Author: Dr. Shrout

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In 1742, a pirate ship attacks a Spanish ship off the coast of Georgia in a battle known as the Battle of Bloody Marsh. It was a fight to gain control of Florida and the Carolinas. During this time period, exploration was in full swing and countries were building their empires at a rather fast pace. Some, like the Spanish, did it for military supremacy while others like the Dutch and English did it for colonialism and imperialism. The picture I used as a primary source is tied to piracy because the Spanish over-expanded and other empires wanted a piece of their wealth. All this piracy started when the Spanish got rich off of trading minerals and expanding their empire.

Cortes’ exploration to the Americas in search of gold started in the 1500s because of the rumors and legends of gold brought back by explorers like Christopher Columbus. His discovery and gains inspired King Philip to expand his military is one of the main reasons Spain fell into poverty. While some ships and pirate operations were run by vagabond privateers like the Famous Captain Henry Morgan, others were actually licensed to raid Spanish Ships. One author, Lane uses statistics of taverns that were opened in Port Royal Jamaica as popular pit stops for pirates. He even talks about the town of Tortuga as a “trading post for buccaneers who established trade routes mostly in hides and cured meats (Lane, 97).” So, the port city of Tortuga was an important location for pirate activity and port cities like are a treasure trove of history in the story of pirates.

Besides pirate towns, we need to understand who the real pirates actually were. Richard Blakemore, author of “The Politics of piracy in the British Atlantic” makes his point clear when says the problem with defining pirates like “Francis Drake to Blackbeard [who] have been seen as both champions and murderers, and scholars have interrogated piracy as a historical concept (Blakemore, 159).” What he means by this is we associate pirates as these brave and dangerous individuals whereas scholars beg to differ. In addition, Shannon Lee Dawdy and Joe Bonni also describe how history pirates are viewed as “predators, outlaws, opportunists, raiders [and even] liberators (Dawdy and Bonni, 674). They were definitely opportunists as “they took advantage of Brazil’s rich trade (Klooster and Padula, 73).”

In contrast to raiding ships, one element of piracy is often overlooked and that is the sugar cultivation in the Canaries and Madeiras. “Sugar Islands” by Alberto Vierira explains the cultivation of sugar and the model it set up for colonialization and mercantilism set the precedent for turning to piracy in the Atlantic. Ample water sources, the soils and the establishment of plantations sparked the sugar movement in the Atlantic in places like the Caribbean and became an important commodity in Atlantic trade. One component of the history of pirates that stems from food is the fact that before they were raiders, they actually used to cook meat on the beaches of the Caribbean Islands. They would kill pigs on the islands and grill them over a fire pit made of sand called a boucan. The men tending this boucans were known as boucaniers by the French. But, the taste of money proved to be a lot stronger than the smell of pork on the beach. As a result, they turned to piracy around the 1600s and became known as buccaneers.

Lastly, pop culture has made a lasting impression on pirates thanks to movies like Disney`s “Pirates of the Caribbean” with Captain Jack Sparrow, a bumbling klutz of a pirate. In contrast, pirates were nowhere near as lovable because they were deadly in their tactics. We need to understand the real history of pirates because it will continue to detract from the real pirates when we keep sugarcoating and advertising Disney pirates because it will now be effective in telling the true story of these swashbucklers of the Atlantic. Pirates should only be portrayed as they appeared in history because it will keep any kind of perception of them accurate with history and help people understand they were not to be taken lightly at all. That way, “Pirates of the Caribbean” won`t brainwash some people into thinking the wrong way about these greedy opportunists of the Atlantic. To sum it all, the history of piracy in the Atlantic is the story of the European empires.

References

Blakemore, Richard J. “The Politics of Piracy in the British Atlantic, C. 1640–1649.” International Journal of Maritime History. 25, no. 2.: 159-172. 2013.

Dawdy, Shannon Lee, and Joe Bonni. “Towards a General Theory of Piracy.” Anthropological Quarterly. 85, no. 3: 673-699. 2012.

Klooster, Wim and Alfred Padula. The Atlantic World: Essays on Slavery, Migration, and Imagination. N.J.: Pearson/Prentice Hall. 2005.

Lane, Kris E. Pillaging the Empire: Piracy in the Americas, 1500-1750. N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe. 1998.

