At that ambiguous turn in periods from the Late Medieval to the Early Modern, Europe was broadening its horizons in a way that only the Vikings had approached previously. The Italians dominated the Mediterranean; the Spanish the central and southern Atlantic; the Portuguese the Indian Ocean. In northern Europe, France, England and the Dutch wanted in on the game. Once the whole global idea started to set in for the wider European set, it became clear to many in these northern countries that logically a northwest passage should exist to link northern Europe to the lucrative markets in the Far East.
Many tried. All failed. Some survived, but many did not. Emerging from the medieval world’s Little Ice Age, ice blocked the route from the northern Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean through the Arctic north of modern-day Canada. Those who ventured out were motivated by adventure, wealth, prestige and royal charters. This failure led to the French demise in North America since they chose not to pursue colonization as fully as did the English (and the Spanish to the south). Their leave-[little]-trace approach to colonization of their New World holdings, reinforced by the lack of a northern trade route enabled England, fresh off the colonization of Ireland, to overwhelm them. Unlike the French, the English would build a formidable Navy unhindered by the obvious obstacles: a) its northerly position and b) its distance from the obvious trade routes to the East.
The need to get from North America’s east coast to the Pacific more efficiently remained relevant. This is obvious by America’s interest in the Panama Canal. In the first couple decades of the 20th century (1904-1914), America invested millions of dollars and (estimated) over 30,000 lives (lost) in building the Panama Canal. (For more information on the Panama Canal visit the Canal de Panama website with English translation.) Western Civilization may have advanced since the Age of Discovery, but shipping remains as essential now as it ever has been–and, likely more so than it ever was.
With the dual advents of the Cold War and the nuclear submarine, movement in Arctic waters–or, more accurately, underArctic waters–actually turned the region into a pretty warm zone. In fact, the Arctic was arguably the hottest point outside of actual war zones in Korea, Vietnam and Afghanistan–perhaps even hotter than outer space during the Space Race! Of course, this was due to simple geographic proximity during the Cold War’s bipolar chess match.
Now, once again, nations are competing for the Northwest Passage. Today, the major players are Canada and the U.S. with a few other competing claims. There are also pressing concerns by Inuit cultures who have long lived in the region and are somewhat better recognized today than during the period of European “Discovery“. Other than the nationalities represented and their existing establishment in the New World, the competition has changed very little in the intervening years since the Age of Discovery. Is this evidence of that period ushering in the modern era? Is it proof of the relevance history has in current affairs? Is it yet another opening for social, economic and political discussions of trade or environment? Yes.
Check out the links below for more on the development of the issue and the history of the fabled passage.
Map of the Northwest Passage from Princeton online exhibit (link below)
I have recently been rereading the controversial but beautiful and clever book, The Conquest of America, The question of the Other, in preparation for teaching about the clash of Old World and New World cultures. The book is not intended to be empirical history, rather it is a narrative account of the Spanish discovery and subsequent conquest of the “other” in the New World. Todorov, prefering to use the antiquated categorization of exemplary history, purposefully crafted a moral treatise. As the author of the latest edition’s forward writes,
it is a form of dialogue in which the author has attempted to mediate between two extremes: on the one hand, the conventional historicist objective of reproducing “the voices of these figures ‘as they really are,’” and on the other, the subjugation of “the other” to the self, so as “to make him [the other] into a marionette” whose strings are operated by the author.
The point was to call attention to the ethical response of the Europeans to other cultures. Thus, Todorov speaks of the discovery the self makes of the other. This is a deeply personal question for Todorov who grew up as a foreigner in France, having left Cold War Bulgaria. He has, with other Bulgarians in France, written or commented about the estrangement he felt. Additionally, he has written on the subject of totalitarian governments, such as Voices from the Gulag: Life and Death in Communist Bulgaria, published by Penn State University Press in 2000. Both accounts show deep analysis of primary sources to express the situation and to insure that the world does not forget.
Discussions of this type are often found in historical works or works with a historical context, because history grants the opportunity for a laboratory of human response. Our interpretation of history is, in fact, often guided by such principles (though, in fairness, we should ask ourselves how often we guide the conclusions in accord with those principles).
He dedicates Conquest to “the memory of a Mayan woman devoured by dogs,” based on an almost passing mention of her destruction by Diego de Landa—a woman whose name history has long forgotten, if it ever knew it in the first place. This kind of attention on the person whom society literally discards is always relevant.
