Hidden History: The 19th Century Slave Rebellions that Rocked the Southern Economy

Episode 7: The Birth of the Cotton South

A New History of the American South

Dr Edward Ayers (2018)

Film Review

This lecture mainly highlights the slave rebellions of the late 18th and early 19th century,  the western migration patterns of Southern colonists and the development of the South’s cotton economy.

During and after the Revolutionary War large numbers of slave rebellions were devastating to the Southern economy. In some cases entire plantations defected to the British, who promised slaves their freedom. Anticipating Britain’s prohibition on the North Atlantic slave trade*, after 1800 American slave traders steeply increased their import of African slaves. As slaves began to outnumber white settlers, rebellions also increased. Inspired by the 1791 revolution that ended slavery in Haiti, Gabriel’s Rebellion in 1800 was the largest Virginia  rebellion. The uprising was delayed by bad weather and ultimately put down by the Virginia militia.

Westward expansion was driven mainly by soil depletion in the coastal states, a growing population of settlers and the lure of easy profits. Daniel Boone led one of the first organized westward migrations in 1769, through a Native American trail the settlers renamed the Cumberland Gap. After Native Americans drove them back several times, settlers formed the first permanent Kentucky settlement in 1775.

Kentucky (1792) and Tennessee (1796) would be the first new states west of the Appalachians, with most new settlers migrating from the North via the Shenandoah Valley. Simultaneously, Louisiana’s Natchez District, formed by British loyalists in the 1770s, was also thriving. Both Virginia and South Carolina lost more than half their population after 1800 to western settlements, when the loss of British markets after the Revolutionary War caused their tobacco, indigo and rice economies to collapse.

With traditional Southern exports to Britain curtailed, new settlements were forced to find new crops. According to Ayers, cotton cultivation dates back to ancient Egypt, where it was produced for the priestly class. Although the Jamestown colony (1607) tried to grow cotton, there was a British embargo on cotton imports to protect their wool producers.

The great success of cotton in the South after 1800 stemmed in part from the discovery of a new rot resistant strain and Eli Whitney’s invention of a cotton gin to automate the labor intensive chore of separating cotton seed and fibers.**

Large cotton plantations originally appeared in central Georgia, after Native Americans signed treaties in 1783 and 1796 opening this land up to European farmers, as well as  Natchez Mississippi. Prior to 1800, vast areas of Mississippi, Alabama and western Georgia were still occupied by Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw and Creek tribes; Florida was still controlled by the Seminoles and Spanish; and Texas was still part of Mexico.

The 1790s also gave rise to the mass production of sugar in the South. Although Jesuit priests first introduced sugar to Louisiana in in 1751, the growing season there  was too short prior to the development of a new technology enabling growers to crystalize sugar from immature cane. Following the Haitian Revolution, thousands of European sugar planters fled to Louisiana. By 1830, the region had 691 sugar plantations. Northern speculators also flocked to the state, and by 1850 the number had reached 1500.

All these new plantations needed slaves, and with the end of the North Atlantic Slave trade in 1808, profiteers made fortunes “harvesting” existing states from failed farms in coastal states. Originally planters force marched their slaves into the western territories.  With the advent of the commercial steam engine, they traveled by steam boat or train.

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*Taking effect in 1808.

**Whitney’s invention was an improvement on the “roller gin,” originally invented by Native Americans in the 16th century

Film can be viewed free with a library card on Kanopy.

https://pukeariki.kanopy.com/video/birth-cotton-south

Link

Episode 2: The World of Slavery

A New History of the American South

Dr Edward L Ayers

Film Review

In this presentation, Ayers discusses how the organized, efficient and globally interconnected slave trade established a precedent for the smooth operation of global capitalism.

The Portuguese began industrial scale slave trading to furnish labor for sugar plantations in their main New World colony Brazil. The principle purpose of colonies was to furnish profit, and silver and gold, so plentiful in Spanish colonies were absent there.

Although England was the largest European market for tobacco, sugar cotton, dyes, spices and other products of slavery, they were slow to enter the slave trade themselves because they had an immense homeless* population they transported to the New World to provide cheap labor.

