Come Shouting to Zion

Today, I am reading Come Shouting to Zion: African-American Protestantism in the American South and Caribbean to 1830 by Sylvia Frey and Betty Wood (1998).
Page 123:

What exactly was the difference that so frightened white observers? Perhaps it was the often extravagant and unrestrained nature of black worship, which implied a view of the world that was wholly different from that which whites were prepared to accept. Long after shouting had become institutionalized and ritualized as part of the structure of conversion, black shouting could still incite fear and awe in whites witnessing it for the first time, as when, for example, the local preacher at Hites Chapel, on the Berkeley Circuit, "got the lacks to shouting, and some of the whites run.

This is a work of comparative history. I especially appreciated its examination of the limited success of early Catholic missionary efforts in West Central Africa and its exploration of African syncretism and adoption of the elements of Christianity that they found most useful to their needs.

I was a little disappointed by the chapters that I read (1 and 4). For a work of comparative history to work well, it must be impeccably organized so that the reader doesn't get confused about what is being compared. Come Shouting to Zion is all over the place.

In the chapter on African beliefs, Frey and Wood jump around promiscuously from the fifteenth to the nineteenth century and back again, from Gambia to Angola to the Gold Coast without much differentiation. After reading this chapter, I had some idea of the general trends whereby Africans of different nationalities incorporated aspects of Christianity into their own belief systems, but I had no idea about the sweep or development of these trends. Frey and Wood are specifically critical of anthropologists' inability to see cultural change, but I found a mashup of 400 years' history without even the most basic timeline to be less than helpful.

A similar problem haunts chapter 4. In discussing the "First Awakening" of Protestant Christianity among enslaved people in the Americas, Frey and Wood jump from Maryland to Georgia to the Danish Virgin Islands, and from Methodists to Baptists to Presbyterians without a good overarching structure.

Perhaps it is just my ignorance of these subjects (which is substantial), but a 40-page chapter with no subheadings, no double line breaks, and no definition of terms makes a comparative history incredibly confusing. I don't know if this is worth bringing up at my seminar tomorrow - it may sound like a ticky-tacky complaint, but I think it is a valid concern since we will be discussing the efficacy of comparative history.

Worlds of Wonder, Days of Judgment

Today's installment of the 123 meme is brought to you by Worlds of Wonder, Days of Judgment: Popular Religious Belief in Early New England by David Hall (1989). I was disappointed to find that this book does not have an acknowledgements section - for once, I was interested.
Page 123:

Hence the questions Roger Clap remembered people asking of each other in the 1630s: "How shall we go to Heaven? Have I a true grace wrought in my heart? Have I Christ or no?" Hundreds gave their answers to these questions as part of the process of becoming a church member. Early on, the procedure was established in most congregations that those who wished to become members must "make ther faith & holynes visible" by something more emphatic than taking part in the rite of baptism.

Black Majority

Oh my! It's been days and days since I blogged about a book. Fear not: the required reading marches on.

This week, I am reading Black Majority: Negroes in Colonial South Carolina from 1670 through the Stono Rebellion by Peter H. Wood (1974).

Excerpt, page 123:

Similarly, the alligator, a freshwater reptile which horrified Europeans (since it was unfamiliar and could not be killed with a gun), was readily handled by Negroes used to protecting their stock from African crocodiles. These same slaves were inevitably knowledgeable about the kind of marsh and cyprus swamp which their masters found so mysterious. From the start they tended, along with local Indians, to dominate the fishing of the region, for Englishmen, while capable of hauling nets at sea from an ocean-going vessel, were not at home in a dugout canoe.

I thought that this was actually a fairly impressive book, given that it was written before 1974. Wood argues for the intelligence, agency, and rationality of slaves in South Carolina. He also pays a surprising amount of attention to meaning making (ex: Did black slaves die from malaria less often than whites? Maybe slightly less often, due to inherited sickle cell resistance. But the fact that whites thought that blacks died less often is more important than the reality.).

