Quotulatiousness

January 28, 2022

Spartan glossary

Filed under: Europe, Greece, History — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

As part of a multi-post series at A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry on explaining (and debunking) the modern day mythology of classic-era Sparta, Bret Devereaux compiled a useful glossary of terms that will be of use as I’ll be excerpting several sections of his series for today’s and several future QotD entries. I’ve added a few entries that seem necessary and expanded some others, but these are enclosed in square brackets “[ ]” to show they’re not directly from Bret’s original post.

Leonidas at Thermopylae by Jacques-Louis David, 1814.
Wikimedia Commons.

Acclamation. A vote held by acclamation (sometimes called a “voice vote”) is a vote where, instead of getting an exact count of yes and no votes, the outcome is judged by the volume of people calling out yes or no. Obviously it would be very hard to tell who had really won a close vote. This is used in modern democracies only for very lopsided (typically unanimous) votes; in Classical Sparta, this was the only voting system, votes were never counted.

[Agoge. The Spartan education system for boys (ἀγωγή, pronounced ah-go-GAY). “Spartan boys were, at age seven, removed from their families and grouped into herds (agelai) under the supervision of a single adult male Spartan – except for the heirs to the two hereditary kings, who were exempt. Order was kept by allowing the older boys to beat and whip the younger boys (Xen. Lac. 2.2). The boys were intentionally underfed (Plut. Lyc. 17.4; Xen. Lac. 2.5-6). They were thus encouraged to steal in order to make up the difference, but severely beaten if caught (Plut. Lyc. 17.3-4; Xen. Lac. 2.6-9). … We are not told, but it seems unavoidable that in a system that intentionally under-feeds groups of boys to force them to steal, that the weakest and smallest boys will end up in a failure spiral where the lack of food leads to further weakness and further victimization at the hands of other boys. I should note that while ancient parenting and schooling was certainly more violent than what we do now – the Spartan system was recognized as abnormally violent towards these boys, even by the standards of the time.”]

Apella. The Apella was the popular assembly of Sparta, consisting of all adult male Spartiates over the age of thirty. The Apella was presided over by the Ephors and all votes were by acclamation. The Apella did not engage in debate, but could only vote “yes” or “no”. The Gerousia had the power to ignore the decisions of the Apella. [In most other Greek poleis the equivalent body would be called the ekklesia.]

Ephor. The Ephors were a board of five officials in Sparta, elected annually by the Apella (technically plus the two kings). The Ephors oversaw the two hereditary Spartan kings and could even bring a king up on charges before the Gerousia. In practice, the Ephors – not the kings – wielded the most political power in Sparta. The Ephors were also responsible for ritually declaring war on the helots every year. The institution as a whole is sometimes collectively referred to as the Ephorate.

Gerousia. The Gerousia – literally a council of old men (the members were “Gerontes” – literally “old men”) which consisted of thirty members, 28 elected (by acclamation in the Apella) plus the two hereditary kings. The elected members all had to be over the age of 60. Gerontes were elected for life. The Gerousia decided what motions could be voted on by the Apella and had the power to cancel any decision of the Apella. It also functioned as a court, with the power to try Spartiates and even the kings. In practice, with the Ephors, the Gerousia wielded the real political power in Sparta.

Helot. The subjugated slave class of Sparta, which made up the overwhelming majority of its residents, the Helots did the agricultural labor which kept the Spartan state running. Helots can be further subdivided into the Laconian helots (those living in Sparta proper) and the Messenian helots (the populace of Messenia which had been reduced to helotry after being conquered by Sparta in the 7th century B.C.). Helots often fought in Sparta’s armies, apparently as screening light-infantry forces (and also as camp followers and servants).

Homoioi. See: Spartiates.

Hoplite. Hoplites were Greek heavy infantry soldiers who fought with a heavy round shield (sometimes called a “hoplon” but more correctly an “aspis“) and a spear, typically in armor.

Hypomeiones. One of several sub-citizen underclasses in Sparta, the Hypomeiones (literally “the inferiors”) were former Spartiates who had fallen off the bottom of the Spartan social system, either through cowardice or (more likely) being unable to pay the contribution to the Syssitia. Though free, they had no role in government.

