#enslaved people were largely christian themselves

[presidentalpaca]

i dont want to start a kerfuffle or anything but @ that post thats like "im happy im not christian bc i dont have to defend slavery." people dont defend slavery bc theyre christian, its bc theyre racist...

[givemearmstopraywith]

I often find myself having mixed feelings about my relationship with christianity. I love who god and jesus are and what the bible stands for and its teachings, but I feel guilty for not fitting in at church (I’ve been to multiple churches growing up, and even now at my family’s current one I still feel like an outcast- which is funny considering that’s who churches are for). I want it to be enough for me to just love god but I feel I can’t do that, especially since my current church teaches that you can’t have a relationship with christ if you don’t go to church. I see god’s people in church and I feel so disconnected with them, and I wonder if I’m doing something wrong and if I really *can’t* have a relationship with him if I’m not like them

churches have evolved to be about power. post-reformational, enlightenment developments in the church as an ecumenical body, on one side, opened more readily to the laity the mysteries of church, scripture, and sacrament. but this opening was simultaneously inoculated against any revolutionary impulse that might be ignited by the idea of a personal relationship with God by the institution– one which is about power, which is patriarchal and authoritative. it instituted an anesthetizing repression in which the personal and private element of faith that had once been part of devotion for clergy was not opened up to the laity but dissolved entirely. this element of personal faith constituted an unusualness, an autonomy, of erotic impulse too dangerous to allowed to proliferate in civilization at large unless it could be commodified, unless it was exploitable, made people submissive and easily persuaded. an example of this is the slave bible, which removed passages about equality and freedom from bondage in bibles intended for use by enslaved africans in the british west indies, in order to prevent them from having any idea that God, not man, was the ultimate authority: that anyone could have a relationship with God that was personal, private, empowering, and ultimately revolutionary.

conservative christianity, both protestant and catholic, responds to independent and personal faith as a kind of fetish rather than as a legitimate religious expression. i'm not saying the church you attend is conservative, but this is a fairly universal tack in all churches, because all churches are built on hierarchical authorities and require human forms of submission to that authority to remain vital and exert control. i do not hate the church, i love it, but i also recognize that it often stands more as an impediment for people gaining a closeness with God more than it acts as a means of bringing them closer to him.

in matthew 18:6, jesus says:

if any of you put a stumbling-block before one of these little ones who believe in me, it would be better for you if a great millstone were fastened around your neck and you were drowned in the depth of the sea.

in this passage, christ is specifically talking about children. but spiritually, we are all and are always children. i approach primarily theology through psychoanalysis, and one thing about children is that in their development they are disposed to see themselves and their mother- their nurturer- as part of them. separation is learned. maturation is learning how to be a part of and connect to the world while neither consuming it wholly for oneself nor being absolutely consumed by it. as simone weil says, to eat without being eaten. our spirituality, our connection to God, is similar: we recognize that we are made in God's image a priori, we may recognize our communion with him as private and beautiful, and separation is learned. we are made in God's image and our separation from him comes after: it is a human institution. all separations, not only in terms of personal relationships but in terms of christian conservatism, militancy, and nationalism. all separations are learned and human.

but simone weil also says: every separation is a link. our separation from God is our link to him, because we are separated from God but God is also separated from us. and our separation from other people is their separation from us. our innate state of being, our longing as human beings, is a longing for connection. but it is precisely this separation that is our communion. maybe the church you currently attend is not a good spiritual home for you, but that does not mean that you don't have a spiritual home. christ spent much time alone: he spent forty days in the desert, but a day is a thousand years to God: he has spent an eternity away from his creation, made in his image, whom he looked at and saw was good as he is good. the hebrew bible says tov, not only good as in physically good and beautiful to look at, or good as in virtuous, but good as in a fertile land, as in good gold. intrinsically good. creatively good. the first thing God asks of man is a question of companionship: humanity is capable of creating communion because that is what God does. but first, humanity- and God- were lonely.

your loneliness, your sense that you do not belong, is as profoundly a part of God as you are, as goodness is. don't be afraid of it and don't let how others behave convince you that you deserve loneliness. (God did not accept loneliness nor think we deserved it: that is the story of christ.) you will find a place meant for you. for now, lean on God: he is leaning on you. you will find your place, your heart, your love. christ also felt disconnected from his own community: a prophet is never recognized in his own town. you'll find your way. i love you.

[mswyrr]

Fascinating article in the NYT about the last two Shakers (gift link from Eric Conrad on bluesky). I've long wanted to write an FF historical romance about two women in the group. Beyond that, I think they're an important case in showing how *when* historical people were radically egalitarian it was in their own terms, not because they were somehow "modern" or "like us" -- they found their way to it using their own cultural tools.

Too many "historical" stories depict a historical person with egalitarian ethics as basically a person who thinks in "modern" terms - as if "modern" is the pinnacle of human beings (and which "modern" do we mean exactly?) given all the wrongs we're embedded in. It really sacrifices something important, which is realizing how truly different people can think even while trying for good ends.

Some neat quotes:

The youngest Shaker in the world is 67 years old, and his name is Arnold. He lives alongside Sister June, 86, in a magnificent brick building designed to sleep about 70 — the dwelling house of the last active Shaker village in the world, at Sabbathday Lake in Maine. Together they constitute one of the longest-running utopian experiments in America. It’s a triumph, as utopian experiments aren’t known for their durability, though the impulse — to start afresh apart from the mess of mainstream society, to reinvent society with like-minded people — has always been strong here. Out of the many that America has fostered, this is one of the most abiding. Out of the tens of thousands of Shakers who have lived out their faith in the last quarter-millennium, these two remain.

...The Shakers have been breaking bread in this manner since before the Revolutionary War. In 1774 a blacksmith’s daughter named Ann Lee led a small group of refugees from Manchester, England, where they had been jailed and beaten for following her heretical teachings: that God was both male and female, a Father-God and Mother-God. She taught that true virtue required sacrificing individual desires for the collective good, including total celibacy. She preached pacifism and the equality of the sexes and races. (Black Americans were welcomed as early as 1790, and communities purchased freedom for their enslaved members.) Her followers lived together in largely self-sufficient communal villages, everyone a brother and sister to one another. To join, prospective Shakers had to divest themselves of their worldly attachments — property, marriages, debts — and dissolve their families: Husbands would live with the brothers, wives with the sisters, and children would be raised separately by the brethren assigned to child care. Shakers believe their calling is to manifest the kingdom of God on Earth, and their Millennial Laws, first drawn up in the 1820s, specified that every detail of their built environment should express that vocation. They organized their lives around the belief that work is a vehicle for the divine: When early Shakers planed wood for a barn, or designed that barn, or sheared sheep, or rolled out a pie crust, they understood themselves to be worshiping. Every day, through their labor, the flawed world in which they lived could be made more whole.

Though it’s hard to get a precise count, at Shakerism’s height in the 19th century, the community numbered roughly 5,000. Over its history, 19 Shaker communities spread out from New England as far west as Ohio and south into Kentucky and Florida. Now some of the most tangible products of their philosophy — the furniture — are more well known than the religion itself. Their chairs are in the Metropolitan Museum of Art; knockoff replicas are sold in big-box stores. The traditional Shaker “aesthetic” is so popular that The New York Times’s Style section ran a 2022 feature on the influence of Shaker design on contemporary “tastemakers.” When I mentioned to a friend that I was writing about the Shakers, she replied, “Are those the furniture Christians?”

...Once, after supper, I asked Brother Arnold, “What makes a good Shaker?” He was in the recliner in the corner of the kitchen, looking at his phone. He told me about the willingness to labor, both physically and spiritually, in perpetuity. This is what it takes. Not everyone can do this work knowing that they might never see the fruits of their labor. “The idea that we need to see results in our lifetimes — that’s not how the Shakers actually teach us to think about those types of achievements,” Graham pointed out to me. “That’s man’s time, not God’s time.” Brother Arnold said to me more than once that Shakers live “in the eye of eternity.”

There are a lot of people around Sabbathday Lake striving to labor in the eye of eternity these days. Maybe a new Shaker will come this year; maybe not. But in the Meeting House this summer, people are singing. Lavender is drying from the eaves of the old sisters’ shop; future harvests will hang in the new herb house. A concept of survival and flourishing that isn’t primarily concerned with linear time or material gains may be the most radical thing about this historically radical American religion, and the one most resonant with a world that is experiencing, constantly, its own existential threats and calamities. It is obvious by now that everyone and everything is dying and living all at the same time, that failure and hope are all mixed up, and still the sheep are lambing and the roof has sprung a leak again and you’ve been snappish and petty even though you swore you’d be better and someone has to make breakfast and even breakfast can be a gesture of belief in the world as it could and should be.

[petervintonjr]

"O woman, woman, upon you I call. For upon your exertions almost entirely depends on whether the rising generation shall be anything more than what we have been or not. O woman, woman, your example is powerful, your influence great, it extends over your husbands and your children, and throughout the circle of your acquaintance."

Meet outspoken writer, orator and intellectual Maria Stewart. Born to free to African-born parents in 1803 Connecticut, Maria was sadly orphaned at the age of 5, and was then "bound out" as an indentured servant (we all know what that means, but: nice try, recently-revised Florida public school curricula!) to the family of a local clergyman. At the age of 15 she moved to Boston and married local businessman (and War Of 1812 veteran) James W. Stewart, and settled into the Beacon Hill neighborhood --at the time a thriving and unusually progressive middle-class Black community. The Stewarts cultivated the friendship of local abolitionist and activist David Walker (a name that will very likely merit its own entry in this series). Walker was particularly known for taking Christianity to task (or more scathingly in his words, pretenders to Christianity) whenever they made excuses for --or outright defended-- slavery. Walker accused so-called Christians of hypocritically twisting their own faith's basic precepts to justify treating Black people even more barbarously and cruelly than any other faith. This made a vivid impression on Maria, herself a devout Christian.

Sadly Maria's life took a few more unpleasant turns --in short order her husband James and their dear friend David Walker both died. Denied an inheritance by the executors of James's own will, she had to resort to returning to a life of domestic servitude. However Maria's own religious faith remained unshakeable and she began writing antislavery articles in much the same vein as Walker's essays --eventually attracting the notice of noted abolitionist (and influential editor!) William Lloyd Garrison in 1831. Maria's essays appeared regularly in The Liberator, Garrison's antislavery newspaper.

Amongst Maria's essays, perhaps her most foundation-shaking work was a full-length pamphlet titled "Religion and the Pure Principles of Morality, The Sure Foundation on Which We Must Build." In this essay Maria pointedly spoke to the notion of freedom for all Black women regardless of status, and called upon Black women to uplift one another. But perhaps even more effectively, Maria invoked Christian rhetoric and principles to make her case --that the teachings of Jesus Christ ran absolutely counter to the notion that slavery should in any way be condoned or upheld, or even (as some arguments went) that Black people somehow deserved their enslavement. (Yes, victim-blaming isn't exactly a new practice, folks.) Unsurprisingly Maria deftly cited many chapters and verses to help make her case. The pamphlet, however, also left some room to criticize Black individuals themselves --suggesting that they were not, in fact, actively doing enough to secure greater freedom for themselves; an admonition to "take the plank out of our own eye," that met with some pushback.

Maria also intrinsically understood --perhaps more so than most-- that America's prosperity was directly dependent upon Black servitude and brutality; that slavery was encoded into America's very economic framework and that it would be a phenomenally difficult job to extricate it. Maria's success as a writer led in turn to more and more speaking engagements. One particular group that invited her to speak, was known as The Afric-American Female Intelligence Society Of Boston (yes, that really is the full name!), and significantly Maria's February 27, 1833 speech was addressed to a large crowd of Black and white people, comprised of both men and women. It's important to understand how, in context, just how groundbreaking such an audience truly was, in the 1830s. Maria continued to travel and teach (and evangelize!) over the years, delivering speeches in New York, Baltimore, and eventually Washington, D.C., where she ultimately settled and became Head Matron of the Freedman's Hospital and Asylum (later the medical school of Howard University). Contemporaneously her published writings found their way into many libraries and schools --a rarity in a time when so many Black people in America were still subjugated.

