#Plantation campaign

[fatehbaz]

On May 28, 1914, the Institut für Schiffs-und Tropenkrankheiten (Institute for Maritime and Tropical Diseases, ISTK) in Hamburg began operations in a complex of new brick buildings on the bank of the Elb. The buildings were designed by Fritz Schumacher, who had become the Head of Hamburg’s building department (Leiter des Hochbauamtes) in 1909 after a “flood of architectural projects” accumulated following the industrialization of the harbor in the 1880s and the “new housing and working conditions” that followed. The ISTK was one of these projects, connected to the port by its [...] mission: to research and heal tropical illnesses; [...] to support the Hamburg Port [...]; and to support endeavors of the German Empire overseas.

First established in 1900 by Bernhard Nocht, chief of the Port Medical Service, the ISTK originally operated out of an existing building, but by 1909, when the Hamburg Colonial Institute became its parent organization (and Schumacher was hired by the Hamburg Senate), the operations of the ISTK had outgrown [...]. [I]ts commission by the city was an opportunity for Schumacher to show how he could contribute to guiding the city’s economic and architectural growth in tandem, and for Nocht, an opportunity to establish an unprecedented spatial paradigm for the field of Tropical Medicine that anchored the new frontier of science in the German Empire. [...]

[There was a] shared drive to contribute to the [...] wealth of Hamburg within the context of its expanding global network [...]. [E]ach discipline [...] architecture and medicine were participating in a shared [...] discursive operation. [...]

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The brick used on the ISTK façades was key to Schumacher’s larger Städtebau plan for Hamburg, which envisioned the city as a vehicle for a “harmonious” synthesis between aesthetics and economy. [...] For Schumacher, brick [was significantly preferable] [...]. Used by [...] Hamburg architects [over the past few decades], who acquired their penchant for neo-gothic brickwork at the Hanover school, brick had both a historical presence and aesthetic pedigree in Hamburg [...]. [T]his material had already been used in Die Speicherstadt, a warehouse district in Hamburg where unequal social conditions had only grown more exacerbated [...]. Die Speicherstadt was constructed in three phases [beginning] in 1883 [...]. By serving the port, the warehouses facilitated the expansion and security of Hamburg’s wealth. [...] Yet the collective profits accrued to the city by these buildings [...] did not increase economic prosperity and social equity for all. [...] [A] residential area for harbor workers was demolished to make way for the warehouses. After the contract for the port expansion was negotiated in 1881, over 20,000 people were pushed out of their homes and into adjacent areas of the city, which soon became overcrowded [...]. In turn, these [...] areas of the city [...] were the worst hit by the Hamburg cholera epidemic of 1892, the most devastating in Europe that year. The 1892 cholera epidemic [...] articulated the growing inability of the Hamburg Senate, comprising the city’s elite, to manage class relationships [...] [in such] a city that was explicitly run by and for the merchant class [...].

In Hamburg, the response to such an ugly disease of the masses was the enforcement of quarantine methods that pushed the working class into the suburbs, isolated immigrants on an island, and separated the sick according to racial identity.

In partnership with the German Empire, Hamburg established new hygiene institutions in the city, including the Port Medical Service (a progenitor of the ISTK). [...] [T]he discourse of [creating the school for tropical medicine] centered around city building and nation building, brick by brick, mark by mark.

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Just as the exterior condition of the building was, for Schumacher, part of a much larger plan for the city, the program of the building and its interior were part of the German Empire and Tropical Medicine’s much larger interest in controlling the health and wealth of its nation and colonies. [...]

Yet the establishment of the ISTK marked a critical shift in medical thinking [...]. And while the ISTK was not the only institution in Europe to form around the conception and perceived threat of tropical diseases, it was the first to build a facility specifically to support their “exploration and combat” in lockstep, as Nocht described it.

The field of Tropical Medicine had been established in Germany by the very same journal Nocht published his overview of the ISTK. The Archiv für Schiffs- und Tropen-Hygiene unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der Pathologie und Therapie was first published in 1897, the same year that the German Empire claimed Kiaochow (northeast China) and about two years after it claimed Southwest Africa (Namibia), Cameroon, Togo, East Africa (Tanzania, Burundi, Rwanda), New Guinea (today the northern part of Papua New Guinea), and the Marshall Islands; two years later, it would also claim the Caroline Islands, Palau, Mariana Islands (today Micronesia), and Samoa (today Western Samoa).

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The inaugural journal [...] marked a paradigm shift [...]. In his opening letter, the editor stated that the aim of Tropical Medicine is to “provide the white race with a home in the tropics.” [...]

As part of the institute’s agenda to support the expansion of the Empire through teaching and development [...], members of the ISTK contributed to the Deutsches Kolonial Lexikon, a three-volume series completed in 1914 (in the same year as the new ISTK buildings) and published in 1920. The three volumes contained maps of the colonies coded to show the areas that were considered “healthy” for Europeans, along with recommended building guidelines for hospitals in the tropics. [...] "Natives" were given separate facilities [...]. The hospital at the ISTK was similarly divided according to identity. An essentializing belief in “intrinsic factors” determined by skin color, constitutive to Tropical Medicine, materialized in the building’s circulation. Potential patients were assessed in the main building to determine their next destination in the hospital. A room labeled “Farbige” (colored) - visible in both Nocht and Schumacher’s publications - shows that the hospital segregated people of color from whites. [...]

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Despite belonging to two different disciplines [medicine and architecture], both Nocht and Schumacher’s publications articulate an understanding of health [...] that is linked to concepts of identity separating white upper-class German Europeans from others. [In] Hamburg [...] recent growth of the shipping industry and overt engagement of the German Empire in colonialism brought even more distant global connections to its port. For Schumacher, Hamburg’s presence in a global network meant it needed to strengthen its local identity and economy [by purposefully seeking to showcase "traditional" northern German neo-gothic brickwork while elevating local brick industry] lest it grow too far from its roots. In the case of Tropical Medicine at the ISTK, the “tropics” seemed to act as a foil for the European identity - a constructed category through which the European identity could redescribe itself by exclusion [...].

What it meant to be sick or healthy was taken up by both medicine and architecture - [...] neither in a vacuum.

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All text above by: Carrie Bly. "Mediums of Medicine: The Institute for Maritime and Tropical Diseases in Hamburg". Sick Architecture series published by e-flux Architecture. November 2020. [Bold emphasis and some paragraph breaks/contractions added by me. Text within brackets added by me for clarity. Presented here for commentary, teaching, criticism purposes.]

