Short Essay 3

David Reece

History 498

Dr. Barnes

Essay 3

By the early nineteenth century Europeans were ready for Darwin’s On the Origin of Species. A new type of Empiricism had arisen in the minds of the intelligentsia of Europe. The history of Medieval Roman Catholic thought could be summarized as the synthesis of the epistemology of Aristotle with the Bible. The history of Protestant thought had been the tale of a distinct epistemology, Divine Revelation Alone, thundering across Europe and then fading away across a few short centuries. The Enlightenment was a time when Divine Revelation started to become secondary to, or even replaced completely by, a new Aristotelian epistemology in the ivory towers of Western Europe. By 1859 Charles Darwin rallied the scientific minded elites of Western Europe around a new telling of man’s definition, place in the cosmos, and origin. Man had become like unto animals, unreasoning as the beast of the field,[1] red in tooth and claw from the start,[2] whose course was determined by blind omnipotent matter.[3] An important lesson is distinguishable here; the ivory tower is the control tower of society.[4] Darwin’s theory of evolution, of how species are formed, and of the survival of the fittest, all laid a foundation for European attitudes of superiority towards Africans in conjunction with nationalist ideology and the advent of polygenesis[5] theory. Africans, rational beings that they are, did not wish to be subject to the dominion of European thought any more than the dominion of the European sword. Over the decades, Africans resisted the scientific racism of Europeans by asserting a variety of forms of ideological opposition, including Islam and indigenous pagan religions, but the primary changes that occurred by the reaction of Africans were the adoption of Protestantism, Roman Catholicism, and Marxist Communism in opposition to the imperialist scientific racism of Europeans.

Protestantism, although the least influential of the three philosophical systems in Africa itself, was an effective intellectual weapon offered by Africans and their allies in European countries with a Protestant heritage against scientific racism and its forbearers. This can be seen in the British abolitionist debates and associated legislation of the time. If the Protestant doctrine of Sola Scriptura was believed by an individual, then it was hard to support any pillar of the new scientific racism or of the older rejection of African humanity. Africans, thus, responded to scientific racism by asserting the contradictory propositions offered by Protestant philosophy.[6] Evolutionary theory is insupportable from Scripture, despite the textual gymnastics attempted by some modern interpreters of Genesis. There is no space here for further discussion of hermeneutical methodology, so, unfortunately this assertion must remain unargued. A subhead of the doctrine of fiat creation is the idea that all men are separated from animals because man is the image and likeness of God which critically undermines scientific racism. According to the Biblical account, all men are a result of the issue of Adam and Eve who were created immediately by God’s decree, but all other men proceeded as the procreative issue of Adam and Eve by ordinary generation. All men, thus, are derived from one ancestor.[7] An important part of this doctrine’s usefulness in combating scientific racism was the definition in Protestantism that made the image of God identifiable. To historic or confessional Protestants the image of God is reason/logic. Since Logic in the mind of an individual makes one by definition an example of the image of God, and since propositional language presupposes logic, any being with propositional language is the image of God. Africans could easily appeal to their own ability to perform propositional thought by simply speaking and reasoning with their fellow Protestants. All of the rights of man were thus imputed in Protestantism to Africans because they could show that they were men created as the image of God if the axiom of Scripture was presupposed. The abolitionist movements in Protestant countries, and the attempts to consistently apply rights to Africans, arose largely from this line of thought. Protestant dominated countries, however, exerted imperial force and exploitation over Africans. Some professedly Calvinistic Afrikaners, for example, attempted to get around these issues by asserting the humanity of Africans, but making other complex claims to domineer over Africans. I, obviously, think that the reasoning of the Afrikaners from Scripture is unsound, but there is not space to deal with that subject here. The British and Dutch both brutally abused Africans in Africa even as some Africans asserted a Protestant ideology of imputed rights against the abusers.

