#none are accounts by 19th century black people

[delphinidin4]

I just had a brainwave about Mansfield Park. This might be something that Jane Austen fans already know and think is obvious, but I've never heard it discussed, and I think it really clears up a lot of things about this book for me.

So scholars are always talking about how this book intersects with slavery. First of all, the Antigua property that isn't doing so well would have been worked by enslaved people (keeping slaves was still legal in Antigua, though selling them there was not). Also, at one point Fanny asks Sir Thomas a question about the slave trade, though it isn't really elaborated on. I saw this discussed again and again in the (admittedly little) scholarship I read on this book, and it always seemed weird to me that they zeroed in on that detail.

More recently, I read Margaret Doody's book on the names Austen used in her work, and she pointed out that the famous legal case that declared slavery to be illegal in England was called the Mansfield Decision. Any reader at the time, reading that novel, would have that information in the back of their head, and it would have informed how they read the book.

This much I knew. But I always felt like these arguments never really explained what slavery had to do with the love story of Fanny Price: even Doody never seemed to connect this factoid about the title very deeply with the novel's themes (a problem I had with a number of her discussions in that book).

More recently, I saw it pointed out that Fanny Price is treated like a slave by Mrs. Norris, and I thought, "Aha! Finally, an explanation!" But it still didn't feel complete to me.

But I just realized: you can take that metaphor a lot farther. (For this argument, please keep in mind that Austen, though on the side of the abolitionists, was a 19th-century woman who didn't have the same sensibilities about the discussion of race as we do now.)

--Like an enslaved person, Fanny is taken from her home and her family and moved far, far away (she isn't kidnapped, of course, but stick with me).

--The family that she joins considers her to be naturally stupider than they are because she has not had the advantage of their education. This is similar to African slaves, whom white people looked down on and thought intellectually inferior because they didn't have a western education.

--The term "family" at the time included the household servants and slaves, not just the actual family. Fanny, the poor relation, joins the household less like a cousin/niece, and more like a servant or an enslaved person. She is literally relegated to sleep in an attic, like a maid.

--Fanny suffers a great deal emotionally because she misses her family (especially Edward). Austen, as an abolitionist, would likely have read accounts like Olaudah Equiano's autobiography, which often described the intense emotional suffering of enslaved people separated from their homes and families.

--One of the justifications slaveholders gave for slavery was that they were "improving" the lives of the Africans they enslaved, by teaching them Christianity and occasionally, trades or other forms of education. Fanny is ostensibly being brought to Mansfield to give her a good education. And while she does get that education, she really functions much more in the household like a servant to Lady Bertram and Mrs. Norris.

--Fanny IS taught a great deal of morality by Edmund, who is a bit of a prig. It seems hypocritical of him to be constantly "schooling" her in morality when it often seems like Fanny is more naturally ethical than he is. This mirrors the hypocrisy of white slaveholders who deigned to teach their slaves Christianity while acting extremely unchristian themselves.

--Fanny ends up with an inferiority complex because she is constantly torn down by Mrs. Norris and treated as inferior by Maria and Julia. In reality, she's very intelligent, well-read, and ethical in a way that none of them area. This mirrors the way black folks were unfairly treated as inferior by white society.

--The injustice of the Bertrams toward Fanny is so obvious to outsiders that even the morally deficient Crawfords are indignant about it. Mrs. Norris makes a snide remark to Fanny about "who and what she is" (a reference to racism?) and Mary Crawford is indignant on Fanny's behalf and rushes in to comfort her. Henry Crawford--at least, after he falls in love with Fanny--says that the way the family has treated her is disgraceful, and that he is going to show them how they should have been treating her all along. Austen may be pointing to the idea that slavery is SO wrong that it should be obvious to everybody.

I conclude that the book is titled Mansfield Park because Austen wants to point out that while slavery may be illegal in England, poor relations are still often treated like slaves by their families.

That being said, here are some questions this analogy throws up:

--Why is Sir Thomas so much nicer to Fanny after his stay in Antigua, where he would have been witnessing slavery on a daily basis? What does this say about him, both as an uncle and a slaveowner?

--Fanny goes home to Portsmouth, and finds that she doesn't like it and it isn't as neat and orderly as she would like. Is this Austen saying that if enslaved people went back to Africa, they would find that they still felt western society to be superior? How would we square that idea with the point above that westerners are not superior to Africans?

--Why does Fanny end up with Edmund? If he's analogous to the son of a slaveowner and she's analogous to a slave, why is she in love with him in the first place, and why does Austen seem to reify her choice by making them get together in the end? (Remember that even Austen's sister Cassandra felt strongly that Fanny should have ended up with Henry Crawford, not the priggish Edmund.) Is Fanny brainwashed by the Bertrams? How does that relate to the slaveholding analogy?

[ortodelmondo]

(𝐈𝐦𝐚𝐠𝐞: 𝐈𝐬𝐡𝐢, 𝐃𝐞𝐞𝐫 𝐂𝐫𝐞𝐞𝐤 𝐈𝐧𝐝𝐢𝐚𝐧 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐖𝐢𝐥𝐝 𝐌𝐚𝐧)

(𝐒𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐜𝐞: 𝐈𝐬𝐡𝐢 𝐢𝐧 𝐓𝐰𝐨 𝐖𝐨𝐫𝐥𝐝𝐬: 𝐀 𝐁𝐢𝐨𝐠𝐫𝐚𝐩𝐡𝐲 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐋𝐚𝐬𝐭 𝐖𝐢𝐥𝐝 𝐈𝐧𝐝𝐢𝐚𝐧 𝐢𝐧 𝐍𝐨𝐫𝐭𝐡 𝐀𝐦𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐜𝐚 & 𝐖𝐢𝐤𝐢)

Ishi (c1861 – March 25, 1916) was the last known member of the Native American Yahi people from the present-day state of California in the United States. The rest of the Yahi (as well as many members of their parent tribe, the Yana) were killed in the California genocide in the 19th century. Ishi, who was widely acclaimed as the "last wild Indian" in the United States, lived most of his life isolated from modern North American culture. In 1911, aged 50, he emerged at a barn and corral, 2 mi (3.2 km) from downtown Oroville, California.

Ishi, which means "man" in the Yana language, is an adopted name. The anthropologist Alfred Kroeber gave him this name because, in the Yahi culture, tradition demanded that he not speak his own name until formally introduced by another Yahi. When asked his name, he said: "I have none, because there were no people to name me," meaning that there was no other Yahi to speak his name on his behalf.

Ishi was taken in by anthropologists at the University of California, Berkeley, who both studied him and hired him as a janitor. He lived most of his remaining five years in a university building in San Francisco. His life was depicted and discussed in multiple films and books, notably the biographical account Ishi in Two Worlds published by Theodora Kroeber in 1961.

𝐄𝐚𝐫𝐥𝐲 𝐥𝐢𝐟𝐞

In 1865, Ishi and his family were attacked in the Three Knolls Massacre, in which 40 of their tribesmen were killed. Although 33 Yahi survived to escape, cattlemen killed about half of the survivors. The last survivors, including Ishi and his family, went into hiding for the next 44 years. Their tribe was popularly believed to be extinct. Prior to the California Gold Rush of 1848–1855, the Yahi population numbered 404 in California, but the total Yana in the larger region numbered 2,997.

The gold rush brought tens of thousands of miners and settlers to northern California, putting pressure on native populations. Gold mining damaged water supplies and killed fish; the deer left the area. The settlers brought new infectious diseases such as smallpox and measles. The northern Yana group became extinct while the central and southern groups (who later became part of Redding Rancheria) and Yahi populations dropped dramatically. Searching for food, they came into conflict with settlers, who set bounties of 50 cents per scalp and 5 dollars per head on the natives. In 1865, the settlers attacked the Yahi while they were still asleep.

𝐑𝐢𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐫𝐝 𝐁𝐮𝐫𝐫𝐢𝐥𝐥 𝐰𝐫𝐨𝐭𝐞, 𝐢𝐧 𝐈𝐬𝐡𝐢 𝐑𝐞𝐝𝐢𝐬𝐜𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐞𝐝:

"In 1865, near the Yahi's special place, Black Rock, the waters of Mill Creek turned red at the Three Knolls Massacre. 'Sixteen' or 'seventeen' Indian fighters killed about forty Yahi, as part of a retaliatory attack for two white women and a man killed at the Workman's household on Lower Concow Creek near Oroville. Eleven of the Indian fighters that day were Robert A. Anderson, Harmon (Hi) Good, Sim Moak, Hardy Thomasson, Jack Houser, Henry Curtis, his brother Frank Curtis, as well as Tom Gore, Bill Matthews, and William Merithew. W. J. Seagraves visited the site, too, but some time after the battle had been fought.

Robert Anderson wrote, "Into the stream they leapt, but few got out alive. Instead many dead bodies floated down the rapid current." One captive Indian woman named Mariah from Big Meadows (Lake Almanor today), was one of those who did escape. The Three Knolls massacre is also described in Theodora Kroeber's Ishi in Two Worlds.

Since then more has been learned. It is estimated that with this massacre, Ishi's entire cultural group, the Yana/Yahi, may have been reduced to about sixty individuals. From 1859 to 1911, Ishi's remote band became more and more infiltrated by non-Yahi Indian representatives, such as Wintun, Nomlaki, and Pit River individuals.

In 1879, the federal government started Indian boarding schools in California. Some men from the reservations became renegades in the hills. Volunteers among the settlers and military troops carried out additional campaigns against the northern California Indian tribes during that period.

In late 1908, a group of surveyors came across the camp inhabited by two men, a middle-aged woman, and an elderly woman. These were Ishi, his uncle, his younger sister, and his mother, respectively. The former three fled while the latter hid in blankets to avoid detection, as she was sick and unable to flee. The surveyors ransacked the camp, and Ishi's mother died soon after his return. His sister and uncle never returned, possibly drowning in a nearby river.

𝐀𝐫𝐫𝐢𝐯𝐚𝐥 𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐨 𝐄𝐮𝐫𝐨𝐩𝐞𝐚𝐧 𝐀𝐦𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐧 𝐒𝐨𝐜𝐢𝐞𝐭𝐲

After the 1908 encounter, Ishi spent three more years alone in the wilderness. Starving and with nowhere to go, Ishi, at around the age of 50, emerged on August 29, 1911, at the Charles Ward slaughterhouse back corral near Oroville, California, after forest fires in the area. He was found pre-sunset by Floyd Hefner, son of the next-door dairy owner (who was in town), who was "hanging out", and who went to harness the horses to the wagon for the ride back to Oroville, for the workers and meat deliveries. Witnessing slaughterhouse workers included Lewis "Diamond Dick" Cassings, a "drugstore cowboy". Later, after Sheriff J.B. Webber arrived, the Sheriff directed Adolph Kessler, a nineteen-year-old slaughterhouse worker, to handcuff Ishi, who smiled and complied.

The "wild man" caught the imagination and attention of thousands of onlookers and curiosity seekers. University of California, Berkeley anthropology professors read about him and "brought him" to the Affiliated Colleges Museum (1903—1931), in an old law school building on the University of California's Affiliated Colleges campus on Parnassus Heights, San Francisco. Studied at the university, Ishi also worked as a janitor and lived at the museum for most of the remaining five years of his life.

In October 1911, Ishi, Sam Batwi, T. T. Waterman, and A. L. Kroeber, went to the Orpheum Opera House in San Francisco to see Lily Lena (Alice Mary Ann Mathilda Archer, born 1877) the "London Songbird," known for "kaleidoscopic" costume changes. Lena gave Ishi a piece of gum as a token.

On May 13, 1914, Ishi, T. T. Waterman, A.L. Kroeber, Dr Saxton Pope, and Saxton Pope Jr. (11 years old), took Southern Pacific's Cascade Limited overnight train, from the Oakland Mole and Pier to Vina, California, on a trek in the homelands of the Deer Creek area of Tehama county, researching and mapping for the University of California, fleeing on May 30, 1914, during the Lassen Peak volcano eruption.

In February 1915, during Panama–Pacific International Exposition, Ishi was filmed in the Sutro Forest with the actress Grace Darling for Hearst-Selig News Pictorial, No. 30.

𝐃𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐡

Lacking acquired immunity to common diseases, Ishi was often ill. He was treated by Saxton T. Pope, a professor of medicine at UCSF. Pope became a close friend of Ishi and learned from him how to make bows and arrows in the Yahi way. He and Ishi often hunted together. Ishi died of tuberculosis on March 25, 1916. It is said that his last words were, "You stay. I go." His friends at the university tried to prevent an autopsy on Ishi's body since Yahi tradition called for the body to remain intact. However, the doctors at the University of California medical school performed an autopsy before Waterman could prevent it.

Ishi's brain was preserved and his body was cremated. His friends placed grave goods with his remains before cremation: "one of his bows, five arrows, a basket of acorn meal, a box full of shell bead money, a purse full of tobacco, three rings, and some obsidian flakes." Ishi's remains were interred at Mount Olivet Cemetery in Colma, California, near San Francisco. Kroeber put Ishi's preserved brain in a deerskin-wrapped Pueblo Indian pottery jar and sent it to the Smithsonian Institution in 1917. It was held there until August 10, 2000, when the Smithsonian repatriated it to the descendants of the Redding Rancheria and Pit River tribes. This was in accordance with the National Museum of the American Indian Act of 1989 (NMAI). According to Robert Fri, director of the National Museum of Natural History, "Contrary to commonly-held belief, Ishi was not the last of his kind. In carrying out the repatriation process, we learned that as a Yahi–Yana Indian his closest living descendants are the Yana people of northern California." His remains were also returned from Colma, and the tribal members intended to bury them in a secret place.

from Historypedia on fb

[billvaouli]

Blog Post 4.1 (Moor's Account Materials)

Part One:

“Among the slaves waiting their turn, I noticed many who had two marks on their cheeks—one in the shape of a coiling snake and the other in the form of a cross. I ventured to ask an Andalusian woman, whom I had heardwhisper some words in Arabic to her daughter, what the brand on her face meant. It means esclavo, she said, peering at me with curious eyes. Looking around me, I noticed that none of the black people in the marketplace had been marked with the brand. In Seville, the color of their skin—the color of my skin—was a sign in itself” (109).

The author notes in this chapter that some of the slaves who are waiting have two unique markings on their cheeks, one that looks like a coiling snake and the other that looks like a cross. An Andalusian woman answers that these marks represent "esclavo," or slave, when she is asked what they mean. Notably, the author also notes that skin tone is a differentiator in Seville's slave market because only individuals with darker skin, including themselves, are identified in this way.

In this section, Mustafa witnesses slaves being branded according to the hue of their skin, the marks denoting their position as enslaved people. Given that Mustafa and his skin tone are similar, it's probable that he is uncomfortable with the way skin tone is utilized to differentiate people.

https://primo.seattleu.edu/permalink/01ALLIANCE_SEAU/3bmk5g/cdi_proquest_journals_2314790976

Part Two:

https://primo.seattleu.edu/discovery/fulldisplay?docid=cdi_proquest_journals_2296048999&context=PC&vid=01ALLIANCE_SEAU:SUP5&lang=en&search_scope=seau_rec_1&adaptor=Primo%20Central&tab=Everything&query=any,contains,dehumanizing%20slaves&offset=0

Part Three:

1. Keefer, K. H. B. (2019). Marked by fire: brands, slavery, and identity. Slavery & Abolition, 40(4), 659–681. https://doi.org/10.1080/0144039X.2019.1606521

The phrase "branding of humans" usually refers to the process by which people or organizations use different marketing and self-presentation techniques to establish a memorable and unique personal brand or identity. This might entail modifying one's look, conduct, and online presence to project a particular image or message, much as how businesses utilize branding to create a distinct and identifiable identity in the marketplace.

2. Crime and punishment in the British Army, 1815-1870. (n.d.). http://www.reenactor.ru/ARH/PDF/Burrougs.pdf 

During the period from 1815 to 1870, crime and punishment in the British army were subject to strict disciplinary regulations. Harsh penalties, such as flogging and imprisonment, were common for various offenses, including insubordination, desertion, and theft. The military justice system aimed to maintain discipline and order within the ranks, but there were growing concerns about the cruelty of these punishments, eventually leading to reforms and a shift towards more humane disciplinary practices in the later part of the 19th century.

3. Exchanging our country marks: University of North Carolina Press. Michael A. Gomez: Preview. Flexpub. (n.d.). https://flexpub.com/preview/exchanging-our-country-marks 

Michael A. Gomez's book "Exchanging Our Country Marks" offers a thorough analysis of the African slave trade and the cultural changes that enslaved Africans in the Americas went through. The book explores the ways African identity and legacy survived and changed in the New World, showing how slaves developed new forms of expression, adjusted to their environment, and kept a sense of self and community despite the sufferings of enslavement. It provides insightful information about the intricate and long-lasting effects of the transatlantic slave trade on communities of African descent.

4. DeLombard, J. M. (2019). Dehumanizing Slave Personhood. American Literature, 91(3), 491–521. https://doi.org/10.1215/00029831-7722104

The book "Dehumanizing Slave Personhood" by Jeannine Marie DeLombard offers a critical examination of the legal and rhetorical tactics used in the US throughout the 19th century to deny enslaved persons their whole humanity. The book explores how the legal system and popular discourse objectified and dehumanized those who were held as slaves, emphasizing the influence of language and the law on how people view themselves and how the institution of slavery is justified.

5. Dressner, Julie, and Edwin, Martinez. 2012. “The Scars of Stop-and-Frisk.” New York Times, June 12. www.nytimes.com/2012/06/12/opinion/the-scars-of-stop-and-frisk.html?_r=1&ref=nyregion.

