and designated to maintain its security and that of Manchukuo. The Kwantung Army, alongside the SMR, developed Manchuria thoroughly by using the state as a veil, but the Protocol allowed it to mobilize Manchuria’s resources and people, essentially acting as it pleased. The Protocol itself was heavily criticized by the international community because of its close resemblance to the Japan-Korea Protocol that established Korea as a protectorate or dependency of Japan after the Russo-Japan War. Although Japan argued that Manchukuo was sovereign because of its ability to conduct diplomacy and sign treaties with other nations, the Japan-Manchukuo protocol only served to highlight the ambiguity of its sovereignty.61 The 1932 report from Beijing postulates that it is “clear that the conclusion of the Japan-Manchukuo protocol can have but one meaning—the last step preliminary to the final absorption of ‘Manchukuo’ by Japan.”62 Lastly, although Japan formally withdrew from the League of Nations, rejecting the premises of international liberalism and thus contributing to its demise, it still attempted to gain interaction and acceptance for Manchukuo as a sovereign nation-state according to the diplomatic norms of the international community. The contradictions inherent in Japan’s dealings with Manchukuo revealed that Japan “toyed with [its] sovereignty as if it were the superior in a hierarchy of states.”63 Furthermore, the early rhetoric that proclaimed equality in relations between Japan and Manchukuo as independent states slowly transformed into “neighbor” (linshi), to “friendly country” (youbang), to “ally” (mengbang), to “parental country” (qinbang) by a decade after the birth of Man-

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59 60 61 62 63

M. Young, Imperial Japan, 227.

Tucker, “Colonial Sovereignty in Manchuria and Manchukuo,” 89.

Ibid., 83-84.

The North-Eastern Affairs Research Institute, How “Manchukuo” Came Into Being, 92.

Tucker, “Colonial Sovereignty in Manchuria and Manchukuo,” 87.

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chukuo, as seen in the official public documents from the state.64 These changes in the relationship between Japan and Manchukuo thereby led to unequal, hierarchical ties and severely weakened the ideals that founded Manchukuo, such as the vision of co-existence and co-prosperity.

Conclusion The existence of Manchukuo was plagued right from its inception. When the new “nation-state” was established, it quickly sought recognition from the League of Nations that it was independently sovereign. For the most part, however, the international community was not convinced. Japan had maintained a presence in Manchuria since it acquired a sphere of influence over it as a result of the Russo-Japanese War in 1905, and since then, institutions such as the South Manchuria Railway Company and the Kwantung Army established extensive formal and informal ties with the area. Manchuria figured into the Empire of Japan, whose imperialism was driven by several pragmatic and ideological factors, as the “lifeline” to which Japan came to depend on for raw materials and resources, and was envisioned to be at the center of a sphere of self-sufficiency under the guise of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.

Manchuria in the next few decades was marked by internal chaos and disorganization, and thus, for as long as the Japanese had no formal sovereignty in the area, they were caught in a precarious position. The turbulent political environment culminated into the “Manchurian Incident” in 1931, where the Kwantung Army set off a small explosion in a Mukden railway line, blaming Chinese nationalists as the perpetrators, as a pretense to formally occupy the whole of Manchuria. A year later, the Kwantung Army proclaimed the birth of Manchukuo.

In the eyes of the West, Manchukuo was but a mere puppet state, but Imperial Japan saw it as something different. In line with the rhetoric of formal equality among Asian nations under a regional alliance, with Japan at the forefront, Manchukuo exemplified Japan’s conception of an idyllic state in Asia that was to be under its aegis. The notion of Manchukuo as an “ideal” nation-state was two-fold: the state was to be a cultural paradise where the peoples of East Asia lived together in racial harmony, and further, the state was to embark on a new kind of planned economic system unparalleled by any in the rest of the world. Thus, Manchukuo was formed as a nation-state proclaiming these ideals, but the Japanese builders also had pragmatic considerations in mind. To work effectively towards their goals, Ishiwara Kanji and his associates in the Kwantung Army needed to work with Chinese elites in the area who believed in autonomy and the framework of a sovereign state. Furthermore, the international environment in the period largely dispelled traditional imperialism, and thus, they had to take this into account to gain credibility, as well as to appease the international backlash over the Manchurian Incident.

The failure of Japanese efforts to gain recognition of Manchukuo’s status as a nation-state was due to several factors. First, colonial structures that dominated Manchuria such as the SMR and the Kwantung Army were still prevalent during the existence of Manchukuo, and thus, it was heavily apparent to the outside world that it was merely a puppet state. When the Manchurian 64 Shin’ichi, Manchuria Under Japanese Dominion, 186.

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issue was brought to the League of Nations, the legacies of the Lytton Commission and the vote that followed condemning Japanese actions in the area would never allow the international community to recognize Manchukuo as a nationstate, however much autonomy it may have gained from Japan in the years that followed. Furthermore, Japan’s withdrawal from the League of Nations, thereby rejecting completely what the League stood for, also contradicted its efforts to gain recognition of Manchukuo’s sovereignty in the international community. Lastly, Japan’s treatment of Manchukuo further undermined its sovereignty, such as the treaties they signed where Japan and the Kwantung Army could still act freely in the area, as well as its denigration of the Manchutikuo Emperor Pu-Yi. In the end, the Japanese conception of an ideal “nation-state” under its guidance would never be in line with one that followed the Wilsonian ideals championed by the League of Nations.

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Tucker, David. “Colonial Sovereignty in Manchuria and Manchukuo.”

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