Seynabou Thiam-Pereira was a 2020 Eccles Centre Visiting Fellow at the British Library.

As an Eccles Centre Visiting Fellow at the British Library in September 2021, I was interested in material from late eighteenth-century British North America relating to American Loyalists and race issues in Atlantic Canada. The economic, political, military and social consequences of the American War of Independence had been major for the British empire. However, my focus was on the exiles from America and the relocation of thousands of Loyalists and disbanded soldiers within the empire.

After the outbreak of the war in 1776, 'Tories' - Loyalist inhabitants of the Thirteen Colonies - together with their slaves, Black and Native Loyalists, as well as disbanded soldiers, migrated to Atlantic Canada, the British West Indies, Great Britain and Botany Bay to seek refuge. The first evacuation took place in 1776 when Loyalists from Boston chose to settle in Nova Scotia. Formerly called Acadia, it had been a British territory since the end of French and Indian War when many New Englanders migrated there after the expulsion of the French Acadians. The largest evacuations occurred years later from Savannah, Georgia, and Charleston, South Carolina, in 1782, from New York City in 1783 and from St-Augustine, in East Florida until 1785.

Propaganda promoting the reception of Loyalists within the empire spread rapidly in pamphlets and newspapers. The image below, for example - 'The reception of the American Loyalists by Great Britain, in the year 1783' by H. Moses - details the variety of social status and ethnicities of the Loyalists. We can see Britannia opening her arms to American loyal subjects, to Natives and to Blacks.

John Eardley Wilmot, Historical View of the Commission for enquiring into the losses, services, and claims of the American Loyalists... London, 1815. British Library shelfmark: 279.k.3

A wide range of documents illuminating these massive departures still exist, including petitions, muster rolls, letters, handbills, maps, and official registers either written by British officials or civilians. At the British Library, the Clarkson Papers and the miscellaneous letters and papers relating to American affairs, contain several petitions from disbanded soldiers and Loyalists to obtain land in order to settle in British American colonies.

Unsurprisingly, the question of land seems to have preoccupied the British government and the settlers throughout the War; not owning property meant being excluded from the shareholder status and its ensuing political rights. In 1782 a strong push began in Britain to offer land in Jamaica, Bermuda, St-Lucie, Barbados and the Bahamas islands to Loyalist planters from the southern colonies. The main arguments used were the possibility of bringing the slaves to the British West Indies which offered the accustomed warm climate and agricultural system. The opportunity to bring thousands of new planters or white settlers with slaves to the British Caribbean was essential in order to maintain the slave societies on these islands. But how could Free Black and Native Loyalists be integrated into this slaveholding system with their liberated, manumitted or free-born status? 

Miscellaneous letters and papers relating to American Affairs, 1718-1796, Add MS 24322, f. 100-103

In order to accommodate this massive arrival of Loyalist settlers, towns were founded or extended and provisioned. Land had to be quickly divided into lots in order to be distributed to about 10,000 people in Jamaica, 5,000 in the Bahamas and hundreds in St-Lucie, Bermuda and Barbados. In some cases these Loyalists doubled or tripled the black and white population of the territories. One must bear in mind the challenge of rapidly organising the evacuation and resettlement of so many refugees while dealing with the peace treaty and trade regulations between Great Britain, France and the United States of America. If we take the example of Canada, muster rolls indicate the large number of disbanded troops, Loyalists and slaves who arrived in Upper/Lower Canada, and Nova Scotia. In 1784, while the province of Quebec was receiving more than 5,500 new settlers, Nova Scotia had more than 28,000 Loyalists including about a thousand slaves and 3,000 Black Loyalists (Native Loyalists were excluded from general musters).

A general description of the Province of Nova Scotia, and a Report of the present state of the Defences ...by Lieut.-Col. [Robert] Morse, Chief Engineer in America', drawn up by direction of Gen. Sir Guy Carleton, Commander-in-Chief of H.M. Forces in N. America; 1783-1784, MS 208, f.23

Beyond the British empire, land acquisition was also a huge issue in the settlement of the Black Loyalists and the Black Poor out of Britain and Atlantic Canada to Sierra Leone, Africa, in 1787 and 1792. Promises of land - between five and twenty acres - were given by the Sierra Leone Company to the 1,190 coloured men, women and children from the Black Loyalists community in Canada willing to participate in the British project 'Back to Africa'.

Clarkson papers, vol. I, Add MS 41262 A, f. 49.