[bienvieille]

Louisiana Creole Culture in Eve’s Bayou (1997)

Kasi Lemmons’s Eve’s Bayou centers on the Batiste family, the Creole descendants of the freed Black woman for whom the titular bayou they live in is named. Much of the film, from the setting to the plot, is rooted in Louisiana Creole culture and history. To understand the influences of the film, you must first understand the Louisiana Creole people. The term refers to the mixed-race descendants of French and/or Spanish settlers in Louisiana and freed or enslaved African-Americans. Many Louisiana Creole people identify themselves solely as Black, although some try to pass as white. Eve Batiste (not the main character), having been a free woman of color, would have occupied a different social class upon no longer being enslaved. This, plus her children being of French white descent, allowed an accumulation of generational wealth that afforded the Batistes in the film their lavish lifestyle. Another aspect of Louisiana Creole culture that is very present in the film is Louisiana Vodou. This religion is a mixture of West African spirituality and religious practices brought by enslaved Africans and the Catholic faith they were largely pressured to convert to. Louisiana Vodou is primarily practiced by members of the African diaspora—though recently has included some white practitioners. Though many Louisiana Creole people do not themselves practice Vodou, there are still many who seek guidance or help from those who do. Vodou and its practitioners have had massive impact on the culture of New Orleans and Louisiana as a whole. Vodou, much like several other religions based in African spirituality, has often been demonized and regarded as evil by the Christian majority in America. As such, many horror movies tend to use Vodou—or at least, the popular perception of what Vodou is—as a malevolent plot device. Eve’s Bayou differs in that Vodou itself is not the antagonistic force, nor are its practitioners. The main character’s Aunt Mozelle practices Vodou, using it to help other members of the community. Elzora is another Vodou practitioner in the film, who primarily provides services for monetary gain. The two present differently, with Elzora mmore resembling the stereotypical image of the Vodou practitioner—yet, the film does not present either as more valid than the other, though they clash with each other. Eve’s Bayou is deeply rooted in Louisiana Creole culture, and presents the aspects of this culture without demonizing any of them. Rather than going the typical route of making Vodou the scary aspect, the horror comes from the family’s interactions with each other and the ways they betray each other.

[lesbianfeminists]

“The most grievous wrong ever inflicted on woman has been in the Christian teaching that she was not created equal to man, and the consequent denial of her rightful place in Church and State.” –Matilda Joslyn Gage, Woman, Church, and State, 1893, page 1

“I do not approve of their [referring to Gage and Stanton] system of fighting the religious dogmas of people I am trying to convert to my doctrine of equal rights to women.” –Susan B. Anthony to Olympia Brown, following the disputed merger of the radical National Women’s Suffrage Association with the conservative American Women’s Suffrage Association in 1889

Most readers of Feminism and Religion know that Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton were leaders in the nineteenth century struggle for women’s rights. Fewer will know that Matilda Joslyn Gage was widely understood to be Stanton’s equal as a theorist and Anthony’s equal as an organizer. The fact that Gage’s contributions have been lost to history can be attributed to Susan B. Anthony’s bargain with the devil.

If Anthony’s bargain had affected only the reputation of Matilda Joslyn Gage, that would be bad enough. But Anthony’s decision to merge the NWSA with the AWSA signaled that the women’s rights movement would cease and desist from its policy of naming and indicting Christian dogma as the source and cause of women’s subordination in the law in Christian countries. This decision meant that feminists would no longer have a clear understanding of the forces they were reckoning with.

When the AWSA proposed merger with the NWSA, it had recently accepted a large number of new members from the Women’s Christian Temperance Union. The WCTU’s leaders had come to the conclusion that if women were given the vote they would vote for prohibition. But their agenda did not stop there. They intended to introduce a Constitutional Amendment that would name Jesus Christ as “the author and head” of the United States government, to require Christian prayer in public schools, and to prohibit any public assembly on the Sabbath that was not organized by the church. (Many of today’s opponents of women’s rights would support these ideas.) The radical members of the NWSA were appalled and assumed that the merger would never happen.

But in 1889, Anthony decided that achieving the vote for women would require the support of Christian women. Knowing that Gage would lead the opposition, she arranged for her to be denied travel funding to attend the upcoming NWSA meetings, did not announce that the merger question would be on the agenda, personally selected committee members favorable to the merger, and introduced the question of the merger at 11 pm on the last day of the meetings, when many women, not knowing that anything important remained to be discussed, had already gone home.

Not surprisingly a great number of women protested, but it was too late. Gage went on to organize the Woman’s National Liberal Union, which once again indicted Christianity as “the chief means of enslaving woman’s conscience and reason,” calling for the separation of Church and State and opposing prayer and religious instruction in the schools. In 1893, Gage published her massive Woman, Church, and State. She died in 1898.

The first three volumes of the History of Women’s Suffrage, officially edited by Stanton, Anthony, and Gage, had been written and edited primarily by Gage and Stanton: Anthony was not a writer. After the merger of the AWSA and the NWSA, Anthony asked her biographer Ida Husted Harper to help her write the final volumes. Gage was effectively written out of history.

Anthony’s actions can be considered reprehensible in and of themselves. She used underhanded methods, and she distorted the truth about the radical nature of the nineteenth century women’s rights movement. If it had only been the reputation of Gage that had suffered, this would have been bad enough. But Anthony’s rewriting of history had more egregious consequences: it signaled that the women’s rights movement would henceforth cease and desist from naming Christian dogma as one of the greatest impediments to the achievement of women’s rights.

Today, feminists are often mystified by the strength of the opposition to access to birth control and abortion and to amending the Constitution to affirm equality of rights under the law for women. In fact much of the opposition to women’s rights-including birth control, abortion, equal rights–comes from Christians, especially from Roman Catholics, Evangelical Protestants, and Mormons. These groups affirm the traditional Christian teaching that women were created to serve and obey men.

The members of the NWSA were not afraid to attack religious dogma. Today many feminists are unfamiliar with Christian dogma and find themselves at a loss when confronted with religious opposition to women’s rights. Secular feminists may be swayed by the argument that “everyone is entitled to their own religious beliefs,” while failing to understand that religious beliefs have never been purely private matters. They may hope that religion will simply wither away. They may wish not to offend liberal and progressive Christians who support women’s rights. Gage, on the other hand, understood that traditional Christian beliefs have shaped every aspect of women’s lives from the time of Constantine to the present day, and she insisted that they must be challenged directly.

Anthony’s bargain with the devil may have hastened the passage of the women’s suffrage amendment. But it left us with a weakened understanding of the forces waged against the struggle for women’s rights. It is high time feminists spend as much time studying the history of religion as they do studying, for example, Marx and Freud. Gage’s book Woman, Church, and State would be a good place to start.”

[allthebrazilianpolitics]

Brazil: Why (and how) do we still have to talk about 13 May, anniversary of the abolition of slavery in Brazil?

For 300 years, the Negroes of the African continent were subjugated and enslaved in various parts of the world, including Brazil. It was three centuries of dehumanisation of millions of people. Today, 134 years afterwards its legal abolition in Brazilian territory, slavery does not hide its profound marks which, unfortunately, the ruling classes turn their backs on as if they were “minor problems”.

Dehumanised by slavery, men, women and children built the wealth of much of the world we know, under the merciless scourge of the whip and so many other forms of violence derived from this condition which, most of the time, was justified as necessary and even positive for the slaves themselves – since, according to the Catholic Church, it would remove the Negro people from sin and give them eternal salvation thanks to their conversion to Christianity.

This condition, to which millions of people were subjected, not only claimed lives in the past but continues to do so in the present, as a result of a perverse system – formed by the alliance of large estates, monoculture and slavery – which laid the foundations of what we know today as Brazilian society, marked among other things by the racial division of labour, one of the pillars responsible for the accumulation of capital and all kinds of exploitation resulting from it.

Continue reading.

[dwellordream]

“...When thinking about the people involved in these activities, at least in most agrarian contexts, it is often important to distinguish between two groups of people: the shepherds themselves who tend the sheep and the often far higher status individuals or organizations which might own the herd or rent out the pasture-land. At the same time there is also often a disconnect between how ancient sources sometimes discuss shepherding and shepherds in general and how ancient societies tended to value actual shepherds in practice.

One the one hand, there is a robust literature, beginning in the Greek and Roman literary corpus, which idealizes rustic life, particularly shepherding. Starting with Theocritus’ short pastoral poems (called eidullion, ‘ little poems’ from where we get the word idyll as in calling a scene ‘idyllic’) and running through Vergil’s Eclogues and Georgics, which present the pure rural simplicity of the countryside and pastoralism as a welcome contrast to the often ‘sordid’ and unhealthy environment of the city (remember the way these ‘gentlemen farmers’ tend to think about merchants and markets in cities, after all). This idolization only becomes more intense in Europe with the advent of Christianity and the grand metaphorical significance that shepherding in particular – as distinct from other rural activities – takes on. It would thus be easy to assume just from reading this sort of high literature that shepherds were well thought of, especially in a Christian social context.

But by and large just as the elite love of the idea of rural simplicity did not generally lead to a love of actual farming peasants, so too their love of the idea of pastoral simplicity did not generally lead to an actually high opinion of the folks who did that work, nor did it lead shepherds to any kind of high social status. While the exact social position of shepherds and their relation to the broader society could vary (as we’ll see), they tended to be relatively low-status and poor individuals. The ‘shepherds out tending their flocks by night’ of Luke 2:8 are not important men. Indeed, the ‘night crew’ of shepherds are some of the lowest status and poorest free individuals who could possibly see that religious sign, a point in the text that is missed by many modern readers.

We see a variety of shepherding strategies which impact what kind of shepherds might be out with flocks. Small peasant households might keep a few sheep (along with say, chickens or pigs) to provide for the household’s wool needs. In some cases, a village might pool those sheep together to make a flock which one person would tend (a job which often seems to have gone to either fairly young individuals or else the elderly – that is, someone who might not be as useful in the hard labor on the farm itself, since shepherding doesn’t necessarily require a lot of strength).

Larger operations by dedicated shepherds often involved wage-laborers or enslaved laborers tending flocks of sheep and pastured owned by other, higher status and wealthier individuals. Thus for instance, Diodorus’s description of the Sicilian slave revolts (in 135 and 104 BC; the original Diodorus, book 36, is lost but two summaries survive, those of Photios and Constantine Porphyrogennetos), we’re told that the the flocks belonging to the large estates of Roman magnates in the lowland down by the coast were tended by enslaved shepherds in significant numbers (and treated very poorly; when a Greek source like Diodorus who is entirely comfortable with slavery is nevertheless noting the poor treatment, it must be poor indeed). Likewise, there is a fair bit of evidence from ancient Mesopotamia indicating that the flocks of sheep themselves were often under state or temple control ....and that it was the temple or the king that might sell or dispose of the wool; the shepherds were only laborers (free or unfree is often unclear).

Full time shepherds could – they didn’t always, but could – come under suspicion as effective outsiders to the fully sedentary rural communities they served as well. Diodorus in the aforementioned example is quick to note that banditry in Sicily was rife because the enslaved shepherds were often armed – armed to protect their flocks because banditry was rife; we are left to conclude that Diodorus at least thinks the banditry in question is being perpetrated by the shepherds, evidently sometimes rustling sheep from other enslaved shepherds. A similar disdain for the semi-nomadic herding culture of peoples like the Amorites is sometimes evident in Mesopotamian texts. And of course that the very nature of transhumance meant that shepherds often spent long periods away from home sleeping with their flocks in temporary shelters and generally ‘roughing it’ exposed to weather.

Consequently, while owning large numbers of sheep and pastures for them could be a contributor to high status (and thus merit elite remark, as with Pliny’s long discussion of sheep in book 8 of his Natural History), actually tending sheep was mostly a low-status job and not generally well renumerated (keeping on poor Pliny here, it is notable that in several long sections on sheep he never once mentions shepherds). Shepherds were thus generally towards the bottom of the social pyramid in most pre-modern societies, below the serf or freeholding farmer who might at least be entitled to the continued use of their land.”

