Phrenology...or Scientific Racism.

Okay, here are some thoroughly unpleasant diagrams that were common during the Victorian Era because of the popularity of phrenology. In case one does not know, phrenology is the study of the human skull, which divides its features into a myriad of segments that are utilized to indicate a person's intelligence, capabilities, and characteristics. This particular branch of pseudoscience rose up during the first half of the 1800's and though it was later discredited, the use of it in conjunction with racism, especially in imperialism, is inseparable.

(Note that some of these may be familiar, especially the first image.)

Above is a diagram that was common in the United States because of the belief that Irish people were as gross and disgusting as African people. The insistence that the brain capacity of European people was significantly larger versus that of, well, anyone else, is emphasized through the examination of human skulls. For those in the United States, phrenology reflected the need to keep Irish immigrants and African slaves in places of servitude, which is why the two examples have similar traits. The enlarged noses, the puffed up lips, and the animalistic qualities in contrast to the attractive anglo face, for example. This is furthered by the diagram below, which is predominantly focused on showcasing that an African individual has a skull more closely related to an animal than that of a European person.  

Note that here, the middle diagram acts like a missing link. Yet, it's not limited to Europeans and Africans:

So why this? Well, throughout both Melville's Benito Cereno and Conrad's Heart of Darkness, animalistic language is utilized to emphasize the racial binary between the white narrator or white people and the other. Yes, it is irritating to read, but it is based upon a branch of pseudoscience that was popular at the time, which maintained the superiority complex of oppressive individuals. Simply stating that a person looks different and leaves themselves open to needing guidance is one thing, but to cite a flurry of British journals that maintain the racist ideologies solidifies the dynamic between the oppressor and the oppressed. Any instance where a simile is applied to a person of color that likens them to an animal, to something primordial, to some creature that's not quite develop stems from phrenology, which tends to be coupled with physiognomy as well.  

For my historical object, I have chosen an article written by Sharon Sliwinski entitled "The Childhood of Human Rights: The Kodak on the Congo." This article includes early photographs released during the human rights campaign that took place around the turn of the 20th century. These pictures set out to expose Leopold for his atrocities and thats what they did. One of these atrocious stories (picture one) document the cruel intentions that most of the colonizers had, and this picture shows a man with his hand cut off due to his master tying rope around his hands so tight that they fell off.  The second picture shows a man who had defied his owners, so in turn, the white masters killed his wife and daughter and put their hands in a sac to give back to the man. This kind of powerful emotional evidence grabs the audiences attention This forces the audience to experience their own true feeling as opposed to a foggy narrators point of view.
There is still the issue of the photographer posing as an unreliable source for truth or mostly action because all he is doing is just observing and reporting what he sees without actually helping the cause. In Heart of Darkness,  Marlow is the observer who has internalized all of the common prejudice that was popular in his day and reports it back in his own racist voice. He neutralizes the Africans by saying "They were not enemies, they were not criminals, they were nothing earthly now, nothing but black shadows of disease and starvation lying confusedly in the greenish gloom" (Conrad 17). He makes them seem like they exist as one whole, without an identity and only referred to as savages and insignificant and the racist narration covers up the scene from being told clearly while at the same time allowing the real voice of the observing public sneak out. Its interesting to see how these people were treated and how hypocritical society can be once they are confronted with the truth but in the end, the Kodak allowed a reliable source of evidence to a general public who had no idea how to speak for themselves.

"Why do we measure mankind?"

This article titled "Why do we measure mankind?" was written by Francis Galton and published in 1890 in Lippincott's Monthly Magazine, a British publication. The article discusses the benefits of being scientifically measured to determine how the person "ranks" in terms of mental and/or physical abilities in comparison to others of the "same sex, age, and social position" (236). Over time, a person's rank can be monitored in terms of what career they pursue or where they end up in general in British society. Overall, the article aims to convince the reader that measuring body parts is an effective method to determine someone's aptitude.

Measuring people's craniums was already used as a method to distinguish Anglo-Saxans, who represented the idealized human form, from those British society deemed less than human, in particular blacks. This concept of scientific racism legitimized treating people in colonized countries as essentially slave labor with "proof" that they couldn't become civilized without British intervention. Although this article doesn't explicitly mention anything about measuring people of different races, it is written at a time where this procedure was utilized for the purpose of creating a racial hierarchy. Since Lippincott's was a magazine consumed by the general British public, this article works as subliminal propaganda for justifying imperialism in the minds of people in combination with supposedly scientific sketches of African people's skulls resembling those of monkeys. After seeing those images and reading this article that claims taking body measurements is a legitimate representation of someone's natural facility in life, people will buy into the idea that black people as a group are lesser than white superiority. It doesn't have to mean they condone outright slavery, but their behavior towards "the others" will be noticeably condescending. Amasa Delano, although against the institution of slavery, often comments on the simple-mindedness and obvious stupidity and passiveness of the blacks (though he is clearly wrong in these thoughts).