Land was also very much linked to economic concerns, since each Loyalist and their descendants were allowed to request financial compensation from the British government for any loss in the Thirteen Colonies. In the 1784 Land Claim Commission register extending to 1815, 47 Black Loyalists out of thousands of claimants gave lists of their lost properties in America. Consequently, the massive arrivals of new settlers shaped a Loyalist mosaic and participated in creating multi-cultural, multi-racial and multi-linguistic societies in the late eighteenth-century British empire.

These documents unquestionably permit a more detailed research of the Loyalist diaspora and the under-studied question of land distribution. Social studies of Loyalists can also encompass these records in order to examine a broader cultural outcome in modern British societies.

 

 

Death is one of the most difficult topics to accept and understand as humans, maybe knowing how other communities and societies deal with this will give us a new understanding of the many ways we can see loss and even our own death.

It is important to be able to talk and think about this topic especially with the Covid-19 crisis and the sudden loss of family members, friends, neighbors, and colleagues. We should be able to have the chance to think a bit more about death and what it means to us.

This is why I wanted to share with you my experience with the present concept of death in my life. I am from Milpa Alta, a small Nahua village located in the southeast of Mexico City and like many Mexicans, every November 1st and 2nd we get ready for the Micailhuitl known as the Day of the Dead.

The celebration could sound creepy and the whole idea of having a celebration and being festive about death may not let you appreciate the healing effect that this event has on the people who grieve and how this helps the members of a community to deal with the loss of a loved one.

Imagine a safe space where you can talk about this difficult subject with others, a place where everyone relates with your feelings, a place that is even going to push your creativity to build an altar decorated with flowers, sugar skulls, papel picado (perforated tissue paper), candles, and food.

The Day of the Dead celebration is that kind of safe and creative space where memories, grief and the chance to connect and share with your community become real. This celebration provides a healthy, festive, and therapeutic space to cope with the pain and suffering.

The British Library holds collections from many parts of the world written in different languages providing the readers the chance to enjoy the diversity of the world we live in. So, in addition, it is not surprising that I found a couple of books in these collections from my hometown.

I choose three of these publications that are particularly important and this is because the books were written in the native Nahuatl language and because they had the memories of a Nahua woman from my village named Luz Jiménez, a remarkable storyteller who is also known as the most painted woman in Mexico.

She was depicted in countless works by some of the most renowned artists working in Mexico in the first half of the 20th century such as Diego Rivera, Jean Charlot, Tina Modotti, Fernando Leal and Edward Weston.

Her collaboration with anthropologists and linguists made possible the publication of her texts as literary and historical works that she authored and translated, but she was always billed as an informant who in her lifetime never got recognition as an author.

Jiménez’s memories of the times of the Mexican Revolution were published in a bilingual Nahuatl-Spanish edition as De Porfirio Díaz a Zapata: memoria náhuatl de Milpa Alta, 1968 (BL shelfmark: X.709/29934).

 

Title page of the bilingual Nahuatl-Spanish edition of Luz Jiménez. De Porfirio Díaz a Zapata: memoria náhuatl de Milpa Alta, 1968 (BL shelfmark: X.709/29934)

 

In 1972, a bilingual Nahuatl-English edition was published as Life and Death in Milpa Alta. A Nahuatl Chronicle of Díaz and Zapata edited by Fernando Horcasitas, from the Nahuatl recollections of Doña Luz Jiménez (BL shelfmark 74/26082). The following description of the Day of the Dead in Milpa Alta comes from this edition. 

 

Title page of the bilingual edition Life and Death in Milpa Alta. A Nahuatl Chronicle of Díaz and Zapata, edited by Fernando Horcasitas

 

During the night between November 1 and 2, the head of the household of Milpa Alta is proud of his ofrenda a table set up with stews, candles, bread, liquor, glasses of water, candles, and cigarettes for the Faithful Departed. All night the members of the family accompany the "little dead ones," the beloved ancestors who have come to spend this one night of the year among the living. (Horcasitas, 1972:75)

 

Jimenez’s stories appear, again in a Nahuatl-Spanish edition, as Los cuentos en Náhuatl de Doña Luz Jiménez, 1979, collected by Fernando Horcasitas and Sarah O. Ford (BL shelfmark X.950/12883).

 

Front cover of the Nahuatl-Spanish edition Los cuentos en Náhuatl de Doña Luz Jiménez, 1979, collected by Fernando Horcasitas and Sarah O. Ford (BL shelfmark X.950/12883)

 

The book contains, among many others, the story of a young man who didn’t believe in the Day of the Dead and how he learned a lesson when he saw the dead coming to his town.

These books were published more than fifty years ago but the events described in them are not very different from the ones I experienced in my own time. Let me tell you how the Day of the Dead is nowadays in Milpa Alta.

