Karen Cronick
INDEX
- Introduction
- The
centuries before and after the Enlightenment
i. The
history of the world
1. What do we know about the past?
ii. The glimpse of ideas of justice and
peace
- Chapter I Cultural Heritages in
the Americas
- First reflections
i. Culture,
past and present
1. The conquests and edicts of the
kings
2.
The constant European wars
- The Enlightenment
i. The Enlightenment in England and
France
ii. The
Enlightenment in Spain
- Colonialism
i. Colonialism
in Latin America
ii. Independence
in Latin America and Venezuela
- Democracy
i. Democracy in England, France, and
the United States of America
1.
Democracy in Spain
2.
Democracy in Latin America
- The
Culture of Family and Community Life
- Final Thoughts
- Chapter 2 THE AMERICAN
NINETEENTH CENTURY: WHAT IT LEFT US
- First Approaches
- Introduction
i. The
Complex American History
1.
The Enlightenment
a.
Tolerance
2.
The American Liberal Tradition
- "The
Frontier" by James Fenimore Cooper
i. Land
tenure
ii. The need to conserve forests and
wildlife
iii. Awareness
of Race and Rank
iv. The characters and genesis of the
American character
- Two
books: "The Pathfinders" and "Bury My Heart at Wounded
Knee"
i. Manifest
Destiny
- The beginning of industrialization
- "Uncle Tom's Cabin"
i. Slavery
as a historical institution
ii. The
slave trade
iii. Conscience
iv. Final
Thoughts on This Novel
- The Civil War
i. War
strategies
- The Conquest of the West
- FINAL
THOUGHTS
- The abolition of slavery
- Social violence
- Migration
- In short, the nineteenth century
- REFERENCES
Introduction
It seems that four centuries is a
long time. But in terms of the history of the world it is only a blink of an
eye. Only a little more than four centuries ago people began to talk about the
possibility of a representative democracy that was universal and inclusive, and
that its laws would reflect the will of the population and not the whims of a
king.
In the eighteenth century something
very important happened in western civilization: it was a historical moment in
which thinkers such as Isaac Newton, Wilhelm Leibniz, Francis Bacon and John
Locke and others applied the principles of rationality and empiricism to the
understanding of the physical and social world, that is, they did not look for
explanations in religious dogma as had been happening for the last 1700 years
since ancient Greece.
They were accompanied in the next
200 years by the Englishman David Hume, the social and political thought of the
Dutchman Baruch Spinoza, and the Frenchmen François-Marie Arouet (Voltaire)
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Charles-Louis de Secondat, Emanuel Kant, Baron de
Montesquieu, to name just a few of the new scientists and philosophers of the
time. In France, Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond d'Alembert devoted themselves
to disseminating and analyzing new knowledge with the Encyclopédie, first
published in 1750.
They began to reflect on
self-determination, states governed by democratic laws, the freedom of
individual people, the rights of man, the value of rational doubt and the
scientific method. This period, which lasted two centuries, is called "the
Enlightenment". The movement was rejected by many of the powerful, although some of the kings of that time defended -at least- the concept
of scientific doubt. These ideas contributed to many events such as the colonial
liberation movements in the Americas, and were the foundation for the drafting
of the U.S. constitution. They inspired the French Revolution. The
Enlightenment can be considered as the fundamental source of all the
libertarian movements that have come after.
The social phenomena that led to the
Enlightenment occurred gradually, and in these reflections, I will consider the
role played by the brief, and somewhat limited democracies in Athens and Rome,
the writings of St. Augustine, the translation of the surviving writings of
Greece and Rome by the Moors in Andalusia, the Renaissance, the religious
splits that produced by Protestantism, and other events. In what follows I will
examine all this, and try to make sense of
the very slow chain of influences that finally ended with the eighteenth
century’s cries of “freedom!”
I will talk about the emergence of
the values of the Enlightenment and how they were received in the American
continent. In the first chapter I will review the evolution of democracy based
on the cultural heritage that Spain and England left in their colonies. In the
second chapter, I will examine the conflicts that arose in the United States in
the nineteenth century between the beginning of democracy, slavery, and the
extermination of indigenous populations. These are historical trends that
competed with each other and are still a matter of debate today.
I will briefly consider the history
of power in Europe. I will consider, not only the sequence of events that led
humanity to the Enlightenment, but the obstacles that this process had to face.
Both factors are important because we still face similar tensions. I will then
reflect on the historical development of the notions of freedom, democracy and
peace in a world that has been dominated by military conquests and the absolute
power of kings.
In these pages I will reflect on
these events, based mainly on legends and historical novels, mixed with
various, intertwined datelines referring to ancient Greece, the Middle Ages,
the Enlightenment and both the colonization and the liberation of the American
continents.
Culture is both inherited and
created. We have access to its history through historical documents and
analyses, legends, and in what Carl Jung (2016) called the “collective
unconscious” which here we can interpret as unspoken and often unconscious
concepts and memories. It would be a shared but implicit understanding of what
we humans are and what we aspire to. It can help to explain why similar themes
show up again and again in mythologies and legends around the world, why people
follow the leaders they choose, and why symbols tend to repeat in successive chronicles.
Historical annals can be enriched by
associating them with legends and fictional narrations. These literary works
have important aesthetic value, but they also contain information about the intimate
and largely unspoken sociological and psychological realities of the people
they describe. In addition, they are legitimate sources of historical
references, and permit the creation of a new dialogue between literature and
history. As Blas Zubiría Mutis (2004) says, historical literature can fill some
of the gaps in bygone consciousness that other sources cannot. There are
relations between literature and history, and they often can capture the
intimacy of past experience and its consciousness. Literature cannot replace
historical analyses, but it can offer guidelines for understanding the
subjectivity of the times it describes.
The historical account that I
present here comes from many years of reading, and for this reason it has a
somewhat personal approach. I have assured the accuracy of the dates on the
Internet, but I have not cited all the many sources I have used. In a single
paragraph there could be several sources of information, and I do not wish to
overload the text. Most of the dates are known and do not raise doubts. In the
event that they are debatable, I recognize it.
The centuries before and after the
Enlightenment
The history of the world
David Graeber and David Wengrow
(2021) say that the first great human groups in Africa, Europe, Asia, and the
Americas were peaceful and self-governing peoples. Later these groups became
conflictive and there were confrontations for the control of lands and
resources. There has always been a longing for peace and self-determination,
but for the history that we are able to know, these longings for serenity and
justice have been formed only in reaction to constant wars and despotisms. The
active and conscious search for freedom, democracy and shared well-being among
the humans of this Earth has been very, very recent.
In the past there were some figures
who promoted peace and love, such as Buddha and Christ; spiritual and religious
leaders who founded creeds. However, political philosophy and the creation of
institutions that promote peace and democracy have been delayed and sporadic.
The early civilizations in
Mesopotamia, Greece, and Rome faced many challenges due to the struggles
between the kingdoms. In ancient Mesopotamia, the kingdoms of Sumer, Akkadia,
Babylon, Assyria, and Persia competed with their neighbors. They developed war
strategies and weapons, and organized powerful armies. They razed entire cities
and towns.
The Old Testament (Note 1), which,
in fact, represents millennia of Middle Eastern oral history, has long
enumerations of conflicts in which the Israelites participated, sometimes as
victims, sometimes as the victorious, as
when they occupied Canaan, in the struggles with the Midianites and the
Philistines, and the capture of Jerusalem by Babylon. There is, however, a captivating
story (Samuel I, Chapter 8) that relates how the people of Israel asked the
priest Samuel to appoint a king for them. The Israelites had been nomads until
then and were afraid of the surrounding empires. The wise old priest warned
them that they would lose much of their autonomy if they accepted the authority
of a king. He said that a king:
“… shall take your sons, and put them in his chariots, and in his
horsemen, that they may run before his chariots (verse 11)... He will also set
them to plow his fields (verse 12)..., He will also take your daughters to be
perfumers, cooks, and kneaders (verse 13), and he will take your lands, your
vineyards, and your good olive groves, and give them to his servants (verse
14).... And you shall cry that day because of your king whom you have chosen,
but the Lord will not hear you in that day (verse 18)."
But the people persisted, despite
Samuel's warnings about the misfortunes and wars that were to come. Eventually,
the priest relented, and facilitated the search for this first monarch, who
ended up being a young man named Saul. The story is interesting because it
demonstrates a certain awareness among the ancient sages of the meaning of
power and the privations that come when the authority of princes is accepted.
Much time later, the ancient Greeks
and Romans attempted to establish governments governed by law and popular will
(Note 2). Their ideals and projects only lasted a few centuries. Moreover,
their libertarian aspirations were restricted for the benefit of their own
citizens: while they talked about democracy at home, they founded colonies in
Europe and Asia and kept slaves. Eventually, Alexander the Great of Macedonia
ended all hope of democracy in Athens, and a bit later Gaius Julius Caesar
Octavian (also called Augustus or Caesar Augustus) ended the Republic of Rome.
Centuries passed, and in medieval
times power was expressed in various ways. The most common system was that of
monarchies with their feudal lords. The king (or a queen) had almost total
authority over the inhabitants of their domain. The monarch was supported by
loyal lords who administered delimited territories called "fiefs".
The power of the monarchs was absolute and generally hereditary. The economy of
the fiefs was based on "vassalage" where the rest of the population
consisted of farmers without any rights.
Despite their power, monarchs faced
challenges: there were numerous conflicts around this time that included
struggles between kingdoms that would try to conquer neighbors and infighting
by nobles, first to obtain their crowns, and then keep them. For example:
Charlemagne, who was king of the Franks and the Lombards from 774, conquered a
large part of Western Europe and ruled until his death in 814. Then his
children disputed the inheritance.
Later, Otto, seated on the throne of Charlemagne, formed the Holy Roman
Empire in 963.
William Shakespeare described the
wars between England and France, and also the infighting between the ruling
houses of England. In France and Italy there were also disputes between
ambitious heirs and families vying for the throne. In Spain there were long
centuries of struggles. The successive alliances between the Hispano-Gothic
tribes (and later the Catholic monarchs), fought for centuries to eliminate the
Moors who had invaded Iberia (in the 8th Century) and had then created
their own cities and civilization in the peninsula. Other gran battles included
the crusader wars that brought the Europeans to North Africa with the motive of
"liberating" the Holy Land from the Muslims.
Those wars have left us with many
stories of heroes and conquests, and only a few legends about peace and
justice. There were some narratives of social justice, such as those of King
Arthur of England with his round table of concord and Good King Wenceslas from
Bohemia who gave food to the impoverished in his kingdom.
In medieval times everyone, even
kings, owed obedience to the ecclesiastical power of the Church of Rome. This
power was not based on the threat of armed retaliation, but rather on religious
dominance, although at the time of the Crusades several military monastic
orders developed, the best known being the Knights Templar. They developed so
much power that they became a menace for the Papacy, and its members were
executed.
The Papacy was established in the
fifth century. At the Lateran Council in 1059 the pope was recognized as the
supreme authority of the Church. The papacy exercised enormous moral force and
social control. The pope could excommunicate kings, princes, and common people,
that is, turn them into pariahs in the eyes of the society of that time. And
sometimes the punishments were more severe, including gruesome executions.
Religion has always had its dark
side. From very ancient times, in Mesopotamia, in remote Greece and among the
Hebrews there have been references, not only to an underworld where the blameworthy
dead end up, but also to the devil and sin. Homer also related in The Odyssey
how Ulysses saw some of the punishments suffered by the dead who had
transgressed divine law. The Old Testament begins with the devil (the serpent),
a sin (the apple of wisdom), and punishment (expulsion from Eden). The medieval
church of Europe continued these traditions, and kings recognized and accepted
the stability that came with fearing the supernatural. The fear of sin among believers
forced them to recognize the existing hierarchies and obey their masters; The
figures of the devil and hell were used as political resources to generate dread
among the possibly disobedient and noncompliant. Examples abound: the churches
of the time were adorned with "gargoyles", frightful figures that
poured rainwater through the mouth or anus. Churches also displayed sculptures
and paintings of the torments and tortures of hell to frighten the faithful.
The portal of the abbey church in Santa Fe de Conques from the ninth century in
France depicts the Last Judgment, and is known by those who make the pilgrimage
to Santiago de Compostela. The poem, "The Divine Comedy", with its
descriptions of hell written by Dante Alighieri in 1320 is still part of
universal literature. Hieronymus Bosch's 16th-century paintings of hell are
well known. In the cathedral of Santiago
de Compostela, there is an image of a deceased drunkard placed upside down as
eternal punishment for his sins while he was alive. There were many, many
examples of the medieval teaching of divine punishment for sinners.
On the other hand, there were some
few thinkers in those medieval centuries who reflected on equanimity and
benevolence; they appeared in the meditations of people such as St. Augustine
of Hippo (354-430) who, influenced by Aristotle and Cicero, spoke of the social
justice that should be present in any government, and recognized a distinction
between the kings’ scepter symbolizing profane power, and the papal ferula or
the bishops’ crosier, that denotes religious authority.
After Augustine the world had to
wait hundreds of years (Note 3) for there to be a movement in Europe that spoke
seriously about the separation of church and state and the possibility of
"freedom." It is time questioning called the Enlightenment.
In the two chapters that follow I
will refer to this Enlightenment, its thinkers, and the ways in which their
ideas were gradually incorporated into the first national constitutions in
Europe and the Americas.
For there to be figures who promoted
civic peace, it would be necessary to wait even longer, until the nineteenth
century. To celebrate those who promote world peace, Alfred Bernhard Nobel, a
Swedish chemist of the nineteenth century, left his legacy to the promotion of both
concord and science. In his life he had invented technologies for the use of
dynamite and had made his fortune with the manufacture of weapons of war. When
he died, he wanted to promote peace and sought to point out and honor people
who had made important achievements to promote it.
What do we know about the past?
It is important to place libertarian
thought within the framework of universal history in order to appreciate how
recent and fragile it is. We have been able to learn something about the
existence of our first ancestors through the objects they left, their cave
paintings, the ruins of their first cities, monuments and even their own
bones. Now, with the technology of the
last two centuries, these traces have given us a lot of information because we
have tools such as radiocarbon dating and other equipment of modern
archaeology.
Then came the written language with
the Sumerians, perhaps in the fourth milenium b.C. With the advent of "historical"
traces, i.e., chronicles based on languages written on stone, clay tablets,
papyrus paper, parchment, and more recently, modern paper, the past has been
amplified and clarified. And even more recently, the Internet has become both a
vast electronic library, and a source of much misinformation.
The written history begins with
practical notes related to administrative records and catalogs of economic
exchanges in the Middle East, ancient China, and Mesoamerica. The first writing
systems that represented some kind of language quickly spread throughout a
large part of the Middle East. (Pigna, n.d.).
The Greeks were the first to write
coherently and extensively about their own history. The process was long. At
first the stories were sung by poets, the aedos, who preserved their collective,
oral memory, and only centuries later their stories and poems were transcribed.
For example, historians generally place the events of the Trojan War in the
twelfth century b.C., but the memories are fragile. The poets of the time
memorized the stories they heard and reproduced them, or improvised on them,
preserving them orally as "songs". Homer, who heard the songs of his
time, composed his own poems about the past, especially the Iliad and the
Odyssey, which became the most important historical works of Greece. Homer must
have lived in the eighth century B.C., that is, four or five centuries after
the events he describes. His poems were only preserved in writing three long
centuries after his death, in the sixth century B.C. The works of Greek
literature have come down to us thanks to their preservation in writing and the
existence of the libraries of antiquity. Even so, many theatrical and
philosophical works have been lost: even today we still mourn the burning of
the library of Alexandria (Mark, September 2, 2009).
Throughout history, the only way to
reproduce a document was by hand copies, and for this reason, each volume was a
precious object. One of the greatest civilizational influences was the invention
of the modern printing press with movable type made by Johannes Gutenberg
around the year 1450, which allowed a faster dissemination of ideas.
For this reason, our knowledge of
history has something of a precariousness. We know about kings, conquerors,
armies, and empires through a few carefully kept documents.
The glimpse of ideas of justice and
peace
The album of the human family is
full of ideas of conflict and rivalries. They are all successive moments, but
not linear, since conquests, massacres, cruel punishments, despots, the demands
of cults and slavery have coexisted alongside people’s longing for justice and
peace and liberating thought. This coexistence endures: in democracies after
the eighteenth century, they still had slavery and practiced massacres of
indigenous peoples in their territories. All these motives and reasons are
still found together in the same villages in a sort of collective unconscious, and
people fight each other over them. Cultures contain the germ of their changes,
but they also carry resistance to reforms. We will talk about these
contradictions in the following pages, especially in relation to the American
continents.
In general, our knowledge has to do
with wars and conquests, we learn about war heroes and conquerors. It is a
cultural heritage that teaches us with great clarity what aggressive strategies
are like. We remember wars accurately, and we can name many conquerors such as
Cyrus II the Great, Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Attila, Genghis Khan,
Hernan Cortés, Napoleon Bonaparte and Adolf Hitler. We label them as destroyers
or beneficent builders of empires of power according to our cultural and
ideological loyalties, and we react with joy or anger when we hear them named.
War has been the great vehicle of
human culture: recorded history. This thirst for conquest did not lead to peace
but to the need to repel other invaders. We have cultivated a dichotomy of
"us" versus "them" and we have a long and latent fear of
the "other". Kings have used this fear to stay in power and to expand
their own area of influence. Their armies have also served to suppress
uprisings in their own territories. War has been an important factor in the
creation of states throughout history.
