Tag Archives: British Empire

Fort Mose. Where Freed Black Africans Enlisted with the Spanish and Fought Against the British.

Posted on by

We wanted to do something to celebrate what would have been Ronnie James Dio’s 80th birthday, had he not died from stomach cancer in 2010. We decided to go on a road trip with Ronnie James Dio as our soundtrack. Our destination: Fort Mose, St Augustine, FL.

St Augustine is a fascinating place. It is the oldest still existing European city in the United States. Founded in 1565 by Spanish colonizers, St Augustine became the fortified town that served as a bulwark against the British colonies further north. Apart from a brief stint under the British between 1763 and 1783, Florida remained under Spanish rule until 1822 when the former Spanish provinces were formally made territories of the United States. Florida became the 27th state of the union in 1845.

The British and Spanish Empires clashed several times at St Augustine. To recruit soldiers and also as a jab to the British, the Spanish let it be known among the enslaved population of the Carolinas and Georgia that those who managed to escape to Florida and St Augustine would be granted their freedom provided that they swore loyalty to the king of Spain and converted to Catholicism.

The first enslaved Africans to successfully escape arrived in St Augustine in 1687. The group—eight men, two women, and one child—were the first of over a hundred people who made it through. In 1738, they were given their own town just north of St Augustine. It was named Gracia Real de Santa Teresa de Mose. The purpose of the town was to serve as a first defense against British attack from the north. This is why the place is better known as Fort Mose (MOH-see).

Reenactors of the Spanish militia of free Black Africans at Fort Mose.
Source: Fort Mose Historical Society.

Fort Mose developed into a thriving agricultural community where people started families and grew crops on their own farms. Though located outside of St Augustine, life at Fort Mose was deeply connected to the town and to the Native Americans in the area. And even though those who escaped from the British colonies were granted their freedom upon arrival in Florida, this is not to say that slavery did not exist in the Spanish colony. Parts of St Augustine’s and Fort Mose’s populations were enslaved, but under Spanish law, not British. At the same time, there was a population of free Black Africans in St Augustine who had never been enslaved, but who had enlisted with the Spanish in the Mediterranean.

There were two settlements at Fort Mose, today known as Fort Mose I and Fort Mose II. Fort Mose I was destroyed when the British tried to take St Augustine in 1740 and failed. The population of Ft Mose was moved into St Augustine where they remained until 1752 when they were ordered to return to Ft Mose and rebuild it. Ft Mose was abandoned in 1763 when the British temporarily took control of Florida. Knowing that the British would enslave all Black inhabitants of the area, the people of Ft Mose relocated to Cuba.

Today, Fort Mose is a designated Florida Historic Park with a museum and a boardwalk to where the fort used to be. Nothing is visible above ground but extensive archaeological excavations have revealed much about the everyday life there. The museum at the park is small but informative. There is a boardwalk that will take you to an outlook over the area of Fort Moses I and II.

Fort Mose II.
The second settlement at Fort Mose was built on the island straight ahead. During Fort Mose’s existence, the fort was surrounded by agricultural fields and pastures. Today, these are brackish marshes caused by rising sea levels and human interference with Florida’s natural ecosystems.
Photo: Erika Harlitz Kern

Fort Mose is an important part of North American colonial history that speaks of the role that Black Africans played in the early hybrid communities that developed as a result of European imperialism. History is not a monolith, and the more we learn about the complexities of the past, the richer we are for it.

Sources:

Florida State Parks, “History of Fort Mose.”

Fort Mose Historical Society, “The Fort Mose Story.”

Florida Museum, “Fort Mose. America’s Black Colonial Fortress of Freedom.”

Wikipedia, “Fort Mose Historic State Park.”

In the words of my friend, the Australian, I shall return.

_____________________________________________________

Did you enjoy this post? Please show your appreciation by supporting The Boomerang for more content of this kind.

Yes, I want to support The Boomerang with a one-time contribution.
Yes, I want to support The Boomerang with a monthly contribution.

Review of Priya Satia’s TIME’S MONSTER. HOW HISTORY MAKES HISTORY.

Posted on by

The more I learn about the human activities in the past we choose to label as history, the more interested I become in the epistemology and historiography of history as an academic field of study. Epistemology is the study of knowledge and how knowledge is created, or How We Know What We Know and Why This Is What We Think We Know. Historiography is a term that carries two meanings. It means the study of the history that has been published by historians and the history of history. I find both the epistemology and the historiography of history endlessly fascinating. How It’s Made: History Edition.

My fascination for how history is made is why I am happy to have been able to publish my second book review for the International Network for the Theory of History, an international community of scholars and web hosted by the University of Ghent in Belgium. This time I have reviewed TIME’S MONSTER. HOW HISTORY MAKES HISTORY (Belknap Press, 2020) by Priya Satia, Professor of History at Stanford University. In her book, Satia takes a closer look at how British historians were complicit in rationalizing and making legitimate the actions of the British Empire, particularly in India.

To read my review in full, please click here.

Enjoy!

In the words of my friend, the Australian, I shall return.

______________________________________________________

Did you enjoy this post? Please show your appreciation by supporting The Boomerang for more content of this kind.