[Kings. Sparta had two royal lines and two kings at all times. The kings were drawn from the Agaids and the Eurypontid families. In theory, both kings had the same set of powers. The kings’ wealth was derived from lands allocated from territory taken from the perioikoi, and the eldest son of the current king in each line was the presumptive heir. On this basis, the kings were almost always the two wealthiest men in Sparta.]

[Kleroi (sing. kleros). The (theoretically) equal plots of land allocated to each Spartiate, worked on his behalf by Helots to generate the contributions to the individual Spartiate‘s Syssitia. Up to half of the production of the kleros had to be paid to the Spartiate by the Helots who worked that land. At some point, the kleroi became inheritable property, which facilitated the accumulation of wealth in fewer and fewer hands, contributing to the demographic collapse of the Spartiate class.]

Lycurgus. [The name of the (almost certainly) mythical founder figure of Sparta.] Lycurgus had been the younger brother of one of Sparta’s two kings, but had left Sparta to travel when his brother died, so that he would be no threat to his young nephew. After a time, the Spartans begged Lycurgus to come back and reorganize society, and Lycurgus – with the blessing of the Oracle at Delphi – radically remade Spartan society into the form it would have for the next 400 years. He did not merely change the government, but legislated every facet of life, from child-rearing to marriage, to the structure of households, the economic structure, everything. Once he had accomplished that, Lycurgus went back to Delphi, but before he left he made all the Spartans promise not to change his laws until he returned. Once the Oracle told him his laws were good, he committed suicide, so that he would never return to Sparta, thus preventing his laws from ever being over turned. So the Spartans never changed Lycurgus’ laws, which had been declared perfect by Apollo himself. Subsequently, the Spartans accorded Lycurgus divine honors, and within Sparta he was worshiped as a god.

Mothax. One of several sub-citizen underclasses in Sparta, the Mothakes were non-citizen men, generally thought to have been the children of Spartiate fathers and helot mothers, brought up alongside their full-citizen half-siblings. Mothakes fought in the Spartan army alongside spartiates, but had no role in government. A surprising number of innovative Spartan commanders – Gylippus and Lysander in particular – came from this class.

Neodamodes. One of several sub-citizen underclasses in Sparta, the Neodamodes were freed helots, granted disputed land on the border with Elis. Though they served in the Spartan army, the Neodamodes lacked any role in government. We might consider the helots who served in Brasidas’ army, the Brasideioi as a type of the Neodamodes (they did settle in the same place).

Peers: See: Spartiates.

Perioikoi (sing. Perioikos). The perioikoi (literally the “dwellers around”) were one of several sub-citizen underclasses in Sparta. The perioikoi were residents of communities which were subjected to the Spartan state, but not reduced to helotry. They lived in their own settlements under the control of the Spartan state, but with limited internal autonomy. The perioikoi seem to have included Sparta’s artisans, producing weapons, armor and tools; they were also made to fight in Sparta’s armies as hoplites.

Polis (pl. poleis). A complicated and effectively untranslatable term, polis most nearly means “community” and is often translated as “city-state”. However, there were poleis in Greece without cities (Sparta being one – a fact often concealed by translators rendering polis as city). Instead a polis consists of a body of citizens, their state, and the territory it controls (including smaller villages but not other subjugated poleis), usually but not always centered on a single urban center. Poleis are almost by definition independent and self-governing (that is, they have eleutheria and autonomia).

Skiritai. The Skiritai were one of several sub-citizen underclasses in Sparta. Dwellers in Skiritis, the mountains between Laconia and Arcadia, they were mostly rural people who were free, but subject to the Spartan state, similar to the perioikoi. The main difference between the two was that the Skiritai – perhaps because of their mountainous homes – served not as hoplites, but as an elite corps of light infantry in the Spartan army.

Spartiates, also called peers or homoioi. The citizen class at Sparta, the Spartiates were a closed ethnic aristocracy. Membership required both a Spartiate father and a Spartiate mother, as well as successful completion of the Agoge and membership in a Syssitia. Spartiate males over thirty were the only individuals in Sparta who could participate in government, although the political power of the average Spartiate was extremely limited.

Syssitia (sing. syssition). The Syssitia were the common mess-groups into which all adult Spartiates were divided. Each member of the Syssitia contributed a portion of the mess-group’s food; the contribution was a condition of citizenship. Spartiates who could not make the contribution lost citizenship and became Hypomeiones.

