#1760s Britain

[digitalfashionmuseum]

Yellow Silk Robe à la Française, 1760-1765, British.

Victoria and Albert Museum.

[jeannepompadour]

Hand-painted Chinese silk robe and petticoat, probably English, c. 1760-1765. Tunbridge Wells Museum & Art Gallery.

[whats-in-a-sentence]

"Our bells are threadbare with ringing of victories," one well-placed Briton bragged in 1759, and in 1763 the exhausted French had no option but to sign away most of their overseas empire (Figure 9.8).

"Why the West Rules – For Now: The patterns of history and what they reveal about the future" - Ian Morris

[fatehbaz]

Travel back [...] a few hundred years to before the industrial revolution, and the wildlife of Britain and Ireland looks very different indeed. 

Take orcas: while there are now less than ten left in Britain’s only permanent (and non-breeding) resident population, around 250 years ago the English [...] naturalist John Wallis gave this extraordinary account of a mass stranding of orcas on the north Northumberland coast [...]. If this record is reliable, then more orcas were stranded on this beach south of the Farne Islands on one day in 1734 than are probably ever present in British and Irish waters today. [...]

Other careful naturalists from this period observed orcas around the coasts of Cornwall, Norfolk and Suffolk. I have spent the last five years tracking down more than 10,000 records of wildlife recorded between 1529 and 1772 by naturalists, travellers, historians and antiquarians throughout Britain and Ireland, in order to reevaluate the prevalence and habits of more than 150 species [...].

In the early modern period, wolves, beavers and probably some lynxes still survived in regions of Scotland and Ireland. By this point, wolves in particular seem to have become re-imagined as monsters [...].

Elsewhere in Scotland, the now globally extinct great auk could still be found on islands in the Outer Hebrides. Looking a bit like a penguin but most closely related to the razorbill, the great auk’s vulnerability is highlighted by writer Martin Martin while mapping St Kilda in 1697 [...].

[A]nd pine martens and “Scottish” wildcats were also found in England and Wales. Fishers caught burbot and sturgeon in both rivers and at sea, [...] as well as now-scarce fishes such as the angelshark, halibut and common skate. Threatened molluscs like the freshwater pearl mussel and oyster were also far more widespread. [...]

Predators such as wolves that interfered with human happiness were ruthlessly hunted. Authors such as Robert Sibbald, in his natural history of Scotland (1684), are aware and indeed pleased that several species of wolf have gone extinct:

There must be a divine kindness directed towards our homeland, because most of our animals have a use for human life. We also lack those wild and savage ones of other regions. Wolves were common once upon a time, and even bears are spoken of among the Scottish, but time extinguished the genera and they are extirpated from the island.

The wolf was of no use for food and medicine and did no service for humans, so its extinction could be celebrated as an achievement towards the creation of a more civilised world. Around 30 natural history sources written between the 16th and 18th centuries remark on the absence of the wolf from England, Wales and much of Scotland. [...]

In Pococke’s 1760 Tour of Scotland, he describes being told about a wild species of cat – which seems, incredibly, to be a lynx – still living in the old county of Kirkcudbrightshire in the south-west of Scotland. Much of Pococke’s description of this cat is tied up with its persecution, apparently including an extra cost that the fox-hunter charges for killing lynxes:

They have also a wild cat three times as big as the common cat. [...] It is said they will attack a man who would attempt to take their young one [...]. The country pays about £20 a year to a person who is obliged to come and destroy the foxes when they send to him. [...]

The capercaillie is another example of a species whose decline was correctly recognised by early modern writers. Today, this large turkey-like bird [...] is found only rarely in the north of Scotland, but 250–500 years ago it was recorded in the west of Ireland as well as a swathe of Scotland north of the central belt. [...] Charles Smith, the prolific Dublin-based author who had theorised about the decline of herring on the coast of County Down, also recorded the capercaillie in County Cork in the south of Ireland, but noted: This bird is not found in England and now rarely in Ireland, since our woods have been destroyed. [...] Despite being protected by law in Scotland from 1621 and in Ireland 90 years later, the capercaillie went extinct in both countries in the 18th century [...].

---

Images, captions, and text by: Lee Raye. “Wildlife wonders of Britain and Ireland before the industrial revolution – my research reveals all the biodiversity we’ve lost.” The Conversation. 17 July 2023. [Map by Lee Raye. Bold emphasis and some paragraph breaks/contractions added by me.]

[arthistoryanimalia]

For #NationalTeaDay 🫖☕️:

Teapot with Fossil Decoration British, Staffordshire, c. 1760–65 Salt-glazed stoneware with enamel decoration 4 1/4 × 7 1/4 in. (10.8 × 18.4 cm) The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 37.22.6a,b

“Though it's got a surprisingly modern look, this teapot was made in the 18th-century in Staffordshire—the heart of Britain's pottery industry. The area’s limestone yielded prehistoric fossils, and potters often turned them into whimsical motifs for teapots.”

[jewellery-box]

Dress. Scotland, Glasgow (place of manufacture), circa 1863. Wool, cotton.

Glasgow Museum Collections

Woman’s dress in light purple wool embroidered with in purple and white thread in tambour-work in an abstract pattern. High round neckline trimmed with lace, bodice loosely pleated from shoulders to wide v-shape at straight waistline with two narrow vertical pieces of gauze with tambour-work centre front with fastening behind of nine metal hooks and thread eyes attached to lining. Full-length sleeves with short pointed frill at shoulder edged with tambour-work, applied narrow piece of gauze around lower arm to suggest folded back cuff, hem edged with white lace. Skirt, full-length, pleated into waistband with tambour-work border around lower half, opening at front fastened by two metal hooks and thread eyes with small watch pocket in waistband. Bodice and sleeves lined with glazed cotton, skirt lined with cotton.