Roman Catholicism played a vital, though still minority, role in Africa itself at providing a response to scientific racism, but it also, obviously, played a large role in the response of Africans in Europe to scientific racism. Roman Catholics ultimately place all revelatory authority in the hands of the Ecclesiastical Magisterium of the Bishop of Rome. Although Rome had long supported and allowed slavery as an institution, she did advocate an essential humanity rooted in the idea that all men are created in the image of God, and that humanity was to be defended in Africans as being equally a part of the nature of an African as of a European. Ultimately, the majority Catholic nations of Belgium, France, and Italy were not prevented from committing the worst sorts of atrocities against Africans in Africa, and the association of the Vatican with Mussolini’s Fascist regime and the Papal Concordat with Hitler’s National Socialist regime prevented an effective use of Catholic influence or power to undermine the functions and authority of the scientific racism that had risen to preeminence in much of Europe by 1940. The articles and books we have read tended to mix Roman Catholicism and Protestantism together as the “Christian response” to scientific racism, but the distinction between orthodox Protestantism and orthodox Romanism ought to be preserved due to the continued large influence of both throughout this time and because of the significantly different philosophical systems and localities of influence that each ideology provided.

Karl Marx desired to dedicate Das Capital to Charles Darwin. Darwin refused the offer by Marx. Marxist Communism is distinctly different from National Socialism in that it primarily divides the race of man into universal economic classes, the lowest of which, the proletariat, will be the final group to rule the earth. National Socialism divides men into competing races and then into classes. A Marxist desires to unite the proletariat across the globe in the violent extermination and/or coerced “reeducation” of the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie. A National Socialist desires to unite a race to form a socialist nation or people and then violently destroy or coercively subjugate all other races/nations to serve the purposes of the master race. Since scientific racism was essentially a Proto-National Socialism, and since the scientific racism of the mid and late 1800’s literally was replaced by National Socialism in Germany in the 1930’s, it seemed natural that many Africans would be drawn to Marxism as an alternative in the empirical realm of philosophy since empiricism continued its prominence as the epistemology of choice for most intellectuals and elites until at least the late 1960’s when relativism and skepticism emerged as the new dominant perspectives of the academy. Marxism played an important role in the response of Africans to European scientific racism, especially in South Africa,[8] and Marxist violence and rhetoric persist in post-colonial Africa to this day as a response to scientific racism. The conflict between Marxist Darwinists and Racist Darwinists[9] is the best accounted for in the end of our stated period of study, but it is nonexistent for most of the time at least compared to the ubiquitous references to missionaries and missionary societies in the readings.[10] In the years between the First and Second World War, Communist influences were directly strengthened by the efforts of the South African government to silence white socialist agitation through giving special favors to white labor that made it easier for them to obtain a higher wage.[11] Marxist ideology gained ground amongst black Africans, at the expense of the black African nationalist movement, at the same time that black African nationalism was on the rise amongst socialist organizations in South Africa. The Communist Party of South Africa was ultimately derailed by violent oppression on the part of the government of South Africa over the course of years, but Marxism as an idea was never obliterated as an important philosophy of many South Africans.

Darwin’s book had the effect of legitimating an idea that was already popular in Europe, the gradual inter-species change of the offspring of organisms across many generations. The scientific form that Darwin clothed the idea of the evolutionary formation of species in also allowed many other ideas to rest upon an accepted foundation. Scientific racism was closely tied to a theory of the origin of species that matched Darwin’s, and was, in many cases, completely derived from Darwin’s basic premises on this subject. Through the natural pride of men, the dangers of the accumulation of power, and the effect of On the Origin of Species on Europeans, scientific racism directly impacted Africans in Africa and in Europe. Africans responded inside of their own frameworks of thinking, such as Islam and varied forms of Paganism, but Protestantism, Roman Catholicism, and Marxism all took root in Africa in a way that had not previously been possible, and Africans used these systems of thought to offer intellectual resistance against scientific racism in both Africa and Europe.