Although England began fishing for cod off the Newfoundland Banks from the early 1500s, they were slower to establish overseas colonies than the Portuguese or Spanish. In 1585, Queen Elizabeth commissioned Sir Walter Raleigh to found a colony on Roanoke Island Virginia to produce olive oil,** sugar and wine and provide a base for English ships to pirate the Brazilian and Spanish ships carrying gold and silver. Given Virginia was the same latitude as North Africa, Raleigh assumed it would have the same climate.

When English provision ships returned six months later, the 100 initial settlers had vanished. In Ayers view, they most likely abandoned the colony to live with neighboring Native Americans.

In 1607, English established a second colony in Jamestown Virginia, consisting mainly of English soldiers and war veterans. When a supply ship arrived with provisions six months late, only 38 of the original 104 will still alive. Although the Powhatan Confederacy objected to permanent European settlement on their land, they only killed the occasional settlers who strayed from the official colony. Most died of dysentery and typhoid after they contaminated their water supply with their own sewage.

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*England’s epidemic of homelessness stemmed from the Enclosure Acts (1604-1914) that drove 50% of its peasant population off their communal lands. See Forgotten History: The Theft of the Commons

**Whale oil was growing prohibitively expensive

The film can be viewed free with a library card on Kanopy

https://pukeariki.kanopy.com/video/world-slavery

The History of European Slave Trafficking

Slave Routes – A Short History of Human Trafficking

Part 2 For All the Gold in the World

DW (2020)

Film Review

In 1441, the Portuguese were the first Europeans to establish a foothold on the African continent. Portugal was still embroiled in the Crusades and thought an African military presence would confer an advantage in battling Muslim Arabs.*

The Portuguese intended to pay for their African military adventures with gold from Africa’s Gold Coast. In the end, the triangular trade they set up exported slaves they exported to Sao Tome** sugar plantations. The sugar they exported from Sao Tome made Lisbon the richest city in Europe.

Within decades, the Flemish, German, Venetians and Genoese also established slave trading outposts in Africa. As Europeans began to expand south of the Equator, the came in contact with the kingdom of Kongo. As the Islamic Empire had no prior ties with Kongo, the king converted to Christianity and was the first in southern African to establish a major trading relationship with Europeans.

Fond of Portuguese luxuries, the Kongo aristocracy became the kingdom’s first slave traders. They sold slaves to mine gold in Akan (north of Kongo), as well as to Sao Tome to grow sugar. As slaves were notoriously overworked (14+ hour days) and underfed, it was rare for them to survive more than 10-15 years. This meant they had to be continual replaced.

In 1595, after a series of armed slave uprisings in Sao Tome, the Portuguese abandoned the island’s sugar plantations and began transporting African slaves to Brazil and the Caribbean.

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*The Crusades didn’t end until 1453, when Constantinople fell to Muslim invaders. In other words, the Europeans lost.

**Sao Tome is an island off the West African Coast

Film can be viewed on Enhance TV at https://www.enhancetv.com.au/video/slavery-routes-for-all-the-gold-in-the-world/52102

 

Fat: Why the Medical Establishment Gets It Wrong

Fat: A Documenary

Directed by Peter Curtis Pardini (2019)

Film Review

This 2019 documentary provides an update in the ongoing battle to get the American Diabetic Association, the American Heart Association, the Dieticians Association of Australia, and similar public health organizations to acknowledge research evidence that the low fat high carbohydrate diet they promote is largely responsible for the epidemic of obesity, diabetes and cancer (the most common medical conditions linked to COVID19 deaths) that is currently sweeping the industrialized world.

The film features investigative science and health journalists Nina Teicholz and Gary Taubes, the handful of doctors and scientists who have actually reviewed the relevant research, and four parents who did battle with the rigidly dogmatic medical establishment. In both cases, parents saved their kids (one with refractory epilepsy and the other with insulin-resistant diabetes) lives by putting them on a ketogenic diet.* .

Filmmakers interview researchers who assert research has never been done linking high cholesterol levels with high cholesterol intake. All dietary cholesterol is totally broken down during digestion. The liver produces the cholesterol found in the blood to fight inflammation.