Like Todorov, William Brennan, author of Dehumanizing the Vulnerable, When Word Games take Lives, is also interested in the ways in which societies dehumanize others. Both gentlemen focus on the sources and the words. Whereas Todorov is a philosopher, Brennan’s field is social work. Todorov argues that the natives of Mexico were generally mere objects to the Spanish and that the Spanish overwhelmed them by reading the social and political tensions existing around the Aztecs to create an advantage, while Brennan looks more broadly at patterns from within societies that are set into motion against others. Looking at many different societies, Brennan believes, despite the varying languages at play, that there are certain patterns for dehumanizing society’s less desirable groups of people and that once dehumanized there is a pretense for eliminating them (or forcing them into prison camps or disenfranchising them, etc.).
Brennan’s range is a wide one. He covers America, Nazi Germany, Rome and the Soviet Union. He is also broad in his identification of dehumanized members of society. Often discussions of the “other” or the “subaltern” are identified with the academic left, but Brennan, a professor at St. Louis University, is very careful to include the unborn and the elderly or infirm (dependent discards) alongside women, European Jews, enemies of the Soviet regime, African-Americans and Native-Americans. It is his contention that against all these groups a systematic “verbal gymnastics” was orchestrated to devalue the target group—often by respected members from within the society, such as doctors, professors and political leaders. These patterns are briefly summarized in his chart shown below, but all focus on the deliberate redefining of a member of the target group as something simply not human. (To read the chart more easily, click on it and it will enlarge it in a new screen.)
Brennan's "Semantics of Oppression"
There are similarities between these two men, their goals and their conclusions, but there are some important differences. On the one hand, Todorov suggests an innate response that is preconditioned by culture and revealed through the texts. For example, in the chapter, “Reasons for Victory,” he is not concerned with the accuracy of the Spanish accounts in their descriptions of Aztec actions, so much as he is concerned with the accounts themselves. In other words, it is the Spaniards’ perceptions that interest him as they identify the Aztecs (the “others”). His research of the particular event is extensive and thorough—he has worked on other collections related to the voice of these conquered peoples, as well—and it is selective and focused, not at all a survey.
Brennan, on the other hand, is not discussing encounters and the discovery of the “other,” but rather campaigns to convince and justify to “good, average citizens” why a target group should be treated differently and ultimately horrifically. Brennan contends that most citizens do not stand by while other citizens have been treated brutally without first being convinced that they should, at minimum, look the other way, and at most, participate with vigor.
Both authors continue to be relevant despite the years that have passed since their publications (Todorov in 1982 and Brennan in 1995) and the continued developments in the field of history, as both authors clearly intend. While in theory they represent opposite poles in the academic world (I exaggerate slightly), there is nonetheless common ground that may suggest inconsistencies within the left and right. In my opinion, both should stimulate extended thought and dialogue about various current events, such as international relations, immigration, health care, abortion and same-sex marriage, among others.
A review of The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin (Winter 2010), “Cochineal Red: The Art History of a Color,” 48 pages, by Elena Phipps
Textile history. . . Yawn, right? Listen to this excerpt from Elena Phipps,
The same physical qualities that make each textile unique and give it beauty—fiber, dye, weave structure, texture, pattern, and design—also give it historical relevance and locate it in a specific time and place. Designs that originate in one culture may be adapted to suit other purposes in another. Some fibers are found only in one particular region; others have been traded across the globe. Artisans in one area may spin yarns in one direction while their neighbors spin in the opposite. Each textile thus carries the cultural signature of the people created it. (2)
Thus, it takes a unique training to be literate in textile history and Phipps provides us with a fascinating translation for red textiles in the Early Modern era. This quote explains, very neatly, the purpose and relevance of her field to historians. The quality of fabric, the method of production and the dye all speak to the owner and the manufacturer. Thus, the excess of sumptuous materials expensively dyed from the court at Versailles is in marked contrast to the attire of the Jacobean revolutionaries, or even that of the French nobility after the revolution. The quality of a cleric’s clothing, for example, may inform us a great deal about the man’s perspective of his profession or, too, about the wealth of his parish and benefactors.