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[1] A paraphrase of the Holy Bible, Daniel 4:21-25

[2] A contrast with Alfred Lord Tennyson's In Memoriam A. H. H., Canto 58, 1850

[3] An allusion to Bertrand Russell’s Mysticism and Logic, pg. 56

[4] A paraphrase of Dr. John W. Robbins’s “The Trinity Manifesto -A Program for our Time”, http://trinityfoundation.org/journal.php?id=1

[5] “The polygenists advanced a more extreme racialist position by placing greater emphasis on the differences between racial groups, and by arguing that anatomical comparisons proved that races were species with separate origins and distinct, biologically fixed, unequal characteristic.” Victorian Studies, Vol. 31, No. 3 (Spring, 1988), pp. 405-430, Douglas Lorimer, pg. 406

[6] Many of the readings contained examples of this sort of argumentation either by Africans or their classical Liberal/Protestant defenders.

[7] “The theory of common origins or monogenesis was compatible with Christian teaching, and its leading advocates had links with humanitarian movements for the abolition of slavery and the protection of aboriginal peoples.” Lorimer, 405

[8] “Essential similarities existed between the pattern of resistance in West and South Africa, but there were also important differences related to the degree of industrialisation in South Africa and the specific nature of the interaction between colonialism and indigenous cultures. For instance, Christianity and the tensions between liberal capitalism and communism played a far more prominent part in the development of black consciousness.” Imperialism, Race, and Resistance : Africa and Britain, 1919-1945, Routledge, 1999, BarbaraBush 157

[9] “Darwin made use of the term 'race', but he was clearly critical of the hard-and-fast distinctions current in contemporary classifications of mankind. Races, he pointed out, 'graduate into each other, so that it is hardly possible to discover clear distinctive characters between them'. This scholarly caution was not however an intellectual characteristic of the Social Darwinists, that section of Darwin's followers who applied evolutionary theories to the study of human society.” The Cambridge History of Africa, Vol. 5, Cambridge 1976, Robin Hallett, 479

[10] “by 1875 European priests and lay-workers were established in almost every part of Africa with which Europeans maintained regular intercourse, and some mission stations had developed into major centres of political and even more markedly of cultural influence. … A notable proliferation in the number of Christian missionary societies, both of Protestant and of Catholic foundation, took place in the decades after 1790; most of these new societies were eager to establish contact with Africa.” Hallett, 465-466

[11] Bush, 161-162

Short Essay 2

David Reece

History 498

Dr. Barnes

Essay 2

In early modern Europe Christianity was the philosophical basis for broad social order. Individuals of every nationality were furnished with a particular place in society as controlled by shared social understandings. The connection between social status and Christianity was very strong, almost to the exclusion of nationality in early modern Europe. What I mean by this is that a Black man in early modern Europe who was the right kind of “Christian” for his location could obtain heights equal to all but the very top of the white social order. More precisely, an individual’s place in the social order was determined by other factors in addition to one’s acceptance of Christianity, but if a person is thought of as not being a Christian, then his social standing would be decisively weakened.

It is important to remember that the term “Christianity” is being used in a specialized form for the purpose of this essay. I do not say I am using “Christianity” in a broad form, because, although it is common to refer to Protestantism, Roman Catholicism, and Eastern Orthodoxy all as “Christianity” in popular conversation, no orthodox member of any of these groups would support the idea that all three groups are a part of the larger category “Christianity”, and this would have been especially true during the period in question. During the period at least between 1529 (really even earlier, but the term Protestant had not been developed until this year) and the early 1800’s, the divisions between Protestants and Catholics were exceedingly hostile. Protestants almost universally considered the Pope of Rome to be the Antichrist of Scripture and the Roman Church-State to be the harlot woman (unfaithful church) who rides the Beast (Empire) of Revelation. Similarly, the Roman Catholic Church pronounced anathemas on Protestants, especially at the Council of Trent. Comparing and contrasting the connections between Protestantism and social status with the connections between Roman Catholicism and social status would be worthy of an historical study by itself, but for the current study the focus will be on the ways the localized accepted form of “Christianity” related to social status.