Even so, the longing for peace is
also ancient. Its spokesmen are usually neither emperors nor generals. They are
usually found among poets and artists. For example, "The Trojan Women"
is a play that the Greek Euripides wrote in 415 B.C. in Athens. It describes
the sufferings of survivors of the Trojan war when their city was torn apart by
a coalition of Greek armies in the twelfth century B.C. Euripides reflects on
that tragedy in which everyone, winners and vanquished, have lost equally
(Euripides, 415/n/f).
Historical attempts to achieve
governments that represent the will of the inhabitants have been scarce. The
most famous occurred in Athens in ancient Greece under Solon. Solon of Athens
(638-558 BC) was a legislator and political philosopher who ruled Athens at the
end of the sixth century BC. His great contribution was the creation of a
constitution that gave rise to the idea of self-government ruled by laws,
(which excluded those who were not citizens, that is, the poor, women, slaves
and foreigners). Despite the exclusions, it was a great experience that allowed
its participants to have a political voice and to speak for the first time
about "freedom". It is clear that the democracy of Athens was not
infallible: the conviction and death of Socrates is an example of this weakness,
but at the very least, its citizens could go to the public assemblies and vote.
This aspiration sadly ended with the conquest of Athens by Alexander the Great.
There was another historical
experiment with self-government with the foundation of the Roman Republic that
began in 509 BC. When the last king, Lucius Tarquinius Superbus was overthrown.
This experiment also ended with the installation of a despot in 27 AD when Caesar
Augustus Octavian was recognized as emperor.
Civilization has had to wait until
the beginning of the European Enlightenment in the seventeenth century A.D. to
truly speak of self-government. In the following chapters I will reflect on
this civilizational birth.
To speak formally of the ethical
regulation of war humanity would have to wait longer. The first attempt
occurred during Venezuela’s war of Independence in 1820 with the Treaty for the
Regulation of War (El Tratado de Regularización de la Guerra). It was written
by José Antonio de Sucre, and was the first document to address human rights in
wartime. It happened almost a half a century before the Treaty of Ginebra in 1864.
It was not until after World War II
in 1945 that the United Nations was founded, and a year later the International
Court of Justice was inaugurated in The Hague, Belgium, in a transnational attempt
to control the cruelty of war conflagrations. Also, in the second half of the
twentieth century, a multiplicity of national and international organizations
with jurisdictional power, and non-governmental organizations, emerged whose
mission has been to reduce violence, and in general, alleviate human suffering.
Europe finally managed to eliminate wars on its own territory with several
treaties initiated after World War II, culminating in the European Union, which
was officially inaugurated with the Maastricht Treaty on 1st. of November 1993.
For the first time in history, for a period of more than 70 years, there have
been no wars in the area now known as European Union.
However, these organizations and treaties
have not eliminated wars elsewhere. At the end of the 20th century and into the
21st century, wars have continued with equal ferocity in Syria, Afghanistan,
Yemen, Iraq, Ukraine and Gaza. Controlling the use of lethal weapons to solve
international problems is an unfinished task.
The longing for coexistence among
nations is also part of our cultural heritage. There is no doubt that the world
is moving towards an awareness of social justice and peace, but this progress
is difficult and there is no guarantee of success.
In what follows I will talk about
the civilizational conflicts in the American continent. First, I consider the
historical and cultural reasons that influenced the different possibilities of
building viable democracies in the countries that emerged from the colonies of
Spain and England. In the second chapter, I will examine the coexistence of
democracy, slavery, and the extermination of native populations in the United
States.
My main source of ideas and
information for the following stories has been literature in the form of
fiction, poems, plays, or biographies. In each chapter I describe this method,
but in general I think that these sources provide a more intimate and more sensitive
perspective than academic histories.
The past does not remain in the
past. Even if people avoid talking about the painful incidents, they have lived
thorough, these experiences are still there in a kind of social and cultural
subconscious. Our mostly silent social memory has been approached from
different perspectives: Émile Durkheim (Durkheim, 1960) has proposed a
collective consciousness as a set of shared beliefs that operate as a unifying
force or influence within society. Antonio Gramsci (Gramsci, 1998) refers to an
ideological hegemony that helps to bring together workers according to their
class consciousness. For his part, Carl
Gustav Jung (Jung, 2016) examines what he calls a collective unconscious, that
is, an individual mental structure, which has archetypes and
"shadows" which influence people, often without their awareness.
Other approaches that postulate shared belief systems are: Wundt's
Ethnopsychology (Titchener, 1899), Mead's Symbolic Interactionism (1982) and
Moscovici's social representations (Jodelet, 1984).
Nicolopoulou and Weintraub (October,
1998) point out with respect to Durkheim's ideas on representations, that:
"... These are two types of representation, but with two different
underlying conceptions of what is significant about the phenomenon of
representation. In the first case, a crucial characteristic of representations
is that they are "internal" to the mind. In the second case, one of
the defining keys is that ... a representation is public, or intersubjective
(p. 5).
I have inserted some endnotes in the
text which I indicate with successive numbers in parentheses (Note x).
Notes
Note 1. The
Christian Bible, with its old and new testaments, is an time-honored, ancestral
document which has emerged from oral histories of very long tradition. It is an
important resource that has, in addition to its elements of dogma that
encompass the three great monotheistic religions, an important part of our
heritage and memory.
The Old Testament brings together
oral histories and legends, such as the great prehistoric flood of the Earth,
which also appear in various legends such as that of Gilgamesh, in which the
god Enlil decided to destroy the world with a great flood. Ea, another god,
warned a man called Utnapishtim, and told him to build a boat so that he could
save himself (Dimri, 6/14/21). The coexistence of this legend with the story of
Noah and his Arc has two possible roots: a) multiple versions of a true event,
or b) the interdependence of ancient oral and poetic traditions.
In the Old Testament there are
references to reigns and kings, migrations, episodes of domination and slavery,
dietary rules, rules of conduct, poems about faith and love, theories about the
beginning of humanity and law, a story about the elimination of human sacrifice
and much more. With regard to the last issue, the parallel between the rescue
of Isaac by the hand of God and what happened in ancient Greece with Iphigenia,
daughter of Agamemnon, is interesting. In Euripides' "Iphigenia in
Aulis" version, she is sacrificed so that her father's army can set sail
for Troy. But there are other versions in which the goddess Artemis saves her
at the last moment (Euripides (414-412 B.C./n.d).
Note 2. As we said before, democracy began in Athens in
the sixth century B.C. but Alexander destroyed it in the fourth century B.C.,
that is, it lasted four centuries. The Roman Republic lasted from 509 BC to 27
BC following a series of civil wars after the death of Julius Caesar, when
Emperor Augustus assumed power.
Note 3. There were some attempts to establish republics
employing various versions of the Roman model, such as the Republic of Florence
in Italy, which was founded in the year 1115, when the Florentines formed a
republic after the death of the Marchioness Matilda. The Republic lasted with
some difficulties until the coup d'état of Cosimo de' Medici in 1434. Again,
there were clashes and in 1527 the Florentines finally expelled the Medici, and
Florence regained control of the city-state. After several conflicts, the
republic finally ceased to exist in 1569. (Academia Lab, 2024).
CHAPTER
I
Cultural
Heritages in the Americas
First reflections
Culture, past and present
Culture is in constant formation;
therefore, it is permanently new, although the shared memory of what has
already been done always has its influence. Peoples, countries and communities
alike have traditions, narratives and documents, and they build their present
and future on them. Perhaps the past influences us in in these five ways: a)
the memory of the solutions – successful or not – of individuals, families and
communities, b) the annals of territorial conquest, c) legislation, which
includes the edicts of kings, ecclesiastical instances, and laws that emanate
from parliamentary debates, and e) the imagery of civil debates that comes from
books, plays and music.
This essay reviews above all this
last line of influences. In these pages I am going to talk about the heritage
that comes to us in legends, historical novels and documents, mainly from
England, France, Spain, Latin America (especially Venezuela) and the United
States. I compare these influences with each other, in order to examine the
effects of European cultures on their colonies. I will consider the shared
memory of minority individuals and groups at the end.
The conquests and edicts of the kings
The culture of Latin America
descends from the Spanish and the Portuguese, from traditions that can be
traced back to the Middle Ages. We can compare them with the ones that England passed
on to its own colonies, and thus reflect on the different paths taken later by
the diverse European colonial possessions in the Americas, and the countries
that were born from them.
The English colonies were influenced
by libertarian legends such as King Arthur's round table in the fifth century
(which meant the protection of the underprivileged -chivalry-) and the
equality between the king and his nobles), the moral legend of Robin Hood in
the thirteenth century (a libertarian outlaw who stole from the rich to help
the poor), the Magna Carta (a guarantee
granted by King John of England to English nobles in the thirteenth century
guaranteeing them respect for their lives and property) and William
Shakespeare's theatrical reflections on the power of royalty and its limits
(especially those of Macbeth -1623/s/f- and Richard III -1591/s/f). (Note 1)
England and France confronted the
priests of Rome on several occasions, especially when King Henry VIII of
England created the Anglican Church in 1534, and King Henry IV of France (the
first of the Bourbons) contributed to a precarious reconciliation between
Catholics and Huguenots. The kings' motives for acting in this way had little
to do with a new understanding of religious tolerance, but their actions later
mediated their people's attitudes about the possibility of pluralism of faiths,
and endured. This tendency towards tolerance appears in Shakespeare's play,
"The Merchant of Venice", in the character of Shylock, a Jew
that the author was able to look at from various perspectives. At one point
this look becomes compassionate when Shylock says:
“I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs,
dimensions, senses, affections, passions; fed with the same food, hurt with the
same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed
and cooled by the same winter and summer as a Christian is? If you prick us do
we not bleed? If you tickle us do we not laugh? If you poison us do we not die?”
( Act III, scene i).
Shylock ends this speech by saying that the similarity between Jews and
Christians extends also to their shared thirst for revenge. But Shakespeare has
created a clear affinity between ethnic groups that at this time were marked by
their differences and sectarianism.
When the time came for an opening to
the ideas of the Enlightenment, the philosophers of England and France welcomed
it – with some misgivings and resistance. Spain, on the other hand, was left
with the medieval structures of a closed monarchy and Catholicism.
The Spanish tradition did not break
away from the church of Rome until the twentieth century. Their kingdoms were
formed in the warlike environment of the reconquest of the Moors, the
Counter-Reformation and the Inquisition. Political and religious repression has
been used as a strategy: the powerful have always used it to secure and
maintain their authority and power. In Spain, what began during the reigns of
the Catholic Monarchs in response to the need to pacify the reconquered Moorish
domains in the lands of Andalusia, ended up becoming the Inquisition (Note 2).
Since the Moors (Note 3) invaded the
peninsula in 711, they created a kingdom in Al-Andalus, proclaiming in 929 as
the Caliphate of Cordoba, which, over time, became a brilliant center of
cultural production and interaction (Note 4). In fact, it was through the
translations of the scientific and philosophical works of the ancient Greeks
and Romans, made in collaboration between the Arabs, Jews and Christians in
this kingdom, that the European world had access to them (Brasa Días,
n.d.). (Note 5).
There were constant military
encounters in the Iberian Peninsula for the domination of the territory from
the beginning of the Middle Ages; Christian legend tells how the Apostle Saint
James left his crypt in Galicia in the year 844 mounted on a beautiful white
horse to defend Christians against those they considered usurpers. In the
Cathedral of Santiago Compostela you can still see sculptures of the saint
trampling on the Moors with his steed.
Then the poem of El Cid Campeador
characterized these struggles: in the eleventh century El Cid is described as a
hero, but our reactions today would represent him as a mercenary who steals for
himself the riches of his adversaries. El Cid is in the purest tradition of
Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar who conquered and confiscated the
treasures of the vanquished for their own benefit and that of their king. The
poem reads:
“... the Minaya flag reached
Alcalá
and from there upwards they turn with the gain,
by Henares up and by Guadalajara.
How many are your big gains,
much booty of sheep and cattle,
and of clothing, and of other ample riches.
Upright comes the banner of Minaya,
no one dares to assault his rearguard..."
“The song of my Cid” (El cantar
de Mío Cid), more or less in 1200/s/f, Anonymous. Lines 477 to 481, My
translation)
The efforts of the Christians to
conquer the south of the peninsula were finally successful in 1492, the same
year that Christopher Columbus arrived in the American "Indies". The
Iberian Peninsula was at sporadic war with the Moors for eight centuries until
the capture of Granada. And the same year the Spanish monarchs defeated the
Moors, the subjugation of the New World began. They used the same strategies of
conquest that they employed in the peninsula along with the expropriation of
wealth.
It was at the end of the struggles
against the Moors that the Christian church in Spain (along with Queen Isabella
of Castile and King Ferdinand of Aragon), found it necessary to secure the
loyalties of the new subjects in their kingdom, and to purify the faith of what
they considered to be Muslim and Jewish heresies. By the end of the fourteenth
century in Seville, Cordoba, Valencia and Barcelona thousands of Jews and Moors
had been forcibly converted to Christianity or murdered. This repression also
had racial and ethnic features, since it was considered that the Jews belonged
to a different race from that of the natives of the peninsula (the Celts, the
Visigoths, and the Hispano-Roman descendants of the north of the
peninsula). The repression finally
materialized with the decisive use of the Spanish Inquisition in the fifteenth
century. By the 16th century this institution
also tried and killed Protestants and Catholics whose beliefs were considered
unorthodox, such as those sympathetic to the beliefs of Erasmus of Rotterdam.
The constant European wars
In other European countries such as
France and England there were also conflicts between Christians and Muslims in
the "crusades" from the eleventh century to rescue the "Holy
Land". But these places were far away, and the knights and their
companions had to travel for a long time to get there. The motivation for them
originated in Rome among the ecclesiastical hierarchy and was not a local incentive.
There were a series of nine religious wars between 1096 and 1291 to
"liberate" the "Holy Land" for Christendom. The kingdoms in
of England, France, the Holy Roman Empire, and elsewhere in Europe
participated, and it sometimes happened that the kings who participated saw,
upon returning, that their kingdoms had been usurped, as in the case of Richard
the Lionhearted of England.
War has been a way of life. Kings
have always fought each other, appropriating the lands and goods of their
neighbors since the beginning of history (Note 6). Europeans have fought many
times. The English, French, Italians and
Spaniards have fought from the beginning the Franco-Merovingian dynasty (since
the middle of the fifth century) to dominate the others. Centuries later, William,
the Conqueror of Normandy invaded England in 1066. It was the last successful
invasion of the islands, but the battles between the English and the French did
not cease: they were well characterized by William Shakespeare in his
historical plays on the lives of the kings of England. They are examples of the
constant eagerness for invasion and occupation by the royal houses. In
Shakespeare's play Edward III, the king of England proclaims his arrogant
decision to invade France to the envoy of the king of that country (Note 7):
"...Lorraine, return this answer to your Lord:
I propose to visit him as he requests;
But how? Not servilely disposed to bend,
But like a conqueror to make him bow.."
In another play Shakespeare
describes how Henry V encourages his English forces to fight against the army
of France (Shakespeare, 2, n.d.). He describes them as a "band of
brothers," to characterize them as a small number of heroic and
righteous warriors, who share a noble cause and fraternity. At the same time,
the poet makes it clear in his work that it is a patrimonial invasion to
increase Henry’s own territory.
There were wars that lasted thirty
and a hundred years. The enemies were defined by their nationality, by their
loyalty to the royal houses of the time, and also, later, by the different
religious adherences within Christianity with the beginning of Protestantism
from the sixteenth century. War has arguably been the most formative influence
on human culture.
The feudal system of the Christian
kingdoms was a theocentric and hierarchical world. Religious submission was a
reflection of the lower classes' acceptance of earthly authority. Wars, carried
out by feudal lords, were justified in the name of loyalties to the royal
houses and religion. This culture of blind loyalty and obedience came to
America with the conquest, and then took hold with colonialism. But it arrived fragmented, by means of
multiple "conquerors", each with his own project of domination, who,
although nominally loyal to the king with whom they identified, were scattered
throughout the American continents.
The Enlightenment
One cannot refer to the
Enlightenment without first referring to medieval universities. The first in
Europe was founded in Bologna in 1088 and Oxford, England, began in about 1096.
The Sorbonne University in Paris was founded around the year 1150. Salamanca in
Spain appeared in 1218. They developed from the monastic and episcopal schools in
order to offer advanced studies under teachers of great excellence. They were precursors and representatives of
the Renaissance in Europe that was emerging at the end of the thirteenth
century, fully manifesting itself in the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries.
In the Renaissance humanism was
born. Beginning in the 14th Century, during the decline of the
Middle Ages, scholars and artists discovered Greek and Roman learning and
values, largely because of translations made by Morish scholars in what is now
Spain. Painters and sculptures realized that human beauty includes both its
spirit and its body. In addition, by the
end of the 15th Century a new world was discovered across the sea,
with new civilizations and vast lands to be colonized. The Copernican view of
the universe was understood to be more accurate than Ptolemaic astronomy. Feudal
economies gave way to commerce. New inventions like gunpowder and the printing
press began to change warfare and culture.
Then Europe discovered reason. In
the 17th and 18th centuries the Enlightenment was born;
it was a remarkable and astonishing libertarian movement in which widespread
questioning of the blind loyalties of medieval times began. They inquired about
science and what they called "freedom". Voltaire in his Dictionary said
simply: "You are free to act when you have the power to act"
(Voltaire (n.d.). But he also said, true freedom also requires a "free
will." This presupposes that the actor has coherent reasons to act, and a
part of the Enlightenment was dedicated to clarifying the possibility of
forming them. In the seventeenth century this questioning became a movement in
which philosophers discussed the different possibilities of civil government,
the rights of citizens, and the nature of science. It was to be important later
in the English colonies, but not so much in the Spanish ones.
