Out of the mouths of babes

I have been writing a book for what seems like forever, to the point of embarrassment.  I’ve been working on it so long, half the time I don’t remember why I’m writing it or what I’m trying to say.  Like a graduate student that hopes to avoid queries about the progress of one’s dissertation, I dread the well meaning questions: “so how’s the book coming along?” “Are you getting any writing done?”  “So what is your book about anyway?”  I expect this from family, from friends, from colleagues.  Sometimes it comes out of the blue.  At my grandmother’s 100th birthday party in 2007, a friend of her named Connie, a spry, talkative, and mildly irritating 90-something, pounced on me and asked “so when is your next book coming out?”  Huh?  It turned out that she had read the copy of my first book that I had given to my grandmother.  Go figure.  Moreover, she came up with a very precise summary of the book’s main arguments that was surprising in a non-academic.

I began thinking about this book in 1997 and researching it in earnest in 2000.  A few extenuating circumstances – children born in 1998 and 2002, several years of related sleep deprivation, a five year stint as associate chair of my department – have legitimately slowed my progress.  But now it’s time to get the damn thing done.  A sabbatical last semester provided a much-needed jump start and I have two substantial (read overly long) chapters completed.  Since then, I try to write a little bit every day; often I get up early to make this happen.

The book, by the way, is about attempts to settle an indigenous frontier in Brazil from the years 1760-1910. It examines the extent to which Indians were able to dictate outcomes in a context of limited effective state presence.  It deals with how disparate cultures interact with one another.  There’s violence and slavery and disease and exploitation, illicit sex, lascivious dances, entrepreneurship, religious and cultural intolerance, environmental degradation, and a fairly predictable unhappy ending.  In the most abstract sense, it deals with how human beings deal with difference and create boundaries to make sense of their world.

So this morning, I was completing  a section about an Indian soldier named Inocencio who served as an interpreter and mediator for a Portuguese man named Bento Lourenço who was a prospector, explorer and road builder.  Inocencio traveled to Rio de Janeiro and requested and sought audiences with the Brazilian emperor, not once, but at least three times during the 1820s.  This involved walking several hundred miles in each direction.  The local authorities didn’t approve of this fellow wandering off to Rio without formal papers, often attracting native followers to join him in Pied Piper fashion.  They issued arrest warrants.  The Emperor, however, was impressed, and gave the shrewd Inocencio a title as Captain of the Indians, special privileges, freedom of movement and lots of presents, some useful, others symbolic.  My favorite was the portrait of the emperor in a gilded frame – which Inocencio valued enough to lug along a few hundred miles before he was arrested.  Within the space of a year, he went to Rio, illegally sold booty gained from the Emperor, was arrested, reassigned to a new frontier post, escaped, went back to Rio, was arrested again, and sent back to his new post.

As I was finishing, my husband wandered out and asked me what I was doing.  I proceeded to summarize this tale, in a shamelessly long-winded and circuitous fashion, replete with excessive detail.  While holding forth, my 6 year old daughter emerged from her room and sat in my lap and listened.  She then spontaneously made up the following dialogue which summed up the main points quite nicely:

“Oh no, I’m in jail again!  Poopy!”

“Hurrah!  I’m out of jail!  Let’s go to Rio!” (upon repetition, she added “with our Indian friends!”)

“Let’s sell stuff!”

I think she should write the damn book.

Ideology and Imperialism

Yesterday we began a very interesting discussion towards the end of class about the origins and nature of U.S. Imperialism. The debate addresssed intentionality – were policy statements and ideological constructs (like the Monroe Doctrine and Manifest Destiny respectively), mere window dressing to justify more sinister political and economic aims? Or did they represent sincere and well intentioned beliefs that went awry in practice? Or a combination of the two? Other questions had to do with distinctions among Imperialism, neo-imperialism, economic imperialism, etc.

It would be presumptuous of me to attempt a definitive definition of Imperialism. Additionally it would consume more time than I have available today. But I invite all of you to continue this discussion by posting comments.