- Bret Devereaux, “Clothing, How Did They Make It? Part I: High Fiber.”

[kemetic-dreams]

As the exoteric “culture of the deities,” (religious practices) of these initial enslaved African groups were systematically suppressed, each new wave of West Africans imported would simply overlay or "refresh" the older traditions with the new, until they too were forcibly suppressed. However, what is critical to understand is that although the “culture of the deities,” (religious practices) were outwardly suppressed, the deities (and its priesthoods)themselves continued to be born in the bloodlines of the African people, and the Vodou traditions though modified, continued in individual African-American families, and ceremonies were held in secret meeting places or masked in early Christian religious worship. Haitian cultural and religious influence was the last to refresh what was clearly the exoteric (outer) cultural expression of the deities. Additionally, even their influence did not began to take root until the early 1800s, shortly after Haiti won their independence, and many disgruntled, white French slaveholders fled to the U.S. and to Cuba, bringing many of the enslaved Africans with them. The Haitian groups who refreshed and overlaid the diminishing Vodou exoteric culture in America, specifically in Louisiana, were largely from the Fon, a subgroup of the Ewe, and the final group to be imported- which is why their Haitian blends remained the most recent and the most enduring. The point that is being made, is that the Vodoun religion was introduced into America by the Africans who were directly imported into the slave-holding states from West Africa. Over the centuries, as a system of African religious and cultural suppression was effected in America, the Haitian blended influence being the last, became the most enduring. In time, it too would be ultimately reduced to the present day ethno-botanical and magical folk practices known as “Hudu” (“hoodoo”). It is this Afro-folk tradition, (practiced all throughout African for centuries) that Hollywood and Christian evangelists enjoy labeling as the “Voodoo religion” proper. Finally, spirits and deities can be born to anyone, anywhere; irrespective  of  race, ethnicity or faith.  How they are named and served is unique to each culture.  The purpose of this article is as it pertains to the Vodoun religion, and its African origins, family lineages and indigenous birthright of Africans the world over, is in making the important distinction concerning the cosmogenetic/ biological link that Africans and the Diaspora possess with the vodou spirits since time immemorial.   This relationship, history, family lineages etc, is separate and distinct from the current promulgation within the 'New Age" culture," Hollywood fantasy and the Christian evangelical disparages promoting their version of Vodou worship as something either “magical” or “malevolent”. These distinction are critical to understanding the consistency and the permanency, and the indestructibility of the unique relationship that the Afro-Diaspora have had with th

[cincinnatusvirtue]

Jan Janszoon also known as Murat Reis the Younger (c. 1570-c. 1641) Dutch Barbary Pirate and founder/leader of a pirate republic, Republic of Sale...

Mention pirates and you may well conjure a number of images in the mind.  It depends on the context you’re discussing in terms of history and placement in the world.  The western world usually has an image of a swashbuckling and misunderstood rogue or misfit outcast who has been rejected from their society or can’t tolerate authority so they take to a life on the high seas in search of freedom, adventure and plunder.  Edward Teach (1680-1718) better known as Blackbeard is sometimes cited as the archetypal pirate in many modern works of fiction.  Or one might picture the character of Jack Sparrow in the Pirates of the Caribbean film franchise.  Images that are based in elements of truth but probably watered down from the reality of the harsh existence pirates found themselves in and the harsh price they exacted from others.

Another type of pirate, widely talked about but not perhaps as well known in some parts of the world is that of the Barbary pirate or Barbary corsair.  The Barbary pirate were privateers or pirates from an Islamic background typically and sometimes used a nominally religiously infused perspective to ply their trade.  They usually hailed from or were based out of the so called Barbary Coast of North Africa, so named for the native Berber peoples who made up the majority of these lands, Berber being a corruption of the ancient Greek for Barbarian a term applied to all non Greco-Roman peoples in antiquity.  These lands were the modern nations of Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia & Libya in particular.  These pirates were largely in operation from the 16th-19th centuries with their zenith being in the early to mid 17th century.  The modern states of North Africa were not full fledged nation states as they are today, in fact they were instead made up of various city states that with the exception of Morocco were nominal parts of the Turkish Ottoman Empire.  These locations while part of the Ottoman sphere of influence had relative degrees of autonomy that fell to their local governors called dey or bey or pasha.  All honorific titles taken from Turkish to roughly mean leader or governor.  The pirates on behalf of their dey or pasha or sometimes on behalf of themselves had virtual control of over their city-states and the surrounding seas.

The most prominent grounds to find these pirates and their bases was the Western Mediterranean and Atlantic seaboard of  Western Europe.  Their primary focus was to engage in the plunder of merchant ships and occasionally raid coastal villages and towns.  The main target wasn’t so much goods like money or inanimate objects but rather in the capture of  people, mostly Europeans and later Americans to become part of the greater Islamic slave trade within the preexisting Ottoman and Arab slave trades which spanned from Asia to Africa and Europe.  Now keep in mind slavery was not exclusive to any one society, culture or location, slavery and human trafficking was commonplace on virtually all continents among all peoples during the 16th-19th centuries.  However, the focus of this post will be on the Barbary slave trade and to provide a snapshot of the practices within that context.

Not all Barbary pirates were born within the Islamic world, in fact some of the best known were originally Christian or Jewish and later converted to Islam.  One of the best known was a Dutchman named Jan Janszoon (Jan Jansen) who took on the later moniker of Murat Reis the Younger...

Early Life...

-Not much of Jan’s early life is documented, other than he was born in the city of Haarlem in the Netherlands in roughly the year 1570.  Sources don’t definitively state who his parents were other than we can determine his surname followed the Dutch patronymic naming system of Janszoon or Jansen meaning “son of Jan or son of John” in English.  

-At the time of Jan’s birth, the Netherlands was technically part of the Catholic Spanish Empire.  However, the ethnic Dutch who were primarily Protestants of the Calvinist Dutch Reformed Church were increasingly at odds with Spanish rule, what resulted was the Eighty Years War or War of Dutch Independence (1568-1648).  Seven northern provinces of the Netherlands, one of the most powerful being Holland formed the united nucleus of new country determined to breakaway from Spanish rule.  This became the Dutch Republic.  What followed was a period of off and on warfare, colonial expansion and a flowering of cultural expression in art, commerce and the establishment of relatively tolerant values based in individualism.  This was reflected in the largely Protestant personalized philosophy of their religion.  The Dutch Republic became a place of comparative religious freedom within Europe and its government was run more by a legislative body than a monarch, though it had monarch like figures with varying degrees of power, more symbolic than absolute.  This contrasted with the absolute monarchy and centralizing of power in most of 17th-18th century Europe.

 -Jan’s profession wasn’t known either, other than at some point he took to a life at sea, it is speculated by some sources that he was apprenticed on merchant ships as a teenager which enabled him to learn the skills of sailing and nuances of trade and diplomacy in all dealings that would later serve him in life.

-In 1595, Jan is recorded as marrying a woman, presumably named Soutgen Cave with whom he had at least one daughter and possibly a son, Edward  The daughter, Lysbeth, was definitively confirmed by virtually all sources and would play a role in her father’s later life.

-Jan would eventually abandon his family in the Netherlands and would never return to them in a long lasting fashion.  Jan appears to have been restless and turned to a life at sea, first as a Dutch privateer on behalf of the Dutch Republic, raiding Spanish merchant ships in an effort to hurt the economy of the nation that nominally ruled over the Dutch Republic.  

-However, in the early 17th century a nominal period of peace or truce was established between Spain and the Netherlands, though the war and issue of independence wasn’t officially resolved.  Jan during these years appears to have left the official capacity of serving under the Dutch flag and instead made his way to Spain and North Africa and largely went into business for himself.

Algiers and Spain “Turning Turk”...

-The timeline is somewhat confused based on the sources we have but Jan’s adventures appear to have taken him to the Canary Islands off Africa’s coast where he was captured by Barbary pirates, possibly under the Ottoman privateer of Albanian extraction, Murat Reis (The Elder).  Jan was conveyed to Algiers (modern capital of Algeria) where he was most likely considered for a life of slavery.  However, it appear Jan either made the conversion to Islam outright to officially spare him the pain of slavery, since nominally Islam forbids the enslavement of other Muslims, though this was not always practiced since other Muslims were occasionally enslaved by the Barbary pirates.  The other possibility is that Jan convinced his captors of his suitability as a sailor and guide and offered his services if not his faith, though it most likely he converted to Islam at this time, probably as a practical matter.  The conversion in European circles was known as “turning Turk” since Turk became a blanket misnomer to all Muslims regardless of ethnicity at this time.

-Jan also made his was to Spain, in particular the port city of Cartagena where in the first decade of the 17th century, some of the last sizable remnants of a Muslim community lived, descended from Muslims that once controlled most of the Iberian Peninsula in the semi-autonomous province of Al-Andalus (Andalusia) from the 8th century to the year 1492.  

-Since 1492, the Christian kingdoms of northern Spain and Portugal pushed backed the Muslims and “reconquered” Iberia from Muslim rule.  The Spanish monarchy overtime changed from relative tolerance of Muslims and Jews to threats of expulsion, forced conversion or death for non-Christians.  In the midst of all this Jan, either not yet a Muslim or a Muslim who as a European could pass for a Christian met a new woman, sources can’t confirm her identity beyond the Spanish name Margarita.  Margarita was known to be a Spanish Moor or Muslim of mixed ethnic background, most likely Arab-Berber with roots in Morocco.  She was part of a community known as Mujedars or Moriscos, Moors who nominally were converted Christianity but in private secretly maintained their Islamic faith and customs.  Sources also vary on whether Margarita was a woman of high birth or nobility or a domestic servant to a Christian family.  There is even a source that speculates her genealogy can be traced in part to the then ruling dynasty of Morocco, the Arab Saadi dynasty which claim descent from the Islamic prophet Muhammad through the Prophet’s daughter Fatima. 

-What is known is that Margarita would become Jan’s wife, the first of four permissible simultaneous wives under Islamic law.  It is not known if Jan ever took another wife.  His first Christian marriage in the Netherlands would be viewed as invalid under from the Islamic viewpoint.  Jan and Margarita also had four sons whose names are Abraham, Anthony, Philip & Cornelis.  All four would have been raised as Muslims by their parents, from this point on this became Jan’s family.  His Dutch family is variously reported to have been ignored or still the recipients of child/spousal support from Jan who would send portions of his earnings to them.  There is evidently truth to this given that his daughter Lysbeth later visited him late in life, suggesting a good enough relationship if distant.

Sale...

-In roughly the period 1609-1612 the family would have left Spain for Algiers and later Morocco and settled in the city of Sale, today a twin city of the capital of Rabat.  Sale had a long history but a number of thousands of expelled Muslims from Spain would come together to form the nucleus of a new period of history in Sale.  These Muslims would have differed from the Berbers of Morocco despite their overlapping ethnic similarities, in that they grew up speaking Spanish probably in addition to Arabic and would have had Spanish influenced customs, this put them at odds with their fellow Moroccans.  

-Jan in his travels would have been multilingual.  In addition to his native Dutch he would have known Spanish and likely Arabic, English and possibly French at the very least.

-1619 saw the city of Sale which had a small Barbary pirate operation already declare itself an independent republic, not subject to the authority of the Sultans of Morocco, then ruled by two brothers of the Saadi dynasty in a virtual state of civil war  At the center of this “revolt” was Jan himself, now known as Murat Reis (The Younger), taken after his former captor who had passed away a decade before.  Jan was already successful in conducting raids for Algiers on European shipping, mostly of Spanish shipping and other nations.  Though he was known to release or ransom his fellow Dutch from captivity in many instances.