In bad neighborhoods, fear of police officers is frequently the result of a complicated web of interrelated issues, such as racial profiling, a history of tough policing, and a lack of trust between the community and law enforcement. When dealing with the police, residents in these neighborhoods could feel insecure, exposed, and uneasy, which could strain relations and obstruct successful community policing initiatives. This fear can perpetuate a cycle of mistrust and tension, making it challenging to create a safer and more harmonious environment for residents.

6. Eastern State Penitentiary. n.d. “Timeline: 1829 October 25.” www.easternstate.org/research/history-eastern-state/timeline

Operating from 1829 until 1971, Eastern State Penitentiary is a historic prison situated near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It is renowned for its avant-garde "penitence" system, which placed a strong emphasis on inmate solitude and introspection in private cells. The architecture and philosophy of the jail had a profound impact on correctional systems across the globe and were crucial in shaping the structure of the contemporary American prison system.

Part Four:

Slavery dehumanizes people by robbing them of their autonomy, dignity, and basic human rights. People lose their agency and become little more than objects, with no ability to make decisions for themselves. Forced work, physical and psychological torture, and frequent treatment as goods to be bought and sold are all commonplace experiences for slaves. Slavery creates an environment in which people are treated more like objects than like people, and their cultural identities, families, and general well-being are frequently ignored. This dehumanizing system weakens the fundamental foundation of what it means to be human and feeds a vicious circle of tyranny.

[seagodofmagic]

tried to write a post about the way the musical adaptation of moby-dick handles race and i had way too much to say.

i’ve seen people criticize tambourine but i actually kind of like it--it’s big, it’s weird, and with very few changes it could have been a great way to pull pip’s story into the meta narrative the show (almost) tells about melville’s failure of imagination when he writes about race. if we’re keeping the book’s metaphor of pip’s soul going wandering when he’s alone in the ocean, why shouldn’t it wander out of the 1840s?

but tambourine doesn’t work because of the stuff around it. i absolutely hate the first song ishmael sings in act iii--it’s such a pointless, unexamined reuse of racist 19th century tropes from the book (pip loves christmas and the fourth of july???? are you fucking kidding me????). the song quickly goes over-the-top so maybe it’s meant to be a commentary on the superficiality of ishmael’s grief for a kid he actually didn’t know at all but if so that needs to spelled out a LOT more clearly/connected up with the rest of the act in a more meaningful way. as it is the song just comes across as deeply, deeply lazy writing.

in general, it feels like the show wants to engage with the racism in the book but it often does so in such a superficial way that it forgets that the book, for all its flaws, is actually a pretty decent primary source on how 19th century racism works, and how even fairly liberal white people saw poc and particularly black people in the 1840s. it’s a grim picture--ishmael is presented as someone who is willing to look past race (whatever that means) in some circumstances but he more often doesn’t do that at all or only does so at a very 101 level even by his own decade’s standards. personally i think the best way to adapt the book for a 21st century audience is to separate ishmael the character/concept (uneducated, apolitical white guy from new york state who genuinely wants to get out from under his rock and connect with other people) from melville the author, and for the most part i think the show does take that approach, which is great! but then when they keep so much of ishmael’s original racist description of pip, i get whiplash! (again, if they did this deliberately it would be another story and i’d still be interested--i just don’t think they actually thought it through.)

the problem starts in the prologue, when actor!ishmael says he wants to re-cast moby-dick the way he wishes america was. that’s a bizarre critique to make of a book where approximately half the characters are poc. melville’s problem isn’t in representation-by-numbers, it’s imagining an inner life for non-white characters (especially Black characters) that isn’t totally dominated by stereotypes. the way the show elides this feels like the (white) creators are weirdly patting themselves on the back for something a white 19th century author already did for them, or perhaps they think race-appropriate casting for non-white characters is somehow something other than the lowest of low bars (????)

that said, in a lot of ways i like the musical’s approach to embodying melville’s characters and giving them more developed inner lives, and i think it usually works pretty well: tashtego and daggoo doing rosencrantz and guildenstern are dead on the masthead; queequeg’s song taking over ishmael’s narrative of their first meeting; fedallah breaking the fourth wall to point out (among other things) that it might not be enough to quietly update the characters if the racism behind them is so bad to begin with.

but then there are other times when melville is clearly a better authority on his era’s own racism than the white people writing the update. pip’s story doesn’t come out of nowhere. even in the scene they got the tambourine idea from, pip is bullied by the crew to play for them, and he tells them his tambourine is broken because he doesn’t want to have to dance and sing for a bunch of drunken sailors! they make him do it anyway! immediately next in that scene someone picks a racist fight with daggoo! the show clearly understands that pip gets left behind in part because he’s Black--yet it doesn’t pick up any of those dropped cues from the book and instead uses that sequence to construct a mostly invented musician identity for Pip. i get the meta temptation--it’s a musical, so why not keep the detail that pip is a musician, it’s another way for the audience to relate to him! but it’s also like......lmao are we really at the same level as Racist Sailor #3? if we’re going to depart from the book and rewrite pip as a whole new character, why not actually do that, free of the racist minstrel trope?

back to the book: in the part of the story where stubb leaves pip behind, it’s clear that it’s not just stubb being personally horrible (though he is) as compared to the rest of the crew--it’s violent racial hierarchy rearing its head on the pequod the way it rears its head everywhere else in 1840s america. of course the person most likely to be left behind is a Black kid who doesn’t have a skillset that would set him apart and keep him safe on the ship. (there’s a strong implication this wouldn’t have happened to dough-boy, the pequod’s actual most useless/annoying crew member, because dough-boy is white and there isn’t a literal price tag on his life.) pip getting left behind is simultaneously stubb’s fault, no one’s fault, and everyone’s fault. (it’s also kind of tashtego’s fault, which could have been an interesting thread for the show to pull on in a couple different ways, but they don’t go there). anyone on that whale-boat could have pulled a queequeg and either jumped in after pip or cut the line--but they don’t, because of who pip is. it’s a violently racist accident.

(melville is fucking clueless about a lot of things but he is not clueless about how violence operates in closed environments--moby-dick is arguably much less violent than some of his other books because the ever-present lurking threat is the whale, not the other people on the boat. but i do think this episode is fundamental to the book and it’s very, very believable as something that could have actually happened--including the collective, confused guilt of everyone else afterward.)

anyway this part of the book is a hot mess but honestly i don’t feel i’m extrapolating much here. and yet none of what i just wrote about comes across coherently in act iii of the musical. pip never came alive for me as an individual character in the show even though so much stage time was spent on his story--which is a pity because the concept of giving his character an entire act is so beautiful and i was really rooting for them to make it work! i want many other parts of the show to stay exactly as they are but i hope the rewrite of act iii is substantial.

[lailoken]

‘Dark and Demon Dogs’

“Haunting the coastline from the Wash to the Deben and beyond, and inland along the Peddars Way into the Brecklands, on marshland roads and mudflats, through the Fens and into the Broads, pads the ancient terror known as Black Shuck. For many hundreds of years the legend of the ghostly black hound has been kept alive and is probably the best known of all East Anglian spectres, still appearing to people today. He is typically seen as a huge, great, black shaggy hound, with blazing red eyes and dragging rattling chains behind him, instilling terror into all he comes upon and considered a portent of impending death or doom by most. Although generally called Black Shuck, he is known by many other names too; the Galleytrot, Old Scarfe, Owd Rugman, Shug Monkey and the Hateful Thing being some, although some form of Shuck or Shuggy is most common. Nor is he always a large black hound, appearing as anything from the size of a Labrador (shrinking into a cat!), a white rabbit in Thetford, to a calf or a donkey and even a monkey on a few occasions. Sometimes he was invisible, only his fierce breath, padding feet, fearful howls or the clanking of his chains giving evidence of his presence. Sometimes he could be seen without his head, but always with his glowing eyes appearing in the middle of where his head should be. One tale from Garveston in Norfolk goes;

‘They du speak of a dog that walks regular. They call him Skeff and his eyes are as big as saucers and blaze wi' fire. He is fair as big as a small wee pony and his coat is all skeffy-like, shaggy coat across, like an old sheep. He has a lane, and a place out of which he come, and he vanish when be bev gone far enough.’

Another informant from the village of Clopton, Suffolk, reported, 'a thing with two saucer eyes', on the road to Woolpit. It would not move out of his way but grew larger and larger as it breathed: 'I shall want you within a week'. The man died the next day.

One Christmas day in the middle of the 19th. Century, Black Shuck pushed against a small, blind boy who was standing on Thetford Bridge with his older sister. The little boy plaintively asked his sister to send the big dog away, but his sister assured him that there was no dog anywhere near them. However, the terrified boy insisted that there was, and that it was trying to push him into the water to drown him. The sister then felt the poor boy being carried away from her; she realised then that what he could feel, and she could not see, must be the terrible Black Shuck that she had heard so much about. Just as her little brother was about to be pushed into the water, she dragged him back from the edge and, hand- in-hand, they rushed off back to their waiting parents at home.

Villagers in the Waveney Valley round about Geldeston call it the ‘Hateful Thing', or the 'Churchyard or Hell-beast'. One old village woman claimed that she saw it one night on the road between Gillingham and Geldeston. She tells the story in the following words;

'It was after I bad been promised to Josh that I saw the Hateful Thing. We met Mrs S. and she started to walk with us. I beard something like a dog running pit-pat-pit- pat-pit-pat. "I wonder what that dog wants", I said to Mrs S. I was walking between Josh and Mrs S. and I lay hold on Mrs S's. arm and she say "It's in front of us; look, there it be." Just in front was what looked like a big, black dog; but it wasn't a dog at all; it was the Hateful Thing and it betokened some great misfortune. It kept on until we came to the churchyard, when it went right through the wall and we saw it no more'.

In Norfolk, Neatishead Lane, near Barton Broad, is a favourite walk of Shuck, as is the cliff path from Beeston, near Sheringham to Overstrand. This recalls the old adjuration in the legend of St. Margaret;

‘Still be though still,

Poorest of all, stern one,

Nor shalt thou, Old Shuck,

Moot with me no more.

But fly, sorrowful thing,

Out of mine eyesight,

And dive thither where thou man

May damage no more.’

A more humorous tale involves the grounding of Noah's Ark on Mulbarton Common, south of Norwich. Scoffers had better not go to Mulbarton. When one village elder was heckled on the point, he replied with some heat;

‘Thass trew! Trew as I stand bere. Where else could it ba' grounded? Aren't this the highest bit o' ground for miles around? When Ole Nick see the Ark be got inter a poont (punt), an' curled his tail up under the thwart and come rowin' around jest as Noah had opened the winder to let the dove in. And Nick sings out: "Mornin' Cap'n Noah. Nice mornin'arter the rain". But ole Noah he sees Nick's tail a-curled up under the thwart an' be sings out: “I know you. You're Owd Shuck! You goo to Hell". And bangs the winder down'.

However, perhaps the most famous accounts of the legend are to be found in Holinshed's Chronicle', an ambitious history of England which was updated to include contemporary events, and a pamphlet entitled A Straunge and Terrible Wunder' written by the Rev. Abraham Fleming, Rector of St. Pancras Church. Both accounts were published in 1577, shortly after the events recorded therein. According to Holinshed's Chronicle;

‘On Sundaie the fourth of August (1577), belween the houres of none and ten of the clocke in the forenone whilest the minister was reading the second lesson in the Parish church of Bliborough (Blythburgh), a towne in Suffolke, a strange and terrible tempest of lightening and thunder strake through the wall of the same church into the ground almost a yard deepe, drave downe all the people on that side above twentie persons, then venting the wall up to the venstre, cleft the doore, and returning to the steeple, rent the timber, brake the chimes, and fled towards Bongie (Bungay), a towne six miles off. The people that were stricken downe were found groueling more than balfe an boure after.......". At Bungay the storm "wroong in sunder the wiers and wheels of the clocks, slue two men which sat in the belfrie, when the other were at the procession or suffrages and scorched an other which hardlie escaped.'

However, Fleming gives the account as starting in Bungay church and includes the infamous Black Shuck;

‘Sunday, being the fourth of this August, in ye yeer of our Lord 1577, to the amazing and singular astonishment of the present bebolders, and abhsent bearers, at a certain towne called Bungay, not past tenne miles distant from the citie of Norwiche, there fell from heaven an exceeding great and terrible tempest sodein and violent..... There were assembled at the same season, to hear divine service and common prayer, according to order, in the parish church (St. Mary's) of the said towne of Bungay, the people thereabouts inhabiting, who were witnesses of the straungeness, the rarenesse and sodenesse of the storm, consisting of rain violently falling, fearful flashes of lightning and terrible cracks of thunder, which came with such unwonted force and power, that to the perceiving of the people...the church did as it were quake and stagger, which struck into the hearts of those that were present, such a sore and sodain feare, that they were in a manner robbed of their right wits.

Immediately hereupon, there appeared in a most horrible similitude and likenesse to the congregation then and there present, a dog as they might discern it, of a black colour; at the sight whereof, together with the feareful flashes of fire which then were seene, moved such admiration in the minds of the assemblie that they thought doomes day was already come.

This black dog, or the divel in such a likenesse (God he knoweth al who worketh all), running all along down the body of the church with great swiftnesse, and incredible haste, among the people, in a visible fourm and shape, passed between two persons, as they were kneeling upon their knees, and occupied in prayer as it seemed, wrung the necks of them bothe in one instant clene backward, in somuch that even at a moment where they kneeled, they strangely died.'

After reflecting somewhat on the wrath of God, he continues;

‘There was at ye same time another wonder wrought; for the same black dog, still continuing and remaining in one and the selfsame shape, passing by another man of the congregation in the church, gave bim such a gripe on the back, that therewith all he was presently withdrawen together and strunk up, as it were a piece of lither scorched in a hot fire; or as the mouth of a purse or bag, drawen together with a string. The man albeit he was in so straunge a taking, dyed not, but as it is thonght is yet alive; whiche thing is mervalous in the eyes of men, und offereth much matter of amasing the minde.

Meanwhile, the Clerk of the church, who had gone outside to clean the guttering, was thrown to the ground during a violent clap of thunder; and at the same time, the wires and wheels of the church clock were 'wrung in sunder and broken in pieces.' Inside the church, the Curate exhorted to prayer and 'comforted the people' until the frightening manifestation of the black hound had passed away, leaving behind it marks on the stones and church door 'which are marvellously renten and torne, ye marks as it were of his clawes or talans.'

According to Fleming, next, on the same morning, in the church of Blythburgh, about twelve miles from Bungay;

'the like thing entred, in the same shape and similitude, where, placing himself upon a maine balke or beum, whereon same ye Rood did stand, sodainly he gave a swinge downe throngh ye church, and there also, as before, slew two men and a lad & burned the hand of another person that was there amang the rest of the company, of whom divers wus blustled. This mischief thus wrought, he flew with wonderful force to no litule feare of the assembly, out of the church in a hideons and bellish likeness.'

The marks of his talons, burned into the inside of the north door of the church, can still be seen today.

Interestingly, archaeologists have recently discovered the skeleton of a massive dog that would have stood 7 feet tall on its hind legs, in the ruins of Leiston Abbey in Suffolk, close to both Bungay and Blythburgh. The remains of the massive dog, which is estimated to have weighed 200 pounds, were found just a few miles from the two churches where Black Shuck killed the worshippers. It appears to have been buried in a shallow grave at precisely the same time as Shuck is said to have been on the loose in this instance.

Coming forward in time, there is a legend of a black dog too, at Blickling Hall, Norfolk. In the 19th century, alterations on the Hall were being made by Lord and Lady Lothian, by the demolition of some partitions in order to form a dining-room;

‘I wish these young people would not pull down the partitions', said an old woman in the village to the local clergyman. Why so?' 'Oh, because of the dog. Don't you know that when A. was fishing in the lake, he caught an enormous fish and that, when it was landed, a great black dog came out of its mouth? They never could get rid of that dog, who kept going round and round in circles inside the house, till they sent for a wise man from London, who opposed the straight lines of the partitions to the lines of the circles and so quieted the dog. But if these young people pull down the partitions, they will let the dog loose again, and there's not a wise man in all London could lay that dog now'.’

This tale is interesting in that it links the occurrence or appearance of the hound with a practical knowledge of geomantic function and is the only tale told of its kind, as far as I am aware. It also links the Black Dog with the liminal area of the lake, which, as we have seen earlier in the chapter, is a gateway to the Other/Underworlds, guarded by supernatural beings; it is possible that the Black Dog may be another one of these guardian entities.

The common name for the black hound, Shuck, is generally considered to derive from the Old English scucca or sceocca, which means a devil/the Devil, a demon or a goblin (the 'sc' in OE being pronounced as 'sh'). There is also the likelihood that it comes from the East Anglian dialect word 'Shucky', meaning shaggy or hairy, a marked characteristic of most descriptions of the Hound. The first known use of the term comes from the Norfolk Chronicle or Gazette, in 1805, in an account by the Rev. E.S. Taylor of Martham as follows;

‘Shuck the Dog-fiend: This phantom I have heard many persons in East Norfolk, and even Cambridgeshire, describe as having seen as a black shaggy dog, with fiery eyes, and of immense size, and who visits churchyards at midnight.’

However, the term was obviously already in use beforehand, but for how long beforehand, no one knows. In regards to the appearance of the phantom in, at or near to churchyards and graveyards, there is another old tradition that is worth noting here. It was customry in years gone by, to bury a black dog in any new graveyard, before any other burials took place. The dog was intended to act as a guardian for the dead who were laid to rest there, and to protect the entrance to the Otherworld, ensuring that none came out – or went in – that were not supposed to. This practice goes back many millennia and is still rumoured to continue today in some areas; the dog is said to be buried in the North, or North-East of the graveyard, the traditional direction of the Dead and the Underworld.