Clayton-Bulwer treaty revisited

The Clayton-Bulwer Treaty was signed on April 19, 1850 by U.S. Secretary of State John M. Clayton, and British diplomat, Sir Henry Bulwer. By 1850, the British had already established significant territorial claims in Belize, the Mosquito Coast and the Bay Islands. However, the treaty sidestepped territorial issues and focused on policy regarding a proposed inter-oceanic canal. Both nations had researched the possibility but neither wanted to assume the costs of the project at that time. Essential passages of the treaty stated that neither power, “will ever obtain or maintain for itself any exclusive control over the said ship canal … that neither will ever erect or maintain any fortifications commanding the same … or occupy, or fortify, or colonize or assume, or exercise any dominion over Nicaragua, Costa Rica, the Mosquito coast, or any part of Central America.” Essentially a canal would be pursued jointly by both nations or not at all. Complete text of the “Convention Between the United States of America and Her Britannic Majesty, April 19, 1850,” can be found at http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/history/johnson/cb.htm

However, the status of pre-existing British claims in Nicaragua and Honduras that might enable Great Britain to assert control over a future canal remained unresolved. The US argued that the convention should be applied retoactively; the British clearly disagreed when they named the Bay Islands a British colony in 1852. A compromise was reached in 1859-60 when Great Britain ceded claims on the Bay Islands and Mosquito coast and was awarded greater latitude with respect to Belize.

The treaty (with respect to its canal policy) came to be seen in the US as a betrayal of the Monroe doctrine and by 1880, US presidents began seeking ways to overturn it. The Hay-Pauncefote Treaty (signed in 1901, ratified in 1902) replaced the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty, and provided the means for the US to build a canal independently. This concession on the part of Great Britain reflects the changing international status of the US following the Spanish American War and growing concerns with the balance of power in Europe, particularly with respect to Germany.

Q: Julio asks, “what is the origin of the term gaucho?”

A: According to www.paginadogaucho.com, a Brazilian site, the word comes from Guarani – guahu, “the howl of a dog” with the pronoun, che, “ my,” resulting in “people who sing sadly.” I think this translates to melancholy, a supposedly gaucho characteristic. Another theory links it to the Guarani mispronunciation of garrocha, a kind of scythe. Some have argued that it is a corruption of the French word “gauche,” (farfetched to my mind). Wikipedia attributes the etymology of gaucho to the Quechua huachu (orphan, vagabond) or the Arabic chaucho (a type of whip used in herding animals). An online dictionary claims it derives from Araucanian (a Southern Cone indigenous language) cauchu “wanderer.” (www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=gaucho)

If you are completely confused by this point, you are not alone. The ever-helpful pagina do gaucho informs us that in 1925, an Argentine journal sponsored a roundtable to clarify the term’s definition. Thirty intellectuals debated the matter and failed to arrive at a consensus. The term with its present meaning first appeared in Spanish texts and dictionaries in the 1780s, signifying a wandering cattleman (presumed a rustler or thief) of the pampas.

I love the Internet. Thanks to Google I did not have to go to the library to check out Richard Slatta’s Gauchos and the Vanishing Frontier (U. of Nebraska, 1983). However, if you would like more information, it’s a decent social history of Buenos Aires.

As an aside, if you google “gaucho” and “etymology” you will come up with a link that takes you to a very intriguing short story by Jorge Luis Borges entitled “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius,” that might change how you think about history. It may be found at aegis.ateneo.net/fted/tlontext.htm

Q: How did Spain get away with expelling the Jesuits in 1767?

A: This question was posed by David after class. So here goes (with the caveat that religious history is not one of my main areas of specialization). Three issues come to mind – the first is the right of royal patronage, or Patronato Real. This was a privilege that both the Crowns of Spain and Portugal had secured from the Papacy prior to the era of expansion into the Americas. Simply put, it enabled the Spanish and Portuguese states to wield power over the church in their dominions. They enjoyed the right to appoint and dismiss secular clergy at all levels, maintained control over the Inquisition, and could selectively enforce or suppress Papal decrees within their respective empires.

The second was the increasingly secular political climate in Europe in the mid 18th century. Prior to the Spanish expulsion, Jesuits had already been ousted by France, Portugal and parts of present-day Italy. Pope Clement XIV, in an effort to improve relations between the Papacy and secularizing political leaders, ceded to pressure and suppressed the order throughout Europe in 1773 (except in Russia where Catherine the Great refused to abide by the decree). So the Papacy was hardly putting up a fight. The Jesuits were eventually restored in 1814 and today constitute the largest of the remaining monastic orders.

The third has to do with imperialist dynamics in Latin America that I alluded to in class – the Jesuits were economically very successful, as missionaries they wielded a great deal of influence over their indigenous converts, in many regions they dominated in higher education, and as confessors, they had the ear of well placed bureaucratic authorities. This was considered problematic by states wishing to centralize their power and become more economically efficient. Expelling the order achieved many objectives – the economic windfall realized by exproporiating their estates and enterprises, increased access to indigenous labor, and the elimination of potential political rivals. Rather sordid, really.