 

A Day of the Dead Altar in Milpa Alta. Picture by Isela Xospa

 

Everybody in my home town knows that a big and special Momoxtle or Ofrenda (altar) will be set up for the people who no longer live with us, but especially at the house of a person that recently passed away. Tamales (a traditional corn dish) and homemade bread will be made at the family house and neighbours will come to help with the preparations.

During the days of October 30^th and 31^st a table will be set up in the main room of the house to be decorated with flowers, candles, fruit, candy, liquor, water, and photographs of the people to whose the offering is dedicated. Some space will be reserved to put the bread and tamales that are going to be made, while the table is being decorated.

The preparation of tamales are usually in the hands of the elder women of the house: this is because they are considered the best cooks and the ones who hold the family recipes. The younger women, men and children will help with la batida (mixing of the dough) and la envoltura (the wrapping and making of tamales).

 

Detail of a Day of the Dead Altar in Milpa Alta showing the homemade bread. Picture by Isela Xospa

 

Bread is made on October the 30^th and is usually in the hand of the men: this is because they have to deal with the fire and heat of the oven but it is common to see men, women, and children working together in the preparation.

These activities provide a very special space where everybody feels free to talk about the people who have died. They even talk about how much the dead are going to enjoy their favourite tamales and all the drinks, food, and candy they will find in their altars. Here you can hear all kinds of stories and memories of the lost ones, and of course, tears will come out of the eyes of many.

This is a multidimensional event; too many things happen at the same time and miraculously everybody knows what to do. While some are in the kitchen making tamales, others are at the oven cooking the bread, others are decorating the altar and others are cleaning the house and bringing wood sticks to get ready for the velada a fire that every family in the town will set up outside of their houses to illuminate the path for their loved ones to their Ofrenda.

This festivity is related to the milpa cycle: it is the end of the harvest and the cornfields have lots of carrizo, a type of dried cane stick that children and adults collect to make star shape decorations covered with tissue paper and also to make paper balloons or Amatecolotl (the name these paper balloons used to have because they had the shape of an owl, while nowadays they are star-shaped). The balloons guide the loved ones to their homes.

Kids will also carve skeleton faces in chilacayotes, a kind of wild pumpkin squash that grows in the fields, and put a candle inside to decorate and illuminate the path to the Ofrendas.

Another way to guide the dead ones to their altars is to make a line path out of marigold flower petals that goes from the street to the inside of the house where the altar is located, so the dead ones won’t get confused or lost.

The entire town will also go to the cemetery on November the 2^nd, where the families will clean the tombs and some will make reparations if they are essential. The shrine will also be decorated with Cempasuchitl (marigold flower), here it is essential to burn candles.

The visit to the cemetery is a moment where the entire community will share with the dead food, drinks, live music, and even street food merchants will join. In some places, this visit to the cemetery will continue all night long and people will wait for their loved ones there instead of waiting for them in the private house altar.

The night of October 31^st is when the dead children come to visit their altars, special presents and gifts for them will be put in the Ofrenda. On November 1^st, the church bells of the town will start to ring at 3pm announcing that the children are leaving and that the grownups are arriving to town, later at 6pm a fire will be set up outside the house and everybody will spend the night surrounding the fire. The next day, November 2^nd, at 3 pm, the church bells will ring again to announce that the dead ones are leaving town.

In this celebration, we welcome our loved ones to their altars, some will have incense burning at the bottom of the table, others will pray to the souls and all of us will have the chance to greet them and tell them that we missed them and maybe talk about how life has been without them around. Then, of course, we will watch with pride our display of love: the food and decorations we made to remember them.

The British Library will host a Day of the Dead celebration with an altar that will be built at the main entrance. We hope this will be a good opportunity to bring the memory of your loved ones, maybe by putting a small photograph in the Ofrenda. Many of us will have the chance to experience this tradition and have the opportunity to grieve and celebrate in a safe and communal environment the lives of the ones that no longer are with us.

Blog post by Isela Xospa.

 

In miqui yoli. El muerto vivo, 2019. Image by Isela Xospa. Tells the story of Pedro, a dead man who kept himself alive in his tomb saving the food and candles that people left for him in his Day of the Dead Altar. Currently being catalogued by the BL.

 

 

Isela Xospa is an illustrator, indigenous language activist and publisher from Milpa Alta, in the Nahua region in southeast Mexico City. She manages Ediciones XospaTronik, an independent publishing project promoting the revitalisation of the Nahuatl language. She works with publishing illustrated children’s books in indigenous languages, and finding ways to make these publications accessible. She is currently a British Library Chevening Fellow working on Latin American Indigenous Languages in early printed books.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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We are delighted to let you know that the Eccles Centre has just published a new Americas-focused bibliographic guide: US Fine Presses Established after 1945: A Guide to the British Library's Holdings (just scroll down a little to find it!)