Wood is clearly a student of Oscar Handlin - he posits a fifty-year period of flux and possibility before South Carolina's plantation system kicked in with full force. He describes a process of creative cultural achievement that makes black slaves actors and innovators rather than passive objects traumatized by the middle passage.

Like any book, this one has a few problems. I think Wood's use of the term "pioneers" to describe the first generations of black slaves in South Carolina is problematic because it obscures the coercion that went into bringing Africans to America and then forcing them to work. Wood's lack of attention to gender, religion, economics, etc. are also flaws. But, again, these are not fatal flaws given that his analysis was pretty groundbreaking for its time.

America's Historical Documents

I was poking around on the National Archives website yesterday and came across this interesting page. The archivists have posted high-quality scans of twenty of the most important documents in the collection, including the Declaration of Independence and the Articles of Confederation.

A few of the documents are a bit more interesting. My favorite is the cancelled check for the purchase of Alaska.
The Apollo 11 flight plan is also intriguing - I love the little cartoony spacecraft. So cute!

Pilgrims Heart Balloons

Today's edition of 17th Century Watch:

Governmental Protection

On Sunday, I got into a heated discussion with my dad over this article.
A brief outline: Arelia Taveras, a lawyer from New York, is suing several Atlantic City Casinos, claiming that they should have noticed that she had a gambling addiction and cut her off when it became apparent that she was playing for days at a time without leaving the tables to shower, eat, or sleep. In all, she lost about $1,000,000 and embezzled money from her clients in order to continue gambling. She was disbarred and has to pay back the money she stole, as well as $58,000 in taxes, etc.

My dad's point was that people sue for many reasons, but "a quick buck" is not really one of them. Lawsuits are drawn-out, costly, and there is a very small chance of actually getting any money in the end. Rather, many suits, such as the infamous McDonald's coffee cup case, are useful for getting industry to reform when government has not imposed specific regulations. Congress may not spend much time on regulating the temperature of fast food coffee, but Stella Liebeck's suit spurred the industry's self-regulation, and now they no longer serve drinks that are capable of causing third-degree burns. Even when the industry does not regulate itself, civil suits often start the ball rolling on public opinion and eventual legislation, as with the suits against cigarette companies. Those plaintiffs rarely win, but they give the issue an airing in court and force judges and juries to rule on the evidence and suggest areas for possible regulation.

I agree with these points. There is no need for massive tort reform. Most rubbish suits get thrown out, as they should. It is vitally important that consumers and citizens be able to bring civil litigation when they are injured by corporations because withholding your business, while noble, doesn't do very much. You're still going to lose because the corporation has so many lawyers and so many resources, but, with luck, your issue will get some attention and a state legislator in Vermont or Oregon will make your concern into a bill, and in 100 years, everyone will be incredulous when they hear that in 2008, it was perfectly legal to let children ride on the schoolbus without a seatbelt.

But there is another issue that I couldn't get my dad to acknowledge. In part, I am writing this post because I've been thinking about it a lot and maybe I can be a bit more articulate now.

The issue I have is that I believe that government regulation has to be primarily about providing access to information and choice, but then not restricting those choices. This is where I differ from my dad. He thinks it would be perfectly ok to make cigarettes illegal full-stop. I don't think so. I do think that cigarettes should come with pictures of diseased lungs on the pack, a red-letter warning marking them as addictive should be on a tape you have to break to open the pack, you should have to be 21 to buy them, they should cost $10.00 in school-supporting taxes, and you should not be able to smoke in a place where other people (including waitresses and bartenders) might be exposed to your second-hand smoke. Arrest anyone who gives/sells tobacco to a minor, by all means. But if all the information is available to you, and you still decide to smoke, I don't think that the government can tell you that you can't. The same goes for marijuana.

What I am saying is that the government has a responsibility to protect you by ensuring that you have information and access to alternatives, but it cannot protect you from your choices, even if those choices are self-destructive.