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On September 6th, 1781, a slave ship Zong left the African coast with over four hundred slaves. During this time frame, slave commodities were very valuable for labor both domestic and plantation services. With the demand for slave labor so high, captains of slave ships often overlooked the regulations of ships and overcrowded their ships in order to gain more money. Often, it was successful on the captain’s part; however, it was usually bad, and more than often deadly news for the enslaved people who were being sold across the Atlantic. Like many ships at the time, the Zong’s captain Luke Collingwood had too many enslaved people on his ship during its voyage. The Zong massacre could have been avoided, but due to a mass of unfortunate mistakes it became an event that began to change the world.

After nearly three months at sea, slaves began dying due to disease and malnutrition. To make matters worse, the Zong sailed into an area that prolonged their stay at sea. As a result of it being stranded, nearly half the crew and fifty of the enslaved people died due to sickness. The Zong captain decided on throwing cargo overboard in order to save the ship and collect the insurance as a result. Over the next weeks, the surviving crew threw 132 slaves overboard. The crimes of the Zong Captain and crew did not go unnoticed. They did not get the insurance money, but instead they went to court. They did not realize that their greed and court case would later help abolish slavery in the future. Throughout time, people have dissected the Zong massacre as much as they could. And even though it was one ship that did what many other ships were doing, the Zong affected history and destroyed the future of slavery. Because of the various different ways authors took to interpret the unfortunate event that is the Zong massacre, authors create a more fleshed out narrative of an event that affected a world dependent on slavery.
In Specters of the Atlantic: Finance Capital, Slavery, and the Philosophy of History describes the event as a “melancholic version of modernity” and”the process quite literally sounds the depths of the event-structure of historical meaning” (Juengel, 148). The massacre and what happens afterwards are the center of the book and overall focus of the book. Ian Baucom suggests that the Zong massacre is a result of financial capitalism, which Giovanni Arrghi “associates with transitional oscillations in the history of capitalism” (Optiz, 252). Baucom struggles with viewing the Zong “event” as more of a romantic historical event. The Zong insurance contract is used as allegory for capitalism. Baucom finds new ways to view the Zong massacre by not just limiting to the singular narrative but also focusing on “a densely theoretical work of cultural history” (Juengel, 148).

The article “A Chain of Murder in the Slave Trade: A Wider Context of the Zong Massacre” tries to look at the massacre in a different angle. Jeremy Krikler’s article focuses on bringing to light the concerns of commerce but also includes culture as well as the context of the time. The argument of the article is “this process habituated surgeons and captains… to the possibility of death (at the hands of African controllers) of the captives they deemed unfit for the African slave trade” (Krikler, 394). Krikler suggests that medical health became connected to the decision “of whether or not to accord commodity value to the captive” (Krikler, 394).

The Zong: A Massacre, the Law, and the End of Slavery by James Walvin argues that the Zong massacre was the beginning towards abolition of slavery. Walvin creates a narrative with “rich, contextual details that flesh out the business of slaving while explicating how Britons came to perceive the extermination of 132 Africans… as cruel and immoral” (Sears, 890). The Zong massacre opened up people’s eyes, showing the true cruel nature of the slave trade. Walvin brings up the idea that the success of a ship was based on “an experienced, savvy captain who can manage men and cargo and navigate business situations” (Sears, 891). However, the Zong captain mentioned before made terrible decisions one after the other that ultimately resulted in the death of innocents.

Many authors saw the Zong massacre in different ways whether it was more of a medical, culture, or just a humane approach. As informative as these parts are, it would be nice to see more of a human side. Most sources focus on the court case and nothing else. It is difficult to find sources for Zong and making it more publicized and showing how it changed how the world viewed its actions is very significant. The primary sources show that human side. It shows key players and what the culture was like before the Zong massacre happened. They never diminished the pain the enslaved people went through. In the end, the many ways the authors took allowed readers from today to see the Zong massacre as a single moment that represented a difficult time in human history. And through that event, the world noticed its crime and began to change, even if it was a slow process.

Works Cited

Juengel, Scott. The American Historical Review 114, no. 1 (2009): 148-49. http://www.jstor.org/stable/30223651.

Krikler, Jeremy. “A Chain of Murder in the Slave Trade: A Wider Context of the Zong Massacre”. Colchester: University of Essex, 2012.

Opitz, Andrew. “Atlantic Modernity and the Wreckage of History.” Cultural Critique, no. 68 (2008): 251-54. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25475467.