[soraavalon]

DM: And he'll take you, you're staring to head up and then suddenly he will veer into the graveyard and takes you up to, you have definitely seen this woman before Eudora, this very very old Halfling woman, very very pale, she's got like a bonnet that's veiled that's hiding most of her face and she's just sort of sitting on this bench out in the shade. She has a wood cane with a grip that looks like a raven and she's just sort of sitting there quietly and enjoying the breeze and she's doing that thing where she's really still and there's a moment where you're looking at this very old, very still person. Tark (OOC): Oh god, she's dead. DM: Yeah. Tark (OOC): Oh god, she's dead. DM: Yeah until you get a little closer and her head will turn in your direction. Myrna: I hear an approach. That'd be Hector and who you got with you? Tark (OOC): I love her already. Eudora (OOC): I love her so much. DM: I think she had this accent... I hope. Well she does now. Tark (OOC): 'I hope' This is her now. Here you go. Eudora (OOC): You mean you're not giving her a fake Texan accent? DM: I can't. Tark (OOC): *laughs* -DM swearing she can't do a Texan accent and Thaddius agreeing that the attempt wasn't good- DM: So she's not from Illsyronia. Myrna: Who's there with you? Hector: This is Tark and Ms. Wildthorne, who you know. Tark is also a friend of Hunt and says that they are, well potentially both Chosen. DM: She kind of slowly will get up from her bench and you realize her cane isn't just for balance. She kind of taps it ahead of herself and follows it. Tark (OOC): Oh, she's blind. DM: Yeah. She kind of peers up at you through her veil and you see her eyes are completely cataracted. Tark (OOC): Oh. Oh. DM: This is a tiny tiny Halfling woman. Tark (OOC): Yes, my goodness. (IC): And Tark will, like he goes to reach out and shake her hand and then be like, 'Is this the appropriate greeting?' DM: She reaches out and shakes your hand. Tark (OOC): Oh beautiful! Okay. That would've been awkward. Fuckin' alright. (IC): Tark kind of looks back at Eudora like 'Where do I go from here? What do I say?' Myrna: You're a Chosen, you say? Tark: Yes. Myrna: Of the Lunar Lady or someone else? Tark: "No, someone else." He kind of side-eyes like 'should I?' Eudora: Eudora nods encouragingly. Tark: Lady Luck. Myrna: *chuckles* No, seriously. Tark: I am very serious. Myrna: Huh. Alright, well... Tark: If you wish, I could demonstrate? Myrna: Certainly, let's see what you can do. Tark: And then I think *looks through spells* Let's see... I'm trying to decide which... I think he would just, you know what, what else am I gonna do right now? Yeah, I think Tark would just summon the bee. Just like 'alright' 'cause I don't know, 'cause there's no way Tark can heal cataracts so... DM: Yeah. Tark: Let's not, that's not something he can demonstrate and no one else is hurt. DM: Right. Nathaniel (OOC): You can hurt somebody. Eudora: Eudora's fully pulling out a pocket knife or something. Hunt (OOC): Remember you stabbed your own leg. Nathaniel (OOC): There's plenty of people to hurt here. DM: That's true. Tark (OOC): You're not wrong, but no. I'm not. (IC): Tark kind of bats the... 'What are you doing?!' and just summons the bee. DM: She sort of closes her eyes as they are unseeing anyways and sort of listens to it buzzing and I kind of imagine it moves around her and--- Tark: Yeah. DM: She's sort of feeling it flow through the air. Myrna: Alright, another Chosen, interesting. There seem to be a lot of those in these times. Tark: Yes, so that is what we've been finding out also.

[townpostin]

Rotary Club Of Jamshedpur West Launches Tree Plantation Drive

Environmental Initiative Combines Greenery Efforts With Community Outreach The event in Chimti Paharia Village included tree planting and distribution of refreshments to local residents. JAMSHEDPUR – The Rotary Club of Jamshedpur West kicked off a tree plantation drive on July 1, 2024, as part of its ongoing environmental sustainability efforts. The initiative, held in Chimti Paharia Village,…

[setzabilly]

Family Room in Portland Family room - large transitional open concept light wood floor family room idea with blue walls and a media wall

[blackhistorystoryteller]

AN ARTICLE ON THE BRITISH LOOTING FROM AFRICA

AND SUFFERING OF AFRICANS

The British should return every loot of all kinds back to Africa

IF THEY CONDEMN SLAVE TRADE THEY SHOULD START BY RETURNING THE LOOTS COLLECTED FROM AFRICA ALL IN THE NAME OF TRADE AND RELIGION ,IF OUR CULTURE WAS BAD WHY DID THEY TAKE AWAY OUR HERITAGE AND STORE THEM IN A MUSEUM ?

The looting of Africa during the colonial era occurred through a combination of methods and strategies employed by European colonial powers, including Britain. Here are some of the ways in which Africa was looted during this period:

Military Conquest: European colonial powers, including the British, often used military force to conquer and control African territories. This involved armed conflicts, wars of conquest, and the suppression of local resistance movements. Through these military campaigns, colonial powers gained control over land and resources.

Resource Extraction: One of the primary motivations for colonialism in Africa was the exploitation of its abundant natural resources. European colonial powers, including Britain, extracted valuable resources such as minerals, rubber, timber, and agricultural products from African colonies. These resources were often taken for the economic benefit of the colonial powers.

Forced Labor: Colonial powers imposed forced labor systems on Africans to work in mines, plantations, and other labor-intensive industries. These labor practices were exploitative and often involved harsh working conditions and little compensation.

Taxation and Economic Exploitation: Africans were subjected to unfair taxation systems that drained wealth from their communities. Colonial administrations imposed taxes on land, crops, and other economic activities, forcing Africans to generate revenue for the colonial authorities.

Land Dispossession: Africans frequently lost access to their ancestral lands as colonial governments allocated land to European settlers and corporations. This land dispossession disrupted traditional agricultural practices and led to social and economic dislocation.

Confiscation of Cultural Artifacts: Colonial powers often confiscated cultural artifacts, sculptures, art, and religious items from Africa. These items were frequently transported to Europe and ended up in museums, private collections, or auction houses.

Unequal Trade Agreements: Colonial powers imposed trade agreements that favored their own economies. Africans often received minimal compensation for their raw materials and agricultural products, while European countries reaped significant profits from these trade relationships.

Suppression of Indigenous Cultures: The suppression of indigenous African cultures and languages was another aspect of colonialism. European powers sought to impose their own cultural norms and values, often devaluing or erasing African traditions.