This guide grew out of a conversation in late 2019 with then-Head of the Centre, Phil Hatfield, who had recently pledged financial support towards the cataloguing of a backlog of US fine press publications. A large number of these works – produced on old-fashioned hand-presses by contemporary printers – had been acquired by our curatorial colleagues in the previous 15 years. Phil rightly noted that without some kind of check-list or guide, it would be almost impossible for Library Readers, now or in the future, to appreciate the depth and richness of these holdings.

Borderbus. [Poem by Juan Filipe Herrera; prints by Felicia Rice.] Santa Cruz, CA: Moving Parts Press, 2019. British Library shelfmark: RF.2019.b.144

Initially, the guide was just going to list the works that were then being catalogued. This suited me perfectly since at that point I honestly didn’t understand the time, money and effort that my colleagues had devoted to obtaining these items! Thankfully, as I immersed myself in this world, my appreciation grew – both for the beauty, originality and boundary-pushing nature of the items themselves, and for the imagination and skill of their printers. And as my appreciation increased, so too did the scope of this project. After discovering P.A.H. Brown’s Modern British and American Private Presses (1850-1965): [catalogue of the] holdings of the British Library (London, 1976) it seemed sensible to push our own guide’s start date back to 1965.¹ And as it became apparent that several post-war presses had been omitted from Brown, so we pushed that date back even further, to 1945.

Kenneth Rexroth, Between Two Wars: Selected Poems Written Prior to the Second World War. Illustrations by Daniel Goldstein. Athens, OH: Labyrinth Editions; San Francisco, CA: Iris Press, 1982. British Library shelfmark: Cup.408.rr.9

The first step in tracking down these presses was to search the Library’s catalogue. Covid-19 related Library closures, combined with often-minimal cataloguing data, made it difficult to verify many of the items’ fine press credentials in person. Thankfully, however, online access to rare bookseller and auction websites made it possible, slowly but surely, to determine whether an item was hand-printed and whether a press had been founded after World War II.

About Sylvia. Poems by Diane Ackerman; lithographs by Enid Mark. Wallingford, PA: ELM Press, 1996. British Library shelfmark: Cup.512.d.9

In total, items by more than 180 such presses were found in the Library’s collection. More than 160 of these presses started after 1965 and – incredibly – more than 90 were established between 1965-1980. This fifteen-year period truly was a golden era for hand-press printing in the United States – a cultural phenomenon which seems entirely in-tune with that counter-cultural moment. Crucially, too, this was the point at which graduates from the recently established university book arts programmes began founding fine presses of their own.

Tom Killion, The Coast of California: Point Reyes to Point Sur. Santa Cruz & Mill Valley, CA: The Quail Press, 1979. British Library shelfmark: C.180.k.1

Researching the emergence and development of these presses was absolutely fascinating. Time and again it showed me the profound impact that great teachers can have not only on individuals, but on an entire creative landscape. For this reason, in addition to listing the names of these presses and some of their works, the guide offers a short ‘biography’ of each of press, including, where possible: the name of the press’s founder(s); the founder’s training and/or education and mentor; how long the press was in operation; how it developed over time; any speciality in subject matter or genre; any change in location; the type of equipment used; and whether it made its own paper. After this ‘biography’, the full details of up to ten works are listed for every press. And at the end of the guide there is a geographic index to the presses, arranged by US state.

Trading Eights: The Faces of Jazz. Essay by Ted Gioia; engravings by James G. Todd, Jr.; poem by Dana Gioia. California: Mixolydian Editions, 2016. British Library shelfmark: RF.2016.b.69

I hope this guide will prove useful to all those working in this field. And for those who are not, I hope it will offer an insight into a lesser-known aspect of the Library’s Americas holdings.

Edgar Allan Poe, The Raven. Etchings and wood engravings by Alan James Robinson. Easthampton, MA: Cheloniidae Press, 1980. British Library shelfmark: C.136.g.42

Jean Petrovic

References

1. Philip A.H. Brown, Modern British and American Private Presses (1850-1965): [catalogue of the] holdings of the British Library. London: British Museum Publications Ltd for the Library, 1976. Shelfmark: Open Access Rare Books and Music 094.4016 ENG; General Reference Collection 2708.aa.36; Document Supply 78/9820. 

In light of the recent unprecedented demand for digital materials, we’ve decided to run a year-long series of monthly blogposts highlighting the extraordinarily rich Americas and Oceania-focused e-resources that are held at the British Library. Although most of these e-resources need to be consulted in-person in the Library’s Reading Rooms, some are accessible remotely to Reader’s Pass holders and we are hopeful that this number will continue to rise.

