#(and largely a result of the french revolution)

[pynkhues]

Not a baiting ask: I don’t recall any of the characters dressing more androgynously as the books went on, save Gabrielle? There are passages of Louis and Lestat wearing lace, pearls and velvet frock coats in the modern day, in reference to 18th c. fashion: Is that what the other Anon may have meant? That’s not an androgynous sartorial choice with historical costuming in mind, though, it’s Louis dressing in the fashion of his human era. (Perhaps there is a misconception from a passage in which Louis wears lace and pearls at Armand’s urging, or someone sharing such passages with intent to mislead other fans about the canonicity of Femme Louis or Femme Lestat beyond Anne’s personal identification with them, which has happened before and will happen again.) In the show, Louis dressing in lace, pearl and velvet would be Louis dressing in a colourful three piece suit in the style of the 1910’s.

(x)

Ah! Thank you for the correction, anon, I didn't remember any either, but I'm hyper-conscious of only having read through Memnoch (and having read most of the books I have quite a while ago, although I've been re-reading TVL recently) so I chose to take the ask in good faith and assume perhaps something happened in later books. That could very well be what the anon meant, but perhaps you're right too that there are scenes being taken out of context.

[whencyclopedia]

The Storming of the Bastille was a decisive moment in the early months of the French Revolution (1789-1799). On 14 July 1789, the Bastille, a fortress and political prison symbolizing the oppressiveness of France’s Ancien Régime was attacked by a crowd mainly consisting of sans-culottes, or lower classes. The anniversary is still celebrated in France as the country’s national holiday. The event was the culmination of multiple different causes. Although the catalyst for the attack was the dismissal of popular Genevan commoner Jacques Necker (1732-1804) from the ministry of King Louis XVI of France (r. 1774-1792), societal imbalances and financial hardships had been pressuring the French people for years. The perceived efforts of the king to undo the work of the Estates-General of 1789, which had resulted in the formation of a National Assembly dominated by members of the Third Estate, combined with rising bread prices to send the people of Paris into a panic, causing them to lash out against symbols of royal authority, including the ever-looming Bastille. While the storming of the Bastille was significant in that it saw the first large-scale intervention by the sans-culottes in the Revolution, it was also one of the first instances of bloodshed and mob rule committed by revolutionaries in what had previously been a relatively peaceful and orderly affair. Still, the event marked a major turning point in which the powers of the king were diminished and the process of dismantling the monarchy began.

[ideas-on-paper]

A brief history of Camille Desmoulins

It's March 2nd today, which means it's the birthday of my biggest writing muse: Camille Desmoulins, 18th-century journalist, French revolutionary and the man who called the Parisian people to arms, resulting in the Storming of the Bastille.

Despite essentially causing such a major historical event, Camille is largely glossed over by historians, and not many people know about him as a result. However, that doesn't mean he didn't have any influence on the revolution, and he contributed to it the same way as famous personalities like Robespierre, Danton, and Saint-Just did. So, in honor of his 264th birthday, here's a little history of the man gracing my profile pic.

The early years

Camille was born in 1760, in the commune of Guise in the province of Picardy. At fourteen years of age, he obtained a scholarship to study at the Collège Louis-le-Grand in Paris, one of the most esteemed elite schools in France. There, he met Maximilien de Robespierre, and despite the boys being two years apart in age and having very different personalities - Maximilien was more calm and secluded, while Camille was lively and impulsive - the two bonded over their mutual love for classical history and philosophy.

After graduating from Louis-le-Grand, Camille began to pursue a career in law, being admitted to the Parlement of Paris in 1785. However, his stammer and lack of connections to the Parisian legal community impeded his success, so he instead took up writing as a journalist, with a primary focus on political affairs.

The Estates-General and the call to arms

When King Louis XVI convened the Estates-General in 1789, Camille was present at the procession on May 5th, writing a comment about the event. The Comte de Mirabeau, presenting himself as a middleman between the aristocracy and the Third Estate as well as a patron for Camille, even employed the latter as a writer for his newspaper for a time.

However, the mingling of the three estates was not well received by the king, and he tried to regain control over the members who had dubbed themselves the National Assembly by closing the Salle des Menus Plaisirs where the deputies met to them. Instead, the National Assembly held their meeting in the Jeu de Paume (which was normally used as the tennis court of Versailles), where the members from various estates swore the oath to not part until they had devised a new constitution for France.

Eventually, the king was forced to relent, but that didn't keep him from concentrating his troops in Versailles and Paris. When he dismissed finance minister Jacques Necker - who was very popular among the people and considered an advocate for their interests - the atmosphere in Paris took a turn for the worse.

The Parisians were angry, worried, and in fear, and in this situation - on July 12th, 1789 - Camille took the opportunity to leap onto a table in front of the Cafe de Foy in the Palais Royal. There, he delivered a passionate speech, even losing his usual stammer in the heat of the moment, calling the people to take up arms to defend themselves against the imminent massacre of the king's troops* and put on cockades so they recognize each other.

Following Camille's example, the people took green leaves from the trees lining the Palais Royal and stuck them to their coats. However, since green was associated with the Comte d'Artois, the conservative brother of the king, the color of the cockades quickly shifted to red and blue, the colors of the commune of Paris (white was added later to represent the king, in an attempt to reconcile the factions). Bad news for Camille's leaf cockades…

*The king most likely didn't plan to massacre the citizens, but the presence of so many troops, a good deal of them foreign, made the populace very anxious.

Journalistic career and the Girondins

After being present at the Storming of the Bastille, Camille continued to be politically active, publishing radical pamphlets and newspapers such as La France Libre, Discours de la lanterne aux Parisiens, and Révolutions de France et de Brabant. He joined the Club des Cordeliers led by Georges Danton and became part of the radical leftist Montagnards, the "Mountain" party of the National Convention, consisting of members such as Maximilien de Robespierre, Jean-Paul Marat, and Louis Antoine Saint-Just.

In 1790, Camille also married Lucile Duplessis, whom he had known for several years and harbored strong feelings for. However, despite Lucile's mother being a good friend of Camille's, her father repeatedly denied the couple his blessing, being of the opinion that Camille couldn't support a family with his meager income as a journalist. (Indeed, in the days prior to the revolution, Camille often had to live in poverty due to his difficulties establishing himself as a lawyer.) After gaining popularity as a journalist, however, Lucile's father finally allowed the lovers to marry, the marriage taking place on December 29th with Robespierre, Jacques Pierre Brissot, and Jérôme Pétion de Villeneuve being present as witnesses.

However, success and bliss were not meant to last: After the massacre at the Champs de Mars on July 17th, 1791, Camille had to go into hiding, putting his journalistic activities on halt for the time being. When he took up his work again in 1792, he wrote a few papers viciously attacking the political faction of the Girondins and specifically their leader, Jean Pierre Brissot. In his works, Camille accused them of betraying the republic and counter-revolutionary acts*, which majorly contributed to the arrest and subsequent execution of many Girondin leaders, including Brissot. However, Camille came to regret his role in their deaths: During the trial, he was lamenting "Oh my God! My God! It is I who killed them!", collapsing in the courtroom when the death sentence was announced.

*The Girondins had acquired a reputation of intending to harm the revolution with their actions, on one hand due to their pro-war attitude (the war with other European empires had taken its toll on the Republic of France), and on the other hand due to the party's indecisiveness concerning the judgement of the king (some of them argued for clemency or a milder punishment).

Vieux Cordelier and downfall

After 1793, Camille had a notable change of heart, becoming one of the voices in favor of clemency instead of terror. In what would become his most well-known and popular journal, Le Vieux Cordelier, he argued against imprisoning citizens based on the mere suspicion of counter-revolutionary activities, condemning the brutality of the Reign of Terror and even directly addressing his old friend Robespierre to moderate his approach.

However, this only ended up making Camille another prime target. Robespierre initially tried to defend Camille from the Jacobin Club calling for his expulsion, but this changed when Danton's secretary, Fabre d'Églantine, was exposed for financial fraud. This cast a poor light on Danton and his allies, including Camille, and it was what made Robespierre support legally persecuting them. Charges of corruption, royalist tendencies, and conspiracy against the revolution were brought forth against them, resulting in the arrest of Camille, Danton, and the rest of the Dantonists.

The trial itself took place from April 3rd to 5th, and was obviously aimed at getting rid of the political threat that Danton and his allies posed. By decree of the National Convention, the accused were not allowed to defend themselves, in addition to being denied the right to call any witnesses. The guilty verdict, which was essentially prescribed due to the nature of the trial, was passed in the absence of the defendants to prevent unrest in the courtroom, and the Dantonists were scheduled to ascend the scaffold on the very same day.

In Luxembourg prison, Camille wrote a last letter to his beloved wife Lucile, with spots from tears being visible to this day. However, it should never reach her, as Camille was informed that Lucile had also been arrested on his way to the scaffold. He went wild upon hearing the news, and it took several men to get him into the tumbrel. Of the fifteen Dantonists guillotined on April 5th, 1794, Camille was the third to die.

Lucile, who had been arrested on the charge of conspiring to free her husband, followed him only eight days later, being guillotined on April 13th, 1794. She left behind her not even two years old son, Horace Camille Desmoulins, who was raised by Lucile's mother and sister. In 1817, Horace emigrated from France to Haiti, where his gravestone can be found to this day.

And that is the story of Camille Desmoulins: the man who ignited the spark of the French Revolution, but eventually got disgusted by its brutality, leading to his tragic end.

Camille may be a bit overlooked as a historical figure, but that does not make him less interesting or important.

So, in all due honor: Happy birthday, Camille! 🎂

[mariacallous]

The French Revolution may have been one of the world’s first experiments in mass democracy, but those governing France have long had a problem with the idea.

Throughout the 19th century, successive rulers tried to curtail democratic rights or did away with them altogether. Even the advent of universal male suffrage in 1848 did little to inflect this skepticism. A large swath of the governing classes mistrusted the masses and the elections that gave them a voice. (And most of those in power also agreed that women should not be given the vote; they were only enfranchised in 1945.)

The catastrophic defeat of 1940 at the hands of the Germans and France’s experience of authoritarian rule under Marshal Philippe Pétain ensured that, after the liberation of France in 1944, most anti-democratic voices were silenced. But French politicians did not suddenly embrace the democratic process.

On the contrary, the reconstruction of the country after the war was led by unelected technocrats, and when Charles de Gaulle returned to power in 1958, he changed the constitution to ensure that the democratic urges of the French were firmly kept in check. His new constitutional settlement—known as the Fifth Republic—bypassed parliament by creating one of the most powerful directly elected executives in the world. It also instituted a two-round electoral system that was designed to allow voters to express their frustration in the first round before making a “sensible” choice in the subsequent runoff.

As for the French themselves, they have long been aware of the various attempts to keep their political urges at bay. That is why the power of protest and the fear of the angry mob have been powerful driving forces in French politics. Even today, every minister knows that their days are numbered if the street turns against them, regardless of the result of the previous election.

With all of this historical baggage, it is not hard to see why almost everyone was completely taken aback by President Emmanuel Macron’s unexpected announcement on June 9 that he would be dissolving parliament. Only an hour before, the first estimations of the results of the European Parliament elections had been released. There was little in the way of suspense: Opinion polls had predicted for months that the far-right National Rally party would do very well. In the moments before Macron spoke, people were more likely to be worried about finishing their washing-up than the composition of the European Parliament.

But Macron had other ideas. His decision to call an election flew in the face of two centuries of French political history. Every single one of his predecessors would have told him the same thing: When the chips are down, the very last thing you do is ask the French people to decide. They will punish you—not simply because they don’t like you, but also because you had the temerity to ask them what they think.

How, then, can we explain such a momentous and uncharacteristic decision?

In the days since Macron’s announcement, even the most experienced political journalists have struggled to answer this question. It appears that there was a special group of advisors working on the possibility of dissolving parliament. There were also members of Macron’s coalition who were recommending this course of action—especially a cluster of right-wing senators, whose mandate is not dependent on the outcome of direct elections.

But this is hardly an adequate explanation. Presidents always have teams whose job it is to game different political scenarios, and they also have to deal with incessant lobbying from their allies. If we want to understand Macron’s logic then we need to probe deeper into his worldview and his vision of French politics.