Missionaries played a complex role in the context of colonialism and the looting of Africa. While their primary mission was to spread Christianity and convert indigenous populations to Christianity, their activities and interactions with colonial authorities had various effects on the looting of Africa:

1. Cultural Influence: Missionaries often sought to replace indigenous African religions with Christianity. In doing so, they promoted European cultural norms, values, and practices, which contributed to cultural change and, in some cases, the erosion of traditional African cultures.

2. Collaboration with Colonial Powers: In some instances, missionaries worked closely with colonial authorities. They provided moral and religious justification for colonialism and sometimes acted as intermediaries between the colonial administration and local communities. This collaboration could indirectly support the colonial exploitation of resources.

3. Access to Resources: Missionary activities occasionally granted them access to valuable resources and artifacts. They may have collected religious objects, manuscripts, and other items from indigenous communities, which were sometimes sent back to Europe as part of ethnographic or religious collections.

4. Education and Healthcare: Missionaries established schools, hospitals, and other institutions in African communities. While these services were aimed at spreading Christianity, they also provided education and healthcare to local populations, which could have positive impacts on individuals and communities.

5. Advocacy for Indigenous Rights: Some missionaries, particularly in later years, became advocates for the rights of indigenous populations. They witnessed the injustices of colonialism and spoke out against the mistreatment of Africans, including forced labor and land dispossession.

6. Conversion and Social Change: The conversion of Africans to Christianity brought about significant social changes in some communities. It could lead to shifts in social hierarchies, family structures, and gender roles, sometimes contributing to social upheaval.

1. Cultural Bias: The British, like many Europeans of their time, often viewed their own culture, including Christianity, as superior to the indigenous cultures and religions they encountered in Africa. This cultural bias led to the condemnation of indigenous African religions and gods as "pagan" or "heathen."

2. Religious Conversion: Part of the colonial mission was to spread Christianity among the indigenous populations. Missionaries were sent to Africa with the aim of converting people to Christianity, which often involved suppressing or condemning traditional African religions and deities seen as incompatible with Christianity.

3. Economic Interests: The British Empire, like other colonial powers, was driven by economic interests. They often saw the resources and wealth of African societies as valuable commodities to be exploited. This economic agenda could involve looting or confiscating sacred artifacts, including religious objects, for financial gain.

4. Ethnographic Research: Some British colonial officials and scholars engaged in ethnographic research to study African cultures, including their religious practices. While this research aimed to document indigenous cultures, it could sometimes involve the collection of religious artifacts and objects, which were then sent to museums or private collections in Europe.

5. Cultural Imperialism: Colonialism was not just about economic and political domination; it also involved cultural imperialism. This included an attempt to impose European cultural norms, values, and religious beliefs on African societies, often at the expense of indigenous traditions.

The issue of repatriating cultural artifacts looted from Africa during the colonial era has gained significant attention in recent years. Countries and communities in Africa have long called for the return of these treasures, which hold deep cultural and historical significance. Among the former colonial powers, Britain stands at the forefront of this debate. This article explores the ongoing discussion surrounding Britain's role in returning looted artifacts to Africa.

A Legacy of Colonialism:

Britain's colonial history left a profound impact on many African nations, including the removal of countless cultural treasures. During the height of the British Empire, valuable artifacts, sculptures, manuscripts, and sacred items were taken from their places of origin. These items found their way into the collections of museums, private collectors, and institutions in Britain.

The Case for Repatriation:

Advocates for repatriation argue that these artifacts rightfully belong to the countries and communities from which they were taken. They emphasize the importance of returning stolen cultural heritage as a step towards justice and reconciliation. Many African nations view these artifacts as integral to their cultural identity and heritage.

International Momentum:

In recent years, there has been a growing international momentum to address this issue. Museums and institutions worldwide are engaging in discussions about repatriation. Some institutions have initiated efforts to return specific items to their countries of origin, acknowledging their historical and moral responsibility.

Britain's Response:

Britain, home to several renowned museums housing African artifacts, has faced increasing pressure to address this issue. The British Museum, for instance, has faced calls to repatriate numerous artifacts, including the Benin Bronzes and the Elgin Marbles, which have origins in Africa and Greece, respectively.

In response to these demands, some British institutions have started to collaborate with African countries to explore the possibility of returning certain artifacts. These discussions aim to find mutually agreeable solutions that respect both the historical context and the cultural significance of these items.

Challenges and Complexities:

Repatriation is a complex process involving legal, ethical, and logistical challenges. Determining rightful ownership and ensuring proper care and preservation upon return are critical considerations. Additionally, questions arise about how to address the legacy of colonialism and rectify historical injustices.

The Way Forward:

The debate over repatriation is ongoing and highlights the need for respectful dialogue and cooperation between nations. While the return of looted artifacts is an essential step, it should also be part of broader efforts to promote cultural understanding, collaboration, and acknowledgment of historical wrongs.

The issue of Britain returning looted artifacts to Africa is part of a global conversation about justice, cultural heritage, and historical responsibility. While there are complexities to navigate, the growing recognition of the importance of repatriation signifies a potential path forward towards reconciliation and healing between nations and their shared history. The ongoing discussions reflect a commitment to addressing past injustices and fostering a more inclusive and culturally rich future.

They condemn slave trades yet they’re still with our treasures and cultural artifacts and heritage

[marvelousmagicalaura]

Thoughts on Mistborn: Shadows of Self

Shadows of Self is incredibly great, heartbreaking, and thought-provoking!

I'm hurt and confused. And I'm not sure how to feel, and I love it for that. Shadows of Self is completely different than its preceding book. It is different from even the Mistborn trilogy. There are themes of the stagnation of political systems, religious tension, the ethics and morals of what line God should, could, might have on interfering with the lives of his creations. After finishing off the book, I genuinely had no idea what to think about Harmony, Trell's puppeteering, Bleeder's campaign, or the state of Elendel.

Something that annoyed me about Era 2's books off the bat was the noble system. There's no state sponsored murder or rape, and the nobles are more like businessmen. But it still felt like nothing changed over the last 340 years. I kept thinking... wow, this is what Kelsier died for?! This is what Vin and Elend fought to protect?! I started off hating everyone - Harmony, the Senate, constables, Wax, even Spook - for not erasing the noble system. But while reading the book I kept thinking about Sazed's limitations due to wielding the Shard of Harmony, his stance on free will, his subtle maneuvering of Wax and Marasi... and kept thinking about real life. I came to the realization that being in the role of God comes with a lot of nuance on guiding mortals. I connected the stagnation of Elendel back to the history of the US... how even though centuries has passed, many abhorrent systems are masked by seemingly more human systems. Governments are still being controlled by nobles and aristocrats, just in a different flavor. Policing has so many issues it could take 1000 years to solve.