In terms of content, e-resources fall into two broad categories: full-text and bibliographic. The former will give you all or most of a particular item, be that a book, journal article, map, letter, playbill, diary, logbook, newspaper article, photo or minutes of a meeting. The latter will simply provide you with citations which you then need follow up elsewhere - in the Library’s Main Catalogue, for example, or a catalogue at another institution.

Fig. 1: The Whole Booke of Psalmes, 1640. This was the first book to be published in the American colonies. It can be found in the full-text, remote access e-resource 'Early American Imprints, 1639-1800.'

Over the coming year, these blogs will cover both types of e-resources (full-text and bibliographic) and will clearly flag the kind of access they offer (in-person or remote). Some will focus on particular subjects: for example, US politics, Oceania, or literature of the Americas. Others will focus on certain types of material. Next month, for example, we will look at newspapers, including historic newspapers from the Caribbean, Latin America and the US,  American Indian newspapers, communist newspapers and service newspapers of World War II; many of these are accessible remotely.

All of the Americas and Oceania e-resources can be found in the Library’s Main Catalogue.

However, if you don’t have any titles or you want to get a sense of what the Library holds, please browse the holdings by subject. Currently, there are 130+ e-resources listed under History, for example, many of which have Americas and Oceania content. And more than 110 are listed under American Studies, a selection of which includes: America in World War Two; American Civil Liberties Union Papers; Black Freedom Struggle in the 20th Century; Entertainment Industry Magazine Archive, 1880-2015; First World War Portal; Global Commodities: Trade, Exploration and Cultural Exchange; History Vault: African American Police League Records, 1961-1988; History Vault: Struggle for Women’s Rights, 1880-1990; The Nixon Years; North American Indian Thought and Culture; Slavery & Antislavery: A Transnational Archive; Trade Catalogues and the American Home; and Virginia Company Archives.

Fig. 2: Several Poems Compiled with Great Variety and Learning...(1678). This anonymous and posthumously published volume of poetry by Anne Bradstreet was the first work by a woman to be published in the American colonies. It can be found in the full-text, remote access e-resource 'Early American Imprints, 1639-1800.'

Finally, I’ll just say a few words about one of my personal favourites: Early American Imprints: Series I: Evans, 1639-1800.  Based on the 14-volume work by US bibliographer Charles Evans, this incredible database provides the full-text of almost every book, pamphlet and periodical published on American soil in the 17th and 18th centuries.¹ And once you have a Reader’s Pass, you can access it whenever and wherever you wish! Among its many treasures are The Whole Booke of Psalmes (1640) – the first work published in the American colonies (Fig 1, above). Anne Bradstreet’s self-revised and posthumously published Several Poems Completed with Great Variety of Wit and Learning (1678) – the first book by a woman to be published in North America (Fig.2, above). And An Alphabetical Compendium of the Various Sects Which Have Appeared in the World…(1784) by Hannah Adams – the first woman in the United States to make her living as a writer (Fig. 3, below).

Fig. 3: Hannah Adams, An Alphabetical Compendium of the Various Sects...(1784). Adams was the first American woman to make her living as a writer and this was her first book; it can be found in the full-text, remote access e-resource 'Early American Imprints, 1639-1800.'

Happy browsing!

Next month we will look at the Library's huge range of Americas-focused e-newspapers. 

(And if you would like to learn more about the British Library's holdings of works by early American women writers, please take a look at 'For Myself, For My Children, For Money': A Bibliography of Early American Women's Writings at the British Library on the the Eccles Centre's website.)

References:

Charles Evans, American Bibliography: A Chronological Dictionary of all Books, Pamphlets and Periodical Publications Printed in the United States of America ... 14 vols. British Library shelfmark: Open Access Humanities 1 HRL 015.73

 

 

 

 

 

 

This blog by Rebecca Goetz (2018 Eccles Centre Visiting Fellow) is part of a special Summer Scholars blog series highlighting recent research across the British Library's Americas collections by scholars and creatives associated with the Eccles Centre, including those supported by the Centre's Awards.

In my work at the British Library in June and July 2019, I was particularly interested in documents from the late seventeenth-century Caribbean that might shed light on illegal and quasi-legal slave raiding and slave trading – moments when the evil but nonetheless completely legal (and indeed, highly regulated) trafficking in African and Indigenous American human life that we know as the Atlantic slave trades collided with the criminal or legal grey worlds of pirates and privateers. Jamaica was a particularly volatile meeting point between these different forms of maritime violence, trade and enterprise. The English seized Jamaica from the Spanish in 1655, and in the course of the next few decades, the newly-conquered island became a haven for pirates and privateers, and not coincidentally, a locus of the shadowy world of intra-European slave trading. I wanted to know how and where Europeans raided and traded for enslaved people, Indigenous and African alike. One paragraph in the records of the governor’s council of Jamaica caught my eye (Sloane MSS 1599). I had not expected to find such a vivid tale of extralegal slaving, Spanish-English rivalry, and treason against the English Crown in the British Library’s manuscripts collection – and yet here we were!