Likewise there is no credible research evidence linking high saturated fat intake with heart disease. Evidence suggesting otherwise includes the 1928 Bellevue Study (revealing people on an all meat diet have greater overall resistance to disease); seven decades of research indicating 50-70% of children with refractory seizures benefit from ketogenic diets; the Warburg Effect (demonstrating the beneficial effect of starving cancer cells of glucose), the !973 Minnesota Coronary study revealing that low fat carbohydrate diets don’t reverse the incidence of hearth disease; John Judkins 1972 book Pure, White and Deadly, warning of the dangers of sugar; and numerous longitudinal studies showing low carbohydrate diets can reverse type II diabetes, as well as lowering the risk of heart disease and obesity.

Unlike earlier films on this topic, Fat delves more into the psychological factors that cause medical and public health officials to stick so tenaciously to unscientific myths (including those around vaccination and fluoridation) as a growing body of research debunks them.

The conclusion filmmakers reach is an ugly one – for medical professionals to reverse themselves on the low fat high carbohydrate diet would force them to acknowledge their role in the premature death of hundreds (or possibly thousands) of their patients.

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*The ketogenic diet is a high-fat, adequate-protein, low-carbohydrate diet that forces the body to burn fats rather than carbohydrates. It’s commonly used to treat refractory epilepsy.

 

Why Castro and Che Guevara Split

 

 

 

Revolutionary Friends

Al Jazeera (2017)

Film Review

This is a documentary about Fidel Castro, Che Guevara and the 1959 Cuban Revolution. In addition to exploring the revolution’s early history, the filmmakers trace how Cuba came to rely on the Soviet Union for its economic survival – and how the Soviets forced Castro to exile Che from Cuba for political reasons.

After traveling extensively through South America, Che Guevara, deeply affected by the extreme poverty and exploitation he saw, was totally committed to “permanent revolution.”* In contrast Soviet leaders were committed to socialism in one country and “peaceful coexistence with the US.” They opposed Che’s guerilla activities in Africa and Latin America owing to the potential threat they posed to US-Soviet relations.

The most interesting part of the film reveals that the CIA initially supported Castro’s guerillas  with arms, funding and US volunteers because they viewed him as “easy to control.” It contains priceless footage of Castro denouncing communism (in English) to an American audience and calling for Cuban “representative democracy.”

In February 1959, the US initially recognizes Castro as Cuba’s new prime minister. A few months later, he appoints Che (an avowed Marxist) to head the Cuban national bank. The US responds by blocking all credit to Cuban banks. Castro retaliates by nationalizing Cuba’s American businesses. The US government, in turn, blocks all Cuban sugar imports.

Given that 90% of the Cuban economy is based on trade with the US, the country is on the verge of collapse. Castro is left with no choice but to ally himself with the USSR to trade Cuban sugar for oil and financial aid.

Under Soviet direction, Castro ends Che’s governmental role in 1963 and sends him on a series of foreign missions.After several speeches critical of Soviet leaders (for failing to support third world guerilla movements), Che angers them further by cultivating relations with China, just as the USSR and China are becoming estranged.

After an unsuccessful campaign with guerilla fighters in the Congo, Castro sends Che to Bolivia, where he and ten fighters who accompany him are stranded without weapons, food, medicine or support from the Bolivian Communist Party. On October 9, 1976, Che is wounded in a firefight with Bolivian security services. He is subsequently captured and executed.

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*As envisioned by Leon Trotsky, this refers to a country’s continuing revolutionary progress being dependent on a continuing process of revolution in other countries.

This film can’t be embedded for copyright reasons. It can be viewed free until April 7 at the Al Jazeera website: Che Guevara Fidel Castro Revolutionary Friends

Coke or Pepsi? History of a Global Sugar Addiction

The Cola Wars Documentary

History Channel 1990

Film Review

Coca Cola was first produced in 1886, when cocaine, morphine and alcohol were common patent medicine ingredients. The immediate predecessor to Coke was a concoction produced by Atlanta pharmacist John Pemberton called French Wine Cola, containing cocaine, alcohol and caffeine. When Atlanta outlawed alcohol sales In 1885, Pemberton left the patent medicine business to produce his renamed Coca Cola for the increasingly popular soda fountain trade. His first version combined cocaine with kola nut extract (a stimulant).

