The Empire of Necessity: Slavery, Freedom, and Deception in the New World
Page 39
Île de France
India
British rule
Industry (ship)
Inquisition
insurance, maritime
Integrity (ship)
interracial relationships
Isert, Paul Erdmann
Islam
Catholicism vs.
education
law
reconquista and
slavery and
West African
Jacobinism
James the Moor Slayer, Saint
Japan
Jefferson, Thomas
Jenny (ship)
Jimeño, Jacinto
Joaquín
Joaquín (ship)
Jones, W. C.
José
Juan Fernández
Kansas-Nebraska Act
Kappa, Lansiné
Kentucky
King Island
La Guaira
Luisa (ship)
Laqueur, Thomas
lascars
Latin
law
on child indenture
defensor de los negros
Fugitive Slave Act
of general average
Islamic
maritime
Tryal trial and executions
Lawrence, D. H.
Lawrence, T. E.
Lima
overland slave route
war for independence
Lincoln, Abraham
Little, George
Liverpool
Nelson monument
Llavallol del Riu, Jaime
London
Lopatequi, Tomás
Louisiana
Purchase
Louisiana (ship)
Louis XVI, King of France
execution of
Lovejoy, Paul
Low, Rufus
Lucas, Robert
Luther, Nathaniel
Lyell, Charles
Mackay, Mungo
Madrid
Malaysia
Mali
Malvina Islands
Mandinka
Manifest Destiny
Mars (ship)
Martha’s Vineyard
Más Afuera
Mashpee
Massachusetts
Matador (ship)
Matthiessen, F. O.
Matus, José
Mayflower (ship)
Maza, Francisco
McCain, John
medicine
slavery and
Melville, Herman
Africa and
“The Bell-Tower”
Benito Cereno
Billy Budd
Civil War poems
Darwin and
The Encantadas
existential views of
Israel Potter
in Liverpool
Manifest Destiny and
Mardi
“Misgivings”
Moby-Dick
Redburn
on slavery
Typee
White-Jacket
on whiteness
Mendoza
Mentor (ship)
mercantilism
contraband
Spanish American slave economy
Mercury (ship)
Metcalf, Theodore
Methodism
Mexico
Mexico City
Miantonomoh (ship)
Middle Passage
reversal of
ship conditions
Milá de la Roca, José Ramón
Minerva (ship)
Missouri Compromise
Mitchell, Moses
Molina, Juan Cayetano
Montevideo
slavery
Mordeille, François-de-Paul Hippolyte
Morgan, Edmund
Mori
execution of
Morison, Samuel Eliot
Morrison, Toni
Song of Solomon
mortality rate
Moulton, William
Mozambique
Murre, Raymundo
Murrell, James
music and dance
Muslims
reconquista and
slavery and
Muxica, Joaquín José de
Mye, James
Mystic Massacre
Nancy (ship)
Nantucket
Napoleon Bonaparte
Native Americans
child indenture
guardian system
religious conversion of
as slaves
Nelson, Horatio
Neptune (ship)
conditions on
rebellion
renamed Aguila
Neruda, Pablo
“Babo, the Rebel”
New Bedford
New England
economy
New Renaissance
sealing and
slavery
New Haven
New London
Newman, Paul
New Orleans
Newport
New York
Niger River
Night of Power (Laylat al-Qadr)
Nkrumah, Kwame
Nonell, Juan
North Carolina
Nymph of the Sea (ship)
Obama, Barack
Ocampo, Victoria
oil, whale
Olazábal, Don Benito
Ollague, Anselmo
Oneida (ship)
Onico (ship)
rebellion
sealing
opium
Palacio, José Ignacio
Palau Islands
Panama
Panther (ship)
Paraguay
Paraná River
Paris
Park, Mungo
Parker, Hershel
parricide
Patagonia
Patterson, Orlando
“people of color” (term)
Pequots
Perseverance (ship)
building of
first sealing voyage
second sealing voyage
Tryal chase, battle, and capture
Tryal rebellion and deception
Peru
abolition
overland slave route
war for independence
Philadelphia
Philbrick, Nathaniel
Philippines
Phillips, David
Pierce, Franklin
Pilgrim (ship)
Pino, Joaquín del
Pio Quinto
piracy. See privateering
Pizarro, Francisco
Plymouth
Pollock, Procopio
Pompey
Port-au-Prince
Portugal
Potosí
privateering
democratization of
Protestantism
Providence
Puerto Rico
Putnam’s Monthly
Quakers
Qu’ran
Ramadan
reconquista
Rediker, Marcus
Red-Jacket
religion
Duxbury
Islam and slavery
reconquista
Second Great Awakening
See also specific religions
Retiro, El
Retiro de Buenos Aires (ship),
revolts, slave. See slave revolts
Revolutionary Army of the Andes
Rhode Island
Rio de Janeiro
Río de la Plata
Ripley, Sarah Alden Bradford
Riti, José de
Robles, Juan
Rocha, Simão de
Rockman, Seth
Rôdeur (ship)
Rogin, Michael Paul
Romero, Tomás Antonio
Roosevelt, Franklin Delano
Rotalde, Ignacio Santiago de
Rouse, Henry William
Rousseau, J
ean-Jacques:
Discourse on Inequality
Social Contract
Rozas, Juan Martínez de
Russia
Rutter, Sally
Saint-Louis
Salem
Sandoval, Alonso de
Sanger, Zedekiah
San Ignacio (ship)
San Juan Nepomuceno (ship)
rebellion
San León (ship)
Sanson, Peter
San Martin, José de
Santa Catalina
Santa Eulalia (ship)
rebellion
Santa María Island
Santiago
Santo Domingo
slave revolt
São Nicolau
sealing
Chinese market
contraband
first voyage of Perseverance
labor relations and corruption
methods of
Onico
second voyage of Perseverance
vanishing herds
Senegal
Seville
Shakespeare, William
Henry VI
Timon of Athens
Shaw, Lemuel
ships, slave. See slavery; Spanish American slavery; specific ships
Sims, Thomas
slave revolts