The Enlightenment in England and
France
It is fundamentally characterized by
a complete trust in reason. The Enlightenment began in England with the
empiricism of David Hume and John Locke with respect to philosophy, and Isaac
Newton with his inquiries into the physical world. In France the editors of the
Encyclopedia (from 1751 to 1765) included Diderot, Voltaire, Rousseau,
Toussaint, Montesquieu, and Voltaire, among others. Some of these thinkers had
to flee France, at least temporarily, but they found shelter and safety in
Switzerland, and among the "Enlightened Despots". (Note 8) The spirit
underlying these publications was a belief in the capacity of rationality to
overcome superstitions and to lay the foundations for a more just and coherent
world. They questioned beliefs about the physical world, but also the power
structures of their time, and began to envision a world of shared power in
which the authority of kings and the church was controlled by the popular will.
The Enlightenment in Spain
Beliefs were always objects of
surveillance and suspicion by the Spanish Tribunal of the Holy Office of the
Inquisition. The Inquisition began in France and Italy in the 12th-century of France
to combat religious deviation, but it lasted longer in Spain. In 1756 the works
of authors such as Montesquieu were banned, as they were considered heretical,
and then the Encyclopedia was also banned. Voltaire and Rousseau were frowned
upon, although there was some diffusion of these works by publishers. Even
universal education was frowned upon among the clergy and the monarchy: it was
not until 1782 that the Inquisition allowed the reading of the Bible in
Spanish, even though Martin Luther had already published it in German more than
two centuries earlier in 1534.
Colonialism
Colonialism throughout the Americas
was characterized by great cruelty, both in the north and in the south of the
"new" continents. In the north in the colonies of England there was a
philosophically discordant ethical process: on the one hand, it meant the
almost absolute massacre of the native population together with the
introduction of slavery (Note 9). On the other hand, and contradictorily, it
meant the desire to break away from England, and in the 18th century,
this aspiration was accompanied egalitarian values. These included ideas of a
union of free states, associated with each other by ideals of constitutional
and legislative equality, and self-determination.
There had already been early
exercises of political autonomy in the states of Virginia and New England. In
1619 Governor George Yeardley in Jamestown instituted a bicameral legislature
that included the participation of affluent settlers, for the purpose of
deciding on the legal and commercial affairs of the area. In another antecedent
of modern democracy, the "Pilgrims" signed an agreement, the
Mayflower Covenant, in which they agreed to live in harmony under the leaders
they themselves would select. As a result, they formulated both civil and
military laws and agreements (Britannica, 7/9/23). Although these agreements occurred in the
context of England's power over its American colonies, and although these legal
structures excluded blacks, the indigenous population, and women in general,
they constituted an ideological first step towards the creation of a democracy
in the United States.
Colonialism in Latin America
With respect to colonialism in Latin
America, we are going to focus above all on Venezuelan society, although there
is a lot of similarity in all the South American colonies. Venezuela, a
captaincy since the 18th century, was organized according to the
different social classes of settlers. The native population was subordinated or
suppressed, and African slaves began to be imported for hard work in the fields
but were powerless. The Spaniards and their descendants, at first tried to
maintain a certain genetic "purity". They assumed a certain level of nobility
and maintained positions of command.
In Venezuela, from colonial times
until the beginning of the twentieth century, castes based on race were
recognized and formed criteria for discrimination. There was even an elaborate
vocabulary to point out racial and class nuances: there were three basic classes
of non-Spanish people: a) those of white descent, but with mixed genetic
heritage, b) Indigenous people, and c) blacks. In a more elaborate
classification system, the peninsular whites, on the other hand, were
Spaniards who had almost total power of command. The Creole whites were
the children of the conquistadors, born in Venezuela. The whites on the
shore came from Spain, but they lacked great fortune. They were merchants,
artisans and professionals.
They, then, discriminated against
those who could not claim the honor of being totally white, and these non-white
classes became more intricately classified.: the pardos were people of
mixed race and tended to occupy minor and salaried functions. The mestizos
had white fathers and Indian mothers. Mulattoes were a mix of white
fathers and black mothers. The Zambos were children of Indians and
blacks. The Indians were of the original population, and the blacks,
brought from Africa, were almost all slaves until their emancipation in 1854,
under the presidency of José Gregorio Monagas.
In Venezuela, discrimination against
strata based on race lasted until the twentieth century, when it suddenly
ceased to have the importance it did before. It is unclear why this change
happened in the country, and racial categories still have social importance in
other Latin countries. However, even in the decade of the 30’s of the twentieth
century, Laureano Vallenilla Lanz classifies citizens according to their race
in his book “Democratic Caesarism” ("El Cesarismo Democrático",
1929).
After the death of President Gómez
on December 17, 1935, Venezuela became a country characterized by ample values
of inclusion and acceptance.
Over time, different racial groups
began to mix in South America, but those who could claim the purest European
ancestry had greater status. From the 18th century on Venezuela was
just a captaincy, not a viceroyship as were the wealthier territories that now
form Peru, Colombia and Mexico. The
captaincy lasted until the beginning of the nineteenth century when the
independence movements began. The ruling
class was made up of the Spaniards, who were a minority. They were landowners, crown
merchants, and political and ecclesiastical officials. The captaincy did not
have much economic importance for the Spanish crown because it lacked the
metals that Mexico or Peru had, but it did have agricultural possibilities,
especially for the production of cocoa, sugar cane, and tobacco.
I found much of this description of
Venezuelan colonialism in Francisco Herrera Luque’s book "Los Amos del
Valle" (“The Masters of the Valley”, 26/04/2013). He described Venezuelan colonial life, inventing
a probable description of the time, and using both real and fictional
characters. He described some of the life-styles of the families with the most
important surnames of the time, that is, those with the most prestigious ancestry
in the Caracas Valley, but most of the characters and narratives were born
solely from the author's imaginative pen.
Although they are inventions,
Herrera gives us an intimate, possible and probable vision of the brutal times
of the conquest of Venezuela and colonialism. The veracity of this work is
limited to a conceivable description of an era, and gains in comprehensive
richness what it misses in accuracy. The "masters" controlled
everything at will. Without appealing to any particular corpus of law, the
characters mostly -and vaguely- based their decisions on supposed edicts
emitted by the Spanish king. In the book the masters amass their fortunes, and
have absolute jurisdiction over the lives and deaths of their servants,
vassals, servants, and slaves. The general population was powerless, and had no
recourse to protect itself except by submitting to their masters’ will.
Independence in Latin America and
Venezuela
In the wars of colonial independence
in Latin America, the Enlightenment marked the speeches of its leaders
somewhat, but Spain's spirit of absolutism sealed a largely authoritarian outcome
for this process. There was no gesture among the emancipators like that of
George Washington who returned to his estate after winning a successful war
(Note 10).
The Viceroyalty regions of New Spain
included Mexico, and lands in the south-west of the present-day United States,
the Antilles, the Central American territories, and the Viceroyalty of the Río
de la Plata (Argentina, Uruguay, Bolivia, and Paraguay). It encompassed the
Falkland Islands, the Viceroyalty of Peru (Peru, Colombia, Argentina, Ecuador,
Panama, Chile, Bolivia and Paraguay) and the captaincy of Venezuela. It also
covered many of the Caribbean islands (Enciclopedia Humanidades, n.d.). All
these territories rose up against Spain at the beginning of the nineteenth
century and obtained their independence between 1820 and 1830. In all cases
there were fierce battles and enormous destruction of infrastructure. Brazil,
on the other hand, negotiated its freedom from Portugal without war.
The wars of independence in Latin
America against Spain were led by their generals, not by established
governments; in Chile it was Bernardo O'Higgins, in Argentina it was José de
San Martín. In Venezuela the war lasted
from 1810 to 1823, under the command of Simon Bolivar (whose complete name was
Simon José Antonio de la Santísima Trinidad Bolívar Ponte y Palacios Blanco). Bolívar
was a military figure and a politician who was fundamental to much of Latin
America’s independence from Spain. He commanded forces in Venezuela, Colombia,
and Ecuador, and had an influence on the independence processes of Peru and
Bolivia. After the wars there were complex transformations, both in terms of
how power was distributed in each liberated country, and in the appearance of
new possibilities for political structures. Bolivar died, however, and his plan
for a “Greater Colombia” could not be carried out.
After independence, most of the new
countries suffered years of civil war, uprisings against nascent authorities,
and a legacy of repressive leaders. In
fact, Laureano Vallenilla Lanz (1929) considered that even the struggles for
independence in Venezuela had the characteristics of a civil war.
Mexico declared independence in
1821, but there were many impediments to its liberation, and it was only in
1836 that Spain finally recognized the country’s autonomy. Then there were
years of internal struggles. The dictatorship of General Porfirio Díaz was
costly both socially and economically. In 1910 the Mexican Revolution broke out.
Its duration is unclear, but it persisted for at least ten years. All these
conflicts left the country outside the capital city in great poverty. The
novelist Juan Rulfo described all this in his novels "Pedro Páramo"
(n.d.) and "Llano en Llamas" (n.d.) in which desolate lands,
peasants in total helplessness and social conditions of futile and arbitrary
violence predominated. Rulfo describes almost uninhabited villages among the
rubbish of the old and ruined latifundia, now without their powerful owners,
destroyed by the battles of independence and revolution. He tells us about this
abandonment and loneliness in "Llano en Llamas" (p. 5-6, My
translation):
"And with all that, and with everything, and the fact that the
green hills down there were better, people were leaving. They did not go to the
Zapotlán side, but to this other direction, where the wind is full of the smell
of the oaks and the noise of the mountain arrives every now and then. They went
quietly, without saying anything or fighting with anyone.... The thing is... no
one came back here. I was waiting. But no one returned. First, I took care of
their houses; I patched up the roofs and put branches in the holes in their
walls; but seeing that they were slow to return, I left them in peace. Only the
rainstorms never stopped coming in the middle of the year, and those winds that
blow in February and blow your blanket all the time. From time to time, too,
the crows came; flying very low and squawking loudly as if they thought they
were in some uninhabited place."
In Chile and Venezuela the
latifundia were weakened but remained intact until the middle of the twentieth
century. They are well described in the novels like “Of love and of shadow” (“De
amor y de sombra”, 1984), Eva Luna (1987) and “The house of spirits” (“La
casa de los espíritus”, 1982/n.d.) by
the Chilean author Isabel Allende, and in Venezuela, in the novel "Doña
Bárbara" by Rómulo Gallegos (1929). These are stories that could
describe Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and many Latin American countries of those
times. In Gallegos' book, however, there is an encounter between cultures. On
one hand he portrays the Venezuelan plains, with its prejudices, violence and the
indisputable power of big landowners. This last aspect is personified by the
title character, Bárbara de Aragón y Guzmán. She rides the prairies together with
her teams of stockmen, swears the same way they do, and is capable of great and
sudden ferocity. This culture of the central savannahs is described -as are so many
semi-abandoned, rural areas- as complex cultural spaces. Beyond the savagery
there is also a deep attachment to the land and family, and a particular sense
of honor and courageousness. In
Gallegos’ novel this enclosed world comes into contact suddenly with urban civilization
and awareness of the greater world when a young man, Santos Luzardo, returns to
his family's hacienda, Altamira, after finishing his law studies in Caracas. The
confrontation between the two world-views represents a Latin American
historical moment of great political and philosophical significance. It is
interesting that, in the end, Santos decides not to return to Caracas. He stays
there, marries Mrs. Barbara´s daughter, and takes over the management of
Altamira. But Mrs. Barbara has to leave.
Venezuela was also left desolate
after the war of independence. However, with the liberation movements, the
notion of law began to appear. In Venezuela, even though successive caudillos
would rule the country until 1938.
Democracy
Democracy is not new, nor was it
born with the European Enlightenment. According to David Graeber and David
Wengrow (2021), there were forms of self-government in prehistoric times. In
fact, the tradition of collective decisions to determine the projects and
lifestyles of the first groupings – and even the first cities – was probably
the norm in prehistory. We attribute the formal concept of democracy to Athens
in the sixth century B.C., where forms of self-government alternated with the sporadic
emergence of tyrants. Modern democracy, which found its prototype in these
experiments, had its beginning in the rule of Solon in the sixth century B.C,
and ended with the conquest of Athens by Alexander the Macedonian two centuries
later.
Democracy in England, France, and
the United States of America
In order to appreciate the contrasts
that the Enlightenment produced in the world, it is important to review Europe´s
wide-ranging historical traditions. Democracy in England was a slow process in
which the power of kings gradually decreased, and that of the House of Lords
and House of Commons increased, along with the figure of the prime minister. We
have already mentioned the Magna Carta in 1215, the first document that limited
the power of a king, in this case that of King John and his successors. Then,
by a series of subsequent laws, Britain became in the nineteenth century a full
democracy, but without a constitution.
In France, the revolution in the
eighteenth century did not produce a true republic, it only succeeded in
temporarily eliminating the royal house of the Bourbons. Then, in just a very
few years, imperial royalty returned with Napoleon. The Second Republic began
in 1848 and lasted only until 1852. Despite its short existence, there were
some reforms during this time, such as male suffrage and the definitive abolition
of slavery. The Third Republic began in 1870, but ended with the German
invasion in 1940. The French Fourth Republic developed between 1946 and 1958.
It was only in 1958 that the Fifth Republic, the current regime, was
inaugurated. However, the ideals of self-determination influenced French
thought and imagery since its revolution.
In the United States of America,
democracy was born with the approval of the Constitution of 1787, and although
it has not been replaced, it has been amended 27 times; the first ten
amendments constitute the Bill of Rights. In these adjustments, the fundamental
attributes of all citizens are stipulated. At first the idea of universal
suffrage was restricted: only white men could vote. In 1870, almost a hundred
years later, all men, regardless of their racial status, came to be recognized
as citizens with the power of suffrage:
"The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be
denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race,
color, or previous condition of servitude– XV).
Women gained the right to vote in
1920.
Democracy in Spain
The First Spanish Republic did not
even last two years, from February 11, 1873, until December 29, 1874, when the Bourbon
monarchy was established. This short year allowed male citizens to live in
secularism, and a government governed by civic principles.
Almost 60 years later, the Second
Republic began, after the fall of the monarchy of Alfonso XIII, on April 14,
1931. It lasted until April 1, 1939, until the end of the Civil War, when it
gave way to Francisco Franco’s dictatorship.
The republic only lasted eight years. These were times of anxiety and
war, which coincided with the growth of fascism in Germany and the beginning of
the Second World War. In the 1940s, this military dictatorship was consolidated
through the political and economic repression of opponents. Thousands of people
went into exile into France and many ended up in Nazi or Spanish concentration
camps. These times were captured by its poets such as Antonio Machado and
novelists such as Javier Cercas.
Machado died in exile before the end
of the war in Colliour, France. His poem "Proverbios y Cantares"
(“Proverbs and songs”, published in 1902, in the book Alma) collects the
feelings of exile and uncertainty about the future. Here is the last stanza of his
original poem (Machado, 1917/ n.d., Note 10)
“There is already a Spaniard who wants
to live and to live, begins,
between one dying Spain
and another Spain that yawns.
Little Spaniard who’s coming
God keep the world for you.
one of the two Spains
will freeze your heart.”
In his novel “Soldiers of Salamis” (“Soldados
de Salamina”, 2001) Javier Cercas describes the experiences of a fascist
soldier, Sánchez Meza, during the Spanish civil war. The novel opens with a
scene at the end of the war, a description of a mass shooting carried out by
the Republicans in Catalonia, just before they escaped from Spain into France.
In this incident, the republican militiamen released their fascist prisoners
with the aim of murdering them all. It was a war marked by hatred and
atrocities on both sides of the conflict. What Cercas describes was an
encounter between an anonymous militiaman and Sánchez, a Francoist soldier, in
which a human gaze prevents an execution:
“… It was a mass shooting, probably chaotic, because the war was already
lost and the Republicans were fleeing in disarray through the Pyrenees, so I
don't think they knew that they were shooting one of the founders of the
Falange…. My father kept at home the
jacket and pants with which he was shot, he showed them to me many times, maybe
they are still around; his pants were full of holes, because the bullets only
grazed him and he took advantage of the confusion of the moment to run to hide
in the forest. From there, sheltered in a hole. He heard the barking of dogs
and the gunshots and the voices of the militiamen, who were looking for him
knowing that they could not waste much time looking for him, because the
Francoists were hot on their heels. At some point my father heard a noise of
branches behind him, turned around and saw a militiaman
looking at him. Then there was a cry: "Is he out there?" My
father said that the militiaman stared at him for a few seconds and then,
without taking his eyes off him, shouted: "There's no one around
here!", turned around and left.... [Sanchez] spent several days sheltering
in the forest, eating what he found or what was given to him in the farmhouses.
He did not know the area, and his glasses had also been broken, so that he
could hardly see; … he always said that he would not have survived if he had
not found some boys from a nearby town, Cornellá de Terri it was called -or is
called-, some boys who protected him and fed him until the nationals
arrived." (p. 5-6).
It is a novel that tells many stories, but
mainly it talks about a bloody war between two Spanish factions, punctuated by
a moment of humanity. On the one hand, the republicans wanted to defend their
democracy, but this defense also implied a lot of hatred, against the church
which supported Franco, against monarchism and against the old structures of
power. On the other hand, the Falangists, defending a tradition that they little
understood, had also mounted a relentless mission of extermination against
everything and everybody that stood in their way.
After the Second World War, Franco
remained in power until 1975, when he finally died. King Juan Carlos I of
Bourbon, who had been appointed six years earlier by Franco as his successor,
was proclaimed king, and against what would have been Franco's wishes, he
supported the creation of a democracy. A year later there were general
elections and the beginning of the democracy that still governs Spain.