Although the section of James Walvin’s Questioning Slavery that was required reading for the course did not really address specifically the issue of Christianity and social status it does touch on the subject in very important ways by implication. Walvin spends a good deal of time explaining the various self-interested motives of Europeans to exploit African labor to the degree that Europeans did through the slave trade. Walvin’s concern seems to be to remove simple racism as the cause of the prominence of the African slave trade over other forms of coerced labor. Walvin’s arguments support the idea that Christianity was closely connected to social status, or at least the foundations of it, by resisting the idea that Europeans chose to turn to enslaved Africans more and more for forced labor because of racism. Walvin’s case that Africans were abused by Europeans because of rational market based decisions suggests that Africans were treated in a basically similar way to any exploited population by Europeans. As related support, Boulle’s “Racial Purity or Legal Clarity?” and  Peabody’s “Race, Slavery, and the Law in Early Modern France” basically demonstrate either that Christianity was more important in France than race or that other socio-political considerations were more important than race. These documents are the weakest of the evidentiary pieces in favor of a robust view of the importance of Christianity in the determination of one’s social status in early modern Europe.

In the chapters from Equiano’s writings, and the rest of the book more broadly, it would seem that Christianity was tied to social status, but Equiano’s place as an enslaved man lowered him to the place of being considered essentially a non-person according to law, an object of abuse for many, and an object of pity for a couple of High-Church Anglican women and many Low-Church Anglicans and Nonconformists. Upon obtaining his freedom and returning to English society, Equiano’s intelligence, writing, and speaking ability, along with his public avowal of Christian doctrine and morals allowed him to obtain a high stature and material wellbeing. Although a number of other factors did prevent Equiano from obtaining better social status earlier (primarily his bonds of perpetual servitude), his Christian profession and demonstration were central to his ability to rise as quickly as he did in British society. Some similar ideas are presented in Garzina’s “Mobility in Chains” which associates some of the origins of Pan-Africanism with the effects of Protestantism on English speaking Africans. The article would support the idea that Christianity was central to social status because it offers multiple examples of individuals who were able to rise because of their acceptance despite distinct difference of appearance and of origins. The idea that enslaved sailors had a paradoxical set of oppressions and opportunities is central to this document, but more central to the thesis of this essay is the fact that men that once were slaves could rise to the levels that they did. Although Christianity did not eliminate all other factors of social status or override them, it did create an atmosphere that could on occasion lead to the total acceptance of outsiders by many Britons. Brown’s “Christianity and the Campaign Against Slavery and the Slave Trade” and Hudson’s “Britons Never Will be Slaves” both show how powerful the influence of Calvinist political thought and the idea of imputed rights or social covenants were as a result, but they also emphasized how Europeans thought of Africans because of the Europeans’ Christianity apart from the Christianity of an Africans, and the value of a Christian African would by necessity be magnified in addition to the other benefits by Europeans who already were so influenced by their own Christian philosophical underpinnings.

The various articles show that Christianity was the inescapable material of the social fabric of Early Modern Europe, and that race was an under developed concept at the time. Nationality was much less important than family, rulers, religion, church, or material gain, but Christianity was an overriding principal of judgment.  In Europe, individuals who were not the right sort of “Christian” for the area they were in were not considered acceptable to be in the highest circles of society.  Racism in Early Modern Europe was a difficult obstacle for Africans to overcome, but judgments of individuals based upon creed were predominant.

Short Essay 1

David Reece

History 498

Dr. Barnes

Essay 1

During the period between 1400 A.D. and 1600 A.D. the European image of Africans changed in many ways both in Mediterranean Europe and Atlantic Europe. In Mediterranean Europe, particularly Iberia, Africans shifted towards being integrated into broader social unity through the Reconquista and Inquisition, and, at the same time, however, Africans became associated with slavery. In Atlantic Europe, especially England, Africans started to have a dichotomous image for different groups of intellectuals, but the practical treatment of Africans was controlled largely by pragmatism due to the low rate of interaction and small African population in England and the rest of Atlantic Europe. One wing of the dichotomy was a negative inferiority view of Africans, and the other stressed African humanity. It would seem that the former was curbed, at least in England, toward the end of the period. In both cases, the image of Africans changed over time, and the influences that altered the perspective of Europeans was very different, though interrelated, in Mediterranean and Atlantic Europe.