Additionally, once people become convinced of this notion, atrocities such as those committed in Heart of Darkness and the Congo during this time period become warranted and necessary. Articles of this kind that are touted as scientific research are powerful tools in controlling the mind of the general public, since most people are quick to believe those who seem to have authority.

The link to the article is here: http://galton.org/essays/1890-1899/galton-1890-why-measure.pdf

-Anna Korotina

Not Just a Cup of Tea

Sir Henry Morton Stanley was a journalist and explorer of Africa, and during one of the previous lectures, Christine mentioned that photographs during these times of imperialism were made into postcards of sorts. Typically, photographic postcards would be sold or sent back to the home countries; and I found three to focus on featuring Stanley and a boy. In each of these photographs, it is pretty obvious that the focal point is the white colonizer. It should also be noted that each shot is very posed, and the boy (who remains nameless) acts a prop. The backdrop is also made to look like these two are outdoors, or perhaps in a garden. Violence is at work here through the form of photography, and the seemingly idyllic scene set before our eyes. Is what is being posed before us a truthful image? Since the whole scene is set up, I think the only clear truth that can be taken is that the boy is being taught violence and servitude. It can even be said that violence is being inflicted upon the boy through the simple act of taking his picture. If you look closely, he is never looking at the camera's gaze in any of the shots. Whether it is because he has been directed to, or is doing so on his own is unclear.

I think what can be said about these photographs, and the whole idea of a photograph, is that it is a medium that shows both truths and lies. It can either stimulate or hinder the way a people or something is represented. But how about considering how the photograph can supposedly anchor people to the past? If we compare these postcard images to the age of modern digital photography, one question to be posed is: which age presents the more truthful images? Or has photography always held some created illusion to mislead others? I think these photographic documents show, as in Benito Cereno and Heart of Darkness, that just as a narrative can be subversive, so can photography---the silences of what may or may not be said will insert a sense of ambiguity for the viewer. And intentional or not, these moments will always be viewed through a voyeuristic lens.

Photos:
http://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/person/mp04254/sir-henry-morton-stanley?search=sas&sText=morton+stanley

http://toglobalist.org/2013/05/a-history-of-imperial-genocide-from-conrad-to-lebensraum/

The Spanish Inquisition and Benito Cereno

(Document)

Inquisition, Spanish

 Europe, 1450 to 1789, 2004

From World History in Context

 

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INQUISITION, SPANISH. Since its inception the Spanish Inquisition has been controversial. In 1478 Ferdinand of Aragón (ruled 1471–1504) and Isabella of Castile (ruled 1474–1504) requested papal permission to establish the religious tribunals in Castile. Unlike the medieval papal Inquisition, the Spanish Inquisition was a hybrid religious-secular institution under the authority of the crown, which appointed its officials and supervised its operation. The tribunals employed judicial procedures that were both contrary and offensive to existing Castilian legal practice. The establishment of the Spanish Inquisition in the kingdom of Aragón, which already had its own (albeit moribund) papal Inquisition, was seen as an affront to the kingdom's privileges, and one inquisitor was assassinated in the cathedral of Zaragoza in 1485. During the sixteenth century northern Protestants used the Inquisition as a cornerstone of the anti-Spanish propaganda campaign later dubbed the Black Legend. Even in its abolition the Inquisition was controversial, as it took three attempts to suppress the court, which lingered until 1834.

Since the fifteenth century the Inquisition has inspired a lively and sometimes lurid debate over the nature of its policies and practices.

EARLY YEARS OF THE INQUISITION

The first inquisitors arrived in Seville in November 1480. Their mission was to extirpate heresy and punish the guilty. Court procedures drew on medieval inquisitorial practice, distilled into the Directorium Inquisitorum by Nicolau Eimeric in 1376. The medieval Inquisition had been founded to combat Catharism, but the Spanish Inquisition's special target was the new heresy of "Judaizing." During the fifteenth century, either by force or choice, many Spanish Jews had converted to Christianity. Some of these New Christians (conversos) continued to practice Judaism secretly while advancing rapidly in Christian society. Seville, the first city targeted by the Spanish Inquisition, was home to a large and wealthy conversocommunity. Several hundreds of people were tried and punished in a short period of time, and similar scenes were repeated in Córdoba, Ciudad Real, Toledo, and Valencia.