QotD: The Myth of Spartan Equality

Filed under: Europe, Greece, History, Law, Quotations — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

This idea – the degree of equality and cohesion – is what I prefer to call the Myth of Spartan Equality, and it’s going to be our target today.

Where does this idea come from? Well, it comes from the same pro-Spartan sources we discussed last time. Plutarch claims that Lycurgus‘ decision to banish money from Sparta essentially removed greed by making all of the Spartans equal (Plut. Lyc. 9.1-4) – or equally poor – though we should note that Plutarch is writing 900 years after Lycurgus (again, probably not a real person) was supposed to have lived. Xenophon notes approvingly that Lycurgus forbade the Spartans from engaging in productive business of any kind, making them thus unable to accumulate wealth (Xen. Lac. 7.1-6). Land was supposed to be distributed equally to each full Spartan citizen – the spartiates or homoioi (we’ll define these terms in a second) in equal plots called kleroi.

This idea – the Myth of Spartan Equality – is perhaps the single “biggest idea” in the conception of the Spartan state, rivaled only by the myth of Spartan military excellence (don’t worry, we’ll get there!). There is something deeply appealing, at a bedrock emotional level, to the idea of a perfectly equal society like that. And that myth of equality has prompted all sorts of thinkers from all sorts of eras (Rousseau, most famously) – including our own – to be willing to look past Sparta’s many, many failings.

And on the face of it, it does sound like a very equal society – practically a collectivist utopia. It is a pleasant vision. Unfortunately, it is also a lie.

[…] every Greek polis had a three-level layer-cake of status: the citizen body, free non-citizens (like foreigners), and non-free persons (slaves). You could – and the Greeks did – divide that top group by wealth and birth and so on, but we’ll get to that a bit later in this post and the next. For now, let’s stick with the three-level layer cake. Sparta follows this scheme neatly.

At the top were the Spartiates, the full-citizen male Spartans. According to Herodotus there were once 8,000 of these (Hdt. 7.234.2); supposedly 9,000 based on the initial number of equal land plots (kleroi) handed out (Plut. Lyc. 8.3 – or rather than saying “handed out” we might say “seized”). Of course these are tallies of Spartiate males, but women could be of citizen stock (but not citizens themselves) and we ought to imagine an equal number of spartiate women at any given time. For a child to be born into the citizen class (and thus eligible for the agoge and future full citizenship), he had to have a citizen father and a citizen mother. We’ll deal with the bastards a bit further down. Also, the spartiates were often also called the homoioi, sometimes translated as “peers” but literally meaning something like “the equals”. As we’ll see, that equality is notional at best, but this ideal of citizen equality was something Sparta advertised about itself.

[…]

But the final word on if we should consider the helots fully non-free is in their sanctity of person: they had none, at all, whatsoever. Every year, in autumn by ritual, the five Spartan magistrates known as the ephors declared war between Sparta and the helots – Sparta essentially declares war on part of itself – so that any spartiate might kill any helot without legal or religious repercussions (Plut. Lyc. 28.4; note also Hdt. 4.146.2). Isocrates – admittedly a decidedly anti-Spartan voice – notes that it was a religious, if not legal, infraction to kill slaves everywhere in Greece except Sparta (Isoc. 12.181). As a matter of Athenian law, killing a slave was still murder (the same is true in Roman law). One assumes these rules were often ignored by slave-holders of course – we know that many such laws in the American South were routinely flouted. Slavery is, after all, a brutal and inhuman institution by its very nature. The absence of any taboo – legal or religious – against the killing of helots marks the institution as uncommonly brutal not merely by Greek standards, but by world-historical standards.

We may safely conclude that the helots were not only enslaved persons, but that of all slaves, they had some of the fewest protections – effectively none, not even protections in-name-only.

Bret Devereaux, “Collections: This. Isn’t. Sparta. Part II: Spartan Equality”, A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry, 2019-08-23.

January 16, 2022

QotD: Once “discovered”, colonization of the Americas was inevitable

Filed under: Americas, Economics, Europe, History, Quotations — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

Another major structural issue is this: what precisely would our pious anthropology professors have had Europeans do with the New World once they found it?