We might start with the historical precedents that exist for Macron’s dissolution of parliament. There have been only three preemptive dissolutions of the parliament under the Fifth Republic: In 1962, de Gaulle needed parliamentary support for his decision to create the directly elected presidency. In 1968, he sought a new mandate in the wake of the huge student and worker protests that had taken place in the spring. And in 1997, Chirac hoped to confirm his success in the presidential elections of 1995 by renewing the right-wing majority in parliament.

It is clear which of these precedents is in Macron’s mind. In 1962 and 1968, de Gaulle’s party was massively reelected, and he came away with renewed legitimacy for his policies. In 1997, by contrast, Chirac was severely punished. The left gained more than 200 seats and formed the majority in parliament until 2002. Given how much more fragmented French politics is in 2024—and given the collapse in party discipline since the 1990s—the dissolution of 1997 seems to be a far more accurate guide to what might happen in a few weeks’ time.

Of course, Macron knows his political history; he knows the risks. He might believe that he has the charisma and stature of de Gaulle, but he will be aware that the general himself was punished by the popular vote. When de Gaulle called a referendum on decentralization only a year after his spectacular success in the 1968 parliamentary election, he told the French that he would resign if he lost. And he still lost.

Even the most formidable French leader of the 20th century was ejected from power by a dissatisfied electorate. What makes Macron think he can do better?

The only credible answer, it seems to me, is that he has belatedly embraced the power of chaos. After telling the French incessantly since his first victory in 2017 that he is the guarantor of stability and the only bulwark against the political extremes in France and Europe, he has decided that his goals can be most successfully achieved by utterly destroying the existing system of political parties and coalition.

Already in the past few days, profound realignments have taken place on the left and right of the political spectrum. It is not impossible that the French center right—the political heirs of Gaullism—will all but disappear. On the left, the real fear of a far-right government has forced entirely incompatible politicians, from Trotskyists to centrist social democrats, into an ad hoc alliance. In the best-case scenario, Macron emerges from this turmoil as the only credible figure of government, like a revolutionary leader left standing after a purge.

But the risks of unleashing chaos are huge. Macron could lose his parliamentary power and his party. He could suffer a crushing defeat at the hands of an angry electorate. Most of all, he could permanently tarnish his legacy by being the first French president to swear in a far-right prime minister who is supported by a far-right majority in parliament. The symbolism of this would be almost as powerful as the notorious picture of Pétain shaking hands with Hitler in 1940.

Many people have compared Macron’s gamble to former Prime Minister David Cameron’s decision to call a referendum on the United Kingdom’s membership of the European Union in 2016. But Cameron was naive: He was told he would win, and he had not drawn any lessons from the near-miss of the referendum on Scottish independence in 2014.

Macron is not naive; he understands exactly what he has done. He may, in time, be vindicated. But if he fails, he alone will bear the responsibility for tearing France apart.

[nesiacha]

8 may 1945 in Algeria

May 8, 1945, is a day of glory for many countries in Europe, rightly so. Nazism has finally been defeated, and it was a relief. But in Algeria, it is a day of national mourning. On that day, the Algerian people took to the streets to demand the release of Messali Hadj, leader of the PPA ( Parti du peuple algérien ), considered at that time one of the most important figures in Algerian independence, a better equality between French people and algerian people, a true vote and not rigged in favor of the settlers. After all, a lot Algerians had participated in the liberation, so why not grant all their demands? Protesters were asked not to display the Algerian flag, but a young man named Bouzid Saâl proudly waved the Algerian flag. A policeman shot him, and he died. Other demonstrations were also brutally suppressed. For example, in Guelma, the deputy prefect Achiary took advantage of the situation to arrest a large number of Algerians, torture them, or kill them. This was followed by a crackdown around Setif in Constantine, where a peasant uprising resulted in around a hundred deaths (of pieds noirs). This led to another disproportionate repression against Algerians, lasting over a month, during which the deaths of these pieds noirs served as a convenient pretext for further repression. In addition to the army, colonial militias participated in the killings, arbitrary arrests were commonplace, and there were even places in Guelma where Algerians were burned alive. The famous writer Kateb Yacine, then a high school student, was arrested while participating in a demonstration, beaten, and several members of his family were killed. Duval would later claim that he gave France peace for 10 years, which is prophetic because many disillusioned Algerians, rightly angered by this umpteenth injustice, inequality, discriminatory laws, and daily repressions, would eventually join the Algerian revolution that began in 1954. De Gaulle, who was in power, approved of everything Papon ( Papon who after having persecuted Jews in France by adopting anti-Semitic decrees, is preparing to do the same thing in Algeria)and Achiary did (it is even possible that de Gaulle gave the orders, because at least he approve them).

This is one of the reasons why I am among those French who do not admire him. Stalin was rightly vilified, but de Gaulle and Churchill escaped such condemnation (you can also see what de Gaulle did in Cameroon to be horrified). What I mean is that as someone who has fought against all double standards, I totally disapprove of the killings of civilian pieds noirs, but we often forget that the colonized were much more massively killed and in total indifference. For the entire French political class, May 8, 1945, is clearly not one of their finest moments (to put it mildly).

A film that illustrates this, although it is very harsh and not subtitled, is the film Heliopolis; even I cried a lot at the end, and the very realistic massacre is based on images from that time.

[kemetic-dreams]

Haitian Immigration : Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries

Many Haitians moved to Louisiana during and after the Haitian Revolution, which began in 1791 and lasted for 13 years:

The long, interwoven history of Haiti and the United States began on the last day of 1698, when French explorer Sieur d'Iberville set out from the island of Saint Domingue (present-day Haiti) to establish a settlement at Biloxi, on the Gulf Coast of France's Louisiana possession.

For most of the eighteenth century, however, only a few African migrants settled there. But between the 1790s and 1809, large numbers of Haitians of African descent migrated to Louisiana. By 1791 the Haitian Revolution was under way. It would continue for thirteen years, result in the independence of the first African republic in the Western Hemisphere, and reverberate throughout the Atlantic world. Its impact would be particularly felt in Louisiana, the destination of thousands of refugees from the island's turmoil. Their activism had profound repercussions on the politics, the culture, the religion, and the racial climate of the state.

From Saint Domingue to Louisiana

Louisiana and her Caribbean parent colony developed intimate links during the eighteenth century, centered on maritime trade, the exchange of capital and information, and the migration of colonists. From such beginnings, Haitians exerted a profound influence on Louisiana's politics, people, religion, and culture. The colony's officials, responding to anti-slavery plots and uprisings on the island, banned the entry of enslaved Saint Domingans in 1763. Their rebellious actions would continue to impact upon Louisiana's slave trade and immigration policies throughout the age of the American and French revolutions.

These two democratic struggles struck fear in the hearts of the Spaniards, who governed Louisiana from 1763 to 1800. They suppressed what they saw as seditious activities and banned subversive materials in a futile attempt to isolate their colony from the spread of democratic revolution. In May 1790 a royal decree prohibited the entry of blacks - enslaved and free - from the French West Indies. A year later, the Haitian Revolution started.

The revolution in Saint Domingue unleashed a massive multiracial exodus: the French fled with the bondspeople they managed to keep; so did numerous free people of color, some of whom were slaveholders themselves. In addition, in 1793, a catastrophic fire destroyed two-thirds of the principal city, Cap Français (present-day Cap Haïtien), and nearly ten thousand people left the island for good. In the ensuing decades of revolution, foreign invasion, and civil war, thousands more fled the turmoil. Many moved eastward to Santo Domingo (present-day Dominican Republic) or to nearby Caribbean islands. Large numbers of immigrants, black and white, found shelter in North America, notably in New York, Baltimore (fifty-three ships landed there in July 1793), Philadelphia, Norfolk, Charleston, and Savannah, as well as in Spanish Florida. Nowhere on the continent, however, did the refugee movement exert as profound an influence as in southern Louisiana.

Between 1791 and 1803, thirteen hundred refugees arrived in New Orleans. The authorities were concerned that some had come with "seditious" ideas. In the spring of 1795, Pointe Coupée was the scene of an attempted insurrection during which planters' homes were burned down. Following the incident, a free émigré from Saint Domingue, Louis Benoit, accused of being "very imbued with the revolutionary maxims which have devastated the said colony" was banished. The failed uprising caused planter Joseph Pontalba to take "heed of the dreadful calamities of Saint Domingue, and of the germ of revolt only too widespread among our slaves." Continued unrest in Pointe Coupée and on the German Coast contributed to a decision to shut down the entire slave trade in the spring of 1796.

In 1800 Louisiana officials debated reopening it, but they agreed that Saint Domingue blacks would be barred from entry. They also noted the presence of black and white insurgents from the French West Indies who were "propagating dangerous doctrines among our Negroes." Their slaves seemed more "insolent," "ungovernable," and "insubordinate" than they had just five years before.

That same year, Spain ceded Louisiana back to France, and planters continued to live in fear of revolts. After future emperor Napoleon Bonaparte sold the colony to the United States in 1803 because his disastrous expedition against Saint Domingue had stretched his finances and military too thin, events in the island loomed even larger in Louisiana.

The Black Republic and Louisiana

In January 1804, an event of enormous importance shook the world of the enslaved and their owners. The black revolutionaries, who had been fighting for a dozen years, crushed Napoleon's 60,000 men-army - which counted mercenaries from all over Europe - and proclaimed the nation of Haiti (the original Indian name of the island), the second independent nation in the Western Hemisphere and the world's first black-led republic. The impact of this victory of unarmed slaves against their oppressors was felt throughout the slave societies. In Louisiana, it sparked a confrontation at Bayou La Fourche. According to white residents, twelve Haitians from a passing vessel threatened them "with many insulting and menacing expressions" and "spoke of eating human flesh and in general demonstrated great Savageness of character, boasting of what they had seen and done in the horrors of St. Domingo [Saint Domingue]."

The slaveholders' anxieties increased and inspired a new series of statutes to isolate Louisiana from the spread of revolution. The ban on West Indian bondspeople continued and in June 1806 the territorial legislature barred the entry from the French Caribbean of free black males over the age of fourteen. A year later, the prohibition was extended: all free black adult males were excluded, regardless of their nationality. Severe punishments, including enslavement, accompanied the new laws.

However, American efforts to prevent the entry of Haitian immigrants proved even less successful than those of the French and the Spanish. Indeed, the number of immigrants skyrocketed between May 1809 and June 1810, when Spanish authorities expelled thousands of Haitians from Cuba, where they had taken refuge several years earlier. In the wake of this action, New Orleans' Creole whites overcame their chronic fears and clamored for the entry of the white refugees and their slaves. Their objective was to strengthen Louisiana's declining French-speaking community and offset Anglo-American influence. The white Creoles felt that the increasing American presence posed a greater threat to their interests than a potentially dangerous class of enslaved West Indians.

American officials bowed to their pressure and reluctantly allowed white émigrés to enter the city with their slaves. At the same time, however, they attempted to halt the migration of free black refugees. Louisiana's territorial governor, William C. C. Claiborne, firmly enforced the ban on free black males. He advised the American consul in Santiago de Cuba:

Males above the age of fifteen, have . . . been ordered to depart. - I must request you, Sir, to make known this circumstance and also to discourage free people of colour of every description from emigrating to the Territory of Orleans; We have already a much greater proportion of that population than comports with the general Interest.

Claiborne and other officials labored in vain; the population of Afro-Creoles grew larger and even more assertive after the entry of the Haitian émigrés from Cuba, nearly 90 percent of whom settled in New Orleans. The 1809 migration brought 2,731 whites, 3,102 free persons of African descent, and 3,226 enslaved refugees to the city, doubling its population. Sixty-three percent of Crescent City inhabitants were now black. Among the nation's major cities only Charleston, with a 53 percent black majority, was comparable.

The multiracial refugee population settled in the French Quarter and the neighboring Faubourg Marigny district, and revitalized Creole culture and institutions. New Orleans acquired a reputation as the nation's "Creole Capital."

