16271. (George Wood­cock) Gabriel Dumont
16272. (Shashi Tha­roor) The Ele­phant, the Tiger, and the Cell Phone ― Reflec­tions on India, 
. . . . . the Emerg­ing 21^st-Cen­tu­ry Power
16273. (Richard van Emden) Boy Sol­diers of the Great War Read more »

One of the more annoy­ing bits of non­sense that crops up is the notion that there are forms of chat­tel slav­ery which are some­how benign. It is often claimed that “tra­di­tional” slav­ery in the Islam­ic world was some­how less of an abom­i­na­tion than the slav­ery in the Amer­i­can South or the Caribbean. Clas­si­cal his­to­ri­ans often pro­mote a sim­i­lar Gone With the Wind-ish inter­pre­ta­tion of slav­ery in ancient Rome, always con­cen­trat­ing on the less numer­ous domes­tic ser­vants while ignor­ing the mil­lions who were worked to death in the mines, on plan­ta­tions, or by the urban syn­di­cates that owned the water-carriers. 

Those who are inclined to accept this con­stant­ly resur­fac­ing fan­tasy are encour­aged to read this book. It’s an account of the life of Thomas Pellew, a Cor­nish child cap­tured by slave-raiders in 1716. He became a slave of the Moro­can sul­tan Moulay Ismail (whose descen­dant still rules Moroc­co today. In the 17th and 18th cen­turies, slave traders from the Moroc­can port of Salé ter­ror­ized the Cor­nish coast, often raid­ing vil­lages and seiz­ing hun­dreds of men, women and chil­dren to sell in the lucra­tive slave mar­kets of North Africa. It is esti­mated the rough­ly a mil­lion Euro­peans, Amer­i­cans and New­found­lan­ders were cap­tured in this way, dur­ing that peri­od. British mon­archs dealt with these assaults with a com­bi­na­tion of blus­ter, mis­di­rec­tion, dou­ble-deal­ing, self-inter­est­ed hypocrisy, fake sabre-rat­tling, bribery, alliances with their own ene­mies, and over­whelm­ing cow­ardice that was vir­tu­ally iden­ti­cal to the Bush administration’s response to 9/11. Them­selves active in a colos­sal slave trade, Euro­pean Chris­t­ian aris­to­crats and wealthy “entre­pre­neurs” were hap­py to col­lude with their Mus­lim counterparts.

In Thomas Pellew, who spent a great part of his life as a slave in a par­tic­u­larly good posi­tion to form an over­all eval­u­ation of slav­ery in North Africa, and who escaped to tell the tale, we have plen­ty of tes­ti­mony to the bru­tal­ity of slav­ery in North Africa. Even Pellew, who sur­vived as a “priv­i­leged” per­sonal slave, suf­fered unspeak­able tor­tures, begin­ning at the age of eleven. The bulk of the cap­tives were abused, tor­tured, and quick­ly worked to death in mas­sive con­struc­tion projects, or laboured in chains in the fields. There was no “benign” slav­ery, because there has nev­er been any form of slav­ery that was benign, any­where. Slav­ery is slav­ery, always filthy, evil and dis­gust­ing, at any time, in any place, in any culture.

Giles Milton’s book, tak­en large­ly from Pellew’s account, but well cor­rob­o­rated and researched, is well-written.

Gabriel Dumon­t’s role in the North­west Rebel­lion of 1885 is well known to Métis Cana­di­ans, and many peo­ple in our three prairie provinces, but oth­er­wise he is over­shad­owed by the more roman­tic fig­ure of Louis Riel. Riel, after all, had reli­gious visions, under­went mar­tyr­dom, and left a writ­ten lega­cy. His insta­bil­i­ty is the stuff that attracts atten­tion, and he’s the one that’s been treat­ed in nov­els, plays, movies, songs, and even an opera. But in many ways, Dumont is a more inter­est­ing man, and deserves more respect than the dubi­ous­ly sane Riel. George Wood­cock, in this short biog­ra­phy, empha­sizes how much Dumont exem­pli­fied the most admirable aspects of Métis soci­ety. Read more »

(Pierre Clas­tres) Recherch­es d’anthropologie politique:
. . . . 16178. (Pierre Clas­tres) Le dernier cer­cle [arti­cle]
. . . . 16179. (Pierre Clas­tres) Une ethno­gra­phie sauvage: A pro­pos de Yanoa­ma [arti­cle] Read more »

Some mod­ern Ket men.

Back in the mid-1980’s, I became very inter­ested in the native cul­tures of Siberia, part­ly because they have many sim­i­lar­i­ties with the native cul­tures of north­ern Cana­da. I went so far as to cor­re­spond with sev­eral peo­ple in Siberia, some­thing which was just then begin­ning to be pos­si­ble. This was nec­es­sary, because there was then very lit­tle infor­ma­tion avail­able in Eng­lish or French about this region, most of which had been sealed off by the Com­mu­nist regime for most of the cen­tury. Some very nasty things hap­pened there, not the least of which was the whole­sale sup­pres­sion and destruc­tion of native cul­tures. I dug up the small num­ber of rel­e­vant books and arti­cles that I could, but there wasn’t much to be found. Read more »

I’ve been read­ing every­thing I can find on this sub­ject for months, now, and this is by far the best book I’ve seen. It is mod­i­fy­ing some of my views, and re-enforc­ing oth­ers. It will take me some time to absorb and reflect on the mate­r­ial, here, so I will not leap to a con­clu­sive judg­ment until it has been well-mulled. What­ever your views on the sub­ject of the neolith­ic tran­si­tion to agri­cul­ture, this book is essen­tial read­ing. It brings togeth­er the main blocks of evi­dence (from archae­l­og­y, lin­guis­tics, genet­ics, pale­o­cli­ma­tol­ogy, skele­tal anthro­pol­ogy, plant and ani­mal biol­ogy) in a bal­anced and sys­tem­atic way. In most cas­es, Bell­wood lets the evi­dence speak for itself, and draws con­clu­sions only when they seem com­pelled by the facts. I think he is miss­ing a major the­o­ret­i­cal ele­ment, if my hunch­es remain con­sis­tent with the evi­dence as it stands. But I think this will require more sat­u­ra­tion in the exist­ing lit­er­a­ture, before I start mouthing off. I’m an ama­teur and an out­sider. This can be an advan­tage, in cer­tain cir­cum­stances, as the his­tory of sci­ence has shown, but it is also very easy for an ama­teur to drift into crankery — which I hope nev­er to do.

This is a very well-writ­ten study of the role of the Eng­lish con­dot­tieri who were the Hal­ibur­ton Gang of four­teenth cen­tury Italy. It focus­es on the char­ac­ter of John Hawk­wood, a minor Eng­lish knight who rose to lead­er­ship among the mer­ce­nary armies that were cast loose on France and Italy, when the Hun­dred Years War entered a lull. Saun­ders’ prose is excel­lent, and evoca­tive, her grasp of the evi­dence is strong, and she has a com­mon-sense vision of the real life behind the doc­u­ments. Read more »