This beautiful dress is made from light purple wool. The silhouette follows the fashions of the early 1860s with a softly draped bodice and wide, full-length skirt that would have been held out by a steel-framed cage-crinoline.

The dress is decorated with an abstract pattern in purple and white thread tambour-work. The stitch resembles chain-stitch but is worked with the cloth stretch over a hoop, known as tambour, using a small hook rather than a needle. The technique originated in India and reached Britain the 1760s. By the early 19th century the west of Scotland was a leading centre for manufacturing tamboured muslins, with up to 20,000 women and girls in total working in the British industry.

[ltwilliammowett]

What did masculinity mean to sailors in the Royal Navy in Victorian times?

uff that's a question that i can't just answer. Because there are whole academic theses that just deal with it, because there are many aspects involved. Masculinity was always an issue, but it became particularly important under Queen Victoria, because now a woman was in power and there were hardly any wars. Hence the focus on discovery and emphasising the growing empire.

At home, the man was still a gentleman and showed this in his appearance, but the soldier, sailor or officer is different, his appearance is designed for power and masculinity and is shown in the uniforms. Earlier in the 18th -early 19th century the man was a gentleman especially the officer, the Sailor a workhorse without uniform. Later we move away from wide coats and towards narrow waists, broad shoulders emphasised by wide epaulettes and the sailor himself gets a uniform, which forms a completely different image. Together with the way the world itself is changing, this appearance is also intentional. Politics is changing, the tone is getting rougher, the man is in demand again and this is also reflected in the armies, not necessarily in society itself, because there the man is an elegant gentleman. outwardly, however, you have to show strength and must not allow yourself any weakness, because even if you are ruled by a queen, it is her men who show and demonstrate their power to the outside world. This, let's call it men's behaviour, this proud, strong appearance continued until the Second World War, only from then on did it slowly diminish.

This is just a small outline of what research is concerned with and it is a really deep subject. If you would like to read more about it, have a look at Manliness in Britain, 1760-1900 and here.

https://scholarspace.library.gwu.edu/downloads/000000506?disposition=inline&locale=en

But I hope I have been able to help you at least a little further.

[whencyclopedia]

Boston Massacre

The Boston Massacre, or the Incident on King Street, occurred in Boston, Massachusetts, on 5 March 1770, when nine British soldiers fired into a crowd of American colonists, ultimately killing five and wounding another six. The massacre was heavily propagandized by colonists such as Paul Revere and helped increase tensions in the early phase of the American Revolution (c. 1765-1789).

Background

In the mid-1760s, the Parliament of Great Britain attempted to directly tax the Thirteen Colonies of British North America to raise revenue in the aftermath of the expensive Seven Years' War (1756-1763). Although Parliament believed it was well within its authority, the American colonists disagreed; as subjects of the British Crown, the colonists believed they enjoyed the same rights as all Britons, including the right of self-taxation. Since the colonists were unrepresented in Parliament, they contended that Parliament had no power to directly tax them; prominent colonists like Samuel Adams (1722-1803) of Boston argued that the Americans would be resigning themselves to the status of 'tributary slaves' if they consented to pay the Parliamentary tax (Schiff, 73).

In April 1765, news reached the colonies that Parliament had issued the Stamp Act, a direct tax on all paper documents. The outraged colonists protested the Stamp Act in a variety of ways; the Virginia House of Burgesses passed a series of resolves denouncing the act as a violation of Americans' rights, while colonial merchants began boycotting British imports. However, the most dramatic opposition to the Stamp Act took place in Boston, the capital of the Province of Massachusetts Bay. On 14 August 1765, a mob of Bostonians hanged an effigy of Andrew Oliver, the stamp distributor for Massachusetts, from an elm tree before viciously ransacking his house that evening. Fearing for his life, Oliver resigned the next day, but the mob was unsatisfied; on 26 August, it attacked the home of Lieutenant Governor Thomas Hutchinson of Massachusetts, stealing all movable goods from the house. These riots were celebrated throughout the colonies; the Sons of Liberty, a loosely organized group of colonial political agitators, dated its founding from the riots, while the elm tree on which Oliver's effigy was hanged became known as Boston's 'Liberty Tree'.

Parliament repealed the Stamp Act in March 1766, but the colonists barely had time to celebrate before a new set of taxes and regulations, the Townshend Acts, were passed by Parliament between 1767 and 1768. These acts imposed new duties on goods such as glass, paint, and tea, and required a Board of Commissioners to set up headquarters in Boston to oversee the collection of the taxes. When the five commissioners arrived in Boston in November 1767, they were greeted by a hostile crowd carrying effigies and wearing labels that read, "Liberty & Property & no Commissioners" (Middlekauff, 163). Nor did the commissioners receive a much warmer welcome from Boston's leading citizens; John Hancock (1737-1793), one of the city's wealthiest merchants, refused to allow his Cadet Company, a military organization he operated, to participate in a parade held to welcome the commissioners. Eager to put men like Hancock in his place, the commissioners seized Hancock's sloop, the Liberty, on 10 June 1768, on the pretext that the Liberty had transported contraband goods and that its captain had threatened a tax collector.

When British sailors arrived to take possession of the Liberty, they were greeted by a mob, who were already angry that the British had been impressing Boston sailors into the Royal Navy. A brawl broke out along the docks that soon blossomed into a city-wide riot, as thousands of colonists roamed the streets beating up tax collectors and attacking the commissioners' homes. The royal officials had to flee to Castle Island, a fortified island in Boston Harbor, to escape the violence. To restore order, General Thomas Gage, commander-in-chief of all British forces in North America, decided to move troops into Boston. Roughly 2,000 British soldiers, mostly from the 29th and 14th regiments, were loaded into transports and carried from Halifax to Boston, arriving in the town on 1 October 1768. A manifestation of Britain's imperial power, the red-coated soldiers disembarked and marched to Boston Common, their fixed bayonets gleaming in the sunlight.

