The Other American Colonies
I struggled to come up with a title for this post that was not United States-centric*–a fact which pretty much sums up the topic at hand. For most Americans** the grade school version of history that we carry in our heads jumps from Columbus in 1492 straight to the arrival of the Puritans in Massachusetts in 1620. *** There’s a vague awareness that the Spanish and the French were out there doing something. Colorful bits bubble through: conquistadores, voyageurs, New Orleans, the Alamo. But for the most part, the story focuses on the development of the thirteen more or less English colonies.
I do pretty well on the French part of the story. For the last fifteen years or so, My Own True Love and I have been on the trail of the French in North America–easy to do if you regularly drive from the historic Illinois Country to the land of the Louisiana Purchase. But I knew I had gaps where the Spanish colonies in the New World were concerned. In the last months of 2013, thanks to family weddings in Texas and Chile,**** I discovered that those gaps were an abyss.
Filling in the hole, one story at a time, is going to take a while. (Not that I’m complaining. This is the kind of history I like best: the places where two cultures meet and change each other.) In the meantime, I’m beginning to squeeze the history of the Spanish colonies into the scaffolding of dates/ideas/images/people from which I view world history. Here are a few of the bits that have caught my attention:
- Harvard, founded in 1636, was not the first university in the New World. That honor goes to the University of Saint Thomas Aquinas in Santo Domingo (now the Autonomous University of Santo Domingo), which was founded in 1538. The Royal and Pontifical University of Mexico (now the National Autonomous University of Mexico) was a close second, founded in 1551. Just to put this in context, the oldest continuously running university in the world is Al-Azhar in Cairo, founded in 960 CE. Europeans called the Americas the New World for a reason.
- Mexico City was the largest, and possibly the wealthiest, city in the Americas in 1776, with a population of 137,000. Philadelphia, the largest city in the thirteen colonies, had a population of 40,000. Not a meaningful measure in itself, but a useful reminder. Gold and silver from the Spanish colonies flooded Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. I’m used to looking at that flood in terms of its impact in Europe and Asia, not in terms of the colonial society that produced it.
- I was already familiar with baroque poet-nun Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (1651-1695), who regularly appears in the pantheon of feminist precursors. I didn’t realize that she is simply the most famous of an entire generation of Mexican intellectuals interested in questions of Mexican identity and history. I clearly need to learn more about criollismo: nationalism in another form.
- And the one that had me gaping with disbelief at my own ignorance: Mexico was a stop on Spain’s version of the Asia trade as early as 1573. The ships known as the Manila galleons brought Asian merchandise through the Philippines to the Spanish port of Acapulco. The goods were then carried by mule to Mexico City and Veracruz, where they were shipped to Spain. A neat way of getting around Portuguese control of the Indian Ocean.
It feels like history nerd Xmas.
* And failed. Or at least failed to come up with something that didn’t sound like the driest survey course text ever written.
**Or at least for most of us raised in the United States, as opposed to those raised in other parts of the Americas. Linguistic sinkholes gape before me. Just like the early days of graduate school when as students of the Indian sub-continent we struggled to find words that did not rest on imperialist/racist assumptions. It isn’t just a question of “political correctness”. Sometimes the language used shapes the knowledge itself.
***Or perhaps the arrival of settlers at Jamestown in 1607, depending on where you grew up or how historically inclined your third grade teacher was. Personally, I owe a great deal of my historical curiosity to Mrs. Bates of Delaware Elementary.
****The educational benefit of weddings should never be underestimated.
The Invention of News
At a time when digital media is transforming the way news is delivered–and by whom– Andrew Pettegree offers a reminder that newspapers too were once a revolutionary form of delivering information. In The Invention of News: How The World Came To Know About Itself, Pettegree looks at the changing definition, use, control, and distribution of the news from the medieval world to the age of revolution.
Building on his previous work in the ground-breaking The Book in the Renaissance,* Pettegree demonstrates how access to news became increasingly widespread, moving from private information networks run by medieval elites, through sixteenth century news pamphlets and news singers, to the newspapers of the eighteenth century. He looks at the development of postal systems, private couriers and the printing press. He considers the importance of the introduction of paper, the rise of coffee shops and the growth of a literate middle class. He discusses the roles played by news pamphlets in the Reformation and by newspapers in the American and French Revolutions.
Some of the most interesting sections of The Invention of News deal not with the development of new media, but the creation of new audiences. Technology often outpaced demand. Early printers, finding the traditional market for large books would not keep them solvent, created new markets for more ephemeral products. The first newspapers were bewildering to audiences accustomed to news pamphlets that told a single story from beginning to end. Perhaps, at some level, the medium is the message.
* Also well worth reading. Printing and the Protestant Reformation are more closely linked than you might think.
A version of this review previously appeared in Shelf Awareness for Readers.
Foyle’s War
History buff-ery can lead you to unexpected places. Recently it’s led My Own True Love and I to our living room in front of the television, where we are totally absorbed in the BBC television series Foyle’s War.* It’s a police procedural set during World War II in the town of Hastings** on the southeast coast of England. The main character, detective chief inspector Christopher Foyle, would rather be in the armed services doing his part but his superiors feel he will do more good maintaining order along the coast.
The care with historical detail in the series is impressive,*** but the choice of period is more than set-dressing. The first season is overshadowed by the fear of German invasion. Subsequent seasons follow the course of the war. The murders in each episode derive directly from wartime conditions in Britain.
Even more interesting, from my perspective, is the representation of wartime British society. Patriots and heroes are shown side by side with Nazi sympathizers, rabid anti-Semites, draft dodgers, profiteers, hoarders, and soldiers irreparably damaged by their experience at the front. Innocent German refugees suffer at the hands of Britons whose patriotism has hardened into intolerance and hatred. Soldiers treat women badly. Men in important positions assume their value to the war effort exempts them from the rule of law. The government tries to cover up failures. The memory of World War I is never far away–something we often forget. This is not a simple picture of gallant little England standing alone against the Nazis. In many ways, it makes the instances of bravery, generosity and justice that appear in each episode more impressive.
We just finished season 5, which centers on the announcement of the German surrender. It will be interesting to see if the historical interest of the series holds as Foyle and his team move into the Cold War.
Don’t touch that dial.
* We are not cutting edge television viewers. The first season of Foyle’s War aired in 2002; season 9 is now in production.
** As in the Battle of Hastings–a subtle reminder that the threat of invasion from continental Europe is a pervasive element of British history, from the Romans onwards. No island is an island.
*** The only note that they don’t quite hit is the issue of scarcity. Characters talk about coupons and rations. In one episode, members of the police force drool over food being held as evidence in a profiteering case. In another, the detective team enjoys the bounty available at an agricultural worker’s boarding house. But you never get the feeling that people are never really warm, that clothing is patched and remade to make it last, or that they are hungry. If you want to get a good since of how pinched the average Briton was during the war, I suggest you read letters or popular fiction written during or just after the war. Off the top of my head, I would suggest Helene Hanff’s 84 Charing Cross Road, Angell Thirkell’s novels set during the war (pure fluff but very clear on the scarcity), or Agatha Christie.