Democracy in Latin America
The birth of democracies in Latin
America is very similar to that of Spain. One of the main motivations of the
wars of independence was the desire to undo the economic restrictions that the "mother
country" imposed on its colonies, but there were also people who, educated
in Europe, and knowledgeable about the Enlightenment, wanted to form governments
based on the principle of law and some form of political self-management.
This desire was realized in
Venezuela for the first time with the elaboration of the Constitution of 1811.
Although this first document was reworked many times due to cyclical armed
rebellions, its mere existence indicates an important desire to achieve institutionalism
in the country. In this first document, the Catholic Church was recognized as
the official religion. Only men who owned property could participate in the
elections, and they could only elect representatives who, in turn, could choose
the members of the Chamber of Deputies, the senators and the triumvirate in
charge of the Executive Power. This constitution lasted only eight years.
A new Constitution was written by
Simón Bolívar in 1823. It distinguished between "active" citizens
(with the right to vote) and passive citizens (without the right to vote),
although all were recognized as having certain attributes of citizenship. It
recognized the right to be tried before the law in the case of crime, and free
expression and thought. Moreover, although it did not explicitly prohibit
slavery, it stated that no man could be the property of another.
After the liberation of Venezuela
from Spain, and the dissolution of Gran Colombia, liberal ideals were lost in political
turmoil. The country was dominated by
regional caudillos until the early twentieth century. Even so, the beginning of
the new century was marked by dictatorships that Vallenilla Lanz described as
necessary and pacifying. In an apology for the unrestricted power of the
dictatorships of Cipriano Castro and later, Juan Vicente Gómez, Vallenilla proposed
in his book, “Democratic Cesarship” ("El Cesarismo Democrático")
that the figure of the necessary gendarme was obligatory for the
pacification of the country. This appreciation of history was challenged by novelists
such as José Rafael Pocaterra (1936/1997) and Federico Vegas (2005).
In the three volumes of José Rafael
Pocaterra's book, “A Venezuelan’s memories of decadence” ("Memorias de
un Venezolano de la Decadencia", 1936), the author describes the
prisons of the dictators Castro and Gómez. Eduardo Santos, who wrote the
prologue for the first volume published by Monte Ávila, has achieved an
excellent appreciation of the work:
"The first volume begins with May 23, 1899... and ends in 1908,
with the author's release from the dungeon of San Carlos, where he had been
imprisoned since 1907. This is... the history of Castro in power, … the
domination of Andean barbarism in its first stage. The second volume is the
story of Gómez... until December 1919, when the author was again imprisoned...
as a conspirator. The third volume... Continues... with the period of 'General
Gómez'... [and] it contains the picture of the incredible evils and cruelties
of the Andean barbarism in its prisons....
Gómez and his gang are worse than the most atrocious bandits in living
memory.... This Andean barbarism, so long and so bloody... and so stupid... you
can build bridges and roads... and erect buildings and monuments, and put on a masquerade
of public works and material progress… [I]it
was just Gomez´ imbecile way of justifying himself before the world…; but... the
stability of this regime will not absolve it of its crimes against humanity and
against God in the abyss of its prisons... (Eduardo Santos López, prologue,
1928).
In another example, Federico Vegas’ book
"Falke" (2005) gives us another category of historical
reflections. Based on some brief reflections written by his uncle, Vegas has
elaborated a fabricated story about a true incident at the end of the 1920’s in
Venezuela. It was an armed incursion in
1929 organized by General Román Delgado Chalbaud, whose objective was to overthrow
Gomez’s dictatorship. The author imagines conversations and certain
relationships of friendship and love, but almost all the characters really
existed. He describes a group of young intellectuals, mostly Venezuelans, and
residents of European countries, none of whom had military training, who
arrived on the shores of Cumaná in Venezuela on a ship (called Falke). From there
they intended to overthrow the dictator. The total failure of this adventure
sealed Gómez's stay in power until his death in 1935. But the desire for change
endured and in the same year of Gómez's death, General Eleazar López Contreras
began to organize a transition to a more participative government.
He was followed in the presidency by
another general, Isaías Medina Angarita, who was appointed by the congress.
Finally, in 1948 the first general elections in the history of the country were
celebrated, in which Rómulo Gallegos Freire (the author of “Mrs. Barbara and
other novels) was elected; he was the first president elected by universal
vote, and although there was a coup d'état against him just months later, his
peaceful rise to power marked a moment of great significance for possibility of
democracy in the country.
The Culture of Family and Community
Life
It is curious that two novels that
combined stories of the Latin American family of the twentieth century with the
political influence of culture focus largely on women. Are; Isabel
Allende's book, "La Casa de los Espíritus" (about Chile), and
Ligia Mujica de Tovar's, "La Rotunda" (about Venezuela). Many of the characters' problems
come from their feminine condition in a patriarchal society; They face
well-known constraints: disadvantaged education, the requirement of virginity before
marriage, the rejection experienced by single mothers, and the hardships and
demands related to the need to sustain their family’s economy without help. And
related to these difficulties is social tolerance for men's infidelity. The
women in these books are both victims and heroines who confront and overcome
these adversities.
But Mujica's book does not stop at
the transformations these people manage to survive; at the same time, it
reviews a century of social upheavals. The characters’ lives are touched and
disrupted by the ambitions of rulers who in each era exercise power, from
General Joaquín Crespo until the end of the twentieth century, passing through a
brief time of liberal democracy that began with Rómulo Betancourt’s overthrow
of the dictator Marcos Perez-Jimenez.
In Mujica de Tovar's book, the
voices of immigrants in Venezuela, Antonio and Mercedes, open this fabric. With
their courage and dedication, they lay the fundamental threads of a long history.
Later their descendants challenge the prejudices of their time during Gomez’
dictatorship. One of the author's contributions in this book is to explore how
social and political situations influence children’s socialization. It shows us
that the successive conjunctures of repression or opportunities, created by differing
regimes, are not inconsequential. They persist in the people who grow up in
them and are passed on, semi-hidden, to their own children.
Final Thoughts on this chapter
The past exists in the present, as a
memory resource, but also as a Jungian shadow (Note 11). And as a shadow, the
only way to confront it is through reflections, almost psychoanalytical ones.
Who does not vote when there is an opportunity? As a general rule, abstention
in legitimate elections implies a substratum of mistrust, that is, doubts about
the final usefulness of political and social debate. There is uncertainty in
these cases about the role of individual citizen and their ability to influence
collective well-being. There is an implicit desire in nonparticipation that has
to do with the need for stability, even if it is malignant, and sometimes a
wish to be part of a dominant group.
In this small reflection I have used
literary works to delve into history. Novels and plays evidently do not provide
us with rigorous historical analysis. Rather, they open generous speculations
about lived experiences, individual perspectives, and concrete views that place
us in the middle of the habits, joys, and sorrows of the characters portrayed
in them. They put us there. For this reason, this kind of exploration opens
doors to a more direct understanding of past lives, and the legacies we have
inherited. It is, perhaps, an exploration of the Jungian shadow.
With our tour of cultural
differences in Europe and the Americas, we can see how history shapes the
present. England and France had an unstable relationship with power and their
subjects repeatedly questioned it. On the other hand, for Spain, absolutism was
an extremely useful instrument for the reigning houses to ensure their own
survival and discourage controversy.
In the sixteenth century, Étienne de
la Boétie (2016) wrote the "Discourse on voluntary servitude"
in which he advanced several reasons for people’s submission to doctrine. The
first is the habit, that is, the habits learned in childhood of obeying, first one’s
parents and then one’s sovereign.
Another reason mentioned by Boétie is that kings have known how to
associate themselves with the gods. Their vassals, equating the jurisdiction of
the deity with that of the sovereign, obey both, because they do not see the
differences. Kings surround themselves with acolytes and other persons who
benefit from their loyalty, and thus ensure their permanence on the throne.
Tolerance of difference (in ethnicity,
religion, political adherence, and so on) is the enemy of autocracy. And war is
the most effective vehicle for achieving uniformity of thought. In what we have
reviewed, we have seen how France, England and Spain have used war since the
beginning of their histories. Conquest, with its associated practice of seizing
neighbors’ lands and their goods, has been an accepted way of life – and has even
been considered laudable – and the conquistadors have entered history as
heroes.
However, other models began to loom,
especially in England. The knights of King Arthur's Round Table practiced
chivalry and protected the underdog. The nobels consider each other equals,
without ranks. This is a model “from the top”, that is, from the viewpoint of
the ruling class. The model developed by Robin Hood was “from the bottom”, and was
not only opposed to King John's greed, but proposed the need for general wealth
distribution. These legends are still
valid: many children there still know these stories. And then, with the advent
of the Enlightenment, the ideals of equality before the law and social justice
began to create new ways of looking at power.
In Spain, on the other hand,
absolutism lasted a long time without question.
These different ways of looking at
the world that influenced the American colonies, and they continue to shape the
types of government that are established in the countries that were formed from
them.
Endnotes
Note 1. The possible historical existence of Arthur's
kingdom would be located in the fifth century; the legends were written ten
centuries later, at the end of the fifteenth century by Sir Thomas Malory, and
the tale long precedes its transcription. The king and his nobles sat around a
"round table" that symbolized their equality in power. The king was
just one more of the royal court.
Robin Hood was the model of the
righteous bandit, who redistributes wealth by stealing from the rich to give to
the poor (National Geographic (n.d).
The barons of England forced King
John to sign "The Magna Carta" on June 15, 1215 to limit his
arbitrary acts. This was a historical basis for limiting the central power of
kings.
Note 2: The Inquisition was not a Spanish creation,
although it survived longer in this country. It was created in 1184 in France, to
combat the heresy of the Cathars, and was later used to suppress any
non-Catholic cult. In 1553 it was used to punish "witches" throughout
Europe, and Protestant Christians emulated these aggressions. For example, in
Geneva, in this year the Calvinists burned alive the Aragonese theologian,
doctor and humanist Michael Servetus.
Note 3: The word "Moor" comes from Roman
times to refer to the population of North Africa.
Note 4: "The Spanish reconquest came only in
1492, so for seven centuries a cultural swarm of Muslims, Jews and Christians
flourished there. Great libraries, palaces and mosques made Andalusia –
Granada, Seville and Cordoba, but also Toledo – a region whose cities shone on
a par with Baghdad or Damascus. In Toledo, under the monarchy of Alfonso the
Wise, of Christian origin, a school of translators was promoted, inaugurated by
Archbishop D. Raymundo de Sauxetat (1126-1152), a fact that multiplied the
crossover of knowledge" whose mission would be to translate into
Latin the works of Arab philosophers and Greek thinkers already translated and
glossed in Arabic. Toledo thus became a "link between East and West",
and occupied, for more than a century, a pre-eminent position among Europeans....
(Brasa Días, n.d.). (Forgotten Languages (1/7/2015).
Note 5: Toledo had been conquered in 1085. By 1126
the Christians of Toledo were enthusiastic supporters of the Moorish regime. It
was precisely at this time that Archbishop D. Raymundo de Sauxetat (1126-1152)
inaugurated in Toledo the school of translators whose mission would be to
translate into Latin the works of Arab philosophers and Greek thinkers already
translated and glossed in Arabic. Toledo thus became a link between East and
West, and occupied, for more than a century, a pre-eminent position in Europe (Brasa
Días, n.d.).
Note 6: Taken from: Timelines (n.d.):
1296 - 1st G. Independence of
Scotland: First Scottish War of Independence (1296–1328). Result: Scottish
victory. (Scotland, England)
1337-1453 - Hundred Years' War: War
between England and France in which other European kingdoms were involved.
1346/08/26 - Battle of Crécy zzz
1429 - Joan of Arc: Joan of Arc
liberates Orléans
1517 - Luther's Reformation
1545 - Trento: Concilio de Trento
1566-1648 - G. 80 years: War between
the Netherlands and the Spanish Empire
1579 - Siege of Maastricht: The
Spanish besiege and take the city of Maastricht
1618 - G. 30 years: 30 Years' War
1642 - English G. Civ.: English
Civil Wars between Royalist and Parliamentarian supporters.
1701 - Suc. Spanish: War of the
Spanish Succession
1715 - Utrecht: Treaty of Utrecht
- 1733 - Suc. Polish: War of the
Polish Succession
1739 - G. Seat: War of the Seat
1740 - Suc. Austrian: War of the
Austrian Succession
1756 - G. 7 Years: Seven Years' War
1775 - Indep. USA: War of
Independence of the United States
1802/03/25 - Amiens: Treaty of
Amiens
1810-1833 - Indep. Latin America:
Spanish-American Independence
1815/06/18 - Waterloo: Batalla de
Waterloo
1853 - Crimea: Crimean War
1866/06/14 - Austro-Prussia:
Austrio-Prussian War
1912 - G. Balcanes
1914 - World War I: World War I
1919/06/28 - Versailles: Treaty of
Versailles
1939 - World War II: World War II
1954 – Algeria: War of Independence
of Algeria from France.
1991-2001 - Yugoslavia
(The names are modern. It refers to
the areas that later became these countries.)
Note 7: Complete Parliament, taken from Act I, Scene
1 of William Shakespeare's "Edward III". (n.d.).
“See, how occasion laughs me in the face!”:
No sooner minded to prepare for France,
But straight I am invited,—nay, with threats,
Upon a penalty, enjoined to come:
Twere but a childish part to say him nay.—
Lorrain, return this answer to thy Lord:
I mean to visit him as he requests;
But how? Not servilely disposed to
bend,
But like a conqueror to make him
bow.
His lame unpolished shifts are come to light;
And truth hath pulled the vizard from his face,
That set a gloss upon his arrogance.”
Note 8: "’Enlightened despotism’, also called
benevolent despotism, eighteenth-century form of government in which absolute
monarchs implemented legal, social, and educational reforms inspired by the
Enlightenment. Among the most prominent enlightened despots were Frederick II
(the Great), Peter I (the Great), Catherine II (the Great), Maria Theresa,
Joseph II, and Leopold II. They generally instituted administrative reforms,
religious tolerance, and economic development, but they did not propose reforms
that would undermine their sovereignty or disrupt the social order"
(Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia, 30-10-2023).
Note 9: Estimates of the pre-Columbian population of
indigenous people in the United States are difficult to achieve, however,
Deneven (1992) places it in the range of 8–112 million individuals. It is
currently 4.8 million (American Demography, 2023). In "The Last of the
Mohicans", which is part of The Leatherstocking Tales (#2) written by
James Fenimore Cooper, the author describes battles between British and French
settlers with indigenous tribes, and also battles between the different tribes.
The novel ends with almost all the protagonists dead, and a tragic omen for
them, says the old patriarch Tamenund: "The pale-faces are already the
rulers of the Earth, and the time of the red-man has not come again..."
This old man feels that he has lived too long because he has been able to
witness the extinction of an entire group of people. (Chapter 33).
Note 10: The last stanza of Antonio Machado’s poem,
Proverbs and Songs, in the original Spanish.
“Ya hay un
español que quiere
vivir y a
vivir empieza,
entre una
España que muere
y otra
España que bosteza.
Españolito
que vienes
al mundo te
guarde Dios.
una de las
dos Españas
ha de
helarte el corazón.
Note 11: According to Carl Jung, the shadow archetype can
be considered as an unconscious aspect of the personality that is rejected by the
conscious self. For an individual, these aspects are suppressed, but remain
latent. The same is true on a cultural level, but it becomes a collective phenomenon.
Chapter
2
NORTH AMERICAS
NINETEENTH CENTURY: WHAT IT LEFT US.
The
traces of the Conquest of the American West according to novels and writings
First Approaches
The Americas of the nineteenth
century left a decisive foundation for us in the twentieth and twenty-first
centuries. What happened at that time left obligatory paths for the descendants
of the inhabitants of both continents at that time, both in their styles of
government and in how they were to live their lives. Especially in the United
States there was a contradictory confluence of the four principles of:
(a) the Constitution and its
amendments,
(b) slavery and its abolition,
c) the brutality of the near-extermination
of the indigenous population, and
d) the strength of the millions of
immigrants who moved westwards, sometimes on foot, and who settled throughout
the national territory.
All this has left psychological,
social and legal traces. It has left social remnants that are still visible in
the country, and still influence the formation of attitudes and ways in which
today's citizens understand themselves and others. It was a century
that abolished slavery, thus questioning and changing millennia of involuntary
servitude, and contradictorily, it was also responsible for one of the largest
massacres in history with respect to the original inhabitants of these
territories.
As we mentioned before, our primary
source in these reflections comes from novels by well-known authors. In fiction,
almost all the characters are the product of the imagination of their authors,
but the descriptions of the protagonists’ living conditions reflect a reality
that cannot be found in historical texts based on verifiable facts. It is
the rescue of an intimate imaginary, very similar to the idea of Gadamer
(1960/2000) who speaks of the fusion of the horizons of knowledge of historical
texts. Blas Zubiría-Mutis (2004) refers more
directly to analyses based on literature, saying that, it avoids neglecting
life’s the daily drama “that flesh and blood beings live in the historical
becoming”.
In this chapter I mainly consider
the following books: "The Frontier" by James Fenimore Cooper,
"The Pathfinders" by Allan W. Eckert, "Bury My Heart
in Wounded Knee" by Dee Brown, "Life in the Iron Mills"
by Rebecca Harding, "Uncle Tom's Cabin" by Harriet Beecher
Stowe, "The Red Badge of Courage" by Stephen Crane, the poem "O Captain! My Captain!"
by Walt Whitman, "Gone with the Wind" by Margaret Mitchell,
and "In America" by Susan Sontag. There are some minor references to
other novels.