(Caveat: This is often an unrealistic standard. Even if you have all of the information in the world, corporations will find a way to use their money and power to screw you over. In fact "all information" should probably be amended to "the best and relevant information" because a deluge of useless and confusing information can be just as bad as no information at all. Even more problematic is the question of access to alternatives. Even if you know you should be eating lots of fresh fruits and vegetables, if you live in a neighborhood where access to fresh food is restricted or you can't afford to buy fresh foods, you are not really making a free choice. Lack of access is the same as coercion.)

One of the reasons I believe this is that the government's "protection" is often no protection at all, especially when the bodies that they are "protecting" are female or belong to people of color.

A good example is coerced cesareans. I'm not talking about women who are pressured by their doctors and insurance companies to have c-sections — I'm talking about kicking, screaming women being strapped down and cut open by court orders. If the government decides that a doctor knows better, even if he/she is violating your religious principles or going to extraordinary lengths to "save" the life of your 22-week-old fetus, the fact that you don't want to have your body cut open becomes irrelevant.

Remember Angela Carder, the woman who was killed by a court-ordered cesarean in 1987? Carder was pregnant when she found out that she had cancer. She asked to be treated for her cancer, even though the chemotherapy might have hurt her 26-week-old fetus. The hospital decided that they wanted to do an emergency cesarean at 26 weeks, even though Angela was weak and sick and dead-set against it. The hospital got a court order to perform the cesarean. The baby lived 2 hours, Angela lived for 2 days.

The ACLU tells the rest of the story:

Court-ordered c-sections are a particularly egregious abuse of state authority because this surgery tends to be carried out on society's most vulnerable, powerless women. In 1987 the New England Journal of Medicine published a study of court-ordered c-sections that revealed that 81 percent of the patients were low-income women of color.

These are women who have all the information they need in order to make a good decision. They are not stupid, they are not evil, and they are not cackling witches who want their babies to die. In fact, they have more information than the government does: they know their own religious convictions and they may have a different way of looking at their lives and the lives of their families. Where the government sees "live mother," a woman may see "mutilated me." Where the government sees "live baby," a woman may see "severely disabled child in perpetual pain." The evil is in restricting the free choice, whether a corporation is restricting your free choice by manipulation or the government is restricting free choice more directly.

There are tricky scenarios. Do I think heroin should be legalized? I guess it comes down to whether heroin users are making a free choice. Addiction is a form of coercion, so I'd say they aren't, and that the government can ban a substance that is clearly addictive to most of the people who use it. The difference between the heroin addict and the gambling addict is just a matter of degree: heroin is addictive to almost everyone who uses it, and people who aren't addicted don't use it. There are plenty of people who can gamble without becoming addicted, so there is a less compelling case for a comprehensive ban.

It's not all blood and guts, though. What about me? I am of that fought-over species, the "woman of child bearing age." There may be evidence that tuna and other large fish contain an unhealthy amount of mercury, which can be stored in the body and possibly cause birth defects. Should the government prevent me from eating sushi? Or should they provide me with this information and trust me to be an adult and make an informed choice for myself? I don't mean to be dramatic, but it is incredibly insulting to be told by the government that I should consider myself as perpetually "pre-pregnant." It would be even worse if they decided to protect me from myself and ban me from all Japanese restaurants.

What about the bill recently introduced into the Mississippi state legislature that would prohibit restaurants from serving obese people? Clearly, this has zero chance of passing, but it's an interesting question: can the government protect you from your choices, even if those choices are bad for you?* Again, I'm all for choice: require that restaurants put the calorie counts right on the menu. Make McDonalds give a bajillion dollars per year to Jump Rope for Heart. If a restaurant's business practices are unnecessarily harmful — using harmful ingredients when they could be using healthier ingredients, restricting access to healthy food in low-income neighborhoods, etc. — nail the bastards. But don't put a judge between me and the onion rings. I have the right to hurt myself as long as I know what I'm getting myself into.