Even after finishing the book, I still think the noble system should've been completely erased. But now I'm thinking if that would've fundamentally changed things. The US doesn't have monarchs, nobles, slave plantations, or aristocrats. But corporations, billionaires, politicians, and the upper class get away with a lot, they find ways to obtain power and avoid accountability. Would Harmony be right if he gave the divine mandate of "I DECREE NO NOBLES FOR ALL OF TIME!" At that point is free will a choice?

I started off blaming Harmony for not making a democratic world with no nobles. Ended off having… weird feelings about him. Like... MeLann brings up a great point about the kandra impersonating witnesses to testify against people. If Harmony allowed that, that could be a dangerous precedent.

But then there's Bleeder. Bleeder is easily my favorite antagonist in the series. She's incredibly competent, her body horror is gruesome horrific, and her climax is depressingly tragic. May she rest in the Beyond. Poor Wax. This is the thing that has me feeling weird about Harmony. This hurts cuz of Sazed. Fuck Sazed. Fuck Sazed. I knew Harmony would’ve become a Chessmaster, but not like this. Sazed isn’t supposed to manipulate people. Sazed isn’t supposed to cause trauma to people 😭😢💔💔

But Sazed is, unfortunately, the Hero of Ages. Harmony seems to be foreseeing a great disaster caused by Trell. I’m pretty sure he’s trying to thread towards a future possibility that will save Scadrial from this disaster. He must think about the future of the entire world. It hurts that he moved Wax this way, but would there really have been any difference if he left Wax completely alone? The Set - puppets of a Shard of Adonalsium - would've subtly caused turmoil on Elendel. What if he told Wax he was hunting Lessie? TenSoon said it himself. Harmony saw the future, saw that Wax wouldn't go through with it. Bleeder - another puppet of a Shard - would've succeeded in her goals. Sure he could've maneuvered someone else, but it opens a new can of worms!

I love the hints of Trell being a far scarier antagonist than it appears. I love the advancements and possibilities of Hemalurgy Trell is responsible for. Shadows of Self does a far better job than The Hero of Ages presenting gray morality in the motives and plans of gods. It also does a far better job at presenting a smart and clever antagonistic deity. I think with the conflict between Ruin and Preservation, Sanderson wrote many things that made Ruin appear too much like "the bad guy." He can say Preservation has a dark side, but we never saw it. The one reprehensible thing Preservation could've been completely responsible for - the Deepness killing people - ended up being the result of his frayed mind. He could've been solely responsible for the Deepness covering the Sun and killing plants, but that ended up being caused by Ruin. Ruin spoke with too much malice and joy of killing all life and destroying everything. Apart from his attributes being fundamental aspects of life and the Universe, there was no possible way I could've seen his stance as having any sort of value. Sanderson also wrote too many things that made Ruin's planning so far behind Preservation's. Preservation felt like a Xanatosian genius even on his deathbed. Ruin was a petulant child. Ruin wasn't kind, or patient, or particularly clever, or have long-spanning schemes when Sanderson presented him in the spotlight. Don't even get me started on his futuresight lmao. And tbh I don’t get why Sanderson wrote a being of death and destruction as the opposite of stasis and stability. Is he trying to say in life and creation, everything either stays the same or everything dies?

I know that wasn’t his intent, but it came across that way. It’s haphazard in retrospect, and I don’t understand why that was the direction after the beauty of Kelsier’s rebellion. I still love the concept of Ruin and Preservation’s conflict, but I think it could’ve been much more developed. More nuanced. Ruin could’ve been far more of a Chessmaster or represented a different concept.

With Harmony and Trell... I'm not as certain who's the good or bad guy. And so far, Trell's schemes are genuinely complex, layered, and terrifying. Even the Set are scary.

Marasi grew a lot, as expected. Wayne didn't grow but he was still so much fun. Love the new dynamic of Wayne and MeLaan, who's also pretty great. ARADEL IS A MAN!!!

There wasn't much of Steris this book. But she vastly improved in such a short time! Feels like she hides a lot but is actually a warm person. Look at the ending 🥺

Well done, Sanderson. I give Shadows of Self ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️/5.

[probablyasocialecologist]

While enslaved people were mostly overseas, in colonies, out of sight, slavery funded British wealth and institutions from the Bank of England to the Royal Mail. The extent to which modern Britain was shaped by the profits of the transatlantic slave economy was made even clearer with the launch in 2013 of the Legacies of British Slave-ownership project at University College London. It digitised the records of tens of thousands of people who claimed compensation from the government when colonial slavery was abolished in 1833, making it far easier to see how the wealth created by slavery spread throughout Britain after abolition. “Slave-ownership,” the researchers concluded, “permeated the British elites of the early 19th century and helped form the elites of the 20th century.” (Among others, it showed that David Cameron’s ancestors, and the founders of the Greene King pub chain, had enslaved people.)

But as Bell-Romero would write in his report on Caius, “the legacies of enslavement encompassed far more than the ownership of plantations and investments in the slave trade”. Scholars undertaking this kind of archival research typically look at the myriad ways in which individuals linked to an institution might have profited from slavery – ranging from direct involvement in the trade of enslaved people or the goods they produced, to one-step-removed financial interests such as holding shares in slave-trading entities such as the South Sea or East India Companies.

Bronwen Everill, an expert in the history of slavery and a fellow at Caius, points out “how widespread and mundane all of this was”. Mapping these connections, she says, simply “makes it much harder to hold the belief that Britain suddenly rose to power through its innate qualities; actually, this great wealth is linked to a very specific moment of wealth creation through the dramatic exploitation of African labour.”

This academic interest in forensically quantifying British institutions’ involvement in slavery has been steadily growing for several decades. But in recent years, this has been accompanied by calls for Britain to re-evaluate its imperial history, starting with the Rhodes Must Fall campaign in 2015. The Black Lives Matter protests of 2020 turbo-charged the debate, and in response, more institutions in the UK commissioned research on their historic links to slavery – including the Bank of England, Lloyd’s, the National Trust, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and the Guardian.

But as public interest in exploring and quantifying Britain’s historic links to slavery exploded in 2020, so too did a conservative backlash against “wokery”. Critics argue that the whole enterprise of examining historic links to slavery is an exercise in denigrating Britain and seeking out evidence for a foregone conclusion. Debate quickly ceases to be about the research itself – and becomes a proxy for questions of national pride. “What seems to make people really angry is the suggestion of change [in response to this sort of research], or the removal of specific things – statues, names – which is taken as a suggestion that people today should be guilty,” said Natalie Zacek, an academic at the University of Manchester who is writing a book on English universities and slavery. “I’ve never quite gotten to the bottom of that – no one is saying you, today, are a terrible person because you’re white. We’re simply saying there is another story here.”