-Sale in its newly declared independence was helmed by a ruling council of 14 leading pirates who elected Jan at its Grand Admiral (head of the fleet) and President.  The newly minted Republic of Sale, was a functioning de-facto city-state that was run by and for Barbary pirates who enriched themselves off of the slave trade and sale of plunder of other goods taken from European ships.

-Sale’s fleet was small at first, numbering 18 ships, mainly of the “polacca” design, the ships were small, sleek and fast.  The harbor at Sale was the mouth of the Bou Regreg river which divided Sale & Rabat on the north and south banks respectively.  The harbor was protected by a sandbar and due to the small design of the ships with they had the ability to slide over the sandbar and dock in the shallow harbor, where European ships typically required deep ports for docking due to their deep and large hulls.  Sale at the time also benefitted from relative isolation with next to no roads leading to the city from land and it was purely a port city.

-Jan is noted by all sources as an intelligent and brave fighter as well as able administrator, the docking fees, percentages of profits from slave sales and others good sold made Sale blossom financially under Jan’s administration.  Nominal fees to the Sultan also helped maintain their semi-autonomy, in recognition of this and due to other deeper difficulties Sultan Zidan Abu Maali of the Saadi dynasty made Jan the ceremonial Governor of Sale.

-Jan and the Sale Rovers as his fleet was called in English sources was known for their guile.  Carrying multiple flags on board Jan and fleet were known to approach ships and like a chameleon adapts to their surroundings by changing colors, the pirates would fly friendly flags as they approached their prey.  This meant they kept informed on the latest diplomatic changes of the day and using this ruse got close to their quarry and then suddenly would raise their own flag of the two conjoined sabers on a field of green or the crescent moon of Islam and frighten their victims.  Barbary pirates in general speaking foreign tongues with a fearsome appearance of swords and pistols in hand and dagger in mouth relied on intimidation and very often tried to capture their victims without an actual fight.  Since the goal was enslavement harm or death to their prisoners was not ideal and psychological terror was their foremost weapon hence why they chose merchant and passenger ships and usually fled at the sight of military ships.

-According to the known accounts Jan and his men treated their prisoners relatively humanely given the circumstances as Barbary piracy was well known by this time, most knew their fate would not be good, few slaves ever returned to their homeland or another destination.  Typically, women and children would be separated from the men, meaning families were often divided.  Once arrived at port, they would be separated according to age and gender since they served different purposes.  Men would typically be used for forced manual labor to their Muslim masters or serve as oarsmen or servants on ships, rarely setting foot on land for long periods of time.  Children would be taken to serve as domestic servants in Muslim homes and women would typically be sold to become domestic servants as well.  Occasionally  women were made into sex slaves to their masters, sometimes ending up in the harems of the Sultan or other Muslim rulers.  On the auction block as is true of slaves anywhere, one would be publicly displayed sometimes naked or asked to run and jump or to be prodded and inspected by prospective buyers.  Those in good health commanded the highest price.  Some slaves were also ransomed through funds raised by the family, government or Christian religious orders, though this fueled the Barbary pirates economy and perpetuated the cycle of enslavement.  Jan is known to have made large profits to fund his family, fleet and home and is known to have had many servants, most probably being men to perform manual labor in maintaining his fleet for future slave runs.

-Jan also occasionally ventured outside of the Western Mediterranean and Atlantic near the Canary Islands, sight of his own capture years before.  He was known to base himself on islands off the coast of England and even return to the Netherlands.  Using his Dutch citizenship and his new found role as an Admiral nominally in the Moroccan navy, he had diplomatic immunity and for his service in attacking the hated Spanish, he was viewed with mixed feeling in his homeland as his fame had spread by this time.  The authorities banned piracy officially and condemned it and thought him a bad example, even if he exacted a toll on the Spanish economy which rivalled the Dutch and was still at war with them.  During one visit back to Amsterdam in 1622, the authorities located his first wife and their children in the hopes the sight of them would spurn him to give up his piracy, it failed.  To make matters worse, he had somewhat a folk hero appeal that lead several Dutchmen to actually leave behind their lives in Amsterdam and leave to join his crew for a life of piracy, a testament to the charisma he probably possessed.  His crew would have been multiethnic containing other Europeans including Dutch, Spanish, French, English and German crewmen alongside Arabs, Berbers and Turks.  Spanish & Arabic would have probably served as lingua francas onboard.

Return to Algiers...

-By 1627, the political situation in Morocco had deteriorated and for safety reasons he took his family to Algiers.  His son Anthony had by this time now an adult left Morocco for a life in the Netherlands and would eventually marry a Dutch woman and immigrate under the auspices of the Dutch West India Company to North America, settling in the colony of New Amsterdam, modern day New York City.  Anthony was known as Anthony Janszoon Van Salee in Dutch.  He was the first Muslim recorded to have been a long term settler in North America and kept the first known copy of a the Qu’ran in America as well, reputed to be a copy of the Moroccan Sultan’s personal Qu’ran which was a gift and a testament to the honorifics bestowed upon the Janszoon family.  Anthony became a successful farmer, landowner and merchant in New Amsterdam and helped found settlements that made up modern day Brooklyn, New York.  He was known to have an independent streak like his father and little regard for authority, making him a colorful character in colonial America.  Through Anthony, Jan has many living descendants in America (see my previous post on Anthony) including the Vanderbilt family which became wealthy in the 19th century. 

-Upon his return to Algiers, Jan resumed his piracy this time conducting two of his most famous raids in 1627 and 1631 respectively.  First, he had his crew leave from England northward to Iceland of all places, where they captured a couple hundred Icelanders and a few Danes from Denmark, all were sold into slavery in Algiers where Jan continued his large profits.  The second took place in Ireland at the village of Baltimore, once more he successfully made off with hundreds of prisoners, only two would ever return to Ireland.  This latter raid was lamented in the 19th century Thomas Davis poem The Sack of Baltimore.  In both instances, Jan’s crew went ashore and captured villagers from their homes, again using intimidation with probably only enough physical violence so as to intimidate and deter resistance.  In the case of the Baltimore raid, Jan’s crew attacked in the middle of the night abducting people from their sleep.

Capture...

-1635 saw Jan captured while at sea in the Eastern Mediterranean, captured by the Christian military order, the Knights of Rhodes or Knights Hospitaller.  He was kept on the island of Malta, the details of his confinement are murky, but he was known to have been beaten and subjected to torture though he never renounced Islam and was known to have become quite pious in his faith.  He encouraged many European captives to convert and spare themselves slavery as Islam forbids enslavement of other Muslims.  In fact, the Muslim view of Jan and his fellow Barbary pirates at the time was widely one of celebration and righteousness.  Not only did it provide economic benefit but the enslavement of non-Muslims was viewed as an act of almost holy war waged against infidel peoples and the pirates were warriors of Islam acting in a righteous manner.

-Jan’s imprisonment lasted five years until he was freed by Tunisian Barbary pirates in a raid on Malta.  He was heralded with great pomp in 1640 at his release having achieved fame in the Islamic world as well as have been a scourge to Christians in Europe.

Final return to Morocco...

-Jan was essentially in search of work despite his old age and feeble condition from his imprisonment.

-He returned to Morocco but not Sale where he made his name and fortune but instead, the new Sultan made him Governor of Oualidia further south on the Moroccan coast.  The modern day seaside resort had a unique lagoon and a new fortress or “Kasbah” was built specifically for Jan.  He also maintained a home in nearby Safi, no longer at sea, he retired and merely administered the area but appears to have been restored to his wealth, his wife Margarita is presumed to have predeceased him either in Algiers or Morocco before or during his imprisonment on Malta.

-In 1641 his daughter Lysbeth from his first marriage travelled with a Dutch embassy to Morocco to greet the new Sultan.  Lysbeth and her husband met with Jan, supposedly both on their docked ship and and his many homes, he was described as being enfeebled but surrounded by luxury and comfort attended to by servants.  Lysbeth stayed with her father for months, the only extended period of time since her childhood, presumably this meant despite his physical distance, their relationship was relatively good.

-No further sources of Jan’s life are known, its presumed he died shortly thereafter of natural causes and was buried in Safi, Morocco in an unmarked grave but no source has yet validated this.

[jeanjauthor]

In mediveal times how long did a noble family have to exist for to be considered noble and not new money? 10 year, 50 years (son/grandson), 100 years (great, or great-great-grandson), or something so big like 200 years?

I'm going to be bluntly honest.

I have no frikkin' idea.

But we can think it through logically, at least a little bit, as well as draw parallels to modern or recent-era situations that are similar.

(This post ended up rather long, so I’m inserting a Keep Reading cut for the rest of y’all...)

We have a lot more writings on the Georgian/Regency eras (1700s onward) regarding the newly rich versus old money...but that's because there were more opportunities to garner new wealth, through the exploitation and colonization of explorers in the Americas, merchants traveling overseas over much longer distances due to better ship design and navigational charts, etc.

We have complaints about sea captains buying noble titles, giving money to their sovereigns who, for whatever reason, needed more income than they garnered from taxes, etc. People who were ennobled for enslaving foreign regions and extracting local resources for European consumption, so on and so forth.

Part of that was because prior to the boom in exploitative exploration & colonization, there was literally only so much land that could be parceled out to heirs or sold to the newly wealthy merchant classes, and land was still seen as the biggest economic stimulus point (the constant need for herds and crops to feed everyone, etc).

Even mining operations and foundries for smelting iron, etc, were still not advanced enough to be productive enough, because science and technology weren't far enough along for these things to provide enough metal to spark the Industrial Revolution until the turn of the 1800s and later.

We can conclude that the means to amass a lot of wealth was, therefore, difficult to acquire prior to colonization and industrialization. This was not to say that it didn't happen! There were always wars against one's neighbors, there was cross-country trade that could make one rich, someone could stumble across a gold mine (literally, a source of precious metals), so on and so forth. The Crusades were initially about Christian religious fervor...and the acquisition of the wealth of their supposed enemies, the Muslims (who weren't enemies to begin with, btw).

People in the Middle East were literally sitting at a crossroads of trade between Europe, Africa, and Asia, so yes, they had access to a lot more cross-continental commerce than anywhere else. And when the invading crusaders brought back some of that wealth--spices, silks, exotic jewels, dyes, decorative objects, and ideas (yes, those can be a source of wealth! Cross-pollination between different groups sharing ideas almost always leads to new innovations!)--it sparked avarice in the hearts of a lot of people who saw a potential opportunity for acquiring more wealth.

Those who came back with that wealth...possibly bribed their sovereigns, bought lands, became the newly rich...except back then there wasn't quite the same class divide barrier to break. Because those who could afford to go to the Holy Land to conquer & rob it of its wealth had to be able to not only walk themselves there, with enough funds to provision themselves along the way, but needed the equipment to be able to successfully capture rich targets. Horses, armor, weapons, so on and so forth.

They'd also have to attach themselves to some noble's entourage if they weren't noble themselves, and that meant they'd have to share their plunder, etc...or be counted a brigand at best. (Let's be blunt, the difference between sanctioned plundering and brigandry is having the approval of a big group of people regarding your actions.) This meant that most of those that made their wealth off of the Crusades often did so as second and third and fifthborn sons, who weren't going to inherit much anyway--or bastard sons, who by law couldn't inherit without their family jumping through legal and liturgical hoops.

The ones who profited the most off of these plunder campaigns were therefore most likely already a part of the ruling class--or at least the mounted warrior class, which was seen as close enough to being the same thing. Compared to the long-distance merchant classes, who rode or sailed long distances to trade items only produced locally (and thus rare elsewhere) for exotic ones they could bring back and trade at home, the bastards and fourth-born sons had an easier time getting to be acknowledged as "acceptable new money."

Most merchants who did get wealthy tended to do so in free cities, or in city-states that were already mostly democratic (albeit the kind confined to wealthy male citizens) in nature, such as Venice and Genoa, where they did not have kings, or did not have a strong kingly or nobility presence (unlike Paris or London, etc, which were the seats of monarchial power).

But there is one more factor to consider: The Black Death.