The Inquisition used several degrees of sentencing. For those found guilty of heresy, there was relaxation to the secular arm of justice (for death by burning), relaxation in effigy for those heretics who had fled or previously had died, and reconciliation for those who abjured and promised to return to the Christian fold. In all cases, the property of those found guilty of heresy was confiscated. Both during and after public humiliation and sentencing at the ceremony known as theauto da fe, the condemned were obligated to wear a distinctive penitential tunic (the sanbenito) over their clothes, and they and their male descendants were banned from holding public office for several generations. Undoubtedly, for those Old Christians who were determined to eliminate unwanted competition from the converso class, the Inquisition was an efficient weapon.

The Inquisition's formative phase lasted until 1517. A well-defined institutional structure took shape. At the top were the inquisitor general (also called the grand inquisitor; the first was Friar Tomás de Torquemada [1420–1498]) and the royal council, known as La Suprema. Several permanent tribunals emerged at this time, while others functioned briefly and then disappeared. During the formative years the tribunals focused almost exclusively on Judaizers. The limited evidence that survives from this period suggests that perhaps as many as 15,000 to 20,000 people were tried during this time, nowhere near the 340,592 suggested in 1808 by the Inquisition's critic and former secretary Juan Antonio Llorente (1756–1823). One must remember furthermore that a great many of the sentences were handed out in absentia or posthumously, so even during this period of fierce persecution about 30 to 40 percent of those arrested ultimately faced the death penalty.

PERIOD OF GREATEST INFLUENCE

The Inquisition's period of greatest influence occurred in 1569–1621, during the reigns of Philip II (ruled 1556–1598) and Philip III (ruled 1598–1621). Before then, under Charles V (ruled 1517–1556), the Inquisition had suffered from a lack of direction. Prosecution of Judaizers had run its course, and aside from prosecuting the heretics known as alumbrados and the followers of Desiderius Erasmus (1466?–1536) in the 1520s and 1530s, the tribunals were left without a well-defined mission. The decade of the 1550s changed all that, however, when Protestants were found in Seville and at the royal court at Valladolid. Under inquisitor general Fernando de Valdés (1483–1568), the tribunals were reformed and redirected toward combating Protestantism.

Eventually numbering a total of sixteen tribunals in Spain, two in Italy, and three in the New World, the Inquisition took over responsibility for censorship and contraband and greatly expanded its prosecution of various religious crimes. In addition to Protestants, conversos, Moriscos (converted Muslims), and foreigners, ordinary Spaniards were drawn into the tribunals, as even the most casual religious oaths and statements became worthy of scrutiny and correction. Detailed questioning of prisoners, once limited to those accused of the most heinous heresies, now was applied to the most unlikely suspects, who were usually fined a ducat or two (a heavy fine for most) and sent on their way without further ado. The large majority of all cases undertaken by the Inquisition took place during this period.

During this period each tribunal functioned at a high level of efficiency thanks to the efforts of two groups of officials, one consisting of professional, salaried career men and the other made up of unpaid volunteers. The professio visita) of his district, while the other inquisitor remained at home to handle business there. The tribunals relied heavily on various types of unpaid officials. First, there were the two networks of familiars and comisarios. The familiars were laymen charged with carrying messages and arresting suspects and delivering them to the Inquisition, but they were not spies and informers. The comisarios were priests who assisted in the gathering of evidence at the local level. To assess the heretical content of the accusations, the inquisitors were advised by theologians known as calificadores. At key stages in a trial inquisitors were required to consult with voting members of the tribunal, who voted on whether or not to indict, torture, and convict. Cases involving the death penalty were sent to the Suprema for review and approval, and each tribunal

nal core of each tribunal included two inquisitors, lawyers for the prosecution, secretaries, a jailor, a bailiff, and a doorman. Periodically one inquisitor was required to go on a circuit (the

Cases in the Spanish Inquisition, 1540–1700
(Excludes the tribunals of Cuenca, Cerdaña, and Palermo)
Judaizers	Moriscos	Protestants	All Others	Total	Total Relaxed
4,397	10,817	3,646	25,814	44,674	1,604
9.8%	23.2%	8.1%	57.8%	100.0%	3.5%
Adapted from Jaime Contreras and Gustav Henningsen, "Forty-four Thousand Cases of the Spanish Inquisition (1540–1700): Analysis of a Historical Data Bank," in Henningsen and Tedeschi, 116. Included in the category "All Others" are propositions and blasphemy (27.1%), bigamy and solicitation (8.4%), acts against the Inquisition (7.5%), superstition (7.9%), and various (6.8%). The "Total Relaxed" involves only those sentenced to death in person.

was required to maintain detailed correspondence with the Suprema about all of its affairs.