Attempts to explain the origins and nature of the Black Hound have been many, some prosaic and some fantastical. He is said to be the memory of one of Odin's battle hounds, brought over by the Viking raiders in the 9th century. Whilst this may sound appealing, Odin did not have any war or battle hounds, but was accompanied by two wolves, a description never applied to Shuck. It is possible that he is the remains of a 'fetch beast', conjured by the Norse shamans to clear the pathways for their invasions, but there is no remaining evidence for this, however attractive; but the pathways theme is pertinent and I will come back to that in a moment. In the Anglo- Saxon classic, 'Beowulf', previously referred to in the case of Grendel's Dam and the Merewives, the monster Grendel himself is termed a 'scucca' and referred to as master of the fens and moors, some of the very places said to be haunted by Black Shuck in more modern times. He is also linked in popular imagination with the Devil and witchcraft, considered to be the Devil in animal form. Whilst there are recorded cases of the Devil appearing in dog or hound form in Suffolk, the descriptions of Shuck's appearances does not seem to fit any of these. He is often linked with Churches and graveyards, as we have seen, as well as crossroads, being described as coming from, passing over or into, or finishing his perambulations at one or the other; this also links in with the fact that the most recorded instances of sightings/encounters of the hound are on paths, roads, trackways, etc. as mentioned above.

It is these latter aspects of the Black Hound that I think give us the biggest clue to his nature and function; this is either as a guardian of the 'ghost roads' - the energetic and spectral pathways across the Land that guide the spirits of the dead on their way, or lead the spirits of living witches and magical practitioners to locations of power or gatherings of their kind or as a 'psychopomp', guiding the deceased on their last journeys to the Otherworld. It has often been remarked that Black Shuck is nearly always seen walking/padding along or beside a path or trackway and that his presence either heralds or initiates a death or near death experience (sometimes also averting disaster if it is not the person's time to die). It seems highly likely that this Hound is a product of the Living Landscape, given form and function, and imbued with the energy to guard/ guide those souls in need over the liminal point between life and death that we all must pass at some point. That he is given such a form by tradition and local culture only goes to show a living tradition stretching back hundreds, if not thousands, of years, as dogs and hounds have been seen as guardians of the gates of the Underworld for millennia, particularly and especially by the succeeding cultures that have inhabited East Anglia and the rest of these Isles. That he is feared, seen as a/the Devil, shunned and reviled, is only indicative of the lack of understanding of most people of the natural Laws and Ways of the Land and their separation from them.”

—

The Devil’s Plantation:

East Anglian Lore, Witchcraft & Folk-Magic

Chapter 2: ‘Mermaids, Giants and Spectral Hounds’

by Nigel G. Pearson

[southeastasianhistories]

Southeast Asia’s role in World War I is all but lost to history. There was no major invasion of the region by a hostile power, like Japan in World War II. None of the Central Powers – an alliance of Germany, Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire – had colonial territory in the region, except on the periphery. German New Guinea quickly fell to the Allies after the outbreak of war in July 1914.

Yet the First World War, which ended 100 years ago this month, proved a decisive event for Southeast Asia. For the first time, it severely tested the relationship between the colonial authorities of Britain, France and the Netherlands (neutral in the war) and their colonial subjects in Southeast Asia, for whom sacrifice in the conflict was to be a rallying cry for more civil rights. The burgeoning nationalist movements throughout the region swelled with veterans returning home from democratic and industrial nations, while others, with considerable consequences in later decades, brought home interests in the radical politics at the time, not least communism.

Arguably, the most interesting response to the declaration of war was made by Siam, as Thailand was then known. As the only Southeast Asian nation not colonised by a European power, Siam, under the absolute monarch King Vajiravudh, decided to go to war against the Central Powers in 1917, sending its own troops to fight in Europe. The Siamese Expeditionary Force of more than 1,000 troops arrived in the French port of Marseilles in July 1918. It was led by Major-General Phraya Phya Bhijai Janriddhi, who had received military training in France before the war. At first, the Thai troops were employed by the Allies as rear-guard labour detachments, taking part in the Second Battle of the Marne in August that year. The following month, they saw their first frontline action. They took part in several offences, including the occupation of the German Rhineland. In the end, 19 Thais had lost their lives – none from battle.

King Vajiravudh’s decision to go to war was calculated. Gambling on Allied victory, he believed Siam’s participation would earn it the respect of Britain and France. He was correct. Although it was independent, neighbouring colonisers (the British in Burma and the French in Cambodia) had slowly whittled away Siam’s territory in the preceding decades, with large tracts of land returned to Cambodia in the late 19th century. After WWI, though, Siam’s territory didn’t budge. Equally important, Siam took part in the 1919 Versailles Peace Conference and was a founding member of the League of Nations, a clear indication that Western powers now saw it as a legitimate force on the international stage and in Southeast Asia.

The rulers of independent Siam might have wanted respect and power, but the thoughts of ordinary people from the rest of colonised Southeast Asia are little known. Few first-hand accounts exist for historians. Quite probably, however, many did not want to be thrust unquestionably into the greatest fratricide the world had yet seen, and some no doubt hoped the colonial empires would be destroyed by the whole endeavour. Yet some nationalists, especially those of higher rank who weren’t expected to fight, saw the war effort as a means of gaining more political rights for themselves under the colonial system.

The war, for example, provided the Vietnamese with “an unexpected opportunity to test France’s ability to live up to vaunted self-representations of invincibility”, as Philippe Peycam wrote in 2012’s The Birth of Vietnamese Political Journalism: Saigon, 1916-1930. The prominent Vietnamese nationalist Phan Chu Trinh, who had spent years in jail before the war for his activism and was imprisoned for six months in 1914 on wrongful charges of colluding with the Germans, played a considerable role in recruiting Vietnamese men for the war. Another noted nationalist, Duong Van Giao, published a history of the Vietnamese war effort, 1925’s L’Indochine pendant la guerre de 1914–1918. Because of Vietnam’s sacrifice, he called on the French colonials to adopt a “native policy”: not quite outright independence but radical reform of civil rights for the Vietnamese. It was a similar sentiment as expressed in Claims of the Annamite People, an influential tract cowritten in France in 1919 by a young activist who later became known as Ho Chi Minh, who had spent most of the war working in a London hotel under the famous chef Auguste Escoffier.

As a French colony, Vietnam was expected to provide troops for the war effort, but there were differing views among colonial officers as to what role they should play. Lieutenant-Colonel Théophile Pennequin was a hardliner but also a keen reformer. Before the outbreak of war, Pennequin requested that he be allowed to form a competent military unit that was termed by some as an armée jaune (yellow army), similar to the force noire (black force) popularised by General Charles Mangin in France’s West African colonies. For Pennequin, a national native army would allow Vietnamese to gain “positions of command and provide the French with loyal partners with whom they could build a new and, eventually, independent Indochinese state,” wrote historian Christopher Goscha in 2017’s The Penguin History of Modern Vietnam.

But Pennequin’s designs were rejected by Paris and, instead, most Vietnamese recruits were sent to Europe to work in factories or as supply hands. Yet some did fight. One estimate contends that out of 100,000 Vietnamese conscripts sent to the war in Europe, roughly 12,000 lost their lives. A battalion of Tonkinese Rifles, an elite corps formed in the 1880s, saw action on the Western Front near Verdun. Do Huu Vi, a celebrated pilot from an elite family, became a national hero after his plane was shot down over France.

Despite overt racism by some French nationals and trade unions’ concerns that they were bringing down wages, many of the Vietnamese put to work in munitions factories found it a revelatory experience. Some started relationships with Frenchwomen, unsurprising since other workers in wartime factories were mostly women. Others joined social clubs and reading groups. After the war, wrote Goscha, “a hundred thousand Vietnamese veterans returned to Indochina hoping to start a new life. Some wanted French citizenship; most expected good jobs and upward social mobility. Several hoped to modernise Vietnam along Western lines, despite the barbarity they had just witnessed in Europe.”

It was a similar story for the Philippines, then a United States colony. It declared war on Germany in April 1917, the same time Washington did. At first, the colonial government requested the drafting of 15,000 Filipinos for service, but more than 25,000 enlisted. These troops formed the Philippine National Guard, a militia that was later absorbed into the American military. Most of the recruits, though, would not leave the Philippines during the war. Those who did travelled as part of the American Expeditionary Forces. In June 1918, the first Filipino died in action at the Battle of Château-Thierry, in France: Tomas Mateo Claudio, a former contract labourer on a sugar plantation in Hawaii who had enlisted in the US.

It is not known exactly how many Southeast Asians died during the First World War. Of those active in the European theatre, the number is estimated to be more than 20,000, mostly conscripts from the French colonies. It was a small figure compared to the number of Southeast Asians who perished during the Second World War. And, unlike in that war, there wasn’t a great arena of warfare in Southeast Asia during the First since none of the Central Powers nations had any imperial control in the region.

But Germany did have influence in China and possessed leased territory in Kiautschou Bay, near present-day Jiaozhou. It was invaded by Japanese forces after 1915, and China would later declare war on Germany in August 1917. But in October 1914, the German East Asia Squadron still had its base in the concession – it was from there that a lone light cruiser, the SMS Emden, slipped into Penang Harbour, part of what was then British Malaya. Disguised as a British vessel, the German cruiser launched a surprise attack on a Russian ship and then sank a French destroyer that had given chase. The sole attack on Malaya during the war killed 100 and wounded thousands more.

After the attack, the Emden is thought to have docked in a port in the Dutch East Indies, present-day Indonesia, raising British suspicions that the Dutch weren’t as neutral as they had claimed. Neutrality, moreover, didn’t mean the colony went unscathed. The Dutch East Indies was home to a sizeable German population that worked to “coordinate and finance covert operations designed to undermine British colonial rule and economic interests in Southeast Asia,” as historian Heather Streets-Salter wrote in 2017’s World War One in Southeast Asia: Colonialism and Anticolonialism in an Era of Global Conflict.

The Emden was finally stopped by an Australian cruiser that ran it ashore in Singapore. The surviving crew of the German vessel were interned there, then a part of British Malaya. Also stationed in Singapore was the Indian Army’s Fifth Light Infantry, which unsuccessfully mutinied in January 1915 after they learned they might be sent to fight in Turkey against fellow Muslims (though they were eventually sent to Hong Kong instead). The 309 interned Germans from the Emden joined in the mutiny, which left dead eight British and three Malay soldiers, as well as a dozen Singapore civilians.

A much forgotten history of World War I was a Turco-German plot to promote jihad (holy war) in parts of the Muslim world colonised by the Allies, including Malaya. Using the Dutch East Indies as a base, supporters of the Central Powers produced “pan-Islamic, anti-British propaganda” that was sent to Muslim-majority British Malaya, and also to India. One of the architects of this plan, Max von Oppenheim, wrote in a position paper in 1914: “In the battle against England… Islam will become one of our most important weapons.” The Ottoman Sultan, Mehmed V, issued a fatwa against the Allies in November of that year. In British Malaya, the authorities doubled down on censorship by closing many Malay-language newspapers, some of which were considered supportive of the Ottoman Empire.

Pan-Islamic propaganda agitating for independence of Malaya was just as attractive to the Muslim-majority subjects of the Dutch East Indies where it was produced. In the preceding decades, these subjects had been demanding more freedoms, even independence, for themselves. This was a serious cause of concern for the Dutch colonialists, but ultimately the real impact of the war on the Dutch East Indies was economic. The Allies’ blockade of European waters, as well as control of Asian waters, made it difficult for Dutch ships to reach the colony for trade purposes.

“The Netherlands Indies was effectively cordoned off by the British Navy,” wrote Kees Van Dijk in 2008’s The Netherlands Indies and the Great War, 1914-1918. As a result, the war caused price increases and severe food shortages in the Dutch East Indies. By the end of 1916, the export industry was practically destroyed. Around that time, social unrest had gained momentum. Rural protesters burned reserve crops, eventually leading to famine in some parts of the colony. Nationalists and a small contingent of socialists began advocating for revolution. By 1918, unrest was so dire that the governor general called a meeting of the nationalist leaders where he made the so-called “November promises” of more political representation and freedom, but these were empty promises.

Economic problems were a constant throughout the region. To help pay for the war effort, the French and British were reduced to raising taxes in their Southeast Asian colonies. The burden fell mainly on the poor. Small wonder it resulted in unprecedented protests. A failed uprising took place in Kelantan, British Malaya, in April 1915. In Cambodia, the so-called 1916 Affair saw tens of thousands of peasants march into Phnom Penh demanding the king reduce taxes. None of these were exact appeals of “no taxation without representation”, but rather the germinal expressions of self-independence that were to become more forceful across the region in the 1930s, and decisive after World War II. Brian Farrell, a professor of military history at the National University of Singapore, has described the impact of the First World War on Southeast Asia as significant yet delayed.

By the close of the war, many of the colonies returned to some form of pre-war normalcy. Yet the colonial governments, indebted and weakened from the conflict, knew that reforms had to be made in Southeast Asia. In Laos, the French-run administration thought the county “secure enough” in October 1920 to introduce the first of a series of political reforms aimed at decentralising power through local appointees, wrote Martin Stuart-Fox in A History of Laos. The British authorities in Malaya also experimented with decentralisation in the 1920s, which involved placing more power in the hands of the provincial sultans. In 1916, the Jones Act was passed in Washington to begin the process of granting the Philippines a “more autonomous government”, including a parliament, which was built upon until full independence in 1946.

War also transformed the role of local elites, who took on more autonomy and power. In Vietnam, the years after 1919 saw the creation of reformist newspapers, written in the increasingly popular Vietnamese script instead of the Roman alphabet, which the French had imposed. In Cambodia and Laos, such forceful nationalism did not arise until the 1930s. Other reformists in the region grew interested in ideologies brought back from the West. The South Seas Communist Party, a pan-Southeast Asian party, was formed in Burma in 1925 before splitting along national lines in 1930. Ho Chi Minh, who spent the war in London, helped create the Communist Party of Indochina that year. Tan Malaka, who had actually tried enlisting to fight with the German army – without success – became an integral part of the communist movement in the Dutch East Indies, later becoming known as something of a father of the independent Republic of Indonesia.

World War I laid bare the unequal “social contract” that colonial authorities had forced their colonial subjects in Southeast Asia to sign. The contract would only become more obviously threadbare by the 1920s, yet it took the next global conflict, which had a far greater impact on the region than the first, for these anti-colonial movements to grab real political power.

[froody]

Okay so here is this extremely weird extremely fucked up bit of family history I found while trying to untangle my strange Appalachian family tree. I may delete this later if I feel like it provides too much information but I’d like to hear your thoughts on it. Buckle up, this one is a wild ride.

My great great great great grandfather was thought to be indigenous. He lived under the name Joseph Sparrowhawk and he was allegedly a chief. This goes beyond the stereotypical reductive claims of distant Native ancestors so many people have because of the context and evidence. My great great great grandmother Sarah was white. They met around 1810 and had 9+ children together but the law would not allow them to marry. Sometime around 1840, he was forcibly removed from Appalachia and sent to Oklahoma via the Trail of Tears. Sarah could not support the children and they ended up going to different homes. She died in 1859 at 66, never having any recorded legal marriages. He died in 1868 at the age of 86 in what would become Oklahoma.

Those 9 children had many children of their own and I’m somehow related to much of the population of western Virginia, West Virginia and western North Carolina. The problem is, none of my extended family has any DNA markers indicating any indigenous ancestors. The DNA inclusion would be in the last 200 years so it should indicate a 1% ancestry. Nobody has that. I can’t find anyone in any of the branches of the family who does, none of their descendants. Looking into it further, I can’t find any evidence a man named Joseph Sparrowhawk actually existed. He only appears in family trees and family journals, there are no photographs of him, just one drawing.

This raises so many questions that there may never be answers for. First hand accounts indicate that yes, Sarah was in a domestic partnership for 30 years with a man who claimed to be Cherokee and lived under the name Joseph Sparrowhawk and he was the father of her 9 children. Her children were legally listed as several different races despite having the same father, some were listed as Black, some as white and others as having mixed ancestors. DNA tests indicate that yes, most of us have some very distant African American ancestors but we cannot be sure where the DNA came from.

So, was Joseph Sparrowhawk Black or partially Black and faking his race to avoid anti-Black racism? Was Joseph Sparrowhawk the alias of a white man pretending to be indigenous as an excuse not to marry Sarah, did he simply abandon the family and leave for Oklahoma on his own volition? Is it possible Joseph Sparrowhawk did exist and was indigenous but was not the father of Sarah’s children? Or, and perhaps strangest of all, is it possible he never existed and that Sarah pretended she had a partner to excuse the fact all of her children had different biological fathers? The implication that Sarah was not mentally sound is something that comes up a lot. She was known to be “free spirited” and she was a psychic by trade.

We cannot know for sure if Joseph Sparrowhawk genuinely existed and if he did exist, was he living under an alias and a fraudulent identity? This happened in the early 19th century and it’s likely we’ll never truly get answers. It’s so mysterious and the implications are all so disheartening. I wish I could say this was the first strange weird find in my journey to untangle my huge messy Appalachian family but it’s not.

[scotianostra]

On February 19th 1313, James Douglas retook Roxburgh Castle and razed it to the ground.

Some accounts have put the Black Douglas attack of Roxburgh Castle to 1314. Historic Environment Scotland puts it to 1313, I always understood it to be in 1314 as part of the final push before Bannockburn but I tend to yield to the view of more learned people .

  The Good Sir James, or The Black Douglas, depending on what side of the border you were on, struck a heavy blow against the invading English forces under King Edward II, capturing Roxburgh and razing it to the ground. Douglas was a loyal general, friend and follower of Robert Bruce. He had helped the Scottish King secure victories at the Battle at the Pass of Brander and the assault on Rutherglen Castle.