Minutes of a Meeting of the Council of Jamaica, 13 March 1688, Sloane MS 1599, v26-r27.

On 13 March 1688 , Captain Edward Reddish appeared before the council, asking for assistance in obtaining compensation from the governor of Margarita for the illegal seizure of his ship, the Inlargement, in 1682. The ship, which Reddish co-owned with several other business partners, was a slave ship carrying a cargo of 135 souls from Africa for sale in the English Caribbean. Reddish claimed he had difficulties with his ship, and so had put it at the island of Margarita to make repairs. The governor of Margarita, a man he named as Juan Fermín, seized the Inlargement and her cargo. Reddish told the council that “Firmin under the colour of freindship surprized the sd ship and detained her to owners loss of 5600 pounds.” Reddish went on to say that Fermín was not the legitimate governor of Margarita; Fermín had usurped that power from the duly appointed governor of the island and forced him to “take sanctuary in the Church.” Reddish understood that the rightful government on Margarita had been restored and wanted the council’s assistance in reclaiming his property or in winning restitution.

This short paragraph attracted my attention because I could not imagine what legitimate business an English captain might have on Margarita, a tiny island off the coast of what is now Venezuela, over 1,500 km away from Jamaica at completely the other end of the Caribbean Sea. The Spanish had claimed mastery of Margarita since the mid-1520s, when they were busily laying claim to the southern Caribbean and its rich pearl beds. Margarita and its sister islets, Coche and Cubagua, were centers of the Spanish pearling industry from the 1520s to the 1540s. Even as early as the first decade of the 1500s, Margarita, Coche, Cubagua, and the nearby mainland were also centers of Spanish slaving of Indigenous people. By the later sixteenth century, Margarita had reinvented itself not as a pearling space but as a locus of a vigorous, informal, and often illegal trade in enslaved Indigenous people from the interior of South America. Margarita was an entrepot providing extralegal and untaxed access to enslaved people to other Spanish islands as well as Cartagena and Spanish settlements in central America. In the 1590s, Walter Ralegh noted a well-established slave trade in the Orinoco River basin; he described canoes full of captive Indigenous women bound for sale as slaves on Margarita. Almost a century later, Margarita remained part of an informal trading and slaving network that included English settlements in Guyana, Dutch settlements at Essequibo, and Curaçao. It seems unlikely to me that Reddish had such serious trouble with the Inlargement that he ended up at Margarita by accident. Instead, I suspect Reddish thought he could get a higher price for his enslaved cargo in Margarita than in Jamaica and he could evade English regulations and taxes while he was at it.

'A Chart of the West Indies, from Cape Cod to the River Oronoque', in J. Seller, Atlas Maritimus (London, 1675). Maps 7 TAB.77. Jamaica is circled in purple; Margarita is circled in red.

Detail of 'A Chart of the West Indies, from Cape Cod to the River Oronoque', in J. Seller, Atlas Maritimus (London, 1675). Maps 7 TAB.77. Jamaica is circled in purple; Margarita is circled in red

What Reddish did not expect was political chaos on Margarita. Juan Fermín de Huidobro was born on Margarita but had spent his career in various Spanish-controlled locales around the southern Caribbean, including posts on Trinidad and in Guyana. His varied career suggests to me he would have been broadly familiar with informal trade in enslaved people, foodstuffs, and commercially valuable products such as annatto (an orange-red condiment and natural dye derived from the seeds of the achiote tree), tobacco, and sugar around the southern rim of the Caribbean. In 1677 he was appointed military commander in charge of fortifying the island and the nearby mainland against attack from the Dutch, English, and the Kalinagos of the Lesser Antilles. Fermín had a falling out with the civil governor of the island, Juan Muñoz Gadea, and the two spent the decade of the 1680s sparring in court at the Audiencia of Santo Domingo, in the Council of the Indies, and periodically launching rebellions against one another on the island. The saga came to a conclusion finally in 1689 when Fermín died.