This is not a joke. Political reality has a way of crashing in on the pipe dreams of liberal academics. The reality is, if the English had not colonised, then the French or the Dutch would have. If the Spanish had not colonised, the Portuguese would have. This would have shifted the balance of power at home, and any European country which had not colonised, would have been relegated to secondary status. And it is easy to overestimate the amount of control that European governments actually had. As soon as the New World was discovered, many fisherman and traders sailed across the Atlantic on their own, in hopes of circumventing tax authorities and scoring a fortune. Long before colonies were established in most regions, the New World was crawling with Europeans whose superior technology gave them an edge in combat. Nonetheless, it was extremely dangerous for Europeans to provoke fights with Native Americans, and most of them tried to avoid this when possible. In retrospect, one could in theory be impressed that so many European governments showed a genuine concern to rein in the worst excesses of their subjects, with an express eye to protecting the Indians from depredation. The logic was simple: they attempted to protect their subjects at home, in order to secure good order and a better tax base. So they would do the same to their subjects in the New World. For a long time, few Europeans harboured any master plan of pushing the Native Americans out of their own lands. In more densely populated regions such as Mexico, such an idea must have seemed an absurdity. Reality tends to occur ad hoc. Boundaries often took generations to move, and would have seemed fixed at the time. For several centuries, many Europeans assumed that they would long be a minority on the North American continent. In Mexico and Peru, they always have been.

Population density mattered, a lot, when it came to pre-modern global migrations. China and India were “safe” from excessive European colonisation because they had the densest populations in the world, and they were likewise largely immune to any diseases brought by Europeans. SubSaharan Africa had a lower population density depleted by slave raiding, but they still outnumbered European colonists by a large margin throughout the colonial era — again because European contact did not decimate their numbers through disease the way it did in the Americas. It is worth noting that no one claims that Europeans committed genocide in India, Asia or even Africa, although their technological advantages gave them every opportunity had they actually been of a genocidal mindset (as were for example the Mongols). In fact, the European track record shows them to be almost shockingly un-genocidal, given their clear technological advantages over the rest of the world for a period of several centuries. Few other civilisations, given similar power over so much of the world’s people, would have behaved in a less reprehensible manner. This is not to give Europeans a pat on the back. Rather it is to point out that Europeans are regularly painted as the very worst society on Earth, when in fact they had the power to do far, far more evil than they actually did. Let us at least acknowledge this fact.

Jeff Fynn-Paul, “The myth of the ‘stolen century'”, Spectator Magazine, 2020-09-26.

December 27, 2021

Celebrating Saturnalia with Cato’s Globi

Filed under: Europe, Food, History — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

Tasting History with Max Miller
Published 15 Dec 2020

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De Agricultura by Cato the Elder: https://amzn.to/3qxL5P5
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Subtitles: Jose Mendoza

GLOBI
ORIGINAL 2ND CENTURY BC RECIPE (From De Agricultura by Cato the Elder)
Globi to be made thus: Mix the cheese and spelt in the same way. Make as many as desired. Pour fat into a hot copper vessel, and fry one or two at a time, turning them frequently with two sticks, and remove when done. Coat with honey, sprinkle with poppy-seeds, and serve.

MODERN RECIPE
INGREDIENTS
– 1 Cup (240g) Ricotta Cheese
– 1 Cup and 1 tablespoon (120g) Spelt, Durum or other whole grain flour
– 1 Quart (1 L) of fat or oil
– 1/3 Cup (80ml) Honey
– Poppy Seeds

METHOD
1. Mix the cheese and flour in a large bowl, then form it into balls about 1 inch across. This recipe should make 12-15 balls.
2. Heat the oil over a high heat until it reaches 350°F (175°C). Turn heat to medium and fry two to three balls at a time, turning every 10 to 15 seconds with tongs. At 60 seconds, begin to check the color; once they are a golden brown (60-90 seconds) take them out and set them on a wire rack over paper towels to drain. Repeat until all of the globi are fried.
3. Dip the dried globi in honey (heating the honey can help if it is too thick). Then sprinkle with poppy seeds and serve.

PHOTO CREDITS
Saturn: By inconnu – User:Jean-Pol GRANDMONT (2011), CC BY 3.0, https://bit.ly/39OKgLF
A Statue of Chronos: By Rufus46 – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://bit.ly/3giv9eH
Pileus: By Marie-Lan Nguyen (2009), CC BY 2.5, https://bit.ly/3osYo1l
Roman Collared Slaves: Ashmolean Museum, CC BY-SA 2.0 https://bit.ly/36OoIgz
Candles Oberflacht: Landesmuseum Württemberg, CC BY-SA 3.0 https://bit.ly/2Lf9yZp
Roman Figurines: Carole Raddato from FRANKFURT, Germany, CC BY-SA 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/…

#tastinghistory #saturnalia #globi #romancooking

December 18, 2021

Saturnalia

Filed under: Europe, History, Religion — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Historia Civilis
Published 17 Dec 2016

Io, Saturnalia!