So back to the gambling suit. I say, post the odds of winning on every game, let gambling addicts voluntarily ban themselves from casinos (the casinos already do this), provide information about gambling addiction, hell, require that every casino keep a team of behavioral scientists on staff to monitor behavior on the floor and identify potential problem gamblers. But don't make gambling illegal. And if people are offered information and help and choose not to take it, don't hold the casino accountable. The government doesn't always know best, and it has to respect choices when those choices are made freely, even if the choice seems like a poor one. If the government holds the casino responsible for Taveras' gambling problem, they are restricting her personal choice and denying her personal responsibility. Maybe that's not so bad in this case, but what about when the government restricts other personal choices? If she can prove that gambling really is like heroin, or at least get people to start down that mental path, fine. But the people must always be wary of the government trying to protect them too much, especially while the people who govern are drawn from such a small group of the governed.

As for the original question: should Arelia Taveras be allowed to bring this suit against the casinos? Of course she should. If it were meritless, the judge would have tossed it out in short order. Just because she has very little chance of winning doesn't mean it won't do some good.

Also, how nerdy is it that my dad and I argue about torts?

*Clearly, eating is not bad for you. The gambling addict doesn't have to go to the casino, but everybody has to eat. Are fat people supposed to go cold turkey and just live off their fat reserves until they reach a socially-acceptable weight?

17th Century Watch

Bringing you the latest news on the 17th century in the modern media, this is 17th Century Watch (cousin to Puritan Watch).

The most recent sighting comes from Slate Magazine, where we learn that Governor Eliot Spitzer used the alias "George Fox" when he was spending thousands of dollars on call girls.

Spitzer's choice of pseudonym was kind of rude. The real George Fox is a somewhat hallowed figure in the annals of Christian faith. He founded the Religious Society of Friends (aka the Quakers) in England during the mid-17th century.

Disappointingly (to me), the article has been updated to make clear that Gov. Spitzer was really impersonating this George Fox (a friend), not this George Fox (a Friend).

Even better, the name of the hotel where Gov. Spitzer met his dates was "The Mayflower."

I imagine that George Fox and William Bradford are having a scowling contest in heaven.

NCAA Vasectomy

I like it.

Song of America

I should be reading, but instead, I am listening to "Song of America," the musical review of American history produced by Janet Reno.

I have mixed feelings about it.

First, there is the question of selection, which other reviewers have covered in depth. In a nutshell, this compilation is highly selective, as any broad compilation must be. Still, the argument of breadth does not excuse the many substantial omissions (unionization? Latinos? Civil Rights Movement? Asian-Americans? The 17th century?).

Second, is the question of definition. Is this a compilation of the history of American music or is a history of America in music? If the former, the interpretive stylings of some of the artists become inexcusable. If the latter, it is hardly comprehensive.

The promotional material for this album touted its usefulness as a teaching tool, and I think that many of the selections would be wonderful for classroom use, but others are too distorted by reinterpretation. Does Harper Simon's breathy, rocked-up "Yankee Doodle" convey an authentic moment? One could argue that they are recapturing some of the song's original risque-ness by presenting it this way, but I'm not that impressed. Why play the "Stars and Stripes Forever" on a mandolin? There aren't enough folksy, acoustic strings on this disk already? One brass band would kill you? I had to look at the credits to find that the song sung by Joana Smith was "The Battle Hymn of the Republic." The casual listener could be forgiven for mistaking it for Ann Margaret's version of "Baby, It's Cold Outside." The version of "John Brown's Body" (featuring kazoo solo) is inching close to the Barron's book that claims that John Brown was himself a slave in terms of travesty.

I don't mean to be a bitch about it - many of the selections are both great listening and updated without being eviscerated. I especially enjoyed "Peg and Awl," "Seven Cent Cotton and Forty Cent Meat," "Rosie the Riveter" (A saxophone! Novel!), and "The Great Atomic Power."

But I probably would not be writing this review at all if the poor, misguided souls who produced this album had not included the bar-none worst song ever crapped out of modern Nashville: "Where Were You When the World Stopped Turning." My hatred for this song once inspired me to write a 20-page paper for a class on war and the media. Unfortunately, the restrained academic voice necessary for writing a research paper did not allow me free rein, so I'll say it now:

THIS SONG IS DISTILLED MUSICAL EVIL.
A CURSE ON ALAN JACKSON!