Sears, Christine E. 2013. The Zong: A Massacre, the Law, and the End of Slavery by James Walvin. Journal of World History. 24, no. 4: 890-892.

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Shreshta Aiyar

Dr. Anelise Shrout

HIST 410

18 November 2016

Historical Primary Source Analysis

My final project will study Catholic justifications for Native American and African exploitation in the Atlantic World. I will analyze Catholic Spain’s tactics and intentions for exploration, and I will discuss with detail primary sources that signify European supremacy over Native Atlantic peoples. By studying the Spanish Requirement of 1513 and Christopher Columbus’s Journals, I will explain how European Catholicism largely contributed to Native oppression.

The Spanish Requirement of 1513 was a document that was read in Spanish to Native and Indigenous peoples of North and South America when conquered by Catholic Spain. Under the Requirement, the Spanish requested that Native peoples adopt the Catholic church as their religion, and that they accept subservience to the Spanish. Should indigenous peoples reject this offer, the Spanish would “powerfully enter into your country, and shall make war against you in all ways and manners that we can, and shall subject you to the yoke and obedience of the Church” (Requirement of 1513). The Spanish Requirement of 1513 represents the usage of Catholicism as a means to conquer and oppress Native American peoples. The Requirement is also an extension of Spain’s home religious and political climate. As Moors were being expelled from Granada, Queen Isabella used Just War Theory to justify the forced conversion or exploitation and conquering of Indigenous Atlantic peoples. Queen Isabella sought to expand Catholicism in order to spread Spain’s social, religious, and economic influence across the globe. In The Church Militant and Iberian Expansion, 1440–1770, historian C.R. Boxer analyzes relations between the regular and the secular clergy; the mission as a frontier institution in many climes and many cultures; the close and inseparable connection between Cross and Crown; and the role of the Inquisition overseas. The Church Militant and Iberian Expansion, 1440–1770 is an important secondary source that relates to the Spanish Requirement of 1513 because C.R. Boxer studies the impact of Catholicism on colonization. Boxer examines the effects of a Catholic crown, of Church Militant groups, and of missionaries on Atlantic civilizations, concluding that Catholicism played a pivotal role in European domination of the New World.

Christopher Columbus’s journals are an example of European supremacy and domination of Native Atlantic peoples. His journal entries depict the roots of white supremacy that endangered indigenous populations. The desire to achieve “God, Glory, and Gold” is evident in Columbus’s writings, and through Catholicism, he separates Europeans from Native Atlantic populations. Columbus showed that religion and exploration went hand in hand regarding Catholic expansion beyond Spanish boarders. Columbus states in his writings that the Native peoples “would be good servants and I am of opinion that they would very readily become Christians, as they appear to have no religion” (Christopher Columbus’ Journals). This ideology is further discussed in Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra’s Puritan Conquistadors: Iberianizing the Atlantic, 1550–1700. In this book, Cañizares-Esguerra argues that there is a striking resemblance between Spanish and Puritan discourse surrounding colonization. Puritan Conquistadors: Iberianizing the Atlantic, 1550–1700 compares and contrasts colonization by the Puritans and the Spanish and overall argues that the Spanish were much harsher and more evil towards Native Americans. However, both the Puritans and the Spanish believed in Christian superiority, and this is a common theme that contributes to the subordination of Indigenous peoples. Christopher Columbus and Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra both expose Catholicism and religion as tools of social superiority that stigmatize Native Americans as uneducated, savage, and non-religious.

In my final project, I hope to connect Catholicism with modern day Euro centrism in the Atlantic. I seek to bridge the Atlantic past of religious dominance over Native Americans with the present day state of American culture and politics, especially through the eyes of Native Americans. It is my goal to research Catholicism’s direct and indirect impacts on the Atlantic between the 15^th and 19^th centuries, as well as on today. Through the Requirement of 1513 and Christopher Columbus’s journals, it is evident that Spanish Catholicism was a tool used to dominate and exploit Native Americans in order to improve and skyrocket Spanish social status and economic importance. C.R. Boxer and Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra both successfully analyze the impact of white religion on the Atlantic, arguing that because of Catholicism and Puritanism, European religion is still a dominant driving force today in social, political, and economic power. I hope to expand on these points in my final project and create a concise digital history project that explains the exploitation of Native American peoples through a religious historical lens.