Continue reading...

[charlesdesvoeux]

vampterror au-- some people and when they were turned:

crozier: sometime in the mid-to-late 1500s and early 1600s. need to do more research on irish history but rn i feel strongly about this time-frame. his maker probably died in the 1600s.

fitzjames: georgian vampire, maybe 1750s-1760s. MAYBE made by lady jane. him and crozier are often drawn to one another; essentially an on-and-off couple. but they are NEVER 100% quitting one another. might spend a century apart but always come back to the other.

james clark ross: made by crozier in the late 1600s; crozier's first companion. probably remained together as pretty much husbands until the late 1700s; had a more-or-less amicable break-up (although crozier was kind of devastated) and are still cordial/come together occasionally.

ann coulman ross: made by jcr in the 1770s-1780s. at first crozier was very cold to her and resented her "coming between" him and jcr but eventually warmed to her and they became friends.

john franklin: ooooold vampire. like late 1400s-early 1500s vampire. made by lady jane who is probably at least 100 years older than him. she made him after the death of his first wife. died in the late 18th century maybe.

sophia cracroft: lady jane's human niece from the 1300s, the first vampire made by her aunt. spent some time as crozier's companion i think during 1800s-1820s or 30s maybe but then left. 2nd oldest vampire in britain ie very powerful.

lady jane franklin: 1300s vampire. very old and very powerful. by this point probably the oldest vampire in the british isles???

eleanor franklin: john's daughter by his human wife, made into a vampire by her father (late 1400s-early 1500s). difficult relationship with both him and lady jane, but close to sophia. dad's death in the late 18th century sends her spiraling. a great vampire, in the same way that hickey is a great vampire (see below). i can see her becoming friends with hickey eventually.

hickey: made by crozier in the mid-1830s. a prodigious killer who relishes in his nature. crozier thought he was an interesting, downright fascinating guy at first but then eventually came to find him wearisome and dumped him and hickey will be forever pissed off about it, it's like being abandoned by your father.

billy: made by hickey circa 1848. the thing is though, both bc billy was sick when he turned and also hickey didn't really know what he was doing he "came out wrong"-- essentially, it's like he's suspended in a dying state for all eternity: moribund but unable to die. it's pretty rough and he resents cornelius for it. some days are better and others are worse; sometimes he can leave the coffin and hunt and all that, but a lot of the time he can't really do all that much. resents hickey, but loves him too.

tozer: made by hickey circa 1850s-1860s, a very good hunter and for a long while hickeygibson's "third" which he resents but also he simply cannot quit hickey. like maybe he'll go away for a couple years or something but he WILL eventually come back to hickey and coming back to hickey also means coming back to gibson so.

armitage: also made by hickey circa 1850s-1860s. was already friends with/looked up to tozer before he became a vampire, and tozer essentially refused to quit his friendship with tommy after he was turned but he was also ADAMANT that he did NOT want tommy to be a vampire!!! he's too good he doesn't deserve our wretched existence!!! i think one day tozer really pissed hickey off and he turned tommy out of spite.

pilkington: made by tozer after tommy BEGGED him to turn him, prob in the 1910s or 1920s, ww1 vet. tommy essentially said "you will never love me like i love you, i have spent more than 40 years being the one you only turn to when hickey disappoints you, I WANT ONE PERSON WHO IS FOR ME". i think him and tommy are very devoted to one another. but also tommy still has very complicated romantic feelings towards tozer that frustrate pilk.

jopson: made by crozier in the 1850s. was crozier's extremely devoted human servant before getting turned. where hickey was a disappointment jopson was (in crozier's opinion) an astounding success. gets a monopoly on crozier's love for a good decade at least but then OOPS fitzjames comes knocking and he's feeling kinda jealous and insecure. which leads us to...

little: a human who managed crozier's business interests, knew about the vampirism and was desperately in love with jopson. after fitzjames comes back jopson turns him out of jealousy and feeling betrayed by his beloved crozier. poor little. initially his love is not enough to heal jop's broken heart but i do think eventually jop comes to actually love him and they become long-term companions. prob made in the 1860s.

le vesconte: regency-era dandy, made by fitzjames in the 1810s. very devoted to jfj but knows that once james gets with crozier he's pretty much kicked to the curb for a while, and it hurts him. still revels in being a vampire. fun guy. on-and-off with fitzjames for all of eternity but a second-choice forever.

hodgson: made by le vesconte in the 1830s-40s. they have a good time but i wouldn't call their bond necessarily super deep. like friends who are roommates.

irving: made by hodgson in the 1850s. struggles immensely with religiosity and vampirism and the like; i mean SEVERE emotional and mental health struggles. hodge is extremely devoted to him; irving does love him in a way but also resents him for turning him into a monster. being a vampire also means a permanent rift with william malcolm, who is a human; he considers turning him but decides he cannot curse him with this horrible burden, and malcolm dies a human. i think it's possible that he meets and connects with gibson over their ambivalent (to say the least) feelings on vampirism and maybe finds a new purpose in becoming gibson's "keeper" and taking care of him (prob during a time when hickey and gibson are broken up)

henrietta lefeuvre: made by dundy in the 1860s-1870s. they do spend quite a while being fairly happy companions but eventually she was like "i'm only a substitute for when fitzjames isn't here and i can't handle that anymore" and eventually decided to travel alone out there and find who she is outside of dundy etc. i think eventually lady jane and sophia take her under their wing.

stanley: turned by fitzjames in the 1850s-1860s, were companions for a while but jfj got bored and dipped. which made him very mad. a pretty good vampire, keeps his kills clean. very discreet.

des voeux: turned by stanley in the 1910s. relishes his nature but is not very controlled with his kills; obsessed with stanley, who's always leaving and coming back and leaving and coming back etc. eventually falls in with hickey's little "coven" ie hickey, gibson, tozer, armitage and pilk. him and stanley are on-and-off forever but they're absolutely never quitting the other for good. i could see him dying in the 2020s which throws stanley into a spiral.

trying to place silna and goodsir in this au but I'm still not sure. might come back to it later

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

The Chronicle Herald :: Michael de Adder :: @deAdder

* * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

July 28, 2024

Heather Cox Richardson

Jul 29, 2024

Just a week ago, it seems, a new America began. I’ve struggled ever since to figure out what the apparent sudden revolution in our politics means.