Prior to the first major sweep of bubonic plague through Europe in the 1340s, the vast majority of European medieval life was pastorally centered, with the vast majority of people being serfs legally obligated to work the farms for the local lords, a few freemen, the clergy (who were slowly focusing on attaining lots of wealth themselves), and the nobles who were supposed to watch over and protect everyone from outside marauders, etc (to various degrees of belief & efficacy; some were genuinely good leaders who wanted to protect and share the wealth, while others were exploitative SOBs, and most were at some stage in between those two extremes).

When a quarter to a third of everyone died, however...that left crops rotting in the fields, people were weakened and devastated, whole reams of knowledge were lost with the deaths of those who were the masters of their crafts, and...well, the wealthy staggered under the weight. IF they survived themselves, of course.

The vast shift in the availability of workers meant the surviving workers started demanding many of the freedoms they had been previously denied--they literally took their possessions and left their serf-bound homes to go work for anyone who was willing to pay them a lot more and give them more legal freedoms. (Modern folks really need to take notes!) And because all ranks and stations were being hit more or less just as hard as any other caste level, that meant those who could have enforced the peasants staying on their lord's demense-lands were unable to bring enough of them into play to herd the wayward serfs back to their quasi-slavery.

After all, if you had 100 warriors, 50 of which were needed to keep a watch out for brigands and guard the castle, you could afford to send out 20-30 of them to spread out, search for, and round up a stray serf who had run away, while keeping the remainder in reserve. (Remember, serfs who ran away to free cities and stayed there successfully for a year-and-a-day were considered free men and could not be dragged back to their farms...but that left 366 days in which they could be caught and dragged back.)

But if you lost 30 of your warrior-class, you'd still need 50 to guard the castle and its lands--possibly more in such restless times!--and you'd only have 20 to spare, period. Which meant in a practical sense that you'd only have 5-10 at most you could send out (needing to keep a reserve at your home base), which meant searches for runaways were far less efficient--either they'd have to search fewer areas with large enough groups to capture and return, or they'd have to split up, find the serf, run for help, and hope the serf was still in that same area when they got back with enough forces to capture the serf without risking injury to themselves or to the peasant in question.

Prior to the Black Death, upward mobility was a rare thing--you practically had to save the life of the king in battle, etc. This was of course easier to do in the 700s than in the 1200s, but still not an easy thing. And even then, you'd have to prove you were "noble enough" to be accepted by the upper classes. We know this upward mobility of the wealthy-but-not-noble was restricted because we do have increasingly stiff sumptuary laws--aka what non-nobles were allowed to wear.

Literally, wearing winter ermine--the white fur of the ermine mustelid with the black-tip tails--was reserved for royalty and very high ranked clergy and sometimes very high ranked nobility depending on timeperiod and culture. Indeed, a lot of furs became increasingly social-rank-dependent, to the point that only squirrel fur was considered "open for everyone." Yes, only squirrels, because even rabbits were considered to "belong" to the local lord, and poaching them for eating, never mind for wearing, became a punishable crime.

You had to have permission from your social betters to wear luxurious furs and other items....so we can conclude that upward mobility was not much of a thing...up until the devastation of the Black Death upended social order, and the vast majority of people seized back many of their natural rights and forced social status mobility upon those who held all the wealth and the power. (*ahem* Do Take Notes, People. *stares in Covid Pandemic* (Yes, I have no chill on this point, there are TOO MANY PARALLELS to what we're suffering today, socio-economically.))

Anyway! if you're thinking medieval pre-pandemic, there wasn't as much social mobility. Post-pandemic (and there were several waves of the Black Death and other plagues, btw, including a devastaing plague in 1655, not just the most famous one of the late 1340s/early 1350s), there was a lot more elbow room for jostling your way toward the top.

However, the best hope one could have for social mobility was to buy into a noble family. Usually via a marriage contract, wherein the non-noble brought in a great deal of wealth to a potentially impoverished noble family, with their offspring to be considered part of the noble family.

This was often done by someone with an ongoing source of wealth, such as merchant enterprises, or someone who could, say, create exceptional glassware, or whose family line held trade secrets in a lucrative profession, such as the thread-of-gold makers in London, ladies who were taught the secrets from an early age and whose skills were sought far and wide--or the lacemakers of certain regions in France, the Low Countries, southern England... Though to say it was "often" done isn't exactly an indication that it was done often, just that it was more likely a means to acquiring social status than saving the life of a king, etc.

So those are several of the possible ways to become wealthy and high in social status. As for "new rich vs old money"...that's a complex and lesser known subject. Most of the records we have from the medieval era were from legal documents and/or household ledgers, neither of which lend themselves to including personal annotations on things like, "A suckling pig and 2 pounds 16 shillings - Mercantile Atteborough paid this much to be included as an honored guest at the Feast of St. Barnabas in my southern manor keep."

Or maybe, "Goodwife Ashton paid 20 shillings to be able to wear a mantle lined with sable marten fur throughout the winter despite it being above her station, the rude hen" or "My son decided to give a length of silk to the village baker's daughter, even though I told him that she had no right to wear such things until after they were wed and elevated into the family fold..."

We do have a few sources mentioning such things from earlier eras, but writing was such a laborious process, the materials so costly (parchment is literally the inner shaved skin of an animal, often a goat or a sheep, and nowhere near as cheap as paper to produce...but paper breaks down so much faster than parchment over time), that most people tended to not meander about various subjects, but instead saved writing for "truly important" subjects--keeping monetary accounts, tallying things for tax-time, writing about God, and for those few scholars who had the wealth and support system, writing about the natural world, the dawning of science and reason, so on and so forth.

So we don't know how much these things were considered, only that they were considered to at least some small extent.

With all that said, we do know that the longer a family bloodline remains in power, the more determined they are to keep that power, which means concentrating it in the upper classes. (This is dangerous biologically, as inbreeding is...um...yeah. BAD.) In later years, those being allowed to join by marriage would be under heavy expectations to fit in, obey the head of the household/bloodline, and copy the manners and traditions of the class they were joining. But again, not many records of this.

Not all marriages were made for love. We see love as a marital concept among the higher classes only being developed after the rules of Courtly Love had been established for long enough that love as a possibility for high-ranked persons was considered possible. Prior to that, it had been as much or more a business transaction to increase familial power and wealth. But while for the common peasant a marriage was often made based on love and/or compatibility/mutual respect, there were still plenty of families in the in-between ranks who insisted on deliberately matchmaking or at least vetting "prospects" by how much wealth or social power each party or family held.

Again, we don't know how much the consideration of depth of a family's noble or wealthy lineage played into these calculations in the Middle Ages. We do know from the post-colonial era that many noble families back in Europe were scandalized by colonists & other overseas exploiters making loads of money and then not only trying to buy themselves a noble title, but in trying to act like they were the social equals ot the nobility.

"American heiresses" (or anyone from any overseas colony) would come to places like London to enjoy "high civilization." When they did so, their wealth would attract prospective grooms, but their breeding (aka, lack of it) would almost invariably scandalize the prospective groom's social peers and/or family members...until the Industrial Revolution created so many rich "commoners" that the nobles actually lost most of their social status power.

This nobility clout faded especially when America came to economic and cultural prominence on the world stage--a land that prided itself on having zero nobles...but that was not to say America didn't (and doesn't) have a ruling class. We just use different names, and we still have our own Old Money groups, who hoard the reigns of power for themselves and their heirs. Rockefeller is a family name known throughout the nation, as is any politician named Kennedy, for example--and now we have names like Gates and Bezos and Musk...though Gates is technically more old-money than the latter two. (Slightly.)

Unfortunately for the Old Money groups, it is now far too easy for "upstarts" to make billions, diminishing the Old Family names...but make no mistake: Most of these new billionaires still come from money, because they've leveraged their older family ties and associations to wedge themselves into these positions of visible economic power. (Musk bought himself into Tesla; he didn't actually found it. Gates, on the other hand, actually did found MicroSoft and did a lot of the actual programming work in his early days.)

...With all of that said, we only need to look at one more item to determine how long it would take Newly Rich to become Old Money: Time. Depending upon the region and the era...? About 3-4 generations would be my best guess.

Life was short and hard for many people in the Middle Ages, due to the lack of advanced healthcare, with a lot of people dying fairly early on from infections, illnesses, injuries, and the like. While the upper classes would have a lot more access to good food and be less likely to suffer from famines, giving them a better chance at a longer life due to having their nutritional needs met and their bodyfat being a little higher (it's a cushion against ilnesses and injuries, folks; stop being fatphobic!), they would still suffer, and often die much younger than a typical modern-day person might, even one living in modern-day poverty. (Wear your goddamn masks, people!! *ahem*)

When you live in a world where getting to live to be a grandparent or even a great-grandparent is a solid accomplishment, changes will be accepted much more quickly by each successive generation. Mostly because "that's the way it's always been" will have a shorter timeframe needed, due to the lack of grandparents raging on and on about "...that old upstart Timothy bought himself land and the funs to put up a keep on it! He's no more a lord than George the Goose Boy!"

The longer something goes unchallenged in the day-to-day lives of the people experiencing it, the more it seems like it should exist that way. (*STARES HARD AT THE LAST 40 YEARS OF ECONOMIC SUPPRESSIONS.*) And by that metric, given the average shorter lifespans even if you don't count early childhood deaths in mortality statistics across the broad span of medieval times in Europe...it wouldn't take more than 60 or so years for everyone locally to accept that New Money is now Old Money.

...Or that acceptance could happen even faster, if the New Money is clever enough to "share the wealthy" by investing their time, money, and effort in building good relations with their wealthy/high-class "neighbors." This would include publicly deferring to "their betters" and copying the social mannerisms of the upper class without mockery and without overstepping the bounds of what they could reasonably be allowed to do with their newfound status. Truly savy social climbers would be cautious and smart about flaunting their new power, planning for the long term haul rather than reveling too much in the moment.

Note that this statement is building good relations, not spending absurd amounts of money on lavish parties, ostentatious clothing, etc...which brings us to the Old Money side of the equation. Again, this is based in my observations on various peripheral socio-economic factors, and not on direct evidence.

The one thing that would irk the Old Money types pretty much every single time is newcomers being overly flamboyant with their wealth. Especially since the flamboyantly wealthy often end up the stupidly impoverished within a short span of time--to be accepted, the newly rich would have to understand the balance between claiming their wealth and status, and investing it to maintain that power. Wasting it wouldn't be viewed well by those who were raised generation after generation with lessons of how to maintain, expand, and increase their family's wealth and power.

It would be far better for a rising family to absorb and adopt higher-ranking privileges slowly and steadily, rather than greedily grabbing at all of it, all at once. And if they reach out to a neighboring Old Money family "for advice" and show some humility, moderate amounts of flattery (again, not in excess), asking to be treated like a nephew or niece in need of a mentorship, the Old Money family might actually take a proprietary interest in this upcoming family, giving them lessons, helping them get better access to things that were reserved for the upper classes.

Flattery is only good in the long term if there is some genuine sincerety behind it (or the one you are flattering is a narcissist, but they rarely hold onto power for long without serious help from outsiders). Instruction can be obtained with flattery, but also by in being respectfully attentive. And making sure you're not a rival to the Old Money neighbors around you can go a long way toward gaining their acceptance, too. By handling one's rise to power with these things in mind, it could actually allow the Newly Rich to be accepted that much faster, to within a matter of years or decades (with a great deal of luck), if not by one or two generations sooner than usual.

As mentioned above, sometimes Old Money doesn't actually still have the wealth that everyone assumes they have, and they need to accept New Money into their family--aka via an economically advantageous marriage. Sometimes they do have that money, but the sources of reliable wealth and political power are shifting, and the Old Family wishes to diversify its portfolio (so to speak). And sometimes they just want to diversify their power structure. This can include gaining access to up-and-coming industries, being able to have a say in how and where they're used (iron smelting, for example).

Just be aware of the fact that most of the time, if anyone accepted Newly Rich into their Old Money family, it was often an established male accepting a rich but socially-lesser female--aka the "American heiress" syndrome mentioned earlier. While the heiress wives would be...tolerated...if they toed the line, only their children would be considered "much more socially acceptable" because it would be presumed their fathers were raising the children in the Old Money Ways.