  In the decade before 1314, the English presence in Scotland was reduced to garrisons in a few significant strongholds, mainly Stirling Castle. They were relatively secure in these fortresses as we had very few ways or means to capture castles in those days.

  To combat this Bruce and his commanders created several cunning strategies. None were more cunning than that of Black Douglas’ at the capture of the powerful castle of Roxburgh. In a stunningly effective manoeuvre, Douglas ordered his men to cloak themselves in cow hide and crawl on their hands and knees towards the castle under the cover night. Complacent guards, who were celebrating the night of Shrovetide – a Roman Catholic holiday “that was solemnized with much gaiety and feasting”.  We know it today as Pancake Tuesday and the beginning of lent. The rather merry guards assumed the dark shapes were merely cattle. Douglas's men then used latest battle device of the day the  rope ladders which hooked onto the end of extra-long spears. With the ladder fixed to the battlements, a member of the garrison emerged to see what was happening only to find one of the Good Sir James's men, Sim of Leadhouse, at the top of the ladder.

  Quickly, the English soldier was dealt with by dirk and his body pulled over the castle wall. The castle was soon overrun but the governor managed to lock himself away in the main Donjon tower. However, he was badly injured by an arrow and agreed to surrender if he and his men could return to England. With the English removed, Robert the Bruce then ordered the demolition of the fortifications, as he had with most castles, to prevent further occupation, remember this was all crucial in the run up to Bannockburn in June.

  The Lanecrost Chronicle records that

"all that beautiful castle the Scots pulled down to the ground, like the other castles that they had succeeded in capturing, lest the English should ever again rule the land by holding the castles."

Douglas gave the governor and his men safe passage to the border. However, the castle seems to have been rebuilt and fell back into English hands just a few years later in 1330.  

Again I refer to to Historic Environment Scotland who say that it was under English control until 1460 when James II laid siege to the fortress with an impressive army drawn from across Scotland. The Scots, fearful that English forces might occupy it, finally destroyed the fortress in the sixteenth century. In the 1550s, English forces briefly re-occupied the site with the intention of rebuilding a fortress there

The pics shows a reconstruction suggestion of how the impressive castle may have looked,  the scant ruins of Roxburgh Castle. and a brilliant depiction of Douglas from the late Andrew Hillhouse. http://www.andrewhillhouseprints.co.uk/

[sciencespies]

The Thorny Road to the 19th Amendment

https://sciencespies.com/history/the-thorny-road-to-the-19th-amendment/

The Thorny Road to the 19th Amendment

When the 19th Amendment became law in August 1920, it constituted the largest simultaneous enfranchisement in American history—women nationwide had finally obtained, at least on paper, the right to vote. But it’s the struggle for suffrage, which stretched more than 75 years prior, and not just the movement’s eventual victory that UCLA historian Ellen Carol DuBois recounts in her new book, aptly titled Suffrage: Women’s Long Battle for the Vote.

Suffrage history is thistly and complicated. The movement got its start in abolitionist circles during the mid-19th century when most married women lacked basic property rights. Even among the progressive-minded women and men gathered at Seneca Falls in 1848, the notion that “it is the duty of the women of this country to secure to themselves their sacred right to the elective franchise” proved radical. “One of my intentions,” DuBois told Smithsonian, “is to integrate the history of the women’s suffrage movement into American history…At every stage, the larger political atmosphere, the reform energies of the 1840s and ’50s, the Civil War and Reconstruction, the period of Jim Crow, the Progressive Era and then World War I, each of those periods creates the environment in which suffragists have to work.” To that end, DuBois traces the ways in which Reconstruction fueled calls for “universal suffrage” as well as a racial schism among suffragists. We learn how the women’s rights advocates became (sometimes uneasy) allies with different political parties, Temperance advocates and the labor movement and how outside political turmoil, like World War I, complicated their quest for the vote. Centuries before social media and the internet, reformers turned to newspapers, speaking tours, and eventually advocacy that ranged from signature-gathering to hunger strikes to convince voters and legislators alike how imperative it was that women gain the franchise.

DuBois’ richly detailed account also doesn’t shy from examining the bitter divides that fissured the suffrage movement over methods, race and class as it struggled to piece together a coalition that would vote to let women vote too. In the 1870s, after a schism between prominent suffrage leaders over supporting the 15th Amendment, the movement split into several camps, one with more moderate tactics and Republican Party allegiance than the other; in the 1910s, a similar split emerged between the more militant NWP and conciliatory NAWSA. And despite the contributions of women of color like Ida B. Wells-Barnett and Mary Church Terrell to their cause, NAWSA adopted an “explicitly racist policy” to appeal to Southern states around the turn of the 20th century, DuBois writes.

Intermixed in all this political history are the miniature profiles of the remarkable, determined women (and choice male allies) who propelled the suffragist movement. Susan B. Anthony ranks among the best known, but DuBois also adds the lesser-known facets like that Anthony was formally tried and found guilty of casting a ballot “without having the lawful right” to do so in New York? DuBois also highlights the stories of suffragists with less name recognition, like the firebrand and Equal Rights party presidential candidate Victoria Woodhull, Woman’s Christian Temperance Union leader Frances Willard and millionaire benefactress Alva Belmont. DuBois spoke by phone with Smithsonian about her book:

This book covers a long history, and I’m curious about the evolution of the movement. What are some of the twists and turns the fight for suffrage took that were not part of the original vision?

First, what really makes the suffrage movement the foremost demand of the women’s rights movement are the consequences of the Civil War. The U.S. Constitution has almost nothing to say about who votes until the 15th Amendment, [which enfranchised African American men]. In the early postwar years, the assumption was that, like economic rights, voting rights would have to be won state by state.

Then with the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments, which virtually rewrite the U.S. Constitution [to abolish slavery and give formerly enslaved people legal and civil rights], the suffrage movement focuses on getting the right for women to vote acknowledged in the Constitution. When efforts to get women included in the 15th Amendment failed, suffragists actually returned to the state level for the next many decades.

The suffragists go back to the states, almost all of them west of the Mississippi, and convince male voters to amend their state constitution to either remove the word “male” or put the right of women to vote in those constitutions. Here is the crucial thing to acknowledge: When that happened, first in Colorado, then in California and ultimately crossing the Mississippi to New York in 1917, those women who were enfranchised by actions of the state constitution had comprehensive voting rights, including for president. So for instance, the women of Colorado gained the right to vote in 1893; they voted for president five times before the 19th Amendment is passed. By the time that the suffrage movement moves into high gear, in the midst of the first World War and then immediately afterwards, four million American women have the right to vote for president.

The way that the right to vote moves back and forth from the state to the federal level is something that could not have been anticipated. Especially since those first suffragists really thought that in the sort of revolutionary change of emancipation and black male enfranchisement, surely women would also be included. The failure of the 15th Amendment to extend the franchise to women so enraged a wing of the women’s suffrage movement that it broke open the alliance between black rights and women’s rights groups with serious and negative consequences for the next half century.

The second thing I’d say is that when women’s suffrage started, the political parties were quite infant. Indeed, the women’s suffrage movement begins before the Republican Party comes into being. I don’t think that suffragist reformers really anticipated how powerful the major political parties would be over American politics. One of the things I discovered in my work was how determined the controlling forces in the major parties, first the Republican and then the Democratic Party, were to keep women from gaining the right to vote.

Why was that?

When the Republican Party enfranchised African-American, formerly enslaved men, almost all of whom lived in the South, they anticipated correctly that those men would vote for their party. The enfranchisement of women was so much greater in magnitude, so there was no way to predict how women would vote. Really up almost till the end of the suffrage movement, American women had a reputation, gained or not, for being above partisan concerns and sort of concerned with the character of the candidate or the nature of the policies, which meant that they could not be corralled into supporting a partisan force. So the only parties that really ever supported women’s suffrage were these sort of insurgent third parties who had nothing to lose and everything to gain by attaching themselves to a new electorate. The most important of these was what was called the People’s, or Populist, Party of the 1890s. Those first victories in the West can be credited to the dramatic rise of the People’s Party.

Suffragists wearing the names of some of the Western states that had already granted women the right to vote process down Fifth Avenue during a 1915 march.

(Bettmann via Getty Images)

How did the women’s suffrage movement move from being very closely tied to abolitionism to largely excluding women of color?

So there were a couple things. First, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, one of the dominating figures in the first half century of the movement, when she’s really enraged not just that women are excluded from the right to vote but women like herself are excluded from the right to vote, she expresses herself in ways that are…she’s charged with being racist. I think it’s more accurate to say she’s an elitist, because she’s as dismissive of European immigrants as she is of the formerly enslaved.

Stanton made really, really terrible comments about people a generation removed from slavery—she called them the sons and daughters of “bootblacks” or sometimes she called them “Sambo.” Sometimes that charge of racism flows over to her partner Susan B. Anthony. That’s not really fair. Anthony’s abolitionism was much deeper and more consistent. When you follow her career, until the day she died, she was always, wherever she went, she would make sure that she went to black churches, black universities, black societies.

Second, by the turn of century we’re moving into a whole different generation of leaders, none of whom have any roots in the abolition movement, who come of age during the period in which Reconstruction is portrayed as a terrible disaster for the nation and who are part and parcel of the white supremacist atmosphere of the early 20th century.

In those final eight years, 1912 to 1920, when the suffrage movement breaks through for a variety of reasons, to a real chance to win a constitutional amendment, the U.S. government is controlled by the Democratic Party. The president is a Southern Democrat. Washington, D.C., the home of the federal government, is a southern city. So the political atmosphere is radically hostile, at the national level, to anything that will help to return the African American vote.

In all the research you did for this book, was there anything that surprised you?

I was incredibly impressed by the congressional lobbying. I don’t think I appreciated, until I wrote this book, the quiet importance of Frances Willard and the WCTU, which doesn’t really fit into our normal story of suffrage radicalism. This sort of conventional women’s organization was important in bringing mainstream women, and not just the kind of radicals who had fought for the abolition of slavery, to recognize the importance of votes for women to achieve their goals, not just because these were high principles of equal rights, but because they couldn’t get what they wanted done. Whether it was the prohibition on alcohol or the end of child labor, they couldn’t do those things without the vote.

One of the lessons of the book is that the notion that women’s suffrage was a single-issue movement is just wrong. All of them had other goals. Carrie Chapman Catt was interested in world peace. Alice Paul was interested in equal rights for women beyond the right to vote. Anthony was interested in women’s right to earn a living. Stanton was interested in what we would call reproductive rights for women. Each of them had a larger vision of social change in which women’s suffrage was fundamental as a tool.

#History

[meta-squash]

Journal For Plague Lovers & Modernist Literary Style

So I’ve had this theory/idea/whatever in my head for at least a year now about Journal For Plague Lovers and Modernist literature. (Note: I’m talking about the full, unedited lyrics available in the deluxe edition booklet, which you can find my scans of here.) Basically, my theory is that JFPL reflects and uses a Modernist style of writing in order to express feelings and experiences. The Modernist writers really started experimenting with form and meaning and how each dictates or manipulates the other, and there are certain stylistic choices that Richey made in these lyrics that are really reminiscent of the Modernist techniques and experimental styles.

To begin with, JFPL is a notably massive leap forward in lyrical writing for Richey. Which, frankly, is amazing if most of it was written between autumn 1994 when he got out of hospital and January 1995 when the binder was given to Nicky. That means that his lyrical advancement occurred in about 6 months, between the writing/recording of The Holy Bible and Richey’s release from hospitalization, which is incredibly fast. Nicky is always mentioning how Richey’s mind was in high-gear around the time of writing Journal For Plague Lovers, how he was unable to switch off or slow down, which probably accounts both for the advancement and the overwhelming overload of references in these lyrics.

Anyway, I’m just gonna go through some of the main characteristics of Modernist literature/poetry, and sort of look at how JFPL reflects that or utilizes it.

Probably the most obvious is the “cut-up” word/writing style of most of the songs. The Beat poets took cut-up and really ran with it, but it kind of started during the later modernist period. Cut-ups are where a text or texts are cut up and rearranged to make a new text.

I don’t think Richey was literally cutting up texts, but the way certain songs, like Me & Stephen Hawking, Peeled Apples, and Journal For Plague Lovers leap from subject to subject or POV to POV very much seems to emulate that cut-up style. Me & Stephen Hawking is a really good example. In an interview about the album, someone mentioned the weirdness of the lyrics to the song and James responded, “Seriously, you haven’t seen the rest. Seriously, you wouldn’t fucking believe them.” The lyrics clearly have an ongoing theme, but it’s hard to make out at first. They’re very cut-up style, random and almost unintelligible:

Queen mother stuffed for exhibition Three strikes yr out – execution – pizza 2/ Dante III, spider robot, Mount Spurrr Increased plastic surgery for pubic hair Sanitation police, crime of proportion.

Peeled Apples, while clearly political, and Journal For Plague Lovers, clearly personal, also really use the cut-up style. Peeled Apples slams together political/history references with images of personal suffering and popular media as well as just plain bizarre phrases like “Canaries are always behind bars the day of deliverance lied.” Pretension/Repulsion also does this, as it’s just single seemingly unrelated words clustered together separated only by commas. The cut-up sort of style allows a ton of words to be put together where it might not have been so easy before. It’s hard to follow, but it manages to pack a LOT of information into a small amount of space, and creates a sensation of overwhelming reality and/or unreality.

Which brings me to another characteristic of modernism, which was the destabilization of reality, the realization that there is not central truth and that truth is provisional and reality is constructed by the “writer” and the “reader.” Jackie Collins Existential Question Time really utilizes that, as it warps reality into this bizarre sort of talk show asking relationship questions– but you don’t know if you’re the audience or not, or where you/the speaker is, or what the conclusion is meant to be, or what the questions really mean. It’s silly but also serious and you’re not really sure how to take it because it’s so weird. You get a sense of place, of what’s going on, but not enough to feel like your feet are on solid ground and that you’re understanding anything.

Facing Page: Top Left and Virginia State Epileptic Colony do this as well, but in very different ways. In Facing Page, you get the sense of a hospital or institution, flashes and fragments of moments and images from within, but there is never any clarity about what is going on, and the world constructed by the words is obscured from any conclusion or truth or central point, since images of institutionalization are interspersed with phrases like “The scum as jewellery,” “Pig bargaining,” “Christian fraternity meeting Pagan idolatry,” and of course “This beauty here dipping neophobia.” It’s comprised mostly of collections of short phrases, and none of these phrases coagulate or combine to clarify anything or to give the listener-reader any sort of intended message. Virginia State Epileptic Colony also presents a hospital scene, but it is much clearer. Instead, the destabilization of reality comes from spaces in the text, and the repetition. We only get about half an image in 13 lines of text– people (patients) sitting at tables drawing circles in chalk, given medication by doctors, waking to strange lights and being told that they are independent because they are allowed to learn domestic tasks. We have the repetition of “Piggy” (and those double asterisks) 5 times in the chorus, with no true explanation as to what it means, and with two verses, a repetitive chorus, and a two-line bridge, there is so much space in this song, so much emptiness. It is up to the listener to fill that space, that reality, making it something constructed not by the words, but by what isn’t there, the information that the listener has to create for themselves out of the half-image that’s given.

As an extension of the above, the use of stream-of-consciousness (and first person) writing became really popular during the modernist era. Most songs are sort of a form of stream-of-consciousness, but the lyrics on JFPL seem to do it more on a literary rather than lyrical level. More than any of the others, William’s Last Words does it best. It’s literally a Faulkner-style first-person prose monologue without line breaks or a verse/chorus/bridge structure. The original version is clearly a drunk character leaving or attempting to leave a party or show of some sort. It’s sad and nostalgic and self-deprecating but it’s all one unbroken monologue-scene of stream of consciousness speech. This is just a small chunk of the page and a half of text:

Goodnight all, you’re all my friends…remember my wedding day, should’ve heard ole Bill singing, we’ll have a good old ding dong tomorrow, you’re lovely all of you, goodnight godbless I’ll always remember you, hope you liked the concert. I’ll go nice and quiet, I’ll just say cherio, here I go on my way, till we meet again, wish me luck as you wave me goodbye. Yr the best friends I ever had, yes, no, no I’m not a clever chap, I made a balls up again, first, second, third time but not on your time I hope, you’re a part of the world….oo be quiet old Bill, no applause, sleeptight, isn’t it lovely when the dawn brings the dew and I’ll be watching over you. It was lovely singing to you, I won’t forget you.

It’s full of commas and run-on or unconnected sentences, but it is prose that connects to itself rather than lyrics. Still, it seems to start in the middle of a scene and fades away into not much of a concrete conclusion, so we get a moment of consciousness– perhaps the most emotional moment– before turning away. Facing Page: Top Left and Marlon JD do stream of consciousness to some degree as well. Facing Page is not a typical stream of consciousness, but more like a list of things or experiences or associations. In some ways again it makes me think of Faulkner, of the way he writes characters that don’t really know how narrate their thoughts/experiences in words. It never leaves its institutional location or changes the subject to something else, it just rambles about the situation it’s in through fragmentary phrases. Marlon JD is also very stream-of-consciousness, but because it’s already based on a monologue from a film that’s kind of to be expected.

Modernism was also characterized by a sort of “what’s becoming of the world?” reaction, in response to the speeding up of technological advancements and scientific discoveries etc etc, as well as the consciousness of the changes that came from the end of the 19th century and how the new 20th century was shaping up to be. Something that the band specifically notes in interviews about the Journal For Plague Lovers album is the emphasis on information overload, of the speed of technology and information/media consumption, as well as concerns about things like the environment, religion, and global politics/history and the end of the millennium.

