Catchup Questions (Class #2.5)

Good class today... I know we were all pretty tired at the end, but I think we accomplished a good amount. I apologize for not making the time to answer your questions, and making my questions the priority instead. This is not my "city on a hill" ideal for teaching, as described in the Syllabus Covenant. Just because it's something I did do, doesn't mean it's something I would do! I will answer them below.

Oh, and here is the proper YouTube link for Pocohontas.

• Crystal wants to know why there was so much linguistic diversity among American Indian (aboriginal) tribes.  I believe the answer lies in the political and geographical decentralization of these tribes. As I discussed, in Central America (e.g. Aztec Empire in today's central Mexico, Maya Empire in today's southern Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, etc.) and in South America (e.g. Inca Empire in today's Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador), there were aboriginal empires that had written languages, complex trading networks, complex agriculture, etc. But the North American tribes encountered by the French and British (like the island tribes first encountered by the Spanish) tended to be organized into smaller political and linguistic units. This leads me to a further observation, though. It is a mistake to think that there was only one Spanish people or language. Actually, it was Ferdinand and Isabella who conquered the other "tribes" of Spain and imposed their language (Castilian) and their rule right around the same time that they started their American empire. People still speak those other versions of Spanish today, and there are even still independence movements. Nor was there only one English people or language; right around the same time that they started their American empire, the English were trying to consolidate their imperial language and their imperial rule ("Britain") over the Scottish, Irish, Welsh, etc. Meaning that the empire in the Americas was actually one way that those "tribes" were able to consolidate power in their local area. So another "lie" of ideology is that American aboriginal people are "tribal" whereas European people are "unified."
• Lucille wants to know how imperial encounters altered European languages. I'm not entirely sure the answer to this question. My sense is that the European languages that entered the Americas stayed distinct from one another because the Europeans generally arranged (or fought) to have separate territories. The best counter-example is the city of New Orleans, which was populated for hundreds of years by various French, Spanish, British, free African, and free American peoples. The British considered this to be the city of "sin" or unforgivable linguistic and ethnic mixing. They still celebrate the Catholic holidays there today, like Mardi Gras. Recall that the Spanish tended to permit "mixing" with American aboriginals, whereas contrary to the "Black Legend" the British policies were more about imposing ethnic borders, even at the cost of genocide. You can see then that the Spanish language was more open to the entrance of aboriginal languages, which we can see in today's Mexican, Guatemalan, Nicaraguan, etc. versions of Spanish, which are very different from standard or "Castilian" Spanish. (Although not in Peru, which was the central imperial capital because of the gold. Their Spanish there is very "pure." And in Argentina & Chile, their Spanish is very "changed," but they seem to have killed all the aboriginals at some point.) Even so we can see the entrance of many aboriginal terms into British-American language, in particular the names of places, rivers, etc. You will see a funny version of this take place in Cooke's "Sotweed Factor," where he has an awkward time incorporating the aboriginal word "canoe" into English.
• Esther wants to know what the origins of "Eurocentrism" or European supremacist attitudes are. My answers in class today were "graphocentrism" or the supposition that written language is superior to spoken language, and what we may call "agrocentrism," the supposition that large-scale agriculture involving import/export and private land ownership is superior to hunting, fishing, gathering, or small-scale agriculture. It might also be argued that the greed for physical resources comes "before" the ideology, and the ideology only comes "after" in order to justify it. This is the core of the Black Legend; the British are accusing the Spanish of using their religion as a pretext for conquest, and claiming that they behave otherwise. All the same, I don't think we should consider this attitude uniquely European; it may be possible to look at another empire, for instance, and speak of a "Chinocentrism" that contains many of the same attitudes about writing, agriculture, and skin color, among other things, either as "pre-justifications" or "post-justifications" of empire.