The rapid growth of the city's population of free persons of color strengthened the "three-caste" society - white, mixed, black - that had developed during the years of French and Spanish rule. This was quite different from the racial order prevailing in the rest of the United States, where attempts were made to confine all persons of African descent to a separate and inferior racial caste - a situation brought about by political reality in the South that promoted white unity across class lines and the immersion of all blacks into a single and subservient social caste.

In Louisiana, as lawmakers moved to suppress manumission and undermine the free black presence, the refugees dealt a serious blow to their efforts. In 1810 the city's French-speaking Creoles of African descent, reinforced by thousands of Haitian refugees, formed the basis for the emergence of one of the most advanced black communities in North America.

Soldiers, Rebels, and Pirates

Many Haitian black males eluded immigration authorities by slipping into the territory through Barataria, a coastal settlement just west of the Mississippi River. Some became allies of the notorious pirates Jean and Pierre Lafitte, white refugees of the Haitian Revolution. Surrounded by marshland and a maze of waterways, Barataria was an effective staging area for attacks on Gulf shipping. The interracial band of adventurers dominated the settlement's thriving black-market economy.

But pirates and smugglers did not make up the whole of Barataria's fugitive residents. Some two hundred free black veterans of the Haitian Revolution, including Lieutenant Colonel Joseph Savary, a former French republican officer, were among them. In 1799 seven hundred soldiers, opposed to Toussaint L'Ouverture fled to Cuba and later migrated to Louisiana. By 1810 this movement of Haitian soldiers from Cuba had created a black military presence in Louisiana that seriously worried Governor Claiborne. He anxiously requested reinforcements. The number of free black men "in and near New Orleans, capable of carrying arms," he wrote, "cannot be less than eight hundred."

Colonel Savary and other republican veterans of the Haitian Revolution remained committed to the French revolution's ideals of liberté, egalité, fraternité (freedom, equality, fraternity.) They regrouped to aid insurgents attempting to establish independent republics in Latin America. In November 1813 Savary offered to send five hundred Haitian soldiers to fight with Mexican revolutionaries. When their effort to establish a Mexican government in Texas failed, Savary and his men returned to New Orleans. Within the year, however, the colonel and other Haitian veterans would be rallying against the forces of the British crown.

As British forces threatened to invade New Orleans in 1814, American authorities sought to win the loyalty of battle-hardened black soldiers like Colonel Savary. They were also well aware of the prominent role that free men had played in slave rebellions. With the English approaching, pacifying them would be strategically sound.

General Andrew Jackson arrived in New Orleans in December 1814 and immediately mustered 350 native-born black veterans of the Spanish militia into the United States Army. Colonel Savary raised a second black unit of 250 of Haiti's refugee soldiers. Jackson recognized Savary's considerable influence and knew of his reputation as "a man of great courage." On Jackson's orders, Savary became the first African-American soldier to achieve the rank of second major.

The Haitians in Barataria also fought in the battle of New Orleans. In September 1814 federal troops invaded their community and dispersed the Lafittes and their followers. Hundreds of refugees poured into the city. Andrew Jackson offered them pardons in return for their support in defending the city. After the victory, he commended the two battalions of six hundred African-American and Haitian soldiers whose presence in a force of three thousand men had proved decisive. He praised the "privateers and gentlemen" of Barataria who "through their loyalty and courage, redeemed [their] pledge . . . to defend the country."

Jackson observed that Captain Savary "continued to merit the highest praise." In the last significant skirmish of the battle, Savary and a detachment of his men volunteered to clear the field of a detail of British sharpshooters. Though Savary's force suffered heavy casualties, the mission was carried out successfully.

Within weeks of the victory, however, Jackson yielded to white pressure to remove the men from New Orleans to a remote site in the marshland east of the city to repair fortifications. Savary relayed a message to the general that his men "would always be willing to sacrifice their lives in defense of their country as had been demonstrated but preferred death to the performance of the work of laborers." Jackson, though not pleased, refrained from taking any action against the troops. In February, the general even lent his support to Savary's renewed efforts to rejoin republican insurgents in Mexico.

Afro-Creoles and Americans

In colonial Louisiana and in colonial Haiti, military service had functioned as a crucial means of advancement for both free and enslaved blacks. After the battle of New Orleans, however, support for the black militia declined among free people of color. The disrespect shown to the soldiers who fought so valiantly, along with their disappointment at not receiving some measure of political recognition, contributed to their disillusionment.

Afro-Creoles' anger mounted as Louisiana's white lawmakers embarked upon an unprecedented and sustained attack upon their rights by formulating one of the harshest slave codes in the American South. In 1830 the legislature reaffirmed the 1807 ban on the entry of "free negroes and mulattoes" and required slaveholders to ensure the removal of freed people within thirty days of their emancipation. In Louisiana, as elsewhere in the South, segregation, anti-miscegenation laws, and the legal ostracism of racially mixed children signified the imposition of a two-category pattern of racial classification that relegated all persons of African ancestry to a degraded status.

Reduced to a debased condition, deprived of citizenship, denied free movement, and threatened with violence, Afro-Creoles, both native-born and immigrant, developed an intensely antagonistic relationship with the new regime. Under the United States government, black Louisianians had anticipated an end to slavery and racial oppression and had looked for the fulfillment of the democratic ideals embodied in the founding principles of the new American republic. But contrary to their expectations, the process of Americanization negated the promise of the revolutionary era. Instead of moving toward freedom and equality, the new government promoted the evolution of an increasingly harsh system of chattel slavery.

From Revolution to Romanticism

Following the example of intellectuals in France and Haiti, Afro-Creole activists in Louisiana - led by Haitian émigrés, their children, and French-speaking native Louisianians - had been nurturing their republican heritage. As political expression was stifled, they poured their energies into a new vehicle of revolutionary ideas, the Romantic literary movement.

New Orleans' highly politicized black intelligentsia thereby tapped into the Atlantic world's ongoing current of political radicalism, protesting injustice in their literary work. Their principal forum was La Société des Artisans. Founded by free black artisans and veterans of the War of 1812, the organization provided local Creole writers the opportunity to exchange ideas and present their numerous artistic works in a friendly setting.

Among these young writers was Victor Séjour. His father, a Haitian émigré, was a veteran of the War of 1812 and a prosperous dry-goods merchant. The young Séjour had been educated at New Orleans' prestigious black school Académie Sainte-Barbe, under the tutelage of Michel Séligny, the most productive Afro-Creole short-story writer. Séjour's audience at La Société proclaimed him a prodigy, and his father, determined to see his son fulfill his artistic potential and anxious for Victor to escape the burden of racial prejudice in Louisiana, sent him to France to complete his education. In Paris, the youth quickly came under the influence of another writer of African-Haitian descent, renowned novelist Alexandre Dumas, author of The Three Musketeers (1844), The Count of Monte Cristo (1844-45), and many other celebrated works.

Séjour made a dramatic debut on the literary scene with the publication, in March 1837, of an impassioned attack on slavery, "Le Mulâtre" (The Mulatto), the first short story by an African-American writer to be published in France.

Following the publication of "Le Mulâtre," Séjour embarked on a remarkably productive artistic career. When he was only twenty-six years old, the famed Théâtre Français produced his first drama; it would be followed by two dozen more. In one season, French theaters produced three of his works simultaneously, and Emperor Napoleon III attended opening nights of two of them.

Ironically, Séjour's first story, though it may have circulated privately within the black community, was never published in New Orleans. It fell within the parameters of an 1830 Louisiana law prohibiting reading matter "having a tendency to produce discontent among the free coloured population . . . or to excite insubordination among the slaves." Violators faced either a penalty of three to twenty-one years at hard labor or death, at the judge's discretion.

Despite such restrictions, the city's free people of color managed to fashion a vibrant literary movement, dominated by Haitian refugees and their descendants. The influence of the French Romantic movement among New Orleans' black intellectuals became more evident in 1843 with the publication of a short-lived, interracial literary journal L'Album litt��raire: Journal des jeunes gens, amateurs de littérature (The Literary Album: A Journal of Young Men, Lovers of Literature). Its most prominent black founder was Armand Lanusse, of Haitian ancestry and one of the city's leading Romantic artists. Lanusse and his fellow writers, both émigré and native-born, ignored the 1830 literary censorship law and, like their fellow Romantics in France and Haiti, used their literary skills to challenge existing social evils.

In a series of introductory essays,the anonymous contributors to L'Album deplored "the sad and awful condition of Louisiana society," where the spectacle of rampant greed, unrelieved poverty, and institutionalized injustice "grips our hearts with deep sorrow, showering grief over all our thoughts, filling the soul with terror and despair."

Within a year of its debut, L'Album disappeared from the literary scene after critics attacked the journal for advocating revolt. Lanusse then edited a collection of poems by Creoles of color in 1845; Les Cenelles: Choix de poésies indigènes was the first anthology of literature by African Americans in the United States. Les Cenelles was much more subdued in tone than its predecessor. Still, Lanusse in his preface emphasized the value of education as "a shield against the spiteful and calamitous arrows shot at us." He and his colleagues considered their art form a springboard to social and political reform.

The Haitian Influence on Religion

In 1847 Lanusse and his friends helped to assure the survival of a small Catholic religious order dedicated to charitable work among the city's enslaved people and free black indigents. The congregation of the Sisters of the Holy Family was founded in 1842 by Henriette Delille, yet another prominent Afro-Creole of Haitian ancestry. As Delille's sisterhood struggled to maintain their community during the 1840s, a coalition of Afro-Creole writers, artisans, and philanthropists obtained corporate status and funding for the religious society.

When Delille took her formal religious vows in 1852, she headed Louisiana's first Catholic religious order of black women and the nation's second African-American community of Catholic nuns. Bearing striking testimony to the enormous impact of the Haitian diaspora, the first Catholic community of African-American nuns, the Oblate Sisters of Providence, founded in 1829 in Baltimore, originated in the Haitian refugee movement.

In 1848, Armand Lanusse and other Romantic writers took concrete measures to promote reform by establishing La Société Catholique pour l'Instruction des Orphelins dans l'Indigence (Catholic Society for the Instruction of Indigent Orphans). Through their organization, black activists executed the terms of a bequest by Madame Justine Firmin Couvent, a native of Guinea and a former slave, to establish a school in the Faubourg Marigny for the district's destitute orphans of color. Appalled by the indigence and illiteracy of the children, Couvent donated land and several buildings for an educational facility of which Lanusse became the first principal.

While Lanusse pursued his reform agenda within the existing institutional framework, another contributor to the volume, Nelson Desbrosses, followed a nontraditional path to empowerment and change. He traveled to Haiti before the Civil War, studied with a leading practitioner of Vodou, and returned to New Orleans with a reputation as a successful healer and spirit medium. Desbrosses undoubtedly recognized Vodou's historical significance in Haiti's independence struggle. During the revolution, the religion served as a medium for political organization as well as an ideological force for change. On the battlefield, Vodou's spiritual power proved decisive in reinforcing the determination of revolutionaries in their struggle for freedom. In the North Province, houngans (Vodou priests) sustained the revolt by mobilizing as many as forty thousand enslaved people. 

Vodou thrived in New Orleans until the 1803 Louisiana Purchase, when President Thomas Jefferson and other political leaders sought to undermine Creole predominance by Americanizing the culture of southern Louisiana. The post-1809 influx of Haitian refugees, however, slowed the Americanization process and assured the vitality of New Orleans' Creole culture for another twenty-five years. Immigrant believers in Vodou infused the religion's Louisiana variant with Afro-Caribbean elements of belief and ritual.

In the relatively tolerant religious milieu of antebellum New Orleans, Haitian immigrants joined with Creole slaves, free blacks, and even whites to assure the religion's ascendancy. Through Vodou, practiced in secrecy, Afro-Creoles preserved the memory of their African past and experienced psychological release by way of a religion that served as one of the few areas of totally autonomous black activity.

In transcending ethnic, class, and gender distinctions, Vodou helped to sustain a liberal Latin European religious ethic that recognized the spiritual equality of all persons. Vodou's interracial appeal and egalitarian spirit, reinvigorated by Haitian immigrants, offered a dramatic alternative to the Anglo-American racial order.

