It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Thursday, January 20, 2022
‘‘That Abominable Nest of Pirates’’ St. Eustatius and the North Americans, 1680–1780
VICTOR ENTHOVEN Free University of Amsterdam
abstract The aim of this essay is to depict the long-standing trade relations between St. Eustatius and the thirteen British North American colonies between 1680 and 1780. For Americans, the otherwise virtually unknown Caribbean island of St. Eustatius is intimately linked to the history of the American Revolution. Indeed, the enduring relationship between them was instrumental to the growth of both sets of colonies and ultimately to the success of the American Revolution. Yet the connection that linked the tiny Dutch island with the mainland Anglo-American colonies was far deeper than is often realized in the existing historiography, which focuses predominantly on the Revolutionary years. St. Eustatius and the thirteen North American colonies were natural allies in the war against protectionism.
Smugglers before the Swedish throne: Political activity of free people of color in early nineteenth-century St Barthélemy
Ale Pålsson
Department of History, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden
ABSTRACT
The Swedish colony St Barthélemy, established in 1785 and under Swedish rule until 1878, was an attractive island for neutral transit trade and for a large number of free people of color, many of whom became naturalized Swedish subjects. As subjects under the Swedish crown, they sought political rights through petitions, stressing their place within the colonial system. Free people of color were also connected to the Greater Caribbean and the mobility of the free port allowed for inter-colonial networks. The Swedish Governor Johan Norderling compared the activity of free people of color in the Swedish colony with other colonies, as well as Haiti and the USA. For him, free people of color throughout the Caribbean were grouped as belonging to the same community. Thus, the examples of activity in other colonies exemplified the dangers of further political rights in the Swedish colony. He also used the Caribbean network to communicate with other French, Spanish, and Dutch governors about a revolutionary plot planned by free people of color. Yet despite being nodal points within network for planning subversive plots, St Barthélemy was not particularly radical space in terms of independence or antislavery, but rather a space facilitating subversive actions between empires
Plague was a harsh trial for early modern communities. Responding to he heavy toll of sickness and death presented tough ethical problems: Who must act? What risks must they accept? This paper examines the role and obligations of English medical practitioners during epidemics. It focuses on the key question of whether they should stay to treat the sick or could flee to safety. Historians have often condemned doctors who fled, assuming that this was equally unacceptable to contemporaries. However, such assumptions are mistaken. While magistrates and clergymen were expected to remain, medical practitioners had no special obligation to stay. Physicians’ lack of specific duties reflected their economic and social position as private practitioners, and the acknowledged limits of medicine itself. At times, however, some English medical practitioners did claim special responsibilities during plagues. But this was rare, and usually related to disputes over medical regulation in London. During and after the 1665 epidemic, in particular, plague became a theme in disputes between irregular practitioners, especially chemical physicians, and the London College of Physicians. Irregular practitioners had long sought to use plagues for self-promotion and legitimisation. Now, some attempted to overturn the College’s monopoly on medical practice on the same basis. To do so, they constructed an image of the epidemic as a medical emergency and a test of ability, courage and charity. To understand these claims, we need to set them against the political, economic and legal framework of medical regulation. Epidemics thus reveal the limits of early modern medical practitioners’ status, and the historical and political fluidity of medical ethics.
In Early Modern Europe court physicians exerted great influence in service to their royal patrons. These medical practitioners acted as learned conduits, whose knowledge of natural philosophy, which often included occult theories of healing, natural magic and astrology, was able to serve the broad interests of their patrons. Thus, in addition to being charged with maintaining the health of a ruler, physicians were often exploited by monarchs seeking to enhance the general health of their body politic. This case study of the German physician Andreas Engelhardt examines his decade-long ser- vice in Moscow between 1656 and 1666 at the court of Aleksei Mikhailovich. This study of Engelhardt's role at court at a time of increased Western influence in Muscovy aims to reveal how the tsar sought to utilize the learning of his German physician in a variety of* Robert Collis is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at The University of Sheffield(UK). His publications include the monograph The Petrine Instauration: Religion, Esotericism and Science at the Court of Peter the Great, 1689-1725 ways. Engelhardt not only administered Western medical remedies, including the use of unicorn horns, to the royal family, but was also instructed to ascertain whether various Russian and Siberian folk remedies possessed beneficent qualities. This process of legitimization and containment of medical knowledge coincided with an attempt to suppress the authority of folk healers, thereby reflecting the autocratic nature of Aleksei Mikhailovich's reign. Furthermore, this article demonstrates that the tsar drew on Engelhardt’s supposed expertise in astrology and divination in order to know how Muscovy would be affected by the appearance of a comet in the winter of 1664-1665.