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December 10, 2021

History Summarized: Britain and the Empire

Filed under: Africa, Asia, Britain, China, History, Humour, India, Military — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Overly Sarcastic Productions
Published 20 Aug 2021

How is it that the history of some islands off the northern coast of Europe balloons into a worldwide history? Empire is how! Let’s dig into the history of Britain since Union of the Crowns of England and Scotland in 1603, and follow that narrative through the monumental rise and precipitous fall of the British Empire.

Special thanks to the community members on Discord who assisted me with my script: Corvin the Crow, Johnny, Jdedredhed, Joud, Jéuname, Klieg, RileyTheProcrastinator, The Missing Link, and thesleepingmeerkat

SOURCES & Further Reading: The Great Courses Lecture series Foundations of Western Civilization II: A History of the Modern Western World by Robert Buchols lectures 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 30, The History Of England volumes 3 Rebellion, 4 Revolution & 5 Dominion by Peter Ackroyd, Scotland: A Concise History by Fitzroy MacLean, The Great Cities in History by John Julius Norwich, A Concise History of Wales by Geraint H. Jenkins, Sea Power: The History and Geopolitics of the World’s Oceans by James Stavridis.

Our content is intended for teenage audiences and up.

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November 26, 2021

The Germans Learn to Love Their Slaves – WAH 047 – November 1942, Pt. 2

Filed under: Europe, Germany, Greece, History, Italy, Military, WW2 — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

World War Two
Published 25 Nov 2021

In November 1942 the resistance fight in many parts of Europe becomes a part of the regular military war. In Germany, the Germans discover humanity while the German mass murders see no end.
(more…)

October 19, 2021

QotD: Slaves and indentured servants in early Virginia

Filed under: Americas, Britain, History, Law, Quotations, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

I saw from the start that some of Nikole [Hannah-Jones]’s 1619 rubbish merely exposed her utter ignorance of her subject. The blacks whom the Virginians bought from a Portuguese slave trader in 1619 were treated like whites – that is, they were treated as indentured servants who after 10 years were freed, given some farm tools, pointed at a plot of land and left to get on with it. (Some of them got on so well that before mid-century they were buying white and black indentured servants themselves to work their expanding acreages.)

One could justly say these early-arriving blacks were not treated exactly like poor English whites who – unless convicted of a crime – had always chosen to sign their ten-year indenture, to pay for transport across the Atlantic and survival while they found their feet. The closer analogy is to some Scottish whites. More than one clan chief sold some clansmen on indentures across the Atlantic when funds were low, and in 1707 a leading Scottish parliamentarian informed his peers that there was no need for them to fix the disastrous financial situation by accepting the English payment and voting their own abolition – Scotland’s elite could keep their separate parliament and avoid national bankruptcy by selling enough poor Scots to the Americas instead.

When the Portuguese offered to sell black slaves, those 1619 Virginians could only buy them as ten-year-indentured servants. They were still wholly under English common law and Lord Mansfield’s 1770s ruling merely echoed a two-centuries earlier ruling of Elizabethan judges that English common law knew no such state as slavery. It took the Virginians decades to start even questioning this and almost a century to unlearn it fully. As late as the 1690s, a black man who petitioned the Virginia council that his white master had made him serve not for ten years but for twelve “contrarie to all right and justice“, was freed by their order. If Nikole had called it the 1705 project, I’d have thought she at least knew something about the actual faults of the country whose history she was travestying. Only positive statute law can override English common law’s aversion to slavery, said Lord Mansfield – and 1705 was the year the Virginia legislature completed providing it. I knew from the start that Nikole was not just lying about all that, not just indifferent to the truth of all that – she was also pretty clueless about it.

Niall Kilmartin, “Critical Race Theorist literally knows nothing”, Samizdata, 2021-07-16.