It can be said that collective
representations can include a certain sense about what is true or false, and
that it can discriminate what things should not be said. It may also include a
vague awareness of what needs to be forgotten. But this is not necessarily the
case. Nocolopoulou and Weintraub elaborate it like this: "The same is
true for... moral codes and forms of moral discourse, than for conflicting
ideologies..." (p. 6).
The collective conscience is also a
collective memory. People have not only their own memories, but also the traces
of written culture and the family collections of their parents and
grandparents, who in turn had memories that, in many cases, were passed on to
the next generations as stories, chronicles and evocations of remote
experiences, and which have been interpreted and reinterpreted to help their
descendants understand the world in which they live. These memories can have
very different contents according to the social group to which each person
belongs.
In the pages that follow, I will
review some of the history of the United States of the nineteenth century. I
describe very different movements, attitudes and ways of living, and they shed
light on the intimacy of life at that time. What these works have left us are
the most diverse representations of what the country has been. These
interpretations filter upwards, like the water of the wetlands, from what has happened
until now, to nurture and irrigate current reality.
People still debate about the murky
events of the past; they also deny them. These darker moments tend to opaque the
greatest achievement of the 18th and 19th centuries: the
creation of a real and incarnate democracy inspired by the European
Enlightenment. These contradictions manifest themselves in a complex mixture of
unease and hope.
The Complexity of American History
The "conquest of the
West", which took place in the nineteenth century in the United States,
was a complex historical event, marked by four incoherent trends. On the one
hand, at the end of the eighteenth century the country had just assumed the
values of the Enlightenment (freedom, rule by law based on a constitution and
tolerance). On the other hand, there were still two atrocious situations: it
was legal to sell and buy human beings (Note 1), and the country's army was
carrying out the systematic massacre of indigenous tribes in its territory. The
migration of millions of Europeans and other peoples to the new territories was
one of the most important human relocations in the history of the world.
The Enlightenment
I have already considered how the
philosophers of the Enlightenment followed in the footsteps of ancient Greece
and Rome. I have also pointed out that they were not the first to think of
systems in which citizens could share power and be consulted in the process of
making political decisions that affected them. For David Graeber and David
Wengrow (Graeber, Wengrow, 2021), the first humans lived in complex and
decentralized governments for millennia.
It would take many millenniums for
there to be a real questioning of absolute power and a new appreciation of the
potential that reason has to solve human problems. Truly, the Greeks explored
the power of reasoning, and the early Romans learned from Greek philosophy. But
then the fall of Athens and the Roman Republic led to the need to cling to the
idea of personal salvation offered by Christianity. We have seen how the use of
reason in the Middle Ages did not die completely: there was Scholasticism,
which found a voice in the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas. It resorted – in part
– to reason to understand the world. Aquinas divided the sources of truth into
Aristotelian reasoning, on the one hand, and Christian revelation, on the
other. But after the Renaissance and the ruptures caused by Protestantism, a
door was opened for reason to be used to understand both the physical and
social worlds. For the Renaissance it was not so much the content of thought,
but the method used to think, and this method was notably found in the sciences
and mathematics. The Enlightenment was born out of a method, and the ideas it
produced led to the concepts of freedom, tolerance, and the law as a human
product to ensure their happiness and general well-being.
The Enlightenment was a historical,
philosophical and literary event; in the seventeenth century. Thinkers from
several European countries, especially France and England, began to question
traditional power structures. The main values of this movement were
"reason," a rule of law, and "freedom," themes that arose
from reflections on the nature of human happiness and the power structures we
create. They began to think about the competence of reasoned thought and nature
ideal governments. In these efforts they employed neither religious inspiration
nor adherence to a prince or a government, but methods of reflection and
investigation.
The Enlightenment was born as a
response to millennia of absolutism, and one of its main themes was the need
for tolerance. For ages, intolerance had been an instrument used by the
powerful to maintain dominance. In the Roman Empire, the political advantages
of a single cult were known and all “new” religions were fought viciously. But
when in 380 A.D. the Roman Emperor Theodosius I declared, in the Edict of
Thessalonica, that Nicene Christianity was the official religion of the Empire,
he was not referring to the Christian morality of love; rather he simply
initiated a new era of control with a new cult. Over time this church became
known as the church of Catholicism.
The emergence of Protestantism
centuries later also had political motives – in addition to the obvious
questioning for reasons of conscience. If religious tolerance was one of the
pillars of Enlightenment thought, at first the acceptance of religions other
than the Church of Rome was not an ethical position; its historical reasons
arose from political expediency. In England, Anglicanism was born out of a
challenge made by King Henry VIII to the power of the Roman church. In France
the acceptance of the Huguenots was traumatic, and included both the massacre
of "the night of Saint Bartholomew" and the French wars of religion.
The third of these wars ended with the peace treaty of Saint-Germain, with the
idea of achieving some coexistence between the sects. This effort did not
achieve its goal, and finally, with the accession of Henry IV to the French
throne, (this king who was formerly the Huguenot Henry III), the decree of the
Edict of Nantes (1598) was achieved which recognized Catholicism as the
religion of the State, and also promoted attempts at a reconciliation with the
Huguenots. This measure also did not produce peace because later, King Henry
himself was assassinated by a Catholic fanatic.
Changes were slow. The thinkers of
the Enlightenment were born from the openings that the Renaissance had made,
where artists dared to admire "man" as an aesthetic object, capable
of thinking, rather than condemning him for having been born of medieval sin,
and the designs of innovators such as Leonardo da Vinci opened up great
aesthetic possibilities and technological efficiency (especially military).
By the eighteenth century there was
greater economic well-being in Europe, partly due to colonialism, with the
arrival of new wealth and food products such as potatoes. Although
internal hostilities between European kings continued, their governments’
military efforts were somewhat diluted due to demands of their overseas
conflicts. In addition, the industrial revolution was beginning with inventions
such as the steam engine, and the mechanical seeding invented by Jethro Tull.
Europeans were still the subjects of despotic kings, but science, which was so
useful for the development of new technologies, ceded some of its method of
systematic doubt to philosophy.
Tolerance: The idea of religious tolerance
began to spread to the coexistence of different political ideas, and to imagine
that these differences could be reconciled through debates, and not by the
repressive exercise of royal power.
Civil rights guarantees had several
historical sources prior to the Enlightenment. We have seen how they can be
traced back to the English Magna Carta (Note 2) in which the nobles of the
court demanded from King John limits to absolute power. Then in the act of
Habeas Corpus in 1679, and then in the Petition of Right in 1689, when English
citizens began to enjoy certain rights. The awareness of these historical
milestones influenced the libertarian aspirations of the English colonies.
The primary influence for the
political changes of the eighteenth century, which included the North American
War of Independence and the French Revolution, was always the Enlightenment.
René Descartes (1596-1650), Francis Bacon (1561-1626), Immanuel Kant
(1724-1804), John Locke (1632-1704), and Voltaire (1694-1778) were some of the
most prominent writers. Ideas such as tolerance, equality, constitutional
government, and church-state separation were widely debated issues in Europe at
this time.
Tolerance was one of the primary
values. Pedro Bravo Gala says in his book on "The Letter of Tolerance"
by John Locke:
“… if the Second Essay on Civil Government dealt a severe blow to
absolutist despotism, the Charter on Tolerance meant the definitive
condemnation, on the theoretical level, of intolerance. …. The consecration of
religious freedom and freedom of conscience as a political right have
historically been linked to the process of constitution of the liberal
democratic State.... (p 10).
John Locke himself (1690/2018), in
Letters of Tolerance, said:
"The State is, in my opinion, a society of men constituted solely
to preserve and promote their civil goods. What I call civil goods are life,
liberty, bodily health, freedom from pain..." (p. 14)
It has not been easy to put
tolerance into practice. Even in the 21st century, an international tribunal in
The Hague is needed to deal with cases of human rights violations, which are
often rooted in intolerance. In the nineteenth century, the reality of a
constitutional government in the United States based on equality was
incompatible with the practices of slavery and the massacre of the Native
Americans. Likewise, incompatible ideologies and practices emerged from the
French Revolution: the "Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the
Citizen" of 1798 was accompanied a few years later by the guillotine.
Both are symbols of the same movement, although the second, a repressive
mechanism of political control, was not new.
France's Declaration of Human Rights
has served as a model for multiple subsequent declarations, national and
international, including the "Declaration of Human Rights" adopted by
the United Nations in 1948.
The American Liberal Tradition
In the eighteenth century, Thomas
Jefferson employed the ideas of the Enlightenment, when he began the prologue
to the Declaration of Independence of the United States from England with these
words: "All men are created equal...Later, the Anglo-American
tradition of legal guarantees and constitutional stipulations resonated in the
French Revolution: "Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité" was a proclamation
of its primary objectives. The idea of American democracy brought two ideas
together. The first had to do with the notion of individual guarantees, based
on the constitution and legal acts. The other came from the idea of reason that
should be the guide of human behavior.
It is interesting to review the life
of George Washington (Note 3); He is an historical figure of great relevance,
both for his beliefs and achievements, as well as for his contradictions. He
was not an intellectual and did not write about the themes of the Enlightenment
as Thomas Jefferson did, although some of the vocabulary of this movement
appeared in his speeches. His opinions and motivations emerged from a deep
humanist ethic and his own observations about society and life. In his first
inaugural address upon assuming the presidency in 1789, he asked for God's
blessing to:
"...to consecrate the liberties and happiness of the citizens of
the United States, [under] a government instituted by themselves..."
and he asked that: "the foundation of our national policy should follow
the pure and immutable principles of private morality, and the pre-eminence of
a free government..." (Navrachna University, n.d.).
Washington was born in 1732 and died
in 1799 at Mount Vernon. He grew up in an environment of personal wealth based
on agriculture, and both his parents and himself owned extensive lands and
slaves to tend to them. Growing up, he devoted himself to country
life, military life, and then to the politics of the new American nation.
Despite his opposition to the
institution of slavery, he could not do without it personally, given the extent
of his properties. He can be criticized, since he could have lived more
modestly, but he preferred to stay in a range of power and influence. He said,
"This kind of trafficking is in opposition to my principles"
(Graff and Nevins, 2-19-2024). But in the end, he treated both his
slaves and his sharecroppers with dignity, tending to their requirements for
food, clothing, and even had a doctor to attend to their health needs. He did
not want to sell his slaves so as not to separate the families, and at the time
of his own death he ordered that they all be freed after the death of his
spouse, Martha Dandridge of Washington.
His early military experiences were
related to confrontations with the French in Ohio and Pennsylvania. At this
time, he was an officer in the British Army. Their involvement in independence
began with communications sent to Patrick Henry and George Mason protesting
British taxes in 1768. At first, he supported peaceful solutions. Then,
in 1774 he participated in the Continental Congress that considered the
possibility of demanding, by military means, greater respect from England, but
he still did not speak of independence. He then said:
"I will raise up a thousand men, pay for their sustenance at my
expense, and march with them for the relief of Boston." He
defended "those rights and privileges which are essential to the
happiness of every free State, and without which life, liberty, and property
become insecure" (Graff and Nevins, 2/19/2024).
He began training volunteers in
Virginia. By 1775 the army was a revolutionary. The Declaration of Independence
was signed in 1776. Washington's army struggled, and he and his men fought in
very poor conditions. He did not have great tactical skills, but in the end,
helped by the French, in 1778, they began to gain ground, and in 1781 the
Americans defeated the British militarily. In 1782 the British accepted American
independence, and the Treaty of Paris was signed in 1783.
The contradictions of George
Washington’s era could not be resolved in his lifetime, but he contributed to
the creation of a more just political structure. Its causes indelibly marked
the following centuries.
In the following section, I cite
several novels and works of literature (Note 4). The first is, "The
Pioneers"; which is a historical short story written by James Fenimore
Cooper (1/1-1823/8-2000). It is the first of five novels by this author that
are known as the "Leatherstocking Tales".
Endnotes; introduction
Note 1. Slavery was abolished on December
18, 1865 with the adoption of the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution.
Note 2. The Magna Carta is an agreement of rights
agreed between King John of England and a group of rebellious barons at
Runnymede, on 15 June 1215. It was later modified, but it remains a historical
landmark.
Note 3. George Washington has been compared to the
Roman Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus, who returned to his fields and plow after
suppressing an uprising, rejecting the honor of being dictator of Rome.
Washington also returned to private life after being the first constitutional
president of the United States.
Note 4. To cite the works in this chapter, in some
cases I have employed online text versions of Guttenberg, as in the cases of
James Fenimore Cooper (1/1-1823/8-2000), Eckert (2002/nf), and Stowe
(1-1-1852/28-10-2021). These texts are not divided into pages, therefore, when
I have quoted them I have limited myself to mentioning the chapters from which
they come.
The Frontier by James Fenimore
Cooper
I begin my journey of the
"conquest of the west" with a novel written by James Fenimore Cooper,
"Frontier." It is set on the East Coast of the United States,
and represents the beginning of the historical and cultural process of the
great 19th century migration from east to west. In "Frontier",
I have tried to identify the place, the values, the aspirations and the
personalities of the time.
In that century in the United States
there were great confrontations, important achievements and at the same time,
actions of sad ethical heritage: slavery was eliminated, and the Civil War was
won, but on the other, the indigenous population was almost completely
eliminated. American history is full of contradictions, and they continue to
loom, influencing the present.
In "Frontier", J.F.
Cooper develops several themes that are of interest to our reflections. The
story is set in New England in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth
centuries.
Perhaps the most salient theme of
the story is the problem of land tenure in the sense of private property. It
was, at the time of writing the story, still a "new" territory, and
unlike in Europe, immigrants could occupy plots of land by simply settling
there. They were, in fact, called “settlers”. This has to do with several
sub-themes such as: a) the expulsion of the original aborigines, b) the
distribution of plots among immigrants and the demands regarding the justice of
this distribution and c) the creation of new social hierarchies.
There are other themes to consider:
for example, Cooper explores the need to conserve forests and wildlife in the
face of the exploitation of new inhabitants. Race awareness and the social
importance of people's ancestral origin can also be
mentioned. Another issue has to do with the genesis of American
character diversity. A final issue is the influence of religion in the area.
Land tenure
Cooper's story begins in 1793; it is
set in an area similar to that of Cooperstown, New York, a town where his
father had extensive domains and where the author lived from a young age. The
tale takes place in the fictional town of Templeton in Otsego County. Although
the characters are invented, they point to well-known personality types of the
time.
The theme of land ownership runs
throughout the novel. Cooper talks about the "dominions" of the
original European settlers, and then how they displaced the American Indians.
The main character, Judge Temple, is the largest landowner, and his extensive
possessions cause distrust among other characters. Sometimes these
apprehensions were due to the restrictions that private property signify (you
cannot hunt deer freely on it because it is not yours). It also had to do with
a perception of injustice (in these new states, equality and freedom were
important values).
Cooper describes a
"frontier" society in the state of New York, which was in rapid
expansion. In the period he describes – which has a lapse of less than ten
years – he says that the population "has spread over a space that
covers five degrees of latitude and seven degrees of longitude"
(Introduction), meaning European immigrants and some African slaves.
Cooper says that it was "a
beautiful region, from which the Indians had been 'removed'”, (Introduction)
although their tribes were still in evidence in the names of the areas, towns
and cities there. Today, the memory of Indigenous populations survives in many
U.S. geographic designations. As Michale Hoper (9/2/24) points out, more than
half of the names in all 50 states have indigenous origins. (Note 1)
The need to conserve forests and
wildlife
Another theme that runs through the
novel is the conflict that arises from the use of these domains. One of
Cooper's main themes is the struggle between the need to protect the virgin forests,
and the needs and concerns of the settlers. Some of the book’s characters think
that these resources should exist freely for everyone’s use, and that everybody
should be able to harvest the trees and hunt the animals without concern for
conservation and sustainability. Others, including the main character, Judge
Temple, worry about the need to protect these resources. As much of the land
has been privatized (and Temple is the most important owner), limits have been
placed on the right of non-owners to hunt deer on it, although these limits are
still not fully respected. All the men know how to shoot their rifles and hunt,
and they forage in the forests, even though there are sources of meat on the
farms.
Cooper describes some animal-killing
sports. There is a moment when the author describes a competition that consists
of shooting at a tied-up turkey; the bird is a small target because only its
head is visible (Chapter 17), and there is a certain distance between the
animal and the "athletes". This rough competition arouses great
enthusiasm among them. At another point, in Chapter 22, the townsmen enter the
mountains and shoot uncontrollably—and without even aiming their rifles—at a
flock of pigeons flying over them, killing far more birds than they can
consume. They do it for the pleasure of killing. The author describes the
scene: "Among the athletes was Billy Kirby, who, armed with an old
musket, charged and, without even looking into the air, fired and screamed
while his victims fell even on his own person." Natty, the character
most linked to the love of the land, says in this chapter: "It would
have been better to only kill those they want to eat, without wasting their powder
and lead, than to be shooting at God's creatures in such a shameful way."
As a sign of this moderation, he
picks up a single bird and takes it away, from the hundreds that lie on the
ground.
Race and Rank Awareness
The inhabitants of the area that Cooper
describes, experienced rapid changes in status and economic influence. In
principle, even the poorest could satisfy their hunger because there was the
possibility of hunting for meat. In general, the poor used their physical
strength; if they were women, they tended the houses of the wealthiest people,
and if they were men, they would to cut firewood, build houses and transport
goods. Those with modest financial means could open a shop. The
"professionals" of medicine or law were often self-taught or
self-proclaimed as specialists. In fact, Justice Temple himself had no known
diplomas, and often the villagers preferred to consult with the indigenous
shaman than with Dr. Elnathan Todd, the village physician. It also happened
that some of the people who had arrived with generous economic means were,
after a while, in poverty, and, on the contrary, the poor could rise to
abundance. This is a feature of the expanding society of the United States in
the nineteenth century, and the phenomenon of social ascendance (and fall) can
still be appreciated.