Russia and the Medical Drug Trade in the Seventeenth Century
Clare Griffin*
Summary.
This article deals with the trade in medicines into Russia in the seventeenth century. Both the early modern medical drug trade, and Russian medicine, have previously received substantial attention, but no work has thus far been undertaken on the Russian angle of the drug trade. Drawing on previously unused documents, this article traces the kinds of drugs acquired by the Moscow court. In contrast to the dominant view of official Russian medicine as divorced from native healing practices and fundamentally reliant upon Western European trends, these documents re-veal that drugs were sourced as locally as Moscow markets, and from as far afield as East Asia and the Americas, but that not all drugs were accepted. As many of these imports came through Western European markets, this article also sheds further light on what drugs were available there, demonstrating the great diversity of drugs traded in early modern Europe.
Exotic Drugs and English Medicine: England’s Drug Trade, c 1550–c. 1800
Patrick Wallis*
Summary. What effect did the dramatic expansion in long distance trade in the early modern period have on healthcare in England?
This article presents new evidence on the scale, origins and content of English imports of medical drugs between 1567 and 1774. It shows that the volume of imported medical drugs exploded in the seventeenth century, and continued growing more gradually over the eighteenth century. The variety of imported drugs changed more slowly. Much was re-exported, but estimates of dosages suggest that some common drugs (for example, senna, Jesuits ’Bark) were available to the majority of the population in the eighteenth century. English demand for foreign drugs provides further evidence for a radical expansion in medical consumption in the seventeenth century. It also suggests that much of this new demand was met by purchasing drugs rather than buying services
Regrettably the TPNW has been rigorously opposed by the United States and other nuclear armed states, as well as those allied states under “nuclear umbrellas.” However, the five original nuclear-armed states, the U.S., Russia, the U.K., France and China are required “to pursue negotiations in good faith” to end the nuclear arms race “at an early date and to nuclear disarmament" under another treaty. That treaty, the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), entered into force in 1970. The States Parties to the NPT meet for month-long review conferences every five years. The 10th NPT Review Conference, originally scheduled for May 2020 and postponed several times due to Covid, was supposed to take place starting January 4 at the United Nations in New York, but it was postposed again due to the surging pandemic. Nonetheless, after months of planning and preparation, there’s been a burst of activity around the NPT.
On January 10, a comprehensive Joint Statement from Civil Society to the States Parties of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, was released by Reaching Critical Will on behalf of more than 90 organizations worldwide including United for Peace & Justice. The joint statement presents three key messages: Global support for the NPT is strong, but its long-term viability cannot be taken for granted; the grave state of global affairs and the rising risk of nuclear conflict and arms racing requires new and bolder leadership from responsible states; and those that resist change also say the “environment” is not right for further progress, but responsible actors everywhere are rising to the challenge. A video presentation is available here. More people are becoming aware that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was a strong proponent of nuclear disarmament. In 1963, he wrote: “I am convinced that the church cannot remain silent while mankind (sic) faces the threat of being plunged into the abyss of nuclear annihilation. If the church is true to its mission, it must call for an end to the arms race.” On January 11, 2022, Archbishop John Wester of Santa Fe, New Mexico released a new pastoral letter urging the local community and the world to join “a renewed commitment to the cause of peace” with the goal of eliminating all global nuclear weapons arsenals. Titled, “A Conversation Toward Nuclear Disarmament,” the 50-page document can be downloaded here.