Amistad
Christiansborg
law of general average and
Neptune
parricide
San Juan Nepomuceno
Santa Eulalia
Tryal chase, battle, and capture
Tryal rebellion and deception
Tryal trial and executions
United States
slave routes, map of
slavery
abolition of,
British trade
disease and illness
economy
“free trade of blacks”
Fugitive Slave Act
Islam and
Melville on
mercantile corruption
Middle Passage
mortality rate
overland trade route
parricide
paternalism
rebellions, see slave revolts
as “social death”
Spanish American, see Spanish American slavery
suicide
United States
See also Spanish American slavery; specific countries
smallpox
vaccine,
Soriano, Cristina
South Africa
South America. See Spanish American slavery; specific countries and cities
South Carolina
South Georgia Islands
Spain
Catholicism
colonial economy
end of colonialism
fashion
Inquisition
mercantilism
reconquista
slave trade, see Spanish American slavery
Spanish American slavery
abolition of
contraband
disease and illness
economy
“free trade of blacks”
Islam and
market revolution
mortality rate
paperwork and legalisms
Spence, Charles
Sprague, Peleg
Sprague, Seth
Starbuck, Thomas
Staten Island
Stewart, Charles Samuel
Story, Joseph
Stowe, Harriet Beecher, Uncle Tom’s Cabin
Stuckey, Sterling
Sufism
sugar
suicide, slave
as flight
Susan (ship)
Swain, Uriah
Swain, Valentine
Sydney
syphilis
Talcahuano
Tasmania
Tennessee
Texas
annexation of
Thoreau, Henry David
Walden
Tierra del Fuego
Timbo
Timbuktu
tobacco
Tobago
Topaz
Toussaint Louverture
Trinidad
Trowbridge, Phineas
Tryal (ship)
chase, battle, and capture of
as Dichosa
rebellion and deception
reward money
sale of surviving rebels
trial and executions
Turner, Charles
United States
abolition
Civil War
colonial era
economy
expansionism
Revolutionary War
Second Great Awakening
slavery
South
United States (ship)
Uruguay
Valdivia
Valdivia, Pedro de
Valparaiso
Van Doren, Carl
Venezuela
Venus
Veracruz
Vesey, Denmark
Villagrán, Francisco de
Virginia
Voltaire
Wallace, James
Wallace, Robert
Wampanoags
Warren (ship)
Washington, George
Webster, Daniel
West African slavery. See slavery; Spanish American slavery; specific countries
Weston, Ezra (King Caesar)
whaling
Whittier, John Greenleaf, “The Slave Ships”
Wilentz, Amy
Williams, Stanley
Wolof
slave revolt
women, black
as adornments
concubines
Tryal
as wet nurses
Wood, Gordon
Wordsworth, William
yellow fever
Yucatan
Zong (ship)
ALSO BY GREG GRANDIN
Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford’s Forgotten Jungle City
Empire’s Workshop: Latin America, the United States, and the Rise of the New Imperialism
The Last Colonial Massacre: Latin America in the Cold War
The Blood of Guatemala: A History of Race and Nation
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
GREG GRANDIN is the author of Fordlandia, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and, in the United Kingdom, the James Tate Black Prize, as well as Empire’s Workshop and The Last Colonial Massacre. A professor of history at New York University and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, he has been a recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and, most recently, the New York Public Library’s Cullman Center, where he was the Gilder Lehrman Fellow in American History. Grandin has served on the UN Truth Commission investigating the Guatemalan civil war and has written for the Los Angeles Times, the Nation, the London Review of Books, New Statesman, and the New York Times.
THE EMPIRE OF NECESSITY. Copyright © 2014 by Greg Grandin. All rights reserved. For information, address Henry Holt and Co., 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
www.henryholt.com
Jacket design by Rick Pracher
Jacket image: François-Auguste Biard,
Slaves on the West Coast of Africa, c. 1833,
© Wilberforce House, Hull City Museums and Art Galleries, UK / The Bridgeman Art Library
e-ISBN 978-1-4299-4317-8
First Edition: January 2014
* Neither Spanish American merchants, when they called for more “liberty” and “more free trade,” nor the Crown, when in response to those calls it deregulated the economy, tended to invoke the idea of individual rights. Rather, they used the language of “utility,” of achieving a greater “good,” as needed to increase the prosperity of the empire. Spanish theologians did recognize that individuals possessed what they called a fuero in
terno, a realm of inner sovereignty, and they even had come to believe, as did English-speaking Protestant religious thinkers and philosophers, that the pursuit of personal gain could generate public virtue. But the Crown didn’t accept the subversive natural-law idea that individual self-interest was itself a virtue.