Yes, I want to support The Boomerang with a one-time contribution.
Yes, I want to support The Boomerang with a monthly contribution.

Interview for Geek Dad/Geek Mom on Racism and Diversity in Speculative Fiction

Posted on by

hqdefault

St. Maurice

On April 11, 2017, I was interviewed by the blog Geek Dad/Geek Mom. We talked about racism and diversity in speculative fiction, about the state of the art in historical research, and how to locate trustworthy sources when you do your own historical research when writing speculative fiction.

And of course, I recommended some books. And referenced Stargate SG-1.

You can check out the interview here.

In the words of my friend, the Australian, I shall return.

There Is Fog in the Channel. My Thoughts on #Brexit

Posted on by

I am a firm believer in the European Union. That is why #Brexit is breaking my heart.

At the same time, as a citizen of the European Union member state Sweden I recognize the behavior and the thought process among those who voted for Great Britain to leave the EU. Because Sweden, too, has dipped its toe into the anti-EU referendum pond.

EY-502041

The foundation for the European Union was laid in 1957 with the signing of the Treaty of Rome between Belgium, France, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and West Germany. This treaty expanded on the coal and steel union from 1952 by creating a customs union. Since then, the original customs union has morphed and expanded into the behemoth that today has Brussels as its capital and includes most countries in what used to be Western and Eastern Europe.

Great Britain joined what was then called the EEC in 1973.

Sweden joined in 1995. By this time, the EEC had become the EU.

The era of the European Union has been the longest period of unbroken peace between Germany, France, and England. This is important because when these three countries go to war–which they have done repeatedly throughout the past millennium and a half, the last time being between 1939 and 1945–all of Europe suffers. The integration of these three countries with each other through the Four Freedoms of the European Common Market–the free movement of people, capital, services, and goods–has enabled a peaceful collaboration unheard of in history before the middle of the 20th century.

And even though Brexit might come as a shock, looking at history the undercurrent of an anti-EU movement has been there from the start. Only after much debate did Great Britain join the EEC in 1973, after having been a member of EFTA since its inception in 1960.

The first referendum on whether or not Great Britain should remain in the EEC was held already in 1975. 66% voted in favor of remaining.

However, Great Britain continued to run its own race within the EU.

Great Britain is not part of the Schengen Area, first signed into law in 1985 and since then expanded upon to create an area of free movement across national borders between EU members states.

Great Britain is not part of the European Monetary Union, i.e. Great Britain has opted to keep the pound (£) as its currency instead of switching to the common currency of the euro (€).

And this is where I, as a Swedish citizen, recognize some of the reasoning behind the Brexit vote.

In 2003, Sweden held a referendum whether or not the country should give up its currency, the krona (SEK), and switch to the euro. The result of the referendum was 52% against the euro and 42% in favor. The Swedish government at the time, led by Social Democratic Prime Minister Göran Persson, was in favor of switching currencies and of course considered the result of the referendum a major disappointment.

In the post-referendum political analysis it was however revealed that the Swedish euro referendum was not so much a vote for or against the euro but rather a vote for or against the general policies of the Swedish government.

In other words, the Swedish voting population used this referendum as an opportunity to express their discontent with their government.

Based on the initial post-referendum analysis of Brexit, it would seem that this kind of reasoning has played a part in the decision making of some of those who decided to vote in favor of Great Britain leaving the EU. The fact that regions of Great Britain that are the most dependent on EU financial aid voted against an EU membership points towards this conclusion.

Of course, the issue is not as clear cut as that. Blended with the domestic political situation of Great Britain of the past number of years and the skepticism towards the European Common market which has been present ever since 1973 is the idea of Great Britain as an island nation that goes its own way.

Great Britain was once the center of the largest empire the world has ever seen. When the British Empire was at its height it controlled 25% of the world’s landmass. London was, without exaggeration, the capital of the world. Since then the Empire has become the Commonwealth, consisting of now-independent nations some of which still have the British monarch as their head of state. The way I see it, the Commonwealth is an ingenious strategy to keep the thought of Empire alive without having to deal with the controversies caused by actual imperialism.

During World War II,  before the United States joined the war after Pearl Harbor and before Nazi-Germany invaded the Soviet Union, Great Britain was the only country that stood against Nazi-Germany’s complete domination of Europe. The heroics of the British general population during the Blitz is still talked of today, as are the energizing speeches delivered by Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and the sacrifices made by the RAF.

The result of the British referendum shows that older voters were more inclined to vote for Brexit while younger voters were more inclined to vote Bremain. This generation gap could be an expression of the changes that Europe and the global economy has gone through during the age of the EU, which also coincides with the age of decolonization and the dismantling of the British Empire.

There is an old saying that goes, “There is fog in the Channel. The Continent is isolated.” This worldview was perhaps a feasible way of looking at the world while India was still the jewel in the British crown.

Today, it is Great Britain that is isolated. And less than twenty-four hours after the referendum result was announced, the British population is already suffering the consequences.

In the words of my friend, the Australian, I shall return.