Two months before his tragic assassination,Dr. King declared: “We have played havoc with the destiny of the world and we have brought the whole world closer to nuclear confrontation . . . I am still convinced that the struggle for peace and the struggle for civil rights as we call it in America happen to be tied together.” Some groups are linking the annual Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday (this year, Jan. 17) with celebrations of the one-year anniversary of entry-into-force of the TPNW on Jan. 22. Click here for Resources for MLK Holiday and Ban Treaty Anniversary, including a banner, quotes, and a sample letter to the editor.
The Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival, has picked up Dr. King’s unfinished work, weaving the interlocking injustices of systemic racism, systemic poverty, environmental devastation, militarism and the war economy and a distorted moral narrative of religious nationalism, into one “moral fusion” campaign. The Poor Peoples Campaign Jubilee Platform calls for cutting U.S. military spending by half including by closing 60% of U.S. foreign military bases, ending the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, and elsewhere, and dismantling and eliminating nuclear weapons.
It is increasingly clear that the multiple national and global crises we are confronting, including nuclear weapons, climate change, systemic racism, a growing wealth gap and rising national authoritarianisms arise from the same foundational causes, and that we are unlikely to prevail on any of them as single issues. We need to come together as never before to build political power through durable, diverse, multi-issue coalitions, networks, and networks of networks based on our shared commitments to universal, indivisible human security.
Forward together, not one step back! The UFPJ Coordinating Committee
FOLLOWING MLK QUOTE THIS IS APPROPRIATE
HISTORIES OF INDIAN RESIDENTIAL SCHOOLS IN AN ERA OF
TRUTH AND RECONCILIATION
With Crystal Gail Fraser, Ph.D.
University of Alberta
Sunday, January 30, 2022
3 pm EST
In May of 2021, the remains of 215 children were found in an unmarked mass grave next to the former residential school in Kamloops, British Columbia. In June, 751 human remains were uncovered next to the former Marieval residential school in Saskatchewan. Other sites have been investigated since these appalling discoveries.
The history of residential schools became widely known in the context of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC) (2007–2015). In its report, the TRC estimated that "of the approximately 150,000 children who attended residential schools, at least 3,200 never returned home. Since then, the figure has been revised significantly upwards; it is believed that at least 6,000 children died in the residential schools."
In this presentation, Dr. Crystal Gail Fraser will share the history of Indian Residential Schools, discuss the tragedy of the thousands of unmarked graves of Indigenous children who were institutionalized, and how we need to continue focusing on these hard truths during this era of reconciliation.
Dr. Crystal Gail Fraser is Gwichyà Gwich'in, an Assistant Professor at the University of Alberta, an intergenerational Indian Residential School Survivor. Her work is dedicated to better understanding colonial histories in northern Canada and the complexities of residential schooling histories through oral histories and working with survivors. Crystal co-authored 150 Acts of Reconciliation for the Last 150 Days of Canada's 150, which has been foundational to advancing reconciliation among Canadians.
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DID THE CANADIAN GOVERNMENT BUILD SCHOOLS TO MURDER CHILDREN? THE WRONGS DONE AT INDIAN RESIDENTIAL SCHOOLS SHOULD BE ACKNOWLEDGED, BUT WHAT WE’RE TOLD BY THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA SEEMS INTENDED LESS TO INFORM THAN TO PROMOTE A PARTICULAR IDEOLOGY. THE GOVERNMENT SEEMS HAPPY TO SUPPORT SLANTED REPRESENTATIONS OF REALITY TO ADVANCE PROGRESSIVE CAUSES.
I first learned of the Bryce Report in a doctoral dissertation about the Anglican Church’s involvement with Indian Residential Schools (Woods, 2012). The Report (Bryce, 1907) outlined tragic health conditions faced by indigenous students, and its publication resulted in the Anglican Church’s Canadian Synod recommending that the schools be closed. So when the Globe and Mail ran a commemorative story on Dr. Peter Bryce (Fraser et al., 2021), I eagerly anticipated more nuggets about this fine man’s career. I was left both disappointed and concerned.