(Keep in mind that this is a worldwide trait for patriarchal cultures, not just European in nature. For far too many years, India's caste system allowed women from a lower caste to marry into an upper caste rank, but men were not supposed to marry a woman from a higher caste. This was a method used by the upper casts to deliberately focus familial power higher and higher on the social ladder. And, of course, it allowed high-caste males the social access/right to marry gorgeous low-caste women.)

Most females in a patriarchal society would not get the chance to marry into New Money unless they genuinely had a choice. Most often, they did not, because their families would want to continue concentrating their influence (including matrilineal! revisit this video I posted a while back on just how much influence a matrilineal family line could have on European politics: https://youtu.be/sl4WtajjMks ) into known avenues of power and influence.

...One last caveat: prior to the invasion of the British Isles by the Normans, who treated the local Anglo-Saxons, Celts, etc, as conquered peoples, replacing their nobility with incoming Normans who fight alongside William the Conqueror, many of whom were literally ennobled and given titles and lands etc, practically on the spot just for being a fellow Norman fighter...social mobility into the ranks of the nobility was easier.

If you had the money, the resources, the horses, etc...boom, you were a part of the local power structure. Afterward, there was a stronger incentive to diminish local power & wealth in favor of emphasizing incoming invaders' power and wealth, to be able to subjugate away those who were the original locals. This led to a lot of suppression of social mobility in order to retain power. Not just in the British Isles but elsewhere, as other regions heard of what the Normans were doing, and decided to do it themselves to their own people.

Prior to the 1066 invasion, it was possible for a warrior of commoner birth to go off raiding and looting, bring home a lot of wealth, and be lauded for his (or her!) rise in socio-economic standing. (Whether or not they were Northmen who went a-viking, since plenty of peoples did go raiding for wealth, etc; Scandinavians were just really good at it, far more so than most of the peoples they raided.)

Post-invasion, those in power started to choke down on who could do what, when, how, where, and with whomever else in order to consolidate their socio-economic power. (Seriously, sumptuary laws are mostly a post-1066 thing, along with strict laws of serfdom, up until the Black Death turned everything upside-down.)

So if you're writing a story set prior to the 1000s, there'll be much more opportunity for wealth-based social mobility and its acceptance. But afterwards, much less. But this exists on a continuum/spectrum that varies not only depending on what timeframe the story would exist in, but also where in terms of location, and what kind of social rise-to-power avenue is taken.

After all, someone gaining a lot of money in Genoa or Venice through trade would be heavily lauded by their home society, whereas someone doing the same in, say, Krakow (deep-continent) would be viewed far less companionably by the upper-classes, because trade was not as huge a part of their local culture--trade existed, but it wasn't central to how the locals & their rulers viewed themselves.

Like I said, I don't frikkin know for sure; there isn't enough hands-on documentation in common circulation. But humans have been humaning since before written records began, and we can make some reasonable guesses to help fill in the gaps.

(And if anyone claims you got it wrong, just cry "--IT'S FICTION!! It doesn't HAVE to be that accurate!!")

[kingdomofthelogos]

Pray for Spiritual Warfare

Read 1 Peter 4

In 1 Peter 4, St. Peter is giving wisdom to his people for spiritual warfare, and he begins by addressing suffering. God may have not created you to suffer, but He did not create you to avoid suffering either. Moreover, good things can come out of suffering, for Christ Himself suffered and died on a cross that eternal life may be purchased. The early church endured a great deal, even frequent martyrdom. Despite this, the church  flourished. They were serious about evangelism, and understood that life with Jesus was more meaningful than any slavery to sin.

There is one large difference between the cultural battle of our time and that of when Peter is writing this book, and while it does not even remotely diminish the value of Peter’s words, it is important for us to understand. At the time of Peter’s words, Rome was overwhelmingly pagan and had been historically pagan. The church was laboring to convert pagans, and thus their suffering was from a hostile world that resisted the church’s ministry. The impulse of their suffering comes from a pagan culture that was being converted into Christianity. To contrast this, America was historically Christian, but that era has ended. Moreover, we are now in an era where the old pagan ideas have returned and are bludgeoning any semblance of God from our nation. Whereas in Peter’s time the church was the assertive body seeking to convert their neighbors, in our time, the assertive belief system dominating our culture is pagan.

How did we get here, and how do we bring Jesus to our neighbors so they can find the joy and meaning God has in store for them? If you watch crime television shows or movies, you have probably heard the term modus operandi, or m.o., which refers to the mode of operation used by a villain to carry out their misdeeds. Let us learn a new term: modus deceptio. This term, which literally means mode of deception, can be simply understood as “how did we get here?” The modus deceptio is how one is ensnared in sin, error, and all wiles of evil and torment. In our modern era, we are afflicted by a peculiar affliction where we as a people cannot tell the difference between truth, error, and outright lies. This term, modus deceptio, can help understand how we got here and thus how we can better fight the spiritual warfare of our age.

In the garden, the modus deceptio for Adam was passivity. Had he been the man that God designed him to be, he would have stepped in and led his wife away from the curse. This passivity still plagues us today, wherein we fall for lies and ignore immorality. Where a man’s wrath may inflict tyranny on those under his power, we must remember that sin works in many ways, and the sin of cowardice and passivity will curse generations well into the future. 

Eve’s modus deceptio in the garden was giving an ear to one who didn’t deserve it, a modus deceptio many often fall into today. Not all voices are equally truthful, and not all are worthy of an ear. Even among sinners, some are willing to receive the Gospel and others only want to sow destruction. It is a modus deceptio to believe that all are worthy of an ear.

Daniel Defoe, the Presbyterian Novelist who authored Robinson Crusoe, stated that “wherever God erects a house of prayer, the Devil always builds a chapel there; and 'twill be found upon examination the latter has the largest congregation.”  We must understand that some ideas are framed in mischief, and what this means is that many of the destructive things stolen into our culture are things that were designed for failure. Many people were sold on social causes, political movements, and even snares for the church such as replacing evangelism with intercultural studies. However, we sit down and examine the fruits of these movements, none of these have done what they purported to do, but have precisely made worse the problems the claimed intentions of fixing. But, in truth, these things were not designed to succeed in their intentions, but only to separate people from what makes them healthy and whole: they were meant to remove Jesus and destroy the family.

Hell came to broken people, and convinced them that the restraints of Christianity was the cause of their misery, and that if they would remove God and buckle down in their vices and desires then they would find joy. If they would fasten themselves to the latest social fad they would find fulfillment. The Lord teaches us we don’t know wicked ideas by how clever their words are, but by their fruits. These hellish lifestyles and modes of thinking have been in our culture long enough that we can weigh these fruits, and they are miserable.

In the time of Peter’s writing, many in the church were former pagans, who were ensnared by the temptations to return to their ungodly ways. Peter assures them that if they suffer, may it not be because they returned to the paganism that once enslaved them. We are subdued by passivity, by an inability to calculate how hot the fire is next to us. Hell has had a long time to refine its deceptions, and the fig leaves and falsehoods that permit people to carry on in their passivity are by design. We are at risk of forsaking our heritage to step into the miserable sufferings of hell.

Jesus alone can make people healthy and whole, and yet many of our neighbors do not know him. They are unhappy, but rather than coming to Jesus they buy into untrue belief systems and lifestyles that were never capable of bringing them salvation nor even designed to do so. The devil does not have to build a counterfeit that works, just one that people will bite into, for his goal is to separate people from Jesus. For some time I have understood that in the same way that God’s grace comes to people before they know Him, the devil has his wicked version of this too, wherein he comes to people as early as possible to turn them away from God before they even understand it. I have finally been revealed the word for this: tenderizing. Tenderizing is the devil's antonym and imitation of prevenient grace.

Peter encouraged the church to be wise in their spiritual battle. They were assertive in their faith, willing to suffer and die for the name of Jesus. As a result, numbers were being added to them day by day. Let us not fall for a modus deceptio of passivity, where something so petty as comfort keeps us from teaching our neighbors about Christ Jesus who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. Sin is miserable, giving an ever increasing desire in exchange for an ever diminishing return. Many are trapped in counterfeits, and some have wantonly given themselves over to the devil. May we not avoid spiritual warfare, but actively seek it.

[spiced-wine-fic]

[Quote] historians such as Oscar and Mary Handlin, Edmund Morgan and Edward Rugemer have largely confirmed Du Bois’s suspicion that while xenophobia appears to be fairly universal among human groupings, the invention of a white racial identity was motivated from the start by a need to justify the enslavement of Africans. In the words of Eric Williams, a historian who later became the first president of Trinidad, “slavery was not born of racism: rather, racism was the consequence of slavery”.

If you asked an Englishman in the early part of the 17th century what colour skin he had, he might very well have called it white. But the whiteness of his skin would have suggested no more suitable basis for a collective identity than the roundness of his nose or the baldness of his head. If you asked him to situate himself within the rapidly expanding borders of the known world, he would probably identify himself, first and most naturally, as an Englishman. If that category proved too narrow – if, say, he needed to describe what it was he had in common with the French and the Dutch that he did not share with Ottomans or Africans – he would almost certainly call himself a Christian instead.

That religious identity was crucial for the development of the English slave trade – and eventually for the development of racial whiteness. In the early 17th century, plantation owners in the West Indies and in the American colonies largely depended on the labour of European indentured servants. These servants were considered chattel and were often treated brutally – the conditions on Barbados, England’s wealthiest colony, were notorious – but they were fortunate in at least one respect: because they were Christian, by law they could not be held in lifetime captivity unless they were criminals or prisoners of war.

Africans enjoyed no such privilege. They were understood to be infidels, and thus the “perpetual enemies” of Christian nations, which made it legal to hold them as slaves. [unquote]

[frangelic999]

Villains of All Nations

     I'm reading a really interesting book about pirates, Villains of All Nations, by Marcus Rediker, and I just want to share some excerpts because it's extremely good. It explains that the terror of piracy was born from a different kind of terror, "practiced by … ministers, royal officials, wealthy men; in short, rulers – as they sought to eliminate piracy as a crime against mercantile property … in truth, the keepers of the state in this era were themselves terrorists of a sort, decades before the word terrorist would acquire its modern meaning … they have become, over the years, cultural heroes, even founding fathers of a sort. Theirs was a terror of the strong against the weak." Pirates, in response, "consciously used terror to accomplish their aims … This they did in the name of a different social order … In truth, pirates were terrorists of a sort. And yet we do not think of them in this way. They have become, over the years, cultural heroes, perhaps antiheroes, and at the very least romantic and powerful figures in an American and increasingly global popular culture. Theirs was a terror of the weak against the strong. It formed one essential part of a dialectic of terror, which was summarized in the decision of the authorities to raise the Jolly Roger above the gallows when hanging pirates: one terror trumped the other." Long post about pirates ahead. Henceforth all bolded text is mine, the rest is from the book:

On the hanging of the pirate William Fly in 1726: Fly, however, did not ask for forgiveness, did not praise the authorities, and did not affirm the values of Christianity, as he was supposed to do, but he did issue a warning … he proclaimed his final, fondest wish: that "all Masters of Vessels might take Warning by the Fate of the Captain (meaning Captain Green) the he had murder'd, and to pay Sailors their Wages when due, and to treat them better; saying, that their Barbarity to them made so many turn Pyrates." Fly thus used his last breath to protest the conditions of work at sea, what he called "Bad Usage." He would be launched into eternity with the brash threat of mutiny on his lips.

 As we will see, poor seamen who turned pirate dramatized concerns of class. Formerly enslaved Africans or African Americans who turned pirate posed questions of race. Women who turned pirate called attention to the conventions of gender. And all people who turned pirate and sailed under "their own dark flag," the Jolly Roger, enacted a highly political play about the nation … When pirates stitched together the black flag, the antinational symbol of a gang of proletarian outlaws, they "declared war against the world."