In Mediterranean Europe the period began with a greater consciousness of the distinctive rather than shared aspects of Africans and Europeans than would be the case in two centuries down the corridor of time, but the social differences were not as pronounced as one might think. Interactions between state officials were the same as interactions between Europeans states as can be shown broadly in Ivana Elbl’s “Cross Cultural Trade and Diplomacy: Portuguese Relations with West Africa, 1441 – 1521”. However, according to Elbl, the archival treatment of Africans by Portuguese officials was often less unbiased than their actual interactions because of the motive to portray Portugal as glorious and righteous, especially as Portuguese power was in relative decline compared with Spain. Elbl argues that this written portrayal had more to do with the fact that these African states were not in constant contact with Europeans, and so could be lied about with relative impunity for the glorification of the kingdom.

In Spain, the completion of the Reconquista resulted in the enslavement of many of Muslims by Catholics, and of many Catholics by Muslims. This created a large pool of forced labor initially, but the supply of slaves diminished over time as Catholics worked to free fellow Catholics and Muslims worked to free fellow Muslims from slavery. Historically, the Italians and other Western Europeans had relied on supplies of salves from Eastern Europe before this period, but various factors reduced the availability of this supply. Because of the indigenous slave trade in Africa, the African slave market became the easiest and most logical source of slaves for Iberia. As a result, the Iberian kingdoms, and their colonial empires turned to Africa for slaves, and the demand for slaves exploded with time in the Americas because of the short supply of labor and the increasing value of sugar production and newly discovered, untapped mines. Because slavery had been an institution in Europe for so long, and because it had not been all that different by definition from the forced labor of serfs and vassals, African slavery did not necessarily represent a dehumanizing or racist view of Africans in Iberia. It is my judgment, however, that all of these groups who were put into forced labor were dehumanized not only in an ethical sense, but as a practical application in the minds of their masters. Although slave keeping and man stealing are grievous evils, these same evils were perpetrated against men of every nation as opportunity arose, and the ruling class is guilty of persistent tyranny across their various relations. Africans seem to fit into this larger pattern.

Annette Ivory’s article emphasizes the ways in which the need to oppress blacks as slaves in Spain led to their portrayal as stupid and buffoon like, but Fracchia’s article explains that the acceptance of Catholicism and a respect for the crown and loyalty could lead to great rewards regardless of race. These same sorts of stories can be found regarding lower classes other than Africans, but the idea that men can climb the social ladder through being good seems oddly more prevalent in this example than in many European tales up to this time. Spanish Empire could play a part in this meritocratic lesson since the old feudal system was giving way to a more and more centralized Spanish throne and the German, Italian, and Lowland holdings of the Emperor were needful of militarily focused administration. This social influencer, however, is probably much less important than the impact of the Spanish inquisition and the nominal and institutional Catholicism that was further strengthened in its hold on the social order of Spain. As Spanish Catholicism reacted both to the Muslim and Jewish presence in Spain, and then to the Protestantism, it encouraged the acceptance of all types of men so long as they would profess the Roman religion. Fracchia goes so far as to suggest that race was almost removed from consideration in Spain as Africans became invisible through the effects of the Inquisition, interracial sexuality, and the household servant style of slavery.