Beginning in the 1860s, Vodou assemblies were systematically suppressed, but the famed "Vodou Queen" Marie Laveau continued to exert great influence over her interracial following. In 1874 some twelve thousand spectators swarmed to the shores of Lake Pontchartrain to catch a glimpse of Laveau performing her legendary rites. By that time Laveau and other Afro-Creole Vodouists had fashioned some of the nation's most lasting folkloric traditions, as well as a religion of resistance that endures to the present moment.

The Civil War

Federal forces occupied New Orleans in 1862, and black Creoles volunteered their services to the Union army. The newspaper L'Union - whose chief founders, Dr. Louis Charles Roudanez and his brother, Jean-Baptiste, were of Haitian ancestry - announced its agenda in the premier issue. The editors condemned slavery, blasted the Confederacy, and expressed solidarity with Haiti's revolutionary republicans.

An 1862 editorial written by a newly enlisted Union officer, Afro-Creole Romantic writer Henry Louis Rey, urged free men of color to join the U.S. Army and take up "the cause of the rights of man." Rey invoked the names of Jean-Baptiste Chavannes and Vincent Ogé. Their ill-fated 1790 revolt had paved the way for the Haitian Revolution:

CHAVANNE [sic] and OGÉ did not wait to be aroused and to be made ashamed; they hurried unto death; they became martyrs here on earth and received on high the reward due to generous hearts...hasten all; our blood only is demanded; who will hesitate?

The editors of L'Union described Rey and the Afro-Creole troops as the "worthy grandsons of the noble [Col. Joseph] Savary." The paper insisted that military service entitled them to the political equality that had been denied their ancestors who fought valiantly in the American Revolution and the War of 1812. Furthermore, its editors warned, the men had resolved to "protest against all politics which would tend to expatriate them."

When federal officials undermined their suffrage campaign, Afro-Creole leaders took their case to the highest level. In 1864 L'Union cofounder Jean-Baptiste Roudanez and E. Arnold Bertonneau, a former officer in the Union army, met with President Abraham Lincoln; they urged him to extend voting rights to all Louisianians of African descent.

In L'Union, and its successor, La Tribune, the Roudanez brothers and their allies foresaw the complete assimilation of African Americans into the nation's political and social life. During Reconstruction they called on the federal government to divide confiscated plantations into ten-acre plots, to be distributed to displaced black families. They insisted that the formely enslaved were "entitled by a paramount right to the possession of the soil they have so long cultivated."

The aggressive stance and republican idealism of La Tribune prompted the authors of Louisiana's 1868 state constitution to envision a social and political revolution. The new charter required state officials to swear that they recognized the civil and political equality of all men. Alone among Reconstruction constitutions, Louisiana explicitly required equal access to public accommodations and forbade segregation in public schools.

The Consequences of the Haitian Migration

After Reconstruction collapsed in 1877, Creole activists fought the restoration of white rule. In 1890 Rodolphe L. Desdunes, a Creole New Orleanian of Haitian descent, joined with other prominent rights advocates to challenge state-imposed segregation. Their legal battle culminated in the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson Supreme Court decision. Though the nation's highest tribunal upheld the "separate but equal" doctrine, the decision included a powerful dissent that would be used to rescue the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments in later Supreme Court decisions. The descendants of Haitian immigrants would play key roles in civil rights campaigns of the twentieth century.

Haitians exerted an enormous influence on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Louisiana. Their sustained resistance to Saint Domingue's regime of bondage forced repeated changes in French, Spanish, and American immigration policies as frightened white officials attempted to isolate Louisiana from the spread of black revolt.

The massive 1809 influx of Haitian refugees ensured the survival of a wealth of West African cultural transmissions, as well as a Latin European racial order that enhanced the social and economic mobility of both free and enslaved blacks. In early-nineteenth-century New Orleans, the immigrants and their descendants infused the city's music, cuisine, religious life, speech patterns, and architecture with their own cultural traditions. Reminders of their Creole influence abound in the French Quarter, the Faubourg Marigny, the Faubourg Tremé, and other city neighborhoods.

The refugee population also reinforced a brand of revolutionary republicanism that impacted American race relations for decades. With an unflagging commitment to the democratic ideals of the revolutionary era, Haitian immigrants and their descendants appeared at the head of virtually every New Orleans civil rights campaign. Their leadership role in the struggle for racial justice offers dramatic evidence of the scope of their influence on Louisiana's history. From Colonel Joseph Savary's militant republicanism to Rodolphe Desdunes's unrelenting attacks on state-enforced segregation, Haitian émigrés and their descendants demanded that the nation fulfill the promise of its founding principles.

In his 1911 book Our People and Our History, Rodolphe Desdunes described Armand Lanusse's anthology, Les Cenelles, as a "triumph of the human spirit over the forces of obscurantism in Louisiana that denied the education and intellectual advancement of the colored masses." African Americans in Louisiana triumphed over these forces in their distinguished history of military service, their embrace of artistic and scholarly pursuits, their campaign for humanitarian reforms, and their Civil War vision of a reconstructed nation of racial equality. Their Haitian heritage was central to those victories.

[dailyanarchistposts]

The term "affinity group" is the English translation of the Spanish grupo de afinidad, which was the name of an organizational form devised in pre-Franco days as the basis of the redoubtable Federación Anarquista Ibérica, the Iberian Anarchist Federation. (The FAI consisted of the most idealistic militants in the CNT, the immense anarcho-syndicalist labor union.) A slavish imitation of the FAI's forms of organization and methods would be neither possible nor desirable. The Spanish anarchists of the thirties were faced with entirely different social problems from those which confront American anarchists today. The affinity group form, however, has features that apply to any social situation, and these have often been intuitively adopted by American radicals, who call the resulting organizations "collectives," communes" or "families."

The affinity group could easily be regarded as a new type of extended family, in which kinship ties are replaced by deeply empathetic human relationships—relationships nourished by common revolutionary ideas and practice. Long before the word "tribe" gained popularity in the American counterculture, the Spanish anarchists called their congresses asambleas de las tribus—assemblies of the tribes. Each affinity group is deliberately kept small to allow for the greatest degree of intimacy between those who compose it. Autonomous, communal and directly democratic, the group combines revolutionary theory with revolutionary lifestyle in its everyday behavior. It creates a free space in which revolutionaries can remake themselves individually, and also as social beings.

Affinity groups are intended to function as catalysts within the popular movement, not as "vanguards"; they provide initiative and consciousness, not a "general staff" and a source of "command." The groups proliferate on a molecular level and they have their own "Brownian movement." Whether they link together or separate is determined by living situations, not by bureaucratic fiat from a distant center. Under conditions of political repression, affinity groups are highly resistant to police infiltration. Owing to the intimacy of the relationships between the participants, the groups are often difficult to penetrate and, even if penetration occurs, there is no centralized apparatus to provide the infiltrator with an overview of the movement as a whole. Even under such demanding conditions, affinity groups can still retain contact with each other through their periodicals and literature.

During periods of heightened activity, on the other hand, nothing prevents affinity groups from working together closely on any scale required by a living situation. They can easily federate by means of local, regional or national assemblies to formulate common policies and they can create temporary action committees (like those of the French students and workers in 1968) to coordinate specific tasks. Affinity groups, however, are always rooted in the popular movement. Their loyalties belong to the social forms created by the revolutionary people, not to an impersonal bureaucracy. As a result of their autonomy and localism, the groups can retain a sensitive appreciation of new possibilities. Intensely experimental and variegated in lifestyles, they act as a stimulus on each other as well as on the popular movement. Each group tries to acquire the resources needed to function largely on its own. Each group seeks a rounded body of knowledge and experience in order to overcome the social and psychological limitations imposed by bourgeois society on individual development. Each group, as a nucleus of consciousness and experience, tries to advance the spontaneous revolutionary movement of the people to a point where the group can finally disappear into the organic social forms created by the revolution.

[blackswaneuroparedux]

“France is in the throes of violent birth”: Thomas Jefferson and the 1789 French Revolution

"The deputies retired, the people rushed against the place, and almost in an instant were in possession of a fortification, defended by 100 men, of infinite strength..."

• Ambassador Thomas Jefferson report on the events on 14 July 1789.

The excerpt shown here is from a letter in Jefferson’s own hand to Secretary of Foreign Affairs John Jay. In great depth, he describes the events of July 14, 1789, including the storming of the Bastille in Paris. The Bastille was a symbol of the old regime, and housed arms, gunpowder, and prisoners.

On 14 July 1789, the U.S. Ambassador to France, Thomas Jefferson, was a witness to the events of  a day in Paris that is commonly associated with the beginning of the French Revolution. Jefferson recorded the events of the day in a lengthy and detailed letter to John Jay, then Secretary of Foreign Affairs.

The American Revolutionary War began as a conflict between the colonies and England. In time, what began as a civil disturbance turned into a world war drawing France, Spain, and the Netherlands into the hostilities. France would send troops, ships, and treasure to support the American effort.   During the war, one of the first priorities of the French government and its allies was to raise funds to fight the war.

When the Treaty of Paris was signed in 1783, France was virtually broke and on the edge of social catastrophe, the result of decades of war with England and other countries. The poor suffered hunger and privation. By 1789, revolution would come to France.

In 1785, Thomas Jefferson arrived in Paris to replace Benjamin Franklin, who was retiring as ambassador to France. At the age of 81, Franklin returned to the United States where he would serve as President of the Pennsylvania Assembly and also participated in the Constitutional  Convention of 1787.

John Adams was reassigned to London where he would be the first American ambassador to the Court of St. James. Jefferson remained on duty in France until late 1789 when he returned to the United States. While in France, Jefferson reported on developments at the court of King Louis XVI, the country at large, and the rest of Europe.

Jefferson was sympathetic to the revolution, opening his home in Paris to its leaders and assisting his friend the Marquis de Lafayette with drafting the Declaration of the Rights of Man. As the first Secretary of State under the Constitution and George Washington, his support for France and the revolution continued.

His friendship to the Marquis de Lafayette, who served in the War of Independence and lived almost 10 years in the USA, became very important in the beginning of the French revolution. The Marquis was the General of the french forces 1789 and tried to prevent a civil war and turmoil. He corresponded with Jefferson, who came from a country with the same experiences. Jefferson and the Marquis agreed that France was not mature to become a republic but a constitutional monarchy, like in Great Britain. However, this was the decision of the national assembly, of which the Marquise was a member. Jefferson went daily to Versailles to inform himself about the decisions. During Jefferson’ s visits, they passed the following laws:

1. Freedom of the person by habeas corpus 2. Freedom of conscience 3. Freedom of the press 4. Trial by jury 5. A representative legislature 6. Annual meetings 7. The origination of laws

This totally fit to Jefferson’s principles. In addition, there was passed a bill, which was prepared by Lafayette and Jefferson and which abolish any title or rank to make all men equal.

Thomas Jefferson also helped his friend Lafayette to bring the different opinions in his party about the constitution to an agreement. France should become a constitutional monarchy.

However, after this, Jefferson recognised that he is not allowed to interfere in the French domestic affairs and that he should be neutral and represent his country. He left France in the thinking that the Revolution was over and that France would grow to a constitutional monarchy. Jefferson was proud of the achievements in France and after his return to USA he declared: “ So ask the travelled inhabitant of any nation, In what country on earth would you rather live? - Certainly, in my own where are all my friends, my relations, and the earliest and sweetest affections and recollections of my life. Which would be your second choice? France."

For all his francophile fervour, as the chief American diplomatic representative, Jefferson’s Enlightenment had been a conventionally English one, dominated above all by John Locke. And Jefferson’s first impressions of America’s principal ally in the Revolution were not positive ones. “The nation,” he confided to Abigail Adams in 1787, “is incapable of any serious effort but under the word of command.”

The stars of the French Enlightenment - Voltaire, Diderot, d’Holbach - were frivolous and useful only for manufacturing “puns and bon mots; and I pronounce that a good punster would disarm the whole nation were they ever so seriously disposed to revolt.”

The events of the spring of 1789 soon changed all of that before Jefferson’s very eyes. “The National Assembly,” he excitedly wrote to Tom Paine, “having shewn thro’ every stage of these transactions a coolness, wisdom, and resolution to set fire to the four corners of the kingdom and to perish with it themselves rather to relinquish an iota from their plan of a total change of government” had excited Jefferson’s imagination as nothing before.