The period 1569–1621 also witnessed a series of controversial trials. First, the archbishop of Toledo and primate of Spain, Bartolomé de Carranza (1503–1576), was sucked into the vortex of court intrigue that consumed the early years of Philip II's reign. Carranza's trial, which lasted from 1559 to 1576, started in Spain and ended in Rome. He was all but exonerated of the charges of heresy in 1576 but died shortly thereafter. A second politically motivated trial was the case of Philip II's secretary Antonio Pérez (1539–1611), who was implicated in the murder of another secretary. After Pérez escaped to Aragón in 1590, Philip tried to recapture him using the Inquisition of Zaragoza. The use of the Inquisition in this manner provoked such widespread discontent in Aragón that Philip was forced to order in the army. Despite these two famous cases, such overt political abuse of the Holy Office's power was rare. However, the Inquisition believed it was entirely justified in closely monitoring Spain's spiritual writers and preachers, who were suspected of having Protestant tendencies. Nowadays the list of those tried or called in for questioning reads like a who's who of Spain's most famous religious men and women, including, among others, Saint Ignatius of Loyola, Saint John of Ávila, Friar Luis de Granada, Saint Francisco de Borja, Friar Francisco de Osuna, Saint Teresa of Ávila, and Friar Luis de León.

DECLINE OF THE INQUISITION

The Inquisition declined with the Spanish empire in the seventeenth century. As the tribunals pulled back from their ambitious program of vigilance, caseloads and revenue fell. The tribunals focused on cases of Portuguese conversosliving in Spain, witchcraft and superstition, and censorship. In the eighteenth century the Inquisition could not stop the slow spread of Enlightenment ideas to Spain, and the country's intellectuals increasingly began to see the tribunals as out of step with the times. With the Napoleonic invasion of 1808, the courts were suppressed for the first time, at the hands of French officials and Spanish liberals. Conservative nationalists, however, fighting for independence and the return of Ferdinand VII (ruled 1808, 1814–1833), claimed that the court was the guardian of Spanish identity and morals. The Inquisition was restored without powers in 1814, only to undergo a lingering death between 1820 and 1834.

The Holy Office was suppressed for the final time by official decree in 1834, but historians have argued about its significance ever since. In the nineteenth century Protestant historians and Spanish liberals blamed Spain's backwardness on the Inquisition and the Catholic Church, which were seen as having terrorized the country, suppressed the basic rights of freedom of speech and religion, and retarded economic growth and scientific thought. In the twentieth century, with the advent of murderous anti-Semitic and totalitarian regimes, the focus shifted to understanding the Inquisition's role in the long history of the persecution of Jews and repression of entire populations. Under the pro-Catholic dictatorship of Francisco Franco (1892–1975; ruled 1939–1975), censorship prevented Spaniards from freely evaluating the Inquisition's legacy, and in the 1970s the most objective work was carried out by foreign historians interested in the new social history and history of mentalités. After the collapse of the regime in 1975, Spaniards in the 1980s and 1990s joined in a renaissance of Inquisition studies to understand their country's complex history. The large body of scholarship produced since 1975 has considerably modified and fleshed out understandings of the Holy Office, which has come to be seen as considerably less monolithic and ruthless than was previously thought.

See also Catholicism; Conversos; Ferdinand of Aragón ; Isabella of Castile ; Persecution ; Philip II (Spain) ; Spain .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Primary Sources

Beinart, Haim, ed. Records of the Trials of the Spanish Inquisition in Ciudad Real. 3 vols. Jerusalem, 1974.

Eimeric, Nicolau, and Francisco Peña. Le manuel des inquisiteurs. Translated and introduced by Louis Sala-Molins. Paris, 1973.

Jiménez Monteserín, Miguel, ed. Introducción a la Inquisición española: Documentos básicos para el estudio del Santo Oficio. Madrid, 1980.

Secondary Sources

Alcalá, Ángel, ed. The Spanish Inquisition and the Inquisitorial Mind. Boulder, Colo., 1987.

Bennassar, Bartolomé. L'Inquisition espagnole: XVe–XIXe siècle. Paris, 1979.