October 11, 2021

QotD: Columbus Day

Filed under: Americas, Europe, History, Quotations, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

It was Columbus Day yesterday, where historically, Americans have celebrated the discovery of the “New world” by Christopher Columbus’ little fleet in 1492. Now, historically there were previous discoveries of parts of the Americas by Europeans. Vikings encountered Newfoundland in roughly 1000 and even had a small settlement there. Some writings indicate that an explorer named Brendan encountered the Americas in the sixth century AD. Chinese apparently had landed on the Pacific coast as early as 3300 years ago.

But when Columbus landed on the Caribbean Island of San Salvador in the Bahamas, he set off a wave of exploration and colonization which the previous discoveries had not. The Viking and Chinese settlements did not last, but the post-Columbian ones did. And that is an incredibly significant historical event, no matter how you view history.

In the 1970s it became popular on the left to consider Columbus a monster, a villain who gave the innocent and peaceful natives diseases, enslaved them, wiped out their culture, and destroyed all that was good. This theory teaches that the American natives were all good and peaceful and wonderful and just and true and righteous. They all ate free trade non-GMO gluten free food and were perfectly multicultural and non-judgmental, free of war and with perfect gender equality. Columbus, an evil white European showed up and ruined it all. In short, Columbus he infected the Eden-like paradise of the Americas with his Euro-masculinity.

And the origin of this theory is that of the Noble Savage. There were people living outside the evil corrupting influence of White European Males, and Columbus found them and ruined everything. That’s why when you hear someone talking about this, they never mention the nearly-constant wars, cannibalism, human sacrifice, rape, pillaging, genocide, disease, poverty, and incredible lack of technical and scientific, artistic, and literary knowledge of the native peoples of America.

Columbus was a man of his time, and a particularly greedy one at that. He ripped off his own people, acting as the King’s supreme representative and authority in the Americas (which at the time was not known to be as vast as it is). He took credit for what others did, he took over what they developed, he took the riches they found, and so on. And yes, he and his men enslaved the local natives, and because of their culture of “free love” spread European venereal diseases among the natives they were not exposed to before. Entire tribes were wiped out by the infections they had no resistances to.

Of course, the natives spread disease among the Europeans they hadn’t been exposed to, either, such as Typhus and Syphilis, and the natives were murderous and killed Europeans but those are details that modern revisionist historians either ignore, gloss over, or present as a rough sort of justice: they had it coming for daring to set foot in the Eden of the Americas.

Objectively, neither side was particularly admirable, as one would expect if you understand innate and original sin. If what’s bad comes from within us rather than outside influences, then its spread evenly throughout all humanity without regard to creed, culture, race, or location. The natives were bad because people are bad. The Spaniards and Columbus (who was Italian) was bad, because people are bad.

Christopher Taylor, “Eden Ruined By Italian”, Word Around the Net, 2018-10-09.

October 2, 2021

This Is Sparta: The Material Remains of a Warrior Polis

Filed under: Europe, Greece, History, Science — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

Thersites the Historian
Published 1 Oct 2021

A video about the material remains to be found at Sparta, or perhaps more precisely, why there isn’t more to see given the obvious importance of Sparta.

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I was unaware that Sparta, after its final military defeat by Roman forces in 192 BC, was effectively turned into a full-time “Living History” theme park for the benefit of tourists … subsidized by the Roman state.

September 12, 2021

QotD: The US Supreme Court’s Dred Scott decision of 1857

Filed under: History, Law, Liberty, Quotations, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

Scott was a slave who claimed to be free because his owners had taken him to U.S. states where slavery was outlawed; in ruling on the case, Chief Justice Roger Taney, writing for a 7-2 majority, found that Blacks were “beings of an inferior order” who, under the constitution, “had no rights which the white man was bound to respect.”

The Scott decision is now considered an important contributing cause of the U.S. Civil War, which began four years later. It proved, beyond anyone’s doubt, President Abraham Lincoln’s maxim that a sovereign nation could not survive half-slave and half-free. Northern states might be capable of abolishing slavery locally, but this “abolition” would never apply to imported slaves from elsewhere considered as property. One cannot fully understand U.S. history, never mind the progress of its law, without studying and appreciating Taney’s cruel language.