The village of Templeton consisted
of about fifty buildings of very varied styles. The construction material was
usually wood, sometimes painted, and they were organized according to a more or
less urban design.
There were some slaves, but they
were not frequent. Due to widespread social disapproval of slavery in this community,
they were sometimes released after a few years. The owners had an obligation to
teach them to read and write before the age of 18. In the end, they were all
released in 1826 – before the Civil War – and after the events narrated in this
novel. The Quaker community that lived there never had slaves and condemned the
practice. (Note 2)
The characters and genesis of the
American character
Its characters are:
"...The great proprietor who resides on his land, and who gives
his name to his property instead of receiving it from his property, as in
Europe, .... The physician with his theory, rather obtained than corrected by
experiments on the human constitution; the pious, self-sacrificing, industrious
and poorly paid missionary; … [the] lawyer of bad repute, with his
counterweight, brother by profession, of better origin and of better character;
the indolent, haggling and envious salesman..., the plausible carpenter,
..." (Introduction).
In general, the characters knew how
to read and write. They read a local newspaper and talked about the events.
They are all people of autonomous character, with defined personalities, and
their bonds are of cautious, mutual respect, all depending on the rank of each
person, with the slaves located at the bottom of the hierarchies. Almost
all of them are of European origin in the first, second or third generation.
The relations between the immigrants and the few Indians who remain in the area
are varied: they are considered "savages", but there are moments of
respect for them.
One of the central characters,
Nathaniel ("Natty" Bumppo, also known as Leather-stocking), is a
hunter and a patriot of the Revolution, a friend of the Indians and respected
by Judge Temple. He loves nature and opposes the habits of those who harm the
forests. Natty represents the border between institutional and natural law.
Judge Marmaduke Temple is a cautious
innovator; He is a natural leader and capable of empathy despite his strict
interpretation of the law. It could be said that he is prudent, honorable and
dignified. He cares about nature and shares many of Natty's views. He represents
those immigrants who view the new lands with respect and even love, but who
have an important commitment to a society governed by law.
There are various versions of
Protestant religions, including the Religious Society of Friends (or the
Quakers). Judge Temple is a descendant of this congregation, although at the
time of this novel, he practices a non-denominational form of his faith.
Distinct Christian religious loyalties abound, not including Catholics. Due to the
Quaker influence, there are few slaves. But there is race consciousness, and
whites consider themselves superior. In fact, at the end of the novel, when
Judge Temple's daughter ends up marrying a character whose "racial
purity" has been questioned, the author finds it important to clarify that
the groom, in fact, is the descendant of a respected European.
These are themes that can still be
appreciated in the culture of the United States. There is still the esteem in
which the independent – and sometimes rude – individual is held, along with
group loyalty. A fondness for firearms, a love of violent sports,
and an exclusive awareness of racial identity also endure. But at the same
time, people engage in frequent ethical questioning on issues as diverse as
respect for the law, the preservation of the environment and social inclusion.
Endnotes: Frontier
Note 1 Some indigenous names left in geographic
locations in the United States:
- Alabama – Derived from the Alabama
tribe, a Muskogean-speaking people.
- Alaska – Derived from the Aleutian
word "alaxsxaq" or "agunalaksh," meaning "the
continent" or "great land."
- Arizona – Derived from the O'odham
word "Alĭ ṣonak", meaning "small spring" or "place of
the small spring".
- Arkansas - Derived from the French
interpretation of the name given to the Quapaw people, a tribe living along the
Arkansas River.
- Connecticut – Derived from the
Mohegan-Pequot word "quinatucquet," meaning "long tidal river"
or "beside the long tidal river."
- Delaware - Named after Thomas
West, 3rd Baron De La Warr, an English nobleman, but influenced by the Lenape
tribe living in the area.
- Illinois – Derived from the French
interpretation of the name given to the Illiniwek people, a confederation of
Native American tribes.
- Iowa – Derived from the Dakota
Sioux word "ayúxba," meaning "sleepy" or "beautiful
land."
- Kansas – Derived from the Kansa
tribe, also known as the Kaw people.
- Kentucky – Derived from the Wyandot
or Iroquois word "kenhtà:ke", meaning "meadow" or
"prairie".
- Massachusetts – Derived from the
Wampanoag tribe language, meaning "on the big hill," or near the
hills.
-. Michigan – Derived from the
Ojibwa word "mishigamaa," meaning "big water" or "great
lake."
- Minnesota – Derived from the
Dakota Sioux word "mnisota," meaning "clear blue water" or
"sky-tinged water."
- Mississippi – Derived from the
Ojibwa word "misi-ziibi," meaning "great river" or
"gathering of waters."
- Missouri - Named after the
Missouri tribe, a Siouan-speaking people.
- Nebraska – Derived from the
Omaha-Ponca word "ni brásge," meaning "flat water" or
"wide river."
- North Dakota – Derived from the
Dakota Sioux word "dakȟóta", meaning "friend" or
"ally".
- Ohio – Derived from the Iroquois
word "ohiːyo," meaning "great river" or "good
river."
- Oklahoma – Derived from the
Choctaw words "okla" meaning "people" and "humma"
meaning "red", together they mean "red people" or "red
man".
- Oregon – Derived from the Spanish
interpretation of the name given to the Columbia River by local Native American
tribes.
- South Dakota – Derived from the
Sioux word "dakȟóta", meaning "friend" or "ally".
- Tennessee - Named after the
Cherokee village of Tanasi.
Texas - Derived from the Caddo word
"teysha" or "taysha," meaning "friend" or
"allies."
- Utah – Derived from the Ute tribe,
a Numic-speaking people.
- Wisconsin – Derived from the
Ojibwa word "wiskonsin," meaning "beaver place" or
"gathering of waters."
Note 2. "The
liberation of the slaves in New York was gradual. When public opinion began to
favor it, then the custom began of buying a slave and keeping them for only six
or eight years, on condition that he be freed at the end of this time. Then a
law dictated that everyone should be released after an indicated date, men at
20 years of age and women at twenty-five years of age. Later a law dictated
that the owner should be obliged to teach his servants to read and write before
they were eighteen years old, and finally, it was ordered that all those who
were still in submission should be released without further preconditions in
the year 1826, that is, after the publication of this tale. The Quakers never
had slaves" (footnote, chapter 4).
Two books: "The
Pathfinders" and "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee"
Manifest Destiny
Immigrants came from all over the
world, mainly from Europe. They came by the millions, welcome in a sprawling
land. The term "manifest destiny" referred to the
territorial expansion of the country before and after the Civil War. The spread
of cotton farms in the South, and the seizure of the Ohio Territory area in
1803 was followed by the Louisiana Territory Purchase in the same year.
President Andrew Jackson invaded Florida, formerly a colony of Spain, in 1818.
Texas was annexed to the country in 1845 after the War between the United
States and Mexico, but before the end of the Civil War in 1865.
The term "Manifest
Destiny" first appeared in 1845 in articles written by John O'Sullivan,
and referred to the desirability of annexing Texas. He described this
determination as "The right... to expand and possess the totality of
the continent that Providence has given us for the development of the great
experiment of freedom and self-government that has been entrusted to us"
(Heider and Heider, 4-3-2024).
Allan W. Eckert's novel, "The
Conquerors" offers us a multiple perspective on the conquest of the
territories that were to become the Midwestern states such as Pennsylvania,
Ohio and Michigan. The conflicts date from the time of colonial settlements to
the end of the nineteenth century. As a result of the draconian "Indian
Removal Act" of 1830, the U.S. government was able to force the migration
of tribal members from east to the west of the Mississippi river, to an area
that later became the state of Oklahoma. In the end, the tribes were forced to
live only on reservations.
But the novel concentrates on the
years around the war of 1812. The author reviews the actions of both the
British military and later those of the French and the Americans. It also
recognizes some of the leaders of indigenous nations in these wars. The
Indo-American leader Pontiac is a tragic hero who fights for a cause he cannot
win and he knows it. Pontiac (whose name in the Odawa tradition was
Obwaandi'eyaag), was a war-chief in the Great Lakes area, allied at first with
the French in their fight against the British. He then fought against the U.S
army (Pueblos Originarios, (n.d.). These are events that occurred before the
waves of Europeans that began to populate these regions, but the objective of
these conflicts on the part of the United States was to leave these territories
free for the settlement of the migrants who were arriving.
Around the same time the United
States purchased "the Louisiana Territories" from France in 1803.
This included large tracts on both sides of the Mississippi River and consisted
of most of the land in the Mississippi River drainage basin, approximately
828,000 square miles (2,140,000 km2), located in the central part of the states
that had not yet been established. Before selling these lands France militarily
controlled only the southern ends of these lands, but for the United States
this meant the international right to continue conquering the lands of the
Indians for itself. (Wikipedia (n.d.).
On the other hand, the book, "Bury
my heart at Wounded Knee" by Dee Brown is not fiction. It is a story
based largely on notes taken in meetings between the councils of the different
Indian tribes with representatives of the U.S. government. The author has also
cited publications made at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning
of the twentieth century (Note 1). The book is the result of carefully explored
and chronologically organized research according to the confrontations between
the indigenous populations of the West and the U.S. armed forces.
It is not easy to read. It is a long
tragedy. One reads this book knowing that the territorial dispute could have
been handled differently. But Europe brought a long tradition in which regional
disagreements were resolved at the point of a saber (or rifle). The conquered
rarely attempted to negotiate solutions acceptable to all involved: the winners
eliminated the losers, or transformed them into labor for the new occupants of
the confiscated territories. Brown describes the first reactions of the whites
when they encounter the Indians:
"So docile, so peaceful, are these people," Columbus wrote
to the King and Queen of Spain, "that I swear to Your Majesties that there
is no better nation in the world. They love their neighbor as themselves, and
their speech is always sweet and gentle, and accompanied by a smile; and
although it is true that they walk naked, their manners are decorous and
praiseworthy." All this, of course, was taken as a sign of weakness, if
not paganism, and Columbus being a righteous European was convinced that these
people should be used "to work, to sow and to do all that is necessary and
to adopt our ways". Over the next four centuries (1492-1890) several
million Europeans and their descendants undertook the task of imposing their
ways on the people of the New World" (p 8).
In his preface, the author delimits
the time and social environment of his work:
"... 1860 and 1890, the period covered by this book.... was a time of incredible violence, greed,
audacity, sentimentality, unbridled exuberance, and an almost reverential
attitude toward the ideal of personal freedom for those who already had it. In
that time, the culture and civilization of the American Indians were destroyed,
and from that time arose virtually all the great myths of the American West:
tales of fur traders, mountaineers, steamship pilots, gold prospectors, card
players, gunmen, cavalrymen, cowboys, prostitutes, missionaries, local
schoolteachers, and settlers. Only once in a while was the voice of an Indian
heard, and most of the time it was recorded by the pen of a white man. The
Indian was the dark menace of myths..." (Introduction, p. 6)
In the first chapter the author cites
a quote from Tecumseh (Note 2), a leader of the Shawanee tribe. It is the first
of many references in the book in which indigenous leaders express their
disappointment and sadness with the treatment they received from European
immigrants, and their sense of loss and their anger.
"Where are the Pequot today? Where are the Narragansett, the
Mohican, the Pokanoket, and many other tribes of our people? They have vanished
before the greed and oppression of the white man, like snow before a summer
sun. Will we allow ourselves to be destroyed in turn without a fight, will we
renounce our homes, our homeland bequeathed to us by the Great Spirit, the tombs
of our dead and all that is dear and sacred to us? I know you'll cry with me:
"Never! Never!" —TECUMSEH OF THE SHAWNEES (p. 8)
Throughout the book this type of
quote is repeated. A solution other than the total surrender of the indigenous
survivors to the country's military power was never achieved. While it is true
that there were clashes between civilian immigrants and Amerindians, most of
the conflicts resulted from a consistent policy of military conquest. The
tribes of the Midwest called the seventh president of the United States, Andrew
Jackson (1829-1837) "Sharp Knife" because of his cruelty in his
dealings with the Indians. In the end they were confined to reservations, on
the worst lands, and without citizenship rights.
Endnotes
Note 1. Here are examples
taken from his long list of references:
Bryant, Charles S., and A. B. Murch.
A History of the Great Massacre by the Sioux Indians in Minnesota. Cincinnati,
1864.
Campbell, C. E. “Down Among the Red
Men.” Kansas State Historical Society, Collections, Vol. XVII, 1928, pp.
623–91.
Historical Society, 1961.
Carrington, Frances C. My Army Life and the Fort Phil Kearny
Massacre. Philadelphia, Lippincott, 1911. Carrington, H. B. The Indian
Question. Boston, 1909.
Note 2. In the U.S. state of Michigan, Tecumseh is a
city in Lenawee County near the Raisin River. Likewise, the name of the state
comes from the Mohican tribe.
The beginning of industrialization
"Life in the iron mills"
by Rebecca Harding is a story probably set in the state of Virginia in the
first half of the nineteenth century (originally published in 1861); it is a
fictionalized version of the author's observations and experiences in her town
of Wheeling where factories were the way of life. It describes the truncated
and ruined lives of workers in the companies of the time before there was a
minimum of labor protection. It is a novel reminiscent of Charles Dickens.
This book focuses on the human
destruction that characterized the early years of unbridled production, and
asks about the causes of constant punishment in the lives of workers. It has
echoes of the Calvinist ethic of spiritual salvation, but its aspirations for
freedom are centered on the expected labor reform from government agencies. The
idea of individual responsibility yields to a collective claim for social
justice. The novel ends in a tragedy for the main character who has had no way
to demand his rights given the lack of a system of labor guarantees, and
therefore seeks them personally and illegally.
ENDNOTES: Industrialization
Note 1. I have used Nasrulla Mambrol's article as a
reference in these reflections.
Uncle Tom's Cabin
Slavery as an historical
institution
Slavery is one of the oldest labor
structures. In civilizations such as the Persians, the Mayans, the Aztecs,
China, and India, there are very archaic references to it, usually linked to
war events. Evidence of this servitude can be found in the Code of Hammurabi
(from the region of Mesopotamia, drawn up in the 2nd century BC), the Old
Testament book of Deuteronomy (Note 1), and in Spanish chronicles of the Inca
civilization, among others. In most of the ancient world, slaves
were a part of the expected spoils of war: it was normal for prisoners
to end up as their captors’ unwilling workers. Aristotle approved of the use of
slavery in Athens, and in Sparta a form of feudalism (called illotism) was
practiced that closely resembled slavery. Then, in the Roman Empire and
throughout the feudal history of Europe, those who had the means to do so
continued to practice the subjugation and submission of people for involuntary
servitude.
In the end, in the nineteenth
century it was abolished in the United States in 1863 with the Act of
Manumission of Abraham Lincoln, and in most European states in 1890 by means of
the Brussels Conference Act. In 1948, article 4 of the Universal Declaration of
Human Rights was adopted, which stipulates that it is inconsistent with the
principle of universal human rights. (Note 2)
Thus, its use in the American
colonies was a continuation of a very old practice. What distinguished it in
the English colonies were perhaps two factors:
(a) its large scope and its broad
integration with the cotton farming model in the southern colonies;
b) the emergence in the North of
groups and individuals who began to oppose it in the name of a new morality
associated with the European Enlightenment and religious convictions such as
those of the Quakers. (Note 3)
The British colonies, territories
that would later become the United States, were divided economically into the
North and South. In the South, the cotton economy was based on slave labor, but
the North was industrializing. Farms were small, often restricted to the work
done by the owners of the plots, all members of the same family. In addition,
there were groups such as the Quakers who were strong opponents of involuntary
labor. Gradually, after their independence from England, the northern states
banned it; in 1846 New Jersey was the last northern state to eradicate it.
In her book "Uncle Tom's
Cabin," Harriet Beecher Stowe explores American slavery in the 19th
century. It is the story of several white families, both from the South and the
North who have mixed opinions about it. In some cases, those who defend the
practice support not only slavery but also the right to mistreatment.
Despite having a basically humanist
stance, Stowe’s character Augustine St. Clare associates the treatment of
slaveholders with the way English industrialists treated their employees in
their factories. He says that there can be no high civilization without the
submission of the lower classes. But he recognized that in the South of the
United States the dehumanization was worse: according to St. Clare, the mere
fact of living with slaves, as happened on the plantations, meant that the
slaveholders had to become morally hardened. He says: "The capitalists
and aristocrats of England cannot feel as we do, because they do not mix with
the class they degrade…. They are in our homes; they are our children's
companions..." (Chapter 12). He says that white children, who are raised
with slaves, and who play with them, have to learn not to love them.
Stowe's different white characters
represent opposing positions on slavery, to name a few:
a) Arthur, Emily Shelby and
Augustine St. Clare who are southern slave owners, and they treat them well;
despite this, Arthur Shelby sells the slave Tom to Mr. Haley, a cruel trader,
b) Ophelia St. Clare, Augustine's
sister, opposes slavery, although she refuses personal contact with black
people until she meets the girl Topsy, a slave she decides to raise in freedom,
c) Simon Legree, an evil master on a
Louisiana plantation who buys Tom after Mr. Shelby sold him. He is a barbaric
and repugnant character, who foments violence and hatred among his slaves and
d) the Quakers, a religious sect
that not only rescues runaway slaves, but also seeks for them a sustainable
refuge in the north, especially in Canada.