Me & Stephen Hawking is the clearest example of this “what is becoming of the world?” anxiety, and the focus on information overload. The main body of the lyric –the verse(s)– never actually made it onto the recording, which just uses the bridge and the chorus. This is probably because the verse(s) are just jumbles of references to history and media and events and ideas. It’s also characterized by swaths of blacked-out lines. Whether the Richey did that or the band did it posthumously, we don’t know. If Richey did it himself, it certainly changes the interpretation of the lyrics, as it adds another layer of “information” (censoring) overload. But the words trip over each other, so many different references all piled in one spot:

2/ Dante III, spider robot, Mount Spurrr Increased plastic surgery for pubic hair Sanitation police, crime of proportion. 3/ Paisleyism and ecumenism and cenotaph bombers [blacked out] wearing policing Soviet labour medals sold for Coca Cola 82 million watch Gorilla Meets Whale

Peeled Apples does the same thing, piling political and historical and emotional and media references in one place until they’re so jumbled it’s hard to make sense of them, showing the anxiety of that information overload and speeding up of communication, creation, knowledge. I’ve always thought that All Is Vanity is a kind of reaction to that reaction, putting the anxiety succinctly into “It’s not whats wrong it’s what’s right / Makes me feel like I’m talking a foreign language at times” and the desire for control or some semblance of order and calmness in “I would prefer no choice / One bread one milk one food that’s all / I’m confused I only want one truth.” Which, again, goes back to that Modernist realization that truth is provisional, reality is constructed, and there is no central point because not only is it all relative, it’s also always moving and changing and growing and shrinking and twisting.

Another characteristic is that of an emphasis on the sexual (in the form of fetish or obsession, usually), and the visceral or grotesque. While JFPL doesn’t really have much of the former, it certainly has plenty of the latter. The most obvious are Journal For Plague Lovers and She Bathed Herself In A Bath Of Bleach. She Bathed Herself really contains the most visceral image in the title, which is, as Nicky calls it, “quite a shocking title.” Aside from the title, the more intense lines are “She thought burnt skin would please her lover” and “Love sat her in a bath of bleach / But salmon pink skinned Mary is still caring.” Even so, the title kind of dictates where the listener’s mind goes with these words, and so with the suggestion from the title, the imagination goes to more grotesque places that the words actually literally contain. On the other hand, Journal For Plague Lovers has some really grotesque imagery. The band sort of cherry-picked lines to record around the more intense parts of the verses. The verses altogether seem to be an image of a rotting self, whether physical, emotional or mental, especially when combined with the “dying relationship” of the bridge.

These perfect abattoirs these perfect actors Babies bones, dustbinned, shorn

Oh such love smeared stimulus Vacuumed pain slow suck luck Wake in hell murder one Troughs o’ bones wade in gore

Weep helpless skewered flesh Milky teeth soured and fetid PG certificate all cuts unfocused Sick in skin embarrassed within

The imagery is really intense but non-specific, creating a reaction of disgust and fragments of gross images without really knowing what we’re looking at or what we’re supposed to be disgusted by. It’s a shock factor that transitions into the bridge, which is a scene of a failing or failed relationship, so that the gross images overlay this moment of romantic collapse, making it even more visceral and pitiful.

Modernism also started really focusing on the meaning and history of words, and how they could be used to create an image without blatantly telling a story. Pretension/Repulsion is the best example of this, especially because James Bradfield specifically noted in an interview that the way the song was laid out meant it felt like Richey was telling him “Look at the words, James, look at the words.” Which makes sense, as it’s just a bunch of individual words divided by commas:

Explored, inclos’d, amaz’d, perturb’d Assum’d, annoy’d, ceas’d, unhinder’d Burden’d, gather’d, agonis’d, lock’d Mix’d, sear’d, receiv’d, unclaps’d 

Instead of focusing on a story, the listener-reader is paying attention to the sound of each word and thinking of the meaning behind it. Instead of a narrative, we get flashes of image/emotion for each word. Peeled Apples also relays on knowledge of words and historical references, with lines like “In SB’s Cistine Chapel inabilities wither / Boy smoking cigarette infront of Himmler’s painted ether” and “Nutrition is neuroses for a maelstrom of inadequacy.” Doors Closing Slowly relies on religious knowledge, and its references go very deep. It twists biblical stories and references, and expects the listener-reader to understand the origin and therefore the modified version:

I want your sin third day perfected Lazarus burning Jerusalem Blaspheme, cut dead, Isiah One day birds of prey Israelite 

But, like the Modernists, each of these lyrics uses an emphasis on the expectation that the listener-reader will have the literary or historical or vocabulary knowledge to understand the meaning/origin of the reference in order to create a specific image through the twisting or reinterpretation of that reference. It wants the definition and history to expand the story, so that it’s the effort of the listener-reader and not the speaker that will expand the story into something fleshed out and recognizable. Despite the cuts that were made for the studio recordings it’s clear when you read the full versions of the lyrics that every single word is important and researched and meant to be included. There is a history and meaning infused in every reference, and Richey’s brain was going so fast that some of the lyrics feel like they’re piled on top of each other, but at the same time, they seem to build on each other, each reference allowing the listener-reader to glean more meaning the more history or definitions they know.

What I found most telling was seeing the quality of modernist literature that my professor really drilled into us: that modernist lit (especially prose, but also poetry to a large extent) was not necessarily about the plot, and the plot was not the most important thing. Instead of a specific narrative, what was important was the impression or emotion evoked by the words. I always think of the novel Nightwood by Djuna Barnes when it comes to feelings/impressions being more important than the plot; there is a plot, but it’s just a scaffolding or a base for the emotion to build off of, for the reader to interpret and feel from. It’s basically what all of the above is driving to create and express. Instead of having a direct narrative within the lyrics (like 4st lbs or La Tristesse Durera or even, to some extent, PCP or Intense Humming…), it relies on fragments of scenes or references to create an impression or an emotion on the listener-reader. Faster and Of Walking Abortion do this as well, but JFPL manages to take it to another level.

The band, when being interviewed about Journal For Plague Lovers, often talk about how much this album seems simultaneously “of its time” and strangely fitting for the present. In his very last television interview, Richey mentioned that his dream was to “write a lyric which I think is flawless, that makes sense to me, not anybody else. That I think in 15-20 lines sums up exactly how I feel about everything, not just how I feel today, how I’ve felt all my life. Everything I’ve read, everything I’ve seen, everything I believe, that in those 15 lines you just say it all.” Considering the sheer amount of knowledge and imagery and information packed into just the 13 songs on the album (not to mention the 20 or so more in the binder that have never been published), I think that’s partly what Richey was trying to do with these words. We’ll never know if he thought he succeeded, but instead of being left with a clear-cut picture of his opinions (or accusations) like THB, instead we are left with impressions of experiences, feelings, and events created through the fragments of information all slammed together– everything, all in 15 lines.

Aside from one or two songs, the tracks on JFPL don’t really have a defined narrative. Instead, they rely on fragments of images, emotions, references, and ideas to form an impression in the listener’s mind. For example, Peeled Apples, the most reference-filled track on the album, doesn’t actually tell a straightforward story or clear opinion the way the more political tracks on THB did. Instead we get an opening line that is clearly political followed by a much more personal line: “Riderless horses, Chomsky’s Camelot / Bruises on my hand from digging my nails out,” and the rest of the lyrics that follow are a mass of references, from the bible to Japanese post-Hiroshima films to the Birdman of Alcatraz to George Orwell, intermingled with lines that are abstract and emotional. Yet somehow what the listener-reader gets out of is an impression of frustration, political anger, and historical/political/personal entropy. Me & Stephen Hawking is similarly reference-packed, and out of that comes the impression of overwhelming technological/information enhancement and concern for the survival of both the environment and the self.

Doors Closing Slowly is full of religious references, and leaves us with an impression religious and personal doubt, and the overwhelming feeling of rejection and dejection towards both. And they’re so twisted together there are some lines, like “Love the soul not the body / Let me forgive the word ruins / I wanted to kill but my tears love,” where you don’t know if it’s a personal reference or a religious one.

There’s a sense of desolation and loneliness, of overwhelming exhaustion at the uncertainty of truth. William’s Last Words, on the other hand, feels desperate, lonely but wishing not to be alone. As a prose monologue, it is more personal-sounding, able to sound rambling and drunken because of the amount of space the words are allowed to take up. Within the words there’s the impression of nostalgia and a sort of rainy quietness, a mental fading, and a sort of muffled personal mourning.

In All Is Vanity, there is a sense of desperation. For control, for understanding, for being understood. Especially in “I’m confused I only want one truth / I really don’t mind if I’m being lied to,” there’s an impression of simultaneous frustration with monotony and a desire for it, a frustration with and desire for beauty, love, a non-existent central point, a conflict of interest on the personal level. This Joke Sport Severed feels bleak, an impression of rawness or over-sensitivity being dealt with through rejection and repression, hiding or turning away from everything that hurts. It includes the odd bridge, “Repress yr emotion / Repression yr revenge / Stoic shitter nerve end,” which radiates anger as well as dejection and frustration. The song leaves an impression of being curled in a corner somewhere, barefoot, confused, frustrated and lost and nursing wounds and pretending nothing outside of your little corner exists.

As I mentioned before, Facing Page: Top Left absolutely leaves the listener-reader with an image of hospitals and institutionalization and the monotony of that existence. It also gives an impression of discomfort, a body seen in fragments rather than as a whole, and a loss of agency. It feels frustrated, searching, but also pointedly disgusted both with the self and with others. The final two lines, for me, pack all of those feelings in a short punch packed with words and images: “Dipping neophobia. Gillette Cuticura. Flak. PS. Recovery. Huh / Central dissolves. Exceed dosage. Subscribed. Cleansed. Boring.”

Journal For Plague Lovers also reflects that disgust, to a much higher degree. The grotesque imagery gives the listener-reader a distinct feeling of uneasy revulsion, but also a sort of pity or helplessness, both for the self and for others that seem to exist in the song. Especially because it’s difficult to make out who the speaker is and what they feel– which puts all the interpretation on the listener rather than the speaker. It makes the listener-reader feel conflicted, uncertain whether they should feel horrified or sad.

Again, most of the songs don’t really have an obvious narrative, just images you can kind of construct meaning out of. But on the off-chance we do get a narrative, it is left so vague and open-ended it’s barely a narrative at all, but a fragment left open at both ends. In Virginia State Epileptic Colony, we get a momentary picture of a hospital scene, but we leave it before we get anything but an impression. She Bathed Herself… gives an incomplete narrative of a mentally ill woman and her views/attempts at romance, a fragment of her thoughts and feelings and experiences, and a fragment of the speaker at the bridge demanding “Brush her hair, no one else will / Don’t hurt her anymore, stop hurting her.” Marlon JD is also fragmentary, but some explanations can be found in the film it references, because most of the lyrics are a monologue from Reflections In A Golden Eye, or descriptions of scenes from the film. William’s Last Words starts abruptly, practically in the middle of a sentence, and peters out into nothing without the narrator going anywhere or doing much. It’s a long, sad, drunken ramble with no central point (as there is no set or stable truth), in which the narrator seems to circle around whatever it is he wants to say without really saying it, and loses steam before he gets to it. Instead we’re left with this strangely contradictory set of ending sentences, (and, apt for the album and its circumstances) a conclusion without any real meaning or conclusion:

“If I sing a song I’m down a scale or up a scale. I’ve come a long way, really, even for a tone deaf singer, if you want to know.”

Nicky also tends to mention how the binder was filled not only with lyrics, but with paintings, scans of other authors’ literature, collages, drawings, prose, journal entries, and other sorts of clippings. He makes it clear that the binder itself was meant to be a work of art. Again, this places emphasis on the form and the importance of references and of the whole being seen to create an impression rather than each little piece being interpreted. This does make me wonder how much more to the lyrics and art within there really was, and if within the whole thing as a work of art Richey did somehow reach his goal of writing the perfect lyrics or the perfect album or the perfect piece of art expressing himself. Either way, I think the inclusion of Richey’s art and non-lyric writings and things in the booklet are a sort of attempt at allowing the whole to give an impression, because the inclusion of the drawn-upon diagrams of Dante’s Infero with the lyrics to Journal For Plague Lovers, or a Christ figure with Marlon JD, or Richey’s notes from therapy with Pretension/Repulsion, flesh the piece out into art as a whole, in which the visual aspect also informs the creation of the impression upon the viewer (or listener-reader).

In Journal For Plague Lovers, modernist style is used and reflected to talk about Richey’s own experiences and thoughts, but also to capture and express a very specific moment and emotion and idea without saying it outright. There is never any mention of that information overload, of apprehension about the coming millennium, no outward or straightforward reference to his time in hospital or his views on relationships or the self. Instead, each song leaves us with an impression, a feeling rather than a clearly defined narrative or message. There’s an internalization of meaning, of imagery, so that it must be sensed and pulled out of all the jumbles of words and emotions; this time, it isn’t the plot or the message that is important, it’s the impression and feelings of an experience and a moment in time that is simultaneously constant and passed, intensely, vividly present and faded away like a memory.

[the-tigrou]

                           ♬ OverGroove & Viticz - Cilukba (Badoet) ♬

                              ♬ Why So Serious ? - Hans Zimmer ♬

                                       ♬ ReCreation - MOKU ♬

                               ♬ Michael Jackson - Is It Scary ♬

                                                  ♦ Jojo ♦ 

                                         ♦ Charlie Douglas ♦ 

                              ♦ The Devil / The Devil in Box / It ♦

                                     ♦ Several billion years ♦

                              ♦ Come from another dimension ♦

                                           ♦ Shapeshifter ♦

                   ♦ Favorite Appearance : A Boxed Devil / Clown ♦

    ♜ Manipulator ♜ Hungry ♜ Sadistic ♜ Determined ♜ Violent ♜ Screwy                ♜ Hypnotic ♜ Unpredictable ♜ Possessive ♜ Good actor.♜

We don’t know anything about Jojo's origins, all we know is that he's part of the same species as Pennywise. Like the dancing clown, It comes from another dimension, and seems to have existed since the dawn of time.

The earliest remains of history known that talks about Jojo date back to Ancient Egypt. Stories tell about a creature residing in a box, or a sarcophagus according to the translations, who took his victims inside to devour them. As soon as the box opened again, despite all his victims, no body exceeded. At that time, Jojo was considered a God to be appeased, the Egyptians made many offerings to him, sacrificing a lot of people. Similar testimonies are also reported a little later in South America, particularly in Maya, Inca, Aztec and many others.

Jojo is forgotten a little time, left in the shadows during the Roman Empire, and had plunged into a phase of hibernation. Unlike Pennywise, Jojo hibernates whenever he wants, or in case of great hunger, and is awake only when a human or an external force causes the opening of his box. 

In the Middle Ages, Jojo returns in force, locked in a coffer in Asia, especially in Japan. The folclore of this country relied heavily on Jojo and his many years of prosperity. According to some accounts, Jojo is said to have been the source of the Kappa legend, because he would have hypnotized people who had woken him up and asked them to bring the children back from the riverbanks in the middle of the forest, and eat hem.

Jojo's coffer is stolen by mercenaries at the beginning of the Renaissance, and is taken directly to Europe. The box remained closed until the 19th century. Jojo then takes the form we know today, which is his favorite form, that of a spring-loaded devil in his big box. It’s bought by a circus who decides to use this charming box without suspecting what it contains.

Jojo, clever as he is, hypnotizes the whole circus, which will continue its tours all over Europe for decades, taking away some children, or some other victims to feed It. The circus is arrested after about fifty years, when they decided to start a tour in the United States, and all members are imprisoned for life for child abduction, and surely murder of them.

Except that the real murderer is none other than Jojo, controlling them, and having devoured the hundreds of missing people. The box is handed over to the authorities, and is then sold, like all other objects, to a Cabinet of Curiosity.

Today, this cabinet is closed, its owner having mysteriously disappeared, and having no one to offer the cabinet inheritance, his small store is abandoned.

It’s now in Arkansas, in an old city named Willer. Beware of It if you enter, and if you fall on Its box, under an old dusty cloth. Jojo hibernates because he’s hungry. On its colorful box is the word "OPEN", prompting you to open this box. But just above, is written in red paint "NEVER", scratched repeatedly as to be erased. Nobody knows who painted this word, perhaps the buyer, maybe even that was killed by Jojo, because his body never been found, never nobody had overwhelmed his disappearance.

It's up to you to see what advice you will follow ! Will you open it ?

⬳ Just like Pennywise, the fear of humans gives his meat a better taste, and of course, the easiest people to scare are kids and phobics. But that doesn’t mean he cannot feed on anyone.

⬳ He rarely leaves his box, which is in a way his shell. It’s irreparably linked to him, but can probably move by teleportation (Only once out of hibernation) and dragging on the ground with his box. He can also take a form out of his box, but will have to return there after a week, after this time, Jojo becomes slower, weaker, but remains immortal.

⬳ In his devil form, he cannot remove the spider's legs from his back.

⬳ In the "enraged" mode, sharp teeth push him by hundreds in the mouth, and his smile extends to his ear on one side, and to his forehead of the other by passing accross his eye. His eyes also become multicolored, and mandibles come out of his mouth, just as a long two-colored tongue can also appear.

⬳ It’s also possible for him to hide in any box, in your drawer, in your bag... All that closes and opens, he can hide in.

⬳ He loves to swing in all directions on his spring, just because he finds it funny.

⬳ He likes roasted peanuts.

⬳ He loves black roses. Sometimes his box is filled with it, and he offers it to his future prey.

                                                    Jojo © Me

[southeastasianists]

Southeast Asia’s role in World War I is all but lost to history. There was no major invasion of the region by a hostile power, like Japan in World War II. None of the Central Powers – an alliance of Germany, Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire – had colonial territory in the region, except on the periphery. German New Guinea quickly fell to the Allies after the outbreak of war in July 1914.