And, indeed, for the world at large, Dred Scott is an unsurpassed reminder of the distinction between law and justice, and of the limitations of a highly reverenced written constitution. Taney not only accepted the (irrefutable) argument that the constitution explicitly countenanced slavery: he wrote fawningly of the Founding Fathers as great men, “high in their sense of honour,” who could never have upheld absolute equality before the law on one hand while hypocritically denying it to Blacks in practice. The Declaration of Independence’s claim that “all men are created equal,” the ex-slaveowner Taney wrote, was never understood by anyone to include inferior races.

Abolitionists of the time saw the innate hypocrisy: the contemporary newspaper editor William Lloyd Garrison risked his life by calling the constitution “a league with hell.” But [University of Buffalo law professor Matthew] Steilen thinks it is better not to expose Black students to the details of that debate. Reading Taney’s “gratuitously insulting and demeaning” words and arguments, he tweeted, is likely to, and there is no other way to put this, injure their feelings. To inquire too deeply into the detail of slavery, and of the law that shielded it, would require Black students to “relive the humiliation” of Dred Scott.

Colby Cosh, “Another Day in a Feelings-First World”, NP Platformed, 2021-06-09.

September 10, 2021

The German Slave Economy – WW2 Special

Filed under: Economics, Europe, Germany, History, Military, WW2 — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

World War Two
Published 9 Sep 2021

To fuel the German war economy, the Nazis force millions of Prisoners of War, Concentration Camp inmates and civilians from all over Europe to work for in their factories and on their farms as slave laborers under harsh circumstances.
(more…)

September 3, 2021

Anti-Slavery Patrols – The West Africa Squadron

Filed under: Africa, Americas, Britain, History, Law, Liberty, Military — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Drachinifel
Published 1 Dec 2018

Title says it all really, we look at something that was definitely worth doing, which really should have been done much sooner.

July 24, 2021

Fighting for Freedom: The Weapons and Strategies of the 1811 Slave Revolt (feat. InRangeTV)

Filed under: Americas, History, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 06:00

Atun-Shei Films
Published 22 Jul 2021

I highly recommend visiting the 1811 Kid Ory Historic House during your next trip to the New Orleans area! https://www.1811kidoryhistorichouse.com/

Karl from @InRangeTV was recently in town, and we visited the plantation house where the 1811 Slave Revolt began. In this video, we examine the uprising primarily from a military perspective, discussing the weaponry the enslaved army used, the tactics they employed, and the likelihood of the rebels’ long-term success if their battle with the local planter militia had gone a little bit differently.

The 1811 Revolt, despite being the largest rebellion of enslaved people in American history, has not been the subject of much scholarship, and in many ways is still poorly understood. Regardless, we were surprised how much our visit forced us to rethink the conventional historical narrative. In Karl’s companion video, we discuss alternative perspectives of the revolt and speculate about what truths may have been lost to history. Watch Karl’s video [embedded below].

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~FURTHER READING/VIEWING~

Daniel Rasmussen. American Uprising: The Untold Story of America’s Largest Slave Revolt (2011). Harper Perennial

“Freedom or Death: The Louisiana Slave Revolt of 1811” (2019). Atun-Shei Films https://youtu.be/1zUPNtP3Yn0

“Creoles, Kaintucks, and the Culture War of Early New Orleans” (2020). Atun-Shei Films https://youtu.be/i0mDwK47Qq0

1811 Slave Revolt – An Alternative Perspective (feat. Atun-Shei)

InRangeTV
Published 22 Jul 2021

InRange is entirely viewer supported:
https://www.patreon.com/inrangetv

First off, I must give very special thanks to John McCusker for his gracious hospitality for allowing us to film, as well as for his research and candid approach to the history, and the social ramifications of this topic that resonate still to this day.

If you’re in New Orleans, or visiting, make sure you take time to go see the 1811 Kid Ory House and say hi to John from InRange & Atun-Shei:
https://www.1811kidoryhistorichouse.com/

On one of my more recent trips to New Orleans, I got together with Atun-Shei and we visited the Andry plantation house where the 1811 Slave Revolt began. In this video, we re-examine the uprising with fresh perspectives on what actually may have happened and contrast it to the relatively tiny amount of academic research done in relation to the actual significance of this important American revolt for freedom.

The 1811 Revolt, despite being the largest rebellion of enslaved people in American history, has not been the source of much scholarship, and in many ways is still poorly understood. Regardless, we were surprised how much our visit forced us to rethink the conventional historical narrative. In Atun-Shei’s companion video, we examine the uprising primarily from a military perspective, discussing the weaponry the rebels used, the tactics they employed, and the likelihood of the rebels’ long-term success if their battle with the local planter militia had gone a little bit differently.