Even when the Paris mob seized the Bastille and beheaded the hapless officers of the Bastille, Jefferson shrugged it aside as a mere incident, since “the decapitations” had accelerated the king’s surrender. As Jefferson would write later, “in the struggle which was necessary, many guilty persons fell without the forms of trial, and with them some innocent.” But rather than seeing the French Revolution fail, “I would have seen half the earth desolated. Were there but an Adam and an Eve left in every country and left free, it would be better than as it now is.”

Jefferson’s admiration for the French Revolution seemed to increase in direct proportion to his distance from it. And once he returned to America at the end of 1789, one of his chief motives for taking the post of Secretary of State was to observe and encourage the French eruption, when the National Assembly seized and redistributed the lands of the Catholic Church, when the king foolishly attempted to flee France, only to be captured, placed on trial and executed.

And when a Committee of Public Safety began a national purge - the “reign of terror” - Jefferson continued to describe the French Revolution as part of “the holy cause of freedom,” and sniffed that “the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.”

There is no question that Jefferson’s influence in the beginning of the French Revolution was very important. His initial moderate counsels and ideas helped in the beginning to prevent a civil war. His opinion that France was not mature to become a republic is probably right, because after 600 years of monarchy and aristocracy they people were not used to have any rights or take part in political matters. Jefferson thought that a republic had to develop from a constitutional monarchy. When you look to the cruel end of the French Revolution, Jefferson’s assessment was right up to a point.

Jefferson’s time as Secretary of State coincided with the most explosive phase of the French Revolution. What started as an attempt to dismantle the Ancien Régime and institute a constitutional monarchy blossomed into a radical experiment in creating an entirely new republican society. As his correspondence with Minister to France Gouverneur Morris and Minister to the Netherlands William Short during the emergence of the Jacobin Terror reveals, Jefferson responded to the violent radicalisation of the Revolution with enthusiastic support.

His advocacy for the French Revolution did not signify his emergence as a disruptive insurrectionist in favour of purposeless violence, anarchy and unbridled populism. Instead, he advocated for recognition and support of the Jacobin government as a successful international analog to the republican project he wanted to pursue at home at the expense of the “monarchical” aspirations of Hamilton and the Federalists. 

In practice, the parallels he imagined between the ideal Jeffersonian and Jacobin republics were usually more apparent than real, as Jefferson often ignored the reports of Morris and Short in favour of fanciful idealising of his French counterparts – a problem Jefferson would only come to grips with in retirement.

Despite these dilemmas, Jefferson’s impassioned advocacy for the French Revolution proved effective, emerging as a cornerstone of the burgeoning Republican Party’s foreign policy and remaining important well into the early nineteenth century, until the Revolution ceased to be an important political issue. It was not until he became President in 1801 that Jefferson’s views toward France began to cool and became more pragmatic, highlighted by the Louisiana Purchase Treaty.

[plethoraworldatlas]

In cities and towns across France on Saturday, more than 100,000 people answered the call from the left-wing political party La France Insoumise for mass protests against President Emmanuel Macron's selection of a right-wing prime minister.

The demonstrations came two months after the left coalition won more seats than Macron's centrist coalition or the far-right Rassemblement National (RN) in the National Assembly and two days after the president announced that Michel Barnier, the right-wing former Brexit negotiator for the European Union, would lead the government.

The selection was made after negotiations between Macron and RN leader Marine Le Pen, leading protesters on Saturday to accuse the president of a "denial of democracy."

"Expressing one's vote will be useless as long as Macron is in power," a protester named Manon Bonijol toldAl Jazeera.

A poll released on Friday by Elabe showed that 74% of French people believed Macron had disregarded the results of July's snap parliamentary elections, and 55% said the election had been "stolen."

Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the leader of La France Insoumise (LFI), or France Unbowed, also accused Macron of "stealing the election" in a speech at the demonstration in Paris on Saturday.

"Democracy is not just the art of accepting you have won but the humility to accept you have lost," Mélenchon told protesters. "I call you for what will be a long battle."

He added that "the French people are in rebellion. They have entered into revolution."

Macron's centrist coalition won about 160 assembly seats out of 577 in July, compared to the left coalition's 180. The RN won about 140.

Barnier's Les Républicains (LR) party won fewer than 50 parliamentary seats. French presidents have generally named prime ministers, who oversee domestic policy, from the party with the most seats in the National Assembly.

Barnier signaled on Friday that he would largely defend Macron's pro-business policies and could unveil stricter anti-immigration reforms. Macron has enraged French workers and the left with policies including a retirement age hike last year.

[deadpresidents]

The Feuding Presidents of Westmoreland County, Virginia

Of all the Founding Fathers, it would seem like George Washington and James Monroe would have been the closest comrades.  The two men were born just miles apart from one another in Westmoreland County, Virginia.  They both were large men physically, not known primarily for their intellect, but instead for their hard work, their courage, and their devotion to the Revolutionary cause.  They were the two Presidents who saw the most action during the Revolutionary War and Monroe served bravely under Washington.  To top it all off, Washington and Monroe kind of looked like each other, too. 

On Christmas Day in 1776, Lieutenant James Monroe was one of those legendary soldiers who famously crossed the frigid Delaware River with General George Washington to engage the British at the Battle of Trenton.  Monroe led a charge in that battle to help capture some cannons that were about to be fired upon the Americans and was wounded in the shoulder, a severe injury that would have resulted in him bleeding to death if it weren’t for the fortunate presence of a local doctor in New Jersey.  Monroe’s heroism led to a promotion as Captain and he continued serving bravely during the war and was amongst those troops who survived the terrible winter of 1777-1778 at Valley Forge.  It would seem as if none of the Presidents could have established more of a bond than the two Virginians who helped fight in the Revolution.  Indeed, General Washington wrote that Monroe “has, in every instance, maintained the reputation of a brave, active, and sensible officer.”

So why did they despise each other?  And did James Monroe indirectly help kill George Washington? After the Revolution, Monroe entered politics and supported the national government being formed under George Washington despite the fact that Monroe had voted against the ratification of the Constitution in 1788.  As one of Virginia’s first U.S. Senators, Monroe continued his support of Washington, who was now President, but began to fear that too much power was being placed in the hands of the chief executive and found himself opposing Washington’s Proclamation of Neutrality.  When Washington appointed Monroe as Minister to France in 1794, something snapped. Monroe, like his friend and mentor Thomas Jefferson, loved France.  He loved the country itself and, as an American Revolutionary, he found himself in love with the French Revolution.  President Washington’s Proclamation of Neutrality insisted on American impartiality towards France and the countries that France was at war with at the time – Britain, The Netherlands, Austria, Prussia, and Sardinia.  Monroe was vehemently opposed to neutrality because the French were the first and most important allies of the United States during the Revolution.  Plus, James Monroe loved France.  In fact, Monroe loved France so much that Secretary of State Edmund Randolph was forced to officially reprimand him due to his glowing compliments about France when Monroe presented his credentials in Paris. From there, things continued going downhill between Washington and Monroe.  Monroe rescued Thomas Paine – another one of America’s early Revolutionaries — who had been thrown into prison in France for criticizing the execution of Louis XVI.  Paine was very sick and believed to be close to death, so after securing his release, Monroe arranged for Paine to stay with him at the American Ministerial residence.  Paine recovered and proceeded to brutally attack George Washington verbally for allowing him to rot in prison instead of rescuing him as Monroe did.  President Washington felt Monroe should have muzzled Paine, or at least repudiated Paine’s disrespectful language towards Washington. 

When the United States signed Jay’s Treaty with Great Britain, easing tensions between the U.S. and it’s former colonial power, Washington expected Monroe to be a good Federalist and support the rather unpopular treaty.  Monroe opposed it and refused to speak out in support of the treaty.  His silence on Jay’s Treaty was the last straw for Washington.  The President was furious and noting that he expected a diplomat who would “promote, not thwart, the neutral policy of the Government” recalled Monroe as Minister and ordered him to return to the United States.  When Monroe learned of his recall, he said that Washington was “insane”. Over the next few years, Monroe spent his time at home in Virginia and worked to undermine Washington and criticize the first President.  Monroe questioned Washington’s capacity as a leader and felt that he had sold out the French, who had done so much to help the Americans during the Revolutionary War.  Washington felt that Monroe was unqualified to critique his Presidency and that Monroe was a hopeless Francophile.  In 1797, long before Monroe was considered to be Presidential timber, Washington cautioned, “If Mr. Monroe should ever fill the Chair of Government he may (and it is presumed he would be well enough disposed) let the French Minister frame his speeches”.  Washington added, “There is abundant evidence of his being a mere tool in the hands of the French government.” Monroe wasn’t ready for the “Chair of Government” on a national level, but after Washington retired to Mount Vernon and handed the Presidency over to John Adams, Monroe decided to aim for the “Chair of Government” on a state level.  In 1799, Monroe campaigned to become Governor of Virginia and as Monroe’s candidacy was promoted by his friends and supporters, 67-year-old George Washington maintained his estate in Virginia in retirement and tried to do whatever he could to prevent Monroe’s rise.  If Monroe was going to be Governor of Washington’s beloved Virginia, then it would practically have to happen over Washington’s dead body. Washington wasn’t powerful enough to prevent Virginia’s state legislature from electing Monroe as Governor in December 1799, however.  On a cold and snowy day, George Washington learned of his former lieutenant’s victory and took off on horseback to tend to Mount Vernon.  When Washington returned to his home, cold and soaking wet, he got into an animated discussion with guests about Monroe’s victory and angrily denounced the newly elected Governor.  Washington continued his discussions without removing his wet clothing.  Already ill with a cold, Washington’s illness worsened.  On December 14, 1799, George Washington said his last words, “Tis well” and died. Monroe continued his public service as Governor of Virginia, a special envoy to France to secure the Louisiana Purchase for Thomas Jefferson, Minister to Great Britain, Governor of Virginia once again, and Secretary of State and Secretary of War under his close friend James Madison.  In 1817, it was finally Monroe’s turn to take the “Chair of Government” as Washington had so feared.  Supported by Jefferson and Madison, Monroe easily defeated Rufus King and became President, kicking off “The Era of Good Feelings” where Monroe’s popularity was almost unparalleled by any other President and the nation was unified and free of almost any partisan bickering.

In 1820, Monroe ran for re-election and was so enormously popular that no one dared to run against him. In Massachusetts, 85-year-old John Adams -- a stalwart Federalist and George Washington's Vice President -- even supported Monroe. Yet Washington got the last laugh. Running unopposed, Monroe was not only certain of victory, but it looked like he would become the only President besides Washington be elected unanimously by the Electoral College. However, Governor William Plumer of New Hampshire decided to deny Monroe that honor and reserve it for Washington and Washington only. Some stories allege that Plumer did it solely to prevent Monroe from joining Washington as unanimous Electoral College victors and some stories note that Plumer truly disliked President Monroe and voted for John Quincy Adams as a protest. Either way, the records will always show that George Washington was the only President elected unanimously and I think it's pretty clear that Washington would have appreciated that Monroe of all people was prevented from joining him in that exclusive club.

[howtofightwrite]

How realistic is it for someone to survive getting jumped with sticks, and surviving with a finger fracture, that is later treated with surgery. What sequence of events would allow this to happen ? Setting is XVIIIth century France, and the character's hair is long, thick, curled and pomaded and powdered, which means his skull would get some cushioning.

So, this a whole set of different components, and taken together there are some issues.

The two most unrealistic details are probably surviving surgery, and their wig remaining on their head through the attack.

It's pretty reasonable for someone to survive getting jumped by attackers armed with sticks. There's a lot of ways this can go, and it's not a good situation to be in, but this isn't certain death unless the attackers really know how to get the most out of their weapons.

Even if the fight goes badly, if they survive without serious internal injuries, they could probably recover.