[allthebrazilianpolitics]

Brazil is on fire, and both crime and climate change are to blame

Government blames gangs for fires; Greenpeace says illegal deforestation is destroying the Amazon

As Cristiane Mazzetti flew over the Brazilian Amazon this month surveying wildfire damage, she couldn't help but feel frustrated.

Mazzetti is a forest campaigner for Greenpeace in Brazil. For years, the environmental group has been trying to curb the deforestation and climate change that makes the country so susceptible to wildfires.

And yet this summer, fires are breaking records in the country, ripping through the Amazon rainforest and Cerrado savanna, destroying huge swaths of biodiverse wetlands, razing sugarcane plantations, and even bringing thick smoke and smog to the country's usually unscathed capital city Brasilia.

"We've been, for so long, working to change things, and it's hard. It makes me sad — makes me think about the people who live near those areas that are being destroyed, the people who live in the cities nearby and get sick, the people that already suffer with respiratory diseases and they get very infected," Mazzetti told As It Happens host Nil Köksal.

"It feels frustrating. But at the same time, we cannot give up."

Continue reading.

[finnlongman]

Keep thinking about that one KJ Charles interview where she's talking about the challenges of being a historical romance novelist when you sort of believe the whole aristocracy should've been executed, and the delicate balancing act of writing historically accurate and interesting characters who don't have awful politics and values. And, crucially, she challenged the typical rich love interest idea by asking, "But where does the money come from?"

Once you think about it, you can't stop thinking about it. Every historical romance I read now, I can tell whether the author has thought about it. Sometimes they've thought about it but tried not to deal with it and hoped we wouldn't notice that the rich aristocrat probably owns a plantation. Sometimes they've actually dealt with it. And sometimes they have not considered it and It Shows.

But I also don't want historical novels where characters have modern sensibilities! I want them to feel historical... I just also want the "desirable" characters to not be, you know, involved in the slave trade or whatever, because that seriously undermines everything the book is doing to make them seem attractive. (One does not generally read this flavour of historical romance for morally grey antiheroes, and even if you did, that would be a fairly tasteless way of developing such a character, imo.)

I really enjoyed a detail in one of Cat Sebastian's books where the love interest is a Quaker, and he refuses dessert because he's boycotting sugar. It's a way of signalling to us that this character has particular values, but one that's rooted in the historical context and doesn't feel like a modern character wearing period clothing. His Quakerism also influences a few other details – his use of first names rather than titles, for example – but it's not a major plot point and he's no intense political campaigner. It's just one facet of his character, and one that made me like him more.

This sort of thing becomes a problem, too, with medieval settings and retellings and anything where you start having to deal with kings. A king of some tiny little pseudohistorical country whose major concerns revolve around not getting invaded and ensuring his people survive the winter is a very different prospect from a king intent on conquering his neighbours and expanding his glorious kingdom, of course. Still a king, though. What do you do with that, if you're someone who doesn't approve of kings?

I ran into this problem with a book I was working on a few years back, and it's one of the reasons I shelved it. I was trying to write a book about community and friendship. I was also trying to write an Arthurian retelling. And while a brotherhood of knights is a great starting point for a story about community and friendship, in order to have knights, you need to have a king for them to pledge fealty to. Problematic. My Arthur figure did not believe in hierarchy, but the story demanded that he perpetuated one anyway, because it was baked into the building blocks of story I was using to build mine. Eventually I realised I could not write that story as an Arthurian retelling without stripping it of everything recognisably Arthurian, and set it aside to be remade into something else.

I still think about this, though. I think about my Bisclavret retelling, which by necessity has a king in it. Bisclavret is a story about feudal loyalty, about oaths, about hierarchies. Take that away and you no longer have Bisclavret; it is a story that cannot exist without a king for the knight-wolf to be loyal to. Does that mean that as a story it always inherently supports a monarchist ideal, though? Or is its portrayal of kingship (a relationship that is, crucially, reciprocal) sufficiently detached from colonialist systems of monarchy to be distinct from those?

What systems and ideals form the assumptions a story is rested on? What happens once you start to question them? Can you still tell the same stories once you ask where the money comes from, or why the king is owed loyalty? Or does there come a point where you realise there are ideas woven into the very fabric of those narratives that you can't see past?

I don't have answers. I'm just thinking aloud. Thinking about having written a book with a king who isn't the bad guy, and what that means when I approve of neither kings nor hierarchies in general. Thinking about writing the past with the eyes of the present. Thinking about the unexamined assumptions in so many historical novels I've read, and how it feels as a reader not to be able to stop examining them.

(I have also read a number of contemporary romance novels where, after working my way through half an author's backlist, I've been forced to acknowledge that despite everything, the author does in fact think rich people are inherently attractive. Not sure what the solution to that one is, but it's certainly a different, if related, problem.)

[thegreenleavesofspring]

In reference to that confederate flag post, I’m honestly curious why one would have pride in that flag. I grew up in the north and was taught that that flag symbolized bad things. I know not every southerner was pro-slavery and I don’t think the history and culture of the south should be erased or demonized, but I find it hard to shake the bias. If that flag doesn’t mean pro-slavery, what does it mean for you? I hope this doesn’t sound accusing, I legitimately honestly don’t understand and would love an answer 💕

I appreciate your respect in this matter, I read the same history books you did and I know well what the commonly taught thing is.

I could wax long about the various disputed reasons for the War. I will not, on this post; many better researchers than I have already done so. I do not condone slavery, of course; I would hope nobody would. But that is also not, not really, the subject under discussion.

Of the Confederate States of America, it was a very small percentage of the population who owned slaves - something like 3-5%, if I remember correctly. The vast majority of the people were not plantation owners, but small individual farmers and tradesmen and families.

And then the war started and it didn't matter, anymore, whether they owned slaves or not; all of the South was under attack. Whether one owned slaves or not, it was one's home and wife and children and fields and livelihood being razed and left dead. It was take up arms, or perish.

Condemning all of the South and all the Confederate soldiers for slavery would be the same as condemning every American citizen for Bush's Iraq War or Obama's Syrian bombings.

That flag is the flag of my people who did not deserve to die for the sins of the elites of their day.