In Atlantic Europe Africans were not very prominent through this time, but, as Kaplan points out, the Hohensaufens caused Atlantic Europe and Mediterranean Europe to be more interconnected, and through this interaction Africans were introduced into Atlantic Europe more frequently. Kaplan makes it clear that the African was originally viewed primarily in terms of how he fit into the system of landlords and peasants, and all men were put into this system of hierarchical social arrangements. Kaplan further explains that Africans were often associated with Islam since the Atlantic Europeans did not much probe into the African continent, but instead were passively left to receive Africans as they passed through the Atlantic European lands. Kaplan further points out that “Barbarossa” used Africans for some special military groups and livery servants. Atlantic Europeans, thus, took on some views of Africans as exotic.

The Vaughns article, “Before Othello: Elizabethan Representations of Sub-Saharan Africa”, attempts to show that non-clerical and non-ministerial English intellectuals before Shakespeare were racially prejudiced, and from this evidence then tries to show that England was then, as a whole, controlled by this perspective, however, the idea that the non-clerical and non-ministerial writings were representative of the majority of the English ruling class and of society in general. However, little is done to validate the effort that the playwrights’ views before Shakespeare really were representative of this larger group. Additionally, Elizabeth’s law requiring the removal of Africans from England was an unmitigated failure, but no explanation is offered as to why this was the case if there was broad support for such an effort. It would seem by this lack of support for Elizabeth’s law that the Englishmen of the time were not concerned with the presence of Africans in England in the way that the Vaughns suggest.

Rather, one might think that the English thought of the Africans as being men who were like all other men, but English judgments against paganism, Islam, and Catholicism would have resulted in the sense of social superiority over pagan, Muslim, and Catholic nations. The English thought that the Africans could be useful allies against the Spanish, and the English assumed that the Africans would be seeking their own rational advantage in national and individual concerns. This understanding of Africans as potential allies and as men like all others led to the view that Africans must necessarily want to remove the Spanish from their own sphere since the English thought that the Spanish must be hated by all men as tyrants because of the “Black Legend”. The practical application of this point can be demonstrated in the way that English privateers worked with and traded with Africans and Maroons in order to achieve their goals. The partnerships were not as successful as the English would have liked for many reasons, but, the English showed their true attitudes by their efforts to court and ally with the Africans who interacted with the Spanish. Although English and Atlantic European attitudes were less monolithic than in Mediterranean Europe, it seems clear that Africans were viewed more according to their social and religious practices and in line with their potential value as allies than in accordance with racial or ethnic strata.

The influence of the philosophies of Europeans and the goals of the ruling class of Europeans in both Atlantic and Mediterranean Europe prevented the more modern racism of the nineteenth century from taking root, and increased interaction in diplomatic and domestic affairs supported the view of Africans in Europe as ultimately similar to Europeans themselves as far as their humanity was concerned. Africans, did however, seem to be looked down upon in popular and ruling culture because of differences of culture and religion. Racism was certainly present in this age, but it is hard to defend the idea that modern racism is the same type of racism as that of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries in Europe.

Introduction

My name is David Reece. I'm a senior at ASU, in fact this Summer session and the next will be my last, God willing. I took HST 300 from Dr. Barnes and it was incredibly challenging and I have thanked God for it every moment of the last couple of days as I listen to lectures and read about the challenges of this course. My major weakness in 300 (and all my classes) was getting things done on time and my goal is to conquer that bad habit. Just in time to finish my degree in history. I do have hopes of furthering my education after ASU but in a less secular setting, perhaps at a seminary, or perhaps just studying on my own and with friends. I have always had a passion for history, philosophy, theology and scripture and hope to never stop growing in my understanding of them all. I have taken a couple of courses with Dr. Barnes, mostly focusing on African subjects and I look forward to combining what I've learned so far (which has been considerable) with what I've always focused on--European history. If I could give some advice to those of you who are meeting Dr. Barnes for the first time in what is probably one of his most challenging courses, communicate with him. Email early and email often. I took a 3 week Winter course with him (a veritable nightmare for a procrastinator like me) and made it out alive. In no small part because of his willingness to communicate. This course is 400 level and online so take responsibility for yourselves but if you need help ask quickly so you can move on. Good luck and I look forward to working with you all.