I'll admit that I have a modern bias, but surgery in the 1700s was a horror show. A large part of this was because of bacterial contamination wasn't understood until the the mid-19th century. Even while observing the best practices of the time, minor surgery, such as repairing a fractured finger were significantly more dangerous. In fact, with this scenario, it's quite plausible that they'd simply end up with a permanently mangled finger after the attack. If they did seek surgical assistance, there would be a very real risk of bacterial infection and death.

That leaves us with the hair or wig. The eighteenth century is near the end of the peruke (the powdered wig) as a fashion accessory in French culture. Popular culture (especially films) tend to dramatically over-represent the peruke and its ubiquity. These could be quite expensive and fragile. While some have survived, they are quite difficult to preserve. These were most often seen among the nobility, and courtiers, later filtering down into the merchant class. These wigs were not something that everyone wore. More than, the tradition of the powdered wig in France effectively died as a result of the French Revolution, because it was heavily associated with the aristocracy.

The peruke was easy to dislodge during strenuous physical activity. So, if your character was actually wearing a wig, then that would probably be lost (and potentially damaged) during the scuffle. Your character may be able to retrieve it after the fight if their attackers leave them there. For what it's worth, I think this is a good detail to be aware of and consider, just for the verisimilitude of your fight scenes. Lose articles of clothes or other carried items might be lost or damaged during combat, and it can help ground the fight as an actual event in your story rather than a disconnected interlude.

There was a practice of wearing powder directly in one's hair rather than on the wig. Again, in France, this was tied to the aristocracy, and the practice died with the French Revolution. In England it went out  of fashion with the 1795 Guinea tax on hair powder, and by that point powdered hair had connotations of callous wealth.

All of that said, I don't see a powdered wig, or powered hair, offering much protection from blunt force trauma. As anyone who has ever run their head into a solid object can attest, your hair makes for poor armor. It's great as thermal protection, and this was also true of the peruke, but it's not going to save you from a club to the head.

So, how realistic is it? That's really hard to say. There's some parts of this that aren't at issue, and others that are a little questionable. Could it happen? Sure. Can you get away with writing it? That depends on how well you can sell the chain of events. Ultimately, the realism will depend on how believable you can make the chain of events.

-Starke

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[justinspoliticalcorner]

Noah Berlatsky at Everything Is Horrible:

In the Anglophone world, the intertwined issues of Jewish identity and antisemitism are connected in public memory obsessively, and almost solely, to the Holocaust. Occasionally, perhaps, people also mention the blood libels of the Middle Ages, or the pogroms of Eastern Europe.

The Dreyfus Affair, however, is almost entirely forgotten. It is not a moment revisited in movies or television shows. Politicians do not reference it; there are no public museums in its memory; it is not a part of school curriculum. Even Jewish people hardly discuss it. I doubt one in ten Americans, of any ethnicity or religion, could even tell you vaguely who Alfred Dreyfus was. The disappearance of Dreyfus memory is a real loss. That’s not because we need to remember antisemitism. We do, as I’ve mentioned, remember the Holocaust. The Dreyfus Affair, though, was a victory over antisemitism, and a victory particularly for the diaspora, in a way that World War II was not. The Holocaust has largely been interpreted as an object lesson in the untenability of the diaspora, and the necessity of a Zionist Jewish ethnonationalism. The outcome of Dreyfus’ story is considerably more ambivalent. As such, it is worth revisiting at a moment when Zionism is busily and horrifically delegitimizing itself.

The Affair

Since, the outlines of the Dreyfus Affair are probably little known to readers, it’s worth covering them briefly. My discussion here, and throughout the essay, is mostly based on Maurice Samuels new excellent biography/history, Alfred Dreyfus: The Man At the Center of the Affair, part of the Jewish Lives series. During the French Revolution, France put into practice its new ideals of liberty and equality by, among other things, making Jewish people full citizens of the republic. After legislation in 1791, Jews were suddenly—for the first time in any European country—able to live where they wished, attend the best schools, and work in every profession. The results were immediate and dramatic. Jews made rapid gains in political and economic life; some became quite wealthy and influential.

Among those wealthy Jews was the Dreyfus family. Alfred Dreyfus, born 1859, grew up, like most French Jews, with a passionate commitment to the French nation and to the principles of equality which had liberated them. Determined to serve his country, Dreyfus attended the French military academy. He excelled and became arguably the first Jewish officer ever on the General Staff. His future seemed bright. And then, it all fell apart. In 1894, the French army discovered that there was a traitor on the General Staff who had been passing top secret information to the Germans. Dreyfus was accused of treason. The evidence against him was weak to nonexistent; his handwriting was said to match that on the recovered documents, even though it obviously did not. Nonetheless, he was arrested, tried in a sham military trial, and sentenced to life imprisonment. He was sent to the horrific penal colony on Devil’s Island in French Guiana. He endured tortures almost certainly intended to kill him. His wife, contrary to law, was not allowed to accompany him.   Dreyfus was singled out because he was Jewish. The generals, once they had begun down the path of antisemitism, decided they could not turn back without undermining respect for the military. They forged more evidence, and stonewalled investigations as long as possible.

The Affair polarized sentiment in France, both on Dreyfus and on the place of Jews in French society. Liberal intellectuals like Émile Zola who believed in the Republic and a forward-looking, cosmopolitan, free and equal France sided with Dreyfus and demanded a new trial. The Catholic Church, the military, antisemites, and proto-Vichyites insisted that Dreyfus was guilty and should be punished—or, really, insisted that as a Jew he should be punished whether he was guilty or not. The hatred of Jews erupted into antisemitic riots throughout the country; Jews were beaten, their homes burned, their businesses destroyed. Several Jewish people were killed in Algiers, where there were violence against Jews occurred almost daily in 1898.   Dreyfus was brought back for a new trial in 1899; he was convicted again despite overwhelming evidence in his favor, and eventually exonerated completely in 1906. He was restored to the rank of Major, and served with distinction in World War I. He died in 1935. Jewish people in France still leave stones on his grave.

[...] It wasn’t just Dreyfus and Jewish people who fought for Dreyfus though. The Affair energized every corner of the left, calling them almost uniformly to their best selves. Zola, for example, believed in a number of antisemitic stereotypes at the beginning of the Affair; his first article on the case argued that Jewish people had an innate talent for making money. From that inauspicious beginning he quickly became one of the most passionate gentile opponents of antisemitism in history; his famous 1898 pamphlet J’accuse was a devastating denunciation of the military coverup intended to force a number of generals to sue for libel. They did, and Zola was forced to flee the country—but not before opening the case again and ensuring Dreyfus’ retrial.

The political left in France was also, initially, wary of standing with Dreyfus because of antisemitism. For many socialists, Jewish people symbolized the banking industry and the upper class. Dreyfus, a wealthy Jew serving in the military, seemed the wrong man to rally working class parties. But eventually Socialist leader Jean Jaurès, and others in his party, recognized that Dreyfus had become the man, and the issue, on which Catholic monarchist and capitalist forces had decided to fight for France’s soul. In 1898 Jaurès gave a speech in which he denounced antisemitism as a threat to France; shortly thereafter he published a book defending Dreyfus and presenting the Affair as a matter of socialist solidarity. Some on the left refused to join Jaurès, and the Socialists split. But as Samuels’ biography of Dreyfus notes, “Jaurès helped ensure that a large part of the political left in France would align itself with republican values and against antisemitism for decades to come.”

Noah Berlatsky wrote in his Everything Is Horrible Substack about how the Dreyfus Affair served as a victory against fascism and antisemitism, and how it gave the left a tool to fight back against oppression.

[whencyclopedia]

Quasi-War

The Quasi-War (1798-1800) or 'Half War' was a limited, undeclared naval conflict fought between the United States and the First French Republic. Hostilities arose when French privateers began attacking neutral American shipping, resulting in several minor naval skirmishes before the conflict was de-escalated in September 1800. The war led to the strengthening of the US Navy.

In 1793, the United States asserted its neutrality in the ongoing French Revolutionary Wars (1792-1802) and decided to suspend repayment of French loans. The following year, it signed the Jay Treaty, which fostered stronger political and commercial ties between the US and Great Britain. Revolutionary France viewed these actions as violations of the 1778 Treaty of Alliance, whereby the two nations had allied against Britain during the American Revolution; in retaliation for this perceived betrayal, France authorized privateers to begin attacking American shipping in the West Indies in late 1796. Within a year, nearly 300 American merchant ships had been captured.

In October 1797, US President John Adams sent a delegation to Paris to negotiate a new treaty and diffuse tensions. This resulted in the XYZ Affair, in which the French refused to negotiate unless the US agreed to pay a large bribe. Outraged, the US began preparing for war. The US Department of the Navy was established, and multiple frigates were commissioned and put to sea, tasked with protecting American merchant ships and hunting French privateers. This resulted in several naval engagements, with the most notable including the USS Constellation capture of the French frigate L'Insurgente in February 1799. Still hoping to avoid a full-scale war, President Adams sent a second delegation to Paris in October 1799. These commissioners had more luck dealing with the new French government, under Napoleon Bonaparte, leading to the Commission of 1800, which ended the war and restored Franco-American relations.

Background

In 1778, the Kingdom of France signed treaties of alliance and commerce with the fledgling United States and entered the American Revolutionary War (1775-1783). France was eager to humiliate and weaken its rival, Great Britain, and duly provided the American rebels with arms, ammunition, uniforms, troops, and ships. French intervention expanded the war into a global conflict, forcing Britain to divert its military resources from North America in order to defend its more valuable colonies in the Caribbean and India. Furthermore, French soldiers and ships proved critical to the decisive American victory at the Siege of Yorktown. When the Treaty of Paris of 1783 ended the war and recognized the independence of the United States, it could be said that French aid had been a key factor in the American victory. Both nations considered the 1778 treaties of alliance to still be in effect.

Signing of the Treaties of Alliance between the US and France, 1778

Charles Elliott Mills (Public Domain)

Then, in 1789, France became embroiled in its own revolution. After the Storming of the Bastille, the revolutionaries gradually eroded the authority of the Ancien Régime until 21 September 1792, when the monarchy was finally overthrown and replaced by the First French Republic. Initially, the French Revolution enjoyed widespread support in the United States, where it was viewed as a continuation of the Americans' own struggle against tyranny. American supporters took to wearing tricolor cockades in solidarity with their French brothers-in-arms, while political clubs called Democratic-Republican societies popped up across the country to praise the Jacobin ideals of 'liberty, equality, and fraternity'. But it was not long before the French Revolution took a radical turn: the deposed King Louis XVI of France was guillotined on 21 January 1793, shortly before the Jacobin government began arresting and executing anyone suspected of counter-revolutionary activity. As it bathed in blood, the French Republic grew bolder and soon sought to spread its revolution beyond its borders; by March 1793, Revolutionary France was at war with most of the great powers of Europe including Austria, Prussia, Spain, the Dutch Republic, and Great Britain. This began a series of total wars that would devastate Europe for much of the next quarter century.

As the French Revolution continued to escalate in Europe, the French revolutionaries looked to the United States for support. They considered the 1778 Treaty of Alliance to still be in effect, as did a large subset of Americans who still supported the Jacobins despite the bloodshed of the Reign of Terror. Thomas Jefferson, leader of the burgeoning Democratic-Republican Party, still referred to the French Republic as 'our little sister' and brushed off the violence, having once said that "the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants”. Jefferson and his supporters (also known as Jeffersonian Democrats) still viewed Britain as an enemy and wanted to support France in its war against the British. In early 1793, France itself sought to whip up support in the United States. Its ambassador, Charles-Edmond Genêt – better known as Citizen Genêt – traversed the country and spoke at Democratic-Republican societies, hoping to rekindle anti-British fervor amongst the American populace. Genêt even went so far as to recruit American privateers to attack British vessels.

Although some Americans supported the French, many others did not. The nationalist Federalist Party was horrified by the chaotic radicalism of the French revolutionaries and feared that similar bloodshed could come to American shores. President George Washington agreed with the Federalists on this point and believed that the United States could not withstand another war with Britain. For these reasons, Washington sought to distance US policy from France. He condemned the actions of Citizen Genêt as incendiary and refused to meet with him, and on 22 April 1793, he issued a Proclamation of Neutrality, wherein he promised to keep the United States out of the French Revolutionary Wars. Around the same time, Congress decided to suspend the repayments of French loans that had been borrowed during the American Revolution; the loans, Congress argued, had been borrowed from the French monarchy which no longer existed and need not be paid to the republic that had taken its place.