On the other hand, from the point of
view of the enslaved, the author Stowe has created characters who wonder about
universal law: who or what has the right to place one man above the others?
-Tom is a slave of strong religious
feelings, faithful, obedient and without malice;
-his wife is Aunt Chloe remains on
Mr. Shelby's estate after he sells Tom.
-Eliza escapes from slave hunters
carrying her small son, jumping across large blocks of ice in the Ohio River in
the winter.
-George, her spouse, also flees and
meets Eliza and their son in the free state of Ohio, but the couple has to
continue to Canada because hunters are still chasing them in the north of the
country (Note 4).
-Topsy is a slave girl who did not
know her parents and has lacked the most basic formative and cultural
influences until Mr. St. Clare buys her and gives her to her sister to raise
her well.
In addition, Stowe asks about the
psychological effects of slavery. Augustine St. Clare, a slave owner (but
lukewarm questioner of the institution), recognizes the damage that the lack of
freedom does to the slave, who becomes brutalized and depressed in his most
basic capacities to think and act. But he says that something similar happens
to the owners. The master likewise degrades himself because his position
compels him to hate and inflict pain on other human beings.
Simon Legree, a character who in the
literary tradition has come to represent evil in its most brutal form, is the
most bestial slave owner in the entire novel. He is Uncle Tom's ultimate
master, his executioner and his torturer: all this malice stems from his
inability to tolerate fortitude and charity in another human being. He tries to
brutalize Tom, and turn him into something similar to himself, but he can't. His
only recourse is to physically destroy Tom.
The slave trade
Trafficking in enslaved persons,
that is, the capture, sale, purchase and, in general, the commercialization of
human beings has existed as much as involuntary labor itself. The Encyclopaedia
Britannica tells us:
"Enslaved people were taken from the Slavs and Iranians from
ancient times [and the trade endured] until the nineteenth century... In the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, enslaved Africans were exchanged in the
Caribbean for molasses, which was turned into rum in the American colonies and
exchanged in Africa for more slaves." (Wallenfeldt, 29-2-20249).
Stowe recounts several American
scenarios in which this type of trade occurred, from a public auction to private
sales. She describes the desperation of the people put up for sale, and the
total depersonalization of the merchants. She describes one of these salesmen using
the voice of Augustine St. Clare: he says that this state of hardening of the
soul is something that can happen to anyone in those dehumanized environments:
"The merchant had reached that stage of perfection... lately, in
which he had completely overcome all human weaknesses and prejudices. His heart
was exactly where yours, sir, and mine could be taken, with the right effort
and cultivation. The woman's wild look of absolute anguish and despair might
have disturbed someone less experienced; But [the human trader] was used to it.
He had seen that same look hundreds of times. You can get used to those things
too, my friend; … So the merchant only considered the mortal anguish he saw in
those dark features, in those clenched hands, and in those suffocating breaths
as necessary aspects of his trade…." (Harriet Beecher Stowe, Chapter 12).
Conscience
Conscience, seen as a moral
elaboration of individual and social acts, is central to Stowe's novel. For
many of her characters, it is something related to the dictates of religion.
For others, scruples have no role as a mediator between their choices and actions,
as their main criterion is simply their own financial and personal benefit.
Augustine St. Clare, the slave owner I have already mentioned, is a man who
identifies with the European Enlightenment, realizes this dichotomy and allows
himself to classify the desirability of his options according to the
moment. He says:
"...All I want is for different things to be kept in different
boxes. The whole fabric of society, both in Europe and in America, is composed
of various things which will not stand up to the scrutiny of any ideal standard
of morality. It is generally understood that men do not aspire to absolute
right, but only to do it as well as the rest of the world. Now, when someone
speaks... and he says that slavery is necessary for us, that we cannot live
without it, that we would be beggars if we renounced it, and, of course, that
we intend to hold on to it: this is strong, clear, well-defined language; it
has the respectability of truth; and, if we can judge by their practice, the
greater part of the world will agree with us..." (Stowe, Chapter 16).
Tom, the slave and central character
of the novel, on the other hand, acts both on the basis of his religious ideas
and on the basis of a deep sense of empathy: he feels the pain of others and
the need to protect the people around him. At the end of the novel, when two
slaves, owned by Simon Legree, named Emmeline and Cassy, organize a complex
escape plan, Tom supports them to the point of losing his life. In the first
stage of their evasion they hide, and Tom knows where they are. Legree,
realizing that Tom has this information, demands that he reveal what he knows,
and Tom refuses to do so. It does so to protect those who try to escape, a
feeling of solidarity and deep affinity and compassion.
Final Thoughts on This Novel
Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote her
novel in the 19th century, before the Civil War when slavery was still legal in
the South of the United States. Her narrative is not only a profound critique
from a humanist point of view, based on its effect on her characters, but also
constitutes a tool to understand racism and vassalage today. Its protagonists
debate the morality and usefulness of an economy based on the subjection of a
large part of the population, and in their conversations, they describe a
system that is radically opposed to the Constitution of the same country where
they live, which was ratified on May 29, 1790.
In her portrayal, slavery is revealed
as a highly economically profitable system, which destroys almost all the
humans who live in it. The only salvation for the subdued is to try to evade
their owners. And these, living with the effects of their own inhumanity, are
fragmented and also break down in their capacity to love and live together.
At the end of the story, some of the
slaves, now free, leave for Liberia, in an attempt to seek their identity and
freedom in something they imagine as their mother-land. An online publication
by National Geographic reads:
"On February 6, 1820, the first group of formerly enslaved people
in the United States who resettled in Africa departed from New York. An
organization called the American Colonization Society had been established,
with funds from Congress, to return them to the American colony of Liberia in
West Africa.... People believed that African Americans would experience greater
freedom and opportunities "back" in Africa. However, there were
problems. Although they were of African descent, many of these newly released
people... had become accustomed [to the American way of life], which had little
in common with Liberian communities.... Of those born in Africa, few had
memories of their diverse peoples and the land from which they were taken. Still,
Liberia was probably not their ancestral home.... Despite
this, in the decades that followed, thousands of formerly enslaved people
[decided to go] to Liberia. In 1847, it became the first African colony to gain
independence as a nation" (Editores 2, n.d.).
It is ironic that these people,
seeking freedom and rootedness, became settlers on a land that was not theirs.
The people displaced by their arrival attacked them, after all this land was
not theirs. In addition, the newcomers suffered from disease, hunger, and the
weather. Many did survive and stayed. In the United States, most of the people
released from slavery rejected the idea of returning to Africa. They had lived
in the United States for generations. They wanted their freedom and equality.
Frederick Douglass (Note 5) was one of the movement's most visible opponents.
Endnotes: Uncle Tom's Cabin
Note 1. In the Old Testament tells how the Israelites
were sometimes sold as servants to other Israelites (Deuteronomy, 1512, NLT).
But after seven years, these people had not only the right to be released, but
also the right to receive some payment for the work done. The capture and use
of war enemies was forbidden in the Old Testament.
Note 2. In a Wikipedia post (n.d. 2) there is a
timeline that refers to the slow manumission of slaves, from when Solon freed
the subjugated Athenians in the fourth century B.C. to the United Nations Act
in the twentieth century A.D. I deal with this subject in the Final Reflections
of this book.
Note 3. "By 1789, five of the northern states
had adopted policies to abolish slavery, at least gradually: Pennsylvania
(1780), New Hampshire and Massachusetts (1783), Connecticut, and Rhode Island
(1784). Vermont abolished slavery in 1777, when it was still independent, and
when it joined the United States as the 14th state in 1791 it was the first
state to join without slavery. Thus, these state jurisdictions enacted the
first abolition laws throughout the "New World".... [Regarding the
new territories in the North] Ohio (1803), Indiana (1816), Illinois (1818),
Michigan (1837), Iowa (1846), Wisconsin (1848), and Minnesota (1858) were all
free states. (Wikipedia, (n.d. 1)
Note 4. The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 was passed by the United States Congress
on September 18, 1850. It extended the scope of the institution of slavery to
the northern states, claiming that refugees from slavery living there could be
recaptured and returned to submission. The event motivated thousands of freedom
seekers to take refuge in Canada. The act was repealed on June 28, 1864"
(Henry-Dixon, 1-6-2021).
Note 5. Frederick Douglass was an American
writer. Born Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey, he escaped slavery and
became a national leader of the abolitionist movement. (Trent, March 4, 2024).
I discuss Douglass in more detail in the "Final Thoughts" of this
book.
The Civil War
The North’s main goal in the civil
war was the restitution of the "Union”, that is the formerly known borders
of the United States. This also implied the incorporation of the Western
territories that were in the process of conquest, or that were already integrated
into the country, because Texas declared its adhesion to the Confederate States
on March 2, 1861.
Underneath the question of the
fracturing of the United States into two countries was problem of slavery’s legality;
for almost all of the northern states abolition was the war’s main reason. On
January 1, 1863, Lincoln issued the "Emancipation Proclamation,"
that declared freedom for all slaves in the rebel states, and this referred to
more than 3.5 million people.
There are several names used to
refer to the American Civil War: it was a War between the "Union" (or
the "North") and the "Confederacy" (or the
"South"). There has long been controversy about the morality of involuntary
servitude in the country, and I have been describing its effects, mostly in the
section "Uncle Tom's Cabin." In this section I consider the war and
its aftermath.
In 1860 Abraham Lincoln, a
well-known opponent of slavery, was elected president of the country. In
response, seven Southern states seceded from the Union, thus forming a new
country, the Confederacy, under the presidency of Jefferson Davis. In 1861 the
army of this new political entity took Fort Sumter in the port of Charleston in
South Carolina, thus giving the northern states reason to respond militarily.
There are many topics related to the
Civil War in the United States (1861 – 1865). First, it was a war between “brothers”
and there is evidence of fortuitous friendly contacts between (white) soldiers
from the North and the South. Second, it was a war based on moral stances,
especially with regard to everyone's attitude toward slavery, although there
were also soldiers who were involved in the fight for other reasons, such as
ideas of military glory, or the simple defense of their own home. Above all, in
the South the importance of territorial defense was felt. Despite the
recognition of the humanity shared between the bands, the strategy of total
destruction of enemy lands was employed by the North against the South.
With regard to the essential
brotherhood among soldiers, there are several examples in the literature. For
example, in Stephen Crane's "Red Badge of
Courage" (1871/1-6-2022), a
"Union" soldier has brief contact with another young man from the
South, in blind conversation in which neither can see the other’s face. They
are hidden in the vegetation where a small stream runs between them. The
Southerner tells him, "Yank, (Note 1)... You're a good boy."
And the author continues: "This feeling, floating towards the young man
in the still air, made him regret the war." (Chapter 1). This young
character has not gone to fight for a cause; rather, he has a head full of
ideas of ancient heroes and wants to be part of an adventure.
But, the main motive for the war was
to end slavery in the United States. In fact, many soldiers went into battle
singing Julia Ward Howe's "Battle Hymn of the Republic".
“ln the beauty of the lilies
Christ was born across the sea,
With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me:
As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free,
While God is marching on.”
War strategies
General Robert E. Lee was the
highest military authority for the Southern Army. In his youth he was trained
at the United States Military Academy and fought on the United States’ side in
the war with Mexico, finishing with the rank of colonel. In 1861, with the
beginning of the formation of the Confederate States, when seven states had
already seceded from the Union, Abraham Lincoln offered the command of the
northern army to Lee, but Lee refused. Already the Confederates were bombarding
Fort Sumter, and Lee proclaimed that he would only bear arms again if it was in
the defense of his home state. A few weeks later he was declared a general of
the Confederate army.
Northern Army General William
Tecumseh Sherman employed a "scorched earth" strategy over the South's
infrastructure, most notably in the "Sherman March," destroying
military targets, train lines, bridges, homes, crops, and other physical and
economic systems in the South. He and General Ulysses S. Grant thought that one
way to "break up the South" would be to not rely on supply lines for
their troops, but rather, to "live off the land," that is, to collect
from the enemy's estates and farms the food and other goods that their soldiers
were going to need. They freed the slaves they found, but forced them to fight
with the northern soldiers, many of whom did so with enthusiasm (Trudeau,
2008).
The war ended with Lee's surrender
in the Appomattox Court House. In the end, the statistics were brutal, there
was an estimated loss of 752,000 soldiers; this would be 2.5% of the population
at the time, and the Office of Military Lost in Action reported that there were
68,162 unidentified soldiers in the period between 1865 and 1868 (These numbers
do not include civilian deaths (Editors 4. n.d.).
President Abraham Lincoln was
assassinated on April 14, 1865, in Washington D.C., (Note 2) five days after
Robert E. Lee and Ulysses D. Grant signed the surrender of the South. I will
talk more about this tragedy in the next chapter when I consider Susan Sontag's
book, “In America”. In the North, Lincoln was regarded as a martyr and a
hero. His murder left an indelible mark on the history of the country. Millions
of people accompanied his funeral procession by train from Washington to
Springfield, Illinois, where his spouse, Mary Todd Lincoln, wanted to his grave
to be.
It is a death that marked the memory
of the country and was recorded in multiple ways in literature. Barrett and
Miller (2005) have collected poems about this loss. Walt Whitman wrote the poem
"O Captain! My Captain!" (n.d./1891) to honor the president, and
reflects the generalized mourning that was felt in the North.
O Captain! My Captain!
WALT WHITMAN
O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done,
The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won,
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring;
But O heart! heart! heart!
O the bleeding drops of red,
Where on the deck
my Captain lies,
Fallen cold
and dead.
O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;
Rise up—for you the flag is flung—for you the bugle trills,
For your bouquets and ribbon’s wreaths—for you the shores a-crowding,
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;
Here Captain! dear father!
This arm beneath your
head!
It is some dream
that on the deck,
You’ve fallen
cold and dead.
My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still,
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will,
The ship is anchored safe and sound, its voyage closed and done,
From fearful trip, the victor ship comes in with object won;
Exult O shores, and ring O
bells!
But I with mournful
tread,
Walk the deck my
Captain lies,
Fallen cold and
dead.
By the end of the war, Lincoln had
judicially pardoned all Confederate soldiers, and they were able to return home
without further restrictions. There were attempts, in the Reconstruction
process under Presidents Andrew Johnson and Ulysses S. Grant, to equalize
Whites and Blacks in their civil rights, but these were met with hostility from
Whites in the region. Reconstruction was initiated to repair the South that had
been almost totally destroyed, and to supervise the granting of civil rights to
the freed slaves.
Margaret Mitchell (1936) wrote a
novel called "Gone with the Wind" about the times before and
after the Civil War. Despite the romanticism, it narrates the intimate effects
of the War on the population and their lives in the following years. She graphically
portrays the destruction of the South. Above all, she demonstrates the lavish
and carefree life of the hacienda owners in the "antebellum" times,
when they were cared for by their slaves, and then describes how their world
collapsed during and after the war. Her portrayal of slaves as happy and loyal
is far from the reality of these times.
Mitchell describes how her main
character, Scarlet O'hara, confronts the changes. She's been a spoiled, wealthy
girl, but suddenly after the war she returns to her old mansion, Tara, and
finds that although the U.S. military hadn't burned it down like they did her
neighbors' houses, the situation was bleak. His mother had died, and his father
had succumbed to the pain of his losses. His sisters were sick, and the slaves
in the field were gone. There was no cotton left in the fields, and there was
no food. Scarlet began working in the fields, doing the tasks that slaves used
to do. Thus begins a long struggle for survival. Little by little the family's
situation improves, but resentment was great, and most of the white male
characters were members of the Ku Klux Klan.
The reaction in the South to
Reconstruction was hostile. The 19th-century Ku Klux Klan was originally
organized as a social club by Confederate veterans. The organization quickly
became a means for underground resistance to racial equality by Southern
whites. Klansmen sought the restoration of white supremacy through intimidation
and violence. Disguised with sheets to prevent "occupation" federal
troops from identifying them, Klansmen whipped and killed freed blacks and
their white supporters in night raids (Editors 1, 3-22-2024).
The Fourteenth Amendment, passed in
1870, required states to protect the idea of equal rights among both races.
However, when Rutherford B. Hayes became president in 1876, he set limits on
the total reconstruction of the South. He withdrew the remaining federal
troops, and signed the Compromise of 1877 that allowed Southern legislatures
(whose members were all white men) the power to discriminate against the black
population. This permitted the initiation of policies of segregation and
repression in the form of "JimCrow" acts (Note 3).
Endnotes.
Note 1. "Yank" was a term used during the
Civil War by Southerners to describe the people of the North.
Note 2. Lincoln died a day later, on April 15, 1865.
Note 3. The JimCrow laws were initiated in the South
after 1877 with the administration of President Rutherford B. Hayes. They made
racial segregation possible under the principle of "separate but
equal". Places designated as "whites only" were always better.
Schools, public transport, theatres, hotels and other places of public use were
segregated. This discrimination would continue until the decade of the 70s in
the twentieth century.
The Conquest of the West
Come my tan-faced children,
Follow
well in order, get your weapons ready,
Have
you your pistols? have you your sharp-edged axes?
Pioneers! O pioneers! …
All the
past we leave behind,
We
debouch upon a newer mightier world, varied world,
Fresh
and strong the world we seize, world of labor and the march,
Pioneers! O pioneers!...
We primeval forests felling,
We the
rivers stemming, vexing we and piercing deep the mines within,
We the
surface broad surveying, we the virgin soil upheaving,
Pioneers! O pioneers!...
All the
pulses of the world,
Falling
in they beat for us, with the Western movement beat,
Holding
single or together, steady moving to the front, all for us,
Pioneers! O pioneers!