With the collapse of the buffalo and the fur trade, the chiefs who were signatories of the treaties with Canada realized that a modern education was essential to survive in the new economy. The promise of education is included in every treaty they signed.
Bryce was a medical officer with the federal government who in 1907 reported that the 35 Indian Residential Schools he visited were often overcrowded, frequently lacked proper nutrition for students, and had substandard sanitation. He said that twenty-four percent of students who entered these residential schools died of tuberculosis before their 16th birthday – double the rate in their home communities.
This data is grim enough, but the article’s authors concluded in their first paragraph, “These effects of colonialism aren’t a dark chapter now being revealed, but rather the main plot in a narrative that defines Canada… The colonial attempts to assimilate were genocidal.” The word “genocide” refers to any attempt to eliminate a racial or ethnic group from the human gene pool, for example, by deliberately injecting people of a particular race with a lethal virus. In a later work, Bryce (1922) states that the sick aboriginal children were infected not in the schools themselves but in their home communities. Nonetheless, the authors of this memorial article accuse the federal government of criminally “turning a deaf ear” to Bryce’s report by not closing the schools. The phrase “deaf ear” implies the government of Wilfrid Laurier ignored it. In actual fact, in 1908 Frank Oliver, the Superintendent of Indian Affairs, tabled a proposal on behalf of the federal government to replace the residential schools with a system of day schools. With both the Anglican Synod and the federal government agreeing to close the Indian Residential Schools, what went wrong?
In defiance of their national synod, the Western Anglican Church joined with the Catholics, Presbyterians and Methodists lobbying to keep the residential schools open. This effort was crucially supported by such new organizations as “The Friends of the Indian and Half-Breed Population of Alberta” that included indigenous leaders. Bryce himself had not recommended the closure of these schools, just the opposite. He was concerned that school attendance in 1905-06 stood at only 52% of the school age population and he recommended that more Indian residential boarding schools be built.
He (Bryce, 1907) said that school attendance had been dropping since 1901 because : the distance between the schools and the reserves made travel between them difficult school staff were often poorly trained
pupils had little opportunity for practical success after graduation
the number of pupils at any given school was dependent on the abilities of principals to recruit students
Indian Agents frequently failed to support the schools, and
parents generally disliked having their children so far from home.
The authors of the Globe article offered another unsupported assertion with, “The Christian churches operated these schools for profit and their model supported the genocidal efforts of the federal government” (Fraser et al., 2021, para 6). In fact, no churches made a profit off these schools and some years the Anglican Synod spent half of its national revenue to subsidize them (Woods, 2012).
It is possible that the Globe and Mail authors were unaware of the 1907 attempt to close the schools, but one wonders why important points such as these contained in the Bryce Report were ignored by the scholars commemorating his legacy.
With the collapse of the buffalo and the fur trade, the chiefs who were signatories of the treaties with Canada realized that a modern education was essential to survive in the new economy. The promise of education is included in every treaty they signed. But residential schools were not the only solution. In 1910, after petitioning the federal government, Little Pine reserve in Saskatchewan got its own day school. Reverend Stan Cuthand later recalled, “Our parents had never had schools before, but they wanted us to learn English. When the school was built, there was so much cooperation between everyone that everyone on the reserve sent their kids there” (Donnelly, 1998, p. 7).
Schools on-reserve where children went home after each school day were not unique to Little Pine. According to the Bryce Report, during the1905-06 school year, 694 students attended 74 such day schools. By way of comparison, 1,739 attended 38 boarding schools; and, 693 students were in 8 industrial schools. The boarding and industrial schools are generally grouped together as “Indian Residential Schools” in today’s parlance, but historically the industrial schools were meant to pay for their operating costs through student labour while the boarding schools were dependent on a government per capita grant under a program that began in 1898. Bryce recommended the use of boarding schools because they were closer to reserves than industrial schools and the principals were generally more closely in touch with the parents. Day schools, he opined, generally offered lower quality education.