Pemberton, a cocaine addict, sold the company to another pharmacist Asa Kandler shortly before his death in 1889. Kandler added more sugar to disguise the medicinal taste and citric acid to disguise the excessive sweetness. In 1916, he began bottling it as well as dispensing syrup to soda foundations.

Pepsi Cola, Coke’s arch rival, was also invented by a pharmacist in Newburn, North Carolina in 1898. It’s name was deliberately deceptive, as it never contained either pepsin (an aid to digestion) nor kola nut extract.

During World War II, Coca Cola gained the upper hand by making an agreement with the US government to be the exclusive soft drink provider to US troops stationed in Europe and the Pacific. The agreement also exempted from the sugar ration, which virtually crippled Pepsi Cola.

In 1985, after Coke made the disastrous misstep of secretly changing the coke formula to make it taste more like Pepsi, the company faced a massive backlash from Coke drinkers, briefly making Pepsi the number one soft drink in the world. Three months later they re-introduced the original formula as “Classic Coke.”

 

The Crusades: Europe’s First Imperialist War of Colonization

The Crusades: An Arab Perspective

Al Jazeera (2016)

Film Review

The Crusades is a fascinating history of a subject that was quite new to me, as Americans rarely study the Crusades in school. Despite the title, the expert commentators represent a balance of French and English historians, as well as Muslim scholars from various Middle Eastern universities. Most of the documentary series consists of historical re-enactment of papal enclaves, battles, sieges, treaty signings and other historical events. The filmmakers use a series of maps to plot the progress of European occupation of Jerusalem and the Levantine* coast, as well the eventual liberation of these territories in the 13^th century.

The documentary leaves absolutely no doubt that the Crusades were an imperialist campaign of colonization – and not religious wars, as is commonly claimed. Whenever European crusaders conquered a specific city or region, they indiscriminately slaughtered most of the inhabitants, whether they were Muslims, Jews or fellow Christians. The entire fourth Crusade (1203) was devoted to sacking the greatest Christian city in the world (Constantinople), whose residents were mainly Byzantine Greeks.

Part 4 is my favorite because it focuses on the role of the Crusades and Muslim influence in facilitating the European Renaissance of the 14th-15th centuries. When the Crusades began in 1085, the vast majority of Europeans (99%) were illiterate, whereas Middle East cities enjoyed an advanced flourishing civilization (as did India, China, Africa and North and South America prior to European colonization). When occupying crusaders were finally defeated and forced to return to Europe in 1291, they took with them advanced knowledge of Arab military tactics and agriculture, sugar cultivation, medicine, algebra, glass manufacturing and Greek philosophers ( whose work had been translated and preserved by Muslim scholars.

Part 1 – covers the role of Pope Gregory and Pope Irwin in instigating the disastrous Peoples Crusade and the first Crusade (1086-1099), resulting in the sacking and occupation of Jerusalem (lasting nearly 200 years).

Part 2 – covers the fragmented Muslim resistance to the expansion of European occupation, hindered by both religious (Sunni vs Shia) conflict and tribal rivalries. It’s during this period (1100-1127) the term hashshashin (origin of the English words assassin and hashish) came into usage, owing to the Shia assassins hired to secretly kill Sunni military commanders. Between 1127-1143 a Muslim revival led to the liberation of numerous crusader strongholds, and the launch of a second crusade by Pope Eugene, Louis VII of France and Conrad III of Germany.

Part 3 – describes the rise of Salah Ad-Din (known in in Europe as Saladin), who unified rival Muslim armies and by 1187 retook all crusader strongholds except Jerusalem. This led to the launch of the third Crusade by Philip II (France), Frederick I (Germany) and Richard the Lion Hearted (England) This was followed by the fourth Crusade, which sacked Constantinople; the failed fifth Crusade (1213); the sixth Crusade in which Frederick II (Germany) retook Jerusalem by treaty and the failed seventh Crusade, led by Louis IX of France (1248). In 1244, Muslim armies retook Jerusalem, which remained under their control until it became part of the British protectorate of Palestine with the defeat of the Ottoman Empire.