I keep coming back to the Ernest Hemingway quote about how bankruptcy happens. He said it happens in two stages, first gradually and then suddenly.

That’s how scholars say fascism happens, too—first slowly and then all at once—and that’s what has been keeping us up at night.

But the more I think about it, the more I think maybe democracy happens the same way, too: slowly, and then all at once. 

At this country’s most important revolutionary moments, it has seemed as if the country turned on a dime. 

In 1763, just after the end of the French and Indian War, American colonists loved that they were part of the British empire. And yet, by 1776, just a little more than a decade later, they had declared independence from that empire and set down the principles that everyone has a right to be treated equally before the law and to have a say in their government.

The change was just as quick in the 1850s. In 1853 it sure looked as if the elite southern enslavers had taken over the country. They controlled the Senate, the White House, and the Supreme Court. They explicitly rejected the Declaration of Independence and declared that they had the right to rule over the country’s majority. They planned to take over the United States and then to take over the world, creating a global economy based on human enslavement. 

And yet, just seven years later, voters put Abraham Lincoln in the White House with a promise to stand against the Slave Power and to protect a government “of the people, by the people, and for the people.” He ushered in “a new birth of freedom” in what historians call the second American revolution. 

The same pattern was true in the 1920s, when it seemed as if business interests and government were so deeply entwined that it was only a question of time until the United States went down the same dark path to fascism that so many other nations did in that era. In 1927, after the execution of immigrant anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, poet John Dos Passos wrote: “they have clubbed us off the streets they are stronger they are rich they hire and fire the politicians the newspaper editors the old judges the small men with reputations….” 

And yet, just five years later, voters elected Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who promised Americans a New Deal and ushered in a country that regulated business, provided a basic social safety net, promoted infrastructure, and protected civil rights.

Every time we expand democracy, it seems we get complacent, thinking it’s a done deal. We forget that democracy is a process and that it’s never finished.

And when we get complacent, people who want power use our system to take over the government. They get control of the Senate, the White House, and the Supreme Court, and they begin to undermine the principle that we should be treated equally before the law and to chip away at the idea that we have a right to a say in our government. And it starts to seem like we have lost our democracy. 

But all the while, there are people who keep the faith. Lawmakers, of course, but also teachers and journalists and the musicians who push back against the fear by reminding us of love and family and community. And in those communities, people begin to organize—the marginalized people who are the first to feel the bite of reaction, and grassroots groups. They keep the embers of democracy alive.

And then something fans them into flame. 

In the 1760s it was the Stamp Act, which said that men in Great Britain had the right to rule over men in the American colonies. In the 1850s it was the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which gave the elite enslavers the power to rule the United States. And in 1929 it was the Great Crash, which proved that the businessmen had no idea what they were doing and had no plan for getting the country out of the Great Depression.

The last several decades have felt like we were fighting a holding action, trying to protect democracy first from an oligarchy and then from a dictator. Many Americans saw their rights being stripped away…even as they were quietly becoming stronger. 

That strength showed in the Women’s March of January 2017, and it continued to grow—quietly under Donald Trump and more openly under the protections of the Biden administration. People began to organize in school boards and state legislatures and Congress. They also began to organize over TikTok and Instagram and Facebook and newsletters and Zoom calls. 

And then something set them ablaze. The 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision stripped away from the American people a constitutional right they had enjoyed for almost fifty years, and made it clear that a small minority intended to destroy democracy and replace it with a dictatorship based in Christian nationalism. 

When President Joe Biden announced just a week ago that he would not accept the Democratic nomination for president, he did not pass the torch to Vice President Kamala Harris.

He passed it to us. 

It is up to us to decide whether we want a country based on fear or on facts, on reaction or on reality, on hatred or on hope.

It is up to us whether it will be fascism or democracy that, in the end, moves swiftly, and up to us whether we will choose to follow in the footsteps of those Americans who came before us in our noblest moments, and launch a brand new era in American history.

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[jeannepompadour]

Elizabeth Gray Otis by John Singleton Copley, c. 1764

[kemetic-dreams]

Yes, Georgia banned the importation of slaves in 1798 when the Georgia Constitution was ratified: 

Background Georgia had a history of antislavery attitudes, starting with the colony's founding in 1733. The colony's trustees banned slavery in 1735, but the ban was overturned in 1751. 

1793 law In 1793, the Georgia Assembly passed a law prohibiting the importation of enslaved Africans, but it didn't take effect until 1798. 

1798 Constitution The 1798 Constitution prohibited the importation of slaves and emancipation by legislation. 

Fear of slave revolts One reason for the ban was a fear of slave revolts. 

Planters' disregard Planters ignored the law and continued to increase their enslaved workforce. 

Entry of free Africans Georgia prohibited the entry of free Africans, so freed slaves couldn't return to the state. 

The life of a slave in Colonial America differed greatly depending on the colony, nature of work, the size of the enslaved workforce, temperament, and the power of the enslaver. Additionally there had been a variety of psychological experiences of those that experienced slavery from birth, versus those born free, and differences across the different ethnicities.

The first enslaved Africans in Georgia arrived in 1526 with Lucas Vázquez de Ayllón's establishment of San Miguel de Gualdape on the current Georgia coast, after failing to establish the colony on the Carolina coast. They rebelled and lived with indigenous people, destroying the colony in less than two months.

Two centuries later, Georgia was the last of the Thirteen Colonies to be established and the furthest south (Florida was not one of the Thirteen Colonies). Founded in the 1730s, Georgia's powerful backers did not object to slavery as an institution, but their business model was to rely on labor from Britain (primarily England's poor) and they were also concerned with security, given the closeness of then Spanish Florida, and Spain's regular offers to enemy-slaves to revolt or escape. Despite agitation for slavery, it was not until a defeat of the Spanish by Georgia colonials in the 1740s that arguments for opening the colony to slavery intensified. To staff the rice plantations and settlements, Georgia's proprietors relented in 1751, and African slavery grew quickly. After becoming a royal colony, in the 1760s Georgia began importing slaves directly from Africa

Slave markets existed in several Georgia cities and towns, including Albany, Atlanta, Augusta, Columbus, Macon, Milledgeville, and above all, in Savannah. In 1859 Savannah was the site of a slave sale colloquially known as the Weeping Time, one of the largest slave sales in the history of the United States. Historian E.A. Pollard wrote in 1858, "Macon, you must know, is one of the principal marts for slaves in the South. Some time ago, I attended on the city's confines an extraordinarily large auction of slaves, including a gang of sixty-one from a plantation in southwestern Georgia. The prices brought were comparatively low, as there was no warranty of soundness, and owing very much, also, to the fact that the slaves were all sold in families." At the beginning of the American Civil War, active traders in Atlanta included Robert M. Clarke, Solomon Cohen, Crawford, Frazer & Co., Fields and Gresham, W. H. Henderson, Inman, Cole & Co., Zachariah A. Rice, A. K. Seago, B. D. Smith, and Whitaker and Turner.

Importing slaves to Georgia was illegal from 1788 until the law was repealed in 1856. Despite these restrictions, researchers estimate that Georgians "transported approximately fifty thousand bonded African Americans" from other slave states between 1820 and 1860. Some of these imports were legal transfers, others were not. Samuel Oakes, the father of a Charleston slave trader named Ziba B. Oakes, was implicated in illegally importing slaves to Georgia in 1844, which resulted in a newspaper notice about the case from Savannah mayor William Thorne Williams that concluded, "The laws of our State are severe, inflicting heavy fines and Penitentiary confinement on such as shall be convicted of these offences Our own safety requires us to be vigilant in preventing the outcasts and convicted felons of other communities from being brought into ours. And all those entrusted with the administration of the laws are bound to use their utmost efforts to bring to just punishment such as shall be guilty of this nature."

Slaves intended for "personal use" could be imported which resulted in a number of workarounds used by traders. One described in the Anti-Slavery Bugle in 1843: "Hamburg, South Carolina was built up just opposite Augusta, for the purpose of furnishing slaves to the planters of Georgia. Augusta is the market to which the planters of Upper and Middle Georgia bring their cotton; and if they want to purchase negroes, they step over into Hamburg and do so. There are two large houses there, with piazzas in front to expose the 'chattels' to the public during the day, and yards in rear of them where they are penned up at night like sheep, so close that they can hardly breathe, with bull-dogs on the outside as sentinels. They sometimes have thousands here for sale, who in consequence of their number suffer most horribly."

Killing of traders Jesse Kirby and John Kirby

Another example of slave importation to Georgia during this period is known from the 1834 killing of "negro traders" Jesse Kirby and John Kirby by enslaved men they were transporting overland to Georgia in a coffle." The Kirbys had been to the slave markets of Baltimore (one enslaved person was purchased at Chestertown) and were traveling with a group of at least nine slaves through Virginia. The Kirbys were killed by enslaved men named George and Littleton at an overnight campsite near Bill's Tavern, around "Prince Edward C. House," near Farmville, Prince Edward County, Virginia, by between two and four enslaved men. Such campsites were apparently typical to the transportation of slaves by overland coffle, as a letter written from Georgia in 1833 described, "During this and other days I have passed by many negro traders, who were crossing to Alabama. These negro traders, in order to save expense, usually carry their own provisions, and encamp out at night. Passing many of these encampments early in the morning, when they were just pitching tents, I have observed groups of negroes hand-cuffed, probably to prevent them from running away. The driver told us, that a thousand negroes had gone on his road to Alabama, the present spring." Slaves working "collectively" to do violence to "cruel owners" was a comparative "rarity" in the history of antebellum violence by the enslaved in Virginia, but "Having left Maryland and their homes behind, [George, Littleton and their allies] likely believed that violence afforded them the last possible opportunity to escape whatever fate awaited them in Georgia. Georgia offered fewer opportunities for escape than Maryland. The movement south threw the slaves lives into flux.

[fatehbaz]

There is a direct connection between the expansion of [...] new [coffee] consumer culture in Europe [...] and the expansion of plantation slavery in the Caribbean. [...] [S]lave-based coffee was more important to the Dutch [Netherlands] economy than previously [acknowledged] [...]. [T]he phenomenal growth of [plantation slavery in] Saint Domingue [the French colony of Haiti] was partly made possible by the export market along the Rhine that was opened up by the Dutch Republic. [...] [E]arly in the eighteenth century, the Dutch and French began production in their respective West Indian colonies [...]. [C]offee was still a very exclusive product in Europe. [...] From the late 1720s, [...] in the Netherlands [...] coffee was especially widespread [...]. From the late 1750s the volume of Atlantic coffee production [...] increased significantly. It was at that time that the habit of drinking coffee spread further inland [...] [especially] in Rhineland Germany [...] [and] inland Germany [due to Dutch shipments via the river].

Although its consumption may not have been as widespread as the tea-sugar complex in Britain, there certainly was a similar ‘coffee-sugar complex’ in continental Europe [...] spread during the eighteenth century [...]. The total amount of coffee imported to Europe (excluding the Italian [...] trade) was less than 4 million pounds per year during 1723–7 and rose to almost 100 million pounds per year around 1788 [...]. In 1790 [...] almost half of the value of [Dutch] exports over the Rhine [to Germany] was coffee. [...]

---

The rising prices in the 1760s encouraged more investment in coffee in Dutch Guiana and the start of new plantations in Saint Domingue [Haiti]. Production in Saint Domingue skyrocketed and surpassed all the others, so that this colony provided 60% of all the coffee in the world by 1789. [Necessitating more slave labor. The Haitian revolution would manifest about a decade later.] [...]

In French historiography, the ‘Dutch problems’ are considered to be the slave revolts (the Boni-maroon wars) [at Dutch plantations]. [...] France made use of the Dutch ‘troubles’ to expand its market share and coffee production in Saint Domingue [Haiti], which accelerated at an exponential rate. [...]

---

[T]he Dutch Guianas [were] producing over a third of the coffee consumed in Europe [...] [by] 1767. [...] The Dutch flooded the Rhine region with coffee and sugar, creating a lasting demand for both commodities, as the two are typically consumed together. [...] [T]he history of the slave-based coffee production in Surinam and Saint Domingue [Haiti] was pivotal in starting the mass consumption of coffee in Europe. [...] Slave-based coffee production was also crucial [...] in Brazil during the 'second slavery', where slavery existed on an enormous scale and was reshaped in the world's biggest coffee producing country [later] during the nineteenth century. [...] The Dutch merchant-bankers organised coffee investment, enslavement, and planting and selling; [all] while not leaving the town of Amsterdam [...].

[This market] expansion ends in crisis [...] - a crisis caused by uprisings and revolutions, most notably, the Haitian one. Yet Germans still liked coffee. And the Dutch colonial merchant-banker[s] [...] learned something about [...] production, and perhaps also something about the role of the state in labour control: as soon as they could, they sent Johannes van der Bosch [Dutch governor-general of the East Indies] to Surinam and Java in order to solve the labour issues and expand the colonial production of coffee [by imposing in Java the notoriously brutal cultuurstelsel "enforced planting" regime, followed later by the "Coolie Ordinance" laws allowing plantation owners to discipline "disobedient" workers, with millions of workers on Java plantations, lasting into the twentieth century].

---

Text above by: Tamira Combrink. "Slave-based coffee in the eighteenth-century and the role of the Dutch in global commodity chains". Slavery & Abolition Volume 42, Issue 1, pages 15-42. Published online 28 February 2021. [Bold emphasis and some paragraph breaks/contractions added by me. All of that italicized text within brackets was added by me for clarity and context; apologies to Combrink. Presented here for commentary, teaching, criticism.]

[oblivious-melodies]

READY TO PLAY: chapter four.

Oblivious Melodies is an interactive fiction game, set in the in the fictional country of Angria, based on early industrial-era Britain. Following the Horne siblings and their emergence into gentry society, you will delve into a country divided by class, religious dissent, political factionalism, and the ever-encroaching interests of empire.

previous chapters: chapter one | chapter two | chapter three

Banner illustration: Richard Wilson, "Wilton House from the Southeast", 1760, Wilton House, Salisbury.

Thank you to everyone who has played so far - please reblog & share if you enjoy my work!

[stephensmithuk]

The Sign of Four: The Strange Story of Jonathan Small (Part One of Two)

I will split this in two parts as I've got a lot to cover here.

CW for discussions of nasty prison conditions.

The depth of the Thames is about 6.5 metres at low tide in Woolwich, near to the Plumstead Marshes as they were then. However, the river has strong currents and very little visibility, so it would be a risky operation even with 2024 diving technology for some rather small objects.

The rupee originally was a silver coin dating back to ancient times in India, becoming something of a standard currency during the Mughal period. The East India Company introduced paper rupees and while there was an attempt by the British to move their territory to the pound sterling, they soon gave up, minting their own rupees with the British monarch's head on. The currency was also non-decimal. India retained the currency post-independence and went decimal as well.

Mangrove trees are very common in equatorial coastline regions - they can remove salt from the water, which would kill many other trees.

Prisoners set to the Andaman Islands penal colony were forced to work nine to ten hours a day to construct the new settlement, while in chains. Cuts from poisonous plants and friction ulcers from the chains would often get infected, resulting in death.

The convict huts on Ross Island were two-storey affairs, with the bottom as a kitchen and took area, the prisoners sleeping on the upper floor. Designed this way as an anti-malaria measure, they however leaked and the prisoners themselves were constantly damp from the rainfall, offering them little protection from the mosquitoes in any event.

Ague is an obsolete term for malaria; adults experience chills and fever in cycles.

The British would conduct experiments with quinine as a malaria treatment by force-feeding it to the prisoners. This caused severe side effects.

The British would make use of locals as warders, who wore sashes and carried canes. I'd imagine they could probably be quite brutal.

Pershoe is a small town on the River Avon near Worcester. It has a railway station with an hourly service to London, taking just under two hours today.

"Chapel-going" in this context means that the people attended a non-conformist church i.e. not one part of the Church of England.

"Taking the Queen's/King's shilling" was a historical term for joining the armed forces - for the army this was officially voluntary, but sailors could be forcibly recruited, being known as "press-ganged" until 1815. You would be given the shilling upon initial enlistment or tricked into taking it via it being slipped into your opaque beer. You would return the shilling on your formal attestation and then receive a bounty which could be pretty substantial in terms of the average wage, although a good amount of that would then be spent on your uniform. Some enlisted, deserted and then reenlisted multiple times to get multiple payments. The practice officially stopped in 1879, but the slang term remains.

The 3rd Buffs refers to the latter 3rd Battalion, Buffs (East Kent Regiment), a militia battalion that existed from 1760 to 1953, although it effectively was finished in 1919. However, in reality, they did not go to India to deal with the rebellion, instead staying in Great Britain to cover for the regular regiments who did.

The British never formally adopted the Prussian "goose step" instead going for the similar, but less high-kicking, slow march.

The musket would possibly have been the muzzle-loaded Enfield P53, a mass-produced weapon developed at the Royal Small Arms Factory in Enfield. It was itself was the trigger of the Indian Rebellion in 1857 due to the grease used in the cartridges. They would also be heavily used in the American Civil War on both sides, especially the Confederate one as they smuggled a lot of them, with only the Springfield Model 1861 being more widely used. As a result, they are highly sought after by re-enactors. The British used them until 1867, when they switched to the breech-loading Snider-Enfield, many of the P53s being converted.

The crocodile would likely have been a gharial, which mainly eat fish. Hunting and loss of habitat has reduced their numbers massively, with the species considered "Critically Endangered" by the IUCN.

"Coolie" is a term today considered offensive that was used to describe low-wage Indian or Chinese labourers who were sent around the world, basically to replace emancipated slaves. Indentured labourers, basically - something the US banned (except as a riminal punishment) along with slavery in 1865. In theory they were volunteers on a contract with rights and wages, however abuses were rife. Indentured labour would finally be banned in British colonies in 1917.

Indigo is a natural dark blue dye extracted from plants of the Indigofera genus; India produced a lot of it. Today, the dye (which makes blue jeans blue) is mostly produced synthetically.

I have covered the "Indian Mutiny" as the British called it here in my post on "The Crooked Man".

The Agra Fort dates back to 1530 and at 94 acres, it was pretty huge by any standards. Today, much of it is open to tourists (foreigners pay 650 rupees, Indians 50), although there are parts that remain in use by the Indian Army and are not for public access.

"Rajah" meaning king, referred to the many local Hindu monarchs in the Indian subcontinent; there were also Maharajahs or "great kings", who the British promoted loyal rajahs to the rank of. The Muslim equivalent was Nawab. However, a variety of other terms existed. The East India Company and the Raj that succeeded them used these local rulers to rule about a half their territory and a third of the population indirectly, albeit under quite a bit of influence from colonial officials. These rulers were vassals to the British monarch; they would collect taxes and enforce justice locally, although many of the states were pretty small (a handful of towns in some cases) and so they contracted this out to the British. As long as they remained loyal, they could get away with nearly anything.

562 of these rulers were present at the time of Indian independence in 1947. Effectively abandoned by the British (Louis Mountbatten, the last Viceroy, sending out contradictory messages), nearly all of them were persuaded to accede to the new India, where the nationalists were not keen on them, with promises they could keep their autonomy if they joined, but if not, India would not help them with any rebellions. Hyderabad, the wealthiest of the states, resisted and was annexed by force. The ruler of Jammu and Kashmir joined India in exchange for support against invading Pakistani forces, resulting in a war. A ceasefire agreement was reached at the beginning of 1949, with India controlling about two-thirds of the territory; the ceasefire line, with minor adjustments after two further wars in 1965 and 1971, would become known as the Line of Control, a dotted line on the map that is the de facto border and one of the tensest disputed frontiers on the planet.

India and Pakistan initially allowed the princely rulers to retain their autonomy, but this ended in 1956. In 1971 and 1972 respectively, their remaining powers and government funding were abolished.

Many of the former rulers ended up in a much humbler position, others retained strong local influence and a lot of wealth. The Nizam of Hyderbad, Mir Osman Ali Khan was allowed to keep his personal wealth and title after the annexation in 1948 - he had been the richest man in the world during his rule and used a 184-carat diamond as a paperweight, at least until he realised its actual value. The current "pretender", Azhmet Jah, has worked as a cameraman and filmmaker in Hollywood, including with Steven Spielberg.

[victoriansecret]

Vails

I haven't actually talked about it here a lot, partly because I try not to do heavy history stuff here - this blog is meant to be a hobby, after all - and it's something I'm frankly too passionate (obsessed) about, but my main area of historic interest and focus, especially when it comes to my own personal research, is the history of domestic service. It is not an exaggeration to say it is my life's work. Another reason I don't write about it often is I don't really know where to start. My breadth of knowledge on the subject is quite broad, so there's a lot I could say, but I think I'll try to write some small things about specific aspects of it. Vails were, in the 18th (and I believe also 19th) century, basically what we could today call tips, often paid to servants. And when you read things written by the 'master class' of people being served, while they're obviously biased and exaggerating, it does become clear that servants rather enforced them. There wasn't a guild system for servants like there were for trades, but there were informal clubs and groups, and this is one of the ways they seem to have acted together, almost as a form of unionization. There's a letter to a British newspaper where the write says that he estimates many servants are doubling, tripling, or even quadrupling their annual salaries through vails. I could write more but I'll just transcribe some of my favourite passages on this subject from the book Life in the Country House in Georgian Ireland by Patricia McCarthy: I will add too, while this is specifically talking about paid servants in Britain, you do see vails paid to enslaved people in America as well. Probably not as often, but Philip Vickers Fithian, who wrote a diary about his experiences in Virginia in the 1770s, writes about similar things of the enslaved people at the plantation he's staying at expecting their "Christmas boxes" of vails, although they weren't quite as beholden to the actual date of Boxing Day.

... The customary scene in the hall, as their guests waited for their carriages or horses to be brought to the door, embarrassed many. [Marshall, Domestic Servants] Hosts feigned ignorance of their guests' fumbling in their pockets to find shillings and half-crowns to distribute to the servants, who had lined themselves up expectantly. Whether the motive for allowing the practice was to salve the collective conscience of the employers at paying such low wages is not clear. [Bridget Hill, Servants: English Domestics in the 18thc.] It was not confined to great houses, but was also expected in more modest establishments, although the amounts given were less. It was also not only expected on departure from the house of a friend: vails were disbursed by 'house tourists' to whichever servant showed them around - in most cases an upper servant.

...

An army officer described how much his visit to the house of a friend would cost him: 'The moment your departure is known, all the domestics are on the qui vive; the house-maid hopes you have forgotten nothing in packing up, if so, she will take care of it till you come again; this piece of civility costs you three ten-pennies; the footman carries your portmanteau .. to the hall, three more; the butler wishes you a pleasant journey - his greate kindness in so doing of course extracts a crown-piece; the groom brings your horse, assuring you 'tis an ilegant baste, and has fed well' - three more ten-pennies go; the helper runs after you with the curb-chain, which he has 'till this moment carefull secreted - two more; making a total of seventeen, or, in English money, upwards of fourteen shillings. A heavy tax for visiting a friend!' [Benson Earle Hill, Recollections of an Artillery Officervol. 1]

...

Richard Griffith from Bennetsbridge, Co. Kilkenny, complained in c.1760 in a letter to hise wife that 'an heavy and unprofitable Tax still subsists upon the Hospitality of this Neighbourhood .. in short while this Perquisite continues, a Country Gentleman may be considered but as a generous Kind of Inn-holder, who keeps open House, at his own Expence, for the sole Emolument of his Servants .. this Extravagance is not confined, at present, solely to the Country .. ; for a Dinner in Dublin, and all the Towns in Ireland, is even in a Morning, with a Person who keeps his Port, you may levee him fifty Times, without being admitted by his Swiss Porter. So... I shall consider a great Man as a Monster, who may not be seen, 'till you have fee'd his Keppers.' [R. and E. Griffith, A Series of Genuine Letters Between Henry and Frances, vol. 4]

...

Swift gives similar suggestions in Directions to Servants: 'By these, and like Expedients, you may probably be a better Man by Half a Crown before he leaves the House.' He further urges those servants who expect vails 'always to stand Rank and File when a Stranger is taking his Leave; so that he must of Necessity pass between you; and he must have more Confidence or less Money than usual, if any of you let him escape, and according as he behaves himself, remember to treat him the next Time he comes.'

...

Card money was particularly lucrative for butlers and footmen - so much so that, in London at least, such menservants refused service in houses where gaming parties were not held. [Marshall, Domestic Servants - Two footmen at the court of Queen Anne, Fortnum and Mason, used this perquisite as capital to begin their grocery business in London. Country House Lighting 1660-1890, Temple Newsam Country House Series No. 4] But it was vails that finally undermined the authority of the employers, who virtually allowed servants to dictate whom should be received, and then pretended not to notice when the servants extracted money from the departing guests.

...

In the London Chronicle a correspondent wrote in 1762 that 'Masters in England seldom pay their servants but in lieu of wages suffer them prey upon their guests'. George Mathew of Thomastown, Co. Tipperary, a man famous for his hospitality, was one of the first employers to ban the 'inhospitable custom' of giving vails to servants, and to compensate them by increasing their wages. This was apparently as early as the 1730s. His servants were warned that, if they disobeyed, they would be discharged. He also informed his guests that he would 'consider it as the highest affront if any offer of that sort were made'. [Anthologia Hibernica, I - No date given for this account, by 'Grand George' Mathew, who died in 1737, was the man described, who was host to Jonathan Swift at Thomastown in the 1720s, a visit described by Thomas Sheridan in A Life of the Rev. Dr. Jonathan Swift] A crusade against the giving of vails began in 1760 in Scotland, where seventeen counties issued appeals to abolish them. Four years later the movement had spread to London, resulting in riots there by footmen, the servants who stood to lose the most. [Marshall, Domestic Servants] It was probably at about the same time that employers from a number of counties in Ireland agreed among themselves to abolish vails. [Griffith, Series of Letters..., IV, 'An Agreement entered into among the Gentlemen of several Counties in Ireland, not to give Vails to Servants'] Like George Mathew before them, they decided to increase staff wages in an effort to compensate them for loss of earnings. One of them was Lord Kildare: in March 1765 he issued a directive from Carton to members of his household, stating that 'In Consideration of Vails &c, which I will not permit for the future to be received in any of my Houses upon any Account whatsoever from Company lying there or otherwise I shall give in lieu thereof... five pounds per annum each to the housekeeper, Maitre D'Hotel, cook and confectioner; three pounds per annum each to the steward at Carton, the butler, valet de chambre and groom of the chambers, and two pounds to the Gentleman of Horse. ...

And I will conclude with this funny account, about the penalty for being known amongst the staff to be a spendthrift, from the same book: ...

An unfortunate guest in England in 1754 found his punishment [for not giving vails] truly humiliating. 'I am a marked man,' he wrote, 'if I ask for beer I am presented with a piece of bread. If I am bold enough to call for wine, after a delay which would take its relish away were it good, I receive a mixture of the whole sideboard in a greasy glass. If I hold up my plate nobody sees me; so that I am forced to eat mutton with fish sauce, and pickles with my apple pie.' [Quoted in Marshall, Domestic Servants]

feel free to tip here (and yes the irony of this is not lost on me, although it did not occur to me until about halfway through writing this)