Reddish clearly believed he could get compensation for the cargo of enslaved people Fermín seized from Muñoz. But the English governor of Jamaica, Christopher Monck, Duke of Albemarle, had other ideas. When Reddish brought his petition to the Council, Albemarle pointed out that some of the owners of the Inlargement had been “attainted for treason whereby the sd ship and Cargoe became forfeited.” The Council voted to write to the governor of Margarita and ask for compensation in the King’s name instead of Reddish’s. I imagine that Reddish’s business partners might have been involved in Monmouth’s Rebellion in 1685, the unsuccessful uprising of several leading Protestant against the Catholic King James II, who was still on the throne at the time of Reddish’s petition (although I do not yet know for sure who they were). Reddish left the council empty-handed.

While I can flesh out the story of Reddish, the Inlargement, and political hijinks on Margarita, there is less I can say about the 135 enslaved people seized. Their “final passages,” as the historian Greg O’Malley would term them, were not recorded in the archives of Spain or of England. Illicit trading and tax evasion made it imperative for smugglers trading in enslaved people to avoid official notice—and thus details were not recorded in imperial archives. Some of these enslaved people might have remained on Margarita as pearl divers. Others might have been sold to planters in Cumaná’s nascent sugar economy. Some might have ended up in Cartagena, and others still might have been sold in Dutch, French, or English territories. Their voices and stories are lost amid tales of interimperial rivalry and treason.

We want to acknowledge the response to our blog post on the 12 August, in which we announced that the email notifications for the blog will be ending shortly, owing to changes made by the third-party platform. Many thanks to everyone who got in touch to let us know their views about this change. We really value hearing from you. It is heartening to know how many people appreciate getting our blog notifications in their inbox and we understand that other ways of finding out about blog posts aren't always as convenient or relevant for you.

We also want to assure you that we are actively looking into this issue and working to implement a solution which will continue your email notifications, however we do not know whether you will continue to receive notifications about new posts before we are able to implement this. But we promise to update the blog with further information as soon as we have it. Thank you for your patience and understanding while we resolve this.

Americas Blog Team

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Americas Blog Team

This blog by Pola Oloixarac is part of a special Summer Scholars blog series highlighting recent research across the British Library's Americas collections by scholars and creatives associated with the Eccles Centre, including those supported by the Centre's Awards.

Travel has changed a lot since the early naturalists voyaged through the Amazonia, and it continues to change today thanks to Covid restrictions. While I’ve been unable to foray in person into the archives of the British Library as I was hoping - summer, London, arcane tomes - I’ve had the luck of encountering the mighty digital explorer, Dr Aleksandra Kaye. Dr Kaye knows her way around the British Library’s vast digital  archives and like any sensible 19th century naturalist seeking help from a guide, I secured her expertise in unearthing their intricate holdings.
 
In the first written accounts of the Amazon, the anthropological gaze is under-developed. Though entranced by the power of landscape, the earliest naturalists typically didn’t consider the human culture they encountered. The richness of the human Amazonian world typically escape their notice. Indeed, where Amazonian people are referenced, early accounts by European naturalists are explicitly racist. One explorer, however, who did take some account of indigenous people was the French painter Hercules Florence, although how he saw them was problematic. He travelled to the Amazon from 1825 to 1829 and ended up spending his life in Brazil.

What excited Florence was undiscovered places and he was uninterested in indigenous village life. He remarked in his diary that the jungle is repetitive and that, "to see a Brazilian village, is to see them all"¹. He became obsessed with capturing the unchartered territory and capturing it through sound and image with pioneering technology. Florence experimented making photographs in Brazil in 1833 and wanted to record the sounds of what surrounded him. This led him to devise a method to record wild bird song in the Amazon. While looking for a way to record sound, he stumbled into photography. Indeed, while trying to publicise his experiments in sound recording he managed to devise the first printing machine in Sao Paulo.

In the first page of his diary he mentions the expedition slaves, noting that all humans become the same bundle of flesh under the severity of the Amazonian environment. When the expedition’s commander, Gregory Langsdorff (Fig. 1, below) succumbs to yellow fever, Florence notes that illness made no distinction about social class in the context of the Amazon.

Fig. 1: G. H. von Langsdorff, Voyages and Travels in Various Parts of the World… London: printed for Henry Colburn, 1813. British Library shelfmark: Mic.F.232 [no. 38483]. Image courtesy University of Alberta, due to Covid restrictions.

Langsdorff claimed to be the first to attempt the fluvial crossing of Brazil, from Pantanal to Belum. Until now it was believed that the first trip was in 1825 but Dr Kaye’s research has revealed a precursor: there was a previous trip funded by the Imperial Russian court and led by Adam Johan Krussertern in which Langsdorff took part. Before his trip with Florence in 1825, Langsdorff had added himself hastily and at his own expense to the Krussertern expedition as a second naturalist (the first was Wilhm Gottlieb Tilesius). Langsdorff, therefore, went into the Amazon at least two times, around 1803-1807.  These earlier expeditions could explain why the subsequent Langsdorff trip a few decades later was hardly noticed by the very Russians who funded it, considering it, perhaps, redundant. Indeed, the reports of the Langsdorff investigation languished in St Petersburg for over a century largely undiscovered.