Part 4 – in addition to outlining the cultural riches Europe gained from the Crusades, Part 4 also explores how Europe’s medieval colonization of the Middle East laid the groundwork for the eventual European colonization of North Africa and the Middle East (in 1917), with the formation of the state of Israel in 1948 representing a major milestone in this re-colonization.

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*Levantine – a term describing a region on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea north of the Arabian Peninsula and south of Turkey, usually including the area of Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, and Syria.

The Hidden Sugar in Processed Food

That Sugar Film

Directed by Damon Gameau (2014)

Film Review

Last night Maori TV showed the Australian documentary That Sugar Film. So far it’s the best documentary I have seen about the western world’s sugar addiction and the 50 years of fake science (sponsored by the food industry) resulting in the cult of the “low fat diet.” Sadly the low fat diet – the major culprit in our current global epidemic of obesity, diabetes, heart disease and cancer – continues to be promoted by many western doctors and public health officials.

The film starts by tracing the original domestication of sugar in New Guinea. From New Guinea sugar cultivation traveled to India, which would be colonized by the British in the 1600s. During the 17th century, sugar was a status symbol for royalty.

Sugar consumption in western society was fairly moderate until 1955, when President Eisenhower’s heart attack highlighted the growing incidence of heart disease. Battle lines were drawn in the scientific community between the American Ancel Keys, who blamed increasing heart disease on fat, and British scientist John Yudkin, who blamed it on sugar. Thanks to a small fortune the food industry spent on studies demonizing fat and lionizing sugar (and major donations they made to US politicians and advocacy groups such as the American Heart Association), by the 1970s Keys had won out and the cult of the low fat diet was institutionalized.

Despite the total absence of independent research, doctors, dieticians and public health officials persuaded millions of patients to eliminate fat from their diets. Owing to shocking levels of sugar in processed foods, the vast majority inadvertently replaced the fat with sugar.

Australian filmmaker Damon Gameau replicates this process through an experiment in which he replaces the fats in his diet with supposedly “healthy” processed foods such as low fat yogurt, muesli (granola), fruit juice and smoothies and beans on toast (a favorite comfort food in Australia and New Zealand). The conditions of his new diet are that he must consume 40 teaspoons of sugar a day without eating any candy, deserts or junk food.

His doctor monitors him very closely throughout the experiment. In less than a month he has put on significant weight (without increasing his caloric intake) and is showing signs of liver damage. He is also experiencing major mood swings and bursts of hyperactivity similar to children with ADHD.

Available on the Maori TV website for the next two weeks: That Sugar Film

1493 and the Hidden History of Industrial Capitalism

1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created

By Charles C Mann

Vintage Books (2012)

Book Review

1493 is a fascinating book tracing a totally neglected aspect of the rise of capitalism and industrial civilization – namely the transfer of new crops, livestock, trees, diseases, guano (nitrogen-rich bird poop, silver and diverse ethnic groups to every continent except Antarctica. Based on his detailed investigations, Mann cites numerous examples of major historical events and movements that can be directly traced to this “Columbian Exchange.”

Mann begins by tracing the history of tobacco, which was first transferred from the lower Amazon to Jamestown Virginia, and from there to China. An immensely popular drug of addiction, it provided the cash England needed to support colonization of the South-eastern US.

He next focuses on the potato, which was transferred from the Andes in South America to Northern Europe, where it replaced wheat as the staple crop in Ireland, northern Germany, Belgium and Russia (potatoes flourish in colder climates and on more marginal land than wheat and are four times more productive). Thanks to the introduction of the potato, Europe was finally able to end the famines that occurred every ten years. At a time, when China, India and various African and South American civilizations were far more advanced than Europe, the main factor holding back European development was its inability to feed its population.

Next Mann covers the important of sugar (originally domesticated in New Guinea) to the West Indies and the importation of coffee and bananas (to South America) from Africa.