For those of you fortunate enough to have avoided this steaming pile of sanctimonious, sentimental schlock, some background info is necessary. After deciding that the country had not suffered enough after September 11, 2001, Alan Jackson managed to crystalize an entire nation's ignorance, smugness, narcissism*, and jingoism into a single song. One might consider it something of an accomplishment if it weren't so infuriating.

After imagining the activities of regular Americans as they reacted to the terrorist attacks (weeping, praying, and "go[ing] out and buy you [sic] a gun" among them), Jackson urges us to abandon any attempts to understand what happened. Instead, we should retreat into the egotism of modern feel-good Christianity:

I'm just a singer of simple songs,
I'm not a real political man.
I watch CNN, but I'm not sure I can tell you
The difference in [sic] Iraq and Iran.
But I know Jesus and I talk to God,
And I remember this from when I was young
That Faith, Hope, and Love are good things He gave us
And the greatest is Love.

Yeah, it's probably not important to think about America's place in a world that includes countries that are not America. Offer up some platitudes and "burst out in pride for the red, white, and blue," because that's the kind of deep thinking that will preserve our Constitution and guard against unilateralism in this stressful time.

Even the title is supremely offensive. Does the world stop turning for any tragedy? Even an era-defining tragedy? Why should the world stop turning for America? I don't think it paused for Hiroshima. The genocide in Rwanda was the equivalent of four World Trade Centers falling every single day, day after day for 100 days in a row. Did your world blip for those children?

This song (and its horrifying popularity) is a real blow to my hope that anyone can ever have any historical perspective. Can we even have contemporary perspective? I guess not, and it's probably foolish to hope so. Still, I have to believe that there is value in striving, and that's tough when this song is willful ignorance with tambourines and spangles. It's musical Young Earth Creationism. It could make an atheist believe in Satan.


"I have that exact platitude-a-day calendar at home. It's how I know that beauty comes from within."
- Veronica Mars

*Note: While typing this post, I inadvertently invented a new word: arcissism. I like it and will incorporate it into my regular vocabulary from now on.

Perspective

Thirty hours until husband returns from business trip: interminable.

Twenty-four hours to finish reading for Tuesday seminar: impossible.

Convenience Store

I just had an interesting interaction with the cashier at the local convenience store.

I bought a bottle of water and a pack of gum for a total of $2.04.

I gave the cashier $3.00, and he handed me $2.04 in change. I returned the change, explaining that the cost was $2.04, but I had only given him $3.00. He took the money and, inexplicably, handed me a single dime. I corrected him again, this time being more explicit, explaining that I was expecting 96 cents. He handed me 96 cents in addition to the dime I was already holding. I gave him back the dime. He looked confused.

When I worked as a cashier, I had to reconcile my cash drawer with a printout from the register at the end of every shift. I would be interested in seeing his reconciliation form.

Also, they didn't have the kind of gum I wanted.

All-around fail.

The British Atlantic World, 1500-1800

I'm reading The British Atlantic World, 1500-1800 (2002) for my Tuesday seminar. It's a collection of introductory essays with titles such as "Economy," "Race," and "Religion." This week's readings include "Gender" and "Class." Page 123 falls in the middle of the "Gender" essay by Sarah M.S. Pearsall:

The inherited nature of chattel slavery meant that intimate matters of sexuality and reproduction were put into a distinctive socio-economic framework. It also meant that slavery descended through the mother, creating an anomalous and unfortunate matrilineality in the British colonies. Slave women suffered from sexual attention from owners.

The essays are decent - someday, I may use them when I teach a class. That's about all I have to say, though.

Rough Day

I didn't get much reading done yesterday because the universe had it in for me.