Contreras, Jaime. El Santo Oficio de la Inquisición en Galicia, 1560–1700. Madrid, 1982.

Dedieu, Jean-Pierre. L'administration de la foi: L'Inquisition de Tolède, XVIe–XVIIIe siècles. Madrid, 1989.

García Cárcel, Ricardo. Orígenes de la Inquisición española: El tribunal de Valencia, 1478–1530. Barcelona, 1976.

Haliczer, Stephen. Inquisition and Society in the Kingdom of Valencia, 1478–1834. Berkeley, 1990.

Henningsen, Gustav, and John Tedeschi, eds. The Inquisition in Early Modern Europe: Studies on Sources and Methods.DeKalb, Ill., 1986.

Kamen, Henry. The Spanish Inquisition: A Historical Revision. London, 1997.

Lea, Henry Charles. A History of the Inquisition of Spain. 4 vols. New York, 1906–1907.

Monter, William. Frontiers of Heresy: The Spanish Inquisition from the Basque Lands to Sicily. Cambridge, U.K., 1990.

Nalle, Sara Tilghman. Mad for God: BartoloméSánchez, the Secret Messiah of Cardenete. Charlottesville, Va., 2001.

Starr-LeBeau, Gretchen D. In the Shadow of the Virgin: Inquisitors, Friars, and Conversos in Guadalupe, Spain.Princeton, 2003.

SARA TILGHMAN NALLE

Full Text: COPYRIGHT 2004 Charles Scribner's Sons, COPYRIGHT 2006 Gale.

Source Citation

NALLE, SARA TILGHMAN. "Inquisition, Spanish." Europe, 1450 to 1789: Encyclopedia of the Early Modern World. Ed. Jonathan Dewald. Vol. 3. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 2004. 272-275. World History in Context. Web. 25 Jan. 2015.

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BLOG: Benito Cereno in Relation to the Spanish Inquisition

In this blog I will be linking the various allusions to the Spanish Inquisition in Benito Cereno by Herman Melville.

          Throughout Benito Cereno, Captain Delano points out the fact that Don Benito is a part of the "Old Empire" while he, conversely, is a member of the new Imperialist Empire, the "New Empire". Delano subtly comments on the Spanish as backwards in the way he describes Benito's ship itself as well as through the comparisons to the Inquisition. It's as if Delano is claiming that the Spanish were more brutal in their history, in the Inquisition, than Americans with slavery.

           The very name of the ship The San Dominick was changed from the historical ship named Tryal to allude to the Spanish Inquisition. Throughout the novella, Delano makes references to slavery in relation to the Spanish Inquisition. He consistently makes note of the violence of the Inquisition when he gets the sense that something is off, but then he further delves into his unreliability once again.  The Inquisition was a time period where the Spanish would torture individuals into admitting their involvement with other religions other than Catholicism. Freedom of speech, religion, economic growth, and science were all skewed and manipulated during this time. Jews and those who were associated with Christianity were targeted; and the victims didn't receive lawyers and were considered guilty if they didn't testify.

           One of the most famous scenes in Benito Cereno is the "play of the barber" scene. However, I would like to make note of Delano's commentary as a build up to the scene. Delano thinks to himself,

 "...a thumbed missal on it, and over it, a small meager crucifix attached to the       bulkhead. Under the table lay a dented cutlass or two with a hacked harpoon,       among some melancholy old rigging, like a heap of poor friars' girdles. There       were also two long, sharp-ribbed settees of Malacca cane, black with age, and       uncomfortable to look at as inquisitors' racks, with a large misshapen armchair,   which furnished with a rude barber's crotch at the back, working with a screw,     seemed some grotseque engine of torment."

This quote is a build up to one of the most revealing scenes in the book. Delano secretly knows something is off just in the way he describes the setting of the cuddy where Benito resides. In this block quote Delano makes multiple references to the Spanish Inquisition such as, "thumbed missal", "meager crucifix", "poor friars' girdles", "Malacca cane", "inquisitors' racks" overall claiming it is uncomfortable to look at. Thumbed missal refers to a book of prayers used by priests; the crucifix refers to a cross; the friar is a religious man, the Malacca cane represents the wealth of Spain as well as it being used as a method of punishment or torture; and the inquisitors' racks are one of the methods people would be tortured into confession during the Spanish Inquisition. Delano's interpretation of this scene, once again, demonstrates his lack of respect for the Old Empire. He sees it as "antiquated" and "inhumane" in the way he describes the scene. As if the Old World had its time, and wealth demonstrated by the cane, and that the Spanish were inhumane. Ironically, the opposite is true as well. In judging Benito for being a Spaniard and a member of the Old World, Delano subconsciously dismisses the U.S.'s involvement with slavery and the violence committed in America within the bars of slavery. We are given a skewed window in the world of Benito Cereno. 