Langsdorff’s story is a reminder of how much these exploratory naturalist expeditions had in common with modern filmmaking. Langsdorff had, in effect, been to the Amazon first as a location scout (1803-1807), but his vision of the Amazon and the legacy of his expedition could not exist without artists to document the trip. For his 1825-1829 expedition - the one that would make him famous - Langsdorff only wanted the very best artists. He hired Johan Moritz Rugendas, but their relationship faltered when the Prussian commander sought to take ownership of the artist’s original works. Rugendas, however, was aware of his own worth as an artist and would not bow to Langsdorff. The Brazilian diaries of both Rugendas and Langsdorff paint the latter in a negative light: Langsdorff was controlling and wanted Rugendas to assign him copyright, but the artist resisted and ultimately deserted the expedition. 

This is how Hercules Florence joined the trip as a second painter to first painter André Taunay. Traveling with Langsdorff, Hercules Florence experimented with photography (he called it “painting with light”). He claimed to be its first inventor, documenting his attempts using silver nitrate and natural acids like urea. Despite these claims, however, Dr Kaye found that Alexander Agassiz, also claimed to be the first to use photography through carbon printing for general illustrations of natural history. In 1871 Agassiz made this claim in the pages of the Bulletin of the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard College (British Library shelfmark Ac.1736/26), where his father, Louis Agassiz, was an acclaimed professor. Agassiz argues that photography is likely to overtake lithography as a mode of illustrating natural history and includes two photographs with his work. His view that the new printing technology would withstand the test of time is born out by the archive; and 150 years later, we can look at these photographs at the British Library.

Fig. 2: Bulletin of the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard College. 1871. British Library shelfmark: Ac.1726/36.

Did Agassiz know of Florence’s efforts to make pictures by “painting with light”? Or was Florence unknown to his contemporaries, even those working as naturalists in Brazil? These questions beg answers. For now, we can only reflect on the fact that the London edition of the early Langsdorff travels (before his trip with Florence) is much more richly illustrated and complete than the American version. In the UK edition we find a lithograph of a Brazilian house (Fig. 3, below) and a musical score called “Brazilian Air” (Fig. 4, below). Both are accessible digitally, which makes comparing them possible. The US edition from 1817 has been digitized by the British Library and is in the public domain - the UK edition from 1813 is only available digitally inside the library, but the University of Alberta digitized their copy and made it publicly available. The London edition was published in two separate volumes, while the US edition has less images, is more cramped and in smaller format and is published as a single book. As a consequence the US edition would have been cheaper to produce and therefore more accessible to bigger audiences.

Fig. 3: G. H. von Langsdorff, Voyages and Travels in Various Parts of the World… London: printed for Henry Colburn, 1813. British Library shelfmark: Mic.F.232 [no. 38483]. Image courtesy University of Alberta due to Covid restrictions.

Fig. 4: G. H. von Langsdorff, Voyages and Travels in Various Parts of the World… London: printed for Henry Colburn, 1813. British Library shelfmark: Mic.F.232 [no. 38483]. Image courtesy University of Alberta, due to Covid restrictions.

Another interesting item with connections to Brazil uncovered by Dr Kaye is a 1916 book of short stories by Edith Wharton, the American author, called Xingú, and Other Stories (London; New York printed: Macmillan, 1916; British Library shelfmark NN.4057). The “Xingú” text portrays a dialogue between elite ladies who cannot fathom what is meant by Xingú. They think Xingú is something mysterious or rude, which creates quite a lot of drama among them. Eventually they discover it’s a Brazilian River. The text keeps you wondering, what would The Age of Innocence (Mrs. Wharton’s vivid masterpiece) be like, if set in the Império do Brasil? A crossover of the directors Martin Scorsese and Joaquim Machado de Assis, with vast corridors of palms, would surely depict a young emperor obsessed with becoming a masterful photographer, like Dom Pedro II of Brazil once was. He would have been especially pleased about finding the British Library's digital versions of his photographs available today.

Pola Oloixarac is the author of the novels Savage Theories, Dark Constellations and Mona. She’s the recipient of the 2021 Eccles Centre and Hay Festival Writer's Award.

1. Hercule Florence Diary: http://etnolinguistica.wdfiles.com/local--files/biblio:kossoy-1977-florence/kossoy_1977_hercules_florence.pdf