My plan for today was to drive home to my parents' house after my 17th century reading group meeting on Friday afternoon,
but it wasn't that easy. When I walked out to my car, I found that it had a large gash down the passenger's side - one that I certainly did not remember from the day before. Based on the following evidence, I concluded that the person who parks next to me must have scraped it while pulling out:

1. The scratch was not there yesterday.

2. The scratch runs along the door, tire, hubcap, and back of the wheelwell in a straight line, indicating that the car was parked in its present position when it was scratched.

3. There was paint between the doors and doorjambs on both the front and back doors. This paint would have come off when
we opened the doors if the scratch were old.


4. The guy who parks next to me drives a small, gray Saab or Volvo that is low to the ground. The scratch is both low and gray.

Complicating factor: the guy who parks next to me is my landlord.

He was not home, so I couldn't ask him what happened, and there was no note on my car. I later realized that there might be a note in my mailbox, but I was already on the road home when that thought crossed my mind. I didn't want to wait until he came home because I was anxious to get to my parents' before it started raining/getting dark, and I also didn't want to destroy the wheel alignment and paint shavings.

So, I called the police and filed a report. A police officer came over to the house, checked out the damage, called it in, and gave me a file number. He also said he would swing by later and see if there was damage on the other guy's car.

Then, I called my insurance company and filed a claim there. Unless I can prove that someone else scraped the car and that it wasn't my fault, we have a $2,000 deductible for repairs. Unless my landlord tells me he did it, I don't know how I would prove that he did. It also could have been someone else (though I have never seen anyone else park in the spot next to ours).

I kind of felt like I was overreacting, but I didn't know what else to do. I'm not angry or anything - I just wanted everything to be properly documented.

Eventually, I got on the road - at 5:30, rather than my planned departure time of 3:30. After lots of traffic, I was within 15 miles of home when I came up behind a giant head-on collision that was blocking both lanes of the only road that goes to my parents' house (it was raining and dark by this time). So, I backtracked to my aunt and uncle's house (the accident was about 2 miles from their house) and hung out there for an hour or so. They weren't home, but I used their phone to call home. I finally got home around 8.

So it was an adventure-filled day, but not very reading-friendly.

The 17th Century Rocks

While poking around on the internet today, I came across this YouTube video based on Flogging Molly's "Tobacco Island":

Now, being an insufferable know-it-all, I must quibble a tiny bit with Flogging Molly - Barbados was primarily a sugar island, not a tobacco island. Still, you inserted references to sugar cane, Cromwell, and Irish enslavement without making the song un-dance-to-able, so kudos on that.

But to the person who made this video, I would advise another once-over of Barbadian history. While Barbados was one of the first English colonies to make extensive use of African slave labor, this song is clearly referencing the deportation of thousands of Irishmen by Cromwell's puritan forces during the aftermath of the English Civil War.

A search on YouTube for "Cromwell" was actually surprisingly fruitful. I recommend this one:

A Factious People

I'm spending a lazy day going through A Factious People: Politics and Society in Colonial New York by Patricia Bonomi (1971):

But by late 1734, it was becoming increasingly apparent that despite these gains in popular party strength it would be impossible to topple Cosby from power so long as he retained the support of his patrons at Whitehall. It was in London that the real decisions about Cosby's future and Morris's displacement as chief justice would be made, and the Morrisites recognized that a more forceful presentation of their case was essential. Besides, many of the problems which had taken shape during the turbulent months since Cosby's arrival touched upon broad questions of constitutional relationships within the empire, and the colonists sensed, correctly, that their point of view was not well understood at home.

Too much politics for my taste - I only perked up during the chapters that were about patterns of settlement and land ownership. Any discussion of the intricacies of 18th-century elections puts me right to sleep.

Colonial New York: A History

I prefer Hogwarts: A History, but I will have to content myself with Michael Kammen's Colonial New York: A History (1975):

His summons would almost seem to be an ultimatum: "Elect and make choice of two proper and fit persons to repair forthwith to this city, empowering them as your representatives to consult, debate and conclude all such matters and things as shall be thought necessary for the supply of this government in this present conjuncture, of which you are not to fail, as you will answer the same at your peril." Surprisingly, there was no response to this decree; whether the reason was apathy or fear of treason and subsequent retribution we do not know. Leisler issued new writs on April 8, and this time an assembly was elected.