Naturally, this was perceived as an insult by the French Republic, but tensions would only worsen the following year. In addition to being anti-French, the American Federalists were generally pro-British; they believed that Britain was the natural ally of the US and sought stronger political and commercial ties between the two nations. This goal was achieved with the controversial Jay Treaty, ratified by Congress in 1795, which resolved some of the issues left over from the American Revolution and fostered trade between the US and Britain. The French were incensed by the Jay Treaty, which they interpreted as a British-American alliance and a betrayal of the 1778 treaties of alliance. In retaliation, France authorized privateers to begin attacking neutral American shipping in late 1796, proclaiming that any American merchant ship carrying British cargo was a valid prize of war. Within a year, nearly 300 American ships had been captured, and their crews were often subjected to maltreatment.

Continue reading...

[beautiful-basque-country]

History of legal Basquephobia

Iñigo Urrutia (1966, Jatabe-Maruri), together with Xabier Irujo, has analyzed the history of legal Basquephobia law by law and rule by rule. The result is the book Historia Jurídica de la Lengua Vasca (1789-2023). To Basque speakers on both sides of the border who are told that we are imposing Basque with every smallest step in favor of our language this work gives us a clear answer: the ones that have been imposed here, with great suffering and in violation of basic human rights, have been the French and the Spanish.

In the last 230 years, how many laws have been passed in the states of France and Spain against the Basque language and the Basque people?

- There are thousands of rules. We have searched the Boletin Oficial del Estado and the former Gaceta, as they can be consulted easily on the internet. Those of the French State we have taken from the Official Journals and previous works on the history of minority languages and the legal history of French.

Are laws against the Basque language or against Basque people?

- This is a very good question, difficult to answer. Basque has always been the target of political power, but behind this there is a historical attitude against the nature of Basques. During constitutional periods, dictatorships, etc., it has always been a constant to oppose our language.

(...) Basque-speaking children who did not know French would suffer terribly - as happened to those who did not know Spanish in the South. Many, to the point of deciding not to pass on Basque to their children.

- We suffered a terrible deculturalization as a people. But on a personal level, from the point of view of freedom and rights, the situation would be dire. Go to a place, completely foreign to you, unable to talk to your friends, suffer punishments for wrongly using the official language, suffer bans, be labeled a traitor against the revolution... "What are we doing here?", many Basques said. International human rights law absolutely prohibits forced assimilation, and this was the case. The violation of human rights extended a lot in our history, in the South until the Republic period, and again during Francoism. Therefore, this genocidal policy against Basque, created during the French Revolution, has lasted until today, for almost 250 years. Basque is now a minority language, but 200 years ago it was the main language in a large part of the territory, so imagine what kind of transformation process the state has caused. However, it must be said that the structuring of the Spanish state has been very slow, that of France has been much stronger and more violent.

At the beginning of the 20th century, we also suffered from xenophobic attitudes against Basques, Bretons, Catalans, etc., for example, the French Minister of Education, Jules Ferry, literally said "the higher races have the duty to civilize the lower races". Did you find many of them?

- Yes, power encouraged this supremacism. Ferry also passed a long-standing language law. He believed that the French were on a different level and wanted to spread this idea through education, a huge attack on many communities. The negative impact of this is very high.

During Francoism, persecution reached all levels. Basque names were banned from being registered in the registry, or the letters k, tx, and b were banned, forcing thousands of names, surnames, and toponyms to change from Basque spelling to Spanish. A century later, these are the laws that have left their mark.

- The attacks against the anthroponymy of the names were very great, because of the spelling and so on. To give a few examples, they also banned Basque on ships, ordered the eradication of Basque phrases and words on matchboxes or went so far as to remove Basque inscriptions from tombstones. And there is a case, from Gernika, where the owners did not erase the Basque inscriptions on the tombstones, the fascist authorities covered them with concrete. Many things were prohibited by the rules, but many other things were made subject to military power. And of course, any activity against public order could be anything, including speaking Basque. Therefore, anything could be done against the conversations in Basque. They were somehow protected by the law. Penalties and fines were also daily. Speaking Basque had no legal protection and could be considered an act against public order. It must be remembered that in many places society was Basque at that time. In Donostia, for example, the Civic Guard was established, it was an organization that aimed to eradicate Basque from the streets. There were usually groups of four and the agents walked around without uniform. They were scattered through the streets, and if someone heard somebody speaking in Basque they told them to speak in Spanish. After that, however, another couple of agents would come closer and if they heard that the citizens were continuing in Basque, they would fine them or beat them, as it is documented. They were strategies to instill fear, so that people would stop speaking Basque in the street.

And in general, what would you highlight from your book?

- That there has been an assimilation process against us, but that the passion, desire and strength of our people to persevere is striking. Despite the laws, decrees, punishments etc. against the Basque language, our people have survived and this gives us a strong character. It proves that we are a nation that wants to own its future.

You start it with Raphael Lemkin's definition of genocide in The Axis Rule, and towards the end you say that [Spanish and French states] wanted to inflict a cultural genocide on the Basques. That's a big word.

- Yes, genocide is a big word, but the book makes clear that the policies against the Basque language have lasted for centuries and have been carried out by all political ideologies. The behavior against our language is not limited to a certain period: in the last 200 years, during constitutional periods, dictatorships, transitions, times of war... the systematic and legal oppression against the Basque language has been deepened. Lemkin's definition of genocide is perfectly met. My partner Xabier is presenting this book at US universities and speaks openly about this genocide.

Source

[mariacallous]

While India’s Bharatiya Janata Party and Prime Minister Narendra Modi appear poised to return to power for a third consecutive term—a feat accomplished by a premier only once before in the country’s history—they are much diminished, having failed to secure a parliamentary majority on their own. In his 10 years in power, Modi has never had to rely on coalition partners. The election marks not only the end of single-party control in the Indian Parliament but also the BJP’s having peaked. Coalition governments—the natural order for India’s democracy since the late 1980s, except for the past decade—are back to stay.

The BJP’s supremacy over the past decade was the result of several factors. In Modi, the party had a once-in-a-generation leader whose charisma and communication abilities placed him head and shoulders above the competition in terms of popularity among voters. Religious appeals, welfare programs (especially those aimed at women and the poor), and organizational capabilities that gave the party a superior ground game all helped. So did a ruthlessness in deploying the dark arts of politics, a disunited and weak opposition, and access to oodles of campaign finance.

The BJP’s manifest hegemony appeared to presage its continued dominance of the Indian political landscape well into the future. But from the summit, the only way is down. Of course, the party may stay near its peak for a while and climb down slowly—but that is not a matter of if, but when.

Although robust political competition is a hallmark of democracies, a surprisingly large number have been dominated by a single political party for long periods of time. Examples include Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party, the Christian Democrats in Italy, the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) in Mexico, and the Democratic Party in Botswana. India itself was dominated by the Indian National Congress party for many decades, and the communist Left Front ran the state of West Bengal unchallenged for three-and-half decades.

When in power, these dominant parties seemed unassailable—until they were not. In some cases, this happened when economic development and technological change altered the structure of the economy and the relative power of different social groups. The green revolution in India, for example, empowered farmers from middle castes who had long been excluded from the Congress party’s social coalition. Their economic ascendency translated into political power that pushed out the Congress in populous North Indian states. The shift from manufacturing to services and the concomitant decline of unions also undermined a major social base of the dominant left-of-center parties.

In many postcolonial states, the party that led the country to independence enjoyed a special legitimacy. But with each successive generation, societal memories of epochal historical events faded. It took seven decades with the PRI in Mexico and three decades with the African National Congress in South Africa (as last week’s election results demonstrate). India’s Congress party played a pivotal role in the nation’s freedom struggle, but while the halo effect persisted for decades, it inevitably dimmed.

Dominant parties can also fade because of national crises driven by international events—such as an economic shock or a defeat in wars. But for many of them, the longer that they are in power, the more that institutional sclerosis sets in. Call it the law of political entropy. As the French political scientist Maurice Duverger put it in the 1960s, the dominant party “wears itself out in office, it loses its vigor, its arteries harden. … Every domination bears within itself the seeds of its own destruction.”

The longer that the BJP was in power, the more that those seeds sprouted within the party. The BJP’s singular strength has been its leader, Narendra Modi. The Congress party also had such a leader in Indira Gandhi, who—like Modi—towered above her contemporaries. The popularity of both leaders far outweighed that of their parties.

But that very strength became their Achilles’ heel as a personality-driven style of party and politics emerged. For the BJP, increasing centralization, declining intraparty democracy, and the cutting-to-size of regional leaders who were not subserviently loyal to national the leader all took their toll. Efforts to engineer defections from opposition parties (through both blandishments and coercion) meant that gradually, the party became a magnet for opportunists rather than those with deep ideological commitments.

Under Modi’s rule, such coercion often took the form of dropping corruption cases against opposition party members who defected to the BJP. But this did not mean that the defectors became less corrupt; a leopard doesn’t change its spots. There’s little wonder, then, that even though the BJP had ridden an anti-corruption wave to power in 2014, preelection polls published in April this year found that more than half of respondents (55 percent) believed that corruption had increased in the past five years. Committed party workers have begun to lose interest as party hoppers brought in for short-term gains crowd them out in coveted positions. A favorite goal of the BJP’s leadership was to create a Congress mukt Bharat (“An India free of the Congress”). Ironically, in attempting to do so, the BJP became the embodiment of that very Congress culture.

If the art of victory is learned in defeat, for the BJP, the opposite is proving true. Each new victory brought a validation of the party’s strategies, whether muzzling critics, coercing opponents, or marginalizing religious minorities. The premium on loyalty increased, and voices of dissent become more quiescent. The initial self-confidence that allowed for risk-taking became an overconfidence spilling over to reckless behavior—exemplified by allegations of India’s intelligence agencies seeking to silence overseas critics in Canada and the United States.

The arrogance meant that the party overlooked three countervailing forces.

First, the manifest reality that no party in India wins with a majority of the votes. For a party to win in India’s first-past-the-post system, it needs a plurality of votes—which requires a fragmented opposition. The more hegemonic that the BJP became, the more authoritarian that it became, putting pressure on opposition parties and their leaders. But instead of weakening them, it brought them together. Nothing concentrates the mind like a fight for survival, and, while imperfect and incomplete, the opposition’s decision to join forces in the so-called INDIA coalition limited vote fragmentation.

Second, while successful political parties embody a set of ideas and ideologies that are yoked to policies and programs, all ideas have their life cycles. Postwar Keynesianism had its day for a quarter-century, and neoliberalism subsequently had its own for about three decades. Both are passé today. Political Islam rode high for around three decades after the Iranian revolution, but its energies have since flagged. In India, the secular socialist idea had a run for nearly a half-century, but its increasing opportunism tripped it up, and it was gradually pushed out as the BJP tapped into the plentiful waters of the anxieties and resentments of the Hindu majority.

But the Hindutva ideology has its limits, too. Even though the BJP did deliver on its promise on constructing a Ram temple on the site of a historic mosque, the expected political payoffs did not materialize. In this election, the BJP failed to win even the constituency where the temple was built. Populism can—and does—secure votes for a while. But India’s complex social mosaic cannot be easily pigeonholed into binary categories.

Third, ideologies do not address the quotidian challenges facing voters. The wellsprings of voter discontent run deep, and addressing them is—and will be—difficult.

The foremost challenge is the economy, which has simply been unable to supply decent jobs in adequate numbers. More and more Indians have formal education credentials but meager skills, a sad testimony to the poor quality of the country’s education system. Rising aspirations are hitting the brick wall of precarious jobs as India continues to struggle to strengthen its manufacturing sector. At some point, the millions of disgruntled youths will find ways to voice their frustrations.