The authors of the Globe article offered another unsupported assertion with, “The Christian churches operated these schools for profit and their model supported the genocidal efforts of the federal government” (Fraser et al., 2021, para 6). In fact, no churches made a profit off these schools and some years the Anglican Synod spent half of its national revenue to subsidize them (Woods, 2012). In the initial deal brokered with the federal government, the churches would pay the operating costs of schools if the government paid the capital costs. The churches planned to pay for these costs through industrial activity such as farming, ranching, fishing or logging, with the students learning skills they could later use after graduation. When it became clear that these “industrial schools” would never become financially self-sufficient, the government began paying the per capita grant. The boarding schools were dependent on this grant and church donations, with the resulting financial incentive to accept any student, no matter how diseased. As I stated in my article on Residential School Syndrome (Robertson, 2006), the motivation of the churches was not financial but religious – they were in the business of saving souls.
The debates about the merits of different types of schools continued into the modern era. For example, despite having a new day school in their community by the 1970s, half the parents in Stanley Mission continued to send their children to the Indian Residential School in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, some 240 kilometres distant. In the 1980s, I co-authored a paper (Robertson and Redman, 1988) to transfer the educational function of the Qu’Appelle Indian Residential School to a board made up of chiefs and councillors. Indian Residential Schools had been closed in most of the rest of Canada by 1969, but in Saskatchewan the schools remained open at the request of indigenous people, with boards consisting of chiefs and counsellors responsible for the physical plant and the Department of Indian Affairs responsible for instruction. In preparation for our report, we asked the chiefs why they wanted to keep these schools open. They told us that the quality of education was higher than was generally found in band day schools because the concentration of larger numbers of students allowed for better programming, including sports. In addition, they said, the residential schools were a place to send children from dysfunctional families.
During my forty years as a practicing psychologist, I have heard from clients who viewed their own residential schools as safe havens from their families. This child welfare function was underscored when I gave psycho-educational assessments to forty children at the Prince Albert Indian Residential School in 1999. It had officially closed as a residential school three years earlier, but was still open as a child welfare institution with the same staff and program.
During my forty years as a practicing psychologist, I have heard from clients who viewed their own residential schools as safe havens from their families.
We all abhor the conditions in which many aboriginal children were malnourished, beaten and sexually molested in residential schools, but conditions in these schools varied with time and place. For example, although tuberculosis was epidemic during Peter Bryce’s time, he found three schools where no children had died. He said the principals in these schools used modern methods including proper ventilation to combat the disease. That fact, neglected in the Globe and Mail article, is more damning of the government of the day than the generalization given because it shows the government could have done more. But was this genocide?
A problem with reducing history to a single political narrative and making the facts fit that narrative is that we then lose the lessons that history can teach. I knew Rev. Cuthand personally both as a child when visiting his reserve and as an adult at the Saskatchewan Indian Federated College. He reversed the usual stereotype by pushing education first and religion second. The education he commended included the technologies of mind that flowed from the European Enlightenment. It is those technologies of mind that drove the scientific, commercial and industrial revolutions, and he wanted aboriginal people to be part of that. Bryce agreed. By the time he wrote The Story of a National Disgrace (Bryce, 1922), the Indian Act had been amended making school attendance for children age 7 to 17 compulsory, but the federal government still had not forced the schools to implement the medical practices necessary to successfully combat tuberculosis.
Bryce’s recommendations in his new tract were that: more Indian Residential Schools be built of the boarding school variety the government take control of the administration of these schools the school curricula used should be that of the provinces, and the health of students should be guarded by proper medical inspections.
He was accusing the government of negligence, not genocide.
Both Bryce and Cuthand were arguing that aboriginal children should receive an education that was based on science and reason. In The Medicine Wheel Revisited (Robertson, 2021a), I suggest that while Enlightenment technologies transcend culture, they are tied to Europe through a process of historical descent. Each culture can better appropriate technologies by linking them to their own cultural antecedents. The Indian Residential Schools were not equipped to accomplish this, but cultures aboriginal to North America have the capacity to make such appropriations today. Leaving out facts that are inconvenient to a political narrative will not help us achieve this goal.
A problem with reducing history to a single political narrative and making the facts fit that narrative is that we then lose the lessons that history can teach.