Yet the First World War, which ended 100 years ago this month, proved a decisive event for Southeast Asia. For the first time, it severely tested the relationship between the colonial authorities of Britain, France and the Netherlands (neutral in the war) and their colonial subjects in Southeast Asia, for whom sacrifice in the conflict was to be a rallying cry for more civil rights. The burgeoning nationalist movements throughout the region swelled with veterans returning home from democratic and industrial nations, while others, with considerable consequences in later decades, brought home interests in the radical politics at the time, not least communism.

Arguably, the most interesting response to the declaration of war was made by Siam, as Thailand was then known. As the only Southeast Asian nation not colonised by a European power, Siam, under the absolute monarch King Vajiravudh, decided to go to war against the Central Powers in 1917, sending its own troops to fight in Europe. The Siamese Expeditionary Force of more than 1,000 troops arrived in the French port of Marseilles in July 1918. It was led by Major-General Phraya Phya Bhijai Janriddhi, who had received military training in France before the war. At first, the Thai troops were employed by the Allies as rear-guard labour detachments, taking part in the Second Battle of the Marne in August that year. The following month, they saw their first frontline action. They took part in several offences, including the occupation of the German Rhineland. In the end, 19 Thais had lost their lives – none from battle.

King Vajiravudh’s decision to go to war was calculated. Gambling on Allied victory, he believed Siam’s participation would earn it the respect of Britain and France. He was correct. Although it was independent, neighbouring colonisers (the British in Burma and the French in Cambodia) had slowly whittled away Siam’s territory in the preceding decades, with large tracts of land returned to Cambodia in the late 19th century. After WWI, though, Siam’s territory didn’t budge. Equally important, Siam took part in the 1919 Versailles Peace Conference and was a founding member of the League of Nations, a clear indication that Western powers now saw it as a legitimate force on the international stage and in Southeast Asia.

The rulers of independent Siam might have wanted respect and power, but the thoughts of ordinary people from the rest of colonised Southeast Asia are little known. Few first-hand accounts exist for historians. Quite probably, however, many did not want to be thrust unquestionably into the greatest fratricide the world had yet seen, and some no doubt hoped the colonial empires would be destroyed by the whole endeavour. Yet some nationalists, especially those of higher rank who weren’t expected to fight, saw the war effort as a means of gaining more political rights for themselves under the colonial system.

The war, for example, provided the Vietnamese with “an unexpected opportunity to test France’s ability to live up to vaunted self-representations of invincibility”, as Philippe Peycam wrote in 2012’s The Birth of Vietnamese Political Journalism: Saigon, 1916-1930. The prominent Vietnamese nationalist Phan Chu Trinh, who had spent years in jail before the war for his activism and was imprisoned for six months in 1914 on wrongful charges of colluding with the Germans, played a considerable role in recruiting Vietnamese men for the war. Another noted nationalist, Duong Van Giao, published a history of the Vietnamese war effort, 1925’s L’Indochine pendant la guerre de 1914–1918. Because of Vietnam’s sacrifice, he called on the French colonials to adopt a “native policy”: not quite outright independence but radical reform of civil rights for the Vietnamese. It was a similar sentiment as expressed in Claims of the Annamite People, an influential tract cowritten in France in 1919 by a young activist who later became known as Ho Chi Minh, who had spent most of the war working in a London hotel under the famous chef Auguste Escoffier.

As a French colony, Vietnam was expected to provide troops for the war effort, but there were differing views among colonial officers as to what role they should play. Lieutenant-Colonel Théophile Pennequin was a hardliner but also a keen reformer. Before the outbreak of war, Pennequin requested that he be allowed to form a competent military unit that was termed by some as an armée jaune (yellow army), similar to the force noire (black force) popularised by General Charles Mangin in France’s West African colonies. For Pennequin, a national native army would allow Vietnamese to gain “positions of command and provide the French with loyal partners with whom they could build a new and, eventually, independent Indochinese state,” wrote historian Christopher Goscha in 2017’s The Penguin History of Modern Vietnam.

But Pennequin’s designs were rejected by Paris and, instead, most Vietnamese recruits were sent to Europe to work in factories or as supply hands. Yet some did fight. One estimate contends that out of 100,000 Vietnamese conscripts sent to the war in Europe, roughly 12,000 lost their lives. A battalion of Tonkinese Rifles, an elite corps formed in the 1880s, saw action on the Western Front near Verdun. Do Huu Vi, a celebrated pilot from an elite family, became a national hero after his plane was shot down over France.

Despite overt racism by some French nationals and trade unions’ concerns that they were bringing down wages, many of the Vietnamese put to work in munitions factories found it a revelatory experience. Some started relationships with Frenchwomen, unsurprising since other workers in wartime factories were mostly women. Others joined social clubs and reading groups. After the war, wrote Goscha, “a hundred thousand Vietnamese veterans returned to Indochina hoping to start a new life. Some wanted French citizenship; most expected good jobs and upward social mobility. Several hoped to modernise Vietnam along Western lines, despite the barbarity they had just witnessed in Europe.”

It was a similar story for the Philippines, then a United States colony. It declared war on Germany in April 1917, the same time Washington did. At first, the colonial government requested the drafting of 15,000 Filipinos for service, but more than 25,000 enlisted. These troops formed the Philippine National Guard, a militia that was later absorbed into the American military. Most of the recruits, though, would not leave the Philippines during the war. Those who did travelled as part of the American Expeditionary Forces. In June 1918, the first Filipino died in action at the Battle of Château-Thierry, in France: Tomas Mateo Claudio, a former contract labourer on a sugar plantation in Hawaii who had enlisted in the US.

It is not known exactly how many Southeast Asians died during the First World War. Of those active in the European theatre, the number is estimated to be more than 20,000, mostly conscripts from the French colonies. It was a small figure compared to the number of Southeast Asians who perished during the Second World War. And, unlike in that war, there wasn’t a great arena of warfare in Southeast Asia during the First since none of the Central Powers nations had any imperial control in the region.

But Germany did have influence in China and possessed leased territory in Kiautschou Bay, near present-day Jiaozhou. It was invaded by Japanese forces after 1915, and China would later declare war on Germany in August 1917. But in October 1914, the German East Asia Squadron still had its base in the concession – it was from there that a lone light cruiser, the SMS Emden, slipped into Penang Harbour, part of what was then British Malaya. Disguised as a British vessel, the German cruiser launched a surprise attack on a Russian ship and then sank a French destroyer that had given chase. The sole attack on Malaya during the war killed 100 and wounded thousands more.

After the attack, the Emden is thought to have docked in a port in the Dutch East Indies, present-day Indonesia, raising British suspicions that the Dutch weren’t as neutral as they had claimed. Neutrality, moreover, didn’t mean the colony went unscathed. The Dutch East Indies was home to a sizeable German population that worked to “coordinate and finance covert operations designed to undermine British colonial rule and economic interests in Southeast Asia,” as historian Heather Streets-Salter wrote in 2017’s World War One in Southeast Asia: Colonialism and Anticolonialism in an Era of Global Conflict.

After docking in the Dutch East Indies, the Emden was finally stopped by an Australian cruiser that ran it ashore in Singapore. The surviving crew of the German vessel were interned there, then a part of British Malaya. Also stationed in Singapore was the Indian Army’s Fifth Light Infantry, which unsuccessfully mutinied in January 1915 after they learned they might be sent to fight in Turkey against fellow Muslims (though they were eventually sent to Hong Kong instead). The 309 interned Germans from the Emden joined in the mutiny, which left dead eight British and three Malay soldiers, as well as a dozen Singapore civilians.

A much forgotten history of World War I was a Turco-German plot to promote jihad (holy war) in parts of the Muslim world colonised by the Allies, including Malaya. Using the Dutch East Indies as a base, supporters of the Central Powers produced “pan-Islamic, anti-British propaganda” that was sent to Muslim-majority British Malaya, and also to India. One of the architects of this plan, Max von Oppenheim, wrote in a position paper in 1914: “In the battle against England… Islam will become one of our most important weapons.” The Ottoman Sultan, Mehmed V, issued a fatwa against the Allies in November of that year. In British Malaya, the authorities doubled down on censorship by closing many Malay-language newspapers, some of which were considered supportive of the Ottoman Empire.

Pan-Islamic propaganda agitating for independence of Malaya was just as attractive to the Muslim-majority subjects of the Dutch East Indies where it was produced. In the preceding decades, these subjects had been demanding more freedoms, even independence, for themselves. This was a serious cause of concern for the Dutch colonialists, but ultimately the real impact of the war on the Dutch East Indies was economic. The Allies’ blockade of European waters, as well as control of Asian waters, made it difficult for Dutch ships to reach the colony for trade purposes.

“The Netherlands Indies was effectively cordoned off by the British Navy,” wrote Kees Van Dijk in 2008’s The Netherlands Indies and the Great War, 1914-1918. As a result, the war caused price increases and severe food shortages in the Dutch East Indies. By the end of 1916, the export industry was practically destroyed. Around that time, social unrest had gained momentum. Rural protesters burned reserve crops, eventually leading to famine in some parts of the colony. Nationalists and a small contingent of socialists began advocating for revolution. By 1918, unrest was so dire that the governor general called a meeting of the nationalist leaders where he made the so-called “November promises” of more political representation and freedom, but these were empty promises.

Economic problems were a constant throughout the region. To help pay for the war effort, the French and British were reduced to raising taxes in their Southeast Asian colonies. The burden fell mainly on the poor. Small wonder it resulted in unprecedented protests. A failed uprising took place in Kelantan, British Malaya, in April 1915. In Cambodia, the so-called 1916 Affair saw tens of thousands of peasants march into Phnom Penh demanding the king reduce taxes. None of these were exact appeals of “no taxation without representation”, but rather the germinal expressions of self-independence that were to become more forceful across the region in the 1930s, and decisive after World War II. Brian Farrell, a professor of military history at the National University of Singapore, has described the impact of the First World War on Southeast Asia as significant yet delayed.

By the close of the war, many of the colonies returned to some form of pre-war normalcy. Yet the colonial governments, indebted and weakened from the conflict, knew that reforms had to be made in Southeast Asia. In Laos, the French-run administration thought the county “secure enough” in October 1920 to introduce the first of a series of political reforms aimed at decentralising power through local appointees, wrote Martin Stuart-Fox in A History of Laos. The British authorities in Malaya also experimented with decentralisation in the 1920s, which involved placing more power in the hands of the provincial sultans. In 1916, the Jones Act was passed in Washington to begin the process of granting the Philippines a “more autonomous government”, including a parliament, which was built upon until full independence in 1946.

War also transformed the role of local elites, who took on more autonomy and power. In Vietnam, the years after 1919 saw the creation of reformist newspapers, written in the increasingly popular Vietnamese script instead of the Roman alphabet, which the French had imposed. In Cambodia and Laos, such forceful nationalism did not arise until the 1930s. Other reformists in the region grew interested in ideologies brought back from the West. The South Seas Communist Party, a pan-Southeast Asian party, was formed in Burma in 1925 before splitting along national lines in 1930. Ho Chi Minh, who spent the war in London, helped create the Communist Party of Indochina that year. Tan Malaka, who had actually tried enlisting to fight with the German army – without success – became an integral part of the communist movement in the Dutch East Indies, later becoming known as something of a father of the independent Republic of Indonesia.

World War I laid bare the unequal “social contract” that colonial authorities had forced their colonial subjects in Southeast Asia to sign. The contract would only become more obviously threadbare by the 1920s, yet it took the next global conflict, which had a far greater impact on the region than the first, for these anti-colonial movements to grab real political power.

[wyrdautumn]

The Apothetry Ithnomik

So, now that me and Jacqueline were officially a team, I wanted her help with something that’d been bothering me for a while. Given that I am a hacker of dubious moral character, I like to make a habit of breaking into any encrypted linkservs I happen to find myself in range of, just for funsies, and on the off chance I might learn something interesting, or have a chance to quietly beef up some nice person’s network so they’ll be safer from unscrupulous actors such as myself. A few months before everything started I ran into some nodes around the city that had some weird stuff floating around them, and I mean weird, at least by my standards at the time. For a while I was convinced I was looking at some kind of dog fighting ring, but, the stuff I was seeing didn’t seem much like dogs, if you follow my meaning. I had kind of decided to let it go, wrote it off as some hoax, or at least above my pay grade. None of it was cropping up near my neighborhood--and you’d best believe I was checking--so I could let it be somebody else's problem and hope I would find out it was just some kind of ARG someday.

But once I had Jacqueline on my side, I thought it would be worth another look. I took her to the last place I had picked up some suspect LMs and asked her to look around a bit, do her arcana check thing. I was kind of hoping she'd put my mind at ease, tell me I hadn’t stumbled onto some dangerous magical shenanigans, but if I had that kind of luck I wouldn’t be telling you about it. No, once we started digging, we pretty much found what you’d expect--somebody in the city was summoning monsters from demonworld and making them fight each other for sport. Even putting aside the ethical concerns--Jacqueline had a whole thing trying to explain the nature of all this, all I really got out of it was that people expect the monsters to feel pain so they do, which seems like a shitty deal if you ask me--this whole thing was obviously obscenely dangerous and was only going to end with a lot of people dead, and we were gonna have to make it our problem before it became everybody’s.

Once you knew what you were looking for, these guys weren’t too hard to track down. They were setting up this whole big arena, converting an old warehouse into a more permanent establishment for their bloodsport. Aethersport? Hard to say if those things bleed.

Anyway, we knew where they were going to be, so all we needed was a plan. Jacqueline really didn’t like the idea of going somewhere with, like, people. She was wary, didn’t want anybody seeing her, being able to track her down. Fair enough, right? Easy fix: she lives in shadows, she can hitch a ride in mine. She keeps hidden and when she does her thing we just pretend it’s my thing. All we had to do was arrange a meeting with the boss, talk him down or scare him straight, and send anything he already summoned back where it came from. So, I tracked down the ringleader on the underweb, hacked into his deck, and wrote us an invitation in the form of some malware.

It was a harmless little thing, just locked up his deck for a bit, played some spooky music, showed him this magicky sigil Jacqueline helped me design like something he might have seen before, then deleted itself and left him a spoofed “let’s talk” message with no sender. Pretty basic trickery, easy stuff once you have access to the deck, but all the effort went into presentation. Everything we had on this guy told us he didn’t really know what he was doing, and if we made it look like this was a supernatural attack and not just some copy-paste warrior level bullshit hacking he’d probably buy it. If it worked--which, of course, it did--all we'd have to do was show up for the next fight and he’d have to bring us right to him.

They built their arena out where the factories used to be, did up the interior nice and classy like some upscale nightclub from the 20s. They kept the place admirably discrete for how much they put into it, but even if we hadn't stepped in, there was no way they were gonna keep their secret for long. Maybe they thought they could pass it off as a regular speakeasy and buy their way out of prosecution when the time came. But then they probably woulda left a bunch of angry fuck off monsters rampaging through the city before it got to that point, so maybe foresight just wasn’t their thing.

I wanted to look the part, so I borrowed a few fashion pointers from Jacqueline and ran with them. I got this flowy gothy dress and witchy black jewelry, and then I threw on combat boots and a studded jacket to add a little punk touch for me. It was a sick look, honestly, and it did the trick, ‘cause I was barely there two minutes before a few burly-ass toughs dressed up like they thought they were Secret Service came around and brought me to their boss.

They called him Cowboy, on account of his whole affectation. Wide brimmed hat, southern twang, low-key aggro with a genteel frontier greed. We’re talking a guy who missed the point of a lot of spaghetti westerns. He didn’t waste any time once his goons deposited me at his table overlooking the pit. “You’re the one who sent me that message,” he said.

Obviously I was going to play it a little coy. “Maybe. I haven’t seen your messages.” That was a lie. “How should I know which one you mean?”

“The one that damn near broke my deck, of course.” It hadn’t done anything of the sort, but I put a lot of work into making him think otherwise. “You know, I figured this’d happen eventually.” He was sitting almost sideways on his booth chair, holding the neck of his whiskey with the tips of the fingers, and all I could think about was how he would seem even less cool once he inevitably dropped the thing. “Gotta be other folks in on this shit. Somebody had to write the book, after all. I knew I’d wind up catching y’all’s eye eventually.”

“Is that what this is?” I asked him in my best husky witch voice. “A cry for attention?”

“Please, darlin’, I’m not so pathetic as that. This here is just good old fashioned capitalism. Man takin’ his advantages and turnin’ them to cash, like nature intended.”

I couldn’t resist. “So you’re using the powers of the arcane to get rich quick. I suppose it’s less pathetic.”

“Heh. Had a feeling you folks’d be like that.” Cowboy grinned like a jackal. A really smug jackal you wanna punch in the face. “Cuz I’m a businessman, and I knew if y’all were businessmen--or ladies, ‘course”--yes he did say that--”and you had the kind of power I got at my hands now, let alone whatever other crazy shit I can only imagine, the world’d be run by folks like us.”

What a fucking idiot. But I needed to keep him talking. “So you’re going to offer me your business acumen.”

“Don’t get ahead of me now,” he said. He sat up for once and leaned in. He really thought he was a viper. “I still don’t know who you are. Or why you wanted to meet me in the first place. I got my ideas, but I know you have your own agenda. So tell me what you’re here for and let’s see what deal we can cut.”

The thing about knowing you’ve got all the cards is there’s not much point in lying. So I was straight with him, which, believe me, that’s not something I can say often. “I’m sure you realize I’m here to stop this.”

He just shrugged. “I figured it might be something like that.” Then he leaned back with that same punchable look. “So what will it take to change your mind? I know I can. Otherwise you wouldn’t have bothered talking to me.”