COCHINEAL RED, The Art History of a Color by Elena Phipps
While textiles have this promise, it is not on such a particular scale that Elena Phipps, the Senior Museum Research Scholar and Conservator at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, engages in Cochineal Red: The Art History of a Color, published by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Winter Bulletin, 2010. In this brief work, she traces the red coloring of the South American cochineal insect, Dactylopius coccus, from its origins in the New World to its eventual spread throughout the globe. To do this she marshals all the resources of the Metropolitan Museum of Art: three thousand samples were examined using high performance liquid chromatography, X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy, surface-enhanced Raman scattering and more, surveying the textiles to establish the red dye used and the material that was dyed. (3) By this means, she follows the dye from the New World to the Old World and back to the colonies and Asia. We are exposed to the political and economic history of European expansion, beginning with the New World. There is also social history related to the pursuit and distribution of New World products during colonization. All this made possible through the collaboration of scientists, archaeologists and historians.
Neolithic cave painting from Lascaux, France.
Phipps begins with prehistory, from which time the color red has been difficult to achieve, and thus a valuable and often sacred, hue for human societies. Neolithic cave painters frequently used ocher and other earth materials to create reddish colors. In Egypt, it was a protective color—Phipps cites The Book of Death and the description of Osiris as “the lord of the red cloth”—and early textile examples are tinted with finely-ground hematite (iron oxide). (5) Other options included cinnabar, powdered mercury (mercuric sulfide) red lead and mercury pigments used in both the New World and Old World. (As Phipps alludes, the toxic nature of these pigmentations is rather poignant for New World cultures that valued human blood above all else and as a sort of currency with the gods, which explains the rituals of human sacrifices.)
The next development, which actually achieves truly red textiles, was to move to the use of animal and plant sources for dye. For example, the following plants, Madder (Rubia tinctorum), safflower (Carthamus tinctoris) and alkanet (Anchusa tinctoria) were popular in Mesopotamia, Europe and Asia. (6)
Quick Latin lesson: Rubia tinctorum: Rubia, from the Latin adjective ruber, rubra, rubrum, meaning “red”; tinctorum, from the noun tincta, tinctorum, meaning “dyed cloths, colored stuffs”—related to the verb tingo, tinxi, tinctus, tinctere, meaning “to wet, moisten, dip bathe, imbue; to soak in color, dye, tinge.” The Madder’s blooms are white (the red coloring is derived from the root) suggesting that the scientific name comes from the practical usage of the plant, for which it was better known, than from its appearance.
In South East Asia, Africa, and South America a purplish red was produced from tropical heartwoods (brazilwood, camwood). In the Mediterranean, and places under its influence, Tyrian purple was produced from mollusks in the genus Murex and was the color of the wealthy or sacred, producing either a reddish-purple or deep bluish-purple. Brilliant crimson was achieved only from a group of scale insects of the Coccoidea superfamily—kermes, lac and cochineal. Middle East examples of the dye from this insect family date back to at least 714 B.C.E. (Assyrians under Sargon II invaded Urartu (Armenia) and acquired access). (6)
The image shows New World variety of cochineal, male and female, on the right, and being harvested on the cactus on the left.
It was the New World cochineal species, Dactylopius coccus, which yielded the most colorant—further improved by domestication and breeding! The species feeds on moisture and nutrients from fruit-bearing pear cactus endemic to subtropical Mexico and South America. While genetics research places the insect’s origin in South America, the New World cochineal was being used in Mexico and Peru as early as the 2nd century B.C.E. It was also a common tribute item in the medieval economy in Latin America. (10) In Mexico, the pre-conquest Matricula de tributes (Tribute List) is an early 16th century Mexican codex recording tribute owed to the Aztecs. This amatl(bark) paper folio tallied bags of dried cochineal insects in combination with the glyph for “twenty.” (12) The Mixtec of Oaxaca owed forty sacks among other goods and valuables (i.e. twenty jade belts, eight hundred quetzal feathers). The Spanish would later adopt and continue the Matricula, demanding the tribute previously owed to their supplanted predecessors. (13)
Phipps goes on to explain, from primary sources, how the cochineal was packaged and shipped to the Old World. In the Old World, she explains, the cochineal became an important trade item with restricted use as sumptuary laws dictated who may wear which colors. The Dutch became major manufacturers for the English, the Italians dyed the expensive fabrics coming in from the East, and the French crown would establish itself as a manufacturer of expensive, dyed textiles for the court at Versailles. Recipes for dyes using cochineal red were kept confidential by families and guilds as trade secrets. Salvages, or sewn “tags,” were used to identify garments as having been dyed with New World cochineal—a standard confirmed by Phipps and scientists. (32) In 1464, Pope Paul II officially changed the Cardinal Purple to red as the ancient Mediterranean dye source, the mollusk, which had dyed the clothing of the Roman emperors, the Roman Catholic higher clergy and European royalty, was suffering from over-use and had all but died out. Just in time for New World cochineal to enter onto the scene—Phipps says it was gold, silver and cochineal which built the Spanish empire. (26-7)
A coverlet from a set of bed hangings by Mary Breed of Stonington, Conn., 1750--cochineal pink-dyed wool embroidery.