Zzzzzzz. When I have to read a book like this one, I am thankful that time will pass whether I get through it or not, and that no matter how painful my Thursday seminar may be, it will end eventually.

My favorite passage:
"Here in 1649 a group of Connecticut Indians attacked the tiny settlement and massacred Phoebe Halsey, the wife of Thomas. Her ghost is said to hover still over the house and its charming herb garden" (38).
I am intrigued by the idea that one can "massacre" a single person, but it's really the "charming herb garden" that gets me. Who ever said antiquarianism is dead?

American Slavery American Freedom

Today, I am reading Edmund S. Morgan's seminal work, American Slavery, American Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia.
Page 123:

But it is not unlikely that he had already transferred much of what he owned to his wife and children in order to circumvent the litigation that a substantial will often produced. It seems evident that while the Virginia Company was failing in London, a number of its officers in the colony were growing rich. In order to do so, they not only rendered less than faithful service to their employers; they also reduced other Virginians to a condition which, while short of slavery, was also some distance from the freedom that Englishmen liked to consider as their birthright.

Given how often this book is cited and how much I enjoy Morgan's writing style in general, I was expecting to enjoy this book, but so far, it isn't going so well. I just finished chapter 3, entitled "Idle Indian and Lazy Englishman." The central premise of this chapter was that everyone in the 17th century was just too damn lazy to feed themselves. The Native Americans were in a perpetual state of near-starvation because the men couldn't be bothered to lift a finger, except during the periodic wars that "relieved the Indians' habitual idleness" (57). The English weren't much better: according to Morgan, "England's listless laborers" and wasteful agricultural practices stifled economic growth.

The strange thing is, Morgan seems to contradict himself on these very points. Speaking of Native American men's responsibilities, he notes:

He could make canoes, weapons, and [fishing] weirs without losing his dignity, but the only other labor he ordinarily engaged in was clearing fields for planting . . .

Morgan goes on to discuss Native American men's labors as hunters, warriors, and housebuilders. I would also add some amount of childcare in the form of teaching young boys to perform adult male tasks, as well as the apparently not-work of diplomacy, religious leadership, and politics. Still, Morgan concludes that Native American men were habitually lazy and that "nearly every activity that could be designated as work at all was left to the women" (52). The above tasks excepted, I guess.

Again, the Englishmen fare little better (curiously, Morgan is all but mute on the subject of English women's work). Despite the fact that they engaged in "milking cows, hedging, ditching, thatching, and a hundred other tasks," the average English agricultural worker was basically a layabout. Morgan's point that many English laborers were underemployed because cereal crops do not require much attention after they are sown is well taken, but I still think he underestimates the average Englishman's day. Unless Edmund Morgan is willing to concede that reading and writing about events that happened 400 years ago is probably not vital to the nation's economy, he should probably refrain from calling a wood-chopping, cow-milking, field-planting, house-building, sheep-herding, rye-threshing, ox-driving, fence-building, ditch-digging, manure-spreading agricultural worker lazy.

New York Burning

Today, I am reading Jill Lepore's New York Burning: Liberty, Slavery, and Conspiracy in Eighteenth-Century Manhattan (2005). Actually, I'm reading a single chapter - chapter 5: "Water" - for my Tuesday seminar. Unlike many historians, who write books by smooshing together discrete essays, Lepore writes beautiful narratives. This makes for great reading, but lousy read-one-chapter-in-the-middle.

Anyway, here's page 123:

Horsmanden's role in the investigation can be uncovered, by careful reading and by placing the Journal alongside other evidence, like Horsmanden's letters and the surviving court manuscripts. But Horsmanden himself did his best to bury it. He had every reason to hide.

See? I appreciate suspense that doesn't involve wondering how many clauses the author can string together.

Professor Lepore teaches a course on historical writing, but she was on leave this past fall. I'm going to try to take it next time around.