 The multiethnic freebooters of 1716-26 numbered around four thousand over the decade. They wreaked havoc in the Atlantic system by capturing hundreds of merchant ships, many of which they burned or sank, and all  of which they plundered of valuable cargo. They disrupted trade in strategic zones of capital accumulation – the West Indies, North America, and West Africa – at a time when the recently stabilized and expanding Atlantic economy was the source of enormous profits and renewed imperial power. Usually sailors joined pirate ships after working on merchant and naval ships, where they suffered cramped quarters, poor victuals, brutal discipline, low wages, devastating diseases, disabling accidents, and premature death. Piracy, as we will see, offered the prospect of plunder and "ready money," abundant food and drink, the election of officers, the equal distribution of resources, care for the injured, and joyous camaraderie, all as expressions of an ethic of justice … Piracy may have held out hope for a good life, but it was not to be a long one.

 Many pirates, like Fly ... used the occasion for one last act of subversion. An endless train of pirates walked defiantly to the gallows and taunted the higher powers when they got there. Facing the steps and the rope in the Bahamas in 1718, pirate Thomas Morris expressed a simple wish: to have been "a greater plague to these islands." John Gow, who was a very strong man, broke the gallows rope at his hanging in 1726. He went to "ascend the ladder a second time, which he did with very little concern, dying with the same brutal ferocity which animated all his actions while alive."

 In 1720, when eight members of the crew of Bartholomew Roberts were captured and tried in Virginia, they were rowdy and outrageous ...They went to their deaths bidding defiance to mercy … "When they came to the Place of Execution one of them called for a bottle of wine, and taking a glass of it, he drank Damnation to the Governour and Confusion to the Colony, which the rest pledged."

 The drama played out again and again. When the fifty-two members of Roberts's crew were hanged at Cape Coast Castle in 1722 before a concourse of Europeans and Africans, a group of pirates explained: "They were poor rogues, and so must be hanged while others, no less guilty in another way, escaped." They referred to the wealthy rogues who bilked sailors of their rightful wages and proper food and thereby turned many of them toward piracy.

 When Bartholomew Roberts and his men learned that the governor and council of Nevis had executed some pirates in 1720, they were so outraged that they sailed into Basseterre's harbor, set several vessels on fire, and offered a big bounty to anyone who would deliver the responsible officials to their clutches so that justice could be served … They made good on such bluster when they happened to take a French vessel carrying the governor of Martinique, who had also hanged some members of "the brotherhood." Roberts took revenge by hanging the poor governor from his own yardarm. Thus did the pirates practice terror against the state terrorists. It was a war of nerves – one hanging for another – and constituted a cycle of violence.

On the use of terror by pirates:

Pirates used terror for several reasons: to avoid fighting; to force disclosure of information about where booty was hidden; and to punish ship captains. The first point to be emphasized is that pirates did not want to fight, no matter how bloodthirsty their image was in their own day and in ours. As Stanley Richards has written, "It was their ambition to acquire plunder and live to enjoy the pleasures that it brought them. A battle might deprive them of that ease of life. Hence on the chance occasion when they had to go into action against another ship, it was looked upon by them as almost a repulsive necessity. They were after booty, not blood." … Harsh treatment of those who resist, announced the Boston News-Letter in June 1718, "so intimidates the sailors that they refuse to fight when the pirates attack them." After all, the pirates would ask: why are you risking your life to protect the property of merchants and ship captains who treat you so poorly? … In this practice of violence, pirates were no different from naval or privateering ships, who practiced the same methods. Indeed, a portion of pirate terror was the standard issue of war making, which pirates undertook without the approval of any nation-state … Pirates also practiced violence against the prize ship's cargo, destroying massive amounts of property in the most furious and wanton ways … They descended into the holds of ships like "a Parcel of Furies," slashing boxes and bales of goods with their cutlasses, throwing valuable goods overboard, and laughing uproariously as they did so. They also destroyed a large number of ships … They practiced indirect terror against the owners of mercantile property.

On the pirate social order:

We will see that the early-eighteenth-century pirate ship was a world turned upside down, made so by the articles of agreement that established the rules and customs of the pirates' alternative social order. Pirates "distributed justice," elected their officers, divided their loot equally, and established a different discipline. They limited the authority of the captain, resisted many of the practices of capitalist merchant shipping industry, and maintained a multicultural, multiracial, and multinational social order. They demonstrated quite clearly – and subversively – that ships did not have to be run in the brutal and oppressive ways of the merchant service and the Royal Navy.

 For, as it happened, there were not merely two kinds of terror, the terror of the gallows and the terror of the Jolly Roger, but three. To understand William Fly and his dispute with the ministers of Boston, to understand the gallows drama repeated in one Atlantic port after another, and, most important, to understand the very explosion of piracy in the eighteenth century, we must attend to what Fly said of “Bad Usage,” of how his captain and mate used and abused him and his brother tars, treating them “barbarously,” as if they were “dogs.” He was talking about the violent disciplinary regime of the eighteenth-century deep-sea sailing ship, the ordinary and pervasive violence of labor discipline as practiced by the ship captain as he moved the commodities that were the lifeblood of the capitalist world economy. Even though there is no surviving evidence to show exactly what Captain Green did to Fly and the other sailors aboard the Elizabeth to produce the rage, the mutiny, the murder, and the decision to turn pirate, it is not hard to imagine. The High Court of Admiralty records for this period are replete with bloody accounts of lashings, tortures, and killings. Fly was talking about the ship captain as terrorist.

 On the necessity of labor for imperial designs:

The sailor knew that thousands of people were moving and laboring around the Atlantic, some willingly, some unwillingly, with many of them, like himself, subjected to violence. By 1716 a worldwide process of expropriation, called primitive accumulation, had already torn millions of people from their ancestral lands in Europe, Africa, and the Americas. … The enclosure movement and other mechanisms of dispossession had set thousands in motion on the roads and ways of England in particular and Europe in general. Masses of people flocked to the cities, where they found work, frequently as waged laborers, in manufacturing and especially in armies and navies, as war required vast amounts of labor. Hundreds of thousands more would embark for colonial plantations as laborers, whether free or unfree. Expropriation had “freed” millions of workers for redeployment to the far-flung edges of empire, often as indentured servants or slaves, on plantations that would produce what may have been the largest planned accumulation of wealth the world had yet seen. It was said that sugar, the leading and most lucrative Atlantic commodity of the eighteenth century, was made with blood. By 1716 big planters drove armies of servants and slaves as they expanded their power from their own lands to colonial and finally national legislatures. Atlantic empires mobilized labor power on a new and unprecedented scale, largely through the strategic use of violence—the violence of land seizure, of expropriating agrarian workers, of the Middle Passage, of exploitation through labor discipline, and of punishment (often in the form of death) against those who dared to resist the colonial order of things. By all accounts, by 1713 the Atlantic economy had reached a new stage of maturity, stability, and profitability. The growing riches of the few depended on the growing misery of the many.

On the shift in attitude toward pirates:

The sailor knew that the rulers of the Atlantic empires had taken a harsh new view of pirates as the enemies of imperial designs rather than as allies who might help to accomplish them. For much of the seventeenth century, pirates had been indirectly employed by the Netherlands, France, and England to harass Portugal and especially Spain in the New World, as well as to capture a portion of their glittering wealth. Operating largely from Caribbean islands, especially Jamaica, the sea rovers sacked Spanish American ports such as Veracruz and Panama City, repeatedly trashing Catholic churches and in many instances toting back to their ships as much silver plate as they could carry. But by the 1680s ruling-class attitudes had changed. Jamaica’s bigwigs could make more money, more predictable money, by cultivating sugar, and members of Parliament in England sought a more stable and reliable system of international trade. Pirates, who disrupted both projects, began to be hanged in significant numbers in the 1690s. According to historian Max Savelle, the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713 “was thought of, both in Europe and in America, as a settlement that would establish a lasting peace in America, based on the principle of the balance of colonial power.” Britain in particular hoped so because its traders, at home and in the colonies (especially Jamaica), had won the Asiento, an agreement with the Spanish government that allowed them officially to import 4,800 slaves per year and to smuggle a huge number more. The “Returns of the Assiento and private Slave-Trade” proved a more dependable way to exploit Spanish wealth. Pirates now stood squarely in the way of the hoped-for stability and profits.

 On sailors' methods of resistance:

The sailor who embraced the Jolly Roger after 1716 came from a potent experience of life and labor in a wooden world. The sailor’s workplace, the deep-sea sailing ship, was something of a factory in those days, a place where “hands”—those who owned no property and who therefore sold their labor for a money wage—cooperated to make the machine go. Sailing these small, brittle wooden vessels over the forbidding oceans of the globe, the seaman took part in a profoundly collective work experience, one that required carefully synchronized cooperation with other maritime workers for the sake of survival. Facing a ship captain of almost unlimited disciplinary power and an ever readiness to use the cat-o’-nine-tails, the sailor developed an array of resistances against such concentrated authority that featured desertion, work stoppages, mutinies, and strikes. Indeed, the sailor would invent the strike during a wage dispute in London in 1768 when he and his mates went from ship to ship, striking—lowering—the sails in an effort to make merchants grant their demands. Facing such natural and man-made dangers, which included a chronic scarcity of food and drink and a galling system of hierarchy and privilege, the sailor learned the importance of equality: his painfully acquired experience told him that a fair distribution of risks would improve everyone’s chances for survival. Separated from loved ones and the rest of society for extended periods, the sailor developed a distinctive work culture with its own language, songs, rituals, and sense of brotherhood. Its core values were collectivism, anti-authoritarianism, and egalitarianism, all of which were summarized in the sentence frequently uttered by rebellious sailors: “they were one & all resolved to stand by one another.” All of these cultural traits flowed from the work experience, and all would influence both the decision to turn pirate and how pirates would conduct themselves thereafter, as we will see in subsequent chapters.

[gardenofkore]

The Sicilians who appear in the 1282-1337 records are consumers rather than traders, individuals seeking or disposing of domestic servants, but not otherwise engaged in the large-scale commerce. Slaves were generally not used for farming. This had long been the norm in Mediterranean practice, but particular reasons existed for Sicily's avoidance of putting slaves in the field. These reasons were largely structural, as outlined earlier. In those few places where bound peasant manorialism was still practiced, slave labor would have been redundant.  And the great bulk of agricultural labor was drawn from the nearby towns and villages, owing to the mingling of the rural and village micro-economies; workers were hired in the towns and given wages in lieu of plots of land. Moreover, the war years before 1302 and after 1317 disrupted agricultural life to a sufficient degree that despite the flight from the land surplus pools of agricultural labor still existed in many areas, which forced a decline in wages for field workers. Putting slaves, whom it required a significant outlay of capital to acquire, to work on the land was thus neither necessary nor financially sensible.  [...]

Thus slavery remained essentially an urban phenomenon, and the slaves, whether Muslim or Greek, female or male, were pressed either into domestic service or shop labor. A general sense of their tasks and relative status emerges from a close reading of the extant documents, since slave records utilized a consistent vocabulary in describing types of slaves. Among females, for example, an ancilla was a general house-servant or lady's maid, whereas a serva commonly worked at menial tasks either in the family shop or in the kitchen. Thus the wealthy Messinese merchant Nicola Cappellano, in his 1296 will, bequeathed the ancilla Giovanna to tend to his widow's personal needs in the house in which, although he bequeathed it to the Greek monks of S. Giorgio, his wife would live out her days. References to ancillae appear most frequently in wills like this, especially in well-to-do merchant and professional families, and reflect a dying husband's last attempt to provide for the wife he is leaving behind; but they are common as well in records of purchases made directly by the wives themselves, either when their husbands were still alive (in order to acquire the necessary help in maintaining the daily household) or after their deaths. Widowhood prompted many women to purchase new domestics, possibly as much for companionship as for services rendered. In these cases, the ancilla was usually purchased with funds specifically bequeathed for that purpose. Other widows, needing ready cash to settle their late husbands' debts, found it necessary to sell their ancillae as soon as their mates had departed. This was the case with Margarita Ricci of Palermo, who had to sell her "ancillam nigram sarracenam nomine Misuda" in June 1308 in order to cover an outstanding debt to the Messinese merchant Filippo Lacerta. Lastly, foreign merchants residing in Sicily, prominent figures who required servants to provide for them on their travels, also owned domestic workers. Resident traders from Majorca, Barcelona, Tarragona, Genoa, and Pisa all purchased or sold ancillae in Palermo, for private domestic use, in a single ninemonth period according to Bartolomeo di Citella's notarial register for 1307-8. The higher price commanded by ancillae, compared to servae, and the fact that no minor age ancillae appear anywhere in the extant records, whereas servae are documented as young as two years of age, further suggests that just such a division of labor existed among female captives. [...] 