• Caleigh wants to know about womens' roles in the British empire. This is difficult. On the one hand, the "volatility" of imperial adventure leads to stricter gender separation because in circumstances that are physically difficult, the physical difference in strength, etc. between male and female becomes more important. I believe, in practice, that more of the settlers were men, and you can see the ideological side of this when you look at the Pocohontas legend where the European is "male" and the aboriginal is "female." On the other hand, if bare survival is less of an issue, it could be said that the volatility of imperial adventure leads to more open gender roles. Why? Because it takes luxury or real economic security to create the kind of leisure roles that high-status women had in agricultural aristocracies or industrial bourgeois societies. Women who came to the Americas were likely to be the daughters and spouses of relatively poor men, or relatively low status men, and so the womens' economic activity was necessary for prosperity if not bare survival. It is only later when the British colonies become more economically secure that we may see a counter-movement... for instance in the 1770s during the U.S. revolution women were typically seen as economic participants in the society (though not citizens or political participants) whereas by the 1850s they were seen only as "symbols" or "teachers" of American ideals to their children. The strictest answer to your question is that the British law of "coverture" was extended to the Americas and later adapted into U.S. law. Unmarried women could not hold property (it was their father's), married women could not hold property (it was their husband's), but widowed women could (therefore they were seen as a sort of economic and sexual threat), and there was pretty much no possibility of divorce. One of the curious things about the Puritans is that, even though the quasi-democratic Puritan political leadership was all male, and even though they were low-status in Europe mainly for religious reasons (they had some degree of wealth and education), the Puritans did include women in their desire for universal education, which was not usual for the British. (The threat of this female power can be seen in the "Salem Witch trials.")
• Viola wants to know how Puritan writers like Bradford and Winthrop influenced later American people/writers. I think I covered that fairly well today.  "American exceptionalism" means that America is the exception to other countries/empires, a sort of paradise on earth. It also means that any act that it undertakes which does not equal its stated ideals is an "exception." And it means that the British-American colony, or the United States nation, is the "city of man," but America as the underlying ideological concept is a city of God that has no beginning and end, no restricted historical existence.
• Sydney wants a clarification of the Norton editor's point about what audience Puritan religious writing addresses itself to, and how it addressed itself. I tried to discuss the curious double approach in Puritan writing (and in Puritan religious thought) between an address to the "heart" and an address to the "mind." But I think what the editor meant was that the Puritans basically divided the world into five sociological categories. First is aboriginals; they don't seem particularly interested in converting them to their religion as the Spanish and the non-Puritan British like Smith did. Second is Europeans who live in Europe; they live in the "corrupted" city of man and are doomed. Third is the "strangers" who came with them to New England but reject their religion, like Morton. They are also doomed. Fourth is the Puritans themselves, or let's say the "ideal" version of the Puritans... the people that they want to be. They called themselves "saints," pure and holy people, though to be fair they were constantly worried that they weren't living up to their ideals. But the fifth category is the audience of Puritan religious writing and speech. And this is the people who could be "saved"... either people attracted to Puritan religious ideas who haven't fully committed themselves, or Puritans who are "backsliding" and failing to uphold their ideal. The reason this is important is because even as the original Puritan ideas fade, we see the "address to the backsliders" occur again and again in American writing and speech. Both Edwards and Franklin are writing in this form, I think.  Both Bush and Obama clearly use this form.
• Tracy wants to compare Smith to Columbus. This is an open question, and one I would encourage you to pursue in the reply comments to this post. Certainly they both suffered many "volatile" ups and downs in their fortunes as a result of their imperial adventures. Certainly we can see the same mix of calculation and legitimate wonder or imagination in their writing. The main difference I pointed out today was that in Columbus' empire he reports directly to the monarch as sovereign, whereas Smith, like the Puritans, is bound by a sovereign legal document or charter that was created by a mixed monarchal/parliamentary government. The British system deliberately encourages the imperial agent to be rather independent or entrepreneurial, although we can see from reading the misfortunes of Columbus or Cabeza da Vaca that the "weak" grasp of Spanish authority in the Americas means that there are many entrepreneurial opportunities.
• If I am understanding her correctly, Clara wants to know why Winthrop references the "Book of Micah" on pg. 86 instead of the Jewish/Christian Bible. Finally, an easy one! The Book of Micah is in the Bible. When I was a small child my family lived in New York and next door there was a boy the same age as I. His name was Micah. My name, Aaron, is also from the Jewish portion of the Bible. The context is interesting... Aaron is a sort of interpreter or translator. His brother Moses is the prophet, the man with the direct "telephone" to God who sees the full truth. But these kind of people, you know they have a hard time putting their ideas into ordinary language... so Aaron helps him. The problem comes when Moses departs for some time and Aaron is left to teach the people... they become unjust because they are now only receiving the word of God indirectly. Then Moses returns and lectures them angrily. My personal interpretation, as suits my name, is that there is no telephone to God and that all of us must struggle with the "partial view" of truth that we get through our mind and our language. I guess that's why I'm Aaron!