While it is possible that Fraser, Logan and Oxford were ignorant of the history of indigenous schooling leading up to the Bryce report, they have no excuse for distorting the words that are actually in the report. Their stated purpose as outlined in the first paragraph of their article was to outline “the main plot in a narrative that defines Canada….” The main plot of Wokism, a political ideology that combines aspects of social justice, postmodernism, Marxism, and Fascism, without being true to any (Coughlin and Higgins, 2019; Pluckrose and Lindsay, 2020; Robertson, 2021b) is to undermine Western civilization and the Enlightenment concepts of science, reason, and humanism upon which that civilization is based. This is not what educational pioneers like Bryce and Cuthand fought for.
It was disappointing that the Globe and Mail chose to deny their readers the broader view by refusing to run an earlier version of this rebuttal. Even more disturbing is the federal government’s involvement in the construction of this Woke-friendly narrative. Two of the authors of the originating article (Fraser and Oxford) list their professional affiliation as “Defining Moments Canada,” a new federally funded organization whose website declares their purpose is to “model innovative commemorative digital methods to engage young Canadians with their history.” From this article it would appear this engagement is skewed in a political direction.
Bryce, P. H. (1907) Report on the Indian Residential Schools of Manitoba and the North West Territories. Ottawa Bryce, P. H. (1922) The Story of a National Disgrace. James Hope & Sons. Coughlin, S. and R. Higgins, R. (2019) Re-remembering the Mis-Remembered Left: The Left’s strategy and tactics to transform America. Unconstrained Analytics. Donnelly, P. (1998) Scapegoating the Indian residential schools. Alberta Report, 25(6), 6-12. Fraser, C., T. Logan, and N. Orford (2021, July 17). A doctor’s century-old warning on residential schools can help find justice for Canada’s crimes. Globe and Mail. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-a-doctors-century-old-warning-on-residential-schools-can-help-find/ Pluckrose, H. and J. Lindsay (2020) Cynical Theories: How activist scholarship made everything about race, gender, and identity and why this harms everybody. Pitchstone Publishing. Robertson, L.H. (2006) The residential school experience: Syndrome or historic trauma. Pimatisiwin: A Journal of Aboriginal and Indigenous Community Health, 4(1), 1-28. Robertson, L.H. (2021a) The Medicine Wheel Revisited: Reflections on indigenization in counseling and education. SAGE Open, 11(2), 1-11. https://doi.org/10.1177/21582440211015202 Robertson, L.H. (2021b) Year of the Virus: Understanding the contagion effects of Wokism. In-sight, 26(B). Retrieved March 1, from https://in-sightjournal.com/2021/02/22/wokism/ Robertson, L. H., & Redman, P. (1988). A Comprehensive Review of Educational Programs and Support Services of the Qu’Appelle Indian Residential School. Regina, SK: Qu’Appelle Indian Residential School Woods, E.T. (2012) The Anglican Church of Canada and the Indian Residential Schools: A Meaning-Centred Analysis of the Long Road to Apology. London School of Economics and Political Science, London.
AUTHOR: LLOYD HAWKEYE ROBERTSON Dr. Lloyd Hawkeye Robertson is President of the New Enlightenment Project: A Canadian Humanist Initiative. During his career he has been Director of Life Skills for the Saskatchewan Indian Federated College; Director of Health and Social Development for the Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations; Director of Mental Health for Northern Saskatchewan; Coordinator of Training and Program Development for Child and Family Services, Lac La Ronge Indian Band; and president of the Kikinahk Indian and Metis Friendship Centre. His book, The Evolved Self: Mapping an understanding of who we are, was published by the University of Ottawa Press.
Regrettably the TPNW has been rigorously opposed by the United States and other nuclear armed states, as well as those allied states under “nuclear umbrellas.” However, the five original nuclear-armed states, the U.S., Russia, the U.K., France and China are required “to pursue negotiations in good faith” to end the nuclear arms race “at an early date and to nuclear disarmament" under another treaty. That treaty, the 
On January 4, Peace & Planet went ahead with its 
More people are becoming aware that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was a strong proponent of nuclear disarmament. In 1963, 