The great majority of slaves, whether female or male, were Muslim; prior to the eastern conquests, only 5-10 percent of slaves were Greek. No Jewish slaves were to be found, of course, since Jews remained technically under the protection of the church and were therefore supposedly immune from slavery - but also because, by a longstanding cultural tradition, any captive Jew who might have shown up in port was usually purchased and manumitted by a fellow Jew. Slaves were brought to market from Rhodes, from "Turkia," from "Russia," from "Dalmatia," and from the "partibus Sclavonic," showing the broad compass of the international shipping that passed through Sicily's waters. Females were strongly preferred to males, as shown not only by their more frequent appearance in sales records - they represented 60-65 percent of all slaves sold - but also by the higher price they commanded. The mean price of a young adult female slave was 5.15.00, compared to 4.15.00 for males. The domestic uses to which slaves were put did not generally require the males' superior strength. Female procreative ability, quite apart from whatever specialized skills they might have possessed, clearly was the dominant factor in causing their higher price levels, as the children of female slaves - fathered at will, presumably, by the slave owners themselves - were likewise enslaved, thus giving the slave owner a steady supply of captive labor without the additional expense of new purchases. Moreover, Muslim slaves, unlike Greek or Slavic ones, were always identified as being either white (albus), olive-skinned (olivacius), or black (niger), with the lighter-skinned captives being much preferred. These classifications may delineate ethnic differences between Arabs, Persians, and Turks; but they also help, on occasion, to identify slaves of sub-Saharan origin, when they are accompanied in the document by the slave's name. Thus, for example, the olive-skinned Fatima whom Pachomeo Bernotto sold to Giovanni Malfrida on 26 September 1307 was likely an Arab woman, whereas the black-skinned Busa sold the following day by Nicoloso Mostardo of Genoa to Orazio Cansario of Palermo was, to judge by her name, perhaps Ethiopian.  Other names of darkskinned Muslims that suggest African origins are Massandi, Amiri, Hamutus, Ashera, Musata, and Sadona, although such attributions are tentative, owing to problems of medieval orthography.

Two remaining factors determined a slave's value: faith and age. To be a sarracenus in Sicily was a matter of race rather than religion, and consequently the market differentiated between Muslim Saracens and Christian Saracens - that is to say, slaves who had been baptized. The latter comprised two types, those who had voluntarily converted to Christianity, and those fathered by the Christian slave owner, who automatically received baptism, though not freedom, at birth. No clear pattern emerges when one compares the data on baptized Muslims with unbaptized, except for the fact that Jews were not allowed to own Christianized slaves. (They appear frequently as owners of Muslim slaves, however.) Mean prices for converted and unconverted captives are virtually identical, although the figures may be somewhat misleading since the ages of Christianized slaves were, for reasons that are not clear, seldom recorded.19 Age was an important factor, though one not applied systematically. In general, slaves under the age of five were of little value, since health hazards made their survival a matter of some doubt; they often sold for as little as 00.15.00. Similarly, slaves over the age of thirty saw their market value decline sharply unless they possessed a unique skill. The price required, however, for their manumission, if they were in a position to bargain for it, rose steadily beyond that age. This trend possibly hints at the general life expectancy of slaves, and certainly suggests a cynical attempt by slave owners to take advantage of a growing sense of desperation felt by aging slaves - a willingness to pay even grossly inflated prices in order to live free in one's last years. Thus Matteo Synga of Palermo and his wife Giovanna were able to demand 10.00.00 (the price of two average-sized houses in the capital) from their aging Fatima, although in this case they mercifully granted her freedom on credit.

Slave owners came from the professional classes; they comprised a cross-section of the leading merchants, artisans, jurists, and urban magnates. Silk weavers, dyers, cloth merchants, grain merchants, goldsmiths, coopers, shipbuilders, notaries, judges, and tax officials, plus a dozen other professions, made up the caste of slave holders. Merchants and artisans purchased their slaves indiscriminately, apart from market influences: cutlers, for example, evinced no discernible preference for Muslims over Greeks, apart from the greater availability of Muslim slaves prior to 1305. But if surviving records provide a representative picture, municipal officials, notaries, and judges unanimously preferred Greek slaves to Muslim. These slaves, coming from the more literate east, may have been put to use as elementary tutors to children or else employed in minor clerical tasks. It is likely too that the possession of literate Greeks played a role in asserting one's social prominence in the status-conscious juridical classes.

Slaves were brought to Sicily in a variety of ways. Some adventurers, like Guglielmo di Malta, captured individuals from the Muslim and Greek communities on the peninsula during the recurrent struggles with Naples. Guglielmo's will, dated 3 February 1298, directed that compensation be made to those people in Calabria from whom he stole money, horses, and servants during his campaigns there. But most slaves were brought to the island by professional slave traders who traversed the sea lanes in galleys filled with fresh war captives or with slaves purchased in one location and sold in another. Once arrived in port, the slavers presented their inventory to the harbormaster (magister portulanus), who was responsible not only for collecting duties on imported and exported goods but also for authorizing and advertising all slave cargoes to be sold. At Sciacca in June 1310, for example, the royal harbormaster Corrado Lancia di Castromainardo posted the following representative notice:

Nos Gonradus de Castromaynardo miles tenore presentium notumfieri volumus universis, quod comitiva comitis Francisci de Viginti Miliis, cum galea Henrici de Manria, ducit de conscientia nostra in Siciliam de insula Gerbarum, quod habuit in cavea ad certum pretium servos Sarracenos subscriptos - videlicet, servum unum nigrum nomine Adde, annorum undecim; servum alium olivacium nomine Aris, annorum quindecim; servum alium olivacium nomine Yseyt, annorum decem et octo; et servum alium olivacium nomine Ayre, annorum viginti sex. De quo presentem sibi ad sui cautelam fieri fecimus nostro sigillo munitum.

These four slaves, captured during the fight for Djerba, probably were not sold at Sciacca, which was simply the first port that the ship put into upon returning to Sicily. Instead, Francesco Ventimiglia, armed with this royal confirmation of his cargo, probably moved on to the large bazaars at Trapani or Palermo before auctioning off the slaves. Slave traders usually worked as a societas, or ad hoc corporation, in order to share the burdens and risks of the profession. Those risks were considerable. Compounding the general decline in the trade itself were the difficulties of trying to make a profit in a Mediterranean beset with piracy and with closely guarded privileges in every port. In 1304, for example, a Genoese slaver named Ottobono della Volta joined with one Georgios Grecos, a merchant from Crete, "and a certain Simone Gavata of Sicily, plus another [Sicilian] fellow who used to be a Jew but is now a Christian going by the name of Marco Cantareno," in an attempt to unload a large shipment of more than fifty slaves at a Cretan port without paying the heavy Venetian duties. The Venetian duke of Crete caught the traders in the act, and, in addition to collecting the necessary dues and a penalty, confiscated the slaves themselves; the traders lost well over ioo.oo.oo. A successful venture could pay handsomely, however. Pachomeo Bernotto and his socii sold a shipment of seventeen slaves, all Muslims, in auction at Palermo after arriving in port on 26 September 1307; their gross receipts totaled over 50.00.00. Unsold slaves would then be placed back on the ship and taken to the next port, where they would be auctioned yet again.

Frequently a single slave would be bought and sold several times. An unfortunate woman named Aziza, a white-skinned Muslim ancilla from Nocera, was owned by Tommasso Lamatu, a goldsmith who probably captured or purchased her during the war and took her to his home in Messina. At some point she converted to Christianity and took the name Rosa. In May 1308 Tommasso sold Aziza/Rosa to a Catalan merchant from Tarragona with the unlikely name of "Aglinus Pagllarisius," who returned with her to Tarragona. Once there, Aglinus promptly sold her to another merchant, Ramon Peris. In December of that year Ramon, deciding for whatever reason to be rid of her, gave Aziza/Rosa to his procurator (a Valencian, Jaume Tredes) who took her to Palermo, where on 8 December she was at last sold to 'Abdul 'al-Salaam ibn Il-fa'it, a prominent Muslim merchant from her native Nocera.

Clifford R. Backman, The Decline and Fall of Medieval Sicily. Politics, religion, and economy in the reign of Frederick III, 1296-1337,   p. 250 - 258

header picture:  Jean-Léon Gérôme, The Slave Market (1871)

[lady-perpetua]

Far Reaching Ministries is a cause that deserves more attention than it gets and it’s a cause I’m happy to share more information about today. All information is provided from their “History & Overview” page on their official website: 

“Sudan gained its independence from England in 1956.  Since then, it has been devastated by two civil wars.  In July 1983, the second civil war erupted in Sudan. Two million people died in South Sudan as a result of that war, as well as the famine and disease that followed. An additional four million people were displaced. The Southern Sudanese people have suffered from decades of violence, injustice, terror, and poverty under the Government of Sudan (GoS) and a terrorist group known as the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA). The GoS and LRA attacked and burned entire villages. They abducted children from their homes in the middle of the night, forcing some to kill their own siblings and parents—and paralyzed an entire country with fear. Countless innocent civilians were tortured, raped, disfigured, mutilated, and murdered based on their Christian or animist beliefs, as well as the color of their skin.

Across the border in Northern Uganda, innocent and defenseless civilians suffered from decades of violence, injustice, fear, and poverty by the same LRA terrorist group. This ultra-violent guerrilla group, led by Joseph Kony, targeted civilians by attacking, torturing, raping, disfiguring, mutilating, murdering, and even forcing some into prostitution. Kony preyed upon children, exploiting them as sex slaves and child soldiers.

The LRA’s abductions of children forced nearly two million Ugandans to live in squalor in Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camps. IDP camps did not stop the abductions though. So, children began commuting nightly into the city centers. They would sleep huddled together in churches, schools, and even on the verandas of shops. That is when FRM established a project in the Kitgum District that erected night shelters, taught Bible studies for children, and cared for orphans.

Far Reaching Ministries (FRM) and Far Reaching Ministries Aviation (FRMA) continue to focus on providing discipleship, followed by providing humanitarian resources relief. This includes providing education to the poor and persecuted people in various nations throughout the world. FRM’s mission is to carry the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the lost and dying of the world, with discipleship as the primary vehicle. Together, FRM and FRMA accomplishes this through evangelism, addressing audiences of all sizes (from evangelical crusades to one-on-one relationships), planting and establishing churches, as well as the founding Bible schools.

FRM and FRMA resources are similarly utilized to rescue and prevent the suffering and exploitation of vulnerable communities by assisting to rebuild lives after facing religious persecution, violence, ethnic cleansing, rape, abduction, torture, and humanitarian crises caused by civil war. FRM and FRMA serves the afflicted, the starving, those enslaved by human traffickers, the ill or dying by bringing aid for their physical needs, but most importantly, fulfilling their spiritual needs.

Including all field posts, FRM and FRMA currently operates in more than eleven countries around the world. Field posts are managed and staffed by a small number of expatriate missionaries and/or pastors, and a large number of national workers trained by FRM. In doing so, the scope and impact increases exponentially. All staff members are trained to train others and encouraged to “work themselves out of a job.””

The site also offers a lot of ways you can help them in their cause with the “Get Involved” section. Please, if you can, share the word and spread awareness to what’s going on.