That flag is still to be found in the homes and on the trucks and on the tackleboxes and inked into the skin of today's Southerners. Because it's our flag, and it means the rednecks, the jacked up pickups, the crazy stunts, the jacked up trucks who drove into Houston floodwaters when the Army trucks stalled out. It's the gentlemen who will stop to help you with a flat tire and the ladies who will bring over a casserole and it doesn't matter what color your skin is if you're polite and courteous because people are people.

That flag is an emblem of Southern culture.

My home and my people are not without our faults, but the prevalent narrative of our flag meaning slavery is just a smear campaign - and an unfortunately very successful one.

[fatehbaz]

"Abolition forgery":

So, observers and historians have, for a long time, since the first abolition campaigns, talked and written a lot about how Britain and the United States sought to improve their image and optics in the early nineteenth century by endorsing the formal legal abolition of chattel slavery, while the British and US states and their businesses/corporations meanwhile used this legal abolition as a cloak to receive credit for being nice, benevolent liberal democracies while they actually replaced the lost “productivity” of slave laborers by expanding the use of indentured laborers and prison laborers, achieved by passing laws to criminalize poverty, vagabondage, loitering, etc., to capture and imprison laborers. Like, this was explicit; we can read about these plans in the journals and letters of statesmen and politicians from that time. Many "abolitionist" politicians were extremely anxious about how to replace the lost labor. This use of indentured labor and prison labor has been extensively explored in study/discussion fields (discourse on Revolutionary Atlantic, the Black Atlantic, the Caribbean, the American South, prisons, etc.), Basic stuff at this point. Both slavery-based plantation operations and contemporary prisons are concerned with mobility and immobility, how to control and restrict the movement of people, especially Black people. After the “official” abolition of slavery, Europe and the United States then disguised their continued use of forced labor with the language of freedom, liberation, etc. And this isn't merely historical revisionism; critics and observers from that time (during the Haitian Revolution around 1800 or in the 1830s in London, for example) were conscious of how governments were actively trying to replicate this system of servitude..

And recently I came across this term that I liked, from scholar Ndubueze Mbah.

He calls this “abolition forgery.”

Mbah uses this term to describe how Europe and the US disguised ongoing forced labor, how these states “fake” liberation, making a “forgery” of justice.

But Mbah then also uses “abolition forgery” in a dramatically different, ironic counterpoint: to describe how the dispossessed, the poor, found ways to confront the ongoing state violence by forging documents, faking paperwork, piracy, evasion, etc. They find ways to remain mobile, to avoid surveillance.

And this reminds me quite a bit of Sylvia Wynter’s now-famous kinda double-meaning and definition of “plot” when discussing the plantation environment. If you’re unfamiliar:

Wynter uses “plot” to describe the literal plantation plots, where slaves were forced to work in these enclosed industrialized spaces of hyper-efficient agriculture, as in plots of crops, soil, and enclosed private land. However, then Wynter expands the use of the term “plot” to show the agency of the enslaved and imprisoned, by highlighting how the victims of forced labor “plot” against the prison, the plantation overseer, the state. They make subversive “plots” and plan escapes and subterfuge, and in doing so, they build lives for themselves despite the violence. And in this way, they also extend the “plot” of their own stories, their own narratives. So by promoting the plot of their own narratives, in opposition to the “official” narratives and “official” discourses of imperial states which try to determine what counts as “legitimate” and try to define the course of history, people instead create counter-histories, liberated narratives. This allows an “escape”. Not just a literal escape from the physical confines of the plantation or the carceral state, an escape from the walls and the fences, but also an escape from the official narratives endorsed by empires, creating different futures.

(National borders also function in this way, to prevent mobility and therefore compel people to subject themselves to local work environments.)

Katherine McKittrick also expands on Wynter's ideas about plots and plantations, describing how contemporary cities restrict mobility of laborers.

So Mbah seems to be playing in this space with two different definitions of “abolition forgery.”

Mbah authored a paper titled ‘“Where There is Freedom, There Is No State”: Abolition as a Forgery’. He discussed the paper at American Historical Association’s “Mobility and Labor in the Post-Abolition Atlantic World” symposium held on 6 January 2023. Here’s an abstract published online at AHA’s site: This paper outlines the geography and networks of indentured labor recruitment, conditions of plantation and lumbering labor, and property repatriation practices of Nigerian British-subjects inveigled into “unfree” migrant “wage-labor” in Spanish Fernando Po and French Gabon in the first half of the twentieth century. [...] Their agencies and experiences clarify how abolitionism expanded forced labor and unfreedom, and broaden our understanding of global Black unfreedom after the end of trans-Atlantic slavery. Because monopolies and forced labor [...] underpinned European imperialism in post-abolition West Africa, Africans interfaced with colonial states through forgery and illicit mobilities [...] to survive and thrive.

---

Also. Here’s a look at another talk he gave in April 2023.

[Excerpt:]

Ndubueze L. Mbah, an associate professor of history and global gender studies at the University at Buffalo, discussed the theory and implications of “abolition forgery” in a seminar [...]. In the lecture, Mbah — a West African Atlantic historian — defined his core concept of “abolition forgery” as a combination of two interwoven processes. He first discussed the usage of abolition forgery as “the use of free labor discourse to disguise forced labor” in European imperialism in Africa throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. Later in the lecture, Mbah provided a counterpoint to this definition of abolition forgery, using the term to describe the ways Africans trapped in a system of forced labor faked documents to promote their mobility across the continent. [...]

Mbah began the webinar by discussing the story of Jampawo, an African British subject who petitioned the British colonial governor in 1900. In his appeal, Jampawo cited the physical punishment he and nine African men endured when they refused to sign a Spanish labor contract that differed significantly from the English language contract they signed at recruitment and constituted terms they deemed to be akin to slavery. Because of the men’s consent in the initial English language contract, however, the governor determined that “they were not victims of forced labor, but willful beneficiaries of free labor,” Mbah said.

Mbah transitioned from this anecdote describing an instance of coerced contract labor to a discussion of different modes of resistance employed by Africans who experienced similar conditions under British imperialism. “Africans like Jampawo resisted by voting with their feet, walking away or running away, or by calling out abolition as a hoax,” Mbah said.

Mbah introduced the concept of African hypermobility, through which “coerced migrants challenged the capacity of colonial borders and contracts to keep them within sites of exploitation,” he said.] [...] Mbah also discussed how the stipulations of forced labor contracts imposed constricting gender hierarchies [...]. To conclude, Mbah gestured toward how the system of forced labor persists in Africa today, yet it “continues to be masked by neoliberal discourses of democracy and of development.” [...] “The so-called greening of Africa [...] continues to rely on forced labor that remains invisible.” [End of excerpt.]