The Amistad and the US Supreme Court Decision to return Africans back to Africa.

"Joseph Cinquez was the leader of a revolt among African slaves aboard the Spanish ship "Amistad" en route to Cuba in June 1839. The slaves seized control of the ship but were soon recaptured and charged with murder and piracy. This portrait was done while Cinquez (or "Cinque") awaited trial in New Haven, Connecticut. John Quincy Adams represented the Africans before the Supreme Court, and thanks to his eloquence, they were set free and allowed to return to Africa."

-From " Joseph Cinquez, the brave Congolese Chief, who prefers death to slavery, and who now lies in jail ..."

In 1839, the Spanish slave ship Amistad set sail from Havana to Puerto Principe, Cuba. The ship was carrying 53 Africans who had been abducted from their homeland in present-day Sierra Leone a few months earlier to be sold in Cuba. The captives revolted, killing captain and others, but spared the life of the ship's navigator so they could set a course back to Africa. Instead, the navigator directed them north and west, to be eventually seized a few weeks later by a U. S. Navy vessel off the coast of Long Island. The Africans were transported to New Haven, Connecticut to be tried for mutiny, murder, and piracy. 

-source from World Digital Library.

An engraving of the Amistad revolt. 

Two years later in 1841, the Africans were jailed to be tried for murder, mutiny, and piracy. The Amistad, as was came to be known of the Supreme Court case United States v. Libellants and Claimants of the Schooner Amistad, was known for being a freedom suit involving several international issues and parties. including United States law. 

The British laid pressure on the court case, saying that they had entered a treaty with Spain prohibiting the slave trade south of the Equator, and considered it a matter of international law that the United States release the Africans. 

The Spanish maintained that none but a Spanish court could have jurisdiction over the case. The Spanish minister stated "I do not, in fact, understand how a foreign court of justice can be considered competent to take cognizance of an offence committed on board of a Spanish vessel, by Spanish subjects, and against Spanish subjects, in the waters of a Spanish territory; for it was committed on the coasts of this island, and under the flag of this nation."

The Spaniards held that just as America had ended its importation of African slaves but maintained a legal domestic population, so too had Cuba. It was up to Spanish courts to determine "whether the Negroes in question" were legal or illegal slaves under Spanish law, "but never can this right justly belong to a foreign country."

Among the parties that weighed in on the Supreme Court's decision were abolitionists who advocated for the rights and freedom of the kidnapped Africans, including forming the "Amistad Committee" so that they could raise funds for their defense, as well as finding a translator to communicate with them. 

The Supreme Court decision ruled, through Pinckney's Treaty, that the Africans in question were never legal property, and so they were not criminals but "unlawfully kidnapped, and forcibly and wrongfully carried on board a certain vessel." The Africans were ordered free and in 1842 were returned to Africa. 

-details on the court case shown and referred to here.

*

Now what interested me about the Amistad case was that it was one of a few slave revolts held on a ship, just as it was in Benito Cereno though about four decades after the event of the book, and that it was around the same time as when Herman Melville was about at sea and about fifteen years before he would publish Benito Cereno. The court case on the Amistad would become an influence in the movement to abolish slavery, alongside other successful slave revolts such as the case of the slave ship Creole in 1841 among numerous other accounts of slave ships accosted and had their slave cargo free.

In Melville's publication of Benito Cereno, it seemed that he did so while the political climate was in full swing between pro-slavery South and abolitionist North among other politics fraught on the subject of slavery. The choice of having a short story published on a real life event in the past, which also referred to the Haitian Revolution which had happened at the same time of Amasa Delano's deposition, seems to me a deliberate move by Melville to look back to similar events in the past that would resonate with the politics of his present.

Just as in Benito Cereno, the slave revolts on slave ships were denounced initially as acts of mutinies and piracy, with their court cases winning in favor of the Africans rather than the slave ship captains and whoever was awaiting the cargo. By being seen in a more heroic light, especially among abolitionists, what I wonder is why Melville was bringing up an even that has happened more than fifty years ago from when he published the story. Is it to see the falseness of Delano's deposition and others who had contributed? Or is it to realize that in order for freedom to be attained, violence and craftiness must be employed that defied people's expectations of the Africans?