* There was a similar relationship between fashion and subversion in the United States. On November 17, 1793, a fire that started in the backyard stables of the Albany home of Leonard Gansevoort, Herman Melville’s great-uncle, nearly burned Albany to the ground. It was part of a rash of arsons (including another one in the barn of Peter Gansevoort, Melville’s Revolutionary War hero grandfather) blamed on slaves who, some of Albany’s Dutch gentry feared, were inspired by the Haitian Revolution. The police arrested a slave named Pompey as the conspiracy’s leader. They never found out his true motive, but they were sure he was guilty not just of arson but of another transgression: he liked nice clothing. During the hard years of the American Revolution, Albany dressed gray on gray, as wartime austerity reinforced the Dutch merchant gentry’s staid reputation. Cut off from trade, families weaved their own drab linsey-woolseys. But when the fighting stopped, ships again came up the Hudson carrying “rich silks, satins, and broad-cloths.” “Colors of the rainbow took the place of the sombre brown and the heavy black previously worn by females, while blue, pea green and scarlet broad-cloths were selected by the males for dress coats.” Just as Spaniards accused “blacks, mulattos, Indians and mestizos” of stealing to dress better than their birth, the Albany slave Pompey was accused of robbing money from his mistress to buy “what he desired in the way of dress.” He was said to be “foppish,” a “gay fellow among the wenches” who hoped to “imitate in dress those who mingled in a different society.” His name even changed with the times. Instead of the neoclassical Pompey (his first master, like other slavers of his day, apparently had taken to reading the 1770 English edition of Plutarch’s Lives), he went by the frolicsome Pomp. At some point before the fire, Pomp, having fled to Manhattan, was caught “parading” on Broadway “wearing a bright red cloth coat, cut in the prevailing fashion, adorned with gilt buttons.” He was captured and returned to Albany. Later, Pomp, along with two other slaves convicted on the charge of arson—Bet, a sixteen-year-old girl and the property of Herman Melville’s cousin Philip van Rensselaer, and Dinah, a fourteen-year-old girl and the slave of another Melville relative, Volkert Douw—were executed, hung from an elm tree not far from Melville’s grandfather’s Albany mansion.
* “Free trade” is often thought of as a removal of the government from the economy. But Spain’s deregulation of slavery actually made the treatment of slaves within its colonies more of a public policy problem; as the trade and the ownership of slaves became more widespread, no one person, class, or company could be held accountable for its excesses. In tandem with the liberalization of slavery came a series of laws and decrees regulating slave hygiene, slave burial, slave punishment, and slave education.
* Africans were the primary victims of smallpox in the New World. But they also played a crucial role in its eradication. In 1803, after his daughter died from the disease, Spain’s King Carlos IV ordered its vaccine (a practical version had been recently fabricated by the British) to be disseminated throughout his dominion. Francisco Xavier de Balmis, the doctor who headed the royal expedition appointed to carry out the task, decided it was best to transport the vaccine live. Twenty-two foundlings aged three to nine were boarded on a ship: doctors made a small incision on the arms of two of them and inserted a mixture of lymph and pus, which after a few days produced the pustules that would provide the material to vaccinate the next two boys. The procedure was repeated until the ship reached America. Once there, the foundlings were feted and praised, laid at the foot of church altars, and adopted by the king himself as “special children of the country.” But Balmis’s team didn’t have the funds to cover all of Spanish America. It turned to the one institution that already reached across the far-flung realm: slavery. In Havana, Balmis bought four young slave girls, whom he used to send the vaccine to the Yucatan (once they performed their service, the two girls were sold). At first, slaves were sent on journeys specifically organized to transport the vaccine. But as time passed, it became easier just to use already established commercial routes, sending the vaccine “arm to arm of the blacks” who were being shipped as cargo. Portugal had from the beginning relied on African slaves to get the vaccine across the Atlantic, sending it to Brazil in the arms of seven enslaved children. It was then taken to Río de la Plata in a shipment of thirty-eight vaccinated slaves who were to be sold in Montevideo. An African woman “with pustules in perfect development” carried the vaccine to Buenos Aires. And from there, slaves took the “miracle discovery”—which made slavery much more profitable for slavers—through the rest of Argentina, over the Andes, and into Chile. Interestingly, before the Spanish began to disseminate the vaccine through the arms of orphans and slaves, the naturalist Alexander von Humboldt reported that young African slaves and Native American cow herders on the slopes of the Andes knew that exposure to the tubercles of cow udders protected them from the pox. Africans and Indians, Humboldt said, “display great sagacity in observing the character, habits, and diseases of the animals with which they live.”