The British colonies, meanwhile, were forbidden from acquiring cochineal directly from neighboring American harvesters, instead having to purchase finished products from Europe. Phipps reports on one incident in which English colonists salvaged packaged cochineal from a weather-wrecked Spanish galleon to sell the dried insects to fellow colonists more cheaply than they could purchase red-dyed goods from England. (37) The Spanish-ruled natives, though harvesting the cochineal insects, were forbidden to manufacture or wear cochineal red. (26)
Spanish trade routes brought cochineal to the Southwest American Indians—they also brought lac to the same region from India and Southeast Asia, where the use of red was often limited to accents. In fact, it was not until the introduction of American cochineal to the Chinese that they made fully red garments. (38-9) Spain jealously guarded its early monopoly, protecting the insect and its food source, though it would eventually be harvested on Guatemala, Iberia and the Canary Islands. Indonesia also began using American cochineal after the Dutch East India Company introduced the prickly pear cactus and cochineal to the Dutch colony on Java, in 1602. (41) The European demand continued to increase after the kermes from Persia and Armenia were lost through the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks. (43-4)
The work is richly informative and provides insight on Early Modern politics and economy from a unique perspective. Its brevity leads to numerous discussion points as many aspects of social history, are only touched on briefly or merely implied. While I will summarize three such points, here, I confess I am somewhat disappointed on this score after the passion and enthusiasm implied in her prologue (quoted at the beginning) where she suggested an excitement for the textile crafted by an individual’s hands. This implied personal connection is not felt throughout her exploration of the New World insect’s travels and influences.
The first of these points, is the brief anecdote relayed by the Spanish soldier, Captain Baltasar de Ocampo, who described the execution of the last living member of the Inca royal family, Tupac Amaru. As he was marched to his death Ocampo described the vivid Inca red attire worn by the king, including his Inca “crown” adorned with red fringe that hung over his forehead. Apparently, this was the lone marker of his being Inca, because Ocampo describes him as wearing a Spanish doublet! It is at this point that Phipps discusses the laws in the Spanish colonies and the sumptuary laws in Europe. (25-6) It is affecting that Tupac Amaru wore the traditional color of his rank, but could do it only in the clothing provided by his captors as they lead him to execution. In this instance, if we had the doublet, the language of the textile would have been one foreign to the man who wore it—the maker having no connection to the wearer.
The British Redcoat uniform.
Secondly, there is the almost passing reference to the Dutch supplying the English their red uniforms. Phipps says that in 1625 the Dutch employed fifty thousand people to dye woolens destined for England. Beginning, at this time and continuing until the late 19th century, the British army purchased cochineal red-dyed uniforms from the Dutch for its army. (28-9) This is instructive for students of American history who learn about young George Washington’s frustration with the habits and manners of the army under the successful British General Edward Braddock who seemed too arrogant to adapt to American realities of war (or, for that matter to grant officers’ commissions to the colonists). The very idea of camouflaging the army was entirely contrary to the point of the red coats. They were clearly meant to demonstrate the wealth and, thus, the power of the British crown. The bright scarlet coats sent a message to all opposing forces. The British army included other units in the 18th century who would wear green, a more concealing color, but the British red coat regiment was clearly intended to intimidate by being seen, marching with precision—to be a spectacle!
Europeans spread the color literally across the globe where it interacted with the local cultures creating new styles fused together by the young but active global economy. Phipps captures that sense of fashion and flair primarily with the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and some samples from other institutes. It is a beautiful way to follow world-altering historic events of such dramatic impact and variegated consequences.
RESOURCES for cochineal red:
In addition, to the secondary sources from Phipps’s work (below), there are the following video resources:
The videocast from the Metropolitan Museum of Art:
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