The Scramble for Africa and the struggle for humanization

"The Scramble for Africa" is a name applied to the colonialist and capitalist ventures of literally stealing any land possible. This particular period of such, occurring in the late19th and early 20th centuries, was the endeavor of European nations seeking out Africa, which to them is really nothing more than a big black land of hopelessness and hut villages. Not only is this a capitalist practice, that is, one that values the art of "getting ahead" and, of course, making money more than anything else; it is also a racist one. To feel that one's acquirement of property is more important than even the concept that human beings might already be living in this land is absurdly condescending. The title this time period has been given even implies that the continent of Africa is something to be seized by outside parties, rather than it being composed of several individual cultures and populations that posses their own agency and abilities. This is an issue with colonialism and imperialism as a whole, of course, but the continent of Africa has historically been especially fetishisized for its mysteriousness, which white colonizers see as enough of a reason to kidnap its autonomy and claim the land as their own. The colonizer believes that the land they're invading will be worth something once their white, European point of view is applied.

This is exactly what occurs in Conrad's Heart of Darkness. The novel has been clearly laid out to the class as as unreliable narrative, but it is not always taught this way. For many, the novel can be read as an adventure story. But as readers with knowledge -- or at least understanding of the concept -- of colonization as horror, we understand that for Conrad, the Congo is simply a backdrop for a story about some white guy doing something out of the ordinary. The Congo is then tokenized as an exotic adventure land. The point of view told in these kinds of stories, then, can never be that of a Congolese person. This is a type of connection (or maybe disconnection) that still exists. I once, in lecture, brought up an image that was circulating the internet a couple of weeks ago concerning the status of Ferguson and the related protests that swept the nation. The image, included below, shows a young black boy embracing a white cop. This is a classic image of realizing the humanity of another culture. The black person (in this case a child, so that even the most conservative of Facebook users can stop and say 'aw, wow, touching') is humanized because they are making peace with a white person, and in this case, a white person of the exact level of authority that is being questioned. White people seeing the image can sympathize with the black community because it is contextualized for the comfort of their perspective. Heart of Darkness and related works bring 'Africa' to a comfortable level for white readers because the experience of the Congo is being told by a fellow white person. This narrative is more obviously racist than those being presented today, but the general concept is still relevant. I hope that this connection isn't too much of a stretch, but I feel that the "scramble" to tame dark people and keep them within the context of white people is not necessarily of the past.

Looking at history through a lens: alienation by camera obscura

On the back cover of our Heart of Darkness novel, there is a tiny paragraph crediting the cover illustration which was described as a: "photograph of ivory being purchased in the Congo, ca. 1890." I was interested in this specific image just based on the year itself and the relationship to photo documentation of imperial atrocities. After doing further web searches on the history of photography, I came across information on the "Kodak Era" which is officially dated 1878-1929. It was interesting to read that in 1889 (one year before the cover photo was taken) flexible roll film was beginning to become somewhat easily available. I also did a tiny bit of research on the many photos of imperial atrocities by just doing a general search of photos on the internet. There were many photos from assumed Japanese cameras in relation to the rape and massacre of Nanjing, China.

Returning to the topic of this cover picture, it seems as if there is a sort of disconnect between the men and ivory tusk in this picture in comparison to the actual history and exploitation of the natives, their land and of course the elephants. The photographs on the internet of severed heads, dead bodies and massive amounts of skulls create a sense of alienation for the "looker"/"viewer" of these photos simply because they were not there and it is just another black and white image on the internet. I can't help but think back to the theory of the "Atomic Sublime" where the image of the mushroom cloud creates a very distant and, in a sense, beautifully horrific picture. The "looker" only sees a far-away view of the mushroom shaped cloud to where in reality the ground level was experiencing tremendous chaos and death. Like the "Atomic Sublime" and the picture of the mushroom cloud, these pictures of imperial atrocities and even of historical genocide (e.g. the famous pictures of Auschwitz and the naked child in Vietnam) create a sense of alienation and non-responsive feelings from the "looker". Of course, it can be argued that these pictures document the evidence of pure injustices and slaughter of people which is proof that these events did in fact occur. And I wonder what means to be a "viewer" or "looker" of these pictures. How can we look at these photos without being or feeling alienated from these events? Is it even possible to not be alienated? 