This guy thought he was so clever, and he was just ludicrously wrong about absolutely everything. I needed to make him see it. “Think about this,” I told him. “That book of yours, do you even know how old it is? How many hundreds of years, do you think?”

“19th century,” he said. “Had a dealer date it for me, before I figured out what it was.”

“19th century,” I repeated. Jacqueline whispered in my ear. I followed her lead. “Been around a while, then. And you’re right, that’s just the tip of it. Knowledge you can’t fathom, back to the dawn of civilization. Old, old, old secrets. Don’t you think that’s odd?”

“Not especially. Everybody knows magic’s out there now, it only stands to reason there’s people who always did.”

“That’s the point. Some people did always know. And all that time, the entire history of the human race, not one person ever had the bright idea to use that knowledge for personal gain. Nobody ever thought they could take that power and run the world with it. That’s what you believe, right?”

“Well, no, when you put it that way, I’m sure somebody tried. Maybe they just weren’t any good at it.”

He really didn’t get it. “Listen to me.” I looked him dead in the eyes. “It's not gonna work. Whatever you think is different about you, you’re wrong. What you’re meddling with here is dangerous, ‘Cowboy.’” I added the sneer. Couldn’t help it. “You’re playing with fire and when you lose control it’s going to burn a lot more than just you.”

Cowboy almost seemed like he was listening, which surprised me. “Let me show you something,” he said, and he waved his hand to pull up two screens for me, one for each of the monsters he had locked up in the pit that night. There was a mean-looking two-legged coyote thing--I figured it was supposed to be El Chupacabra--and some sort of freaky lion bear snake chimera creature that, I’m gonna be honest, looked a lot grosser in real life than it would have on an album cover.

But the weird thing about them was, they were just kinda… standing there. They were moving back and forth a little bit, but their motions were repetitive, like they were stuck in some sort of idle loop. “That’s always what they do,” Cowboy said, “least til we open their cage and let ‘em at each other. They’re dumb sons of bitches, ma’am, ain’t inclined to go huntin’ for nothin’ that ain’t directly in front of their face. We let ‘em kill each other, then we shut the winner in for a few days ‘til he fades away an’ goes back wherever he came from. Any poor bastard you put in front of ‘em is gonna get ripped to shreds, sure, but it ain’t a problem so long as you don’t let any poor bastard put himself in front of ‘em.”

I’m not kidding you, that was his grand fuckin’ scheme. That was his defense! ‘This is totally safe because everything about it is the exact opposite of safe!’ It really threw me for a god damn loop. I had no clue how to respond to that. So I looked back at the screens, and I almost forgot about all the bullshit I just heard, cuz El Chupacabra was looking back at me.

I guess Cowboy saw it on my face, cuz he glanced at the screen too. “Oh, huh,” he said. “Yeah they do that sometimes. Nothin’ ever comes of it though, it’s just kinda creepy. They forget all about the camera once they catch sight of each other.”

A jingle played over the building’s speakers and an announcer told us bets were closing in 60 seconds. The lights dimmed around the room and a spotlight came on over the pit. At this point I was genuinely pretty spooked, and I looked at Cowboy and told him, “you have to call this off.”

“Relax, darlin’,” he said, and he took a big swig of whiskey. “Why don’t you just enjoy the show?”

It was hard to keep my cool, but I thought freaking out then would ruin all that effort I put into building the facade. We always thought we were gonna have to drop in on the fight and let Jacquline take care of the monsters anyway, so I figured, okay, I guess we can just stick to the plan, why not?

But it didn’t feel right. Somehow I knew we had miscalculated. I looked back at the screens, and El Chupacabra was staring back at me, I swear looking right into my eyes. Like, right into them. Almost like--well. I guess I had a hunch. So I got up. I moved away from my seat. And its eyes followed me.

“Shit,” I said.

Cowboy turned to see what I was looking at. After a few seconds, it clicked. “Shit,” he said, and I didn’t hear what he said next, because the announcer came on again and said there were ten seconds left. Cowboy held a hand up to his ear, looking concerned, and started talking to his staff, but it was too late for them to do anything I guess, because the countdown kept ticking, down to 3 seconds, to 2, to 1…

There was a loud siren. I saw the cell doors open on the monitor and both monsters charged out of the gates. I whipped around, leaned over the balcony Cowboy was using as his perch, and watched with what I would say was an appropriate amount of terror as the monsters leaped straight out of the pit onto the floor below us.

So right away there’s pandemonium, people screaming and yelling and running, tables getting bowled over by the people and by the monsters, Cowboy spilling his whiskey all over the floor. About half of the guards ran for their lives, the other half drew their guns and started firing like that was gonna fuckin’ do anything, but luckily for them El Chupacabra and his buddy weren’t interested in the bystanders. They were coming for me. Or, more likely, for Jacqueline.

Less intelligent demons don’t really know how to deal with Jackie, is the thing. Most of the time they know she’s a threat to them, and some of ‘em try to run away or give her the slip, but you’d be surprised how often they just pick the biggest threat in the room and run straight for it. Normally that suits us just fine, but Cowboy picked the exact wrong time to show some common sense. He jumped right into action, to his credit, running off to help evacuate his customers and barking orders to the staff, and the first thing he did was make sure they threw on the lights. And they had gone all out with them, like full on covering the room with floodlights, I guess for specifically this kind of situation, which is almost an admirable precaution except for how utterly futile it is. But more importantly it just really fucked us over, because a room that bright ain’t got no shadows.

Jacqueline was wavering beneath me, the faint shadow I was casting barely enough to hold her. The monsters were skidding up the stairs, El Chupacabra leaped forward and smashed the seat Cowboy had been using, everything was going wrong and I realized I was going to die. I didn’t have very many options. And I wound up doing the thing I always do when things go sideways, like seriously you’d be surprised how much this comes up--I threw myself off the balcony and hoped for the best.

Bad plan. It’s always a bad plan. I took a hard fall and smashed into the ground. I was lucky I hadn’t broken anything, but I was bruised and hurting and winded. I could feel Jacqueline’s weight shifting around in my shadow. She didn’t have much to work with, to fight the monsters or to keep me safe. I felt paralyzed. I think she did too. And I didn’t… I didn’t like what I was doing to her. I didn’t want her to have to watch me…

Well, I didn’t want to die either. And the monsters had already leaped down. They were closing in on me, cautious, afraid of whatever scent they had picked up from Jacqueline. So I spun up my deck and beamed the worm I prepared to every device I could reach. I’d hoped to do it properly, have time to slip it by anything using more than basic security, leave my fingerprints off of it, but I didn’t have much choice. All I could do was brute force it and hope it got where it needed to.

I crawled backwards as best I could, my deck vibrating madly in my pocket, worried that if I tried to scramble to my feet one of them would take the chance to pounce. The ominous tone I cooked up started playing from somewhere in the distance, then it spread across the room, one device at a time. Then I heard it coming loud, from the monitors above the pit, and the house lights blinked out all at once. I felt a lurch in my stomach and I was gone.

Before I knew it I was back on my feet, somewhere else, still in the building but I couldn’t tell where. I was disoriented, the lights were all off save for a few bright floodlights casting long dark shadows all over the room, and the red glow from the monitors I hacked gave everything this super menacing vibe. Before I could get my bearings I heard a roar and felt something coming up behind me, and I dropped to the ground.

The chimera barreled past me and tried to swerve back around. It skidded into the wall, but that didn’t slow it down. It came crashing back toward me, but I saw the shadows swirling around me and I knew I didn’t have to be afraid of it. We had already won. So I charged right back at it. It swung its paw at my head but I ducked below it, sliding beneath its underside, and I gave it a hard uppercut in its soft underbelly that did absolutely jack shit. But then a thick lance of shadow shot out from beneath me, piercing the thing straight through its middle. It writhed and roared in pain, or whatever living aether feels, and the pillar of shadow lanced out again, stabbing it from the inside with a bunch of big nasty fuck-off shadow spikes, and then the thing just… wasn’t, anymore, and the shadows receded, and the chimera was gone.

Before I knew what was happening, I felt something swinging at my head, and then I was gone too. My stomach lurched and I was somewhere else again, but El Chupacabra must have been catching on, because I barely had time to register it barreling towards me, claws ready to rip my stomach out of my gut, before I was nowhere once more.

You have to understand, Jacqueline does the shadow thing easy. It’s second nature to her, like she knows the dance so well she doesn’t even realize she’s dancing anymore. She’ll shift and shape and reform however she wants and it doesn’t phase her in the slightest. But I can’t do any of that, and I definitely couldn’t do it back then, and being shoved in and out of your entire reality like that really fucks you up when you’re not used to it. So when I tell you I was doubled over on the ground sick to my stomach in just the grossest most pathetic seasick haze, I just want to make sure you know, for the record, that I’d like to see you take it any better, all right?

But, so, okay, yes, I spent the next minute or so shaking on my knees trying not to retch, so I kind of missed the next little bit after that. But I imagine a bystander would have just seen me grappling with my super anime inner demons and exploding in a big jaggy ball of shadow rage that eradicated El Chupacabra before it could try to get another hit off, so that’s the reality I’m gonna choose to live in.

Once I managed to gather my bearings, I took off to track down our friend Cowboy and finally finish the job. Luckily I didn’t have to go far. He was very courteously waiting for me by the bar, surveying his mostly-destroyed club. As far as I could tell everybody else made a break for it. But I guess he realized we still had business.

He tried to keep himself together, but he was fidgeting nervously and avoiding my eyes. “Well. It’s fair to say a lot went wrong here. But, I will point out, those things only had eyes for you, and clearly you had ‘em licked, so frankly I don’t know who you have to blame ‘cept yourself.” I think he could tell I was stabbing his head in my mind. “But I’m not a fool, no, and you’ve made your point, so, maybe it’d be best if we worked something out. I’m not adverse to bringing in an expert when the situation calls, and havin’ somebody who can keep the beasts in check is only a fair precaution, I would think. Obviously you can’t be in the room with ‘em, but--”

“Stop talking,” I told him. I stepped forward. He flinched. He was scared of me. That was Jackie’s cue. The shadows started swirling around me again, and Jacqueline rose from my shadow, half-formed in shadowstuff, shaping herself as a demonic figure towering behind me. We advanced on Cowboy. He staggered back, swearing under his breath.

Jacqueline took over from there. “You don’t understand anything.” She made her voice raspy and deep, a slight echo of Harvey’s cocky drawl underneath it. “This, all of this, this is the misguided workings of a neophyte, dog-paddling in water deeper than the deepest ocean, arrogant and ignorant of how small he is, how dark the waves below.” Cowboy had his back against the wall. “I could unmake you with a thought, and I am a shadow of the beasts you fail to see rising up to swallow you whole.” The shadows swirled and formed into a great scythe that she held in her towering shadowy hands, perched above Cowboy’s head, ready to strike. “This is a mercy.”

The scythe came down and passed through Cowboy. He gasped and shuddered and almost fell over, but I grabbed him by the neck and stared into his eyes. “You won’t be summoning anything again. You can try, but it won’t work. It never will. Let it go and live your life, Cowboy.”

I let him drop to the ground. I’m pretty sure he passed out. So we just left him there, and hoped he learned his lesson. If not, well, at least his next scam couldn’t be any more dangerous.

...

Nah. It doesn’t work that way. But what Jacqueline keeps telling me is magic shit’s all about, like, faith. And then she walks that back because that makes it sound like she means religious faith, and it’s not that, or like it can be, but it doesn’t have to, or something. I’m not gonna pretend I get it. But I think what it’s really about is, like… the belief that things should work the way you expect them to? You gotta have confidence in what you’re doing, and that’s what she took from him. Lot of work to make a white guy feel insecure, but I guess you can’t argue with results.

[patriotsnet]

Who Were The Republicans In The Civil War

New Post has been published on https://www.patriotsnet.com/who-were-the-republicans-in-the-civil-war/

Who Were The Republicans In The Civil War

Gop Overthrown During Great Depression

What if Civil War broke out between Republicans and Democrats?

The pro-business policies of the decade seemed to produce an unprecedented prosperityuntil the Wall Street Crash of 1929 heralded the Great Depression. Although the party did very well in large cities and among ethnic Catholics in presidential elections of 19201924, it was unable to hold those gains in 1928. By 1932, the citiesfor the first time everhad become Democratic strongholds.

Hoover was by nature an activist and attempted to do what he could to alleviate the widespread suffering caused by the Depression, but his strict adherence to what he believed were Republican principles precluded him from establishing relief directly from the federal government. The Depression cost Hoover the presidency with the 1932 landslide election of Franklin D. Roosevelt. Roosevelt’s New Deal coalition controlled American politics for most of the next three decades, excepting the presidency of Republican Dwight Eisenhower 19531961. The Democrats made major gains in the 1930 midterm elections, giving them congressional parity for the first time since Wilson’s presidency.

Election Of Abraham Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln was born into relative poverty in Kentucky in 1809. His father worked a small farm. In his youth, Lincoln held down a variety of jobs before moving to Illinois and becoming a lawyer.

Lincoln sarted to get involved in local politics. Lincolns political views came to the fore after the Kansas Nebraska Act where he spoke out against the spread of slavery.

1860 was the presidential election year. In the spring the two main parties, the Democrats and the Republicans chose their candidates.

Abraham Lincoln . The Republicans held their convention in Chicago. Lincoln was chosen with overwhelming support.

Stephen Douglas . The Democratic Party was split. Northern Democrats wished for further compromise over slavery. Douglas was chosen as their candidate.

John Breckinridge . The Southern Democrats wanted no compromise on slavery. They wished to see slavery guaranteed and were trying to take over the party. They left the Democrat Convention in Baltimore and selected their own candidate John Breckinridge.

John Bell . The Constitutional Union Party was trying to prevent the country dividing over the issue of slavery.

The election campaign of 1860 was unusual. Lincoln only campaigned in the North and Breckinridge in the South. Stephen Douglas exhausted himself by campaigning in all the states.

The result was that Lincoln became President. He won all 17 states in the North but none in the South. The country was now more divided than ever.

Opinionheres What Getting Rid Of Mississippis Confederate Flag Means And Doesnt

In the summer of 1864, for example, the war was going poorly, and Republicans feared that a public sick of defeat would toss Lincoln out of office. Then Gen. William T. Sherman won a resounding victory at Atlanta in September. Lincolnâs landslide re-election in 1864 seemed to many at the time and since then to be the result of that military success.

But by analyzing House elections in 1864, Kalmoe uncovered a different story. In the 1860s, congressional contests were held over the course of the entire year, rather than on the same day as the presidential contest. If Republicans were in trouble before September, House GOP candidates should have been crushed by Democratic challengers. But instead, Kalmoe found, Republican vote share changed little over time. Lincoln was on his way to win before Atlanta. Republican partisans supported the president even though the war was going poorly, as they did when the war was going well.

In the Civil War era, partisanship had a strong effect on how people interpreted good or bad news.

Republican refusal to abandon Trump seems ominous. Trumpâs disastrous response to a national health crisis has led to tens of thousands of unnecessary deaths. If his voters arenât moved by that, how can we hold government accountable to the people at all? Partisanship seems to be a recipe for denial, dysfunction and death.

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Read Also: Parties Switched Platforms

President Truman Integrates The Troops: 1948

Fast forward about sixty shitty years. Black people are still living in segregation under Jim Crow. Nonetheless, African Americans agree to serve in World War II.

At wars end, President Harry Truman, a Democrat, used an Executive Order to integrate the troops.

These racist Southern Democrats got so mad that their chief goblin, Senator Strom Thurmond, decided to run for President against Truman. They called themselves the Dixiecrats.

Of course, he lost. Thurmond remained a Democrat until 1964. He continued to oppose civil rights as a Democrat. He gave the longest filibuster in Senate history speaking for 24 hours against the 1957 Civil Rights Act.

Recommended Reading: How Many States Are Controlled By Republicans

Republicans And Democrats After The Civil War

Its true that many of the first Ku Klux Klan members were Democrats. Its also true that the early Democratic Party opposed civil rights. But theres more to it.

The Civil War-era GOP wasnt that into civil rights. They were more interested in punishing the South for seceding, and monopolizing the new black vote.

In any event, by the 1890s, Republicans had begun to distance themselves from civil rights.

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Horace Greeley Proceedings Of The First Three Republican National Conventions Of 1856 1860 And 1864 78

“Republican Party Platform of 1856, American Presidency Project, at , accessed April 25, 2014.

Abraham Lincoln, Speech at Carlinville, Illinois, August 31, 1858, in Abraham Lincoln Association, Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, edited by Roy Basler, at , accessed April 25, 2014.

Abraham Lincoln, Emancipation Proclamation, January 1, 1863, at United States National Archives, Americas Historical Documents, at , accessed April 25, 2014.

University of Richmond Digital Scholarship Lab, Voting America: Presidential Election, 1864, at , accessed January 9, 2014.

History Of The Republican Party

Republican Party

The Republican Party, also referred to as the GOP , is one of the two major political parties in the United States. It is the second-oldest extant political party in the United States; its chief rival, the Democratic Party, is the oldest.

The Republican Party emerged in 1854 to combat the KansasNebraska Act and the expansion of slavery into American territories. The early Republican Party consisted of northern Protestants, factory workers, professionals, businessmen, prosperous farmers, and after 1866, former black slaves. The party had very little support from white Southerners at the time, who predominantly backed the Democratic Party in the Solid South, and from Catholics, who made up a major Democratic voting block. While both parties adopted pro-business policies in the 19th century, the early GOP was distinguished by its support for the national banking system, the gold standard, railroads, and high tariffs. The party opposed the expansion of slavery before 1861 and led the fight to destroy the Confederate States of America . While the Republican Party had almost no presence in the Southern United States at its inception, it was very successful in the Northern United States, where by 1858 it had enlisted former Whigs and former Free SoilDemocrats to form majorities in nearly every Northern state.