Fragments
of O! Pioneers, by Walt Whitman
"In America" by
Susan Sontag is a novel that portrays the arrival of European migrants to the
West at the end of the nineteenth century. The author traces the life of a
Polish – and later American – actress, Helena Modjeska, who appears in the book
as Maryna Zalewska. Sontag speaks in several voices, including her own. She
begins by describing a social gathering that she attends. She goes to a party,
but because she is the author, she observes them but can’t be seen. She stands
there, almost just another character, as she looks at her protagonists, and
thus knowing them, she introduces them, one by one, to us, the readers.
Then, in addition to the author's
voice, her characters begin to speak; they speak sometimes for a moment,
sometimes they do it for an entire chapter. The result is like the pixelated
vision of a bee, all focused on a single and complex personality, Maryna
Zalewska. She is the center of everything, of the lives of her family, her
friends and her theater flatterers. She has the vanity of a star, which Sontag
uses to create other characters. Throughout the novel they are reflected in the
lantern that emanates from the actress, and they represent different aspects of
the huge European migration to the United States. This diverse eye captures the
movement of the book so well, that readers see not only the Polish and American
lives of the characters, we also see how cultures move; they are changeable but
resilient on two continents.
It all happened at a precise moment,
at the end of the nineteenth century, in a remote fantasy of political
independence for their original country, Poland’s liberty was not to be
realized until after the First World War. Simultaneously, it was a fantasy that
was materialized when the Americans began to build their own multifaceted vision
of the world, after the conquest of the West. In the novel these different cultures
drive the characters’ destinies.
They – at Maryna's insistence –
decide to move all together to California, to form a utopian commune. They had
all had read Charles Fourier, an author of several books on communes, and they
all wanted to believe in a better world. Thus, the characters move to
California, carrying their personalities on their backs like unescapable
luggage. These people, formerly members of the European intellectual class,
begin to clear weeds, sow, milk cows, cook, wash dishes and keep the accounts
of an agricultural organization. After a few years they lose interest in the
project, and the members slowly start leaving. Maryna returns to the theater,
but she is already an American, and becomes a well-known and highly appreciated
actress there. This book is of interest to our reflections on the nineteenth
century in the United States because it represents the ideals of many of the
people who took part in the western migration.
Sontag uses abundant quotations from
well-known authors -Shakespeare, Ibsen, Dumas, Corneille, among others, making
her characters recite fragments of plays at key moments in their own lives. The
characters that accompany Maryna usually appear with their real names.
The last chapter is perhaps the best
of the whole book. In it there is a monologue in the voice of Edwin Thomas
Booth, a famous Shakespearean actor of that time, whom Sontag has sometimes put
on the theatrical stage together with Maryna. Edwin Thomas was also, in real
life, the brother of John Wilkes Booth, the man who murdered President Abraham
Lincoln in 1865. In this final chapter of her novel, Sontag places Edwin Thomas
in Maryna's dressing room, where he delivers a monologue as he becomes more and
more drunk. Edwin mixes the sorrows of the characters he has played on the
stage with his own heartaches. He mourns both the death of Lincoln (Edwin was a
Northern abolitionist) and his brother (a Southerner who supported the
Confederate States). He weeps for the whole country. Even though some of the
characters he cites exist in dramas that happened centuries before, he makes
them speak on behalf of that new nation, for example: "Shylock is in
pain and for this reason he is very ... combustible..."
At another point he offers some
appraisals of Hamlet's character that are so accurate that they amaze the
reader:
"Hamlet reminds me of something in myself. Maybe because Hamlet is
an actor, yes, Marina, that's all he is. He's acting. It seems to be one thing,
and underneath that seeming, what's there? Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. The inky
black shirt he wears in the second scene. That tenacious, showy mourning for
his father. 'Everyone's father dies', as Gertrude reminds him, and right she is.
Why seems it so particular with thee? And Hamlet howls, he's
howling, you know, ‘Seems, madam? Nay it is. I know not ‘seems’. But he does
know ‘seems’. He knows nothing else. That’s his problem. Hamlet would give
anything, anything, not to be an actor, but he is condemned to it. Doomed to be
an actor! He's waiting to break through seeming and performing, and just to be,
but there is between appearance and performance, and just 'being', but there is
nothing on the other side of seeming…. pp 373-371)."
Edwin also "seems" the
characters he plays in the theater. The United States also "seemed".
It was the result of many cultures wanting to become coherent and acting as
though they were. The country has just come out of a war of secession and
another of conquest with Mexico, it has been a slave owner, it has destroyed
the original inhabitants of its territory, and at the same time, and in a
discordant way, it constituted communes to promote social justice, and it spoke
of democracy.
Sontag offers a generous and
comprehensive commentary on the effects that societies have on people. In both
Poland and the United States, freedom was talked about in an idealistic but
impractical way. With great success, the "American" Maryna brings her
own theater company to local towns and cities. We understand that it is the voices that
Maryna intones in characters such as Desdemona (Note 1), Ophelia (Note 2), Lady
Anne Neville (Note 3) and Portia (Note 4) that interpret the vital themes of
life, such as happiness, freedom, justice, mercy and even love.
Endnotes: In America The conquest of the
West
Note 1. Desdemona: Female character in the play
Othello.
Note 2. Ophelia:
Female character in the play Hamlet.
Note 3. Lady Anne Neville: Female character in the
play Richard III.
Note 4. Portia: Female character in the play The
Merchant of Venice.
FINAL
THOUGHTS
In these two chapters I have
reviewed some of the effects the Enlightenment had on the American continents.
In the first, I reviewed the cultural heritages that facilitated the creation
of democracies in the New World, and in the second, I reflected on the
conflicts between the ideals of democracy on the one hand, and the effects of
slavery and the demands of Manifest Destiny on the other. It is necessary to
understand these bases in order to understand today's conflicts.
One issue that I have been
developing has to do with ideological and economic conflicts. The aspirations
that the Enlightenment left for a more rational and humanistic life collided
with the realities imposed by a rapidly expanding economy. This is the struggle
and the legacy that the nineteenth century left for the following centuries.
The story comes with many parallel threads, some are cultural aspects that
promote happiness and human well-being and others inhibit them. The ideals of
the Enlightenment, and its reflections on the possibility of freedom and
happiness, clashed all the time with a long-standing culture in which violence
was the most common instrument, used both to produce wealth and to resolve
conflicts.
The Enlightenment did not stop at
examining the physical world and the possibilities of reason. It also gave
birth to new theories about the mind and ethics. John Locke (1690/2013)
considered that, at birth, the mind was a tabula rasa, a blank sheet of paper
that is then filled with education and life experiences. Thus, people,
according to him, were not born with evil and imperfection. This perspective
clashed with the idea of Thomas Hobbes, whose approaches were closer to the
Christian vision of the Middle Ages that considered that the human being was
primarily aggressive and born in sin. Hobbes felt that this sinful being always
would require supervision to maintain order.
The conflicting coincidence of these
two visions of the world expressed different desires. On the one hand, there
was the idea of creating a better world, and on the other was the obligation of
the powerful to use their authority and their capacity for punishment to
promote their own prosperity, norm, and discipline. This dichotomy runs through
all the phenomena we have reviewed, from slavery to the violent seizure of the
territories of the New World.
The abolition of slavery
This brings us back to the final
abolition of slavery. I have been describing this institution, but it is still
necessary in these last reflections to give a historical context to its
abolition. Involuntary labor has always existed, evidenced from the earliest
historical documents. It has definitely been part of the human conscience, but
at the same time it is an economic structure that, once established, seemed
indispensable.
There were three main kinds of this
servitude:
1. -The first was the result of debts:
when a person lacked the capacity to pay an obligation to somebody else, he
could be forced by his creditor to work until the value of the commitment was
paid, but this obligation ended with the payment.
The second consisted of the
vassalage of the serfs, that is, the unfree peasants who, unlike slaves, could
not be sold except together with the land to which they were
"attached".
3. -A third type of servitude
consisted of the total submission of persons considered as the "property
of another"; Usually these people belonged to a nationality (or kingdom),
class, or race distinct from that of their owners, and were often labeled as an
expected part of the spoils of war or the trade of humans from one country or
continent to another.
The first two types of serfdom have
been abolished sporadically and temporarily in history, especially when serfs
and their owners have shared the same cultural identity or citizenship. The
laws of Solon in Athens, those of Rome in its republican era, or the
limitations imposed in the Old Testament in the Book of Deuteronomy regulated
these types of servitude. "Thus, the Roman reforms protected Roman
citizens, the Athenian reforms protected Athenian citizens, and the rules of
Deuteronomy guaranteed freedom to a Hebrew after a fixed duration of servitude)"
(Editors 1, n.d.), but when the serf was of another nationality or race, there
was no such protection. When Solon freed the slaves in Athens, he only freed
the Athenians and not the Thracians, or the Scythians, the Cappadocians, or
others who might have had foreign origins.
The liberation of slaves considered
as "property" had to take a long time, but there has always been a
collective sense of guilt in the world about it. There were several historic
attempts to eliminate the slave trade, but the first nationwide liberation of
all enslaved people was when Louis X of France issued a decree abolishing all
slavery in his country in the year 1315. This decree reduced involuntary
servitude in France, but it did not eliminate it completely, even within the
country's own borders. Total abolition did not occur in France until 1848, five
centuries later. Pope Paul III banned the enslavement of indigenous people in
the American territories in 1537 and King Sebastian of Portugal did the same
for the Portuguese territories in 1570. In 1772 slavery was declared
"non-existent" in England and Wales. Some of the dates of the
abolition of slavery of Africans in Latin America are: Ecuador in 1851,
Argentina in 1853, Venezuela and Peru in 1854. In 1865 all forms of slavery
(except to punish some crimes) were abolished in the United States with the
Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution. However, only 30 of the 36 states
voted in favor of it. It was not until the 1926 Slavery Convention that this
system of forced labor was abolished (in a more formal than practical sense)
globally by the member states of the League of Nations. Even so, there are
still today cases of involuntary servitude. (Most of the dates in this
paragraph come from "Editors 1, n.d.)
This long collection of dates
reveals something important: in the history of the world the abolition of
slaves is a very recent achievement and there are many people in the world
whose great-grandparents were not born free. For the United States, assuming a
life expectancy of 50 years on average in the 19th century, we are talking
about only a little less than five generations. The novelty of this achievement
still leaves cracks through which the complex fabrics of social memory pass,
and they sustain, paradoxically, both the desire for a rational and humanistic
world, and the longing among some groups for the times when a human being could
be the owner of others. (It is clear, in these longings, the dreamer imagines
himself as the owner and not as the slave.) Mississippi is an example of this
remembrance: it resisted for almost a century and a half, and only officially
ratified the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution in 2013 (Editors 1,
n.d.). Today this nostalgia is expressed as racism and social exclusion.
Social violence
There is another loophole that needs
to be examined: social violence and the emotional attachment that certain
sectors have to the possession and use of firearms. I have referred to James
Fenimore Cooper's description in "The Frontier" of several incidents
in which characters fired their guns for the sheer pleasure of doing so, or in
sports, or in situations similar to hunting. The use of weapons of all kinds in
sports is also old. Fencing, bow and arrow competitions, even martial arts,
have long histories. Also, the hunting of deer, birds, foxes, rabbits, and even
tigers and lions is an activity that, was once related only to the search for
food and protection; for thousands of years, it has also become a so-called sporting activity.
But gun culture goes beyond sports.
In ancient society, weapons were designed for specific purposes. There were
spears, bows, slings, swords, catapults, and different forms of protection in
the case of weapons of war. Soldiers had the most lethal and heaviest weapons,
while peasants had light weapons that were designed for hunting and small-scale
self-defense. With the beginning of the use of gunpowder and firearms, it was
common for any peasant in the Americas to have his rifle and revolver. In these
reflections I do not intend to make an exhaustive history of the development of
weapons; rather I want to pose the situation in which, since the nineteenth
century, it has become an informal norm that non-slaves could "walk around
armed" as a way of being.
But there were reactions, almost
from the beginning of English colonization. Once again, a contradiction is
evident, between false freedom (which in this case is achieved by the
possession of a personal weapon), and a rational world (in which human
happiness is a goal). There were dozens of local laws and regulations to limit
access to and use of firearms, demonstrating not only the population's
eagerness to have access to them, but the relative success of efforts to
control them. Spitzer explains how it happened:
"... restrictions on the carrying of weapons... they were common in
the Western territories in the nineteenth century, even in the "Wild
West." ... Axiomatic expressions such as 'the weapons that won the
West'... (are) exaggerated.... These characterizations ignore the central role
of farmers, ranchers, miners, traders, businessmen, and other farmers on the
western plains. The 'domestication' of the West was, in fact, an agricultural
and commercial movement, attributable mainly to cattle ranchers and farmers, to
cowboys who did not brandish weapons. In fact, the six-round revolver and rifle
played a relatively minor role in the activities of these groups, including the
cowboys"
(Spitizer, 2017, p. 12).
Even in the violent towns of the Old
West, such as Abilene, Caldwell, Dodge City, Ellsworth, and Wichita, tolerance
of violent behavior soon ended. Most of the deaths were related to the
struggles against the tribes that did not meekly accept the displacement from
their ancestral lands that the army imposed on them.
Migration
Another topic, mass migration in the
nineteenth century from Europe, opens up many topics for reflection. The first,
and perhaps the biggest, is: what is American culture after all? It has been
called a "cauldron" for mixing cultures and races, but this is a
metaphor for a society that can become homogeneous, in which the different
elements merge into a single thing.
Even if the mixture is not total, it
could suggest a peaceful and harmonious amalgam. Then we can talk about
multiculturalism, or a kaleidoscope where the components of the mixture are
visible and are part of a total design, identifiable with their own qualities.
This second metaphor refers to a cultural projection where there are
distinguishable, sometimes bilingual, neighborhoods such as "Little
Italy," "Chinatown," or the vast fields planted with tulips in
Holland, Michigan. Barton says in this regard in the summary of his
seminar, "Becoming American: Immigration and Assimilation in Late 19th
Century America":
"Let us think of the Creoles of the South and the
Franco-Canadians of the North, who clung to French for so many generations and
maintained, however feebly, spiritual and social contacts with the mother
country; of the Germans with their Deutschthum, their Männerchore, Turnvereine
and Schützenfeste; of the universally separated Jews; of the Irish, intensely
nationalist; of the Germans of Pennsylvania; the indomitable Poles, and even
more indomitable bohemians; of the 30,000 Belgians in Wisconsin, with their
'Belgian' language, a mixture of Walloon and Flemish welded together in
reaction to a strange social environment" (Barton, n.d.).
It refers to different cultural
identities that coexist in peace. In the nineteenth century these
concentrations were notable, but each new wave of immigration inspired
rejection. For example, the entry of large numbers of Italians at the end of
the 19th century inspired resistance, which included anti-Catholic sentiments
in a majority Protestant population. But, in the end, these European groups,
although "different", were white, and they assimilated fairly
quickly. The problem arises when you add "black ghettoes"
or Native American reservations, because their inhabitants don't have as much
freedom to leave their cultural islands and "mix" with the general
population.
African Americans, Native Americans,
and Asians had more difficulty. As Eduardo Bonilla Silva (2003) said: "Blacks,
Chinese, Puerto Ricans, etc., could not mix in the race. They could be used as
wood to produce fire for the pot, but they could not be used as material to be
melted in it."
However, since the nineteenth
century there has been a certain assimilation of the rejected groups: the last
biography of Frederick Douglass (1881/n.d.) tells a story of a certain
coexistence. Douglass was born and raised as a black slave. He learned to read
in secret and eventually escaped to the north (and at two times to England). He
was active in the abolitionist movement and came to know personally, both
Presidents Abraham Lincoln and James Garfield, as well as personalities such as
author Harriet Beecher Stowe. He became a member of the Board of Trustees of
the Freedmen's Savings and Trust Company, and was later elected
president of the bank. He was criticized for his last biography because some
readers felt he should have denounced slavery more vigorously. Certainly, in
the last chapters he told how he began to assimilate to the values of a middle
class without so many racial prejudices. In response to this criticism, I have
to say that, although Douglass's assimilation distanced him a little from a
staunch activism, it brought him closer to the humanist ideal of equality and
cultural freedom proposed by the Enlightenment.
In the end, the ideal of democracy
is dialogue in coexistence. Pruit and Thomas say in the introduction
to their handbook for peace facilitators:
"It is now generally accepted that a sustainable peace is one
that empowers people, and helps them acquire skills and build institutions to
manage their different and sometimes conflicting interests in a peaceful
manner. Dialogue is universally recognized as the quintessential tool for
addressing and, hopefully, resolving the differences, objective or subjective,
that caused conflict in the first place.... Dialogue is defined as a democratic
method aimed at resolving problems through mutual understanding and
concessions, rather than the unilateral imposition of the views and interests
of one of the parties. On the other hand, democracy as a system of government
is a framework for an organized and continuous dialogue" (Pruit and
Thomas, 2007).
In short, the nineteenth century
The American nineteenth century laid
the foundations of American culture, both in its problematic aspects and in the
elaboration of its greatest ideal: an enduring and functional democracy. I
close these reflections with the idea that the history of a democracy is a
process. The country has had almost the same constitutional structure for three
centuries, and in this time, it has seen many conflicts: a civil war, two world
wars, many minor wars, and several major challenges to its survival. These are
all echoes that come reverberating from the times of our deepest historical
memories, but the most recent and vociferous sounded very loudly in the
nineteenth century. There is no doubt that there has been progress since then.
If that century posed the problems, it also provided some of the instruments to
be able to solve them.
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