United States v. The Amistad: Supreme Court's Opinion

The Amistad was a Spanish slaver that carried slaves and cargo across Cuba during the early nineteenth-century. In July 1839, while transporting roughly fifty West African slaves to a small Cuban port for auctioning, a mutiny led by the slave Joseph Cinqué resulted in a takeover of the Amistad. The slaves attempted to force the ship's navigator to sail "for the coast of Africa", but the navigator tricked them and sailed to Long Island instead, where the ship was taken into custody by the USS Washington (FindLaw). Because the international slave trade had been outlawed by the time of the events, the ensuing Supreme Court case, United States v. Libellants and Claimants of the Schooner Amistad (1841), ruled that the slaves were acting as free men during the mutiny, and ordered their freedom. The legal victory became an important symbol for the abolitionist movement. 

The court case, held in New Haven, Connecticut (an ironic placement for such a trial - 'New Haven'), throughout early 1841, heard arguments from multiple parties, including former President John Quincy Adams, who represented the slaves. Adams argued that the Spanish seamen violated an 1817 treaty between Great Britain and Spain outlawing the slave trade across the Atlantic - he subsequently charged them with assault and piracy (FindLaw). In a landmark decision, the Supreme Court agreed with the former President; because the Amistad was captured in New York waters, they found, it was subjected to United States law, under which the slaves were judged to be free. Writing the majority opinion for the court, Justice Joseph Story wrote, "the said negroes be declared to be free, and be dismissed from the custody of the court, and go without delay" (FindLaw). Justice Story's handwritten opinion is pictured here:

The writing is small and difficult to read, but more information can be found at these links:

http://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/amistad/supreme-court-opinion.html

http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?navby=CASE&court=US&vol=40&page=518

Though it's difficult to navigate through the tricky and outdated legal language, the opinions are very interesting to read with Melville's Benito Cereno in mind. It rarely feels like Adams, Story, or other abolitionists, are motivated to abolish slavery for moral reasons - instead, judging from the language, they were mostly concerned with protecting the integrity of the law. Regardless, the outcome provided momentum for abolitionists across the country. 

Melville's readers would have been familiar with the United States v. The Amistad, and may have interpreted the Spanish Cereno with these events in mind. Pinpointing Cereno as a Spanish pirate not dissimilar from the pirates of the Amistad would have dramatically altered an interpretation of Benito Cereno. 

-Marcus Dovigi

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1. "Find Law | Cases and Codes." FindLaw | U.S. Supreme Court. N.p., n.d. Web. 25 Jan. 2015.

     <http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?navby=CASE&court=US&vol=40&page=518>

Craniology in Heart of Darkness

The images above are from a text entitled Crania Americana, written by Dr. Samuel George Morton and published in 1839. Morton was an American doctor and professor at the University of Pennsylvania who, through the ‘science’ of craniology, determined that there was evidence to support a racial hierarchy. The images above are nothing short of gross caricatures of actual human beings. They are so outlandishly unrealistic that it is difficult to characterize them as scientific by any means. Let us take a moment to focus on the three sketches on the left hand page of the bottom image. Morton argued that racial differences were actually distinctions between separate species, and here is attempting to display the external and internal physical markers. I assume that Morton is visually establishing his notion of species/race hierarchy beginning with the top caucasian bust, moving on to the highly stereotypical distortion of a brown skinned man, and finally ending with an ape. Next to each figurehead is a sketch of what Morton claims to be their skulls. Morton believed intelligence and general mental attributes to be directly related to brain size, and therefore skull size and shape.

While I am by no means a physical anthropologist, I call into question the, for lack of a better word, reliability of Morton’s sketches. This, however, is an excellent example of how unreliability is present not only in the fictional literary sphere but reflected in the laws, public education, and popular general knowledge and ideology of a certain moment in history that we generally perceive to be factual. I believe what strikes me as the most audacious aspect of this text, this man, and these beliefs are that they were widely accepted as a scientific truth and were used as a justification for the exploitation of other ethnic groups by white men. Morton was a professor and his claims were backed by a powerful academic institution. This are not the claims of one extremely racist individual but are instead a point that was collectively agreed upon by many scientific, academic, and political leaders.

In terms of our readings, I believe Morton’s Crania Americana ties in well with a better critical understanding of Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. Published in 1899, it is reasonable to assume that Conrad had access to Morton’s writings, or at least similar ones. As Christine mentioned in class, craniology is mentioned in the text itself. When Marlowe is being inspected before his trip, the doctor asks, “in the interests of science, to measure [his] crania” (11). Marlowe asks the doctor if there has ever been a difference in the cranial measurements before and after a trip to the Congo, to which the doctor replies, “the changes take place inside, you know” (11). I would argue that this may be a way in which Conrad is commenting against scientific racism, insomuch as in this moment, there is an acknowledgement that changes within humanity occur internally and cannot be measured.