Also Check: How Many States Are Controlled By Republicans

How Did The Spanish Civil War End

The final Republican offensive stalled at the Ebro River on November 18, 1938. Within months Barcelona would fall, and on March 28, 1939, some 200,000 Nationalist troops entered Madrid unopposed. The city had endured a siege of nearly two-and-a-half years, and its residents were in no condition to resist. The following day the remnant of the Republican government surrendered; Franco would establish himself as dictator and remain in power until his death on November 20, 1975.

Spanish Civil War, , military revolt against the Republican government of Spain, supported by conservative elements within the country. When an initial military coup failed to win control of the entire country, a bloody civil war ensued, fought with great ferocity on both sides. The Nationalists, as the rebels were called, received aid from Fascist Italy and NaziGermany. The Republicans received aid from the Soviet Union as well as from the International Brigades, composed of volunteers from Europe and the United States.

Pietistic Republicans Versus Liturgical Democrats: 18901896

MOOC | The Radical Republicans | The Civil War and Reconstruction, 1865-1890 | 3.3.5

Voting behavior by religion, Northern U.S. late 19th century % Dem 90 10

From 1860 to 1912, the Republicans took advantage of the association of the Democrats with “Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion. Rum stood for the liquor interests and the tavernkeepers, in contrast to the GOP, which had a strong dry element. “Romanism” meant Roman Catholics, especially Irish Americans, who ran the Democratic Party in every big city and whom the Republicans denounced for political corruption. “Rebellion” stood for the Democrats of the Confederacy, who tried to break the Union in 1861; and the Democrats in the North, called “Copperheads, who sympathized with them.

Demographic trends aided the Democrats, as the German and Irish Catholic immigrants were Democrats and outnumbered the English and Scandinavian Republicans. During the 1880s and 1890s, the Republicans struggled against the Democrats’ efforts, winning several close elections and losing two to Grover Cleveland .

Religious lines were sharply drawn. Methodists, Congregationalists, Presbyterians, Scandinavian Lutherans and other pietists in the North were tightly linked to the GOP. In sharp contrast, liturgical groups, especially the Catholics, Episcopalians and German Lutherans, looked to the Democratic Party for protection from pietistic moralism, especially prohibition. Both parties cut across the class structure, with the Democrats more bottom-heavy.

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Birthplace Of The Republican Party

Meeting at a in Ripon on March 20, 1854, some 30 opponents of the called for the organization of a new political party . The group also took a leading role in the creation of the in many northern states during the summer of 1854. While conservatives and many moderates were content merely to call for the restoration of the or a prohibition of slavery extension, the group insisted that no further political compromise with slavery was possible.

The February 1854 meeting was the first political meeting of the group that would become the Republican Party. The modern , a Republican think tank, takes its name from Ripon, Wisconsin.

Ripon is located in the northwest corner of .

According to the , the city has a total area of 5.02 square miles , of which, 4.97 square miles is land and 0.05 square miles is water.

Presidency Of George W Bush

In the aftermath of the , the nationâs focus was changed to issues of national security. All but one Democrat voted with their Republican counterparts to authorize President Bushâs 2001 invasion of Afghanistan. House leader Richard Gephardt and Senate leader Thomas Daschle pushed Democrats to vote for the USA PATRIOT Act and the invasion of Iraq. The Democrats were split over invading Iraq in 2003 and increasingly expressed concerns about both the justification and progress of the War on Terrorism as well as the domestic effects from the Patriot Act.

Recommended Reading: How Many States Are Controlled By Republicans

Social Conservatism And Traditionalism

Social conservatism in the United States is the defense of traditional social norms and .

Social conservatives tend to strongly identify with American nationalism and patriotism. They often vocally support the police and the military. They hold that military institutions embody core values such as honor, duty, courage, loyalty, and a willingness on the part of the individual to make sacrifices for the good of the country.

Social conservatives are strongest in the South and in recent years played a major role in the political coalitions of and .

The Founding Fathers Disagree

Differing political views among U.S. Founding Fathers eventually sparked the forming of two factions. George Washington, Alexander Hamilton and John Adams thus formed The Federalists. They sought to ensure a strong government and central banking system with a national bank. Thomas Jefferson and James Madison instead advocated for a smaller and more decentralized government, and formed the Democratic-Republicans. Both the Democratic and the Republican Parties as we know them today are rooted in this early faction.

Read Also: How Many States Are Controlled By Republicans

On This Day The Republican Party Names Its First Candidates

On July 6, 1854, disgruntled voters in a new political party named its first candidates to contest the Democrats over the issue of slavery. Within six and one-half years, the newly christened Republican Party would control the White House and Congress as the Civil War began.

For a brief time in the decade before the Civil War, the Democratic Party of Andrew Jackson and his descendants enjoyed a period of one-party rule. The Democrats had battled the Whigs for power since 1836 and lost the presidency in 1848 to the Whig candidate, Zachary Taylor. After Taylor died in office in 1850, it took only a few short years for the Whig Party to collapse dramatically.

There are at least three dates recognized in the formation of the Republican Party in 1854, built from the ruins of the Whigs. The first is February 24, 1854, when a small group met in Ripon, Wisconsin, to discuss its opposition to the Kansas-Nebraska Act. The group called themselves Republicans in reference to Thomas Jeffersons Republican faction in the American republics early days. Another meeting was held on March 20, 1854, also in Ripon, where 53 people formally recognized the movement within Wisconsin.

On July 6, 1854, a much-bigger meeting in Jackson, Michigan was attended by about 10,000 people and is considered by many as the official start of the organized Republican Party. By the end of the gathering, the Republicans had compiled a full slate of candidates to run in Michigans elections.

The Uss Hispanic Population Swells

In recent decades, America has gone through a major demographic shift in the form of Hispanic immigration both legal and illegal.

The legal immigration has major electoral implications, as the electorate is becoming more diverse, and there is a new pool of voters that the parties can try to win over. Currently, the Democrats are doing a better job of it this population growth already helped California and New Mexico become solidly Democratic states on the presidential level, and helped tip swing states Florida and Colorado toward Barack Obama too.

But meanwhile, illegal immigration has also risen to the top of the political agenda. Democrats, business elites, and some leading Republicans have tended to support reforming immigration laws so that more than 10 million unauthorized immigrants in the US can get legal status. Many conservatives, though, tend to denounce such policies as “amnesty,” and being “tough on illegal immigration” has increasingly become a badge of honor on the right.

The bigger picture is that while the country is growing increasingly diverse, non-Hispanic whites are still a majority, and Trump’s strong support among them was sufficient to deliver him the presidency.

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If There Was A Republican Civil War It Appears To Be Over

The party belongs to Trump for as long as he wants it.

By Jamelle Bouie

Opinion Columnist

That there is a backlash against the seven Republican senators who voted to convict Donald Trump of inciting a mob against Congress is not that shocking. What is shocking is how fast it happened.

Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, for example, was immediately censured by the Louisiana Republican Party. We condemn, in the strongest possible terms, the vote today by Senator Cassidy to convict former President Trump, the party announced on Twitter. Another vote to convict, Richard Burr of North Carolina, was similarly rebuked by his state party, which censured him on Monday. Senators Ben Sasse of Nebraska and Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania are also in hot water with their respective state parties, which see a vote against Trump as tantamount to treason. We did not send him there to vote his conscience. We did not send him there to do the right thing or whatever he said hes doing, one Pennsylvania Republican Party official explained. We sent him there to represent us.

That this backlash was completely expected, even banal, should tell you everything you need to know about the so-called civil war in the Republican Party. It doesnt exist. Outside of a rump faction of dissidents, there is no truly meaningful anti-Trump opposition within the party. The civil war, such as it was, ended four-and-a-half years ago when Trump accepted the Republican nomination for president.

Ideology And Political Philosophy

MOOC | The Radical Republicans | The Civil War and Reconstruction, 1850-1861 | 1.6.6

In terms of governmental economic policies, American conservatives have been heavily influenced by the or tradition as expressed by and and a major source of influence has been the . They have been strongly opposed to .

Traditional conservatives tend to be anti-ideological, and some would even say anti-philosophical, promoting, as explained, a steady flow of “prescription and prejudice”. Kirk’s use of the word “prejudice” here is not intended to carry its contemporary pejorative connotation: a conservative himself, he believed that the inherited wisdom of the ages may be a better guide than apparently rational individual judgment.

There are two overlapping subgroups of social conservativesthe traditional and the religious. Traditional conservatives strongly support traditional codes of conduct, especially those they feel are threatened by social change and modernization. For example, traditional conservatives may oppose the use of female soldiers in combat. Religious conservatives focus on conducting society as prescribed by a religious authority or code. In the United States, this translates into hard-line stances on moral issues, such as and . Religious conservatives often assert that “America is a Christian nation” and call for laws that enforce .

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[lizardl0ver43]

do a google search tho please. . . im not a satanist lol and didn't know literally anything about this until i looked it up to fact check, but i found that there's a difference between the church of satan and the satanic temple, the latter of which rejects fascism and lavey's beliefs and does good activism. the satanic temple's website describes it. also the documentary hail satan? (2019) is about the satanic temple, though i'll admit i haven't watched it yet. although i'd agree it doesn't seem like a black and white issue, considering the church of satan has existed much longer, and if anyone is applauding the satanic bible then they need to stop and analyze that they're basically being fed ayn rand with a satanic aesthetic. the satanic temple is essentially a response to and rejection of laveyan satanism, but they also argue that modern satanism was not created by lavey or encompassed solely by his writings, and that the inherent spirit of it, which they believe to be compassionate and anti-authoritarian, comes from the cultural symbol of satan as opposition to cultural christianity in american. which seems to make sense. basically, satanism had a schism, and most satanists today are actively anti-fascist. it's not as if they worship the satanic bible and ignore that it has fascist roots in favor of the aesthetic, they not only seem to recognize that part of the history of modern satanism but also stand in absolute opposition to it.

some quotes from their website: "With such glaring differences, why is it that we often find former Church of Satan members joining The Satanic Temple, and sometimes find current Church of Satan members openly applauding our actions? Clearly, many, if not most, people come to LaVey through Satan, rather than to Satan through LaVey. Satan provides a certain cultural raw material that very rarely doesn’t have an “intuitive” interpretation residing in the minds of anybody embedded in Western culture. To those who gravitate with an affinity toward the “eternal rebel,” Satan appears as the antithesis of today’s Evangelical Theocrats, regardless of the fact that the Church of Satan — like the metaphorical frog that fails to escape the slowly boiled water — now apparently finds its politics perfectly, though unwittingly, aligned with the American Theocratic Right." "In his book Modern Satanism: Anatomy of a Radical Subculture, published before the founding of The Satanic Temple, and documenting the rise and fall of LaVeyan Satanism, author Chris Mathews writes, “the Satanic eschewal of compassion, contempt of democratic conventions and scorn for egalitarian values is diametrically opposed to the most basic liberal principles.” [17] However, the roots of Modern Satanism, reaching back to Milton’s Paradise Lost, and elaborated by 19th century romantics, were decidedly egalitarian and the embodiment of liberal democratic ideals. Whereas LaVeyan Satanism can be viewed as a response to the post-Darwin culture wars, early modern Satanism was a construction of a new cultural mythological framework in response to the fall of Christendom, and the rise of Enlightenment Values." "With this lineage in Satanic thought, the Church of Satan-authoritarian concept of Satanism demands more justification than the Humanistic-Satanic character of The Satanic Temple. Indeed, intuitions about the character of what Satanism is to those who identify as Satanists, as assumed by those who recognize the rebel angel archetype from Miltonic lore, seems more closely aligned to The Satanic Temple’s beliefs than the autocratic Tea Party Objectivism of the Church of Satan… so much so that many people are perplexed to learn of the Church of Satan’s fetishization of authoritarianism, and one sees little to none of those philosophical positions so much as alluded to on the Church of Satan’s Twitter account — their primary outlet for “activity” — where they generally post snarky memes and commentary upon any current pop cultural references to Satan."

i don't think it's fair to say that satanists have "pulled a miku" either, considering the satanic temple's website is hardly ignoring that history, and instead dedicated an entire page to recognize the fascism and social darwinism of the church of satan and wholeheartedly reject and refute it, while also recognizing that modern satanism has more complex roots than lavey's writings alone, and interrogating what the true meaning of satanism is.

the author of the satanic bible was a literal fascist and y’all clowns will go on about how cool satanism is as if it’s something opposed to christianity and not just edge church ™

and i know someone’s about to cry ‘satanic panic’ at me but it’s just a mess, it’s pop culture references tied together by selfish beliefs. lavey’s fucked up politics hugely influenced satanism, forever shifting it to the right so don’t even try to pull a miku on this because it reeks of his influence

[mountphoenixrp]

We have a new citizen in Mount Phoenix:

                                   Xao Ming, who is known by no other name;                                                     a 25 year old son of Anteros.                                                       He is a bartender at Minx.

FC NAME/GROUP: Huang Zitao CHARACTER NAME: Xao Ming AGE/DATE OF BIRTH: 25 / 7 August 1993 PLACE OF BIRTH: Shanghai, China OCCUPATION: bartender at Minx HEIGHT: 177cm WEIGHT: 61 kg DEFINING FEATURES: ear piercings: two lobe piercing and helix piercing in left ear, three lobe piercings and auricle piercing in right ear.

PERSONALITY: He took much after his mother. Kind and vivacious, he is certainly a connoisseur of life, good wine and food, and love. He is a romantic at heart and seems to have an unending supply of love to give, simultaneously. Which far too often landed him in a mess. Since he arrived at the island he learned (the hard way) to be much more careful, as angering a demigod (or even worse, a god) may end in a bad way, especially when hurt feelings are involved.  

On that note, it is hard for him to keep away from other people love lives. If someone asks his advice on the matters of heart Ming is compelled to help.  Once invited into other people’s problems he may be a bit intrusive with a know-it-all streak, especially concerning love, but with good intentions. Dishing out a good love advice is not all he does. He may interfere with varying effects (because people can be dumbly stubborn). His own love life is another thing entirely - it has only two states - mess or none at all.

At a first glance, he is a pretty laid back, happy guy. He likes to binge watch soap operas, have a soft spot (and free drinks) for those unhappy in love. Likes sweets and cats. But there is the downside to him as well. He is vindictive person and while it is not easy to anger him, a crass disregard for others, hurting his friends, using someone’s honestly given love - it will put one on Ming’s  blacklist. And then, his ruthless side shows up and it is not a pleasant sight. He does not believe in regrets and second chances. To sum up, he is a kind and happy boy until he isn’t. And then beware.

HISTORY: Since the 19th century his family lived in the bustling and dangerous city of Shanghai - at that time the Shanghai became the main port for import and export, one of the few open to European ships, the place where the West met the East. It was as exhilarating as dangerous and his ancestors fit right in. Quite the mix, his family was, they owned a few teahouses,  dabbled in the smuggling of opium and other goods, there even had been a few shamans among them. The rascals, pirates and thieves, they were nevertheless a tightly knitted group of colourful individuals, each having their own strengths and vices.

When Ming was born, a child of an unwed mother, the 20th century had scattered the family to the four winds. Some of them settled in Hong Kong, some migrated to the USA, some stayed in Shanghai. His mother has retained a free spirit of their ancestors, and never stop travelling from continent to continent, a vivacious and warm woman falling as easily in love as falling out of it.

It was hardly a stable environment but they somehow got by. He saw more airports than he cared to by the age of 14. Languages and cultures mixed and he travelled between them as easily as he travelled between countries. The missing space in his life, his father remained a mystery, at least until his wings appeared, he was 11 and on a verge of becoming a man. Waking up and seeing them sprawling from his back and gave him a panic attack. His mom’s reply to his frantic yells was “oops”.

Getting them to disappear was a chore. They tended to re-appear whenever he was nervous or happy, or, even worse, during romantic situations.  Well, being a demigod had other repercussions, the wings notwithstanding. As he grew into his teenage years his love life seemed to grow to epic proportions, mingled and mixed with the love life of others in a way that was sometimes hard to untangle. His energy was usually far to often wasted on avoiding pitfalls that came with it. Finally, his uncle decided the boy was going in the wrong direction and brought him to Hong Kong, where Ming worked in his uncle ’s trading company while trying to get his business degree. The control over his wings was easier than controlling his quirky love life. It came gradually when he was entering his twenties. It was also the time when at the airport of all places a man with a knowing smile sunk into a seat next to Ming and extended his hand. The power between them surged and Ming’s wings flickered into life to his mortification. “Well. I can see we are the same, in a sense.” The island that offered a safe haven for the likes of him seemed like a such a good idea back then.

PANTHEON: Greek CHILD OF: Anteros POWERS: Butterfly wing manifestation - the wings, coloured in lavender, blues and blacks are made of insubstantial matter,  a sort of light. They appear out of nowhere, flickering and giving off a colourful shine. They look like something between the light show and hologram. They are not material and the demigod has no flight ability. They just look fancy and would make a good Halloween costume option, if he had a bit more control over their appearance.

STRENGTHS:

archery, level almost legendary. He has great eyesight and good aim. Great eye-hand coordination as well.

High emotional intelligence. He has a natural insight into the emotional state of others, especially those concerning love.

WEAKNESSES:

Almost a knee-jerk response to love given. There was a time when he felt obliged to reciprocate if the love was true. Now he has a bit more control over the reaction.

He easily falls in love, often in more than one person at a time (his own love life is often a mess).

Not minding his own business. He has uncanny ability to get into a world of trouble on account of others.  Especially if their love life is involved.