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Abolition was not an overnight success. Rather, it was a protracted process shaped by the actions of black and white abolitionists as well as of enslaved peoples. Often times, enslaved peoples would work both for their masters and as abolitionists, doing so to pursue personal and community freedom. Abolition was also not a movement with a singular process. Some activists embraced gradual emancipation, some demanded immediate equality. Others advocated for peaceful activism while white and black militants wanted to fight for black liberty (Egerton et al, 462). The end of slavery did not end the Atlantic, but it did shift the connections between Europe, Africa, and the Americas from an economy based on free labor to imperial dynamics and global processes.

Chapter 14 reminded me of the image “La Figure des Moulins a Sucre”. “La Figure…” encapsulates the social and economic justifications of slavery that would later translate into centuries of Native and African oppression and exploitation. Through the images of willing African sugar labor and smiling masters, “La Figure…” represents the economic and social driving forces of the Atlantic: consumer success through enslaved labor. Chapter 14 discusses how ridding the Atlantic of slavery is a process still incomplete. To unravel the cycle of racism and prejudice woven into the economic backbone of the Atlantic is to acknowledge the institutionalized systems of inequality and exploitation that founded Atlantic success.

In a previous post, Enrique Angulo states that “nearly every reading we have read this semester has had something to do with the economic exploitation of others or the development of the global marketplace, [and] while this is probably and accurate way to look at Atlantic History it is also incredibly depressing.” I completely agree with Angulo’s comment and and would like to point out that the history of the Atlantic is largely intertwined with the social and political history of the United States. The success of the West would not be possible without the forced labor of people of color. White civilization is built upon the skeletons of enslaved and marginalized communities, and the history of the Atlantic proves that the vast spaces of Europe and North America profited largely due to the exploitation of Native and African peoples.

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Sven Beckert’s work Emancipation and Empire: Reconstructing the Worldwide Web of Cotton Production in the Age of the American Civil War explores the effect the ending of the American institution of slavery had on the world economy. Under the race based institution of slavery cotton production in the US had little to no labor costs. Plantation owners only needed to provide their slaves with room and board which cost them significantly less then providing them with living wage. Once the American Civil war ended and the institution of slavery was outlawed in the United States cotton production slowed and the world economy was in need of alternate sources. My peer Chris pointed out that three nations in particular rose up to meet the demands of the market, which were India, Brazil, and Egypt. These countries experienced a brief era of economic expansion before depression hit the marketplace and everyone suffered.

I earlier stated that I believed that slavery was a topic that came up to frequently in our readings; I would like to now revise that statement to include economic exploitation and the global marketplace. I feel like nearly every reading we have read this semester has had something to do with the economic exploitation of others or the development of the global marketplace, while this is probably and accurate way to look at Atlantic History it is also incredibly depressing.

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In Emancipation and Empire: Reconstructing the Worldwide Web of Cotton Production in the Age of the American Civil War, Sven Beckert analyzes the rise and fall of American cotton as a global commodity along with its relations to the American Civil War. Becker discusses the shift in importance of cotton before, during and after the Civil War, and how this affects the American economy, American foreign relations, and American slavery.

Cotton was an incredibly important commodity prior to and during the American Civil War. Cotton brought in large amounts of revenue to America, and what stemmed was relationships with Europe, Asia, and Africa. As nations in these continents depended on American cotton, foreign ties strengthened as a result. What also strengthened from the boom in cotton before and during the Civil War was American slavery. Slavery and the success of cotton are directly linked, as free labor provided quick, cheap, and convenient access to the backbreaking process of harvesting cotton.

The Civil War put the state of slavery in jeopardy, and as a result, the state of cotton production was also put into question. Beckert writes that the Civil War was “not only a struggle over American territorial integrity and the future of its ‘peculiar institution’ but also about slave labor and nation-building in the world at large” (Beckert, 1409). Not only did the Civil War question the ethics and morals that continued to justify slavery, it also challenged the economic status of the United States and its commodities. This reminded me of Erin Wroe’s post where she states the reformation of industrial cotton production outside the United States represents the growth in demand and international ability to match American competition. While American cotton production was heavily relied on free labor, nations outside of the US began to invest in industrial methods of production.

Beckert’s writings also reminded me Vieira’s Sugar Islands in that like sugar, cotton became a global commodity that allowed America’s economy to blossom into an international powerhouse. Cotton represents a later form of economic power and dominance in the Atlantic, as both products’ success were heavily dependent on the exploitation and labor of Africans.