 

 

 

 

 

Thoughts on the Issue of the Author as Activist

Posted on by

American author William Faulkner famously said that fiction is a better conduit to conveying a truth than journalism. Faulkner’s adage has been confirmed time and time again through literary history where stories such as George Orwell’s Animal Farm and Virginia Woolf’s Orlando have told us more about political and sexual oppression than any journalistic piece ever could.

Because fiction is such a powerful way of revealing the truth, the author as activist is arguably the most dangerous person to an oppressive regime. Just look at José Rizal (1861–1896) whose novel Filibusterismo was crucial to the Filipino independence struggle against Spain. Or the importance of Vaslav Havel’s (1936–2011) work to the fall of Communism in what is today the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Or the very latest example, Svetlana Aleksievich’s hybrid style of fiction and journalism that made the Lukashenko regime of Belarus label her as a non-existing individual and which earned her the 2015 Nobel Prize for Literature.

Rizal, Havel, and Aleksievich have in common that they are authors writing as activists against an oppressive society within which they themselves live their lives. Their work resonates because the experience they share is their own. This is the reason, I believe, why Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Between the World and Me made such an impact when it was published last year. Coates writes from personal experience and the reader feels this in the prose. There is no other option but to take him seriously and listen to him because there is no denying that—like Rizal, Havel, and Aleksievich—the experience he shares with us is his own.

But what about when the author as activist adopts the cause of a group to which he or she does not belong? When the author as activist speaks on behalf of someone else’s experience?

An example of this type of activism is the authors’ protest letter and boycott of PEN America’s decision to award French satire magazine Charlie Hebdo the PEN/Toni and James C. Goodale Freedom of Expression Courage Award in 2015. The reason given for the protest and boycott was that Charlie Hebdo targets a “section of the French population that is already marginalized, embattled, and victimized.” This in referral to France’s Muslim population. In other words, according to the protesters, Charlie Hedbo‘s work is not reprehensible for its crude satire, but because it targets Muslims.

However, as I expressed several times on twitter while this controversy was going on, the authors that were involved in this protest made no mention of the fact that Charlie Hebdo‘s main target for their satirist cartoons is not Islam, but the Catholic Church. Neither did anyone seem to have a problem with the Charlie Hebdo cartoons that targeted Jews.

I cannot speak for any of the authors involved in the protest but novelist Jennifer Coden Epstein’s request to have her name removed from the letter and the reasons stated by her for this request show the perils of becoming an activist for a cause that is not your own. In what I would refer to as a courageous statement, Epstein admits that she was misinformed and wrong about Charlie Hebdo‘s work and her assessment of the cartoons. Salman Rushdie tweeted that he hoped that other signees would follow in Epstein’s footsteps. Unfortunately, that seems not to have happened.

Making sure that you are fully informed of all the aspects and nuances is only one important aspect when you decide to fight for a cause which is not yours. Another important aspect is to be aware of the historical background of that cause and to know how to interpret a historical process in comparison to other processes.

An example of how an author undermines him- or herself as an activist when not understanding how to analyze history has been made evident in a round-table conversation published by Electric Literature. The round-table discussion concerned the anthology Extraordinary Rendition: (American) Writers on Palestine where comparisons were made between the origins of the United States and Israel, making the argument that the two countries shared an origin as colonial settler states.

As far as the United States are concerned, there is an origin story of colonial settlement. From the first lasting settlement at Jamestown in 1607 until 1776 when the United Colonies declared independence from the British Empire, a colonial project of gigantic proportions, controlled and instigated by the British government, took place on the east coast of North America. Land was cleared for farming by European settlers, Native Americans were displaced, and Africans were brought in as slaves.

When it comes to Israel, until the end of World War I, the area that is now Israel and the PA was under the colonial rule of the Ottoman Empire. From the collapse of the Ottomans and until 1948, the region was under the colonial rule of the British Empire. During the decades leading up to 1948, this region saw an influx of Jewish immigrants. In 1947, the United Nations general assembly voted to partition the region between a Palestinian state and an Israeli state. On May 14, 1948 the British empire left the region for good and the UN resolution came into force.

When comparing origin stories, the only way for Israel to have a colonial settler origin such as the United States would be if the Jewish immigration prior to 1948 had been orchestrated by either the Ottomans or the British for their own gain. Or if a large immigration of one particular group to an area would constitute as colonization. If so, then consequently Europe is currently being colonized by Syrian refugees. Which, of course, it is not.

The author as activist is, arguably, one of the most important aspects of being an author. The author as activist has the opportunity and the ability to highlight and bring forward issues in a way that journalists and historians simply cannot. However, the fact that the author as activist is writing fiction does not give the author the liberty to disrespect facts or historical processes. When this happens, fiction no longer tells the truth better than journalism. Rather, it becomes the harbinger of untruths.

In the words of my friend, the Australian, I shall return.

Sources
Karen Ordahl Kupperman The Jamestown Project (Harvard University Press, 2007).
The Guardian, “Two Dozen Writers Join Charlie Hebdo PEN Protest.”
The Guardian, “Novelist Says She was Wrong to Oppose Charle Hebdo PEN Award.”
Electric Literature, “A Conversation about American Writers and Palestine.”
Britannica Online, search term “Israel.”