These challenges will be greater given the extraordinary technological changes that are upending labor markets—not just in manufacturing, but also the tech services that have been India’s one categorical success. Even robust growth is unlikely to produce the sort of labor demand that one might have expected in the past. And a febrile politics will be rocked even more in the future, as technological change in the form of artificial intelligence is poised to further political turmoil. Managing this will be hard in the best of circumstances. In a polity where polarization is actively encouraged, it’s hard to be sanguine about where this may lead.

India’s election was held under a searing heat wave, a vivid reminder of the inexorable impacts of climate change, whose afflictions are mounting. Indian agriculture is particularly vulnerable as temperatures climb and rainfall patterns change. A bedraggled urban India will face further pressures as the recent water shortages in India’s booming information technology capital, Bengaluru, illustrate. And this is just the beginning.

These are all exceedingly difficult challenges no matter which political party is in power in India. But for now, the one silver lining is that while commentators and experts have been deeply apprehensive about India’s democracy, its voters clearly seem to be less so. Just ask the BJP.

[thegunmaybetheperfectweapon]

THE DANGER OF LEFTISM

213. Because of their need for rebellion and for membership in a movement, leftists or persons of similar psychological type often are unattracted to a rebellious or activist movement whose goals and membership are not initially leftist. The resulting influx of leftish types can easily turn a non-leftist movement into a leftist one, so that leftist goals replace or distort the original goals of the movement.

214. To avoid this, a movement that exalts nature and opposes technology must take a resolutely anti-leftist stance and must avoid all collaboration with leftists. Leftism is in the long run inconsistent with wild nature, with human freedom and with the elimination of modern technology. Leftism is collectivist; it seeks to bind together the entire world (both nature and the human race) into a unified whole. But this implies management of nature and of human life by organized society, and it requires advanced technology. You can't have a united world without rapid transportation and communication, you can't make all people love one another without sophisticated psychological techniques, you can't have a "planned society" without the necessary technological base. Above all, leftism is driven by the need for power, and the leftist seeks power on a collective basis, through identification with a mass movement or an organization. Leftism is unlikely ever to give up technology, because technology is too valuable a source of collective power.

215. The anarchist [34] too seeks power, but he seeks it on an individual or small-group basis; he wants individuals and small groups to be able to control the circumstances of their own lives. He opposes technology because it makes small groups dependent on large organizations.

216. Some leftists may seem to oppose technology, but they will oppose it only so long as they are outsiders and the technological system is controlled by non-leftists. If leftism ever becomes dominant in society, so that the technological system becomes a tool in the hands of leftists, they will enthusiastically use it and promote its growth. In doing this they will be repeating a pattern that leftism has shown again and again in the past. When the Bolsheviks in Russia were outsiders, they vigorously opposed censorship and the secret police, they advocated self-determination for ethnic minorities, and so forth; but as soon as they came into power themselves, they imposed a tighter censorship and created a more ruthless secret police than any that had existed under the tsars, and they oppressed ethnic minorities at least as much as the tsars had done. In the United States, a couple of decades ago when leftists were a minority in our universities, leftist professors were vigorous proponents of academic freedom, but today, in those of our universities where leftists have become dominant, they have shown themselves ready to take away from everyone else's academic freedom. (This is "political correctness.") The same will happen with leftists and technology: They will use it to oppress everyone else if they ever get it under their own control.

217. In earlier revolutions, leftists of the most power-hungry type, repeatedly, have first cooperated with non-leftist revolutionaries, as well as with leftists of a more libertarian inclination, and later have double-crossed them to seize power for themselves. Robespierre did this in the French Revolution, the Bolsheviks did it in the Russian Revolution, the communists did it in Spain in 1938 and Castro and his followers did it in Cuba. Given the past history of leftism, it would be utterly foolish for non-leftist revolutionaries today to collaborate with leftists.

218. Various thinkers have pointed out that leftism is a kind of religion. Leftism is not a religion in the strict sense because leftist doctrine does not postulate the existence of any supernatural being. But, for the leftist, leftism plays a psychological role much like that which religion plays for some people. The leftist NEEDS to believe in leftism; it plays a vital role in his psychological economy. His beliefs are not easily modified by logic or facts. He has a deep conviction that leftism is morally Right with a capital R, and that he has not only a right but a duty to impose leftist morality on everyone. (However, many of the people we are referring to as "leftists" do not think of themselves as leftists and would not describe their system of beliefs as leftism. We use the term "leftism" because we don't know of any better words to designate the spectrum of related creeds that includes the feminist, gay rights, political correctness, etc., movements, and because these movements have a strong affinity with the old left. See paragraphs 227-230.)

219. Leftism is a totalitarian force. Wherever leftism is in a position of power it tends to invade every private corner and force every thought into a leftist mold. In part this is because of the quasi-religious character of leftism; everything contrary to leftist beliefs represents Sin. More importantly, leftism is a totalitarian force because of the leftists' drive for power. The leftist seeks to satisfy his need for power through identification with a social movement and he tries to go through the power process by helping to pursue and attain the goals of the movement (see paragraph 83). But no matter how far the movement has gone in attaining its goals the leftist is never satisfied, because his activism is a surrogate activity (see paragraph 41). That is, the leftist's real motive is not to attain the ostensible goals of leftism; in reality he is motivated by the sense of power he gets from struggling for and then reaching a social goal. [35] Consequently the leftist is never satisfied with the goals he has already attained; his need for the power process leads him always to pursue some new goal. The leftist wants equal opportunities for minorities. When that is attained he insists on statistical equality of achievement by minorities. And as long as anyone harbors in some corner of his mind a negative attitude toward some minority, the leftist has to re-educated him. And ethnic minorities are not enough; no one can be allowed to have a negative attitude toward homosexuals, disabled people, fat people, old people, ugly people, and on and on and on. It's not enough that the public should be informed about the hazards of smoking; a warning has to be stamped on every package of cigarettes. Then cigarette advertising has to be restricted if not banned. The activists will never be satisfied until tobacco is outlawed, and after that it will be alcohol, then junk food, etc. Activists have fought gross child abuse, which is reasonable. But now they want to stop all spanking. When they have done that they will want to ban something else they consider unwholesome, then another thing and then another. They will never be satisfied until they have complete control over all child rearing practices. And then they will move on to another cause.

220. Suppose you asked leftists to make a list of ALL the things that were wrong with society, and then suppose you instituted EVERY social change that they demanded. It is safe to say that within a couple of years the majority of leftists would find something new to complain about, some new social "evil" to correct because, once again, the leftist is motivated less by distress at society's ills than by the need to satisfy his drive for power by imposing his solutions on society.

221. Because of the restrictions placed on their thoughts and behavior by their high level of socialization, many leftists of the over-socialized type cannot pursue power in the ways that other people do. For them the drive for power has only one morally acceptable outlet, and that is in the struggle to impose their morality on everyone.

222. Leftists, especially those of the oversocialized type, are True Believers in the sense of Eric Hoffer's book, "The True Believer." But not all True Believers are of the same psychological type as leftists. Presumably a true-believing nazi, for instance, is very different psychologically from a true-believing leftist. Because of their capacity for single-minded devotion to a cause, True Believers are a useful, perhaps a necessary, ingredient of any revolutionary movement. This presents a problem with which we must admit we don't know how to deal. We aren't sure how to harness the energies of the True Believer to a revolution against technology. At present all we can say is that no True Believer will make a safe recruit to the revolution unless his commitment is exclusively to the destruction of technology. If he is committed also to another ideal, he may want to use technology as a tool for pursuing that other ideal (see paragraphs 220, 221).

223. Some readers may say, "This stuff about leftism is a lot of crap. I know John and Jane who are leftish types and they don't have all these totalitarian tendencies." It's quite true that many leftists, possibly even a numerical majority, are decent people who sincerely believe in tolerating others' values (up to a point) and wouldn't want to use high-handed methods to reach their social goals. Our remarks about leftism are not meant to apply to every individual leftist but to describe the general character of leftism as a movement. And the general character of a movement is not necessarily determined by the numerical proportions of the various kinds of people involved in the movement.

224. The people who rise to positions of power in leftist movements tend to be leftists of the most power-hungry type, because power-hungry people are those who strive hardest to get into positions of power. Once the power-hungry types have captured control of the movement, there are many leftists of a gentler breed who inwardly disapprove of many of the actions of the leaders, but cannot bring themselves to oppose them. They NEED their faith in the movement, and because they cannot give up this faith they go along with the leaders. True, SOME leftists do have the guts to oppose the totalitarian tendencies that emerge, but they generally lose, because the power-hungry types are better organized, are more ruthless and Machiavellian and have taken care to build themselves a strong power base.

225. These phenomena appeared clearly in Russia and other countries that were taken over by leftists. Similarly, before the breakdown of communism in the USSR, leftish types in the West would seldom criticize that country. If prodded they would admit that the USSR did many wrong things, but then they would try to find excuses for the communists and begin talking about the faults of the West. They always opposed Western military resistance to communist aggression. Leftish types all over the world vigorously protested the U.S. military action in Vietnam, but when the USSR invaded Afghanistan they did nothing. Not that they approved of the Soviet actions; but because of their leftist faith, they just couldn't bear to put themselves in opposition to communism. Today, in those of our universities where "political correctness" has become dominant, there are probably many leftish types who privately disapprove of the suppression of academic freedom, but they go along with it anyway.

226. Thus the fact that many individual leftists are personally mild and fairly tolerant people by no means prevents leftism as a whole form having a totalitarian tendency.

227. Our discussion of leftism has a serious weakness. It is still far from clear what we mean by the word "leftist." There doesn't seem to be much we can do about this. Today leftism is fragmented into a whole spectrum of activist movements. Yet not all activist movements are leftist, and some activist movements (e.g., radical environmentalism) seem to include both personalities of the leftist type and personalities of thoroughly un-leftist types who ought to know better than to collaborate with leftists. Varieties of leftists fade out gradually into varieties of non-leftists and we ourselves would often be hard-pressed to decide whether a given individual is or is not a leftist. To the extent that it is defined at all, our conception of leftism is defined by the discussion of it that we have given in this article, and we can only advise the reader to use his own judgment in deciding who is a leftist.

228. But it will be helpful to list some criteria for diagnosing leftism. These criteria cannot be applied in a cut and dried manner. Some individuals may meet some of the criteria without being leftists, some leftists may not meet any of the criteria. Again, you just have to use your judgment.

229. The leftist is oriented toward large-scale collectivism. He emphasizes the duty of the individual to serve society and the duty of society to take care of the individual. He has a negative attitude toward individualism. He often takes a moralistic tone. He tends to be for gun control, for sex education and other psychologically "enlightened" educational methods, for social planning, for affirmative action, for multiculturalism. He tends to identify with victims. He tends to be against competition and against violence, but he often finds excuses for those leftists who do commit violence. He is fond of using the common catch-phrases of the left, like "racism," "sexism," "homophobia," "capitalism," "imperialism," "neocolonialism," "genocide," "social change," "social justice," "social responsibility." Maybe the best diagnostic trait of the leftist is his tendency to sympathize with the following movements: feminism, gay rights, ethnic rights, disability rights, animal rights, political correctness. Anyone who strongly sympathizes with ALL of these movements is almost certainly a leftist. [36]

230. The more dangerous leftists, that is, those who are most power-hungry, are often characterized by arrogance or by a dogmatic approach to ideology. However, the most dangerous leftists of all may be certain oversocialized types who avoid irritating displays of aggressiveness and refrain from advertising their leftism, but work quietly and unobtrusively to promote collectivist values, "enlightened" psychological techniques for socializing children, dependence of the individual on the system, and so forth. These crypto-leftists (as we may call them) approximate certain bourgeois types as far as practical action is concerned, but differ from them in psychology, ideology and motivation. The ordinary bourgeois tries to bring people under control of the system in order to protect his way of life, or he does so simply because his attitudes are conventional. The crypto-leftist tries to bring people under control of the system because he is a True Believer in a collectivistic ideology. The crypto-leftist is differentiated from the average leftist of the oversocialized type by the fact that his rebellious impulse is weaker and he is more securely socialized. He is differentiated from the ordinary well-socialized bourgeois by the fact that there is some deep lack within him that makes it necessary for him to devote himself to a cause and immerse himself in a collectivity. And maybe his (well-sublimated) drive for power is stronger than that of the average bourgeois.