~FURTHER READING/VIEWING~

Daniel Rasmussen.
American Uprising: The Untold Story of America’s Largest Slave Revolt (2011). Harper Perennial

July 15, 2021

Haitian independence was bought with blood … a lot of blood

Filed under: Americas, Books, France, History — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Theodore Dalrymple recently read a book by Sherbrooke University professor Jean-Pierre Le Glaunec on the Battle of Vertières which ended Napoleon’s attempt to recapture the island and re-enslave the population:

Haiti is one of those countries that you can leave after a visit, but that never quite leaves you. Its history is so heroic and so tragic, its present condition often so appalling, its culture so fascinating and its people so attractive, that even if it does not become the main focus of your intellectual attention, you never quite lose your interest in it, or in its history.

That is why, recently in a Parisian bookshop, I bought a book about the Battle of Vertières, the last gasp of the expedition sent out by Napoleon to Haiti, or Saint-Domingue as it was still known (“The Pearl of the Antilles” by those who profited from it), to return it to the condition of a vast slave plantation. General Leclerc, Napoleon’s brother-in-law, commanded, and 50,000 French soldiers, including Leclerc, lost their lives in this ill-fated and, from our current moral standpoint, malign expedition. Six weeks after its final defeat at the hands of the former slaves, Haiti, or Hayti — under the first of its many dictators, Jean-Jacques Dessalines, who made himself emperor and was assassinated two years later — declared its independence from France.

The book, titled L’Armée indigène, “The Native Army”, was by a French historian, Jean-Pierre Le Glaunec, who now teaches at Sherbrooke University in Quebec. The book recounts not only the history of the battle itself, which took place on 18 November 1803, but how it has been remembered, or forgotten (especially in France), in the subsequent two centuries, and the purposes to which the memory has been put.

The author is a specialist in Haitian and American history. His fundamental historical outlook is very different from mine, but that did not reduce my pleasure in his book, for he writes well and marshals much interesting evidence, the fruit of diligent original research in primary sources. And it seems to me that no one can fail to be moved by the heroism and determination of the former slaves to defend their newfound freedom from the attempt to return them to servitude. The slave colony of Saint-Domingue had been among the cruellest ever known; the methods of Napoleon’s expeditionary army grew more and more vicious as it suffered repeated decimations. That history has its ironies — it is possible that, had the slave revolution failed, Haiti would now be more prosperous than it is, like Guadeloupe or Martinique — does not detract from the righteousness of the cause of the former slaves. They could not be expected to foresee the two centuries of failure, poverty, and oppression to come. Besides, the dignity conferred by the victory cannot be simply set against its deleterious long-term material consequences: Man does not live by GDP alone.

The rest of the article delves into Professor Le Glaunec’s other recent book on George Floyd’s death and fails to show the same intellectual honesty and willingness to face unpleasant facts that his Haitian history demonstrates.

In other words, Professor Le Glaunec, who makes much of his dispassionate resort to historical evidence by contrast with his opponent, reveals himself to be at least as parti pris as that opponent. He displays a lack of curiosity about George Floyd that surely derives from his political standpoint. As for the dedication to the memory of George Floyd, it is morally obtuse: for a man does not become good by being wrongfully killed. A mother loves her son because he is her son, not because he is good, and therefore the grief of his family is understandable and easily sympathised with; but for others to turn him into what he was not, a martyr to a cause, is to display at once a moral and an intellectual defect.

The connection between historical explanation and individual morality is nowhere more complex than in Haiti. The victor of Vertières, the former slave Dessalines, was declared dictator for life, with the right to choose his successor, in the very document that announced the independence of Haiti and the freedom of its population. Dessalines then undertook a policy that today would be called genocide: he ordered that every white settler, man, woman, and child killed (about 6000 in all) who remained in the country after the last of the French troops should be killed, and his orders were carried out. The truly atrocious conduct of the French explained this genocide no doubt, but did it justify it? To answer in the affirmative is to claim that there are good, or justified, genocides; to answer no is to be accused of a lack of psychological insight into the righteous anger of Dessalines and others, or of a lack of sympathy for the state of mind of the victims of slavery.

The death of George Floyd was similarly wrong; but that does not mean that the reaction to it was right.

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