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In the wake of Britain’s high-ranking marketing enterprises on resources overseas, many occupied countries sought rural changes in how they farmed goods for these mercantile companies. As Sven Beckert in Emancipation and Empire was describing, this was in conjunction with the price of cotton in the eastern U.S. rising deeply throughout the world in the 1860s, with Britain as the main spectator of this dilemma. As Tram Hua elaborated, the American Civil War erupted its own outbreak of a “cotton famine” to the world in the hopes that countries who prospected the most from selling and producing the crafted material would approve of the Confederacy’s disgruntled view of global commerce. The South banned all exports of cotton goods to Britain just so they can be recognized as a legitimate, autonomous democracy once they infiltrated an economy that in and of itself [probably] held more power than the South’s own little government along the Atlantic.

It appears that the North subtly achieved its own take on installing an auxiliary patron in Liverpool, London, to divert from the South’s political and commercial cause. Outside of the U.S. in places around India, Egypt, and Brazil, local impatient demands for commercialized cotton incentively stirred up the need to increase the price of cotton exports from European commercial entities. Meanwhile, Liverpool recruited other regions around the world, namely Argentina, China, Central Asia, and Togo in West Africa to manufacture more cotton goods to keep the U.S. industrial states satisfied for the time being. Of course, who could forget the protagonistic appeal of the obsolete effect industrialism had on slavery to ensure what was starkly shown to be the best shift in Atlantic history, politics, and economics?

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Cotton had always been an important cash crop but after Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin in 1793, the cotton industry transformed. Blessed with the desire climax to grow this crop, the cotton gin, and the use of slave labor force, American South quickly dominated the cotton industry. When the outbreak of the Civil War occur in 1861, it was much more than just the internal struggle between the Northe and the Southern states. The war affected the worldwide cotton production and global capitalism. After the Northern blockade successfully kept cotton from leaving the South, the number of 3.8 million bales of cotton exported to Europe in 1860 fell to virtually nothing just two year later (Beckert,1408).

Like Viktoriya Shalunova said to her blog, “The impact of the American Civil War changed the lives of slaves by emancipation. It also caused the flourishing economies of Egypt, Brazil, and India to become a word player in the cotton industry.” The cotton famine created a crisis across the globe also subsequently created a new kind of imperialism (Beckert, 1411). Countries were now in the race to become the new world’s market for cotton production and exportation. During the Civil War years, Indian cotton alone prevented the collapse of the European cotton industries. In Egypt, vast amount of its fertile land converted to cotton cultivation, thus permanently changed the country’s economy. In Brazil, farmers abandoned their crops to focus on cotton, thus doubling Brazilian cotton export (Beckert, 1414).

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Sven Beckert illuminates the global implications of the American Civil War and its effect on the Southern cotton industry. Internationally, the Civil War created reason for profitable cotton markets, and all pieces and parts included (i.e. labor, land, and imperial interests), to evolve. Prior to 1861, the American south dominated cotton production and export across the globe. Textile manufacturers in Great Britain benefitted directly from their relationship with U.S. coastal growers and their cheap cotton, afforded by non-wage labor. “In England alone, it was estimated that the livelihood of between one-fifth and one-fourth of all people was based upon the industry, one-tenth of all British capital was invested in it, and close to one-half of all exports consisted of cotton yarn and cloth.” (Beckert, 1408) Two short years later, Union naval blockades and foreign policy conflict all but terminated British-American cotton relationships. Europe as a whole was negatively effected. Economic adaptation was vital for the survival of such a profitable business, otherwise global war may have occurred a generation earlier then it actually did. Fortunately, markets in Egypt and India filled the void, in turn generating new imperial interests decades before petroleum commanded the same degree of covetousness. As Egerton et al argued in chapter thirteen, new imperialism followed closely behind industrialization. In this case, Beckert suggests necessity generated imperialism, and adaptation formed the environment for it to flourish.

The new cotton industry would prove more expensive in the years following the emancipation of slavery in the U.S. Cotton, it seems, was much more difficult to attain when not farmed by slave labor. As Vince points out, labor wages, market fluctuations, capitalist traps, and environmental hazards changed the global cotton economy and created new avenues through which imperialist interests were able to navigate freely. Cotton, like sugar before it, spanned the Atlantic, connecting nations and creating trade networks so intertwined that an event on one Continent could mean disaster on another.

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