---

This text excerpt from: Emily R. Willrich and Nicole Y. Lu. “Harvard Radcliffe Fellow Discusses Theory of ‘Abolition Forgery’ in Webinar.” The Harvard Crimson. 13 April 2023. [Published online. Bold emphasis and some paragraph breaks/contractions added by me.]

[reddest-flower]

The Soviet intervention in Hungary and the Khrushchev revelations produced in Europe a process that led – gradually – to the Eurocommunism of the Communist Party of Spain’s leader Santiago Carrillo, who said, in 1976, ‘once Moscow was our Rome, but no more. Now we acknowledge no guiding centre, no international discipline’. This was a communism that no longer believed in revolution but was quite satisfied with an evolutionary dynamic. The European parties, correct in their desire for the right to develop their own strategies and tactics, nonetheless, threw themselves onto a self-destructive path. Few remained standing after the USSR collapsed in 1991. They campaigned for polycentrism but, in the end, achieved only a return to social democracy.

Amongst the Third World communist parties, a different orientation became clear after 1956. While the Western European parties seemed eager to denigrate the USSR and its contributions, the parties in the Third World acknowledged the importance of the USSR but sought some distance from its political orientation. During their visits to Moscow in the 1960s, champions of ‘African socialism’ such as Modibo Keïta of Mali and Mamadou Dia of Senegal announced the necessity of non-alignment and the importance of nationally developed processes of socialist construction. Marshal Lin Biao spoke of the need for a ‘creative application’ of Marxism in the Chinese context. The young leader of the Indonesian Communist Party – Dipa Nusantara Aidit – moved his party towards a firm grounding in both Marxism-Leninism and the peculiarities of Indonesian history. [...]

In the Third World, where Communism was a dynamic movement, it was not treated as a religion that was incapable of error. ‘Socialism is young’, Che Guevara wrote in 1965, ‘and has its mistakes.’ Socialism required ceaseless criticism in order to strengthen it. Such an attitude was missing in Cold War Europe and North America [...] After 1956, Communism was penalized by the Cold Warriors for the Soviet intervention in Hungary. This played some role in the Third World, but it was not decisive. In India, in 1957 the Communists won an election in Kerala to become the ruling party in that state. In 1959, the Cuban revolution overthrew a dictatorship and adopted Marxism-Leninism as its general theory. In Vietnam, from 1954, the Communists took charge of the north of the country and valiantly fought to liberate the rest of their country. These were communist victories despite the intervention in Hungary.

[...]

Much the same history propelled the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) forward from 1951, when it had merely 5,000 members, to 1964, when it had two million party members and an additional fifteen million members in its mass organizations (half of them in the Indonesian Peasants’ Front). The party had deep roots in the heavily populated sections of east and central Java but had – in the decade after 1951 – begun to make gains in the outer islands, such as Sumatra. A viciously anti-communist military was unable to stop the growth of the party. The new leadership from the 1953 Party Central Committee meeting were all in their thirties, with the new Secretary General – Aidit – merely thirty-one years old. These communists were committed to mass struggles and to mass campaigns, to building up the party base in rural Indonesia. The Indonesian Peasants’ Front and the Plantation Workers’ Union – both PKI mass organizations – fought against forced labour (romusha) and encouraged land seizures (aksi sepihak). These campaigns became more and more radical. In February 1965, the Plantation Workers’ Union occupied land held by the US Rubber Company in North Sumatra. US Rubber and Goodyear Tires saw this as a direct threat to their interests in Indonesia. Such audacity would not be tolerated. Three multinational oil companies (Caltex, Stanvac and Shell) watched this with alarm. US diplomat George Ball wrote to US National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy that in ‘the long run’ events in Indonesia such as these land seizures ‘may be more important than South Vietnam’. Ball would know. He oversaw the 1963 coup in South Vietnam against the US ally Ngô Đình Diệm. The West felt it could not stand by as the PKI got more aggressive.

By 1965, the PKI had three million party members – adding a million members in the year. It had emerged as a serious political force in Indonesia, despite the anti-communist military’s attempts to squelch its growth. Membership in its mass organizations went up to 18 million. A strange incident – the killing of three generals in Jakarta – set off a massive campaign, helped along by the CIA and Australian intelligence, to excise the communists from Indonesia. Mass murder was the order of the day. The worst killings were in East Java and in Bali. Colonel Sarwo Edhie’s forces, for instance, trained militia squads to kill communists. ‘We gave them two or three days’ training,’ Sarwo Edhie told journalist John Hughes, ‘then sent them out to kill the communists.’ In East Java, one eyewitness recounted, the prisoners were forced to dig a grave, then ‘one by one, they were beaten with bamboo clubs, their throats slit, and they were pushed into the mass grave’. By the end of the massacre, a million Indonesian men and women of the left were sent to these graves. Many millions more were isolated, without work and friends. Aidit was arrested by Colonel Yasir Hadibroto, brought to Boyolali (in Central Java) and executed. He was 42.

There was no way for the world communist movement to protect their Indonesian comrades. The USSR’s reaction was tepid. The Chinese called it a ‘heinous and diabolical’ crime. But neither the USSR nor China could do anything. The United Nations stayed silent. The PKI had decided to take a path that was without the guns. Its cadre could not defend themselves. They were not able to fight the military and the anti-communist gangs. It was a bloodbath.

[...]

There was little mention in Havana of the Soviet Union. It had slowed down its support for national liberation movements, eager for detente and conciliation with the West by the mid-1960s. In 1963, Aidit had chastised the Soviets, saying, ‘Socialist states are not genuine if they fail to really give assistance to the national liberation struggle’. The reason why parties such as the PKI held fast to ‘Stalin’ was not because they defended the purges or collectivization in the USSR. It was because ‘Stalin’ in the debate around militancy had come to stand in for revolutionary idealism and for the anti-fascist struggle. Aidit had agreed that the Soviets could have any interpretation of Stalin in terms of domestic policy (‘criticize him, remove his remains from the mausoleum, rename Stalingrad’), but other Communist Parties had the right to assess his role on the international level. He was a ‘lighthouse’, Aidit said in 1961, whose work was ‘still useful to Eastern countries’. This was a statement against the conciliation towards imperialism of the Khrushchev era. It was a position shared across many of the Communist Parties of the Third World.