African Slaves Resistant to Malaria

He devotes a whole section to the transfer of diseases, which played a significant role in wiping out America’s indigenous population, to the New World. I was previously aware that new settlers also brought malaria with them. This often fatal illness was endemic to England in the 1500s – thanks to misguided schemes to reclaim wetlands for agriculture. The high prevalence of malaria meant that 8 out of 10 settlers in Jamestown and other southern colonies could be expected to die in the first 18 months. Mann makes a case that the natural resistance present in slaves from West and Central Africa** was a main factor in England (a historically antislavery nation) turning to slaves in their desperation to establish a labor force to work the tobacco fields.

Silver, Sweet Potatoes and the Downfall of China

The chapter on the role of the Columbian Exchange in the downfall of China as the most prosperous, politically developed and culturally sophisticated country in the world is also extremely enlightening. I was totally unaware that between 1/3 and 1/2 of all the silver mined in 16^th century Peru was transported to China via the Philippines for use in their monetary system. Nor the importance of sweet potatoes and maize (which, like potatoes, thrive on marginal land) in feeding poor farmers displaced by China’s dynastic wars. China is still the number one world producer of sweet potatoes.

Why the US was the Last to Free Their Slaves

For me, the most interesting section was the one on slavery, particularly the chapter on the “maroon”*** revolts and guerilla warfare that forced Central and South America to abolish slavery long before the US did. Except for Florida, escaped slaves in the US tended not to form rebellious maroon enclaves. The reason, according to Mann, was their difficulty surviving on their own in a colder climate and the opportunity for legal freedom if they fled to the North.

In Florida, escaped slaves formed alliances with the Seminole Indians. Their guerilla bands conducted continual attacks (with covert British support) on Georgia – until 1839 when Florida maroons were granted their freedom if they agreed to resettle of the Mississippi.

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*The Columbian Exchange was the widespread transfer of plants, animals, culture, human populations, technology, and ideas between the Americas and the Old World in the 15th and 16th centuries, related to European colonization and trade after Christopher Columbus’s 1492 voyage.

**Approximately 97% of people indigenous to West and Central Africa are resistant to malaria owing to the presence of the Duffy Negative Antigen.

***Maroon is a term applied to fugitive black slaves.

How the Sugar Industry Blocks Health Research: A Thirty Year Scandal

The Case Against Sugar

Gary Taubes (2017)

Taubes is an investigative journalist whose main focus is the deplorable state of public health research in the US.

During the 1990s, Taubes cut his teeth debunking the shoddy studies leading to public health recommendations that salt in the diet leads to high blood pressure and heart disease (which turn out to be totally groundless). He followed this with a series of exposes on the biased studies erroneously linking saturated (animal) fat to obesity, heart disease and cancer. These studies, and the infamous “low fat diet” western doctors have been pushing for nearly fifty years have been a major culprit in our current global epidemic of obesity, diabetes, cancer and tooth decay (see The Role of Western Medicine in the Epidemic of Obesity, Diabetes, Heart Disease and Tooth Decay).

His most recent book, The Case Against Sugar, focuses on a successful 30-year effort by the sugar industry to shut down independent research into sugar as a major causative agent in these chronic illnesses.

He maintains a big part of the problem was the demise of German and Austrian research into obesity after World War II. This European research, informed by the developing fields of genetics, metabolism and endocrinology, supported a hormonal regulatory defect as the primary cause of obesity. Lacking this background in genetics, metabolism and endocrinology, US researchers were blinded by their puritanical bias that lack of willpower causes obesity. With the discovery of metabolic syndrome and insulin resistance (both aggravated by high sugar and carbohydrate diets), it turns out the European researchers had it right all along

For me, the most interesting part of this talk is Taubes’ discussion of sugar’s role as an addictive drug. I had no idea the tobacco industry began adding sugar to their cigarettes in 1954 to make them more addictive. I also like the point he makes about sugar, along with rum, chocolate and tobacco, being important New World discoveries to cheaply dull the pain of oppressed workers under industrial capitalism.