Many Communist parties, frustrated with the pace of change and with the brutality of the attacks on them, would take to the gun in this period – from Peru to the Philippines. The massacre in Indonesia hung heavily on the world communist movement. But this move to the gun had its limitations, for many of these parties would mistake the tactics of armed revolution for a strategy of violence. The violence worked most effectively the other way. The communists were massacred in Indonesia – as we have seen – and they were butchered in Iraq and Sudan, in Central Asia and South America. The image of communists being thrown from helicopters off the coast of Chile is far less known than any cliché about the USSR.

Red Star Over the Third World, Vijay Prashad, 2019

[townpostin]

BJP Leader Geeta Murmu Launches 'A Tree for Mother' Campaign

Tree plantation drive inaugurated in Galudih by BJP’s Geeta Murmu to promote environmental conservation. A tree plantation campaign titled ‘A Tree for Mother’ was launched by BJP leader Geeta Murmu in Galudih. JAMSHEDPUR – Under the leadership of BJP leader and Galudih Mandal in-charge Geeta Murmu, the ‘A Tree for Mother’ campaign was launched on Saturday in Ullda and Barakhurshi villages of…

[scotianostra]

On July 1st 1782 the Proscription Act was repealed.

The Government passed two previous acts in 1716 and 1725 which were aimed at disarming the clans, but which had proved ineffectual. This time they were determined to get it right, even before the act was in place the Butcher, Cumberland's men set about committing, what, under no uncertain term s would be described nowadays as war crimes.

The 1746 Act set out its intentions in its opening lines: “An act for the more effectual disarming the highlands of Scotland; and for the more effectual securing the peace of the said highlands; and for restraining the use of the highland dress.”

I will return to the wording, but before I do I want to point out that the wearing of tartan was not included in the act, it would have impossible to enforce, tartan back then was more coarse and not the colourful thig it is today, it was the type of cloth that was worn by everyone in the Highlands, including women and children.

That’s not to say it wasn’t targeted, it began to be phased out, returning to the wording here it says

“From and after the first day of August, one thousand seven hundred and forty seven, no Man or Boy, within that part of Great Britain called Scotland, other than such as shall be employed as Officers and Soldiers in His Majesty’s Forces, shall, on any pretence whatsoever wear or put on the Clothes commonly called Highland Clothes (that is to say) the Plaid, Philabeg, or little Kilt, Trowse, Shoulder Belts, or any part whatsoever of what peculiarly belongs to the Highland Garb; and that no Tartan, or party-coloured Plaid or Stuff shall be used for Great Coats, or for Upper Coats; and if any such Person shall presume after the first day of August, to wear or put on the aforesaid Garments, or any part of them, every such Person so offending, being convicted thereof by the Oath of One or more credible Witness or Witnesses before any Court of Justiciary or any one or more Justices of the Peace for the Shire or Stewartry, or Judge Ordinary of the Place where such Offence shall be committed, shall suffer imprisonment, without Bail, during the space of Six Months, and no longer, and that being convicted for a second Offence before a Court of Justiciary, or at the Circuits, shall be liable to be transported to any of His Majesty’s Plantations beyond the Seas, there to remain for the space of Seven Years.”

So while tartan cloth was not banned, any man wearing Highland dress was liable for transportation. It was not tartan they banned as such, it was dressing like a Highlander, a clansperson.

What the Highlanders wore was not a military uniform, the were plaids and kilts , worn for specific purposes – for instance, they served as blankets when men were out on hills and glens tending sheep and cattle. Taking away the right to wear this type of clothing was part of a systematic campaign to clear the people from the highlands.

I would also point out that the clans, or parts of clans who fought against the Jacobites were also hit by the act. There is plenty of evidence that many lowland Scots also wore elements of Highland dress such as coats, so to ban tartan coats was an unthinking swipe against the Hanoverians’ many allies in other parts of Scotland outside the Highlands and Islands.

The part in the act that made exemptions to “ Officers and Soldiers in His Majesty’s Forces “, was a very clever ploy. Cumberland and his fellow generals knew what formidable fighters the clansmen were, so why not use the lure of being able to wear the traditional garb as a recruitment aid?

It is the “disarming” sections of the Act which are truly brutal, and there is evidence that losing the means of defending one’s family drove many Highlanders off their lands, either abroad or often into the Forces.

So the act was repealed in 1782, mostly at the prompting of the Duke of Montrose and the Highland Society of London. But the damage had been done in the 25 years it was in force, and Highland culture, if not Highland dress, was devastated.

[deadpresidents]

James K. Polk was rare among Presidents in that he didn't just inherit slaves. Polk, like [Andrew] Jackson, actively -- but secretly -- bought slaves while President. Unlike Jackson, however, Polk didn't buy them in Washington, D.C., but secretly back down south. Why the secrecy? Because during his career, Polk straddled the lines between slaveholders and abolitionists, never completely joining either side. Polk was already a major slave owner when he became President but was very cautious about letting people know about his ownership of other people. Perhaps he was afraid of the American people -- especially abolitionists -- finding out that he was buying children. "Of the nineteen slaves Polk bought during his Presidency, one was ten years old, two were eleven, two were twelve, two were thirteen, two were fifteen, two were sixteen, and two were seventeen," said William Dusinberre, author of the great Slavemaster President: The Double Career of James Polk (BOOK | KINDLE). "Each of these children was bought apart from his or her parents and from every sibling. One or two of these children may possibly have been orphans, but it would strain credulity to suggest many of them were." So Polk, who needed more labor for his plantation, did what most rich politicians would do in his situation: he found a way to increase his personal wealth without his constituents finding out about it. He set up agents to buy the slaves in their names and then transferred them to his possession at home... ...He even made sure he had plausible deniability. Dusinberre noted that Polk -- living in a pre-Civil War America -- made sure that while he bought slaves in the White House, he never used his Presidential salary. "He used his savings from his salary to pay campaign debts, to buy and refurbish a mansion in Nashville, and to buy U.S. Treasury certificates, but never to buy slaves," Dusinberre said. "Evidently he distinguished (between) his private income -- from the plantation --(and) the public salary he received from government revenues. Thus, if the public had ever learned of his buying young slaves, he could always have truthfully denied that he had spent his Presidential salary for that purpose. Polk may have been careful about how he bought his slaves because he knew slavery was an evil institution. But Polk kept his slaves throughout his life and didn't even free them upon death, leaving that for his wife.

-- A closer look at the extent of President James K. Polk's record as a slave owner while he was in the White House, including a troubling tendency towards buying children and separating them from their families.

This excerpt is from Jesse J. Holland's excellent and very revealing book, The Invisibles: The Untold Story of African American Slaves in the White House (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO).