Popular Controversies in World History: Investigating History's Intriguing Questions, Volume 3: The High Middle Ages to the Modern World

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Author: Steven Danver

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Popular Controversies in World History

© 2011 ABC-Clio. All Rights Reserved.

Volume One

Prehistory and Early Civilizations

Volume Two

The Ancient World to the Early Middle Ages

Volume Three The High Middle Ages to the Modern World Volume Four

The Twentieth Century to the Present


Popular Controversies in World History INVESTIGATING HISTORY’S INTRIGUING QUESTIONS

Volume Three The High Middle Ages to the Modern World Steven L. Danver, Editor


Copyright 2011 by ABC-CLIO, LLC All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Popular controversies in world history : investigating history’s intriguing questions / Steven L. Danver, editor. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-59884-077-3 (hard copy : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-1-59884-078-0 (ebook) 1. History—Miscellanea. 2. Curiosities and wonders. I. Danver, Steven Laurence. D24.P67 2011 909—dc22 2010036572 ISBN: 978-1-59884-077-3 EISBN: 978-1-59884-078-0 14 13

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This book is also available on the World Wide Web as an eBook. Visit www.abc-clio.com for details. ABC-CLIO, LLC 130 Cremona Drive, P.O. Box 1911 Santa Barbara, California 93116-1911 This book is printed on acid-free paper Manufactured in the United States of America


Contents

VOLUME ONE Prehistory and Early Civilizations Introduction, xv List of Contributors, xix CHAPTER 1 Tool use is characteristic of hominids and apes, but not of other animal species, 1 PRO Talaat Shehata CON Patrick G. Zander CHAPTER 2 Agriculture, or the domestication of plants, diffused from its start in the Middle East to the rest of the world, 23 PRO Olena Smyntyna CON Harald Haarmann CHAPTER 3 The Great Flood referred to in the Book of Noah and in Gilgamesh resulted from the flooding of the Black Sea by an influx of higher-level water from the Mediterranean via the Dardenelles and Bosporus, 51 PRO Harald Haarmann CON John Lee CHAPTER 4 Much of what is now considered to be Classic culture actually has Afroasiatic roots, 75 PRO Talaat Shehata CON Harald Haarmann

v © 2011 ABC-Clio. All Rights Reserved.

vi | Contents

CHAPTER 5 China’s head start in technological innovation was retarded by its efficient and centralized imperial government, 103 PRO Talaat Shehata CON John Lee CHAPTER 6 The findings of Neolithic drawings at C ¸ atalh€ oy€ uk in Turkey are a fraud, 127 PRO Justin Corfield CON Harald Haarmann CHAPTER 7 The existence of Atlantis is not entirely mythical, 149 PRO Laszlo Kocsis CON Cheryl Golden CHAPTER 8 Lemuria is not the invention of religious enthusiasts, but rather, actually existed, 179 PRO Laszlo Kocsis CON Claire Brennan CHAPTER 9 Native American peoples came to North and South America by boat as well as by land bridge, 207 PRO Peter N. Jones CON James Seelye CHAPTER 10 The ancient Egyptians used volunteers, not slaves, to build the pyramids, 227 PRO Harald Haarmann CON Talaat Shehata CHAPTER 11 Ancient Egyptian obelisks were raised by a hitherto undiscovered technology, 249 PRO Talaat Shehata CON Patrick G. Zander CHAPTER 12 The Beta Israel (or Falasha) People of Ethiopia are one of the Lost Tribes of Israel, 271 PRO Barry Stiefel CON Talaat Shehata


Contents | vii

CHAPTER 13 Ancient findings of Ancient Babylonian cities confirm the Old Testament, 295 PRO Benjamin D. Thomas CON Thaddeus Nelson Index, 317 VOLUME TWO The Ancient World to the Early Middle Ages Introduction, xv List of Contributors, xix CHAPTER 1 The Ark of the Covenant is in Axum, Ethiopia, 1 PRO Talaat Shehata CON Thaddeus Nelson CHAPTER 2 The Greek city-states were ‘‘democratic’’ by our modern American definition, 21 PRO Cenap C ¸ akmak CON John Lee CHAPTER 3 The Ogham Celtic script is derived from the Norse Rune script, 43 PRO Justin Corfield CON Harald Haarmann CHAPTER 4 The ‘‘Trial of Socrates,’’ described by Plato, was an actual event that occurred in 399 BCE, rather than merely a philosophical device used by Sophists in teaching Apologia, 63 PRO Todd W. Ewing CON John Lee CHAPTER 5 Pushyamitra Sunga, a Hindu ruler in the second century persecutor of the Buddhists, 83 PRO Caleb Simmons CON K. T. S. Sarao


BCE,

was a great

viii | Contents

CHAPTER 6 The Shroud of Turin is actually the wrapping shroud of Jesus, 103 PRO Justin Corfield CON Thaddeus Nelson CHAPTER 7 A Staffordshire inscription points to the location of the Holy Grail; it may be in Wales, 125 PRO John Lee CON Juliette Wood CHAPTER 8 Nestorius did not intend to argue that Christ had a dual nature, but that view became labeled Nestorianism, 145 PRO Mark Dickens CON Annette Morrow CHAPTER 9 The Celtic Church that arose after 400 CE as distinct from Roman Catholicism is a modern construct, rather than a historical reality, 175 PRO Michael Greaney CON Joseph P. Byrne CHAPTER 10 The inhabitants of Easter Island who erected the monoliths were from South America, not from Polynesia, 203 PRO Chris Howell CON Harald Haarmann CHAPTER 11 The Roman Empire’s collapse was primarily due to social and political problems rather than the Barbarian invasions, 229 PRO Heather Buchanan CON Laszl o Kocsis CHAPTER 12 The Hawaiian and other Polynesian seafarers developed navigation methods based on observation of constellations and currents, so that they could sail intentionally from Tahiti to Hawaii and back, 257 PRO Harald Haarmann CON Claire Brennan


Contents | ix

CHAPTER 13 The Toltecs and Maya developed wheels for religious reasons, but not for wheelbarrows or other practical uses. The reason is that they had sufficient slave labor, 281 PRO Talaat Shehata CON Harald Haarmann CHAPTER 14 Native American languages can be traced to three grand linguistic roots, 301 PRO Harald Haarmann CON Peter N. Jones CHAPTER 15 The historical Buddha was born in 563 PRO Anita Sharma CON K. T. S. Sarao

BCE

and lived to 483 BCE, 325

Index, 347 VOLUME THREE The High Middle Ages to the Modern World Introduction, xv List of Contributors, xix CHAPTER 1 North American rune stones point to extensive exploration by the Norse of North America, 1 PRO Justin Corfield CON Harald Haarmann CHAPTER 2 The Ancestral Puebloans lined up their communities so that, although miles apart, they could signal each other with fires by line of sight to communicate, 25 PRO Linda Karen Miller CON Peter N. Jones CHAPTER 3 The Mayan kingdoms died out from disease, 49 PRO Justin Corfield CON Chris Howell


x | Contents

CHAPTER 4 The Chinese explorations of the 1420s reached both coasts of North and South America, 69 PRO Justin Corfield CON Eric Cunningham CHAPTER 5 The technologies that allowed Europe to dominate the world were all imported from the East: compass, lateen-rigged sail, gunpowder, windmill, stirrup, moveable type, 93 PRO David Blanks CON Talaat Shehata CHAPTER 6 Richard III was innocent of the charge of murder, 117 PRO Charles Beem CON Jeffrey Mifflin CHAPTER 7 Columbus intentionally underestimated the circumference of Earth in order to get funding, 141 PRO Talaat Shehata CON Joseph P. Byrne CHAPTER 8 European pathogens caused the decline of Cahokia and Mississippian mound builders, 165 PRO Chris Howell CON James Seelye CHAPTER 9 Shakespeare’s plays were written by someone other than William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon, 191 PRO Alexander Hugo Schulenburg CON Jeffrey Mifflin CHAPTER 10 Galileo willfully violated the injunctions of the Inquisition and was thus guilty at his 1633 trial, 225 PRO Joseph P. Byrne CON Arthur K. Steinberg CHAPTER 11 The Man in the Iron Mask was Count Ercole Antonio Mattioli, 249 PRO Justin Corfield CON Heather K. Michon


Contents | xi

CHAPTER 12 Prince Louis Charles (Louis XVII), also known as the ‘‘Lost Dauphin,’’ survived captivity during the French Revolution and was allowed to escape in 1795, 267 PRO John Lee CON Lorri Brown CHAPTER 13 Charles Darwin got his idea of evolution from ‘‘social Darwinist’’ Herbert Spencer who published first, 287 PRO Ian Morley CON A. J. Angelo CHAPTER 14 Slavery was unprofitable for slave owners, 309 PRO Radica Mahase CON Jerry C. Drake CHAPTER 15 Lincoln maneuvered the South into firing the first shot at Fort Sumter, 333 PRO Rolando Avila CON Lee Oberman Index, 355 VOLUME FOUR The Twentieth Century to the Present Introduction, xv List of Contributors, xix CHAPTER 1 The Progressive movement in the United States and in other countries in the first decade of the 20th century represented a middle-class, conservative reaction against the rise of both big business and big labor that had created a status revolution, 1 PRO Kevin Wilson CON Arthur K. Steinberg CHAPTER 2 The captain of the ship Californian was guilty of gross negligence in not coming to the rescue of the survivors of the Titanic, 25 PRO Tim J. Watts CON Elizabeth D. Schafer


xii | Contents

CHAPTER 3 The assassins of Archduke Ferdinand were funded by the Serbian government, 49 PRO Laszlo Kocsis CON Steve Garrin CHAPTER 4 The deaths of over one million Armenians in Turkey were due to a Turkish government policy of genocide, 83 PRO James Frusetta CON Cenap C ¸ akmak CHAPTER 5 The British had shipped weapons aboard the Lusitania, in effect using women and children as ‘‘human shields’’ for a war cargo, 107 PRO Ardhana Mudambi CON Justin Corfield CHAPTER 6 Woodrow Wilson’s neutrality in World War I was so blatantly pro-British that he forced the Germans into attacking U.S. shipping, 127 PRO Walter F. Bell CON Justin Corfield CHAPTER 7 Mahatma Gandhi would not have been a world leader without the influence of Rabindranath Tagore, 147 PRO Rajini Pani CON Rajshekhar CHAPTER 8 Sacco and Vanzetti were innocent, 171 PRO Annessa Babic CON Arthur K. Steinberg CHAPTER 9 Warren Harding was murdered, rather than dying of food poisoning, 193 PRO Elizabeth D. Schafer CON Kimberly K. Porter CHAPTER 10 Marcus Garvey was ‘‘railroaded,’’ 217 PRO Kelton R. Edmonds CON Tim J. Watts


Contents | xiii

CHAPTER 11 Franklin D. Roosevelt had knowledge of an impending Japanese attack and used Pearl Harbor as an excuse to spur American entry into World War II, 241 PRO Rolando Avila CON Paul W. Doerr CHAPTER 12 Alger Hiss’s 1950 conviction for espionage was not an example of Cold War hysteria. He was a Soviet spy and deserved his punishment, 263 PRO Jeffrey H. Bloodworth CON Annessa Babic CHAPTER 13 John F. Kennedy was elected U.S. president in 1960 only because of voter fraud committed by his connections in the mafia, 287 PRO Christian Nuenlist CON John H. Barnhill CHAPTER 14 Lee Harvey Oswald was not the sole assassin of John F. Kennedy, 309 PRO Rajshekhar CON Tim J. Watts CHAPTER 15 Considering the refusal of Saddam Hussein to comply with United Nations– imposed inspections, it was reasonable for George W. Bush and his advisers to assume that Iraq harbored weapons of mass destruction and that justified the invasion, 333 PRO Dan Tamir CON Christian Nuenlist Index, 361


Introduction

In the countless history courses I’ve taught over the years, the one question that invariably appears at some point (usually from a nonmajor who has to take the course for some general education requirement) is: ‘‘Why should we study history?’’ This is not an idle question, but an esoteric one that goes to the heart of what history is and what it can tell us. Usually, the student asking that question has the notion that history consists of a static set of ‘‘facts,’’ unchanging (or, at least, it should not change) and ultimately meaningless for modern life. Students often buy into Henry Ford’s famous take on the subject, ‘‘history is more or less bunk,’’ rather than George Santayana’s maxim, ‘‘those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.’’ In the end, neither of these perspectives is especially true or helpful. This is because both writing history and understanding history are complex activities. They are our attempts to make sense of the past, usually drawing from incomplete or biased accounts of what actually happened. Even when the accounts are complete, the interpretations of history can vary radically depending on the perspective of the person writing. Perhaps the best explanation of the problem comes from the novelist Aldous Huxley, who, in his novel The Devils of Loudun, said ‘‘The charm of history and its enigmatic lesson consist in the fact that, from age to age, nothing changes and yet everything is completely different.’’ This work proceeds on the assumption that history is not a subject, but rather an activity. The activity of history engages the capability of students to use reason. On a purely anecdotal basis, I’ve asked many of my colleagues which skills they believed were the most important for their students to possess a high proficiency in when they begin college. Almost invariably, the two top answers were writing and critical thinking. In Taxonomy of Learning, developed in 1956 by Benjamin Bloom as an effort to show the evolution of mental skills in pyramidal form, critical thinking skills are integral to the third and fourth levels: application and analysis. The students who ask why it is important to study history are proceeding on the assumption that history is only an activity that engages the first two levels: knowledge and comprehension. If that were all there is to history, then Ford may have been right. However, application and xv © 2011 ABC-Clio. All Rights Reserved.

xvi | Introduction

analysis are also key to understanding, without which one cannot reach the final two levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy—synthesis and evaluation—which are essential to the creation of history. So, to summarize, critical thinking skills are key to moving from the first two levels—knowledge and comprehension—to the highest levels—synthesis and evaluation. In order to understand and, eventually, to write history, critical thinking is the transitional, indispensable skill. Judging once again from my unscientific survey of my colleagues, it is one of the skills with which many students who are entering college struggle. This realization was the genesis of this project. Popular Controversies in World History takes as its subjects the topics over which there has been considerable historical debate. Some of these topics will not be familiar to students, but many of them will. Did the Great Flood, described in both the biblical book of Genesis and the Epic of Gilgamesh, actually happen? Is the lost continent of Atlantis just a myth, or was really such a place? Is the Shroud of Turin the actual burial cloth of Jesus Christ? Was William Shakespeare the sole author of all of the plays attributed to him? Who was the ‘‘man in the iron mask’’? Did Franklin D. Roosevelt allow the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor to happen as a pretext for the U.S. entrance into World War II? Did Lee Harvey Oswald act alone in assassinating John F. Kennedy in Dallas? These questions and more reveal that history is not a static set of facts, but rather a living, expanding set of ideas and interpretations. To understand those interpretations and formulate those ideas, critical thinking skills are paramount in importance. The purpose of this work is to present the varying perspectives on events like these. These topics, as well as the ability to think critically about them, are vitally important parts of the social science curriculum at both the secondary and postsecondary levels. Each chapter takes a particular topic that has generated controversy either within the historical profession or in society as a whole and offers pro and con points of view, allowing readers to draw their own conclusions. The work covers all eras of human history, both before and after the advent of the written record. Each chapter in Popular Controversies in World History is formatted in the style of a historical debate, with a ‘‘pro’’ and a ‘‘con’’ section that presents contrasting perspectives. In most cases, both of these perspectives are or have been widely held within academia and supported by scholarship. The readers are then given the opportunity to exercise their critical thinking skills to evaluate the evidence presented by each side, to assess the validity of the arguments made by the authors, and eventually to determine which conclusions they accept or reject. Of course, I could never have presented these arguments, ranging across so many eras and subdisciplines of history, by myself. This work represents the efforts of 62 other scholars with whom I have had the privilege to work. In addition, much of the early work on this project, especially determining the format to be used to accomplish our goals and formulation of the various questions


Introduction | xvii

to be debated, was done in conjunction with Geoff Golson, to whom I give due credit. I’d also like to thank the editorial and production staff at ABC-CLIO, including David Tipton, editorial manager; Barbara Patterson, who administered the considerable paperwork involved; Kim Kennedy-White, who helped me refine the manuscript submissions; and Donald Schmidt and his team, who oversaw the production work to turn the manuscript into a book. Without the efforts of such a fantastic team, this work would not have been possible. References Bloom, Benjamin S., et al., eds. Taxonomy of Educational Objectives: The Classification of Educational Goals. New York: Longmans, Green, 1956. Huxley, Aldous. The Devils of Loudun. New York: Harper, 1952, p. 259. Santayana, George. Life of Reason, Reason in Common Sense. New York: Scribner’s, 1905, p. 284.


Contributor List

Claire Brennan James Cook University, Townsville, Australia Justin Corfield Geelong Grammar School, Geelong, Australia Cheryl Golden Newman University, Wichita, Kansas Harald Haarmann Institute of Archaeomythology, Luum€ aki, Finland Peter N. Jones Bauu Institute, Boulder, Colorado Laszlo Kocsis South East European University, Tetovo, Macedonia John Lee Utah Valley State University, Orem, Utah Thaddeus Nelson Columbia University, New York, New York James Seelye University of Toledo, Toledo, Ohio Talaat Shehata Columbia University, New York, New York Olena Smyntyna Odessa National University, Odessa, Ukraine Barry Stiefel Tulane University, New Orleans, Louisiana

xix © 2011 ABC-Clio. All Rights Reserved.

xx | List of Contributors

Benjamin D. Thomas University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois Patrick G. Zander Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Georgia


1 North American rune stones point to extensive exploration by the Norse of North America. PRO Justin Corfield CON Harald Haarmann

PRO There have long been sagas that recorded the Vikings—or Norsemen, as they were known at the time—sailing across the Atlantic Ocean. They certainly established settlements in Iceland and Greenland, including the west coast of Greenland. There are also two Icelandic sagas, the Greenlander’s saga and Erik’s saga, recording the locating of what became known as Vinland. Both of these record how Erik the Red who, outlawed from Iceland in the late 10th century, sailed for Greenland and built a colony there. In ca. 985–986, a Norse leader named Bjarni, whose father had sailed with Erik the Red, while at sea, was blown off course by a violent storm and ended up on the coast of a place that had neither snow nor mountains. The Norsemen decided not to land because Bjarni wanted to reach Greenland, and they managed to return there. However, 15 years later, the son of Erik the Red, Leif Eriksson ‘‘the Lucky,’’ sailed to a place identified by many as the coast of America. The first place where he landed was called the Helluland, or ‘‘Land of Flat Stone,’’ and then he and his men headed south to what he named Markland, or ‘‘Land of Woods.’’ They later landed at a spot that had beaches of ‘‘silver’’ sand and decided to stay ashore for a few days. It was during this time that they found grapes that one Norseman, who had served in Turkey (probably in the Varangian Guard), identified correctly, leading the Norsemen to name the place Vinland. By studying the various sea currents, and given that the Norse settlements on the west coast of Greenland were located at Godthab and Sandnes, it has been suggested that Helluland could be the southern part of Baffin Island, with Markland being Labrador and Vinland being the region around the island of Newfoundland. This theory meant that the Norsemen probably did not reach any part of the modern United States. Brief mention should also be made of the ‘‘Vinland map,’’ which was discovered in 1965 and marked identifying Helluland, Markland, and Vinland. The map became the subject of an international conference at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C., in 1966, and it is now believed to have been forged, perhaps as recently as the 1920s. 1 © 2011 ABC-Clio. All Rights Reserved.

2 | North American rune stones point to Norse

Although the visits of Bjarni and Leif Eriksson have been well known to historians for many years, there have always been queries about whether any subsequent Viking expeditions reached North America. With mounting evidence from the sagas that some Vikings in the 10th century had given the name Vinland to part of North America, there was no physical evidence found for the Vikings being in the Americas until 1898, with the discovery of what became known as the Kensington Runestone. In 1893 a Danish archaeologist had shown that it was possible for a Viking ship to reach America, and there was then renewed interest in the subject. Only five years later, a rune The Kensington Runestone, found in 1898 stone was found in 1898 on a farm near Kensington, Minnesota by a farmer some three miles from the village of named Olof Ohman, has been a source of con- Kensington, in the southwest corner of tinuing controversy over its origins. (Richard Douglas County, in west-central MinHamilton Smith/Corbis) nesota. As a result of where it was found, it became known as the Kensington Runestone. The man who found it was Olof Ohman, a Swedish-born farmer who had migrated to the United States in 1879 and was living on the farmstead with his wife Karin and their children. The place where the stone was found was near the crest of a small rising piece of land above the wetlands. According to the version by Ohman, it was tangled in the root system of a poplar tree as though it had been placed near the site of the tree, and the roots had wrapped themselves around it. Olof’s eldest son, also called Olof, aged 10 at the time, uncovered the stone and spotted some lettering on it and, apparently, believed that it was some kind of ‘‘Indian almanac.’’ The stone was then pulled out of the ground. It was 30 inches tall, 16 inches wide, and 6 inches thick (76 by 41 by 15 cm), and weighed about 200 pounds (90 kg). It was not long after its discovery that Olof Ohman, the boy’s father, began to realize what the stone might represent. From the 1870s, schoolchildren in Norway and Sweden had been taught about runes as a part of the syllabus covering Scandinavian heritage. The Kensington Runestone was then taken to a local bank where it was put on display. There is certainly no evidence that the Ohmans tried to make any


PRO | 3

money from the discovery, and this is one of the key points to be raised in favor of the discovery being genuine. A transcription of the stone was quickly made, which was later found to be inaccurate, and it was sent to Olaus J. Breda, who was a professor of Scandinavian languages and literature at the University of Minnesota. Although there are some queries about his linguistic knowledge, he had been born in Norway 45 years earlier and was clearly the main expert in Minnesota at the time, having previously taught in Iowa. Olaus Breda translated the text and immediately declared that the stone was a clear forgery, and many other linguists concurred. It was subsequently translated by Hjalmar Holand from the lettering, or runes, as: ‘‘8 Geats (South Swedes) and 22 Norwegians on acquisition venture from Vinland far to the west We had traps by 2 shelters one day’s travel to the north from this stone We were fishing one day. After we came home found 10 men red with blood and dead AVM (Ave Maria) Deliver from evils!’’ On the other side there was an inscription: ‘‘I have ten men at the inland sea/lake to look after our ship 14 days travel from this wealth/property. Year of Our Lord 1362’’ (Holand 1909: 15). It was not long after its discovery that the stone started to gain some political notoriety. By 1898 there were considerable political problems between Norway and Sweden, with Norway finally achieving its independence in 1905. As the stone described a joint Norwegian-Swedish expedition, some Norwegians started to claim that the stone was actually a Swedish hoax, with Swedes keen on proving a long historical link between the two countries. Being found by a Swedish farmer further emphasized their point. The Kensington Runestone was then sent to Northwestern University in Chicago, and later returned to the Ohmans, with most scholars beginning to believe it was a hoax. However, in 1907, Hjalmar Rued Holand bought the stone from the Ohmans for a reported $10. Holand believed the stone was genuine and spent most of his life researching it. Hjalmar Holand had been born near Oslo, Norway, on October 20, 1872, and when he was 12 he migrated to the United States with his parents Johan Olson Holand and Maren (nee Rued). In 1898 he graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and gained his master’s degree the following year. He then started farming near Ephraim, Wisconsin, before becoming very interested in the Kensington Runestone. Although some books describe him as a furniture salesman, Holand is described in the 1910, 1920, and 1930 censuses as a farmer or a fruit farmer. To try to ascertain whether or not the stone was genuine, Holand and others made a number of investigations. The Ohmans certainly did not profit from their find, although they did enjoy the early local publicity. When they first found it, they felt it was a curiosity. Their exhibition of it in a local bank certainly indicates this, as well as their treatment of it when it returned from Northwestern University—they kept it in a shed until Holand bought it. Although there is a



popular story that the family used it for straightening out nails or as a steppingstone into the granary, neither of these stories has been confirmed, and even if true, they only further emphasize the family attaching no huge value to it. One of the initial areas for investigation was confirming the exact location where the stone was found and why it was found in Kensington, Minnesota. The land was not settled in modern times until 1858, and even then with the Dakota War of 1862, there were relatively few initial settlers, although the land had been taken from the Native Americans by the late 1860s. The tree under which the stone was found was cut down before it could be studied and its age ascertained, but other nearby poplars were dated as being about 40 years old in the 1890s, although one person who had seen the original poplar did feel that it might have been only 12 years old. But the question that remained at that point unanswered was why the stone was found in Minnesota in the first place. By the 1900s, many people were beginning to believe that the Vikings had arrived in North America in medieval times, but the concept of them sailing up the Saint Laurence River and through the Great Lakes to reach Minnesota, had not been considered. To reach the spot, the Vikings would then have had to have gone south along the Minnesota River before going north along Chippewa River. It was an extremely long journey from the Atlantic Ocean. It is not altogether impossible, but this led to many historians querying the validity of the stone solely on account of its location. Holand started investigating the nearby waterways and at Cormant Lake, Becker County, also in Minnesota, where he found boulders that had triangular holes in them. He compared them to similar ones found off the coast of Norway, which were used to anchor boats in the 14th century. It appeared that the stones in Minnesota had been fashioned with chisels rather than drills. Also, in 1871 at Climax, Minnesota, a firesteel had been found that matched a similar specimen held at the museum at Oslo University, Norway. There also remain two other scenarios. Because many Native American tribes had inhabited Minnesota, there has to remain the possibility that the stone might have been moved by them between its original erection on the coastline and its discovery by Ohman, or it might have been taken there by an early European explorer. Mention should also be made of the Viking Altar Rock at Sauk Centre, Minnesota: a rock that is 27 feet (8.2 meters) long and 17 feet (5.2 meters) wide, it has two sets of holes about three feet from the base, which may have held an altar shelf, with holes at each end to support halberds from which a canopy could be hung. Although this altar was rededicated in August 1975 and is now a part of the Trail of the Vikings in Minnesota, even if it were not genuine, it would have no real bearing on the Kensington Runestone. Newton Horace Winchell, a geologist who was also a member of the Minnesota Historical Society, and George Tobias Flom, a linguist from the Philological Society of the University of Illinois, both made an extensive study of


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the rune stone in 1910. They were the last ones to make a detailed study based on a physical analysis for the next 88 years. N. H. Winchell (1839–1915) was the state geologist of Minnesota from 1872 until 1900 and professor of geology and mineralogy at the University of Minnesota from 1873 until 1900. He was also the founder and editor of the journal American Geologist from 1888 until 1905. His son was also a prominent geologist. G. T. Flom (1871–1960) was born in Wisconsin, the son of Norwegian parents, and became a professor of Scandinavian languages and acting professor in English philology at Iowa State University from 1900 until 1909, then professor of Scandinavian languages at the University of Illinois from 1909 until 1927, and professor of Scandinavian languages and English philology, writing many learned papers on paleography and Norwegian medieval texts. Winchell sought out the evidence as to where the stone was found and largely drew a blank, with Flom querying whether the inscription used more modern language than he felt might have been the case in the 14th century. To try to verify the authenticity of the Kensington Runestone, Hjalmar Holand took the stone with him to Europe in 1911 and showed it to scholars at the Norse Millenary Congress held at Rouen, France, in that year. He did not have much success there, with scholars such as Charles H. Haskins claiming that a cursory examination of the stone showed that the rune had been cut recently and other scholars claiming that there were linguistic mistakes. The linguistic analysis of the Kensington Runestone, started by Breda, has been intense, and much of it rests on the use of the letter ‘‘j.’’ Because this letter was not used at the time of the runestone’s supposed origin, most linguists were quick to denounce the stone a as forgery. However, Robert A. Hall Jr., emeritus professor of Italian language and literature at Cornell University, claimed there might not be as many linguistic problems as others had thought. His account, The Kensington Rune-Stone is Genuine: Linguistic, Practical, Methodological Considerations, was published in 1982. Hall studied the normal variances in dialects in Old Swedish and suggested that the linguistic evidence was inconclusive, which made other aspects of the stone crucial in deciding its authenticity. This led to an engineer, Richard Nielsen, from Houston, Texas—his work being heavily inspired by that of Hall—studying the stone and in 1983 he argued that what had been interpreted as the letter ‘‘j’’ was, in fact, the letter ‘‘l,’’ which was used in the 14th century, and although rare, it was quite in keeping with its use on the Kensington Runestone. These linguistic analyses, however, were merely opinions. The people who carved the runes on stone could easily have made a mistake or misspelling—it happens to this day even on official plaques and gravestones—and there are manuscripts found regularly around the world that contain new words or ideas previously not thought to have been used at the time. As to the finding of the stone, some historians such as Theodore C. Blegen had long believed that Ohman or others had forged the stone—there were many



Scandinavian settlers there. This theory gained support when an audiotape was transcribed in 1976, on which another farmer, Walter Gran, claimed that his father, John Gran, had confessed, in 1927, to having made the stone with Ohman. However, although this new claim received some publicity, Walter Gran never seems to have said anything more about it before his death some years later, and some locals claimed that there was jealousy between the Grans and the Ohmans, which might have been the real motivation for the release of the tape. However, Blegen, in his The Kensington Rune-Stone: New Light on an Old Riddle, published by the Minnesota Historical Society in 1968, offers a different suggestion. He claimed that a Swedish schoolteacher named Sven Fogelblad (1812–1897), who grew up in Sweden and immigrated to Minnesota and was a friend of the Ohmans, may have been the source of the carving of the rune stone. Furthermore, he noted that Fogelblad had graduated from Upsala University and had been a cominister in Sweden with a noted rune expert Claes J. Ljungstr€ om, who had written on the subject. It appears that Fogelblad had left the church over dogma differences, but little more is known about his life. He does not appear on any U.S. Census, at least under the surname Fogelblad. And if Fogelblad had been the source of the stone, there remain some queries, the first one being why the stone was only found after Fogelblad died. Also, if, as some historians claim, Fogelblad was the forger, based on being an expert on runes, there has to be some question about why he would make the elementary mistakes these same authors claim are present on the stone. The issue of the authenticity of the Kensington Runestone continued for many years. By this time Hjalmar Holand had written extensively on the subject. His History of the Norwegian Settlements had been published in 1908, soon after he had bought the Kensington Runestone, and his first major work on the subject, The Kensington Stone, was published in 1932, followed eight years later by Westward from Vinland. His book America 1355–1364 was published in 1946, and Explorations in America was published exactly 10 years later. Indeed, in 1948–1949 the stone was displayed at the Smithsonian Institution, with a photograph of it appearing in National Geographic in September 1948. The photograph showed Neil Morton Judd (1887–1976), curator of American archaeology at the Smithsonian from 1919 until 1929, and curator of archaeology there from 1930 until 1949, examining the stone that the caption claims has been declared genuine by recent studies of it. By this time some written confirmation of the possibility of the Norsemen in North America in the 14th century had emerged. Carl Christian Rafn had written about some of this in the early 19th century, after uncovering a reference from the cartographer Gerardus Mercator (who developed the Mercator projection) in a 1577 letter in which he refers to a geographic text about the Arctic region of the Atlantic, written over 200 years earlier by a man named Jacob Cnoyen. This letter mentions that eight men had returned to Norway from


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the arctic in 1364. Accounts of Greenland by Ivar Bardarson, a cleric, also exist from the same year. There were also references from Gisli Oddsson, the bishop of Iceland, who started writing a history of Iceland and other Norse colonies in 1637 and mentioned that some of the colonists in Greenland had rejected Christianity in 1342 and went to North America. There was also a letter by King Magnus II ‘‘Eriksson’’ of Sweden and Norway ordering Paul Knutson to lead an expedition to sail for Greenland, although there is no evidence that this expedition ever set out—and, indeed no evidence that it did not. These problems over the authenticity of the Kensington Runestone led to academic debate throughout the 1950s and 1960s. S. N. Hagen and William Thalbitzer acknowledged its authenticity in a series of articles. Hagen’s account, ‘‘The Kensington Runic Inscription,’’ was published by the journal Speculum in 1950; and Thalbitzer wrote his account, Two Runic Stones, from Greenland and Minnesota, which was published by the Smithsonian Institute in 1951. Holand continued writing about the rune stone with Explorations in America, published in 1956, and A Pre-Columbian Crusade to America, published in 1962. This last work sadly links the stone with the ‘‘Newport Tower’’ and several other supposed Norse sites that have been totally disproved. Critics have also used these to attack Holand’s thesis on the Kensington Runestone. Holand died on August 8, 1963. Two years before Holand died, Ole G. Landsverk started publishing his thoughts on the Kensington Runestone with his The Discovery of the Kensington Runestone: A Reappraisal. In 1974 his Runic Records of the Norsemen in America was published in New York, and his ‘‘The Kensington Inscription Is Authentic’’ was published in the Journal of the New England Antiquities Research Association in 1981. It was not long before scientific analysis of the Kensington Runestone came up with important new discoveries. Advances in science and technology led to a much more detailed study of the stone itself from December 1998 onward. Curiously, exactly 100 years after its discovery by Ohman, the 1998 examination was the first detailed physical analysis of the stone since that by N. H. Winchell in 1910. This new study involved sampling of the core of the stone and examination of the stone with a scanning electron microscope. A geologist, Scott F. Wolter, released the preliminary findings at the Midwest Archaeological Conference, held in St. Paul in November 2000. Wolter said that the evidence of the stone itself suggested that it had been ‘‘in the ground’’ for between 50 and 200 years. He compared the stone with slate gravestones from Maine dating back 200 years—gravestones were used because an exact date of when they were set could be ascertained—and these gravestones showed considerable degradation of the pyrites, whereas the Kensington Runestone showed a total lack of mica on the inscribed surface of the stone. Even though the effects of weathering between Maine and Minnesota might not be exactly the same, Wolter was able to show scientifically that the stone had been buried in the ground long before the first permanent European settlement of that



part of Minnesota in 1858. This could also explain the entangling in the roots of the poplar tree. It certainly placed the stone well before either Sven Fogelblad or Olof Ohman arrived in the United States—indeed before Ohman had been born. However, the more important information came forward when Wolter examined all the runes on the Kensington Runestone and found that there were a series of dots engraved inside the four runes forming an ‘‘R’’ shape. This was similar to dotted runes located in 14th-century gravestones on the island of Gotland, off the east coast of Sweden near Stockholm. This again tended to give proof that the Kensington Runestone was genuine. In 2001 Scandinavian Studies published an article by Richard Nielson that argued that although a number of the runes on the Kensington Runestone were similar to the Dalecarlian Runes (from Dalarna, Sweden), others had no connection to them and could easily be explained by 14th-century dialectic differences. Three years later, Keith Massey and his brother Kevin Massey claimed that the use of ‘‘AVM’’ for Ave Maria was a medieval tradition that would not have been known to the Ohmans or any other forger in the 1890s. Although the Ohmans and Fogelblad might have had access to other information, the religious abbreviation would not have been known to them. In 2004 a new book added to the body of information suggesting that the Kensington Runestone was genuine. Written by Alice Beck Kehoe, an archaeologist, her book The Kensington Runestone: Approaching a Research Question Holistically set out to investigate one area that had hitherto not been the subject of research. She unearthed some Native American traditions that included references to an ancestral hero known as Red Horn who managed to encounter ‘‘red-hairedgiants.’’ She was also able to trace signs of a tuberculosis epidemic among some Native American tribes in medieval times and 19th-century accounts of Native Americans with ‘‘blond hair.’’ Although these oral traditions are not conclusive, more weight is placed on them now than was the case a century earlier. The Kensington Runestone is now in the Runestone Museum in Alexandria, Minnesota. Although the controversy over the Kensington Runestone continues, it is now accepted by historians that the Norsemen did arrive off the coast of North America. In 1960–1961, Norwegian archaeologists Helge and Anne Ingstad, working in Newfoundland, Canada, uncovered what they believed was a Norse settlement located at L’Anse aux Meadows. Since then they and others have found many more traces of Norse civilization in remote parts of the west coast of North America. L’Anse aux Meadows is on the northern tip of the island of Newfoundland, and the Ingstads, working there, founded a settlement that was proven to consist of at least eight buildings. These included a forge, a smelter, and a lumberyard, which could have provided enough wood for building a ship. The largest house there was 28.8 meters by 15.6 meters, and it had several rooms. A detailed archaeological dig on the site uncovered sewing and knitting tools that indicated


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The Runestone Museum Located in Alexandria, Minnesota, near where Olaf Ohman found the Kensington Runestone, the Runestone Museum not only celebrates the evidence of Nordic exploration carried by the Runestone, but also pays homage to Native American cultures, the Scandinavian population of the region, and historic Fort Alexandria. Just in case visitors miss the town and its significance, a 28-foot statue of a Viking, affectionately called ‘‘Big Ole,’’ sits in downtown Alexandria, proudly proclaiming the town as the ‘‘birthplace of America.’’ A 40-foot Viking ship named the ‘‘Snorri’’ educates visitors on how the Vikings made their way to North America, while a wildlife exhibit and a replica of the 1862 fort teach adults and children alike about the region’s long history.

that women might have been present at the site. The finds quickly attracted much attention throughout the world, with a Norwegian adventurer-turned-archaeologist Helge Ingstad and his wife working on the site. Ingstad wrote about them in the National Geographic in November 1964, and then in his book Westward to Vinland (1969). The site at L’Anse aux Meadows is now accepted by most as being a major Norse archaeological discovery, although Erik Wahlgren (2000), who has long denounced the Kensington Runestone as a hoax, has argued that the main Norse settlement in North America was farther south than L’Anse aux Meadows. It should be mentioned that Helge Ingstad also felt that the Kensington Runestone was not genuine, but this, and Wahlgren’s work, was before the recent scientific tests—Wahlgren died in 1990, and Helge Instad died in 2001, aged 101. Although the Kensington Runestone is not the only Norse ‘‘stone’’ in North America, it is certainly far more important than the others. Some writers have associated the Heavener Runestone with the Kensington Runestone. Found at Heavener, Oklahoma, during the 1890s, if Norsemen placed it in Oklahoma, it shows that they managed to navigate the Mississippi River, the Arkansas River, and the Poteau River to the site where it was found. Although possible, it seems an unlikely location, but this has created much interest in Oklahoma, yet only became famous after Frederick Julius Pohl wrote about it in his book Atlantic Crossings before Columbus, published in 1961. There are a number of theories about the inscription on it ‘‘GNOMEDAL,’’ suggesting it might mean the Valley of Glome (‘‘Glome Dal’’), or even refer to the date ‘‘November 11, 1012,’’ as suggested by Alf Monge in 1967. The Heavener Runestone was still officially recognized as genuine by the Oklahoma Historical Society in 1959, although other historians feel that its location makes it unlikely to have been Norse in origin. It became famous internationally with the novel Runestone, by writer Don Coldsmith, published in 1995. Once again,



as with the Kensington Runestone, it is possible that Native Americans or later settlers might have moved the Heavener Runestone. Another rune stone, also found in Oklahoma, the Shawnee Runestone, spells out ‘‘Medok,’’ which has been taken by some to refer to the Welsh Prince Madoc, who was said to have sailed for North America in 1170, or, according to Alf Monge, is a cryptopuzzle giving the date ‘‘November 24, 1024.’’ The Oklahoma filmmaker Jackson Burns, in a film on the Heavener Runestone, portrayed the Shawnee Runestone as a hoax made up about 50–60 years ago, and the two other rune stones found near that of the Heavener Runestone as also being hoaxes, but that the Heavener Runestone and another known as the Poteau Runestone might be genuine. However, they have all been subjected to much less interest than the Kensington Runestone, which, after recent scientific tests, is now believed by many to be genuine. References and Further Reading Blegen, Theodore C. The Kensington Rune Stone, New Light on an Old Riddle. St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society, 1968. Hagen, S. N. ‘‘The Kensington Runic Inscription.’’ Speculum 25 (1950): 321–56. Hall, Robert A. Jr. The Kensington Rune-Stone Is Genuine: Linguistic, Practical, Methodological Considerations. Columbia, SC: Hornbeam Press, 1982. Holand, Hjalmar R. America 1355–1364: A New Chapter in Pre-Columbian History. New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1946. Holand, Hjalmar R. Explorations in America before Columbus. New York: Twayne, 1956. Holand, Hjalmar R. ‘‘An Explorer’s Stone Record which Antedates Columbus.’’ Harper’s Weekly 53 (October 9, 1909): 15. Holand, Hjalmar R. The Kensington Stone: A Study in Pre-Columbian American History. Ephraim, WI: Private printing, 1932. Holand, Hjalmar R. A Pre-Columbian Crusade to America. New York: Twayne, 1962. Holand, Hjalmar R. Norse Discoveries and Explorations in North America 982– 1362: Leif Eriksson to the Kensington Stone. New York: Dover, 1969. Holand, Hjalmar R. Westward from Vinland: An Account of Norse Discoveries and Explorations in America, 982–1362. New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1940. Hughey, Michael W., and Michael G. Michlovic. ‘‘Making History: The Vikings in the American Heartland.’’ International Journal of Politics, Culture and Society 2, 3 (1989): 338–60. Ingstad, Helge. Westward to Vinland: the Discovery of Pre-Columbian Norse House-Sites in North America. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1969.


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Kehoe, Alice Beck. The Kensington Runestone: Approaching a Research Question Holistically. Long Grove, IL: Waveland Press, 2004. Landsverk, Ole G. The Discovery of the Kensington Runestone: A Reappraisal. Glendale, CA: Church Press, 1961. Landsverk, Ole G. ‘‘Does Crytogrammic Analysis Reveal Pre-Columbian Voyages to America?’’ Biblical Archaeology Review 6: 2 (1980): 54–55. Landsverk, Ole G. ‘‘The Kensington Inscription is Authentic.’’ Journal of the New England Antiquities Research Association 15: 3 (1981): 58–62. Landsverk, Ole G. Runic Records of the Norsemen in America. New York: E. J. Friis for Twayne, 1974. Morison, Samuel Eliot. The European Discovery of America: The Northern Voyages. New York: Oxford University Press, 1971. Nielsen, Richard. ‘‘Response to Dr. James Knirk’s Essay on the Kensington Runestone,’’ Scandinavian Studies, 72:1 (Spring 2001), 2-75. Pohl, Frederick J. Atlantic Crossings before Columbus. New York: Norton, 1961. Quaife, Milo M. ‘‘The Kensington Myth Once More.’’ Michigan History 31 (June 1947): 129–61. Rafn, Carl Christian. America Discovered in the Tenth Century. New York: W. Jackson, 1838. Reman, Edward. The Norse Discoveries and Explorations of America. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1949. Thalbitzer, William. Two Runic Stones, from Greenland and Minnesota. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution, 1951. Wahlgren, Erik. The Vikings and America. London: Thames and Hudson, 2000.

CON The thrust of this chapter, that the so-called Kensington Runestone is a forgery, has been argued against by the stone’s apologists for a century, but such arguments have demonstrated inherent flaws. For any assessment of the role of runic inscriptions as evidence of Norse explorations in North America to be comprehensive, it does not suffice to analyze runic material in isolation. It is the socioeconomic and cultural contexts of living conditions during the Viking age that provide clues to the motivation for using the runic script by the Norse communities in the North Atlantic region. An analysis of these conditions is crucial for understanding why rune stones were not erected in Greenland or on the American mainland, and why runic material remained scarce in that part of the world.



In the discourse about the significance and extension of Norse explorations of North America, manifold facets of a mixture of facts and fiction are revealed. We can learn valuable lessons about the reactions of the human mind to the soberness of scientific findings and to the temptation of wishful thinking. Arguably, the personal history of anyone who participates in the debate has a bearing on his or her attitude toward the Vikings, their quests, and their culture. In the minds of central and southern Europeans, Viking seafaring and colonization may have the value as an academic subject, and Viking mythology and narratives may be themes for entertainment. For someone from Scandinavia, though, this takes on a different meaning. Norwegians and Icelanders are very interested in their family histories, and they celebrate ancestors who once set out to sea, as adventurers, to colonize Greenland. Having a Greenlander among one’s kinfolks is a matter of great pride. The historical retrospective is also sentimental for many Scandinavian Americans. The world of archaeologists who deal with finds from the Viking age and the views of romanticizers of the Norse explorations are colliding to the effect that ‘‘a gulf has emerged between scientific and popular opinion of what the Vikings did and did not do in North America. The contested ground between scholarship and popular or folk culture has been a constant and problematic feature of the social side of American archaeology’’ (Wallace and Fitzhugh 2000: 374). History is never fixed because the time distance that separates us from past events is continuously floating, and every epoch has its own zeitgeist that sets standards and conventions of historical retrospective. In other words, every epoch and its zeitgeist forge the conceptual molds of our cultural memory. With the rise of nationalism in the 19th century, the pride in a nation’s cultural heritage grew to unprecedented scale. Those people from Scandinavia who, some 100 or 150 years ago, immigrated to North America, brought with them the national pride in their cultural heritage, above all the glorified Viking past, which they continued to cultivate in their new homeland. Between 1850 and 1875, about 370,000 people from Scandinavian countries immigrated to the United States. In the 1880s, immigration from Scandinavia increased to almost half a million people. The highest rates for immigration are recorded for the decade between 1901 and 1910 (Gjerde 1995: 87). This considerable portion of the population in the United States made a difference when it came to the shaping popular opinions about the pre-Columbian history of North America. The offspring of immigrants of Scandinavian descent were educated in the spirit that had shaped the cultural memory of their parents and grandparents. From one generation to the next, Viking history became increasingly sentimentally mystified, as an ingredient of people’s self-identification. The Scandinavian spirit manifested itself in the popular discussion about the Norse quests in North America at an early time, in the 1850s, to the amazement of contemporaries. Since American history is much younger than that of other continents, there seems to have been a particular interest in pre-Columbian © 2011 ABC-Clio. All Rights Reserved.

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events: ‘‘[I]t appears refreshing to light on any class of facts which promises to lend a ray of antiquity to our history’’ (Schoolcraft 1853–57, I: 109). The arrival of the Vikings on the east coast of North America predates the ‘‘discovery’’ of the continent by Columbus by almost five centuries. The perception of time may vary considerably in a cross-cultural comparison. The date of 1000 CE as the beginning of the Norse presence in North America corresponds to the period of the early Middle Ages in Europe. This horizon of time would not seem long to many Europeans, but, for Americans, it signals a remarkably ‘‘remote’’ past. The memory of the pre-Columbian past was constantly nourished by finds, both historical and fanciful, that seemed to be somehow related to the Viking era, especially objects that were allegedly inscribed, or in the words of a contemporary, ‘‘hardly a year passes unsignalized by the announcement of the discovery of tablets of stone or metal, bearing strange and mystical inscriptions’’ (Squier and Davis 1848: 274). The speculative mind of American historians readily clung to these disparate finds that were woven into a popular narrative about the heroic explorations of North America by the Vikings. In 1874, Rasmus B. Anderson, professor of Scandinavian languages at the University of Wisconsin, published his America Not Discovered by Columbus, which not only appealed to readers with an academic background but also became popular. An event that caused a sensation was the arrival of the ‘‘Viking,’’ a replica of the historical Gokstad vessel that had crossed the Atlantic Ocean, in Chicago in 1893. In the 19th century, speculations of research added a facet of global prestige to the theme of Viking explorations and cultural achievements, highlighting the high age of the runic script. The 19th century was still a time when students of the history of writing had freedom to speculate about the historical relationships among ancient writing systems because reliable dating methods of artifacts and cultural strata did not exist at that time. Karl Faulmann’s 1880 work, Illustrirte Geschichte der Schrift, the first universal history of writing ever compiled, engages in chronological speculation by assuming that the system of Germanic runes was the oldest script of humankind and that the Mesopotamian and ancient Egyptian traditions were inspired by the runes in both the outer form of their signs and their manner of stylization. Faulmann’s assumption about the runic system being the mother of all other writing systems was certainly inspired by a Euro-centric bias, a common attitude of the time (Lambropoulos 1993). His ideas spread widely and became popular, spurring numerous attempts to renew Faulmann’s claim up to the present. It took decades before the relative age of the runes could reliably establish the origins, which are dated to the first century CE. As for the time frame of the emergence of runic writing, the flair of high age dissolves in a comparative view: Compared to ancient classical scripts, the old Germanic runes are a young and unsophisticated relative from a remote corner of the world. Runes may © 2011 ABC-Clio. All Rights Reserved.


The Kensington Runestone and the Holy Grail At least one modern geologist, Scott Wolter (2005), believes and has written about the authenticity of the Kensington Runestone. Not only that, but Wolter also believes that the rune stone was carved by members of the medieval military order, the Knights Templar, after their voyage to North America over 100 years before Columbus sailed. The Knights Templar fled Europe after the pope disbanded their order in the 1300s, and some have argued that they took all they could carry on their ship, including important relics such as the Holy Grail, and sailed to America. Though Wolter believes the rune stone is a document laying claim to the Mississippi River Valley, and has no direct ramifications for grail lore, if his theory is true, then the grail might just be buried somewhere in the region as well.

be called young, since, at the time when they first appear, almost all major writing systems in the world were already invented. (Williams 2004: 262) This means that the runic script was a latecomer to the world of literacy, as was the Celtic Ogham. Seeing Norse Explorations of North America in the Archaeological Record In the consciousness of 19th-century Americans, their country was strewn with remainders of the Norse presence on the American continent. The list of the artifacts is long, which were thought of as proving the existence of Viking settlements, of Norse explorations of the coastal areas, and as far as the Midwest. But most items on that list do not stand the scrutiny of scientific verification. Many artifacts have revealed their true nature as fakes, and the ruins of buildings have proven to be of an age unrelated to the Viking era. This is true for the Kensington stone from Minnesota, the Newport Tower, the Heavener rock carvings in Oklahoma, the Beardmore relics from Ontario, the Spirit Pound Runestones from Maine, and others. In the 1960s, the ruins of an undisputedly Norse settlement could be identified. The site is L’Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland, which became the first United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization World Heritage site. No other settlements dating to the Viking era have been found in North America, which means that other campsites mentioned in the sagas have so far not been identified on the American mainland. The interconnection of the Norse settlement at L’Anse aux Meadows with the Viking world can be demonstrated for a diagnostic item of Norse culture: tools made of jasper. The material of the tools found in Newfoundland matches jasper sources from Iceland and Greenland (Smith 2000). Another item of


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unequivocal Norse fabric is a coin, a Norse penny, which was unearthed in Maine (the Goddard site on the northeast coast of Penobscot Bay). This piece, minted in Norway between 1065 and 1080, is not evidence for Norse presence in the area but rather of trade relations between the North (i.e., Newfoundland and Labrador) and the South (i.e., areas of Massachusetts and Connecticut) (Cox 2000). The archaeological record of the Goddard site includes Dorset tools from Newfoundland and Rhode Island jasper. A find that may also be related to the pre-Columbian trade network on the east coast are three bronze pieces (so-called Thor’s hammers) from Niantic in Connecticut. The authenticity of these metal objects, however, is disputed because of deviant nickel content, an atypical suspension ring, and surprisingly little corrosion for such old artifacts (Wallace and Fitzhugh 2000: 378). The Vinland Voyages According to the Icelandic Sagas The sagas that were composed in Iceland in the Middle Ages, recording the quests of the Vikings in Greenland and North America, are the earliest accounts of the explorations of the North Atlantic by Europeans. The ‘‘Greenlander saga’’ and the ‘‘Erik the Red saga’’ both contain some geographic and ethnographic information relating to the areas that were visited or settled by Vikings. These two sagas form a group that is known as the ‘‘Vinland sagas.’’ These sagas, recorded in the Old Icelandic language and written in Latin alphabet, are transcriptions of stories and folktales that were handed down from one generation to the next. In the process, events and narrative themes were subject to various changes. For example, in the ‘‘Greenlander’s saga,’’ Leif Eriksson is credited as the discoverer of Vinland, and there are accounts of four expeditions. In the ‘‘Erik the Red saga,’’ these four expeditions are integrated into one, Leif’s role is marginalized, and Thorfinn Karlsefni is hailed as a great explorer. It is therefore problematic to perceive the contents of the sagas as chronicles, which they are not, and the accounts as reports about individual expeditions. The general fact remains, though, that the Vikings explored the east coast and some islands of North America to some extent. Given their character as narratives rather than chronicles, the Icelandic sagas contain very few exact descriptions of the places and landmarks where Vikings made their landings, set up camps, or founded settlements. Among the places that are given names in the sagas are Straumfjord (Stream Fjord), Straumsey (Stream Island), H op (Tidal Pool), Bjarney (Bear Island), Furdhustrandir (Wonder Strand), Kjalarnes (Keel Point), Krossanes (Cross Point), and some others. Three names of geographic areas are mentioned: Vinland, Helluland, and Markland. Since the first half of the 19th century, scholars, amateur historians, and dilettantes have tried to solve the mysteries surrounding the geographic descriptions in the sagas, the first being the Danish philologist Carl Christian Rafn (1795–1864), who



published his ‘‘Antiquitates Americanae’’ in 1837. However speculative most of the identifications may be, they are all confined to a narrow region in the northeast of the North American continent. The assumption has been made that the site of L’Anse aux Meadows may be identified as either Leifsbudhir (Leif’s Camp) or as Straumfjord. According to the context of the saga account, three crews (with men and women from Iceland and Greenland) founded and inhabited the site. Most probably, in this settlement, the first white American born was Snorri, son of Leif and Gudrid. Most of the inhabitants, though, were men and only a few women. There is no archaeological evidence for family households or communal life. ‘‘The settlement was not a normal colonizing venture but a base for exploration and exploitation of Vinland’s resources farther south’’ (Wallace 1993: 378). The commodities and material that the Vikings found in Vinland, lumber, furs, walnuts, and grapes, were much appreciated. There was not enough hardwood lumber in Greenland for shipbuilding. The walnuts (i.e., the local subspecies in North America, the butternuts) grew in the Saint Lawrence River Valley, as well as wild grapes. The site of L’Anse aux Meadows was a seasonal settlement, which means that those who stayed at the site during the summer season arrived in late June and left by mid-September at the latest. The route that was taken went from Brattahlid, the eastern settlement near the southern tip of Greenland, along the shores of Baffin Island (the Helluland of the sagas) and Labrador (Markland) to Newfoundland. That distance is about 2,000 miles (or some 2,300 km, respectively). The voyage lasted between two to four weeks, depending on the winds. The seasonal occupation of Straumfjord may have been between two to three months, from mid-June to mid-September, max. If there were people who lived at the site all year round, their number must have been small. Probably, those who stayed at L’Anse aux Meadows were carpenters who selected lumber and prepared material for the construction of seafaring vessels. The summer season, then, was the time for teams of skilled craftsmen to build new ships that then sailed to Greenland in fall. Some timber would have also been transported, as construction material, to the Norse colonies in Greenland. The number of occupants of L’Anse aux Meadows is estimated at 40 to 50. This was about 10 percent of Greenland’s total Norse population, which ranged between 400 and 500 (Lynnerup 1998: 115). The Icelanders who participated in the Vinland voyages were always a minority. Whatever interests the Vikings had to explore in Vinland, they neither had the manpower nor the resources to keep up a chain of camps along the coast. What was so typical of the colonization of Iceland in the 9th and 10th centuries, the so-called landn am (‘‘occupation of the land for settlement’’), never happened in Vinland. When it comes to the question whether the Vikings engaged in large-scale explorations of inland North America, as far as Minnesota or Oklahoma, this was simply not possible, given the limited resources they had, compared to what would be required for such expeditions.


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L’Anse aux Meadows, the site of an early 11th-century Viking colony at the tip of the Great Northern Peninsula of the island of Newfoundland. The settlement consisted of a number of sod-roofed buildings and included a lumberyard and shipyard. The colony was inhabited for two or three years before it was abandoned. (Dylan Kereluk)

There was a further important factor that would have dimmed the Norse enthusiasm to make inland explorations, if they had any. The Amerindian populations outnumbered the Norse by far, wherever they went, and the encounters with the skraeling—as the Native Americans (including the Inuit) were called by the Vikings—were hostile for the most part. The curiosity of Norse explorers was certainly sobered by the perspective of repeated fighting and the high risk of loss of life. Straumfjord served as a base for the Norse only for a few years. The reason why the Norse abandoned it and the exact date when this happened are unknown. One may assume that the pressure from hostile skraeling who lived in the southern parts of Newfoundland or the small parties of seasonal occupants of the site ultimately made the Norse decide not to return there. The halls that had been built as storage facilities and for housing the seasonal occupants were systematically burnt down, either by the Norse before they left or by Newfoundland skraeling afterward. Besides, there was no incentive for the Vikings to explore arable land in North America because, at the time of the Vinland voyages—that is in the 11th century CE—the climate in Greenland was warmer than today, supporting pastures and favoring plant cultivation and the keeping of livestock. As an addition to the agrarian diet, wild caribou provided meat, and rich fishing grounds offered a variety of seafood to the European colonists of Greenland.



Rune Stones in Mainland North America Asking the question related to the distribution of rune stones is different from asking a question concerning runic inscriptions. The latter is an overarching term, which makes reference to all objects inscribed with runic texts, stationary (i.e., solid rune stones) and mobiliary (i.e., small portable stones, objects made of wood or metal), while the former refers to bigger stones that bear runic inscriptions (Knirk 1993). The great majority of such stones are rocks or boulders that keep their natural form and whose surface was used as a canvas for carving runic letters. In some cases, stones were worked into a rectangular shape and erected. The statistical record of rune stones shows a marked disproportion in their distribution. A total of 2,307 stones have been surveyed. Of these, 2,057 (89.2 percent) are found in Sweden, 199 (8.6 percent) in Denmark, and 51 (2.2 percent) in Norway. Evidently, the main gravitation of the rune stone tradition lay in Sweden, in the southern part in particular. In light of the wide area with medieval population in Norway, the scarcity of rune stones in that country strikes the eye. One may conclude that erecting rune stones never was a widespread custom in Norway. It might be for this reason that we do not find any big rune stones, neither in Iceland nor in Greenland where colonists from Norway settled. Rune stones were a tradition that was practiced in the heartland of the Nordic peoples, in Scandinavia, and, to a minor extent, in the British Isles from where some 30 rune stones are known. By the time when the Norse colonization of Greenland began and the first explorations of Vinland took place, the use of runes had already ceased in Britain. The rune stones that were discovered on the North American mainland, under mysterious circumstances, as well as other claimed runic inscriptions are regarded by most scholars as modern forgeries, although some still argue for their authenticity. The professional skills of the Norse explorers of Vinland included carpentry and metalworking, but not masonry. Those who stayed in L’Anse aux Meadows used specialized tools for shipbuilding and repair and the utensils needed by a metal smith. And it was such tools that the seafarers brought from Greenland. In order to erect a rune stone, the Vinland explorers would have had to rely on someone who was skilled in working big stones and on someone who had training as a literate artisan to execute the design of a runic text on a hard surface. The material that was used to build houses in Greenland were stones, but of relatively small size. Since the custom of erecting stones with inscriptions was not practiced in Greenland, no Greenlander possessed those skills. If the Norse had felt the need to erect a rune stone for commemorating the discovery of Vinland by Leif, then they would have done that in L’Anse aux Meadows, the pivotal base for all exploration voyages. However, not a single commemorating runic text was carved onto the surface of any of the rocks of which Newfoundland is rich, nor was any stone erected for that purpose.


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Besides, no runic material has ever been found at L’Anse aux Meadows, not even small-inscribed objects. If the Norse did not leave any commemorating texts in Newfoundland, in their major outpost in Vinland, why would those few people who explored other parts of the area erect rune stones elsewhere? Rune stones in Scandinavia were erected in areas with a sizable sedentary population and functioning communities. The Norse colonies in Greenland were fairly underpopulated, and they would have needed more inhabitants to guarantee a normal transition of intergenerational continuity. On the American mainland, there is no archaeological evidence for any colony with a sizable population of Norse descent in preColumbian times. In the absence of community life in Vinland, there was no incentive for the Norse to erect rune stones. Consequently, the claims made by Scandinavian American enthusiasts about the existence of rune stones without associated proof of Norse community life in the area of discovery have raised suspicions among independent scholars about the authenticity of such artifacts. Among the most popular of these runic stones found as isolated pieces, which is outside any cultural context connecting them with Norse archaeological relics, are the Spirit Pond ‘‘rune stones’’ and the Kensington Runestone. The three ‘‘rune stones’’ of Spirit Pond were found on a beach in Popham (Maine) in 1971. One of the stones showed a map of the area with several place names in runic script. This find aroused much attention in the press, culminating in a story by Calvin Trillin in the New Yorker (February 5, 1972). Subsequent investigations demonstrated the stones to be frauds (Wallace and Fitzhugh 2000: 378). The Dubious Case of the ‘‘Rune Stone’’ from Kensington, Minnesota None of the other pre-Columbian documents of North America has prompted so much debate about its authenticity as the ‘‘runic’’ text on the Kensington Runestone, which was found in 1898, near Kensington, Minnesota. According to the inscription, a party of some 30 explorers would have reached the region where the stone was erected. The date is given as the year 1362. At that time the Norse settlements in Greenland were in full decline. A drastic climatic change brought colder weather, which made agriculture exceedingly difficult, and in the end impossible, in Greenland. A worsening of socioeconomic conditions can be observed in many parts of northern Europe. Farmsteads were abandoned in great numbers, many of them never to be reinhabited. On top of this, the Black Death took its toll in 1348. ‘‘While northern Europe suffered, Norse Greenland died’’ (McGovern 2000: 327). Given such unfavorable conditions for the sustenance of the Norse colonies in Greenland, it is absurd to expect contemporary explorations of the American inland. No Greenlander left for America during those times of crisis. The impression of absurdity even increases when taking into consideration that the tradition to



erect rune stones had already been defunct in the heartland of Norse civilization, in Norway, for almost 200 years when the alleged Kensington exploration took place. We are led to believe that, during a time of irreversible decline of Norse colonies in Greenland and a general worsening of economic conditions in northern Europe, including Scandinavia, a party of some brave explorers—apparently blessed with resources and logistics in abundance—made their way from Newfoundland to Minnesota, brought their tools for masonry with them, stayed in the Kensington area for several weeks –(the time that was needed to extract and work a sizable rectangular stone and to carefully execute a runic inscription), in a fashion unlike the way of living practiced anywhere in the world of Norse civilization. We are also urged to believe that all this happened at a time when the runic script had fallen almost into oblivion (having been superseded by the Latin alphabet). In the second half of the 14th century, runes had become a matter of antiquarian interest, and the knowledge of it was preserved only in the minds of some learned literates (Elliott 1996: 335). Even the use of runes for wooden message sticks (called r unakefli in Norwegian), with their long medieval tradition, had ceased by the time when the Kensington exploration allegedly took place. Common sense is likely to revolt against such a fanciful scenario. There is another inconsistency in the ‘‘runic’’ inscription of the Kensington Runestone that casts a shadow on its claimed authenticity, and this is the stylistic technique of the textual composition. Its tenor is that of a narrative text in the style of the Icelandic sagas, which is atypical of rune stones. ‘‘The typical runic inscription from the Viking Age is a raised stone with a memorial inscription to a person who has died. It is not necessarily placed over the person’s grave; such stones were also raised in public places or by bridges and roads so that they could be read by passers-by. . . . The inscription may also have an addendum about the circumstances of the death or some description of the dead person’’ (Spurkland 2001: 86). The motivation for erecting rune stones was manifold, connecting the writer(s) of a text, in communicative reciprocity, with potential readers. The commemorative function of the inscription on the stone only made sense if there were people who would read this text, and the readers would honor, in their memory, both the deceased person and the donor of the rune stone. Consequently, rune stones were intended to be noticed—as landmarks—and their texts to be read by other people who were familiar with the runic script. According to these criteria, the Kensington Runestone does not fall within the category of Norse rune stones. Why would Norse explorers erect a rune stone in the middle of nowhere, in the awareness that, after they had left the place, nobody would have been around who was capable of reading its runic text? Since there was no audience to receive and appreciate the contents of the runic inscription, there was no motivation whatsoever to make an effort to erect a rune stone.


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If the Kensington exploration had occurred in reality, its participants, in all probability, would have chosen a different means of communication for their memory to become immortal. Those who would have survived the fights with the skraeling would have returned home and told the story of their spectacular expedition. And they would have certainly made mention of their labor to erect a rune stone on-site. The Europeans in their 14th-century crisis would have loved to have been cheered up by a heroic exploration story and distracted from their misery, and generations of storytellers would have embellished the narrative. But no such saga or story is known from Norse or Icelandic literature. Documentary Evidence for Runic Inscriptions in Greenland Only one runic inscription on a small stone is known from Greenland, the Kingiktorssuaq Stone. It was discovered by a Greenland Inuit on an island (located at approximately 73 degrees north) off the shore of west-central Greenland, in the Upernavik district, north of Disko Bay. Disko Bay is in the area of the northern hunting grounds (Nordsetur in Norse), which were frequented by the Norse colonists. The stone material is phyllite, a mineral, which is available in the area. This miniature rune stone records the names of three hunters and is dated to the second half of the 13th century. The text reads as follows: ‘‘Erlingur Sigvatsson, Bjarni Thordarson, and Enridi Odsson built Saturday before Rogation Day a cairn’’ (Gullv 2000: 320). The authenticity of this rune stone has remained undisputed. One could argue that the motivation of the inscription on this small stone resembles that of the recording on the Kensington Runestone. In both cases, the presence of Norsemen (of explorers or hunters, respectively) is documented. There is a significant difference, though. The writer of the inscription of the Kensington Runestone could not expect to have an audience of readers, whereas the writer of the runic inscription from Greenland was sure that other hunters who would visit the northern hunting grounds would read the text and learn to whom the cairn belonged. This runic document is the last evidence for Norse presence in west-central Greenland. Since about 1300, the skraeling, the Greenland Inuit, became more and more hostile, engaged in clashes with the colonists, and gradually pushed the Norse down to the south. By the middle of the 14th century, the western settlement had already been abandoned as a result of constant attacks from the Inuit. The last traces of Norse community life in Greenland are lost at the beginning of the 15th century. References and Further Reading Anderson, Rasmus B. America Not Discovered by Columbus: An Historical Sketch of the Discovery of America by the Norsemen in the Tenth Century, 4th ed. Chicago: S.C. Griggs and Co., 1891.



Cohen, Robin, ed. The Cambridge Survey of World Migration. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995. Cox, Steven L. ‘‘A Norse Penny from Maine.’’ In Vikings: The North Atlantic Saga. Edited by William W. Fitzhugh and Elizabeth I. Ward. Washington DC: Smithsonian Institution, 2000. Daniels, Peter T., and William Bright, eds. The World’s Writing Systems. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996. Elliott, Ralph W. V. Runes: An Introduction. New York: St. Martins Press, 1996. Gjerde, Jon. ‘‘The Scandinavian Migration.’’ In The Cambridge Survey of World Migration. Edited by Robin Cohen. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995. Gullv, Hans-Christian. ‘‘Natives and Norse in Greenland.’’ In Vikings—The North Atlantic Saga. Edited by William W. Fitzhugh and Elisabeth I. Ward. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2000. Houston, Stephen D., ed. The First Writing. Script Invention as History and Process. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Knirk, James E. ‘‘Runes and Runic Inscriptions.’’ In Medieval Scandinavian: An Encyclopedia. Edited by Phillip Pulsiano and Kirsten Wolf. New York: Garland, 1993. Lambropoulos, Vassilis. The Rise of Eurocentrism. Anatomy of Interpretation. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993. Lynnerup, Niels. ‘‘The Greenland Norse. A Biological-Anthropological Study.’’ Meddelelser om Grnland: Man and Society 24 (1998): 1–149. McGovern, Thomas H. ‘‘The Demise of Norse Greenland.’’ In Vikings: The North Atlantic Saga. Edited by William W. Fitzhugh and Elizabeth I. Ward. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution, 2000. Pulsiano, Phillip, ed. Medieval Scandinavia—An Encyclopedia. New York: Garland Publishing, 1993. Sawyer, Birgit. The Viking-Age Rune-Stones. Custom and Commemoration in Early Medieval Scandinavia. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. Schoolcraft, Henry R. Information Respecting the History, Condition, and the Prospect of the Indian Tribes of the United States Collected and Prepared Under the Direction of the Bureau of Indian Affairs per Act of Congress of March 3rd, 1847, 4 vols. Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1853–57. Smith, Kevin P. ‘‘Jasper Cores from L’Anse aux Meadows.’’ In Vikings: The North Atlantic Saga. Edited by William W. Fitzhugh and Elizabeth I. Ward. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution, 2000.


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Spurkland, Terje. Norwegian Runes and Runic Inscriptions. Rochester, NY: Boydell Press, 2001. Squier, Ephraim G., and E. Hiram Davis. Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley: Comprising the Results of Extensive Original Surveys and Explorations. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution, 1848. Wallace, Birgitte L. ‘‘L’Anse aux Meadows.’’ In Medieval Scandinavian: An Encyclopedia. Edited by Phillip Pulsiano and Kirsten Wolf. New York: Garland, 1993. Wallace, Birgitte L. and William W. Fitzhugh. ‘‘Stumbles and Pitfalls in the Search for Viking America.’’ In Vikings: The North Atlantic Saga. Edited by William W. Fitzhugh and Elizabeth I. Ward. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution, 2000. Williams, Henrik. ‘‘Reasons for Runes.’’ In The First Writing: Script Invention as History and Process. Edited by Stephen D. Houston. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Wolter, Scott F. and Richard Nielsen. The Kensington Runestone: Compelling New Evidence. Minneapolis: Lake Superior Agate Publishing. 2005.


2 The Ancestral Puebloans lined up their communities so that, although miles apart, they could signal each other with fires by line of sight to communicate. PRO Linda Karen Miller CON Peter N. Jones

PRO Over a millennium ago, a number of imposing masonry pueblos, or great houses, were erected in Chaco Canyon in northwestern New Mexico. These great houses, such as Pueblo Bonito, are some of the best-preserved standing ruins in the American Southwest. The Anasazi (now called the Ancestral Puebloan) constructed these settlements at Chaco Canyon in the San Juan River Basin of northwestern New Mexico, later at Mesa Verde in southwestern Colorado, at Canyon de Chelly in northeastern Arizona, and at many other places by the end of the first millennium CE. The vast landscape that was once the territory of the Anasazi encompasses the Colorado Plateau but extends from central New Mexico on the east to southern Nevada in the west. The northern boundary winds through southern Nevada, Utah, and Colorado as the southern boundary follows the Colorado and Little Colorado rivers in Arizona and the Rio Puerco to the Rio Grande in New Mexico, with extensions eastward toward the Great Plains on the Cimarron and Pecos rivers and the Galisteo Basin. Archaeologists divide the Anasazi area into subregions named for geographic regions with certain ceramic technology: from west to east, there are the Virgin, Kayenta, Tusayan, De Chelly, and Winslow, Northern San Juan, Cibola (or Chaco), and Rio Grande. The Anasazi people succeeded in developing what is called the Chaco Phenomenon between 900 and 1020 CE in planned stages to a time of greatness between 1020 and 1120. At their cultural zenith during the first third of the second millennium, the Anasazi emerged as the preeminent community planners, architects, and builders of the plateau cultures. The remnants of the time of greatness remain in the ruins of immense ruined towns, villages, earthen mounds, roads, and irrigation works. John Macrea Washington led a military expedition into the Navajo country in 1849. His surveyor, Simpson, wrote descriptive notes about the ruins, and an 25 © 2011 ABC-Clio. All Rights Reserved.

26 | Puebloan communities used sight-line communication

The Ancestral Puebloans The ancient Pueblo people, sometimes called by the Navajo name Anasazi, probably emerged around the 12th century BCE and descended from small bands of huntergatherers. They’re best known for their homes—pit houses originally, which developed into the more elaborate and inaccessible dwellings—and pottery, which in later periods was often highly decorated. Like the Sumerians and some other ancient civilizations that displaced earlier settlements, it isn’t clear from where they migrated. Much of the more sophisticated development of the Anasazi occurred in the temperate, fertile period of the 10th and 11th centuries CE. Like other North American cultures, they suffered from the run of droughts and cold summers that lasted from about the middle of the 12th century to shortly before European contact.

artist made sketches. The resulting manuscript was first published in 1850. An archaeological survey was conducted years later. During the 1930s, nearly 10 miles of ruins were excavated. The project was completed in 1936, with a reported 200 sites mapped and surveyed. The first history of research in Chaco Canyon was written by Donald D. Brand in 1937. The Anasazi originally lived in pit houses, semisubterranean dwellings with roofs made of natural materials. Eventually the Anasazi moved from the pit houses to adobe houses built above ground and often in large rock shelters in cliffs. Chaco contains 16 great houses (two are unfinished). It contains over 60 kivas (religious rooms). It is four stories tall and covers nearly two acres of land. Archaeologically, a site consisted of a single ‘‘focal’’ site of 75 to 400 rooms, with 2 to 13 satellite sites of 2 to 25 rooms each. In addition to being large, each of the focal sites is distinguished by the presence of an open plaza area and a ‘‘spinal’’ room block and by being positioned along the back edge of the site. All of the focal sites are situated in defensible positions—hilltops, knolls, or isolated small mesas overlooking the land around the satellite sites in the cluster. Significantly, the focal sites are located so that there is a clear line of sight with each of the others and overlooking all the primary access routes leading into the valley. Above the cluster at valley level, the strategic position of the focal sites point to some degree of valley-wide cooperation and coordination. In their defensive locations, the focal sites are all carefully positioned so as to collectively oversee all access routes into the valley and at the same time maintain visual contact and communication between communities. The importance of establishing visual contact between focal sites is reinforced by the discovery that a deep notch was excavated prehistorically in a hill slope that otherwise would have interfered with the line of sight from one site to the other. The notch then allowed visual contact and communication between the two focal communities. Jonathan Haas (1990) discusses that the visual network of defensive sites extends beyond the Long House Valley in Arizona to the east. It also


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indicated that by 1250 there was a pan-valley, supravillage interaction and network in the valley that corresponded to a tribal form of organization. Questions about the Great Houses Many aspects of the great houses baffle researchers. How did the people have the manpower to build the massive structures? Were the roads part of a closely integrated communication system? Chaco experts have suggested that tower kivas were facilities in elevated positions that were used for communication between these great houses and the Chaco core. At several of the great houses, investigators have discovered these cylindrical masonry towers—‘‘tower kivas,’’ which are defined as multistory kiva-like structures that rose for two or three stories above the rest of the great house structure. The towers may have served, according to speculation, as ceremonial structures, communication towers, lookout towers, or rudimentary lunar and solar observatories. The Chaco World Database revealed that 9 of 10 tower kivas in its archives are about 25 miles apart from one another, perhaps close enough for signaling. However, another study of tower kivas at the southern great houses of Kin Ya’a and Haystack showed that even if intermediate stations were built between them, they were not built to communicate with one another. Some theorize that Chaco Canyon was a central place, the ceremonial nexus for the outlying communities, and that the roads were basically ceremonial symbols of the great houses. Dozens of small towns lay along the roads, 60 miles to the north and 60 miles to the south. Archaeologists rarely looked beyond the areas immediately surrounding their excavations. However, according to Stephen Lekson, a study over a decade ago proposed that: three of the region’s largest and most important ancient centers were linked by a 450–mile meridian line—Chaco Canyon, in New Mexico; Aztec Ruins, 55 miles due north near the Colorado state line; and Casas Grandes, 390 miles due south in Chihuahua, Mexico. Chaco and Aztec were also connected along the meridian by a road known today as the Great North Road. Tree-ring dates indicate that Chaco was occupied mainly from A.D. 850 to 1125 (after which its population was greatly diminished), Aztec from 1110 to 1275, and Casas Grandes from 1250 to 1500. As Chaco was dying out a new center was being created on the same meridian at Aztec. In commemoration of the earlier site, the new one was connected to it by the Great North Road. When Aztec collapsed and the Four Corners area was abandoned, Casas Grandes arose due south of Chaco. (Lekson 1997) These centers were sequential from 900 to 1450 CE. The most unique feature about their positional alignment is that the capitals were all built on the same meridian.



Chaco was the center of the 11th-century Pueblo world. Chaco was very likely a center of some kind, very possibly a sacred meeting place, where the tribes would gather on special occasions for ceremonies or to renew old alliances and to transmit the ancient stories and songs after being notified by the signal fires. The Chacoans might have used the line-of-sight visual communication network of pinnacle shrines to communicate to the people to come to the center from across the Colorado Plateau for ceremonies or to warn them of impending trouble. The people came in massive numbers, moving in procession across the roads. Ancestral Puebloans and Sight Lines Many scientists believe that the Chacoans developed a communication system. Certain towers and mesa or ridge top ruins seem likely placed for receiving and transmitting line-of-sight messages by smoke signals during the day and interrupted fire-light signals at night. The canyon is ringed with four sites that are on high points with exceptional visibility. By the end of their occupation, the sites had a functional defensive configuration, and they were all visible to one another. This line-of-sight system, presumably operated with smoke or mirrors, paralleled the more famous Chacoan roads, and may prove to be more important to the understanding of Chaco and its world. Questions about why and how populations congregate are important ones in archaeology, anthropology, and geography. The alignment of these centers and the roads is the topic of this debate. Does the alignment reflect religious connections or communication connections? Why did these populations congregate in such a way? I contend that the alignment was for communication purposes. Since the 1970s, scholars have known about the existence of an elaborate line-of-sight system spanning large portions of the Chaco region. Archaeological surveys done in Chaco Canyon by Alden Hayes and Tom Windes (1975) revealed evidence of the communication link. It was their excavation work during the late spring of 1973 of Site 29 on the mesa above Penasco Blanco that discovered the line-of-sight network that extended from the buildings of Chaco Canyon to the surrounding region and perhaps beyond to its very farthest corners that could not have been accidental but were carefully selected. Three shrines, with five miles between the outermost, are all in sight of each other, and among them command a view of all the major pueblos in the canyon as well as Pueblo Alto to the north and Kin Ya’a, 27 miles to the south. Hayes and Windes discovered that all of the Bonito phase sites in the canyon and on both sides of it are visible from one or more of the three shrines, with the exception of the pueblo of Una Vida. Una Vida is located against the canyon wall under the Great Kiva, Kin Nahasbas. From Kin Nahasbas one can look directly down upon the tower kiva in the Vida’s west wing. All three shrines are in view of Tsin Kletzin. From Tsin Kletzin, one can see the smaller pueblo and tower


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Pueblo Bonito, in New Mexico’s Chaco Canyon, was the center of Ancestral Puebloan culture and commerce between approximately 900 and 1150 CE. (Clive Ruggles)

kiva of Kin Klizhin, 6.5 miles west. Kin Bineola, 10.5 miles west, is invisible, but a small tower-like structure looks down on Kin Bineola and can be seen from Tsin Kletzin. Thus they discovered that all of the contemporary large pueblos of the Chaco were locked into a network, with the exception of Pueblo Pintado. Because these structures were placed at the few limited points and within the narrow restricted areas that permitted intervisibility, Hayes and Windes were led to believe that they were relay points for signals. Huerfano Mountain, in turn, has a direct line of sight to Pueblo Alto. Messages could have been passed from Chimney Rock at the northeastern edge of the Chacoan region to downtown Chaco in a matter of minutes if people were manning the stations at Huerfano Mountain. The signaling system would have required careful management, staffing, and coordination. Shrines were often combined with signal stations. Hayes and Windes found that the shrines were linked but that there was no evidence that the shrines had fires. They also found few actual tower kivas. These observations were deduced from plotting the contour lines on U.S. Geological Survey topographic sheets. They could also be verified with the eye and from the ground. The evidence from Chaco Basin has been more commonly preserved and studied. In the spring of 1975, further investigation found another one-acre tract on Chacra Mesa from which the Pueblo Pintado, Kin Ya’a, and Tsin Kletzin could be seen. The Charcra station did not command a view down into the canyon but was visible from a fifth arc, located at the only point on the southeastern edge of



South Mesa from which Kin Ya’a could be seen to the south and Una Vida and Kin Nahasbas to the north. Still another shrine, a half mile west, revealed a view of the Chacra point that included Kin Ya’a and Kin Klizhin to the west and the mesa immediately above Kin Bineola. Consequently, the seventh wall arc on the southwestern edge of South Mesa was in a position to communicate with those same three pueblos but not with the Chacra shrine, nor with anything in the vicinity of the canyon. These researchers concluded that it would be possible to link the entire population within an area about 30 miles square with three to four fires or smokes, in spite of the broken terrain. If signals were the function of these sites—and they believe that they were—one would expect to find a similar one on Huerfano Butte, about 30 miles north of Chaco, which is visible from several spots on the San Juan River, from Aztec, and even from Mesa Verde. An experiment by members of the Chaco Center, research staff tested the line-of-sight connections among these features with signal flares to suggest that people intentionally positioned these features to ensure intervisibility. The archaeologists equipped themselves with railroad flares and stationed themselves at certain points. At 9 P.M. the flares were lit and visual communication was established between each signaling station and its two neighboring stations. Every station could observe the lights at one or more of the other stations. Site location based on line-of-sight communication has been well documented for the Kayenta area by Haas and Creamer (1993). They made the observation that line-of-sight communication linked sites within a cluster, but there were no visual links between the clusters. The people of Klethla Valley removed part of an intervening cliff to create a visual link between two sites. There is also evidence at El Morro of a similar pattern of site intervisibility at the Hole-in-the-Rock site, where it’s possible a hole was cut into a mesa remnant to provide a view of other sites. There is also evidence in the Pecos area, the Verde Valley, and New River area. Within many of the clusters of pueblos, there appear to have been small pueblos located on high points so as to provide a visual link between large pueblos located in low-lying areas. While most of these small pueblos have never been examined to determine whether they do provide such a link, they were present in the Chama, Pecos, Petrified Forest, Chacra Mesa, Grasshopper, and the Upper Little Colorado River settlement clusters. In some cases, large pueblos were placed in high places, even though other pueblos of the same size in the same cluster were situated in low places. This suggests the large pueblos situated on high places were there not simply for defense, but also to facilitate line-of-sight linkages between pueblos with their cluster. Clusters with such large, high sites include Zuni, Newton-Rattail, Acoma, and Anderson Mesa. The argument that the purpose of the line-of-sight settlement locations was for communication rather than surveillance can be found in the distance between sites. The locations of sites in El Morro Valley and in Kayenta meant


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that they could have seen each other. As they were three miles apart, it would not have been possible to observe details of activities taking place at another pueblo or even to see who was coming and going. Thus it seems that the pueblos were situated not to ‘‘spy’’ on potential enemies but were located to enable signaling for mutual support. The presence of towers on sites does not automatically mean they were used for line-of-sight communication. Many of these towers may have served as watchtowers. The number of documented cases for line-of-sight communication is small, because this is a badly neglected area of investigation. It seems though, that intervisibility could have been a common feature of the late period settlement landscape. Testing for such visual links between sites is relatively easy and would be a productive activity for researchers. Historical Interpretations According to Steve LeBlanc (1997), site intervisibility was closely related to the presence of site clusters. If sites were located to be mutually supporting, then they must have been able to send for help during an attack. While there were other means of asking for help, there were certainly site clusters that did not have intervisibility in some of the cliff dwellings. Signaling would have been one of the best and fastest ways to communicate. Site intervisibility has rarely been investigated, although there are some good examples from the Southwest. In spite of these considerations, intervisibility can be determined with minimal excavation, and its value is high for showing evidence of warfare and for defining boundaries of site-cluster alliances. The intervisibility can be demonstrated, and the ethnographic explanation for such communication is defense. There is also debate among scholars as to the distance that signaling is practical. Signals can be very simple if mutual support is needed. Signals that work only at night would have their limitations, and sunlight-reflecting mirrors would not be useful in all circumstances. Some combination of fire at night and smoke during the day would have been both practical and adequate for many parts of the world. Some scholars have suggested that line-of-sight links defined alliance boundaries. It is possible that clusters of sites belonging to the same alliance would have contained sites that were intervisible. It was significant that allied sites were not intervisible with enemy clusters. The lack of intervisibility between sites probably defined the alliance boundary if sites within the boundary were intervisible. If a number of sites within the boundary were intervisible, and a gap is found where there is no intervisibility with another site cluster, it’s probably evidence for an alliance boundary. To address the question of kiva intervisibility, researchers conducted a recent GIS–enhanced study to determine whether two of the tower kivas could have signaled each other using intermediate relay points, according to a study



by John Kantner (2009). A computerized model of the now-collapsed tower kivas at Kin Ya’a and Haystack and the surrounding landscape convinced researchers that even if intermediate relaying stations existed, the tower kivas were not likely meant to communicate with each other. The computer did identify potential relay points between the tower kivas, but no archaeological features were found at these stations. These points were already visible from the ground, which meant that the towers were superfluous and did not achieve long-distance visibility. However, their extra height did greatly improve visibility of the immediate community area. This interplay between the visible and the invisible emphasizes Chaco as the center place. It is not clear what methods of communication would have been used between these intervisible pueblos, but fire and smoke are likely candidates. The other possibility for communication is mineral mirrors. James Riddle (2005) believes that the Chacoans may have used a primitive source of mirrors. So he tested several mineral specimens. The best results were from mica, which could be use to create a larger field of reflection as it diffused the light. In tests using mica as a reflective material, Riddle was able to send a signal 3.92 miles, which would certainly be far enough to communicate with the next settlement. He believes that a set of signals, corresponding to a number of flashes, could have been worked out between the settlements. Such an assertion, however, is difficult to verify with certainty, as mica is quite fragile, and such mirrors made of the mineral would not be likely to survive today. However, mica was a readily available reflective material that the Chacoans certainly mined. The tests he performed proved that thin mica slabs could be used possibly at distances of 10 or more miles, depending on the size of the slab, and even greater distances if the sun is low in the sky. Mirrors would have been treasured and might have been destroyed rather than have them fall into enemy hands. A good description of the Chaco Canyon settlement layout would be a central place, ringed by forts which would signal each other for help. The signaling system was known to extend far outside of Chaco Canyon, such as for the Sonora and the Rio Grande areas (Riddle 2005). Road Networks An extensive road network connected the Chacoan economic, political, and religious systems. The paths connected the great houses and great kivas in the canyon to distant, more outlying villages and sacred sites. People may have used these kivas’ elevated positions, combined with still-undiscovered ‘‘repeater’’ stations, to relay signals from community to community. Linda Cordell (1994) noted that this was the greatest aboriginal land communication system north of Mexico. Researchers have discovered 400 miles of roads in northwestern New Mexico. The roads from Chaco Canyon stretch 40 miles to the San Juan River. The roads are straight from point to point and skip major obstacles.


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Horizontal directions are inscribed on the Chacoan landscape, suggesting that the Chacoans thought of the canyon as the center place at the intersection of both vertical and horizontal planes. Chaco Canyon sits at the geographic heart of the San Juan Basin. This centrality may be one reason why Chaco became such an important location. There are also four horizontal directions expressed through roads and through building alignments and orientations. The function of the roads has been debated. The alignments might not been primarily for transportation but for a symbolic package of architectural features that included great houses, great kivas, and earthworks. To the Anasazi the straight road signified the spiritual path, the means of direct return to the heart, the way of life, just as the rays of the sun always take a straight course. These ‘‘roads,’’ or cleared linear alignments, have long been recognized across the Chacoan world, although their function has been debated. In the 1980s, researchers believed that the roads extended out from Chaco like spokes on a wheel. Later ground verification by the Bureau of Land Management demonstrated that the road network was not that extensive. The alignments primarily connect Chaco with other resources and may only extend a short distance from the great house before disappearing. The alignments entering Chaco help the pedestrian to maximize the juxtaposition of the visible and invisible. The two longest roads—the North Road and the South Road—fix Chaco as a center place balanced between low and high places. Both roads extend for more than 30 miles each from Chaco. The east-west roads were less defined. The remarkable network of fire-signal or mirror-signal stations paralleled the straight roads. Researchers believed that a relationship existed between the line-of-sight signal stations and the configuration of the prehistoric road system. Through the roads, fundamental spiritual ideas were ceremonially reenacted physically on a periodic basis, instilling the wisdom of the ancestors into every member of the tribe from the earliest years. Solar and Lunar Cosmology of Major Buildings Work done by the Solstice Project showed that Chacoan construction techniques incorporated elements of solar and lunar cosmology in the buildings’ internal layout, directional orientation, and in the geographic layout of the settlements. In her 1997 article, ‘‘The Primary Architecture of the Chacoan Culture: A Cosmological Expression,’’ Anna Sofaer stated: Twelve of the fourteen major Chacoan buildings are oriented to the midpoints and extremes of the solar and lunar cycles. The eleven rectangular major Chacoan buildings have internal geometry that corresponds with the relationship of the solar and lunar cycles. Most of the major buildings also appear to be organized in a solar-and-lunar regional pattern that is symmetrically ordered about Chaco Canyon’s central complex of large ceremonial buildings.



These findings suggest a cosmological purpose motivating and directing the construction and the orientation, internal geometry, and interrelationships of the primary Chacoan architecture. (Sofaer 1997: 90) Therefore, astronomical orientation was a vital part of Chacoan construction techniques. Some sites are critically situated for multiple views. Precise Line of Sight Calculation How could these primitive people have calculated the line of sight so carefully? William Calvin (1997), from the University of Washington, in his article on surveying north-south lines without modern instruments, proposes that ‘‘surveying long lines that are not north-south, such as Chaco’s other ancient roads, can use a two-observer method: build large signal fires at each end of the desired path on a still day and then maneuver in between.’’ He suggested that ‘‘an experienced team of ‘utility pole’ haulers’’ could raise the pole and steady it with guylines. Then, they would follow the pole’s shadow over the course of the day using a rope from the base of the pole. Next, he says, a second team would be sent south with another pole, with which they would determine the longest distance over which a sight line could be seen, usually on a high point. Then, at the first pole, a surveyor looked to determine whether the pole or smoke from a signal fire was aligned, telling the team with the second pole to relocate if necessary. After the poles were properly aligned, the initial team moved their pole to a further location, and then the second repeated the process, leapfrogging each other to create a long northsouth survey line. By using signal fires (and their smoke plumes) rather than poles, direct sight lines might not even be necessary to have a workable system. Conclusion The above examples have been given to show that there is evidence of an Anasazi civilization communication system among the various Rio Grande pueblos. Researchers still do not agree on how this communication was made or how far it reached. One question often asked of the Chacoan regional system is how this could possibly work. How could the Chaco affect and control a great house 240 km (eight days’ walk) distant? The answer has to be communication. The clearness of Southwestern skies, its open landscape, broad vistas, and a large complex line of sight communications system spanned large portions of the Chaco region. Studies have shown that the line-of-sight system extends over much of the northern San Juan Basin. Recently there was a discovery in Peru of a tower that researchers believe was a solar observatory. The buildings there were also very well aligned as were those in Chaco. The ancestors of the Incas, who probably were contemporaries of the


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Anasazi, did this as well. While visiting Korea, I saw another solar observatory that was built around 622. Could all of these be connected? Could this be the answer for the alignments in all areas: Were they all communicating with the sun to tell the seasons? Further research will need to be done. By the 14th century, the Anasazi abandoned the Chacoan region, the Mesa Verde region, and the southwestern Colorado Plateau, leaving behind empty cities of stone. Did their line-of-sight communication fail them, and were they invaded by the more advanced Aztec? It is the pueblos of northwestern Arizona and western New Mexico that greeted the Spanish expeditions into the Southwest in the 16th century. The last of those pueblos now stand as living monuments to the endurance of the Anasazi traditions, the cultural strength, the adaptability, and the resourcefulness of an ancient people. Chaco stands as a place where people achieved monumental things. These achievements were accomplished by this intricate line-of-sight communication, which was far ahead of its time. References and Further Reading Calvin, William H. ‘‘Leapfrogging Gnomons: A Method for Surveying a Very Long North-South Line without Modern Instruments.’’ 1997. Available at http://williamcalvin.com/1990s/1997gnomon.htm (accessed January 8, 2010). Cordell, Linda. Ancient Pueblo Peoples. Montreal: St. Remy Press, 1994. Cordell, Linda. Prehistory of the Southwest. Orlando, FL: Academic Press, 1984. Fagan, Brian. Chaco Canyon: Archaeologists Explore the Lives of an Ancient Society. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. Gabriel, Kathryn. Roads to Center Place. Boulder City, NV: Johnson Books, 1991. Hass, Jonathan. The Anthropology of War. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990. Hass, Jonathan and Winifred Creamer. Stress and Warfare Among the Kayenta Anasazi of the Thirteenth Century A.D. Chicago: Field Museum of Natural History, 1993. Hayes, Alden C., and Thomas Windes. ‘‘An Anasazi Shrine in Chaco Canyon.’’ In Papers of the Archaeological Society. Edited by Theodore Frisbie. Norman, OK: Hooper Publishing, 1975. Hayes, Alden C., David Brugge, and James Judge. Archeological Surveys of Chaco Canyon New Mexico. Washington, DC: National Park Service, U.S. Department of the Interior, 1981. Kantner, John. The Ancient Puebloans from A.D. 900 to A.D. 1150. Santa Fe: School for Advanced Research, 2009. Available online at http://www.sarweb .org/sipapu/history/timeline/timeline900.html. (accessed August 5, 2010).



LeBlanc, Steve. Prehistoric Warfare in the American Southwest, Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1997. Lekson, Stephen. The Archaeology of Chaco Canyon: An Eleventh-Century Pueblo Regional Center. Santa Fe, NM: School of American Research Press, 2006. Lekson, Stephen. The Chaco Meridian. Walnut Creek, CA: Altamira, 1999. Lekson, Stephen. ‘‘Rewriting Southwestern Prehistory.’’ Archaeology 50:1 (January/February 1997), abstract. Available online at http://www.archaeology.org/ 9701/abstracts/southwest.html (accessed August 5, 2010). Noble, David, ed. In Search of Chaco. Santa Fe, NM: School of American Research Press, 2004. Reed, Paul F. The Puebloan Society of Chaco Canyon. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2004. Riddle, James. ‘‘Prehistoric Heliographs.’’ July 21, 2005. http://myweb.cableone .net/lkd7aoilthe.htm (accessed January 8, 2010). Rohn, Arthur, and William Ferguson. Pueblo Ruins of the Southwest. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2006. Sofaer, Anna. ‘‘The Primary Architecture of the Chacoan Culture: A Cosmological Expression.’’ In Anasazi Architecture and American Design. Edited by Baker H. Morrow and V. B. Price. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1997. Windes, Thomas. Investigations at the Pueblo Alto Complex Chaco Canyon, New Mexico, Vol. I. Santa Fe, NM: National Park Service, U.S. Department of the Interior, 1987.

CON The complex, sophisticated, and extensive ruins encountered throughout the four corners region of the American southwest have along inspired scholars. James Simpson of the U.S. army, one of the first Euro-Americans to describe the region when he visited the area in pursuit of Navajos in 1849, concluded that the superior construction of the ruins allied them with the Aztec, who, legend says, moved from the north to the south into Mexico. Professionally trained archaeologists working in the area during the 1920s and 1930s were skeptical of the Aztec connection, however, as it seemed as if such a great distance between the two regions would precluded any cultural connection. Edgar Hewett (1936), in The Chaco Canyon and Its Monuments, and Neil Judd (1954), in ‘‘The Material Culture of Pueblo Bonito,’’ for example, disagreed with the Aztec cultural connection hypothesis and argued rather that the builders of the ruins were the ancestors of the contemporary Pueblo peoples. This theory was hard for many to believe because


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the ruins of the four corners region were more extensive and architecturally grander than those of the contemporary Pueblo people. Doubters of the local Puebloan connection countered that it was unreasonable to assume that the Puebloan peoples would use a less-complex architectural building pattern if they had previously been such architectural masters. As a result, between 1950 and 1970 a return to the Mesoamerican connection was a common theme among scholars working in the Southwest, including Edwin Ferdon (1955), Charles DiPeso (1974), J. Charles and Ellen Kelley (1975), and Robert Lister (1978). Rather than Aztecs, however, they suggested that a small group of Toltec traders could have organized the prehistoric Ancestral Puebloan into a period of cultural florescence that centered on turquoise, which was highly valued among the societies in Mesoamerica. As part of this resurgence in a Mesoamerican connection, scholars attempted to find specific cultural correlations between Mesoamerican societies and the Ancestral Puebloan. For example, scholars noted that, just like in Mesoamerica, many of the Ancestral Puebloan communities and buildings appeared to be aligned with one another or with various geophysical phenomena. Because many of the Mesoamerican societies aligned their buildings for long-distance signaling purposes, a similar analogy was transplanted onto the Ancestral Puebloan. Like the pyramids of Mesoamerica, scholars initially argued that the communities and buildings of the Ancestral Puebloan were aligned so that they could signal one another with fires by line of sight. The recently discovered time depth of the Ancestral Puebloan development, beginning around 700 CE, coupled with the late date of demonstrably ‘‘Mesoamerican’’ objects in the area (macaws, copper bells, etc.), has cast doubt on any Mesoamerican connection concerning the alignment of Ancestral Puebloan communities and buildings, but it did not necessarily rule out that the Ancestral Puebloan used some form of large-scale signaling system. For example, Thomas Windes (1987), in ‘‘Population Estimates,’’ argued that the Ancestral Puebloan used a line-of-sight signaling network. However, this hypothesis can no longer be held favorable, because there is now a fairly large body of empirical evidence indicating that the Ancestral Puebloan aligned their communities and buildings for spiritual reasons and not for signaling purposes. Support for Spiritual Alignment Theory Early support for the spiritual alignment of Ancestral Puebloan buildings came from the archaeoastronomic work of John Carlson and J. James Judge (1987) and of Ray Williamson (1984). Presently architectural features found throughout the Ancestral Puebloan region, the extensive network of roads linking communities to one another across the area, and the extensive and complex archaeoastronomic features involving the specific layout of buildings, pictographs, and geophysical



phenomena all argue that the alignment of Ancestral Puebloan communities was spiritual. The Ancestral Puebloan were a people who occupied the Colorado Plateau and surrounding areas of the southwestern United States, roughly bounded by the Rocky Mountains to the north and the Mogollon Rim to the south. The Ancestral Puebloan’s cultural origins began around 700 CE and lasted through the 1200s, with an apex occurring between 1020 and 1100 CE. During this period, these people built numerous communities throughout the region that included large-scale architectural structures, extensive road networks, and modified landscape features and earthworks. The Ancestral Puebloan were primarily farmers who grew a variety of crops in lowland basins of the four corners region of the southwest, and there is evidence of long-distance trade and exchange with other cultural groups. Most of these communities contained between 10 and 100 households, were oriented in a southeasterly direction, and contained a number of characteristic architectural features. Two of the most common architectural features that have come to be associated with the Ancestral Puebloan are large-scale, multistoried buildings known as great houses, and circular or enclosed structures known as grand kivas. The most spectacular of the Ancestral Puebloan communities was constructed in Chaco Canyon, located in northern New Mexico. Recent archaeological evidence suggests that Chaco Canyon was one of several large centers that encompassed more than 200 communities spread over 110,000 square km of the northern southwest and that these communities and structures within each community were purposefully aligned for spiritual reasons. As mentioned, the roots of Ancestral Puebloan culture have origins in the earlier Basketmaker III and Pueblo I (775– 825 CE) time periods, but by 850–900 CE, when the first great houses were built, such as the early houses at Una Vida and Pueblo Bonito, evidence of purposeful construction and alignment of buildings across the Ancestral Puebloan region are encountered. These two great houses demonstrate, in fact, that the Ancestral Puebloan purposefully aligned their buildings at a very early date and that this alignment was for spiritual purposes, as these two great houses are aligned with prominent landmarks on the adjacent buttes, Fajada and Huerfano, respectively. The Solstice Project Organized in 1978 by artist and archaeoastronomer Anna Sofaer, the Solstice Project conducts research on and makes films about the Sun Dagger, a spiral petroglyph used as a calendar by the Pueblo people. Archaeoastronomy is the study of astronomy as known to, and studied by, ancient peoples—encompassing everything from their recordings of celestial events to the theoretical use of constructions like Stonehenge and the Pyramids in measuring time and the positions of the stars. The interdisciplinary field is often highly speculative, as it is difficult to definitely prove the validity of a claim.


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As discussed by David Doyel (2001) in Anasazi Regional Organization and the Chaco System, these attributes, along with others such as visibility within and between the communities and across the landscape, association with a great kiva, and stone masonry construction indicate that the Ancestral Puebloan spiritual landscape played an early role in architectural design and the location of each community. In fact, in ‘‘Recent Research on Chaco Prehistory,’’ James Judge and J. Schelberg (1984) have convincingly argued that the great houses found within the Ancestral Puebloan region functioned primarily as nondomestic facilities that integrated the populations of geographically widespread communities, perhaps for specific events, such as community rituals or other spiritual observations. Monumental Architecture Incorporating this spiritual landscape across the Ancestral Puebloan region was an extensive series of roads and pathways stretching over 2,400 km (1,500 miles). These achievements were so grand compared to earlier cultural manifestations found in the region that many of the architectural features, such as great houses and grand kivas, have come to be known as monumental architecture. In Chaco Canyon, where the development of monumental architecture reached an apex, it is now agreed that the monumental architecture was constructed to convey, reinforce, and codify ideas about Ancestral Puebloan spiritual and cosmological order. This spiritually and cosmologically ordered landscape developed over time as the alignment and construction of architectural and earthen features progressed. Archaeological evidence indicates that by 1000–1040 CE, Ancestral Puebloan architecture expressed the basic tenets of a unified worldview: directionality, balanced dualism, and places of central importance. At the beginning of 1100 CE, however, evidence indicates that confidence in this newly formed ritual order was shaken by specific environmental and social developments as a result of population pressures, drought, and resource constraints. As a result, it has been hypothesized that leaders sought to reformalize the Ancestral Puebloan worldview by instituting a new building scheme across the region, which was centered at Chaco Canyon. Six new great houses were positioned on the landscape in a patterned, nested series of oppositional relationships. Furthermore, this reformalization of the Ancestral Puebloan landscape was legitimated, as discussed by Ruth Van Dyke (2004) in ‘‘Memory, Meaning, and Masonry,’’ through direct alignments and indirect architectural references to the already existing architectural features, as well as, according to David Doyel and Stephen Lekson (2001) in ‘‘Regional Organization in the American Southwest,’’ to various geophysical and astronomical phenomena. As noted, a number of attributes, including formality, dimensional uniformity, and large-scale construction over a brief period of time, suggest that a vision, or



plan of the structure, existed before construction began. Great houses such as Pueblo Bonito and Chetro Ketl are among the best-preserved prehistoric pueblo ruins in the Ancestral Puebloan region that exhibit these attributes, with standing walls in excess of eight meters in height and several dozen rooms in each great house. These planned, monumental architectural structures represent a substantial investment of both labor and design. For example, although three centuries may have elapsed from initiation to completion at Pueblo Bonito, the final form of the building, according to Lekson (1984) in ‘‘Standing Architecture at Chaco Canyon and the Interpretation of Local and Regional Organization,’’ was attained in essentially seven epic construction events. The timing and architectural characteristics of the major construction cycles, in fact, are reflected, according to Andrew Fowler and John Stein (2001) in ‘‘The Anasazi Great House in Space, Time, and Paradigm,’’ in the construction histories of great houses throughout the Ancestral Puebloan region. Dating the Construction Archaeological evidence indicates that great house construction was initiated during the late 9th century and escalated through the early 12th century CE, during which time great houses and associated features appeared across the greater Ancestral Puebloan region, often in the midst of communities of small, domestic sites. As noted above, great houses are large, massive, usually multistoried structures built in planned construction episodes. Core-and-veneer architecture is typical of great house construction, and a number of veneers, or facing styles, have been recognized. Great houses are differentiated from smaller, domestic structures by their larger rooms and higher roofs, as well as by their overall size and scale. Beyond their planned design and construction history, other evidence supporting the spiritual alignment argument is the fact that most great houses contain enclosed kivas, or circular rooms, constructed inside rectangular rooms. Likewise all great houses are constructed to face the south/southeast, a pattern common to many Ancestral Puebloan sites, reflecting the importance of the sun and the cardinal directions in the Ancestral Puebloan spiritual landscape. Furthermore, great houses often are associated with one or more great kivas—large, semisubterranean circular structures usually considered to represent communal, public, integrative architecture. These attributes demonstrate that the great houses were purposefully aligned and positioned on the landscape and that this alignment was for spiritual purposes rather than for the purposes of signaling. In fact, Fowler and Stein have argued that the great house was a manifestation of an Ancestral Puebloan sacred technology in that the monumental architecture represented a form of nonverbal communication, as well as an earthly symbolic representation of the cosmos. This spiritual landscape was manifested at different scales across the region, from the specific construction of great houses, to the


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building of long-distance roads, to the development of enclosed structures known as kivas. Association with Kivas As discussed above, most Ancestral Puebloan great houses are associated with kivas, which are either located inside the great house or are aligned with the great house at a nearby location. Some great houses also contain what are known as elevated kivas, or enclosed kivas, which are found at a second-story level or higher. In rare cases, a series of up to four enclosed kivas are vertically stacked on top of one another to create a tower kiva. In ‘‘An Anasazi Shrine in Chaco Canyon,’’ A. C. Hayes and T. C. Windes (1975) have argued that tower kivas functioned as part of a signaling network. However, signaling alone does not seem a sufficient explanation, because a similar height could have been attained without the labor and time needed to construct the tower kivas. Rather, as Lynne Sebastian (2001) notes in ‘‘Chaco Canyon and the Anasazi Southwest,’’ the kivas have a distinctive set of features and are remarkably uniform, indicating that more was involved in their construction than just for the purposes of signaling. This conclusion is further supported by ethnographic evidence, as contemporary Puebloan peoples use kivas for spiritual and religious purposes only and signaling has no association with these structures. In fact, the Casa Rinconada kiva dating to the middle Ancestral Puebloan period is aligned on a true north-south line, demonstrating that the cardinal directions are intricately tied to Ancestral Puebloan spirituality. Not only are kivas and specific buildings such as great houses aligned for spiritual purposes, but the spiritual landscape of the Ancestral Puebloan influenced the construction and alignment of almost all of their communities in general. Looking at Pueblo Bonito as a whole, for example, it is evident that the entire village is astronomically aligned. Originally built for safety and housing, kivas, such as the Specifically, the wall Casa Rinconada kiva in New Mexico, have been used for that divides the pueblo sacred purposes by the Ancestral Puebloans and their into western and eastern descendents. (David Muench/Corbis)



halves was constructed very nearly along the meridian, while the western half of the south wall is nearly a precise east-west line. Landscaping Evidence The spiritual importance of Ancestral Puebloan buildings and their specific alignment is not only reflected in above-ground architectural structures but also in the landscape surrounding the communities and specific earthworks within the communities. In fact, some of the landscape was manipulated to such an extent that scholars have identified mounds and other earthworks across the Ancestral Puebloan region. The most spectacular and convincing examples of Ancestral Puebloan earthwork architecture are found at Chaco Canyon and are the paired rectangular mounds in front of Pueblo Bonito. These mounds were defined and faced by massive masonry retaining walls and were provided with broad formal stairways that accessed a plastered horizontal surface at 3.5 meters above the original grade. J. R. Stein and Stephen Lekson (1992) have argued in ‘‘Anasazi Ritual Landscapes’’ that the space between the two mounds and between the mounds and the great house are formalized avenues or roads. These roads, in conjunction with the alignment of the mounds, formed a visual link between Pueblo Bonito and the ‘‘isolated’’ great kiva, Casa Rinconada. Specifically, the configuration of the space between the mounds extended the alignment of the eastern wall of the housing for Great Kiva A, which is part of the larger Pueblo Bonito structure, and projected it as a line of sight to Casa Rinconada, demonstrating that these two centers of importance were both spiritually and physically linked. Stein and Lekson have suggested that landscape modifications such as roads, mounds, and other earthworks that are ubiquitous throughout the Ancestral Puebloan region represent a ritual landscape focused on great houses. Where they are present, earthworks such as mounds spiritually define the space in front of the great house, linking the great house to the rest of the Ancestral Puebloan world by means of the extensive road network. The relationship between mounds and roads has been fairly well documented, and most scholars agree on their significance in defining and linking the Ancestral Puebloan world. For example, at Haystack Great House, earthworks define the roads, with some lying parallel to the roads while others collectively bind the avenue, which encircles the great house. Likewise at Kin Hocho’i, the great house is completely encircled by a sunken avenue 15 meters in width. The perimeter of this avenue is defined by a berm that is a composite of several earthen masses. Stein and Lekson have convincingly argued that this berm functioned as a barrier between the great house and the great beyond, conceptually delineating a spiritual order built on the alignment of the mounds, roads, and buildings. The order that resulted out of this alignment created a spiritual landscape recognizable across the Ancestral Puebloan region and was a guiding influence across the Ancestral Puebloan period chronologically.


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This conclusion is supported by the fact that numerous examples of roads have been identified that connect noncontemporary landscapes and architectural features. These compose some of the longest and most formalized segments of constructed roadway known for the Ancestral Puebloan. For example, the Ancestral Puebloan pueblo of Ats’ee Nitsaa is separated from Kin Hocho’i pueblo by 2.5 miles of roads. Likewise, road number 1 at Navajo Springs ruins is intensively formalized for a distance of 1 mile and was arguably a constructed feature for 5 miles, where it appears to articulate with Rocky Point, a late Ancestral Puebloan ritual landscape on the south bank of the Rio Puerco near Sanders, Arizona. A similar roadway connects the middle Ancestral Puebloan great house of Casa Negra with Goodman Point, a middle to late Ancestral Puebloan center near Cortez, Colorado. Similarly, as noted by Arthur Rohn (1963) in ‘‘Prehistoric Soil and Water Conservation on Chapin Mesa, Southwestern Colorado,’’ Cliff Palace and Spruce Tree House, both late Ancestral Puebloan centers in Mesa Verde, articulate with Far View House and Pipe Shrine House/Mummy Lake, middle Ancestral Puebloan centers by way of a pronounced ‘‘ditch’’ 4 miles in length. The Armijo Group in the Cebolleta Mesa district is focused on the Dittert Ruin, an apparent middle Ancestral Puebloan great house that is linked by roads to several structures and large kivas. In fact John Roney (2001), in ‘‘Prehistoric Roads and Regional Integration in the Chacoan System,’’ has convincingly argued that the prehistoric roads were not constructed to facilitate transportation and communication, but rather were built for some other purpose. Since there were no transportation requirements for the large scale of the roads, it is reasonable to assume that the scale and elaboration of the road network was not motivated by simple economic function. Attempts to empirically demonstrate the roads’ pragmatic purpose have met with difficulty, although it is fairly well agreed that the roads did fulfill a functional role in Ancestral Puebloan spirituality. As W. James Judge (1991) has noted in ‘‘Chaco: Current Views of Prehistory and the Regional System,’’ the roads and their associated structures composed a visual communication network that was operative throughout the region. Furthermore, as suggested by Anna Sofaer and colleagues (1990) in ‘‘An Astronomical Regional Pattern among the Major Buildings of the Chaco Culture of New Mexico,’’ certain roads may have been visible expressions of Ancestral Puebloan cosmology, supporting the argument that the alignment of Ancestral Puebloan communities was spiritually based. Pictographic and Astronomical Alignment Evidence Not only do roads and various architectural phenomena demonstrate the importance of spirituality in linking the Ancestral Puebloan landscape, but pictographic evidence also supports the conclusion that Ancestral Puebloan communities were aligned primarily for spiritual, and not signaling, purposes. Throughout the



Ancestral Puebloan region, pictographs of various designs link the buildings and communities to one another and to various astronomical phenomena. The most common astronomical phenomena marked by the Ancestral Puebloan were the solstices and equinoxes. One of the better known pictographs marking such an event is located a few hundred yards east of Wijiji Pueblo and is a symbol of the sun. Painted in white with what appear to be four feathers protruding from its disk, the sun symbol is located adjacent to an ancient roadway. Directly aligned with this symbol, 500 yards away across a shallow rincon, a sharp break appears in the mesa profile where a pillar of rock projects above the line of the horizon. This sandstone pillar is in perfect alignment with the painted sun symbol, and on the winter solstice the sun rises directly behind this sandstone pillar in line with the sun symbol. Another example of specific Ancestral Puebloan astronomical alignment comes from the Holly House ruins, where two enormous boulders form a natural narrow corridor, 18 feet long, that opens to the eastern horizon. The western horizon is almost fully blocked by another large boulder. On the south side of this natural corridor, the Ancestral Puebloan pecked several shallow petroglyphs. Above and to the east are two spirals, and three feet to the right are three concentric circles with a dot in the center. The appearance of this symbol in this exact location clearly demonstrates sun watching was widespread and important for Ancestral Puebloan people. The spiritual importance of this site is further demonstrated by the fact that about 45 minutes after the sun rises above the local landscape on the solstice, a narrow sliver of light begins to enter the long, narrow corridor from a natural slit in the northeast and cut across the lefthand spiral. As it elongates and reaches across the second spiral, a second knifelike light beam begins as a tiny point of light far to the right of the sun symbol. This beam moves to the left toward the sun symbol and the first sword of light, eventually cutting across the sun symbol just below its center on the solstice. Likewise, at Fajada Butte a streak of light is caused by sunlight passing between two of the three upright sandstone slabs that lean back against the ledge on which a pictograph of a spiral is carved. On the summer solstice a small spot of light forms above the center of the spiral. It soon lengthens into a dagger shape and begins to move slowly downward through the center of the spiral. By paying close attention to the solar year, the Ancestral Puebloan could keep track of important times so that spiritual observances could take place. Not only did the Ancestral Puebloan specifically record the solstices, but there is also clear evidence that they paid attention to other astronomical phenomena for various spiritual purposes. Perhaps one of the most sophisticated examples of Ancestral Puebloan spiritual alignment can be found at Hovenweep, located in southwestern Colorado. Within the Hovenweep area, as discussed by Ray Williamson in Living the Sky, Hovenweep Castle is a large tower that functioned as an observatory of the sun and contained the essential


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elements of a complete yearly calendar marker. All four major solar events are marked by the building—the summer and winter solstices and the spring and fall equinoxes. Furthermore, the Ancestral Puebloan placed the external door in such a position that they could use it to keep a daily calendar along the northern interior wall. In fact the variety of ways that the Ancestral Puebloan found to keep a calendar are truly astounding. They used ports, doorways, walls, and even the relative orientation of two buildings. For example, Unit-Type House, a boulder house located in the Hovenweep area, contains three solar ports opening, respectively, to the summer solstice, fall equinox, and winter solstices. By specifically aligning buildings throughout the region, the Ancestral Puebloan could keep track of the solar year and make sure that various rituals and observances took place synchonistically throughout the region. Conclusion Ever since Euro-Americans first came across the magnificent ruins of the Ancestral Puebloan peoples in the four corners region of the U.S. Southwest, hypotheses have been put forth attempting to explain the alignment of these ruins. Arguments that the Ancestral Puebloan communities were aligned for signaling purposes, although receiving initial support, are no longer tenable in face of the overwhelming empirical evidence. Architectural features such as the specific and planned construction of great houses; their connection to and association with great kivas, roads, and earthworks; as well as numerous examples of archaeoastronomic phenomena all overwhelmingly argue that the alignment of Ancestral Puebloan communities was for spiritual purposes.

References and Further Reading Carlson, John, and W. James Judge. Astronomy and Ceremony in the Prehistoric Southwest, Vol. 2. Albuquerque, NM: Maxwell Museum of Anthropology, 1987. DiPeso, Charles. Casas Grandes: A Fallen Trading Center of the Gran Chichimeca. Dragoon, AZ.: Amerind Foundation, 1974. Doyel, David E., ed. Anasazi Regional Organization and the Chaco System. Albuquerque, NM: Maxwell Museum of Anthropology, 2001. Doyel, David E., and Stephen Lekson. ‘‘Regional Organization in the American Southwest.’’ In Anasazi Regional Organization and the Chaco System. Edited by D. E. Doyel. Albuquerque, NM: Maxwell Museum of Anthropology, 2001. Ferdon, Edwin N. A Trial Survey of Mexican-Southwestern Architectural Parallels, Vol. 21. Santa Fe, NM: School of American Research, 1955.



Fowler, Andrew P., and John R. Stein. ‘‘The Anasazi Great House in Space, Time, and Paradigm.’’ In Anasazi Regional Organization and the Chaco System. Edited by D. E. Doyel. Albuquerque, NM: Maxwell Museum of Anthropology, 2001, Hayes, A. C., and T. C. Windes. ‘‘An Anasazi Shrine in Chaco Canyon.’’ In Papers in Honor of Florence Hawley Ellis (Vol. 2, pp. 143–56). Edited by T. R. Frisbie. Santa Fe, NM: Archaeological Society of New Mexico, 1975. Hewett, Edgar. The Chaco Canyon and Its Monuments. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico, 1936. Judd, Neil M. ‘‘The Material Culture of Pueblo Bonito.’’ In Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections 124. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1954. Judge, W. James. ‘‘Chaco: Current Views of Prehistory and the Regional System.’’ In Chaco and Hohokam: Prehistoric Regional Systems in the American Southwest (pp. 11–30). Edited by P. L. Crown and W. J. Judge. Santa Fe, NM: School of American Research, 1991. Judge, W. James, and J. Schelberg. ‘‘Recent Research on Chaco Prehistory.’’ In Reports of the Chaco Center No. 8. Albuquerque, NM: National Park Service, 1984. Kelley, J. Charles, and Ellen Abbott Kelley. ‘‘An Alternate Hypothesis for the Explanation of Anasazi Culture History.’’ In Collected Papers in Honor of Florence Hawley Ellis (Vol. 2, pp. 178–233). Edited by T. R. Frisbie. Albuquerque, NM: Archaeological Society of New Mexico, 1975. Lekson, Stephen. ‘‘Standing Architecture at Chaco Canyon and the Interpretation of Local and Regional Organization.’’ In Recent Research on Chaco Prehistory (Vol. 8, pp. 55–74). Edited by W. J. Judge. Albuquerque, NM: Reports of the Chaco Center, 1984. Lister, Robert H. ‘‘Mesoamerican Influences at Chaco Canyon, New Mexico.’’ In Across the Chichimec Sea: Papers in Honor of J. Charles Kelley (pp. 233–41). Edited by C. Riley and B. Hedrick. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois Press, 1978. Rohn, Arthur H. ‘‘Prehistoric Soil and Water Conservation on Chapin Mesa, Southwestern Colorado.’’ American Antiquity 28, 4 (1963): 441–55. Roney, John R. ‘‘Prehistoric Roads and Regional Integration in the Chacoan System.’’ In Anasazi Regional Organization and the Chaco System (Vol. 5, pp. 123–31). Edited by D. E. Doyel. Albuquerque, NM: Maxwell Museum of Anthropology, 2001. Sebastian, Lynne. ‘‘Chaco Canyon and the Anasazi Southwest: Changing Views of Sociopolitical Organization.’’ In Anasazi Regional Organization and the


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Chaco System (Vol. 5, pp. 23–31). Edited by D. E. Doyel. Albuquerque, NM: Maxwell Museum of Anthropology, 2001. Sofaer, Anna, Rolf M. Sinclair, and Joey B. Donahue. ‘‘An Astronomical Regional Pattern among the Major Buildings of the Chaco Culture of New Mexico.’’ Third International Conference on Archaeoastronomy, University of St. Andrews, Scotland, 1990. Stein, J. R., and Stephen Lekson. ‘‘Anasazi Ritual Landscapes.’’ In Anasazi Regional Organization and the Chaco System (pp. 87–100). Edited by D. E. Doyel. Maxwell Museum of Anthropology Anthropological Papers 5. Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico, 1992. Van Dyke, Ruth M. ‘‘Memory, Meaning, and Masonry: The Late Bonito Chacoan Landscape.’’ American Antiquity 69, 3 (2004): 413–31. Williamson, Ray A. Living the Sky: The Cosmos of the American Indian. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1984. Windes, Thomas C. ‘‘Population Estimates.’’ In Summary of Tests and Excavations at the Pueblo Alto Community. Investigations at the Pueblo Alto Complex, Chaco Canyon, New Mexico, 1975–1979 (Vol. 1, pp. 383–406). Edited by T. C. Windes. Santa Fe, NM: National Park Service, 1987.


3 The Mayan kingdoms died out from disease. (Earlier views held Mayan decline to be cyclical.) PRO Justin Corfield CON Chris Howell

PRO The Mayan civilization was one of the greatest in the medieval world. At its height it dominated southern Mexico, the Yucatan Peninsula, and also large regions of Central America, including parts of modern-day Belize, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. There is archaeological evidence for the Mayan civilization starting as early as 2000 BCE, and the Mayans are noted for having the only known fully developed written language in pre-Columbian America. Their civilization reached a peak during what is now called the classic period of the Mayas, from about 250 to 900 CE. However, parts of the civilization went into decline in the 8th and 9th centuries, and by the start of the 11th century, the civilization had decayed, leaving behind incredible ruined cities and evidence of urbanization on a massive scale. The city of Tula seemed to have already fallen into major decline, although the exact date of its ending remains obscure. The city of Chichen Itza continued to flourish until about 1250, when it was finally sacked by an army from Mayapan. Some archaeological work at El Mirador in modern-day Guatemala has shown that the decline in that part of the Mayan world started as early as about 300 CE, but for the most part the decline was not until much later. There is no written documentation explaining the end of the Mayan civilization. Instead, the decline is dated from the lack of written sources. This has led to many suggestions that the Mayan civilization ultimately collapsed as a result of disease, which possibly destroyed the cities, forcing people back into the countryside. This may explain the abandonment of the cities, but that alone cannot explain how their civilization collapsed steadily over such a relatively long period of time. In recent years there have been a number of studies of the climate at the time, and many scholars now suspect that environmental problems, brought on by a long drought, were responsible for the decline of the Mayan civilization. This in turn seems to have led to a series of disagreements between people in various cities, leading to the eventual collapse.

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50 | Mayan kingdom died out from disease

Petroglyphs One of the oldest methods of creating lasting images, petroglyphs have been made all over the world, since prehistoric times. Instead of drawing or painting on a stone surface, or carving a larger stone into a sculpture, a petroglyph is made by chipping away at a stone surface in order to engrave the image. Various methods can be used, depending on the type of rock and the desired image, and modern people are often surprised to see how detailed and skillful petroglyphs can be. They are often discussed because of the similarity of petroglyph images at sites around the world, which is sometimes used to support various diffusionist theories of history or Jungian theories of psychology.

Rise of the Mayan Civilization To analyze the fall of the Mayan civilization, it is first important to recognize why the civilization became so powerful. Although archaeologists have found remains in the Mayan area going back to the 10th millennium BCE, these are not clearly identifiable as being ‘‘Maya’’ until sometime from about 1800 BCE, in the Soconusco region of Mexico, near the Pacific Coast. The pots and the clay figurines from that period clearly appear to be precursors of later Mayan items, and by 1000 BCE, these ‘‘preclassic’’ Mayas were using burial mounds that have some similarities with the subsequent stepped pyramids for which they became famous. These early sites are located in the southern Mayan lowlands, with locations in the Guatemalan highlands being settled from about 800 BCE. Gradually, Mayan communities started to be established in the northern Mayan lowlands. During the classic period of Mayan civilization (from about 250 to 900 CE), there was a rapid expansion of Mayan settlements, with large settlements being transformed into cities, new towns being built in a large number of locations, and other settlements developing into towns. There are also considerable surviving monumental inscriptions and also significant intellectual and artistic achievements evident in surviving temples and other buildings. The great city of Tikal and also the cities of Calakmul, Copan, and Palenque all date from this period. The largest monuments in these cities are the large stepped pyramids and, also nearby, what appear to be clearly the palaces of the Mayan rulers. The rulers themselves were more like mayors or tribal chiefs, rather than the royalty of medieval Europe. They ruled with the people and clearly had considerable interactions with them. Start of the Decline The surviving inscriptions at Tikal and elsewhere describe the great achievements of the rulers and the Maya in general, as well as showing clearly that there was


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widespread trade in the region. Certainly, archaeologists have found gold at Mayan sites that originated in Panama and also goods that have clearly been brought in from long distances. Some of the achievements of the Maya exceeded those of western Europe during the same period, and some of the Mayan settlements were larger and more complex than those in Europe. However, during the eighth and ninth centuries the Mayan civilization declined quickly. Gradually, by about 800 CE, there are fewer and fewer inscriptions. There also were not many large-scale buildings being constructed, and many of the cities went into decline and were subsequently abandoned. Some writers have suggested that the Mayan civilization did not collapse so quickly. It was, they have argued, more likely that there was no new building work, and the same people and their descendants continued to live in a city but without the money to build more, or to repair it, and that the abandonment of the cities came later. Either way, there was a gradual decline in the whole region—the only matter in dispute is the exact speed of the decline. Comparable Civilization Collapses The Maya were not the first civilization in Mesoamerica to collapse—the Izapa operated in the Mexican state of Chiapas and operated from 600 BCE until 100 CE. They operated before the Maya, with many surviving temples, inscriptions, and also stelae. The reason for their sudden decline is also not known, and it is possible that the Mayan civilization could have collapsed for similar reasons. Some civilizations around the world have been brought down by a single catastrophic or cataclysmic event, and there have been suggestions that this might have been the case with the Maya. There are active volcanoes in the region, and there certainly were some in the 9th and 10th centuries. However, there are three problems with the ‘‘single catastrophe’’ theory to explain the collapse of the Maya. The first is that there is no clear evidence of any major volcanic eruption during the period of the decline; the second is that a volcano would probably only strike one center, not all of them (and the Mayan civilization covered a large area); and third, the decline of the Mayan civilization was gradual, taking place over more than a century. By comparison with the Romans, devastating as the eruptions of Vesuvius for Pompeii and nearby places have been, the city was relatively quickly rebuilt after the eruption in 62 CE, and even after 79, settlements were built nearby even if the original city, then covered in lava, was no longer inhabited. Rise of Disease as Reason for Mayan Decline The lack of any convincing evidence for the ‘‘single catastrophe’’ theory has led some people to contend that a disease could have been responsible for their decline. There are many diseases prevalent in parts of Mexico and Central America



today, and visitors to the country are always advised to take precautions against malaria in some parts of the country, as well as dengue fever, schistosomiasis (bilharzia), typhoid, and tuberculosis. Certainly there were many scholars who surmised that a credible way of explaining the end of the Mayan civilization must have been because of disease, including a possible poisoning of the water supply. It seemed as though it was the only possible explanation for the relatively sudden collapse of the cities, with the population continuing in the countryside. These ideas were certainly influenced by the study of the history of disease in the 19th and early 20th centuries, with many books written, and even more studies and surveys conducted into the effect of the Black Death, which hit Europe in 1340s, as well as the other plagues that routinely devastated parts of Europe. Epidemiologists have studied how disease has been able to devastate a population. Because of the tropical climate, which would help disease to spread, and the close confines of many Mayan peoples in cities, the explanation that the Mayan civilization died out from disease became accepted by many scholars, and their theories were then repeated in more general works on the Maya. It was also suggested that some other civilizations, including the empire of Angkor in modern-day Cambodia, might also have been sapped by disease, although its final collapse was after its capital was sacked by the T’ais from modern-day Thailand. Although there is no evidence that any diseases have been capable of killing the entire population of a particular city, it would not have been necessary for this to happen to cripple the Mayan civilization. Diseases may affect particular people in a city more rapidly, with some modern diseases often affecting different segments of the population much faster than others. Had a virulent disease struck the Mayan civilization and killed many of the intelligentsia and the middle class as well as those living in close confines in the city slums, it would easily have been possible to cause a quick end to major building projects (through shortage of labor if nothing else) and a rapid decline in the civilization. In A Study of History (1934), the British historian Arnold J. Toynbee suggested that the ‘‘creative minority’’ of the population was the central part in any civilization, and the deterioration of their role could have a more far-reaching effect than the death of a percentage across the entire population. As a result, if there were a disease that was rife within the elite in a city—such as wealthy Romans suffering from poisoning owing to their reliance on water from lead pipes—this certainly could account for a decline. Yet, when this happened in other places, it was not long before a new elite emerged. Another reason why disease may not be the sole explanation for the collapse of the Maya was that during events resulting in the death of large numbers of people, such as in the Black Death in Europe in the 1340s (which is believed to have killed between 30 and 60 percent of the entire population of the countries ravaged), there was far less demand for food, less need to cultivate marginal land, and more resources per head for the people who survived. This would


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allow, in time, the population to rebuild itself. This certainly happened in late medieval Europe. But this ‘‘rebuilding’’ did not take place with the Maya. Although the plague did return in Europe at intervals—often once every generation, or so—and although tens of thousands of people were killed in these pandemics, there was never any risk of the destruction of any entire nation. Even the Spanish influenza epidemic that followed World War I (1914–18), breaking out around the world from 1919 onward, which caused a similar number of deaths to those who had died in the war, never came close to wiping out entire populations, even on isolated islands in the Pacific, where it struck with devastating effects on American Samoa and New Caledonia. Environmental Issues as Cause of Mayan Demise Instead of disease as a major factor, it now appears that there were major environmental problems whereby the Maya had clearly overexploited the land. It is not known what the exact population of the Mayan kingdoms was, or even that of individual cities, although rough (and varying) estimates have been made. Like most cities around the world, they were probably on the site of small townships, located in the middle of fertile land, and the townships grew into cities, the sprawl covering much of the fertile farming land, thereby eroding the farming base of the region. Environmentally, but on a very different scale, the demise of the classic Mayan civilization can be compared to the events on Easter Island, where the overpopulation has stripped the environment, and where a drought could quickly cause major problems that some people chose to try to resolve in war. This does seem to explain the early demise of the Mayan settlements at El Mirador. Certainly, the Mayan god Chaac, the god of thunder and rain, was one of the most important gods in the Mayan world. There were a number of rituals associated with him, and he was the patron of agriculture, represented with a human body covered in reptilian scales, and a nonhuman head, which had a long and pendulous nose and fangs. Although he was an important Mayan deity, not too much need be read into this, as many other cultures around the world had gods of rain—the Aztecs having Tlaloc—because the agricultural cycle was important to all civilizations. Even without a drought, there were enough environmental problems in the Mayan Empire. Around the Yucatan Peninsula and the Peten Basin, there has long been believed to have existed relatively thin tropical topsoil. The removal of the forest cover generally results in quick degradation of the land, and it seems likely that many of the trees would have been felled for construction work in the building not only of the surviving stone temples but also the many wooden houses that must have been residences for ordinary people in Tikal and other cities. There was little ground water for the Maya, and there are also not many sources of fresh water in the Yucatan Peninsula, which has few lakes. There are no river systems



Tikal, in present-day Guatemala, was a hub of Mayan culture during the Classic Period (CA. 200 to 900 CE). It boasted a population of about 100,000 people. The excavated ruins cover six square miles, but most of the vast city remains uncovered. (iStockPhoto)

in the Peten Basin. A regular monsoon rain is required to keep the tropical vegetation alive, and when this does not happen through drought, it would have been possible for a collapse in the agricultural base of the country to happen quickly. Spanish colonial officials were able to document these cycles of drought, and it is believed that these patterns might have happened earlier. Indeed, some climate change skeptics have argued that global warming is a regular feature of the Earth, and that the rise of the climate that led to the drought that ended the Mayan civilization might have just been one of these cyclical changes. The Maya used a very intensive cultivation system, which used ridged terraces, and also in some areas, they clearly used slash-and-burn ‘‘techniques’’ for agriculture. The latter had the effect of making land good for use soon after it was deforested, but the soil could rarely sustain crops for long periods of time. The terracing produced the result of keeping the topsoil, but the intensive nature of the planting cycle meant that natural fertilizers had to be used to keep up the high levels of production. If, in periods of ‘‘plenty,’’ there were large increases in population, then any agricultural problems would lead to starvation. However, as with diseases, it would not necessarily lead to the total collapse of the civilization, unless there were some other factors. The two Mayan scholars Thomas Gann and J. Eric Thompson first suggested the idea of a drought leading to the collapse of the Mayan civilization in


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1931. Irishman Thomas W. F. Gann (1867–1938), a medical doctor by training, became interested in the Maya during his posting as a doctor to British Honduras (modern-day Belize). Although he was at first fascinated by the concept of a civilization dying out through disease, he gradually came to focus on studying the possibility of a drought and how that could affect the region. J. Eric Thompson (1898–1975), an English archaeologist who also became involved in studying the Maya through his time in British Honduras, was involved in deciphering the Mayan script. Both Gann and Thompson felt that a drought was possible, and the whole concept was explained in much more detail by Richardson Gill (2000) in his book The Great Maya Droughts. Gill felt that it was a long series of droughts that started the problems leading to the end of the Mayan civilization. He argued that all the other possible causes, such as internal warfare, peasant revolts, a falloff in trade, and foreign invasion, could be explained by a shortage of food resulting from drought. Drought could lead to an abandoning of particular cities and a gradual but inevitable decline in the Mayan civilization. As to examining whether or not there was a drought at the time, sediment cores from Yucatan have provided evidence for a severe drought from 800 to 1000 CE, which was the most severe in the last 7,000 years and which coincides with the fall of the Mayan civilization. A study of temperatures around the world has shown that cold weather in northern Europe usually coincides with drought in Mesoamerica, and a study of climatic models, tree-ring data, and surviving written accounts shows that there was a cold spell in northern Europe during the period of the Mayan collapse. The Maya clearly saw that there would be a problem with a drop in the water supply. They lived in a seasonal desert, and rainwater was their main source of water both for drinking and for irrigation. From winter until spring, there was little rain, so that during the rest of the year, water had to be preserved. Sometimes natural depressions were lowered to help with the construction of reservoirs, with many houses building their own small reservoir, or chultun, in the ground, sometimes actually underneath the house or nearby. Certainly, some Mayan settlements, such as those around the Petexbatun Lake and also others along rivers, did have regular supplies of water. But in cities such as Tikal, the population had to survive entirely on rainwater. There were large water tanks built to collect and store the rainwater, and at times when the water ran out, there were clearly major problems. In fact, much of the building work at Tikal ended at the end of the eighth century, and this would mean that Tikal possibly was the first of the major Mayan settlements to be abandoned. Some scholars have argued that the drought theory may easily explain the abandoning of Tikal, but it would not explain how northern cities such as Chichen Itza, Uxmal, and Coba managed to survive and thrive. Gill, in his research, showed that groundwater around Tikal was too far down for the Maya to reach,



whereas groundwater in the north is much closer to the surface, and bore holes did not need to be as deep. Indeed, the U.S. archaeologist Sylvanus Griswold Morley (1946) showed that most of the cities that survived longer had a large number of these bore holes and had greater access to water. The coastal Maya were also able to flourish on heavier reliance on seafood to supplement their diet. Argument for Political Origin of Mayan Demise Archaeologists have discovered that the peak of the building projects for the Maya was between 730 and 790 CE. In any society of the period, the majority of the building work had to be undertaken by the peasants. This has led to some left-wing scholars arguing that the Mayan civilization could have been brought down by a peasant revolt. There is no written evidence for a peasant revolt, but the absence of some details on inscriptions suggests that there could have been a number of uprisings. In many other comparable civilizations, where there are much better written records, there were revolts, and the Maya would not have been an exception. There is some archaeological evidence for the revolt through the smashed remains of some thrones and the burning of some of the temples, events that remain characteristic of a peasant revolt or revolution. If these revolts had taken place, the elite would gradually have lost control of the population, and with revolts breaking out around the Mayan Empire, it was possible that the empire might have decayed over a couple of centuries through societal collapse. This theory is not incompatible with the idea of a drought. If a drought had taken place, and food shortages ensued, the civilization would have been at an increased risk of a peasant revolt. The elite kept their position essentially by providing the necessities of life to the poorer people. If they were unable to provide food, or were not able to supply water, people would quickly lose faith in the governing class, and it is inevitable that there would be some attempt at a revolt. It might also have been possible for some Maya in some areas to join up with people in nearby cities or towns to usurp the rule of their elite at periods of crisis. Again, this is not incompatible with the theory of a prolonged drought. Some theories of history hold that great social turmoil, revolt, or revolution usually stem from foreign wars. Certainly the French Revolution of 1789, the Russian Revolutions in 1905 and in 1917, and the Chinese Revolutions of 1911 and 1949 owe some of their origins to other wars. Fighting is known to have taken place between the people from Chichen Itza, who attacked and captured their southern rival Seibal in 830 CE, which then allowed them to continue their attack on Becan. There is also evidence that the Toltecs did attack the Maya in Yucatan. But there is no evidence of any major invasion of the Mayan lands. The destruction of some places through fighting could, again, go some way to back up the theory of drought. In times of crisis, the inhabitants of one city might invade another to seize its resources, especially water. If the Mayan system was crumbling, the fact that it did


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not face a widespread invasion by the Toltecs could be explained by the Maya having declining resources and abandoning areas as not viable for their population, and therefore not worth the Toltecs investing their time and trouble to invade. There is evidence that there was considerable fighting within the Mayan kingdoms, with the kingdom of Mutal, based at Tikal, and that of Kaan, based at Calakmul, fighting in the sixth and seventh centuries, respectively. Fighting tended to take place between rival kingdoms, and an increase in fighting could exacerbate the environmental degradation. However, the fighting in the Mayan world just before its decline, for which there is evidence, shows that it was either dynastic disputes between rivals or between different city–states. Some historians claim this alone could not result in the collapse of the entire civilization, pointing out that even the devastation of parts of Europe during the Hundred Years’ War in France or the Thirty Years’ War in central Europe did not result in the permanent abandonment of the cities attacked. Nevertheless, there are many instances in history when this has been the case, such as the sacking of the Cambodian city of Angkor in 1432 and the destruction of the T’ai city of Ayuthia in modern-day Thailand, both of which led to the end of their respective civilizations. Part of this has been explained by the British historian Arnold Toynbee, who observed, after studying the fighting in Ceylon, that a war in a tropical region can be more devastating than that in a temperate zone. This is because the destruction of the methods of keeping water such as the irrigation system or the water supply system is far more devastating than in temperate climates, where rainfall could replenish the water supply. The fighting and the peasant revolts certainly disrupted the trade routes that had made the Maya wealthy, even though they did not use beasts of burden and had not invented the wheel. However, most of the long-distance trade during the period of the Maya was in luxury items such as gold, feathers, cacao, and other items that could be carried relatively easily over long distances. Food was traditionally grown outside cities, in close proximity to the centers of population, and thus any disruption in the trade routes, however sustained, could not lead, in itself, to the collapse of the Mayan civilization. Some trade routes between Teotihuacan, Monte Alban, and Mayaland were disrupted in the seventh century CE, with the quality of ceramics and other goods seeming to decline significantly in quality. Certainly, archaeological work on Mayan sites in the northern Yucatan Peninsula have shown that some of the settlements there seem to have taken over the trade routes of their former rivals farther south, but this would be no more than a reflection of the decline, not a cause of it. Conclusion All the scenarios for understanding the end of the Maya basically surround a series of tumultuous events that affected everyone in the Mayan kingdoms. It had to be gradual and sustained—because the Mayan civilization collapsed slowly



but inexorably. This returns us to the hypothesis that it was a great drought, brought on from climatic change, that left many of the Mayan cities, such as Tikal, without supplies of water. This, in turn, led to an end of building projects as the population started to become unsettled. Following this were social upheavals, and these led to peasant revolts and attempted revolutions. The cessation of construction of new temples and prestige projects seems to be clearly, according to the archaeologists, before the time of the temple burnings, and this scenario therefore fits with the available evidence. The civil unrest led to the inhabitants of some cities attacking those of others, a splintering of central rule, and disunity, because those cities with large water supplies could maintain themselves and those without had serious problems. However, the result was that the inhabitants of those cities without water would attack those with, and this, in turn, could lead to a series of internecine wars in which the environment—the water supplies, the farms, and the method of producing and selling food—was so severely disrupted over so much of the country that the civilization collapsed on itself. The invasions by other powers seem to have taken place when either the Maya were very weak or after their civilization had already collapsed. References and Further Reading Coe, Michael D. The Maya. London: Thames and Hudson, 1999. Demarest, Arthur Andrew. Ancient Maya: Rise and Fall of a Rainforest Civilization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Gann, Thomas and J. Eric Thompson. The History of the Maya from the Earliest Times to the Present Day. New York: C. Scribner’s Son, 1931. Gill, Richardson Benedict. The Great Maya Droughts: Water, Life and Death. Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 2000. Henderson, John S. The World of the Ancient Maya. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1997. Hernandez, A. Arellano. The Mayas of the Classic Period. Woodbridge, England: Jaca Books, 1999. Morley, Sylvanus Griswold. The Ancient Maya. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1946. Webster, David L. The Fall of the Ancient Maya: Solving the Mystery of the Maya Collapse. London: Thames and Hudson, 2002.

CON Although several million people of Mayan descent are still with us today, a certain fascination with the classical Mayan world, including its tropical cities, highly accurate astronomical observations, hieroglyphic scripts not fully deciphered, and


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the mysterious collapse of the classic Maya over a millennium ago, continues to captivate the imaginations of scholar and layperson alike. What happened to the millions of classical Maya occupying dozens of stone cities in the heart of a Central American jungle? Well, of course today, through archaeology, linguistic advances in the ancient scripts, and through the modern Maya themselves, we know that their civilization did undergo a collapse of sorts in its core, the southern or Peten lowlands by 900 CE, although the Maya did not disappear but simply abandoned cities and temple complexes that could no longer be sustained, often migrating to peripheral regions. After 600 years of successful civilization building, what happened? As a research community we can now answer many of the who, what, when, and where questions of the classical Mayan collapse, but to date, the exact nature of the collapse, or as some would prefer, the transformation from a classical to postclassical world, including ‘‘how’’ and ‘‘why’’ the collapse took place, cannot be answered. Over 80 theories have been put forth as to what caused the collapse in between 800 and 900 CE. Perhaps the best summary to date was created by Heather McKillop in 2004. McKillop breaks down the explanations of classic Maya, Peten lowland collapse theories into three main categories: ecological overload, endemic warfare, and climatic catastrophe. David Webster (2004) has argued it was ecological collapse, while Arthur Demarest et al. (2005) have argued for the endemic warfare theory and against the other two theories. Interestingly it was Demarest’s team that researched the collapse of an entire Peten region known as Petexbatun, centered on Mayan cities like Dos Pilas and Aguateca, that led Demarest (1998) and others to the endemic warfare conclusion. Not only did these researchers find evidence of a violent, warfare-driven collapse of the region, but they did not find evidence for ecological collapse or climatic change. This research project is probably the most convincing to date arguing for the warfare theory. David Webster (2004), though a proponent of human driven ecological change as part of the collapse, took the warfare argument a step further to include the entire southern lowlands for late classic Mayan times. He argued for a combination of internecine warfare, royal rivalry leading to further warfare, and an exploding population leading to ecological imbalance and gradual decline. Together, these arguments differ mainly in scope and in rate of change or decline rather than in any fundamental way that excludes warfare from the equation. The climatic change theory has been repeatedly postulated and then fallen from favor. In 1931 Thomas Gann and J. Eric Thompson, long the preeminent Mayan researchers, suggested climate change and social revolution. In modern times, research by Richardson Gill (2000) has renewed interest in climate change as the major cause. The problem with this theory is that most of the Gill data are from lake cores in the northern lowlands of the Yucatan and not from the core collapse area, the southern lowlands, or Peten. McKillop (2004) has noted sea level rise in a coastline near the Peten. However, without comprehensive



research in the core collapse area of the Peten itself, along the lines of what took place with Demarest’s team in the Petexbatun, it’s difficult to explain why a major drought in the Yucatan would have led to increased Mayan growth there from 800–1000 CE while the region to the south of Gill’s database collapsed! Further, why would a climate change only strike the Peten and not the surrounding regions? The Maya in Copan in highland Honduras continued on a slow decline, while the great city–state to the north in central Mexico, Teotihuacan, had already been abandoned by 650 CE. Also the so-called great drought of 800– 1000 CE, supposedly the greatest in the past 7,000 years, does not explain the decline of Mayan cities along waterways such as the Usumacinta, Pasion, Negro, or Belize rivers. The classic Mayan cities of Yaxchilan and Piedras Negras lie along the banks of the Usumacinta at the edge of the Petexbatun project. Classic Mayan sites were abandoned along some rivers while others grew. Jared Diamond (2003, 2005) has also suggested environmental collapse, but such an argument is subject to the same critique leveled above. Diamond (2003) does note that classic Mayan warfare peaked just before the last recorded Mayan calendar long count date of 909 CE and counts warfare as one of his five most important factors in assessing the collapse. Diamond (2005), like Webster and Demarest, suggests the collapse is a complex issue and not easily explained by a single climatic change theory. All researchers acknowledge that warfare was a constant part of Mayan civilization, whereas environmental change, whether human or naturally derived, was more periodic. Researchers also find a fundamental issue that is hard to explain. Why did the Maya not only abandon but also not return to the Peten even after the forests returned and the drought ended? Was there something more than environmental issues that kept them away? Was this a buffer zone both in time and space from a land of trouble? The classic Mayan collapse is complex. The Maya utilized a variety of food production and water control measures exactly because they were in a classic wet-dry rainforest biome. The very nature of the civilization developed around this ability to adapt to seasonal change in the rainforest. Additional complexities include the uneven collapse, where core areas of classic Mayan civilization in the Peten are abandoned while peripheral areas are slower to decline or even increase in population. Taken together, this complexity of the case makes it unlikely that a single catastrophic theory will explain the collapse. Demarest has repeatedly argued just such a case and additionally has carried out the most pointed research looking for evidence directly within the collapse region of all three main explanations of ecological change, endemic warfare, and climatic change. Certainly much of the debate centers on what one means by ‘‘cause’’ and by ‘‘collapse.’’ Demarest and Don and Prudence Rice (2005) have discussed the complexities of labeling historic change across many variant regions that made up the Mayan world. It will suffice here to define a working definition of ‘‘cause’’ as meaning the leading reason or reasons and ‘‘collapse’’ as referring to a major set


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of changes concerning how a civilization survives and thrives. It will be argued that although population excess, resource depletion, and climatic change were factors or reasons in the classic Mayan collapse, warfare, in a broad sense, was the frontrunner in bringing about the end and transformation of the classical Mayan world for both commoner and elite over 1,000 years ago. Background to the Controversy The Maya are a set of peoples who shared 30 related languages across five major time periods and three geographic regions. Temporally the Maya start their calendar on August 11, 3114 BCE, but archaeologists cannot find the first signs of distinctive Mayan culture until the last millennium BCE. Thus archaeologists date the preclassic Maya from 1000 BCE to about 200 CE. The period is poorly understood currently due to lack of excavations and Mayan scripts that date to the time period. However, sites like El Mirador indicate just how extensive the Maya were at this time. The classic Maya existed from roughly 200–1000 CE and are better understood due to more archaeological and historical research. This period is characterized by stone cities, temple complexes, complex calendars, murals, and hieroglyphic scripts that vary by region but as a rule are much better understood now than they were 20 years ago. Major cities like Tikal, Caracol, Palenque, and Copan vied for power as the Mayan populations reached their zenith. The postclassic Maya existed from 1000–1500 CE and are often associated with a move of population and power north to the Yucatan Peninsula at sites like Chichen Itza and Coba. Eventually the arrival of the Aztecs, and on their heels, the Spanish, by 1500 CE truncated this reemergence of the Maya. This led to the historic era of Mayan civilization, one in which the many Mayan communities shrank from the diseases and conquests of the Columbian exchange but have rebounded to populations approaching those of the classic period. Geographically, the Maya occupied three regions beginning with the highlands in the south, where most Maya live today, namely in Guatemala and Honduras. Mayan population grew substantially in the jungle lowlands known as the Peten, north of the highlands by the start of classic times. Then in postclassic times, after the ‘‘collapse,’’ more and more Maya migrated into the Yucatan limestone lowlands of the north. Thus we can think of three major Mayan regions: the southern highlands, the Peten lowlands in the middle (often referred to as the southern lowlands), and the Yucatan lowlands in the north. They relied heavily on corn for up to 70 percent of their dietary needs in an area roughly the size and population of the modern U.S. state of Colorado. Mayan population density averaged about 500 people per square mile according to Jarod Diamond (2005). Such numbers indicate how likely conflict due to population and resource access must have been, and Diamond notes that the Maya were constantly at war within themselves.



The Evidence So what is the evidence that warfare was a primary factor in the classic Mayan collapse and not other factors, such as the oft-cited droughts or overharvesting of resources such as limestone or timber by a too large population? A combination of epigraphic (written) and archaeological evidence, much of it surfacing within the past 10 years, now strongly points toward large-scale warfare, both polity to polity and internal civil wars, as a major reason for the Mayan collapse. Epigraphy (Written and Art) Previous arguments against war’s role in the Mayan collapse have centered on the limited ability of the Maya to wage war beyond a ritual clan level due to technological limitations, a peaceful nature, and small polities. Lawrence Keeley (1997) has argued that Stone Age warfare can be every bit as lethal as modern warfare in his groundbreaking work War before Civilization. Of the 15,000 plus known inscriptions, most fall within their Baktuns 8 and 9 or the classic period. Linda Schele and David Friedel (1990) have noted that Maya writing and art as well artifacts indicate a well-developed set of Stone Age tools for war, including spear throwers, obsidian-edged weapons, industries for producing weapons, trained warriors that utilized them, and perhaps most important, reasons for use. Webster (2004) believes those reasons included fulfillment of rituals, status rivalry, and most important, competition for resources. Further, the idea that the Mayan polities never attained sizable state parameters and thus could not carry out large-scale war was first attacked by Joyce Marcus in 1976 and was further elaborated upon by Simon Martin and Nikolai Grube in 2000. Martin and Grube believe the epigraphic evidence is strong enough to specifically define territorial states and boundaries of which alliances between Tikal and Naranjo and Calakmul and Caracol were perhaps key in understanding why the classic period rivalry between giant cities Tikal and Calakmul may hold clues to the Mayan collapse. The power of elite status rivalry by royal families within the polities cannot be underestimated. As Ronald Wright (1992) has noted, the postclassic Mayan text known as The Annals of the Cakchiquels holds clues to the Mayan collapse. The Cakchiquels were a group of royalty who broke off from the largest Mayan nation of today, the Quiche, and became their rivals in 1475 CE. This took place not because of too few resources but because an opportunity and resources to form a rival polity were available. War was the result of this splintering. Such a sequence may be relevant for the incessant splintering and alliances noted in the late classic art and epigraphy of the lowlands as well. In any case, Diane and Arlen Chase (1998) have compiled four types of warfare listed in classic Mayan inscriptions, including capture events, destruction events, decapitation events, and ‘‘star wars’’ (battles timed to correspond with astronomical events) usually involving the planet Venus. Linda Schele and


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A wall painting from Bonampak depicting Maya priests and nobles judging prisoners of war. (Peabody Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA/The Bridgeman Art Library)

David Friedel, David Stuart, and David Webster have all noted that the four types of warfare, and especially the star wars events, increase dramatically in late classic texts and art to become the dominant theme by 800 CE. The TikalCalakmul rivalry and associated alliances are connected with most of those events. Interestingly none of the over 15,000 inscriptions has been interpreted as describing times of drought or ecological disaster, especially those from the late classic. Warfare is the clear and dominant theme. If the Chases and Martin and Grube have correctly interpreted a badly eroded monument, we even know the names of the heads of the royal families who perhaps engaged in the star wars episode that placed warfare in an exalted context as the primary means by which power in the region could be manipulated. It was in April 562 CE when Caracol ruler Yajaw Te’ K’inich II, on behalf of Calakmul, defeated Tikal leader Wak Chan K’awiil. So while the exact names of clans and kin groups may not be known, the main protagonist polities and leaders certainly are. Archaeology It is important to remember that archaeology data for war are often hard to find or ambiguous due to their ephemeral nature. The research of Connell and Silverstein (2006) on the borders of territories between the powerful states of Tikal and Calakmul has yielded a surprising number of both hasty fortifications and



Core and Veneer Architecture The architecture associated with the Puuc region of the Yucatan, core and veneer architecture uses a concrete core instead of the larger, bulkier stones that had been used earlier. This stable core is then decorated with a veneer of intricately cut stones placed before the concrete has set. The decorative veneer can vary from simple repeated patterns of shapes to masks to painstaking mosaics to elaborate sculptures. Examples of the style among the Mayan ruins can be found at Chichen Itza and Oxkintok.

more permanent defensive citadels dating to the late or terminal classic including Tikal, Calakmul, and the associated polities Dos Pilas and Chunchucmil. It may be that archaeologists have been looking too much at the big temple complexes and not enough in the high conflict borders. The Sacbeobs, or raised causeways that emanate from places like Calakmul, may be key in determining key alliances and also crucial border areas, but much more work needs to be done. Archaeological research designed to test for warfare at secondary centers such as Caracol and Dos Pilas has been conducted by the Chases and by Arthur Demarest, respectively. Additionally, Demarest has found evidence of warfare in the late classic across the Petexbatun region. Perhaps most telling is the congruence that takes place between star wars events, archaeological evidence of war, and the epigraphic data. The archaeological evidence for war is strongest both at major and minor polities associated with Tikal and Calakmul just when the star wars events are mentioned, most often in the Mayan glyphs and in Mayan art forms during the late postclassic. The grandest period of monumental architecture projects was in the ninth century CE as well. Classic Mayan civilization was at its height just before its collapse. This does not make it a certainty, but it is interesting to note that the Maya were not turning to new agricultural practices, new lands, or even to the supernatural powers as times got tougher, but instead they increased the level and intensity of warfare. The site of Seibal does have some indications of foreign influence from the north, but Demarest as well as Webster believe most of the warfare was endemic or internal between Mayan polities, and perhaps in some cases it broke down into civil unrest. Conclusion Perhaps the most important point to make about the role of warfare in the classic Mayan collapse concerns the interrelationship between population, environment, civilization, and war. No one doubts that Mayan populations were high, pushing the limits of their highland and lowland resource bases, and were exacerbated by


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droughts, some severe. Yet the Maya had weathered previous droughts, successfully increased food production and water control in previous times of need, and some even migrated north into Yucatan lands during the postclassic, which was only lightly touched on by the conflicts of the Peten and the south. So if a region-wide drought was the key to the collapse, why did some areas like Copan and the Yucatan continue to thrive? However, if war was the key theme in the late classic, and the epigraphic and archaeological evidence suggests it was by 800 CE, then the data showing that the Peten regions succumbed while others, especially peripheral regions, blossomed make more sense. An increasingly overpopulated core continued to grow by using alliances with smaller polities that provided access to resources not available at the core. These alliances were cemented by marriages, kin relations, common resource territories, and strategic locations to acquire needed materials such as obsidian, limestone, timber, exotics, trade route access, and slaves. The big polities were the military elite, and they provided coercive force support to the smaller polities in their local and border rivalries as the Peten lowlands became circumscribed. Seasonal warfare known to us as capture, destruction, and decapitation events more or less kept the balance of power in the early classic. But, in the late classic the balance of power changed, especially after the 562 CE fall of Tikal to Calakmul, Tikal’s reemergence in 680 CE, followed by the rise of secondary powers such as Naranjo and Caracol between 700–1000 CE. Without question it was war that changed the balance of power in the region. The worst, however, was yet to come. Imagine a scenario in which an overpopulated state with a capital of 50,000 people as at Tikal or Calakmul maxes out its long overutilized water and food resources then is hit by an extended drought. Only by turning to old alliances such as Naranjo and Caracol can they survive. This likely meant sharing military resources and thus power, especially if large-scale star wars were waged. These star wars events became the means to not only knock out your rival polity and acquire scarce resources for your state but also the means by which smaller polities could become more powerful, especially the royal families that headed them. This can be seen even at Dos Pilas and Piedras Negras, relatively small and unimportant polities before the late classic. Royal alliances and competition for urgent subsistence supplies led the lowland Maya around the Peten down a path from which they would not return intact. Warfare moved beyond seasonal fighting by elite professionals, as the archaeology and epigraphy suggests. Smaller second-, third-, and even fourth-level polities could not field military specialists as Tikal and Calakmul used to do, so they turned to commoners, the same ones who would normally be tending the fields and water supply, the river transports and sacbees or roads. War was waged year round, the delicate and complex infrastructure went into decline, and cities became untenable. Civilians, now armed to the hilt, fields in ruin, turned on the elite ruling classes whom they had entrusted the balance of the universe



with. The Mayan twin corn gods would lead the classic Mayan commoners to new fields in the north, from which the teosinte (maize) seed would sprout forth. But it was the end for classic Mayan civilization as it had been lived for over 500 years. For many readers this scenario will seem plausible or even probable just as other explanations for the collapse have. However, since the Mayan collapse is so uneven in its nature, we need to seek an explanation that is by nature uneven. Warfare impact, as noted repeatedly in studies from across the globe, leaves an uneven mark on the landscape of civilization. Some regions, polities, and peoples may be sacked, while others realign and still others remain neutral. Just think of World War I and the differential levels of conflict evidence it left around the globe and within Europe itself. It greatly depends on where you look for war as to whether you find the evidence, but that does not mean it did not take place! Perhaps a better analogy would lie in medieval Europe or Samurai Japan with constantly shifting royal political alliances and almost constant internecine warfare. Some castles and estates saw constant conflict, some intermittent, some managed to escape. Often this was a function of a variety of factors, including geographic location, politics, and luck. Yet no one doubts the evidence that medieval Europe and Japan had a high degree of warfare at the same time as the classic Maya. The major difference is probably the prodigious written records between the regions. No doubt if no written record of the crusades into the Middle East was left, or of Portuguese voyages into Japanese trading ports, archaeologists might still be debating whether or not the events took place. That is the nature of archaeology, both good and bad. The evidence for war as a major factor in the collapse exists in the Petexbatun and in the Peten in general. The main issue to be resolved is what the relationships were between war, ecology, and climate in the collapse and transformation of the classic Mayan world of the Peten. We might imagine a sliding scale in which war accounts for 40 percent of the destruction, ecological overuse another 20–30 percent, and perhaps climatic and other changes another 20–30 percent. However, no longer can the role of warfare as a major shaper of Mayan history be left in the background. One wonders what the ancient Maya, who at last abandoned sites at Dos Pilas or Tikal or Caracol, might have answered when asked the question of what happened to their civilization, so long successful in the Peten. Sometimes the distance of time in the research community can leave us isolated from the reality of the historical experience we seek to study. It is, after all, the perspective and worldview of the ancient ones that we are looking for. References and Further Reading Brown, Kathryn. Ancient Mesoamerican Warfare. Lanham, MD: AltaMira Press, 2003.


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Chase, Arlen, and Diane Chase. ‘‘Late Classic May Political Structure, Polity Size and Warfare Arenas.’’ In Anatomia de una Civilizacion: Aproximaciones Interdisciplinarias a la Cultura Maya. Edited by A. Ciudad Ruiz. Madrid, Spain: Publicaciones de la S.E.E.M 4, 1998 Connell, Samuel, and Jay Silverstein. ‘‘From Laos to Mesoamerica.’’ In The Archaeology of Warfare: Prehistories of Raiding and Conquest (pp. 395– 433). Edited by E. Arkush and M. Allen. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2006. Demarest, Arthur. ‘‘The Vanderbilt Petexbatun Regional Archaeological Project: New Evidence and Interpretations on the Classic Maya Collapse.’’ Ancient Mesoamerica 8:2 (1998), 207–228). Demarest, Arthur, Prudence Rice, and Don Rice. ‘‘The Terminal Classic in the Maya Lowlands: Assessing Collapses, Terminations and Transformations.’’ In The Terminal Classic in the Maya Lowlands: Collapse, Transition, and Transformation. Edited by A. Demarest, P. Rice, and D. Rice. Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 2005. Diamond, Jarod. ‘‘The Last Americans: Environmental Collapse and the End of Civilization.’’ Harper’s Magazine (June 2003), 43–51. Diamond, Jerod. Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. New York: Penguin Books, 2005. Gann, Thomas, and J. Eric Thompson. The History of the Maya from the Earliest Times to the Present Day. New York: C. Scribner’s Son, 1931. Gill, Richardson. The Great Maya Droughts: Water, Life, and Death. Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 2000. Keeley, Lawrence. War before Civilization. London: Oxford University Press, 1997. Marcus, Joyce. Emblem and State in the Classic Maya Lowlands: An Epigraphic Approach to Territorial Organization. Washington DC: Dumbarton Oaks, 1976. Martin, Simon, and Nikolai Grube. Chronicle of the Maya Kings and Queens. London: Thames and Hudson, 2000. McKillop, Heather. The Ancient Maya: New Perspectives. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2004. Schele, Linda, and David Friedel. A Forest of Kings: The Untold Story of the Ancient Maya. New York: Morrow, 1990. Stuart, David. ‘‘Historical Inscriptions and the Maya Collapse.’’ In Lowland Maya Civilization in the 8th Century A.D. Edited by J. Sabloff and J. Henderson. Washington DC: Dumbarton Oaks, 1993.



Webster, David. ‘‘Ancient Maya Warfare.’’ In War and Society in the Ancient and Medieval Worlds (pp. 333–60). Edited by K. Raaflaub and N. Rosenstein. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999. Webster, David. The Fall of the Ancient Maya: Solving the Mystery of the Maya Collapse. London: Thames and Hudson, 2004. Wright, Ronald. Stolen Continents: The ‘‘New World’’ through Indian Eyes. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1992.


4 The Chinese explorations of the 1420s reached both coasts of North and South America. PRO Justin Corfield CON Eric Cunningham

PRO There has been intense debate over whether or not the Chinese reached America before the 16th century. Because of the vast size of the Pacific Ocean, many people had not thought it feasible to cross the ocean before the building of the caravels by the Portuguese, although the view that the Vikings in their longboats were able to cross the Atlantic in early medieval times is now widely accepted. However, because of the size of the Pacific Ocean and its currents, as well as the very small number of islands in the North Pacific, the problems facing seafarers were enormous. In 1947 the Norwegian seaman Thor Heyerdahl and his small crew, in the Kon-Tiki, proved that it was possible, in a raft made from balsa wood, to go from the west coast of South America to Polynesia. From that point, scholars started suggesting that it might have been possible for people to sail eastward across the Pacific, using the trade currents, to reach America. Heyerdahl proved that it was possible, but whether it took place was doubted. Early Claims of Chinese ‘‘Discovery’’ The idea that the Chinese might have ‘‘discovered’’ the Americas can be traced back to Joseph de Guignes, who suggested that Buddhist monks from China went to the Americas in the fifth century CE. These ideas have been systematically disproved, and Joseph Needham (1971) went through all the then-extent evidence for the Chinese in the Americas in the pre-Columbian period. China is not traditionally thought of as being a strong maritime power and certainly has not been one in the past 500 years. However, in the 15th century, the Chinese admiral Cheng Ho (Zheng He in pinyin) did command a large fleet of massive ships that sailed around the South China Seas and the Indian Ocean, and as a result, it has been suggested that some ships commanded by the Chinese captains Zhou Wen, Zhou Man, Yang Qing, and Hong Bao may have visited many other parts of the world, including, possibly, the west coast of the Americas. 69 © 2011 ABC-Clio. All Rights Reserved.

70 | Chinese explorers reached America long before Columbus

The voyages of Cheng Ho were well known to Chinese scholars, and, indeed, there are Chinese temples and communities around the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean that have long celebrated the expedition. However, these voyages were relatively unknown in the West until a former British Royal Navy submarine commander Gavin Menzies (2002) wrote his book 1421: The Year China Discovered America, which became an international bestseller. In 2005 a large exhibition was held in Beijing to commemorate the voyages of Cheng Ho. In the book, Menzies suggests that the Chinese might have visited the Americas, and as a result, this claim has become known as the ‘‘1421 hypothesis.’’ Cheng Ho’s Voyages The great Chinese admiral Cheng Ho was born as Ma Ho in about 1371 in Kunming, in Yunnan Province, in the southeast of China. Cheng Ho’s family claimed to have been descended from an early governor of Yunnan from the Yuan (Mongol) Dynasty, tracing their descent from the kings of Bokhara in central Asia, and Cheng Ho’s father, a devout Muslim, had made the pilgrimage to Mecca. When he was 10, the Chinese loyal to the newly established Ming Dynasty captured Yunnan from the Mongols, and he was captured and sent to work in the imperial service, where he distinguished himself and became an important figure at court. In 1400 there was a rebellion that led to Emperor Chien-wen being overthrown two years later and he was replaced by his nephew Yung-lo. Yung-lo reigned for the next 22 years and wanted to demonstrate the power of the new Ming Dynasty to the entire region. Ma Ho took the name Cheng Ho and was selected by the new emperor to sail around the ‘‘Western Oceans.’’ The first fleet led by him in 1405 consisted of 62 ships and 27,800 men. This was a massive undertaking and extremely expensive—when Columbus sailed for the Americas in 1492, he took with him only 86 others, and various European rulers did not want to back him because of the cost of the venture. The fleet of Cheng Ho reached Champa (in modern-day central Vietnam), then sailed for Siam, Melaka (in modern-day Malaysia), to Java, and then around the western part of the Indian Ocean, reaching modern-day Sri Lanka, and returning to China in 1407. Obviously the emperor was please with the first fleet because he ordered a second fleet to be prepared. It embarked on its voyage in 1409 and headed for modern-day Sri Lanka, where the Chinese were involved in an attack on King Alagonakkara, defeating his armies, and brought him back to the Chinese capital of Nanking as a prisoner. The third voyage started in 1411 and headed straight for India, where it then reached the Straits of Hormuz (between modern-day Iran and Oman) and returned via Sumatra. A fourth voyage was undertaken in 1413, again heading for India, and then to the modern-day Oman, with some of the fleet heading to modern-day Aden. A Chinese delegation did reach Mecca and


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then traveled to Egypt, with the main fleet heading south along the east coast of Africa, reaching modern-day Mozambique. They returned in 1415. A fifth voyage lasted from 1417 until 1419 and again reached the Persian Gulf and the east coast of Africa, with a sixth voyage, in 1421, taking back some of the foreign emissaries who had gone to Nanking on the fourth voyage. The cost of these sea voyages was enormous. As a result, with the death of Emperor Yung-lo in 1424, the imperial court decided to disband the navy and end all naval expeditions. This had as much to do with the cost of mounting the expeditions as with the intrigue Illustration of the Ming Dynasty navigator in the imperial palace. However, Cheng Ho. Between 1405 and 1433, Cheng Cheng Ho did manage a seventh voy- Ho led seven immense fleets in expeditions age in 1431–1433, going to Southeast to Southeast Asia, India, the Persian Gulf, Asia, India, the Persian Gulf, the Red and the east coast of Africa. These expediSea, and the east coast of Africa. tions, made up of several dozen ships carrying some 20,000 men, heightened Chinese Cheng Ho died in 1435. prestige, increased trade, and added more The details of most of the seven countries to the Ming tribute system. (The voyages of Cheng Ho are not con- British Library/StockphotoPro) tested, and details of the ships sent out and the places visited survive, both in Chinese records and in records of some of the places they visited. There are temples and plaques that remain, commemorating the voyage. Even some of the dry docks in Nanking, where the enormous ships were built, have survived. What a study of these voyages does show was that Chinese ships were easily capable of sailing around the Indian Ocean, were easily able to reach the coast of east Africa, and, if necessary, were well armed and capable of taking part in local wars. This then demonstrated that the Chinese ships of the period were capable of sailing across the Pacific Ocean, or across the Indian Ocean and around the Cape of Good Hope into the South Atlantic. The debate rests on whether or not they did so. Arguments against Chinese ‘‘Discovery’’ The most obvious reason suggested why the Chinese did not reach America before 1492 was that the Chinese had never claimed to have discovered the



A Medal for Discovering America In 2007 a seven-centimeter diameter brass medallion was dug up in a graveyard in coastal North Carolina. That, in itself, is not astounding, but what was inscribed on the medal is. A Chinese inscription reading, ‘‘Da Ming Xuan De Wei Ci,’’ translates as ‘‘Awarded by Xuan De of Great Ming.’’ It refers to the reign of Emperor Xuan Zong, from 1426 to 1435, decades before Columbus sailed. It has long been asserted that Chinese explorers, most notably Cheng Ho, reached the Americas before Columbus, and this discovery, if valid, lends more credence to that theory. Medallions like this were given to those who carried the authority of the emperor, and certainly Cheng Ho would have qualified on that count. There are other theories explaining how an early 15th-century Chinese medallion ended up buried in North Carolina, but Gavin Menzies, author of 1421: The Year the Chinese Discovered America, sees this as the first of a number of many similar findings that will reshape how Americans look at the continent’s ‘‘discovery’’ by outsiders.

Americas, whereas they did claim to have ‘‘discovered’’ other parts of the world. The answer to that is obvious. Many important documents in China were destroyed in the wars and revolutions since the 1420s. The loss of archives and libraries in the emergence of the Manchu Dynasty in the 1640s, the devastation of much of the country during the Taiping Rebellion in the middle of the 19th century, and the civil war, the Japanese invasion, and the Cultural Revolution of the 20th century resulted in the loss of many histories and manuscript accounts. Many detailed histories of the period are known to have existed, but all copies appear to have been lost. Although there are only two main written references in Norse sagas to the Vikings sailing to places that could be identified as the Americas, archaeological evidence has proven beyond any doubt that they did so. As to why the claim had not been made beforehand, Cheng Ho’s expeditions certainly incited a large degree of jealousy in the imperial court, and it is easily possible that details from his later expeditions could have been deliberately hidden either by his direct enemies or by people anxious to play down the discoveries, because they might have resulted in further expeditions that would have drained the government coffers. There are a number of surviving maps indicating that the Chinese voyages of Cheng Ho—and those of his admirals—covered a great deal more territory than had previously been thought. The Kangnido Map, dated to 1402, before Cheng Ho’s first expedition, certainly shows many details of the African continent and appears to have been drawn in a stylistic fashion, possibly originally from a rough sketch. It comes from a map that was presented by the Korean ambassador to the Chinese Emperor Yung-lo in 1403, and although the original has been lost, a Japanese copy has survived. This clearly shows the Straits of Gibraltar, the North African coast, including the Atlas Mountains, and the entire


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coast of the African continent, although with a large inland lake—a common perception by many explorers of the period. Because the European sailors did not cover the continent until 60 years later, the map shows that somebody in China had knowledge of the African continent before the Portuguese had sailed around the west coast of Africa. Although, obviously, it is possible to sail around the coast of Africa, following the trade currents, it seems likely that the ships going from the Indian Ocean around the Cape of Good Hope might have reached West Africa, and then possibly headed across the Atlantic to northern Brazil. This speculation leads to the Pizzigano Map of 1424, made by a Venetian cartographer named Zuane Pizzigano. It ended up in the collection of the British antiquarian Thomas Phillips and from there, found its way to the James Ford Bell Library at the University of Minnesota. It also showed the African continent. But more important, there were four islands marked on the map in the western Atlantic. These were called Satanazes (‘‘Devil’s Island’’), Antilia, Saya, and Ymana. There are no islands in the location marked on the map, but because the Europeans had problems calculating longitude, Gavin Menzies showed that it was possible that these were, in fact, Caribbean islands. He suggested that Satanazes was the modern-day island of Guadeloupe, with Antilia being Puerto Rico. Given that Christopher Columbus did not sail into the region until 1492, the map indicates that some people reached the Caribbean at least 70 years earlier. Much more conclusively, one of the islands has a remark written on it stating that it was where volcanoes erupted, and there had been eruptions in the Caribbean during this period. It was, in fact, this map that led Gavin Menzies to begin his work, and he believes that the Pizzigano Map incorporated information from other, probably Chinese, maps. Again, as with the Kangnido Map, the Pizzigano Map does not prove that the Chinese reached any part of the Americas, but it indicates that somebody did go there (and return) and clearly suggests that it was possible. The third map, the Fra Mauro Map, from 1459, has very detailed coverage of places in Asia, the Indian Ocean, and Africa, again predating the European circumnavigation of Africa. More important, it also shows an ‘‘Indian’’ Zoncho, marked as a ship, in the Atlantic Ocean. As the term ‘‘India’’ was loosely used in Europe to refer to Asia—leading to the native people of the Americas being called Indians, for example—and the term zoncho stood for a ‘‘junk,’’ Menzies argues that this again shows evidence of Chinese ships in the Atlantic Ocean. There are several other maps that, again, tend to point to the Chinese explorers having located parts of the Americas. The Martellus Map of 1489 includes rivers in South America identified as the Magdalena (Colombia), the Orinoco (Venezuela), the Amazon (Brazil), the Paraguay and the Parana (Paraguay), and the Colorado, Negro, and the Chubut (all in Argentina). Menzies has also managed to identify on the map the Mississippi, the Brazos, the Alabama, and the Roanoke in North America. There is also the Piri Reis Map of 1513, which,



Menzies argued, shows that Admiral Hong Bao—one of the admirals serving under Cheng Ho—was involved in charting the coast of Antarctica. Again, it shows that the Chinese ships seem to have been sailing all around the Americas, so it seems unlikely that they did not discover some part of North or South America. Furthermore, as early as 1428 the Portuguese claimed that they had a map covering the whole world, but they never claimed they had created this chart. A more intriguing piece of evidence that the Chinese reached the Americas comes from a 1430 Chinese publication called The Illustrated Record of Strange Countries. It describes some animals such as the armadillo, which are unique to South America, and the mylodons, which were then found in Patagonia. Many voyages of discovery included hunting local animals and occasionally taking them back to the explorers’ home country, so the interest in armadillos would certainly have been expected, given its unusual appearance. Also, much has been made of the presence of Asiatic chickens in the Americas. The bird is flightless, and it seems likely that the Chinese fleets would have taken a supply of these for fresh meat on their voyage. They predominantly lay blue-colored eggs—both in China and also from Mexico to Chile, along the west coast of Latin America—while the European chickens lay eggs that are either cream colored or white. Ferdinand Magellan refers to finding a new breed of chicken in South America, and the references to these chickens by the Incas predated the arrival of the Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro. The term for the word chicken was hualpa, and the great Inca leader Atahualpa was called that before the arrival of Pizarro, who overthrew and killed him in 1533. Curiously, the chicken in Mexico is known locally as tori, while in Japanese it is nihuatori. The Arawaks called it karaka, whereas the Indians referred to the chicken as karaknath. Similar work has been done on the maize used in the Americas and its link to types of maize used in China, contrasting with the maize in Europe at the time. Evidence of Chinese Presence in the Americas To compare, once again, the possible Chinese ‘‘discovery’’ of the Americas with the Viking discovery of North America, apart from the Vinland Map—which is questioned by some experts—there are no other documentary sources for the Vikings’ voyages to North America, except references in two sagas, mentioned earlier, and the various rune stones, some of which may be hoaxes, and others (such as the Kensington Runestone), which may be genuine. However, few people doubt that the Vikings did reach North America, mainly because of the archaeological remains of Viking settlements found at L’Anse aux Meadows in Canada and elsewhere. As a result, researchers have been trying to locate any evidence in the Americas of sites that may have possible origin or artifacts. Menzies has identified


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17 sites or documentary sightings that seem to have connections to early Chinese sailors or settlers. Two of these are on the east coast of North America. There were reports of Chinese junks off the coast of Florida by the Spanish explorer Pedro Menendez de Aviles, and when George Washington and some colleagues drained a swamp west of Norfolk, Virginia, it has been reported that they found the remains of ‘‘an ancient C Chinese sailing ship.’’ In the Caribbean, Columbus is reported to have found a shipwreck off the coast of Guadeloupe, and Vasquez de Coronado is reported, in Hakluyt’s The Principall Navigations, Voiages, and Discoveries of the English Nation (1589) to have seen junks with gilded sterns— ‘‘three shippes on the sea coast which bore Alcatarzes or pelicans of gold and silver in their prows.’’ A Chinese book also cites a secret report by Columbus in which he found Chinese mirrors in ‘‘bird boats.’’ There are far more interesting discoveries on the west coast of the Americas. A large shipwreck was found off Vancouver Island that was longer than James Cook’s Endeavour or Vancouver’s Discovery. A number of Chinese artifacts, including vases, were also found nearby. An ‘‘Asian pot wreck’’ was found several centuries ago, and this has been linked to an unexplained group of potters who settled in the valley between Vancouver Lake and the Columbus River, operating there between about 1400 and 1700. J. G. Swan’s book The Northwest Coast (1857) also makes mention of Chinese artifacts at Clatsop Beach, Vancouver Island, and Ming porcelain has been found on the Netarts sand pit in Oregon, along with Southeast Asian hardwood that has been dated to about 1410. This was in about the same location as some wrecked Chinese junks were illustrated in the map of California from 1543 drawn up by Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo. A Chinese brass plate was found buried at Susanville, near Sacramento, California; and there are Ming porcelain objects in local museums in southern California and northern Mexico. There also are regular reports of Native North American tribes with collections of Chinese coins, although nobody has currently dated these to any particular time period. The English sea captain Francis Drake is reported to have ‘‘chased a junk’’ off the coast of modern-day California in June–July 1579 when he was circumnavigating the world in 1577–1580. Although this may refer to a Chinese ship, the reference is in passing—the vessel never posed a threat to them—and it is possible that the mention could refer to a local boat, although Drake did sail to the Moluccas and through the East Indies, where he certainly would have come across genuine Chinese ‘‘junks.’’ Other accounts come from John Ranking’s (1827) Historical Researches on the Conquest of Peru, Mexico, Bogota, Natchez and Talameco, in the Thirteenth Century by the Mongols. Ranking claims in his books—he wrote another on the Mongols and Rome, published in 1826—to have spent 20 years in ‘‘Hindoostan’’ and Russia. Ranking studied details of the Mongol fleet, which did attack Japan, and queried whether some of the ships could have reached the Americas.



This seems far less likely than the fleet of Cheng Ho making the trip, and Ranking cites his reasons based on his studies of the items from the region, including carvings of elephants and also the copper armor in pre-Columbian America, in Peru and Mexico, as well as some characteristics in their hieroglyphics used in some parts of the region. There was, however, evidence of similarities with those used by the Mongols. Ranking detailed wrecks of what are believed to be Chinese ships off the coast of Peru and the remains of junks found near ‘‘Taroja’’ in Chile. He also mentioned the presence of some animals, such as the tapir, common to both regions. Certainly, the similarities to Mongol items are interesting, but this does not rule out Cheng Ho’s expeditions as being the source of these. The Yuan Dynasty ruling China until just before the birth of Cheng Ho was Mongol, and indeed the Mongols were in control of the province of Yunnan when Cheng Ho was born. As a result, it seems highly likely that Cheng Ho would have taken with him at least some Mongols, and there would be a certainty that some of the older people connected with voyages would have studied during Mongol rule, which ended in parts of China 53 years earlier, but which continued in regions up to 30 years before the actual voyage. It was not until 1402 that the Mongol rulers ceased to use the name of the dynasty. There are numerous other similarities between items in China and those in pre-Columbian America, including fishhooks and labrets used in Ecuador that are similar to those in China. Lacquer boxes from Ming China have been found in Mexico, as have the remains of Chinese dyes. Bronzes with Chinese inscriptions have been located in Trujillo in Peru, as was a silver ‘‘idol’’ with a Chinese inscription, and at Nasca, also in Peru, pottery with Chinese inscriptions has been found. In addition to the early Ming brass plate that was found in California, a stone with a Chinese inscription was also found in that state. There have also been suggestions that some of the carved Mayan statues and figurines in modern-day Mexico and Guatemala have Chinese-style features, and writing on a Mayan temple wall in Yucatan appears to be Chinese in origin. The evidence of carvings of what are believed to be elephants in Central America by the Maya and by other peoples in modern-day Bolivia has also given rise to suggestions that these inscriptions or models were done by, or brought from China, as elephants had died out in prehistoric times. Mention should also be made that in parts of northern Peru, especially in the Ancash Province, Menzies managed to identify some 95 geographic names that are words in Chinese and have no significance in any of the local dialects, such as Quechua and Aymara. Indeed, he pointed out that the name ‘‘Peru’’ means ‘‘white mist’’ in Chinese and, also the name ‘‘Ch-Li’’ (for modern-day Chile) means ‘‘dependent territory’’ in Chinese. There are also 130 geographic names in Peru corresponding to names of places in China. Indeed, the Inca roads in Peru were made using gypsum cement in a similar style to that used in China.


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Another area of investigation into whether Chinese intermarried or settled in the Americas has come through analysis of DNA. In 1964 in a study of the distribution of transferrin phenotypes—proteins that transport iron in blood—Tulio Arends and M. L. Gallengo from the Instituto Venezolano de Investigaciones Cienti’ificas in Caracas, Venezuela, examined some of the people in tribes in the foothills of the Sierra de Perija in Venezuela. Some 58 percent of them had a slowmoving transferrin that was similar to that found in Chinese from the province of Kwantung, in southeast China, and nowhere else. As it has been suggested by Menzies that it is extremely likely that many of the crew for the ships of Zhou Man and Hong Bao would have come from Kwantung, and it seems highly likely that at least one Chinese person is the ancestor of some of the Venezuelan tribes people. Recently Uncovered Evidence The major evidence that the Chinese did discover the Americas came out after the publication of Menzies’s book. A Chinese lawyer and collector, Liu Gang bought a map from a Shanghai dealer for $500 in 2001. The map was being sold at a stall in a bookshop in Fuzhou Street, Shanghai, and the inscription on it stated that the map was drawn in 1763 based on a copy of another map made in the 16th year of the Emperor Yung-lo (1418). The inscription states that the map was drawn by Mo Yi Tong and shows North America, South America, Africa, and Australia. But it does not include the British Isles. After hearing about the book by Menzies, Liu Gang revealed his possession of the map. Known as the Zheng He Map, some skeptics believe that the map is false, while others claim that even if the map can be accurately dated to 1763, with forensic tests in Canada on the paper and the ink, we only have the copier’s statement that the map was an accurate copy of a 1418 map. A forensic test of the paper showed that there was an 80 percent probability that it dated from between either 1640 and 1690 or between 1730 and 1810. Because only the paper was tested—and not the ink—there still remain questions concerning it. However, there are certainly intriguing anomalies about the map that point to it possibly being genuine. These involve Australia being wrongly placed. It is more-or-less accepted that the Chinese reached Australia before Captain James Cook. More intriguingly, California is shown as an island. It was originally thought to be such by the Portuguese and shown as one on Portuguese maps, but the Portuguese did not sail to California, making it possible that the early Portuguese maps were, in fact, copied from the Chinese map. Conclusion There was much debate about the research by Gavin Menzies, and some of his arguments can be demonstrated to be shaky, or to rely too heavily on other sources



that are sometimes not cited in full. Given the reported sightings, the evidence from isolated archaeological findings, and from evidence from analysis of the Indians in Venezuela, it seems highly likely that the Chinese did visit the Americas. Some scholars have sought to disprove some of the arguments by Menzies, but to prove that the Chinese did not reach the Americas, they would have to disprove all of them. It is certainly clearly possible that the Chinese had the capability to sail to the Americas—both across the Atlantic, and via the Indian Ocean and around the Cape of Good Hope, across the Pacific to the west coast. The main evidence for the Chinese discovery of the Americas comes from the maps, and it is becoming even more obvious that some sailors had certainly visited the Americas and mapped parts of them before Christopher Columbus arrived there. This information then reached the west—Columbus refers to the sailors from Bristol, and English court records do mention an expedition to a place called ‘‘Brazil’’ in the reign of King Edward IV (d. 1483), with the term ‘‘Brazil’’ possibly referring to Newfoundland. This might explain how Columbus knew of the existence of the Americas somewhere across the Atlantic, but the maps cited earlier show that other people had clearly known much of the western coastline of the Americas, as well as the eastern coastline, before Columbus set sail. As this predates the Europeans, there are few other options. The Japanese did not have ships capable of sailing the Pacific Ocean; their society was so insular and they had little contact with the outside world that it was unlikely such information could have reached Europe. This leaves the intense probability, rather than the certainty, that the Chinese discovered the Americas before Columbus. References and Further Reading Arends, Tulio and M L Gallengo. ‘‘Transferrins in Venezuelan Indians: High Frequency of a Slow-Moving Variant.’’ Science 143:367 (January 24, 1964), 367–368. ‘‘China Beat Columbus to It, Perhaps.’’ The Economist (January 14, 2006): 80–81. Duyvendak, J. J. L. China’s Discovery of Africa. London: Arthur Probsthain, 1949. Gilmore, Donald Y., and Linda S. McElroy, eds. Across before Columbus? Edgecomb, ME: NEARA Publications, 1998. Grice, Elizabeth. ‘‘Explorer from China Who ‘Beat Columbus to America’.’’ Daily Telegraph (London) (March 4, 2002): 5. Jeffreys, M. D. W. ‘‘Pre-Columbian Maize in Asia.’’ In Man Across the Sea: Problems of Pre-Columbian Contacts. Edited by Carroll Riley et al. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1971.


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Menzies, Gavin. 1421: The Year China Discovered America. New York: Harper Collins, 2002. Menzies, Gavin. Zheng He’s Voyages to Xiyang. Singapore: Canfonian, 2004. Needham, Joseph. ‘‘China and Pre-Columbian America.’’ In Science and Civilisation in China (Vol. 4, Part 3, pp. 540–53). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971. Ranking, John. Historical Researches on the Conquest of Peru, Mexico, Bogota, Natchez and Talameco, in the Thirteenth Century by the Mongols. London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green, 1827. Viviano, Frank. ‘‘China’s Great Armada.’’ National Geographic (July 2005): 28–53.

CON Prior to the release of Gavin Menzies’s (2003) 1421: The Year China Discovered America, the ‘‘big’’ problem for historians studying the Ming treasure fleets was not trying to establish proof of New World explorations, but rather trying to determine why the Ming chose not to explore any new worlds. Given the fact that its ships were large and seaworthy, its captains highly skilled, and its seafaring technologies adequate to the task of relatively long distance voyages, why, historians asked, did China ‘‘turn its back’’ on the sea? Why did the Ming rulers (1368–1644) decide not to send their fleets beyond the Indian Ocean and create the kind of maritime empire that less sophisticated European powers would establish a century later? If only China had seized this opportunity, historians speculated, European exploration, and the expansion of Western civilization might have been dramatically altered. This question has been the subject of interest to China scholars throughout the 20th century. In the first half of the century, celebrated Sinologists such as J. J. L. Duyvendak and Joseph Needham (1959, 1962, 1965) wrote about the short but dramatic period in which China was the world’s largest maritime power. In the past 20 years, Edward Dreyer (2007), Robert Finlay (1992, 2004), and Louise Levathes (1994) have published focused studies of the treasure fleets, offering greater insight on such matters as the motives for exploration, the diplomatic context, military history, and even naval architecture. The general consensus among historians is that the voyages were a priority only to the expansive emperor Yongle (r. 1402–1424), and were not necessarily consistent with the larger aspirations of a new dynasty trying to restore good Confucian governance after nearly a century of Mongol (1279–1368) rule. By this argument, the voyages were terminated with the death of Yongle because the cost of supporting the fleets diverted resources from more vital concerns such as restoring the agricultural infrastructure of rural villages, maintaining a good defensive posture against frontier enemies, and



rebuilding the urban commercial economy after decades of Mongol neglect. Another reason often given is that eunuch ‘‘admirals,’’ epitomized by the great Zheng He (1371–1433), became too influential in court, prompting jealous mandarins to eliminate their rivals’ opportunities to acquire prestige and power. All things considered, the question is a good one and has yet to be fully resolved. Historians over the years have written a great deal in their attempts to clarify the problem, but none has ever felt the need to challenge the validity of the base assumption that the Ming voyages were limited in scope, duration, and space, and extended no farther than the western Indian Ocean. The entire discussion changed in 2003, with the publication of Menzies’s controversial bestseller 1421, which insists that the Ming treasure fleets discovered, charted, and even settled the American hemisphere as early as 1421, decades prior to the first Portuguese explorations in the Indian Ocean and Spanish explorations in the Atlantic. Menzies’s thesis has not made the old question obsolete, but it has shifted the focus of the discussion away from its original, and arguably more substantial, historical concerns. No more do we debate the question of why the Ming fleets failed to establish a Chinese maritime empire; instead we weigh in on the problems of Menzies’s methodology and take positions on the degree to which we think he has abused the practice of good history. While judgments of Menzies’s project do not completely answer the interesting question of whether or not the Chinese discovered America, they do indicate that what is at stake today in the writing of history is not simply the interpretation of evidence but rather the manner in which historical questions are posed, researched, and presented. The question before us is less historical than historiographical, and to address it, we have no choice but to examine one book and its controversial author. Menzies’s thesis, bold in its position and revolutionary in its implications, has created a firestorm among historians. His book (along with its sequel 1434: The Year a Chinese Fleet Sailed to Italy and Ignited the Renaissance [2008]) has spawned a print and Internet cottage industry of sympathetic readers who continue to furnish their own ‘‘evidence’’ of China’s American explorations. Not surprisingly, the 1421 phenomenon has also inspired an equally vigorous community of ‘‘Menzies-bashers,’’ primarily professional historians who accuse Menzies of poor methodology and unsubstantiated theories. Menzies’s critics maintain that as an amateur historian (he is in fact a retired British submarine commander), he has not adhered to even minimum standards of professional historical research, specifically failing to consult primary sources (he does not read Chinese) and failing to provide any positive evidence for his radical claims about Chinese naval presence in the Atlantic, the Antarctic, the Americas, and Oceania between 1421 and 1423. In taking up the ‘‘con’’ side of this argument, it would be easy enough to say that the critics are correct, and that the case is closed. It is true that Menzies does not read Chinese; it is true that Menzies


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A replica of a ship used by Ming Dynasty explorer Cheng Ho, also known as Zheng He, while under construction at a park in Nanjing, eastern China’s Jiangsu Province in 2006. Cheng completed seven voyages between 1405 and 1433, leading huge flotillas of more than 100 ships and 25,000 men to 30 countries. (Sean Yong/Reuters/Corbis)

engages in dramatic conjecture, and it is true that Menzies does not—and based on the available evidence cannot—‘‘prove’’ that Chinese ships arrived in the American hemisphere in the 1420s. If good history is done on the basis of clear documentary evidence, which is to say, evidence that positively proves an assertion, rather than merely raises a possibility, then there is now no conclusive historical argument to support the position that the Ming fleets discovered America. Having said that, I would also concede that the bluntness of this ready counterargument may do some injury to the healthy practice of historical speculation, and may be too dismissive of Menzies’s project, in that it fails to address completely the good questions that Menzies does raise about the existence of charts that may show regions of the Americas and the wider world prior to 1492. Had Menzies left these questions unanswered and avoided the temptation of answering them with confidence ‘‘beyond the scintilla of doubt,’’ he may have been more enthusiastically received by academic critics, though the boldness with which he made his assertions (which gained him a large part of his notoriety) would likely have been gone as well (Menzies 2003: 127). When amateur historians bring bold, new, and unsubstantiated theories into print, becoming icons of popular culture as a result, the natural consequence is a backlash of academic ire that may be as rash in its condemnation as the contested theses are in their postulates.



China’s Treasure Fleets In July 2005, the city of Nanjing, in China’s Jiangsu Province, opened the Zhenghe Treasure Ship Ruins Park, which commemorates and preserves many of the relics of the Ming Dynasty treasure fleets, which may have arrived in the Americas before Columbus. The voyages of Cheng Ho (or, Zheng He) to Southeast Asia, India, the Persian Gulf, and the Red Sea are a primary focus of the park, which includes a hall of treasures exhibiting gifts Cheng Ho received during his voyages. The centerpiece of the exhibit is a 200-foot replica of a treasure fleet ship, although Cheng Ho’s flagship would have been over twice as large. His fleet consisted of some 300 ships and 37,000 sailors. The fleet began in 1405, when the first Ming Emperor, Yongle, commissioned Cheng Ho to sail in order to establish trading partners and demonstrate China’s prowess as a naval power. It is noteworthy to point out, however, that although the Chinese fleet voyaged as far as any European explorer, they did not build forts to establish a permanent presence, preferring instead to amass a fortune through trade.

Menzies, whose 1421 project resembles such fictions as the Da Vinci Code or National Treasure, may not deserve to be called a serious historian, but he probably does not deserve to be called a charlatan either. He is certainly not the first history buff to be mistaken for a professional historian by an enthusiastic public. The controversial theory of the Chinese discovery of America is, despite some embarrassing holes, an important topic, not only because of what the evidence may or may not tell us, but because the controversy itself reveals some of the limitations of ‘‘good’’ historical scholarship and invites us to consider what the correct role of the historian should be. It also forces us to consider why unsubstantiated theories can so quickly and permanently work their way into the consciousness of a public looking for truth in history. That a society groping for satisfaction in a troubled world will often embrace pseudo-history as real history says a great deal about the vitality of that society’s historical aspirations, to say nothing of its confidence in its own historical assumptions. This section, in opposing the thesis that the Chinese discovered America, will not only address the argument and its evidence, but will also consider some of the larger questions about history, historiography, and historical consciousness that it presents. What the Evidence Shows Thanks to reliable court documents and biographical records of the Ming Dynasty, we know that the third emperor Yongle commissioned a series of voyages to the ‘‘western ocean.’’ He did this, apparently, to ‘‘display his shoulders in strange lands in order to make manifest the wealth and power’’ of his empire


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(Dryer 2007). Yongle’s goal was not merely to project Ming power abroad, but also to draw the maritime nations of Southeast Asia and Africa into tributary relationships with the Chinese court. The voyages, beginning in 1405, marked something of a departure from early Ming foreign policy. Yongle’s father (and dynasty founder) emperor Hongwu (r. 1368–1398), chose a path of diplomatic isolation after years of fierce campaigns to expel the Mongols from China. In the early years of his reign, he banned trade with foreign countries, set to work on reconstructing the Great Wall, and repudiated the expansionist policies of the Mongols, who had ruled China for nearly a century. Yongle, on the other hand, was ruthlessly self-aggrandizing, determined to increase his own glory and the prestige of his empire (Tsai 2001). After a bloody four-year rebellion against his nephew, the Emperor Jianwen, Yongle seized the throne in 1402 and began a multifaceted project to expand Ming power over land and sea. By 1410, he had reopened hostilities with the Mongols, made incursions into Vietnam, and launched the fabled treasure fleets—all, as Edward Dreyer observes, in defiance of the wishes of the mandarins, the Confucian scholar-officials who staffed the imperial bureaucracy. In the final analysis, Yongle’s dreams of expansion came to little, as these adventures were too costly to sustain. After Yongle’s death in 1424, his imperial successors and the Confucian bureaucracy took decisive steps to curtail the military and maritime adventures that had cost China so much in terms of lost lives and wasted treasure. While the decommissioning of the treasure fleets was easy to justify from an economic standpoint, it is clear that court politics played a significant role in these decisions. The core of the political controversy was the long-standing suspicion of the mandarins, who saw themselves as the rightful administrators of the realm, toward the court eunuchs, who enjoyed great influence as palace guards, generals, and, for a while, sea captains. The life of the legendary ‘‘admiral,’’ Zheng He, who commanded these voyages, gives evidence of how power relationships outside the traditional channels of Confucian scholarship and government were treated by the mandarins as a threat to political stability. Often portrayed as a great sailor in the legendary maritime tradition of Islam, Zheng He’s chief qualification for the position of commander-in-chief of the treasure fleets was not his expertise as a skipper, but rather his unwavering loyalty to Yongle. As a young boy, Zheng He had been taken prisoner during the Ming wars against the Mongols. He was castrated and forced into service in Yongle’s household while the latter was still an imperial prince and a commander in his father’s army. As Zheng He grew up, he became a great soldier, serving with conspicuous bravery during his patron’s quest for the throne. While it is true that Zheng He came from a devout Muslim family, he was neither a mariner by training nor an experienced explorer prior to being placed in charge of the treasure fleets (Dreyer 2007). Six voyages were launched between 1405 and 1422, with a seventh and final voyage commissioned in 1431, seven years after Yongle’s death. By all



accounts, the size and composition of the treasure fleets was staggering, especially in comparison to the three 85-foot caravels that Columbus took to the Caribbean in 1492. As an illustration, the first Ming fleet got under way with 62 treasure ships, each over 400 feet in length and 180 feet in the beam. These large flat-bottomed ships displaced over 20,000 tons; each was furnished with nine masts, sealed watertight compartments, fore and aft anchors, and sternpost rudders. They were accompanied by 255 support ships carrying water, horses, gifts for overseas Ming vassals, and a complement of about 27,000 sailors, ambassadors, and men-at-arms. The seven fleets were sent to destinations in Vietnam and Southeast Asia, India and Sri Lanka, the Straits of Malacca, the Gulf of Aden, the Arabian Peninsula, the Red Sea, and eastern Africa as far south as Mozambique. As noted above, these voyages were chiefly diplomatic missions, designed to show the grandeur of the Ming emperor, to establish tributary relations with the rulers of the Indian Ocean area, and to collect medicinal and zoological specimens. Because these goals seem to stand in such stark contrast to the later goals of Spanish and Portuguese explorers (which might be characterized by the old, but not inaccurate, mnemonic of ‘‘God, gold, and glory’’), they have often been interpreted as ‘‘peaceful’’ missions. It is difficult, as Dreyer points out, to consider these deployments of enormous ships filled with soldiers as peace missions, especially in view of the fact that Ming soldiers engaged in hostilities with locals on several occasions, but this interpretation has been used by Chinese and non-Chinese historians alike to suggest that China’s geopolitical ambitions, also in contrast to the West, have always been, and still are, benign (Dreyer 2007). The crux of the debate is the sixth voyage of 1421–1422, which Menzies claims is the voyage that brought the treasure fleets to the western lands. Conventional accounts tell us that the purpose of this voyage was to return long exiled diplomats to their home countries. While there is evidence to show that the fleet separated into smaller task forces, there is little else to support the idea that these subordinate forces sailed into the Atlantic or Pacific Ocean. We know that the voyages, with one exception, came to an end with the death of Yongle in 1424. The mandarins, who had long opposed the treasure fleets and military expansion, convinced the new emperor, Hongxi, to suspend the voyages, and the government took forceful steps to prevent any resumption of maritime activity. Needham and Levathes both contend that deck logs, sailing directions, and ship’s plans were destroyed by Confucian officials in later decades of the Ming Dynasty, in the hopes of making sure that the empire would never again waste ‘‘myriads’’ of treasure and grain on such non-Confucian priorities as seafaring (Levathes 1959). Exactly what records the officials destroyed, and precisely why they did so, is a matter of debate (Dreyer 2007). It is beyond doubt that the Ming Dynasty turned away from maritime activity, but proving that only the records of Zheng He’s voyages to America were destroyed—while making


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use of the records of the first five voyages that were kept—seems to be an uphill battle. The argument in favor of the Chinese discovery of America absolutely depends on the belief that key documents about the new world were destroyed, because the gap in the historical record is the only basis available to the creative historian who wishes to supply the missing narrative. With that, let us turn to the Menzies argument. The Menzies Thesis: Strategies and Assertions It is not the purpose of this section to present an item-by-item refutation of Gavin Menzies’s argument, but because Menzies is the author of the only existing thesis that asserts that the Chinese discovered the new world, we have to grapple first with the argument he makes and the evidence he uses to support it. When we do so, we find that the argument and the evidence are two sides of one rhetorical strategy to offer conjecture as conclusion, and to offer random and often irrelevant data as if they were a preponderance of proof. Menzies makes no serious attempt to prove that the Ming fleets discovered America—he just asserts that they did, and makes this assertion the ground of proof for the evidence that follows. His methodology relies on three rhetorical strategies: (1) making the absence of a historical record the essential proof of his thesis, (2) treating detailed discussions of peripheral matters as if they were central issues, (3) offering personal intuition as if it were professional expertise. The combined effect of these strategies is to lull an uncritical reader into thinking that the conclusion, because it is stated so boldly, must be true, and that the author, because he demonstrates a certain degree of real knowledge on such technical matters as naval architecture and celestial navigation, must also be a legitimate authority on history. The speculations he makes, then, strike the reader as the kind of courageous new arguments that institutional scholars are afraid to make, rather than merely the fantasies of an amateur historian who desperately wishes they were true. If one accepts Menzies’s conclusion as premise, then the book seems plausible, especially in the latter (and in absolute terms, least convincing) chapters, which strike readers in much the way that any book rich with data might—as an almost mind-numbing avalanche of supporting evidence that leaves them overwhelmed with the feeling that the author must be right. When we look more closely, though, we can see that the ‘‘conclusion as premise’’ method has no substance, and we have to admit that his evidence, as interesting and overwhelming as it is, and as cleverly deployed as it may be at times, really proves nothing. In relation to the first strategy, 1421 is constructed over a void. The starting point of Menzies’s argument is the claim that the mandarins destroyed the real evidence of the far western voyages. As we have seen, the officials after Yongle did bring an end to the treasure fleets, and they did make efforts to suppress future seafaring, efforts that included the destruction of some documents associated with



Zheng He’s voyages. Nevertheless, it is impossible to know the content of destroyed evidence, and neither Menzies nor anybody can state that the destroyed material was categorical proof of voyages to the Western Hemisphere. In other words, the evidence that makes the book ‘‘work’’ is missing evidence—it is not the case that the Chinese discovery of America has been long known or widely suspected and that Menzies has heroically found it—it is rather the case that no evidence for the Chinese discovery of America, as such, exists at all (Menzies 2002: 81–82; Needham 1959: 558). Without these critical pieces of evidence, all we have are conjecture, circumstantial evidence, and intuition. This is precisely where Menzies’s second and third strategies come into play. The evidence of carved stones, artifacts from shipwrecks, observation towers, ‘‘Chinese’’ maps, transplanted animals, and human DNA scattered throughout the world is only persuasive if we accept Menzies’s thesis upfront. We are asked to do so for two reasons: first, there is no other cohesive explanation for all of this evidence, and second, because Menzies’s experience as a Royal Navy submarine commander gives him the ability to confirm the explanation as true on the basis of his experience and trained instinct. At one point he writes: ‘‘If I was able [sic] to state with confidence the course a Chinese fleet had taken, it was because the surviving maps and charts, and my own knowledge of the winds, currents and sea conditions they faced told me the route as surely as if there had been a written record of it’’ (Menzies 2003: 81, emphasis added). All told then, we have an original thesis, passionately stated, illustrated by a wide variety of data, none of which adds up to historical certainty. The opening chapters of the book contain a large quantity of good, common knowledge and a small number of controversial proposals. By the end of the fourth chapter, ‘‘Rounding the Cape,’’ this ratio has been inverted, with pure speculation as the ground for every argument, and bits of evidence put forth as the unifying hub of the speculation. Let us look at the how the book goes from being ‘‘interesting enough’’ in the introductory chapters to simply implausible by only the fourth chapter. The Menzies Narrative: Construction and Shortcomings In the introduction to 1421, Menzies tells us that his research was inspired by the chance discovery of a nautical chart from the year 1424 depicting islands that seemed like they might be in the Caribbean. Knowing that no Europeans had sailed to the Caribbean prior to 1492, Menzies wondered how knowledge of these islands, if they really were in the Caribbean, could have become known to Zuane Pizzigano, the Venetian who made the chart. After comparing the relative strengths of the maritime nations of the mid-15th century, Menzies concluded that only China had the resources, the technology, and the seafaring expertise to launch the kind of explorations that would have brought mariners into contact with such far-flung regions, and he decided that he would find additional evidence to support this conclusion.


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The first chapter gives us a portrait of a resurgent China, enthralled by the expansionistic vision of the emperor Zhu Di (Yongle). Without dealing concretely with the historical context of Ming China’s diplomatic situation, Menzies asserts that Yongle was driven by the desire to achieve world domination on land and sea. To this end, he launched the monumental sixth voyage of 1421. The rich depictions of Chinese economic and intellectual life lend an air of authority to Menzies’s narrative, although as the endnotes show, this information was gleaned from the most general sources available and have little to do with the specific event of launching the sixth fleet. In the second chapter, historical events that took place over 50 years apart are conflated as the single event that led the mandarins to ban maritime voyages forever. The first event was a catastrophic fire in 1421 that damaged the capital, Beijing; the second was the 1477 destruction of the records of Zheng He’s voyages by the mandarin Liu Daxia. By placing these events in such close narrative proximity, Menzies gives us the impression that the imperial government had acted swiftly to end the treasure fleets, not only to appease the anger of heaven, but to restore common sense to the realm even while Yongle was still alive. Thus, the most complicated aspect of the historiography of the entire debate is glossed over in anecdote and confusing chronology. In the third chapter, Menzies makes his first reference to the problem of determining longitude—an almost irrelevant concern to the primary content of the chapter, which deals with shipboard life and routine. The information on navigation seems almost a distraction to the main story, but it lends a measure of credibility to Menzies, whose subsequent narrative recounts details on shipboard life, complete with the habits of embarked concubines, all from secondary sources. This chapter ends with the division of the fleet into four squadrons, each commanded by a different eunuch admiral: Hong Bao, Zhou Man, Zhou Wen, and Yang Qing. It is almost impossible to figure out why he is certain these men were Zheng He’s subordinate commanders because none but Zhou Man is identified as such in any prior study. Yet, coming as it does at the end of a long catalog of reasonably factual material, the casual reader is disinclined to challenge the veracity of the assertion or any of the grandiose speculations that follow. In the fourth chapter, which discusses the rounding of the cape of Africa, the book’s logic begins to break down, although it is here that Menzies most confidently asserts his authority: ‘‘[A]s I began to trace the voyages of the great treasure fleets in the ‘missing years’ from 1421 to 1423, I was entering familiar territory, making use of knowledge and skills I had acquired over many years’ experience as a navigator and commanding officer on the high seas’’ (Menzies 2003: 81). In this chapter, a set of carved stones that claim Zheng He and his companions visited 3,000 countries is presented as the primary evidence for the tales of exploration that make up the rest of the book. To supplement this thin foundation, Menzies again invokes his navy experience, offering his knowledge of the ‘‘winds, currents and navigational problems the Chinese admirals encountered’’



as a guarantee that they had rounded the cape and turned northward into the Atlantic (Menzies 2003: 83). Statements of historical fact that proceed only from claims of intuition cannot be taken seriously by academic historians, yet the rest of the arguments in 1421 are built upon just these kinds of claims. Of particular importance to the thesis are Menzies’s instincts concerning the role played by the Venetian explorer Niccolo da Conti, who as a young man converted to Islam and sailed to India and the Middle East. Menzies not only ‘‘felt certain’’ that da Conti met the Chinese chronicler Ma Huan in India, but that he also brought Chinese charts back to Europe, unlocking the mystery of how Europeans had knowledge of ‘‘Chinese discoveries’’ prior to 1492 (Menzies 2003: 86). Whether da Conti did any of these things can only be speculated, yet by the end of the chapter, Menzies has already used these speculations to make a concrete conclusion: that Chinese ships sailed south out of the Indian Ocean. At the risk of sounding too dismissive, there is no need to go into any details concerning the rest of the book. The remaining chapters have no real evidence and no new methodological strategies—only more cases of looking for evidence to support premade conclusions, and more statements such as ‘‘The conclusion is inescapable: Chinese fleets must have brought chickens to South America’’ (Menzies 2003: 126). The fog of data and the boldness of the claims eventually bring more confusion than clarity to the reader’s mind. By the end of 1421, the Ming treasure fleets have not only beaten all sensible odds by rounding the cape of Africa, they have also discovered North and South America, Antarctica, Australia, and the North Pole—yet somehow completely missing Europe and West Africa in the process! If Menzies had added an epilogue claiming that the treasure fleets were actually made up of submarines, and he knew this because he himself had commanded submarines, it would not appear too fantastic in light of all the other claims. I should probably add, at the risk of being facetious, that the best argument against the Chinese discovery of America is the impressive body of evidence to support the theory that the Spanish and Portuguese did discover America. Leaving aside the matter of whether or not the fully operational and thriving civilizations of America were really ‘‘discovered’’ by anybody, as well as the fact that any theory that the Chinese discovered the ‘‘new’’ world is just as dismissive to pre-Columbian civilization as its European counterpart, the Europeans obviously found something in America worth conquering and keeping. The argument that Chinese mariners arrived and then left, never to return, could be taken as a slight against their ability to recognize the value of opportunities that sustained contact with a new hemisphere may have afforded. It is one thing to say, as the conventional arguments do, that China’s cultural priorities kept it from ever considering exploring the new world. It is quite another to say that once having seen the American continents, they simply abandoned them. Menzies’s argument is held up as a kind of compliment to China, but on closer examination it looks like an


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insult—it argues that the Western exploring nations, as puny as they were, possessed such power as to be able to accidentally find, deliberately conquer, and then utterly despoil an entire world, while China lacked even the ability to realize what it had stumbled upon. Do we imagine that a Chinese state so obtuse could have prevented the spread of Western imperial expansion? Historians and students of history alike need to be very vigilant in watching for the concealed implications of even ‘‘flattering’’ historical arguments. Conclusion and Historiographical Considerations Rather than begin with a conservative hypothesis and seek to demonstrate it with substantial facts, Menzies proceeds as if his theory were irrefutable fact, and takes every bit of evidence, pertinent or not, as ‘‘proof.’’ Not only then does Menzies put the ‘‘cart’’ of his conclusion before the ‘‘horse’’ of meaningful data, he also used the assumed fact of his conclusion as a justification for stuffing a wide range of additional historical mysteries into his ready-made thesis. So, without proving that the Chinese discovered America, he conveniently uses the ‘‘fact’’ that China did discover America to solve a variety of problems involving premodern cartography, natural history, anthropology, and zoology. What we have then is less a case of historical research than a creative exercise in using random facts as plausible evidence to support a hypothesis. This practice is so common in popular journalism, television, and historical fiction that it is easy to see why a curious and ‘‘truth-seeking’’ public would accept it. A society accustomed to such alternate histories as Raiders of the Lost Ark, The X-Files, The Da Vinci Code, and National Treasure—which is to say, a society that has lost its credulity in official knowledge and simply knows that there is more ‘‘out there’’—is easy prey for such a strategy, and ‘‘serious’’ history, because of its built-in limitations and sometimes stifling assumptions, has a difficult time convincing the public not to buy into sensation and hype. Arguably, serious history could do a better job appealing to people who, by nature, are not necessarily looking for truths so small that they can be proven beyond the shadow of a doubt by clear documents. It is often said that there is no such thing as objective, value-free history. All histories, even those that purport to be scientific and objective, are serving some larger cultural purpose than merely telling a true tale of the past, even if that purpose is merely validating the thing we have come to call ‘‘objectivity.’’ When scientific historians claim that their works are true because they are based on primary source documents—authentic statements of law, policy, philosophy; journals, letters, and speeches—they do not necessarily concede that even these primary sources are conditioned by the emotions, attitudes, and social contexts of their own producers. A primary source may be the most authentic source, but it is by no means the most accurate rendering of absolute historical truth, because the writing of history will invariably support the self-defined interests



of the historian and his or her culture. In a sense then, history writing does as much to create and reinforce consciousness as it does to discover objective truth. It remains to be seen what future historians of China will do with the 1421 theory of Chinese exploration. If China should depart from its Maoist revolutionary heritage and seek a new identity as a modern liberal nation, the Menzies thesis may serve to add legitimacy to Chinese claims for dominance in a progress-determined world. On the other hand, should China decide to redefine itself as a post-Enlightenment or postmodern global power, it may seek to distance itself from any suggestion that it neglected to create the historical conditions that only Europe could bring to maturity. It is a matter of some concern that the coming decades may see any number of new appropriations of the Menzies thesis, despite the fact that the thesis itself fails to prove its assertions. As both interpreters and makers of reality, historians are always engaged in a battle for certainty, and the stakes are always high. Accordingly, historians should be conservative in generating their hypotheses and very strict in interpreting their data. The debate over whether Chinese fleets ‘‘discovered America’’ before the Europeans is indeed an issue that has the potential to reshape world historical consciousness, but at present, there is no historically sound reason to believe that it happened. References and Further Reading Dreyer, Edward L. Zheng He: China and the Oceans in the Early Ming Dynasty, 1405–1433. New York: Pearson Longman, 2007. Finlay, Robert. ‘‘How Not to (Re)Write World History: Gavin Menzies and the Chinese Discovery of America.’’ Journal of World History 15, 2 (June 2004): 229–242. Finlay, Robert. ‘‘Portuguese and Chinese Maritime Imperialism: Camoes’s Lusiads and Luo Maodeng’s Voyage of the San Bao Eunuch.’’ Comparative Studies in Society and History 34, 2 (April 1992): 225–41. Furnish, Timothy. ‘‘Is Gavin Menzies Right or Wrong?’’ History News Network. March 10, 2003. Available at http://hnn.us/articles/1308.html (accessed June 9, 2010). Hsu, Mei-Ling. ‘‘Chinese Marine Cartography: Sea Charts of Pre-Modern China.’’ Imago Mundi 40 (1988): 96–112. Levathes, Louise. When China Ruled the Seas: The Treasure Fleet of the Dragon Throne, 1405–1433. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994. Menzies, Gavin. 1421: The Year China Discovered America. New York: Morrow, 2003. Menzies, Gavin. 1434: The Year a Chinese Fleet Sailed to Italy and Ignited the Renaissance. New York: Morrow, 2008.


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Needham, Joseph. Science and Civilization in China, Vol. 3. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1959. Needham, Joseph. Science and Civilization in China, Vol. 4, Part 1. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1962. Needham, Joseph. Science and Civilization in China, Vol. 4. Part 2. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1965. Prescott, Victor. ‘‘1421 and All That Junk.’’ The 1421 Myth Exposed. Available at www.1421exposed.com/html/1421_and_all_that_junk.html (accessed June 9, 2010). Tsai, Henry Shi-shan, Perpetual Happiness: The Ming Emperor Yongle. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2001.


5 The technologies that allowed Europe to dominate the world were all imported from the East: compass, lateen-rigged sail, gunpowder, windmill, stirrup, movable type. PRO David Blanks CON Talaat Shehata

PRO The year 1500 is often seen as a turning point in the history of our planet. It is a convenient date. It marks what some call the Age of Discovery, when Europeans learned the art of ocean navigation that enabled them both to reach the New World and to open a direct sea route to India. According to the 18th-century economist Adam Smith, ‘‘The discovery of America, and that of the passage to the East Indies by the Cape of Good Hope, [were] the two greatest events recorded in the history of mankind.’’ (1776). A hundred years later Karl Marx agreed, as did the sociologist Max Weber. For many intellectuals, the Age of Discovery brought an end to the Middle Ages (500–1500 CE) and the beginning of modernity, the period when the West came to dominate the globe. Yet the path to power was neither quick nor easy. If we were to take a survey of the world in 1500, we would see that at the time when Europe is commonly believed to have been launching itself toward greatness, it was actually quite backward and underdeveloped compared to the rich, populous, sophisticated empires of Asia. In today’s terms, it would have been seen as a third world country—rural, poor, and illiterate. The great cities and great civilizations were farther east. If asked to predict which people were poised for domination, an informed 15th- or 16th-century observer would have said Ming China, or perhaps Mogul India, or Ottoman Turkey, or Safavid Persia. No one would have bet on Europe, a marginalized region far distant from the centers of wealth and imperial might. But our informed observer would have been wrong. Five hundred years later Beijing, New Delhi, Istanbul, and Tehran are filled with teenagers sporting jeans and T-shirts, eating at international coffee shops, using PlayStation, and watching first-run Hollywood movies. Europe, and the West in general, have taken over the globe, not only militarily, but economically and culturally as well. 93 © 2011 ABC-Clio. All Rights Reserved.

94 | Europeans imported most important technologies from the East

Given the relative weakness of the West in 1500, how did this happen? What made it possible? What changed? This is the question in world history today. How was it, to paraphrase Marshall Hodgson (1974), that European merchants were able to outproduce, outtravel, and outsell anyone, that their physicians were better able to heal than others, that their scientists put the rest to shame, that their armies, their politicians, their businesspeople, and their performers are the ones whose influence resonates throughout the world and not those of some other culture? Any number of explanations have been suggested: political organization; military tactics and experience; the emergence of comparatively free and vibrant civil and commercial societies; population growth, bureaucratic expertise, urbanism, capitalism; the nation–state; and the Industrial Revolution each, at one time or another, has been put forth as the leading cause of European success. Today, however, the two factors that are most frequently mentioned are technology and biology. One school of thought has it that technologies imported from the East, such as the compass, the lateen sail, gunpowder, and movable type, were instrumental in enabling Europeans to establish themselves as a global power; the other, that it was actually European resistance to animalborne diseases that enabled them to conquer rival civilizations. The Technology Factor The first theory is connected with what is sometimes called the ‘‘military superiority thesis.’’ It argues that Europe went through a ‘‘military revolution’’ in the 16th and 17th centuries, made possible, in large part, by technologies borrowed from China, India, and the Arab world. These technologies, most importantly the use of gunpowder, were then improved upon, and the resulting weapons, it is said, combined with their vast practical experience in warfare, gave Western nations a decisive advantage. This seems like a satisfying answer, especially to people living in the 21st century. We can easily see the relationship between war and power, and we are accustomed to thinking of global dominance in terms of military might. Other historians have modified the military superiority thesis by suggesting that advanced military technology and strategic superiority alone were not enough. They speak not merely of a ‘‘military revolution’’ but of a ‘‘modern revolution.’’ They argue that there were a whole series of inventions and innovations that led to the ‘‘Rise of the West.’’ Ploughs, windmills, water mills, paper, printing, books, advances in mining and metallurgy, new ship designs, sails, navigational devices like the astrolabe and compass, the spinning wheel, and the clock all were brought to Europe from elsewhere, and all contributed, in one way or another, to Europe’s ability to dominate the globe. This, too, seems sensible, especially, once again, in the modern world, where the link between technology and economic and political ascendance seems self-evident.


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Was this really the case? Or are we, with hindsight, projecting modern assumptions about how the world works back onto the past? The connection between technology and power is clear today, but did it also work that way prior to the Industrial Revolution of the 19th century? Let’s take some examples of the transfer of technologies from East to West and see if this was in fact what led to European success. As explained in the introduction, compared to most of Asia, the Latin West was an underdeveloped region in the Middle Ages (500–1500). As a civilization it had a lot of catching up to do. Government was ineffective; security lax; standards of living low; and cultural achievements minimal. It would be several hundred years before order could be established even within the bounds of Europe—and several hundred more before Western peoples would reach demographic, economic, and military parity with the vast and powerful empires of the East. Furthermore, as suggested above, without the network of cultural diffusion that stretched from Mongolia to the Mediterranean, Westerners might never have managed to move beyond their own borders onto the world stage. To understand how this process worked, let’s begin with a comparative analysis between East and West. This will allow us to see where things stood prior to the impact of technology and biology. As a starting date, let’s choose a familiar one, namely, 1066, the year of the Battle of Hastings, one of the most decisive military encounters in European history. When Harold Hardrada rushed to the coast to defend his kingdom from the invading Normans, he had with him about 8,000 Saxon infantrymen. William the Conquer had some cavalry, but the total size of his force was about the same: fewer than 20,000 men in a legendary battle that shaped the entire future of the country. Yet at the same time, on the other side of the world, in a place the English had never even heard of, the emperors of Song China (960–1279) were regularly fielding armies that exceeded 1 million. According to the Domesday Book, a medieval census, this was roughly equivalent to the entire population of England at the time. Indeed, in the Middle Ages, even the largest Latin Christian armies maxed out at 30,000 men. It is a striking contrast. Moreover, in terms of military technology, whereas William the Conqueror’s army at least had archers and mounted knights, Harold’s didn’t even have horses. Imagine what would have happened if they had faced the Song. Armed with clubs, spears, swords, axes, and rocks, the Saxons would have been devastated by even a tiny Chinese division of mounted archers fighting with sophisticated crossbows and small incendiary bombs. For that matter, had any of the Latin Christian kingdoms been located in East Asia, they quickly would have been crushed and absorbed into the Chinese Empire. It is even more striking to learn that these advanced weapons were supplied by government factories that also made thousands of suits of armor and millions of iron arrow heads annually. That the Chinese government was able to supply



The Largest Invasion Fleet in History: Kublai Khan’s Plan to Invade Japan In 1281 the Mongolian Emperor Kublai Khan launched a bold plan: to invade Japan with over 4,400 ships. However, neither the ships nor the 70,000 men they carried succeeded in conquering the island nation. Having built the ships in the short period of one year, the mere existence of the fleet was amazing. However, the scant evidence left in Japanese scrolls and more recent underwater archaeological studies show that the Mongol fleet met a similar fate as did the miniscule (in comparison) Spanish Armada. Off the coast of Japan’s Takashima Island, Japanese archaeologists have uncovered Mongol anchors, helmets, swords, and arrows in great numbers. From the evidence found, scholars have argued that the Mongols were unsuccessful in defeating the Japanese samurai that defended the islands and had to remain on their ships. From the direction of the anchors of the ships found, it appears that some type of large wind event, possibly even a typhoon, did the fleet in. Archaeologists who have analyzed the ship remains maintain that the fact that the fleet was constructed in such haste meant that many of the ships were merely riverboats that were much more poorly constructed than normal Chinese ships, which were among the best in the world. Given that fact, it’s no surprise that a typhoon could have been enough to sink the fleet.

its vast army through organizing production in state-controlled factory systems shows the extent of their technical superiority. Sophisticated blast furnaces, fueled for the first time by coke, were capable of producing huge quantities of iron and steel. In addition to weapons, the iron was used to produce coins. Already by this time more than half the state’s revenue was being collected in cash, another sign of the advanced nature of Chinese civilization; and paper money had been in circulation since the early ninth century. It would not make its appearance in the West until the first regular bank notes were issued in Sweden in 1661. The Chinese moved their supplies and raw materials to the factories in the capital via a complex shipping and transport network that depended upon the construction of an extensive system of canals and locks. Some of these ships were armored, driven by treadmills and paddle wheels, and equipped with projectile-throwing machines. Their navies, like the armies, were huge. In 1281, in an attempted invasion of Japan, the Chinese fleet consisted of an estimated 4,400 ships. Like the Spanish Armada that attempted to invade England in 1588, the attack was destroyed in large part as the result of storms; but the Spanish fleet was only a fraction of the size, comprising a mere 130 ships. Yet another indication of the superiority of Asian power and technology was the series of voyages made between 1405 and 1433 by the Chinese Admiral Zheng He. The first of these seven two-year cruises, to Calicut on the west


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coast of India, consisted of more than 300 ships that carried 27,000 sailors and soldiers—a force that might well have been able to invade and take England where the Spanish had failed. Sixty-seven of these vessels were what the Chinese called ‘‘treasure ships,’’ between 370 and 440 feet in length and 150 to 180 feet wide with up to nine masts, some 90 feet high, and displacements of between 2,000 and 3,000 tons. By comparison, the European Age of Discovery, hailed by Smith, Marx, and Weber as a turning point in the history of the world, was a rather paltry affair. When Columbus ‘‘discovered’’ the New World, he had but three ships with him; and when Vasco da Gama made his famous voyage to India in 1497, he had but four. The largest flagship was a three-mast ship, less than 100 feet in length, that displaced a maximum of 300 tons. Columbus’s three caravels were even smaller. Even by the late 18th century—a time by which it is commonly assumed Europe was in a position of dominance—the British, who by then had become the principal Western trading nation and the foremost European sea power, were still unable to make inroads into the Chinese market, enjoying but a modest presence in the single port city reserved for the use of foreigners, Guangzhou. And they were nowhere near capable of defeating the Chinese military. (That would have to wait until the Opium Wars of 1839–1842.) Thus when, in 1793, the British sent a mission to China to request more extensive exchange privileges, the Emperor Qianlong sent back a startling letter to King George III. In it he thanked the British for what he saw as their submission to the Celestial Empire, and, although he excused their ignorance due to the fact that they lived on a remote and isolated island far from the center of civilization, he nonetheless declined what he considered an audacious request on the part of ‘‘barbarian merchants.’’ There was nothing the Chinese wanted or needed from England and nothing the English could do about it. Nonetheless, by the late 18th century, the West had advanced considerably: the English as well as the Dutch, French, Spanish, and Portuguese had in fact established forts and colonies throughout the world even if they could not be said by that time to ‘‘dominate’’ the globe. In the post-1500 era, as international trade and contacts increased, the merchants, diplomats, sailors, and learned men of Latin Christendom had gradually become aware of the vast economic and technological gap that separated them from the more developed societies of the East; and accordingly, little by little, they had begun to borrow Asian ideas and adapt them to their own needs and purposes. These initiatives, carried out on an individual, case-by-case basis were, in turn, integrated, bit-by-bit, into a culture that slowly came both to value—and to give public space to—entrepreneurship and innovation. And it was these initiatives that eventually gave the West its competitive advantage. The process of borrowing and improving upon technologies, often military in nature, began well back in the early Middle Ages, as early as the eighth century,



when the stirrup, which had spread from China eastward through the Mongol, Indian, Persian, Arab, and Byzantine worlds, reached the West sometime around the early eighth century. Like the various technologies that followed, the barbarian horseman of the remote West improved upon the method until they were able to develop a type of military technology that would at last allow them to hold off Arab and Slav invaders. The compass was another early adaptation. Invented by the Chinese around 960 CE, it was known in the West by 1180 CE at the latest, when the Englishman Alexander Neckam described it in his book De Utensilibus. In those days it was a rather crude device consisting of a magnetized needle floating in a bowl of water, but by the early 13th century, Indian captains were using a more sophisticated version to navigate. And by the 15th century, it was common throughout the Mediterranean. Like the history of many technologies, that of the compass is typical in that through the records we can see the device being mentioned with increasing frequency and gradually making its way from East to West, but it is difficult to know when it was first used, who made the innovations, where, or how it was transmitted. It is important for our story, however, because the compass helped make deep water, year-round shipping possible, and without it, Europeans would not have been able to sail around the world. The stories of paper and printing are similar to those of the stirrup and the compass. Paper was invented during the Han Dynasty (220 BCE–9 CE). Although there was other progress as well, including advances in iron and especially silk production, an achievement that brought the distant Chinese culture to the attention of the Romans, arguably the most far-reaching invention was paper, which was first made by Han craftsmen from hemp and tree bark. In Asia paper money, paper shoes, wallpaper, and even toilet paper came into use centuries before the technology was transferred to the West. Block printing, too, was known as early as the seventh or eighth century. The diffusion of these ideas through Tibet, India, central Asia, and the Islamic world eventually brought paper to Europe via Spain in the 12th century. And although it is unclear whether Guttenberg was or was not influenced by Chinese techniques when he developed a Western version of movable type in 1455, one thing is certain: Europeans used this technology as a means to further their conquests. Because he was able to read reports of Cortes’s expedition against the Aztecs, Pizarro had some idea of what to expect in Peru. Books allowed Pizarro to know his enemy, how he lived, how he thought, and how he might react. This knowledge may well have given him an edge with the Inca. Whether it did or not, what we know for certain is that in 1533 several hundred Spaniards armed with guns and horses brought down the entire Incan Empire. The conquistadors and other settlers would not have reached the Americas at all if it had not been for important new developments in ship design. The first ships capable of crossing the Atlantic emerged as hybrids from the dockyards


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This bronze cannon is believed to be the oldest yet discovered; it is dated to 1332 CE. The Chinese invention of gunpowder is associated with the experiments of Daoist alchemists in the early centuries CE, but its use in such weapons as mines and flame throwers did not begin until the 10th or 11th century. (Instructional Resources Corporation)

of Portugal and Spain; and the influences that went into their creation came from as far away as the North Sea and the Indian Ocean. With two or three masts, caravels were square rigged when running before the north-east trades on the voyage out, but they also sported lateen sails, borrowed from the Arabs, that enabled them to move in and out of coastal estuaries and to maneuver in shifting winds. Other features, too, such as the sternpost rudder, were likewise adopted from the Arabs, who in turn may have gotten it from the Chinese. Hulls also underwent significant modification. Collectively, these additions and modifications resulted in ships capable of circumnavigating the globe. Mounting cannon in them made them capable of much more. Gunpowder, which was invented in China around 900 CE, is central to the military superiority thesis. As mentioned above, by the 11th century Song warriors were using both bombs and fire lances to fight of the Qidan, an invading Mongolian people from the North. Within a century, the fire lance—a sputtering burning weapon intended more to frighten than to kill—was transformed into the first crude gun. Craftsmen did this by placing the ignition hole at the rear of the cylinder, which provided for a single discharge of lead pellets and pottery fragments. William of Rubrick, papal envoy to the Great Khan, was in China in those days, and not long after his return to Europe, Rubrick’s friend, Roger Bacon, published the first Latin account of gunpowder and fireworks. Perhaps this was a coincidence, but somehow the



idea of gunpowder spread from China through Russia to the West and there, at the hands of generations of technicians, scientists, and soldiers, gun weaponry was refined to the point that Europe soon became the leading arms manufacturer in the world, a distinction it maintained until the 20th century. In the Age of Discovery, however, it was cannon that made the difference. Already by the 14th century a model had been developed that was a sort of bottle-shaped canister that discharged arrows. Later, stone balls were tried; and eventually iron ones; and then founders learned to cast cannon that could withstand the stress of larger charges. Much of the progress was a result of an arms race among the nations of Europe. There the competitive nature of small states and a burgeoning capitalism created the environment for investment and innovation in weapons technology. In China, where commerce and manufacture were under imperial control, the incentives were lacking for experimentation; and ironically, by the late 15th century, for a variety of reasons, the Chinese government began to turn landward, away from the sea. It was in those same years that European captains began installing their newfound cannon on their newly designed ships, making them an unstoppable naval force. For centuries the Arabs, Persians, Indians, and Chinese had been engaged in massive, sophisticated, and largely peaceful international trade centered on the Indian Ocean. Shortly after 1500, the Portuguese, followed by the Dutch and the English, came blasting their way in. The Biology Factor These heavily armed incursions into Eastern trade, the long distances traveled, and the barbaric nature of Western society have led historians to call the Europeans the ‘‘Mongols of the seas.’’ This is true both culturally and technologically. As Arnold Pacey (1991), among others, has argued, advances in weaponry and ship design were to the Europeans in the 15th and 16th centuries what the stirrup and bow had been to the Mongols in the 13th century. But biology, too, played a role, especially in the New World and those regions such as South Africa, Australia, and the Pacific Islands that were remote from Europe yet similar to it in climate and geography. Thus in addition to the ‘‘military superiority thesis’’ as a means of explaining Western domination, there has also arisen what might be called the ‘‘biological superiority thesis.’’ William McNeill put it in an interesting way. According to him, Western power was a function of two things: macroparasites and microparasites. Macroparasites were the people who spread across the globe like an endemic disease, infecting and taking over other civilizations; microparasites were the germs they carried with them, the germs that helped them win. There is strong evidence in support of this idea. Even at the time of the first Spanish conquests, which took place on the Canary Islands near the West African coast in the 15th century, missionaries like Friars Alonso de Espinosa and Abreu de Galindo readily admitted that they


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would not have conquered the native Guanches if it had not been for the devastating effects of germs. ‘‘The mortality was so great,’’ wrote Espinosa in The Origin and Miracles of the Image of our Holy Lady of Candelaria (1594), ‘‘that the island remained almost without inhabitants, they having previously numbered 15,000. . . . If it had not been for the pestilence, it would have taken much longer, the people being warlike, stubborn and wary.’’ Like the technologies the Europeans used in their conquests, the diseases they brought with them were also from Asia. The history of epidemics is complicated and still, to an extent, speculative, but ultimately it comes down to the question of evolution. In brief, like all organisms (or like technologies for that matter), germs continuously change and develop new forms. Epidemic disease is caused by germs that have been given the chance to evolve among social animals in crowded conditions. This means that a dense animal population is required for the spread of diseases like rinderpest, a deadly cattle plague, or, more recently, bird flu—or Simian immunodeficiency virus, which is found in West African chimpanzees and is the source of HIV (human immunodeficiency virus). When dense animal populations correspond with dense human populations, which was often the case in settled and growing Eurasian agricultural communities in the premodern world, these pathogens are sometimes transmitted to humans, where they mutate into purely human diseases. Measles, for example, come from rinderpest. So too with the other great killers, such as measles, tuberculosis, and smallpox which came from cattle or flu, which came from pigs and ducks. These were the diseases that were the most devastating for the indigenous peoples of the Americas and elsewhere. In the past, they were devastating for Europeans and Asians as well, but over time, the inhabitants of Eurasia developed immunities, so that the descendants of those who survived became less likely to die from infection. This was not the case for isolated populations in other parts of the world. Thus, when Spanish sailors arrived on shores that were, in effect, virgin territory for diseases that had become commonplace in Europe, they introduced germs that wiped out entire populations of people who had no natural immunities. In Mexico, as on the Canary Islands, germs fought for the conquistadors. When Cortes first reached Tenochtitlan with his tiny force of less than 200 men in 1519, they were beaten back with heavy casualties, for like the Guanches of the Canary Islands, the Aztecs were stubborn and warlike. But when Cortes and the remainder of his men returned to Tenochtitlan early the following year, nearly half the Aztecs had died from smallpox, including the emperor. By 1618 it is estimated that Mexico’s initial population of around 20 million had been reduced to less than 2 million. The sad story of Pizarro and the Incas is much the same. By the time he and his men made their way to the Inca capital, Cuzco, the emperor, Athuapulca, and many of his people had already been killed by the biological advance guard, making it far easier for the Spaniards to defeat the survivors with



their horses, guns, and swords. The same thing happened in North America. All told, it is estimated that European diseases killed up to 95 percent of the Native American population during the 16th and 17th centuries. Similar tragedies took place elsewhere. Having first run aground near Cape Town in 1647, the Dutch eventually built fortresses and trading posts, and the first case of smallpox among the native Khoisan was reported in 1713 with predictable results. In the late 18th century, the Englishman Captain Cook ‘‘discovered’’ Australia, bringing with him syphilis, gonorrhea, tuberculosis, and the flu, along with typhoid and, inevitably, smallpox and measles. As elsewhere, mortality rates ranged from 50 to, in some cases, 100 percent, when entire tribes were wiped out by previously unknown epidemics. Conclusion Our task here has been to determine whether it was technology or biology that enabled the West to exert a global influence, but as with all complex historical questions, it is difficult to come down firmly in favor of a single, overwhelming cause. Circumstances change according to time and place, and there are many factors in addition to technology and biology that helped determine the outcome. One such influence, nearly impossible to measure, is what we might call ‘‘geographic luck.’’ Europe was fortunate. Although long isolated from the centers of world power and commerce, in the early modern period it became a hub of international economic activity, perfectly positioned to take maximum advantage both of its inheritance from the East and of its newfound wealth in the far West. Thus, for example, the fortunate discovery of silver in Peru allowed Europeans to exploit their technological and biological legacy and to provide themselves with the cash needed to penetrate the markets of the Indian Ocean. And it was lucky, too, that as the industrial revolution began to heat up in England, factory owners found themselves sitting on seemingly inexhaustible deposits of coal. Although unplanned, in the long run, Europe’s geographic position gave it a decided advantage in the power struggles of the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries. A second factor, equally difficult to measure, was the influence of ideas. Simple and rather obvious discoveries, such as clever navigational techniques and a knowledge of the winds of the south Atlantic, had clear benefits, but what of political and cultural forms? How can we determine their impact? Because Europe failed to become a single, unified empire (as was the norm in Asia), it gave rise to a dangerous military and political instability that forced states to modernize or perish. This atmosphere of competition permeated the business community as well, which began to reward innovative and aggressive commercial activities, thereby giving rise to a spirit of individualism and entrepreneurship. Independent thinking and experimentation increased among scientists and scholars, too. Combined, these intangible qualities enabled Europeans to exploit


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opportunities and resources in ways the world had never seen. Overseas conquests were made possible not only by technological and biological advantages, but also by the ability to organize and to govern, to tax peoples and extract profits from nature, to marshal productive forces, and to be able to adapt to changing circumstances through the creative use of reason. A third mitigating factor in this debate, one that bears some reflection, is the question of what properly constitutes a technology. The cases of military and nonmilitary inventions listed above are obvious enough, but what about a practice or procedure, such as the three-field system, which allowed medieval farmers to put more land into production every growing season? Is that, too, a technology? Or money, which fueled economic growth, was this an invention or an innovation? Remember: it’s not just the physical coin or piece of paper, but the whole idea, with all its attendant institutions, such as banks and government bureaucracies, that allowed international trade and finance to flourish. What about the introduction of new species? The conquistadores could not have defeated the Aztec and Inca Empires without their sophisticated weapons; equally, however, they could not have sustained a large European population without their plants and animals. But do these also count as ‘‘technologies’’? In the strictest sense, perhaps not; but for our purposes we should perhaps define technology in the broadest possible terms. Ships and guns and (sometimes) germs made their initial victories possible, but sustainable political and cultural domination would not have been possible without all the other techniques, practices, products, and procedures that the Europeans brought with them. In fact it was the entire suite of Western technologies, including books, maps, charts, and mining techniques, along with various types of mills and ploughs and other labor-saving devices, that created a competitive advantage. The same observation can be made in biological terms. It was not just the germs they carried with them, but also their crops and animals—wheat and sugarcane and later cotton; and horses and cattle and chickens and pigs—that helped Western settlers occupy and control new continents and islands. And yet, even when these additional factors are kept in mind, there is an answer to our question as it is here framed, for when geography and chronology are taken into consideration, that is, when we think about where and when Western power manifested itself, there seems little doubt that ultimately it was through the use of new technologies (originally Eastern and mostly military) that the rise of the West was made possible. If we are talking about world domination, then it is clear that biology was only an advantage in areas that were isolated from Eurasian populations. The impact of European germs on their real rivals, the Arabs, Turks, Persians, Indians, and Chinese, was minimal. These were urban/agricultural civilizations that had built up immunities in the same way the Europeans had. It should likewise be noted that elsewhere, such as in sub-Saharan Africa and parts of Southeast Asia,



germs actually worked against the invaders. Malaria, yellow fever, dengue fever, dysentery, and all manner of tropical parasites effectively prevented Europeans from penetrating the interiors of these regions until the development of yet more new technologies—this time medical—in the 19th century. Only then was Europe able to conquer and to colonize. This suggests that even without biological superiority in places like the Americas, South Africa, the Pacific Islands, and Australia, Europeans eventually would have prevailed through other means. Germs were useful in some places, but useless or positively deadly in others; thus it is something of an overstatement to say that resistance to animal-borne disease allowed the Europeans to dominate the globe. Not to mention the fact that germs would not have had any impact at all had the Europeans not developed the means to transport smallpox and influenza to these isolated regions in the first place. Likewise, when we consider the timing of all this, it becomes clear that what we have mostly been talking about so far is European success in the premodern era, but success in setting up colonies, forts, and trading posts is not the equivalent of conquering the world militarily, economically, and culturally. Even in the late 18th century, as we saw in the example of England and the Chinese market, the world’s greatest wealth, power, and population still remained in the East, where the European presence was a paltry thing. On the eve of the Industrial Revolution they hung on in the Indonesian archipelago but with the sufferance of local potentates, and most of Africa remained virtually untouched. True, Adam Smith saw the discovery of the Americas and the route to India as decisive in world history, but he also understood that China was far richer than the regions of Europe, which leads us to ask: What it is we really mean by ‘‘dominance’’? There is no question that Europeans began to make their power felt throughout the world in the period between 1500 and 1800, but it was not until after the Industrial Revolution in the late 18th and early 19th centuries—a technological revolution all the way—that Europeans and European culture and society could truly be said to have come to rule the world. And in this, the impact of disease on biologically isolated peoples such as the Amerindians and aborigines played no role whatsoever. References and Further Reading Buck, David D. ‘‘Was It Pluck or Luck that Made the West Grow Rich?’’ Journal of World History 10 (1999): 413–30. Crosby, Alfred W. Ecological Imperialism, 2nd ed. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986. Diamond, Jared. Guns, Germs and Steel. London: Vintage, 1997. Hodgson, Marshall G. S. ‘‘The Great Western Transmutation.’’ In The Venture of Islam (Vol. 3, Book 6, Chap. 1, pp. 176–200). Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974.


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McNeill, William H. Plagues and Peoples. Garden City, NY: Anchor Press/ Doubleday, 1976. McNeill, William H. The Pursuit of Power. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982. Mokyr, Joel. The Lever of Riches. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990. Pacey, Arnold. Technology in World Civilization. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1991. Parry, J. H. The Age of Reconnaissance. Cleveland: World Publishing, 1963. Smith, Adam. An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. Dublin: Whitestone, 1776. Thompson, William R. ‘‘The Military Superiority Thesis and the Ascendancy of Western Eurasia in the World System.’’ Journal of World History 10 (1999): 143–78.

CON The basic question to be answered in this section is what actually provided the impetus for European domination of the world? Dominance from immunity to animal-borne and transmitted diseases might have played an important role; but, clearly, if one were to carefully thumb through the available historical, archaeological, and anthropological evidence, he or she would discover that many other important factors were as important, and in some cases (i.e., migration, displacement, and never-ending psychological stress and despair) other factors were of equal importance. For all concerned, conquerors and conquered, European domination didn’t come or recede easily. Over the past 500 years, domination has been a historical phenomenon, which has, and continues to be a reality with which most, if not all, nations and small and tribal societies, on a global basis, have had to or are now contending with in their daily policies and affairs. The vibrant secularism that it brought has interestingly ingratiated itself into the age-old conflict since ancient days, between the forces of traditionalism and the forces of modernity, in most national and tribal histories. Therefore, the ‘‘dominance from immunity’’ may, instead of only being a medical historical fact, also include the immunity gradually acquired from the metaphysical, philosophical, legal, political, often racist, social, and cultural historical constructs that have evolved over the centuries within secularism and modernity’s often very fluid and pliable nature. Historical and archaeological evidence has established that within a century after the arrival of Christopher Columbus on present San Salvador’s shores, 95 percent of the Native American populations had been decimated by disease. Diseases such as smallpox, diphtheria, measles, cholera, yellow fever, malaria, influenza, and whooping cough, to mention only a few, ravaged the ranks, religious, political, and social tribal structures of the indigenous inhabitants. It was



devastating and horrific. As the renowned scholars Alfred W. Crosby (1972) and William McNeill (1976) elaborated in their works, this had to occur as a direct result of the contact of alien cultures for the first time in their separate histories. It was inevitable. Their arguments, which have had loyal supporters over the past three decades, insisted on the fact that the indigenous populations were ‘‘virgin’’ populations. They were virgin in the sense that their geography and demography were established prior to their contact with the Europeans. They believed that the epidemics introduced by the Europeans penetrated this ‘‘virgin soil,’’ in that the Native American inhabitants didn’t have the immunological readiness to fend off these multiple varying strains of diseases, which the Europeans had acquired immunity from as a direct result of having survived most of them during their individual and collective childhoods. This argument, for the next three decades, would be a significant one that influenced the writings of many well-intentioned scholars, not only in the ever-fascinating field of American studies, but also in the equally vibrant fields of African history and world history. But, sadly, much of this reasoning has had its subtle and often very subconscious racist constructs to it, from which one could logically draw that from the late 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries, racist constructs had already been established by briefly dominant groups of European powers, which attempted to justify its fleeting global dominance in pseudo-scientific and crude racist assumptions. Through this, racism’s insidious nature forced it to justify its presence by attempting to cook the biological facts available to most, if not all, academic practitioners. By doing so, classified variations between the conquered people and other races were created, all, of course, for the ‘‘greater’’ good. Categories, subgroups, and subgroups to the subgroups were diligently created. Also, with the arrival of the 1980s, a new form of cultural racism replaced the old; this new racism based its premise on essentialist and cultural grounds. Much more subtle than the earlier 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries variety, it manifested itself by placing much more emphasis on the ‘‘differences’’ in cultural heritage and traditions, with emphasis on the distinct nature of each of the groups being studied, measured, and discussed. In that context, one needs to pursue the impact of colonialism and nonepidemiological constructs in the decline of Native American and other indigenous groups and in their encounters with European settlers and forces. The impact of epidemic disease on these native populations was no doubt huge and catastrophic. Yet, if one were neutral in assessing what the comprehensive reasons were as to the demise and disappearance of these populations, one would need to take into consideration other primary reasons that contributed significantly to their lack of regeneration. That would have to include the impact of relocation on these diverse groups, the crushing phenomena of slavery, and, according to the deceased but yet well-regarded and profound American historian William Appleman Williams (1988), the urge and desire of the Puritans to be left alone to their own devices,


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Sir Jeffrey Amherst and Germ Warfare Some scholars have argued that during Pontiac’s Rebellion, which followed the French and Indian War, while the Odawa war chief Pontiac was laying siege to Fort Pitt, the commander of the fort, General Jeffrey Amherst, gave the Indians blankets from the fort’s smallpox isolation ward in an attempt to deliberately do what nature had been doing for over a century: decimate the Indian population. Letters between Amherst and Colonel Henry Bouquet seem to bear out the fact that Amherst was not averse to using such a tactic: Bouquet to Amherst, June 23, 1763 Captain Ecuyer writes me that Fort Pitt is in good state of defence against all attempts from Savages, who are daily firing upon the Fort; unluckily the Small Pox has broke out in the garrison, for which he has built an Hospital under the Draw Bridge to prevent the Spreading of that distemper. Amherst to Bouquet, July 7, 1763 Could it not be contrived to Send the Small Pox among those Disaffected Tribes of Indians? We must, on this occasion, Use Every Strategem in our power to Reduce them. Bouquet to Amherst, July 13, 1763 I will try to inoculate the [Indians] with Some Blankets that may fall in their Hands, and take Care not to get the disease myself. As it is pity to expose good men against them I wish we would make use of the Spanish Method to hunt them with English Dogs, supported by Rangers and Some Light Horse, who I think effectualy extirpate or remove that Vermin. Amherst to Bouquet, July 16, 1763 You will Do well to try to Innoculate the Indians, by means of Blankets, as well as to Try Every other Method, that can Serve to Extirpate this Execrable Race.—I should be very glad [if] your Scheme for Hunting them down by Dogs could take Effect; but England is at too great a Distance to think that at present. Source: Papers of Jeffrey Amherst, Library of Congress.

realized by exterminating those who stood in their path, as the Puritan fathers, mothers, children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, expanded their illusory or purported ‘‘isolationist’’ American Dream out to the western frontier. This, among other factors, such as the messianic nature of past and current evolution of ‘‘liberal democratic’’ traditions, which evolved in the Western Hemisphere, especially in United States and North American continent, under the crucible and dire conditions of Western expansionism (which in time, would translate into global economic, financial, and military expansion), would thereby completely negate the earlier dominant argument throughout the first half of the



20th century by another deceased and well-known American historian Fredrick Jackson Turner, in his ‘‘Frontier Thesis,’’ which attempted to claim that what determined the unique character of the political and social experiment in the United States was its westward expansion—where hypothetically, it had reached its ultimate destination once it had reached the Pacific Coast. All future developments within the continental United States would, in accordance with Turner’s thesis, then supposedly fold onto itself. The premise for Turner’s argument seemed very short-sighted to William Appleman Williams, since his strong assertion was that this political, economic, financial, and social ‘‘expansionist’’ approach undertaken by American policymakers throughout much of the 19th century was only getting started once it had reached the Pacific Coast. The United States and other old European powers, if they could keep up with the United States’ growing and expanding potential and power at the end of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, only sought continued outward (meaning global) territories. The quest for empire, therefore, according to Williams, ‘‘was the only way to honor avarice and morality. The only way to be good and wealthy’’ (1988). According to Williams, this ‘‘unique Frontier’’ phenomena that Turner, along with many future American historians that he had mentored or influenced with his argument, so eloquently sought to elaborate and propagate missed the totality of the forest from the few trees they had mistakenly imparted too much significance to. The western frontier expansionism of Turner would, once it had reached the Pacific Coast, morph into the global American expansionist expectations that would reformulate future American policymakers thoughts. First, the Spanish American War of 1898, against the declining Spanish Empire, would provide the United States with not only a foothold into Central and South America but also with the acquisition of the Philippines, which it would give to the United States as a foothold into Pacific and Asian affairs. This would allow it, according to Williams, to continue the charade of being an ‘‘honest’’ broker with its Open Door policy to China, Indochina, and the region, while old European powers attempted to continue to bolster their influence and presence in the continent. According to Williams, it was very disingenuous. Its global expansionism, beginning with Admiral Perry’s ‘‘opening,’’ at gunship point, of Japan’s selfimposed isolation of over 2,000 years in July 1853 and later involvement in China’s internal affairs was a direct outgrowth of that early stage of American western frontier expansion. The motives were purely avarice and market oriented in its continuing expansionism. This, in time, would allow all future political, diplomatic, economic, financial, religious (primarily the evangelical variety), social, and cultural American global policies to revolve around that core nexus, in the late 19th, throughout the 20th, and into the 21st centuries, and beyond. According to Williams, the entire enterprise was, and continues to be, coldly calculated and implemented. With continuing inward and outward territorial conquest, market expansion, and war, Williams was of the view that in time, it became the easily


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deferred to and convenient manner by which all future American domestic and foreign policy could be viewed through an executable prism, which continued to be defined and redefined by its elites and policymakers. Therefore, according to Williams, disease and displacement in American and European policies were allowed to perform their deadly ‘‘magic,’’ and their global policies toward the native populations would be that of nonintervention in domestic native affairs or brazen policies of benign neglect. Once the native populations ranks had been decimated, as Williams strongly stated, as if the powers-that-be had used ‘‘bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki,’’ then, according to him, gunfire would be used to ‘‘remove the hardy.’’ All this, therefore, evolved as a natural outgrowth of the earlier nightmares one often associated with the decimation within the Native American ranks, from the late 15th to the late 19th centuries, which were caused by many of these widespread diseases and epidemics. Puritan isolationist and progressive policies required a first few steppingstones to embark on its initial virgin voyage and forward into history. It began, but according to Williams, clearly didn’t end with the Native Americans. Future history would inform us. As recent scares regarding the H1N1 or ‘‘swine flu’’ virus have demonstrated to a large swathe of the global community, epidemics are not merely a far distant past phenomenon. Even though, by many historians’ assessments, between 47 and 54 million Native Americans perished within the first century of European arrival on their shores in 1492, the Great Influenza pandemic of 1918–1919 killed more people than any epidemic prior or since. The estimate is that in one year, on a global scale, over 40 million people lost their lives. More people died in that pandemic in one year than during the four years of the bubonic plague, or Black Death, which struck Europe and the Mediterranean world, when between a fifth of the global population and a quarter of the American population had become infected. AIDS would contribute to an emphatic exclamation point in the past two decades. This recent growing pandemic might just claim in a few short decades two to three times as many victims as the Great Influenza pandemic had at the beginning of the 20th century; making it, unfortunately, the worst pandemic in human history. Other potential epidemics that we might find ourselves having to contend with during the 21st and 22nd centuries are manmade varieties such as within a bioterrorist setting. This, if not intelligently and persistently confronted and defeated, could far surpass any of the figures established for the Great Influenza of 1918–1919 and the current AIDS epidemic. Crosby and McNeill’s ‘‘virgin soil’’ argument would unintentionally have contained within its core constructs a mid- to late-19th-century racist ‘‘scientific realist’’ construct often used by the dominant European powers’ academic and policymaking elite groups during their global hegemonic influence of that period. The idea of the ‘‘noble savage,’’ which had also grown pervasive during much of the 18th and 19th centurie’s, would subconsciously inform Crosby and McNeill’s ‘‘virgin soil’’ arguments in that late 20th century. It was all undertaken



for the ‘‘greater’’ good. In ‘‘scientific realism,’’ its theories were promulgated so that through illegitimate means it would legitimize white European supremacy over all conquered people throughout the world. The biological facts available to most academic practitioners and later policymakers, who would seek to administratively implement them, were meticulously schemed. Categories, subgroups, and subgroups to the subgroups were diligently created. They created and classified hair types, skin types, skull shapes, blood types, eye types, nose types, and on and on. In time, variations were not only limited to those hair-splitting details, but they began to cast negative dispersions on the intellectual and moral basis and skills of the subordinate minorities within the European powers borders, but, more specifically, to the conquered natives within the borders of their extensive empires. With that historical backdrop, Crosby and McNeill unintentionally and inadvertently found themselves attempting to scale that slipperiest of slopes. For to attempt to convey the idea as they did, that the depopulation of the Americas was a direct outgrowth of the contact between disease-immune Europeans and a ‘‘virgin’’ native population in the Americas, along with other native global populations that were temporarily conquered by the European powers, was not giving complete justice to the other equally important factors— whether it be displacement, migration, malnutrition, psychological stress, exhaustion, or calculated policymaking initiatives, to mention a few. Crosby elaborated: ‘‘Virgin soil epidemics are those in which the populations at risk have had no previous contact with the diseases that strike them and are therefore immunologically almost defenseless’’ (1976). This argument erroneously places the ‘‘population at risk,’’ or the ‘‘innocents’’ for our argument, in the position of the passive agent who erroneously had never encountered any other sort of disease or epidemic in their diverse encounters, over thousands of years, with other native tribes and populations, prior to the arrival of the Europeans. According to that argument, we are supposed to suspend our rational reasoning abilities and allow for time to stop, and then permit it to start with the arrival of the European powers. On its merits, within a historical context, this seems quite ridiculous. The ‘‘noble savage’’ of the 18th and 19th centuries was defined as an ‘‘innocent’’ and humane side of man being untouched by the grimy nature of human industrialization and evolving civilization, living in a blissful state of ‘‘goodness.’’ This, as we can see, morphed into Crosby and McNeill’s disease and epidemic argument, that the ‘‘innocents’’ of the New World and the global ‘‘innocent’’ native populations were also living in a state of blissful ‘‘goodness,’’ only to have the nasty, dirty, disease-carrying, and biologically immune Europeans, as they would have their readers believe, come into these multiple states of Eden and let loose their vile disease-infested baggage on the poor and completely defenseless community of ‘‘innocents.’’ The argument evolved during the earliest phases of capitalism, from within the 18th and 19th centurie’s multiple narratives, which continued in organic form into the 20th and 21st centuries. Those narratives


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comprised a fertile anthropological and historical imagination as to the ‘‘true’’ conditions and ‘‘nature’’ of the primitive. The rise and impact of the Romanticist movement in American and European literature also was strongly felt. All these ‘‘new’’ ideas with regard to the ‘‘noble savage and primitive’’ had continued to saturate and influence future readers and scholars, whether accurately or inaccurately, in how Western men and women need to perceive non-Westerners people, and especially the subjugated indigenous populations in their perceived ‘‘care.’’ Therefore, in regard to this argument, as has been demonstrated, there’s much more that informs the reasons for the destruction and subjugation of the native populations in the Americas, and throughout the globe, besides the Europeans and the Africans that they brought with them being immune from childhood and natural selection of many of the diseases and epidemics that helped decimate native populations throughout the world. Thankfully, this is still considered among many scholars and historians as a critical and important field of study that continues to deserve the gaze of many practitioners within the field and would provide more informed and less superficial answers to some of the very significant questions being posed. The European immunity that we might need to consider is instead of a merely medical historical variety, which has been demonstrated to play an important but not totally singular role and what later evolved into a more

Aztecs dying from smallpox introduced by the Spaniards, from the Florentine Codex, about 1540. (Peter Newark American Pictures/The Bridgeman Art Library)



institutional metaphysical, philosophical, political, legal, religious, social, and cultural sort. The evolving modernism of the European powers would significantly impact nations and small and tribal societies. It would pit the historical forces of traditionalism against modernity in ways that many of the native populations had not been prepared to do. Migration, growing ethnocentrism, racemixing, and the conceptual underpinnings of how one interpreted, or was even allowed to interpret, what ‘‘freedom’’ was would influence their acceptance of them. This played an important role in the evolving identities of most of these diverse tribal groups within the indigenous populations. Most of the migrations in the New World by the native populations, not necessarily being voluntary after their contact with Europeans as the Spanish, Dutch, English, French, and Portuguese, as they had often been voluntary through their earlier seasonal and climatic changes prior to their contact with the Europeans, were directly influenced by the labor needs of the European settlers and their political and trade representatives. The labor systems that were established skirted around the concept of freedom, especially in Central and South America, and brought to most of their shores coerced migrants to work the fields and gold and silver mines. This also explains the more blatant form of institutionalized and coerced migratory labor practices imposed by most of these European powers, between the 16th and 19th centuries, during the rise and eventual ultimate collapse of the transatlantic slave trade. But, most scholars and historians would agree that pure financial incentives should not explain the conditions of the native population and resettled slaves from Africa and other regions of the world. According to these peoples, there were religious and cultural factors that needed to be understood, which could better inform us as to the growth of the abolition movement in Britain, Europe, and the United States and its ultimate positive impact on the institutionalized status of the transatlantic trade by bringing it to a gradual end. This central quest for a reformulated identity by the native populations, in the attempt to cope with the chaotic intrusions imposed upon their individual, family, and tribal lives, consistently challenged them in finding a recognizable and secure ‘‘fit’’ between the traditionalism that they had grown comfortable with over the ages and the unceasing modernity introduced and often coercively imposed upon them by their European neighbors and foreign taskmasters. It was William Appleman Williams’s searing imagery of the messianic need for limitless Western expansion, driven by an equally potent strand of messianic economic and financial zeal for domestic and outward territories, that the evolving industrial, technological, and military forces of modernity were put at the European powers’ and their settlers’ regular and daily disposal to ‘‘remove the hardy.’’ Modernity had made the Europeans immune. With that in mind, the Europeans could then proceed ever so efficiently in dismantling all the traditionalist constructs of their conquered populations. The native populations were perceived as occupants of a preindustrial, precommercial, and


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premodern space, within the larger growing, dynamic, and avarice-focused industrial, commercial, and modern society. The natives were noncapitalist; the Europeans were capitalists. The natives needed to be marginalized, if not eradicated. The process of eradication was so that despite their marginalization, the European powers always feared that they could pose as pockets of resistance to the larger outward expanding commercial, industrial, and technical machinery that they sought to create and propagate. But, on the other hand, if ‘‘tamed,’’ then the Europeans might be able to continue exploiting them for their labor, their lands, and resources and keep them indefinitely, if not permanently, in an underdeveloped state. For the Europeans, it was sweet, a classic win-win case. The indigenous peoples rarely, if ever, digressed from their lose-lose conditions and status. At the height of European religious missionary zeal, indigenous populations were converted to Christianity. Then, with the passage of time, secular ideas were introduced to the natives, informing them that their newly acquired religious convictions needed to be reined in, since the Constitution had asserted the right for all to be free from religious teachings and rule; the government had no legal rights to impose any specific religion on any tribe, state, or nation. This secularism also emphasized that all political actions by any varying groups and people within the nation were to be based on reason, facts, and evidence instead of religious dogma, belief, or faith. The simpler ancestral times, with each passing day, seemed to most of them like a distant disappearing mist on the horizon. But, aside from the potential resistance that they might have posed to the aggressive onslaught of European modernization, many members of the native population adopted the European religion(s) imposed upon them in order for them to assimilate. This, of course, does not deny the fact that a few natives had earlier converted out of true and deep conviction in the new faith(s) they had adopted. But, as a whole, historical evidence indicates that the earliest native converts had done so primarily as an instinct to survive the daily and regular onslaughts by the European settlers that surrounded them. But, the irony was that the more they sought to fend off the Europeans by adopting or assimilating with their religious and cultural rules and practices, the more they were mistrusted and alienated from the larger European body. In time, and well into the 20th and 21st centuries, they would pay dearly for their readiness to let bygones be bygones. They would suffer the highest unemployment, alcoholism, and drug rates in the United States; in some cases over 50 to 60 percent. Facilities to meet their health care needs were, are, and continue to be meager. Their youth see high preteen pregnancy rates, inferior educational programs, and dilapidated schools in their miserable economic circumstances. Over 55 percent of their male youths are in the larger society’s prison systems. Good mental care, once released from jail, was meager to nonexistent. This contributed to a large rate of recidivism within their communities. Suicide rates have and continue to be regularly off the charts. They experience a high mortality rate and are often the victims of violent



crimes. Many of these young males do not live into their mid-20s; if they’re really fortunate, they might reach their 30th birthday. This set of evolving conditions clearly allows us to better understand an important escape mechanism employed by many of the natives and their tribes, with the emergence of the ceremonial religious dances in the late 1880s, which have come to be known as the Ghost Dance. Getting its start in the Nevada territories, among the Paiute tribe, it spread among the Native American tribes within the central plains and beyond the Missouri River and Rockies. It was a messianic doctrinaire movement. Its founder was a 35-year-old known as Wovoka by his tribe and Jack Wilson by whites. His reputation as a medicine man had grown significantly among members of his tribe and the nearby surrounding tribes. He came down with a life-threatening fever. During his illness, and later convalescence, a brief eclipse of the sun infused his tribesmen and -women with a lot of excitement. In the throes of his life-threatening fever, Wovoka grew delirious and experienced an indelible image, which he strongly believed was a direct encounter with his ancestral god. In that state of delirium, Wovoka also felt that he had inhabited a purely spiritual realm. His ancestral god informed him that the final spiritual and secular redemption of himself and his people was very close at hand. He was told that their pillaged and stolen inheritance would be regained. His and fellow tribesmen’s and -women’s departed family members and friends would be united as one all-encompassing tribal family. Their ancestral simplicity, ‘‘good’’ and ‘‘happier’’ days, would be restored. The only matter at hand that they all needed to stay focused on and attend to was to perform in earnest the dance ceremonies and sing as one united people so that they could individually and collectively attain that moment of salvation they had been promised by their ancestral god and Wovoka. With regular performances of this dance, many hypnotic trances among the participants ensued. This became a very important coping mechanism, with all the misery that in time had come to envelope and surround them. In time, with its growing popularity, tribes such as the Sioux in the Dakotas, the Arapahos, and the Cheyenne embraced the song and dance ceremonies as their own. With the Sioux, the practicing of this ceremony helped to galvanize their tribesmen and -women through venting the anger they felt, regarding the murder of Sitting Bull on December 15, 1890. Then, exactly two weeks later, on December 29, the Wounded Knee massacre occurred. All-out conflict broke loose between the Sioux tribe and the federal forces. In time, the more virulent forms of the dance and song ceremonies receded in their overall impact on the tribes and the federal forces. But it persisted in more internal Native American social functions. The important fact regarding this unique native tribal event was that it was just another way by which the native populations, who had over the centuries become subjugated and marginalized by the larger European society, could vent their bitter and deep frustrations to the seemingly ‘‘immune’’ practices and powers imposed upon them by what they perceived to be a virulent and


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destructive alien presence. This is also what had informed and driven the Pontiac Rebellion of 1763 and 1764, and immediately prior to the War of 1812, it emerged in Tecumseh and his brother Tenskwatawa’s impact, influence, and eventual rebellion against federal and state forces by their local and surrounding tribesmen. That, according to diverse members of the indigenous populations, if anything, was the real ‘‘epidemic’’ they needed to be forever vigilant of and regularly combat—alien European powers and their proxy settlers and their combined persistent and avarice means of encroachment. So, in the end it was not Eastern technology that allowed Europeans and their later American descendants to prosper and conquer the entirety of the American continents. The seeds of their dominance were, quite literally, sown even before the first permanent settlements were founded. With the first fish catches dried by English sailors on Newfoundland’s shores, the biological exchange began. By the time the Pilgrims arrived at Plymouth, they found the perfect location for a settlement, seemingly abandoned by its native inhabitants. By the 18th and 19th centuries, that biological advantage had come to be internalized by American settlers moving west. They felt entitled to dominate the west, and promoters and social theorists were only too happy to lend their voice to support their cause. Despite the earlier ‘‘immunity’’ that Europeans might have felt toward all indigenous populations, not only in the Americas but throughout the world, they will not be immune from the judgment of future generations, native and European. The Atlantic slavery of the 16th through 19th centuries and the collectively accepted evils that it had perpetrated will be equated with the present and continued treatment of the descendants of the native populations that were conquered by earlier Europeans, and the fruits of the conquered populations’ labors have and continue to be enjoyed by these earlier Europeans’ descendants. Biological factors may have started Europeans down the road toward colonialism and domination of indigenous populations, but hubris continued it, and it is that hubris that largely forms the context for Native American relations today. References and Further Reading Berger, Peter L., and Thomas Luckmann. The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge. New York: Knopf Doubleday, 1967. Bose, Sugata. A Hundred Horizons: The Indian Ocean in the Age of Global Empire. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009. Crosby, Alfred W. The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1972. Crosby, Alfred W. Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900–1900. Studies in Environment and History Series. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003.



Crosby, Alfred W. ‘‘Virgin Soil Epidemics as a Factor in the Aboriginal Depopulation in America,’’ William and Mary Quarterly 33 (April 1976): 289–299. Curtin, Philip, and Edmund Burke III, eds. Cross-Cultural Trade in World History. Cambridge Studies in Comparative World History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984. Curtin, Philip, and Edmund Burke III, eds. The Rise and Fall of the Plantation Complex: Essays in Atlantic History. Cambridge Studies in Comparative World History Series. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Emmer, Peter. ‘‘The Myth of Early Globalization: The Atlantic Economy, 1500–1800.’’ European Review 11, 1 (2003): 37–47. Geertz, Clifford. The Interpretation of Cultures. New York: Basic Books, 1997. McNeill, John Robert. ‘‘Yellow Jack and Geopolitics: Environment, Epidemics, and the Struggles for Empire in the American Tropics, 1650–1825.’’ OAH Magazine of History 18, 3 (April 2004): 9–13. McNeill, William H. Plagues and Peoples. Garden City, NY: Anchor Press, 1976. Klooster, Wim, and Alfred Padula, eds. The Atlantic World: Essays on Slavery, Migration, and Imagination. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson/Prentice Hall, 2005. Krige, John. American Hegemony and the Postwar Reconstruction of Science in Europe. Transformations: Studies in the History of Science and Technology. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2006. Mangan, J. A. The Games Ethic and Imperialism: Aspects of the Diffusion of an Ideal. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981. Williams, William Appleman. Empire as a Way of Life. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980. Williams, William Appleman. The Tragedy of American Diplomacy. New York: Norton, 1988. Wright, Donald R. The World and a Very Small Place in Africa: A History of Globalization in Niumi, the Gambia. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 2004.


6 Richard III was innocent of the charge of murder. PRO Charles Beem CON Jeffrey Mifflin

PRO There is no positive or conclusive historical evidence of any kind to suggest that King Richard III of England (r. June 1483–August 1485) murdered his nephews, King Edward V (r. April–June 1483) and his younger brother, Richard, Duke of York, or that these princes necessarily died at all during Richard’s reign. The young and tragic Edward V, whom Richard deposed after a reign of less than three months, has the most shadowy history of all the kings of England before or after him. In fact there are no contemporary witnesses to their alleged deaths. Instead all contemporary eyes and subsequent pens remained focused on the power struggle surrounding his throne and failed to notice how, when, or why he and his brother disappeared from sight following Richard’s usurpation of the crown. Not surprisingly, as historian Alison Hanham once observed, ‘‘in general, it would be safe to say that our picture of English history in the later fifteenth century is deceptively clear because there are so few details to confuse the eye’’ (1975: 155). In the case of the probable deaths of the princes, however, there are no solid details whatsoever. Nevertheless, accusations of Richard’s guilt in their murder have resounded down the centuries, the centerpiece to his enduring popular reputation as England’s most wicked king. However, the complete lack of contemporary witnesses describing how and why the princes disappeared renders accusations of Richard’s guilt in their probable murders, all of which were made after his death at the Battle of Bosworth (August 22, 1485), mere smoking guns that, in more than one mock trial of recent times (1996 and 1997), have acquitted the last Yorkist king of direct complicity in the murder of the princes. Because Richard himself lost his crown to another usurper, Henry Tudor (subsequently King Henry VII), the succeeding Tudor Dynasty (1485–1603) had a vested interest in blackening Richard’s character to bolster their own rather dubious legitimacy. By the reign of Elizabeth I (1558–1603), this evolutionary process of historical character assassination had reached the proportions depicted in William Shakespeare’s famed historical drama The Tragedy of Richard III, which regaled audiences with a grotesque, deformed, morally bankrupt prince out ‘‘to 117 © 2011 ABC-Clio. All Rights Reserved.

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prove a villain,’’ who had already murdered scores of other individuals long before he got his hands on the unfortunate princes in the tower. As a host of modern historians have demonstrated, nothing could have been further from the truth. As the historical evidence is sifted and balanced, a clear historical case of reasonable doubt emerges concerning Richard’s complicity in the possible deaths of the tragic and unfortunate princes in the tower. The Historical Background Before the death of his elder brother, Edward IV, the first Yorkist king (r. 1461–1470, 1471–1483), Richard, Duke of Gloucester, had been conspicuous in his unswerving loyalty to the interests of the York family. This was exemplary conduct in the context of the later 15th century in England and a highly prized commodity during the various events collectively referred to as the Wars of the Roses. These conflicts, a series of power struggles, street fights, and occasional pitched battles, occurred from 1455 to 1487 between the rival dynastic Houses of Lancaster and York and their erstwhile and eminently changeable allies among the nobility. This was a particularly violent and unstable period of English history for members of the aristocracy and gentry, as they competed for power, patronage, and influence within the treacherous confines of the royal court. Edward IV himself, the dazzling sun king of York, king at the age of 18 in 1461, had been particularly ruthless in the pursuit and maintenance of his royal estate, both deposing (twice, in 1461 and 1471) and probably ordering the murder of the decrepit Henry VI (r. 1422–1461, 1470–1471), the tragic and unfortunate final Lancastrian king, who supposedly expired in the Tower of London from ‘‘pure displeasure and melancholy.’’ During the first phase of Edward IV’s reign (1461–1470), Gloucester emerged from adolescence as what biographer Paul Murray Kendall, Richard’s most enthusiastic modern historical defender, once referred to as ‘‘the sturdy prop of his brother’s throne’’ (1955: 514). This was in marked contrast to the career of the elder of Edward’s surviving brothers, George, Duke of Clarence, who eventually came under the influence of Richard, ‘‘The Kingmaker,’’ Earl of Warwick, whose initial influence over the king began to wane over the course of the 1460s. The quintessential ‘‘over-mighty subject’’ of the 15th century, Warwick convinced Clarence to marry his elder daughter Isabel in 1469, in flagrant violation of the king’s firm refusal. By 1470 these two men entered into a plot that constituted the nadir of 15th-century English political history. In 1470, when Warwick, with a confused Clarence in tow, struck a bargain with Henry VI’s queen, Margaret of Anjou, to toss Edward IV off his throne and replace him with the previously deposed Henry VI, Edward’s prisoner in the Tower. Henry VI’s ‘‘redemption’’ of 1470–1471, which placed a previously deposed, and utterly worthless, king back on his throne to play the role of royal puppet, was


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the ultimate dirty deal of dynastic convenience between formerly implacable enemies who aptly represented the stunning decline of the respect for and sanctity of the royal office that occurred over the long expanse of Henry VI’s disastrous adult reign. Through all the sudden changes of fortune that Edward IV endured, Gloucester remained perfectly loyal to his interests. Indeed before his bid to become king in 1483, Richard of Gloucester’s career as an unwavering supporter of the House of York was without blemish and provided a startling and refreshing contrast to the morally bankrupt opportunism that characterized the political culture of his day. Once back on his throne after crushing the Houses of Lancaster at the Battle of Teweksbury (May 4, 1471), Edward IV enjoyed relative stability as king for the remainder of his reign. Indeed he was a capable administrator and financier, at least when he applied himself to business, but Edward nevertheless sowed the seeds that ultimately served to destabilize the Yorkist succession. Three years after becoming king in 1464, Edward IV had impetuously married, well below his station, the Lancastrian widow Elizabeth Grey (nee Wydeville), while his chief minister, the Earl of Warwick, had labored in ignorance negotiating a French marriage for the king. Despite two sons from her previous marriage, Thomas, later created Marquis of Dorset, and Richard Grey, Elizabeth Wydeville bore Edward four daughters and two sons. The eldest son, named Edward was created Prince of Wales soon after his birth and was sent to Wales to live under the tutelage of his uterine uncle, Anthony Wydeville, Lord Rivers. Back in London, Edward presided over a court riddled by faction and intrigue. While Gloucester had endeavored to reconcile Clarence back to his brother in 1471, the Wydevilles had never forgiven Clarence for the role he had played in the death of the queen’s father, the first Earl Rivers, in 1470, and worked unceasingly to destroy him. Following Clarence’s execution (February 18, 1478), the Wydevilles, rapacious in their desires for aristocratic marriages, wealth, and power, competed for power and patronage at court with Edward’s loyal household men and the rest of the nobility, whose ostensible leader was William, Lord Hastings. Though implacable enemies, Hastings and Dorset were both enthusiastic companions in Edward IV’s lecherous and gluttonous extracurricular activities, indulging his passions and desires with striking regularity, which ultimately hastened the king’s early demise. Apart from these groupings in the final years of the reign stood Richard of Gloucester, a tower of moral rectitude, serving the king as royal viceroy in the north of England, a virtually autonomous jurisdiction that Edward IV bestowed on his younger brother on account of his leadership abilities and unwavering loyalty. Because of his complicated responsibilities in the last few years of Edward IV’s reign, Gloucester had been an infrequent visitor to the king’s court and stood aloof from the factional strike that he undoubtedly had no sympathy for whatsoever. However, there is no evidence to suggest that Gloucester was



on bad terms with the Wydevilles, members of Edward’s royal household, or the rest of the Yorkist nobility. When Edward IV’s health began to fail rapidly at the beginning of April 1483, he fully realized the dangerous lack of consensus among the various factions present at his court, which his deathbed exhortations were unable to reconcile. Edward’s imminent death meant the onset of a royal minority, that is, the reign of an underage king, which required some form of regency. The most successful of medieval minorities were those of Henry III (1216–1227), which enjoyed the singular leadership of the legendary William Marshal, the Earl of Pembroke, the loyal servant of the first four Plantagenet kings, and Henry VI (1422–1437), created king at the age of nine months, whose minority succeeded because the lords temporal and spiritual worked together consensually and corporately to govern the realm during the young king’s protracted minority. While the 1422 precedent pointed toward a conciliar form of regency, in 1483, as in 1216, only one man, Gloucester, could possibly have imposed consensus on the factional strife that was endemic at the Yorkist court. Thus the king probably put much faith into the last-minute codicils added to his will that appointed Gloucester as protector of the king and kingdom during the inevitable minority of his heir. When Edward IV died on April 9, 1483, however, the new king, 12-year-old Edward V, and his protector and uncle, Richard of Gloucester, were both equidistant from London, in Wales and Yorkshire, respectively. The Prosecution’s Case In the capital, Queen Elizabeth and Hastings squared off for control of the minority regime, as the queen wrote to her brother and son in Wales, urging them to reach the capital as quickly as possible. The queen did not inform Gloucester of her actions, in the belief that if the new king could be crowned before Gloucester reached London, this would nullify his protectorship, in accordance with the 1429 precedent, when the protectorship of Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, was terminated following seven-year-old Henry VI’s English coronation. An expedited coronation sought to circumvent Gloucester’s appointment as protector and place de facto power in the hands of the queen and her adherents. Despite opposition from Edward’s household men, the queen was able to dominate the initial meetings of a royal council that had come together spontaneously upon Edward IV’s death. As Michael Hicks (1979) has argued, the reign opened with a Wydeville coup d’etat, as the queen prevailed on the council to endorse her suggestion for a hasty coronation, scheduled for May 4. Gloucester, however, had been informed of the queen’s machinations and wrote to Earl Rivers in Wales, asking if their parties could meet, so the protector could personally escort the new king into London, a request that Rivers, not suspecting any subterfuge, could hardly have declined.


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However, when the rendezvous occurred in Northampton (April 29, 1483), Gloucester only found Rivers; the king was 14 miles down the road closer to London in Stoney Stratford. Joined by Henry Stafford, Duke of Buckingham, a kinsmen of the Lancastrians who had been forced to marry one of the queen’s sisters, Gloucester enjoyed a convivial evening with Rivers and the next morning promptly arrested him, the king’s half-brother Richard, and Thomas Vaughan and shipped them off to the north of England for safekeeping. Gloucester and Buckingham then proceeded to Stoney Stratford, where Gloucester took physical possession of the king, the first positive step toward Edward V’s deposition. Richard’s historical prosecutors have often claimed that at this moment Richard was already scheming to obtain the crown. Despite the naked show of force, Gloucester still enjoyed considerable support among the ranks of Yorkist political society. Before arriving in the capital, Gloucester had written sober letters defending his conduct while accusing the queen and her kindred of conspiring against him. Gloucester and the king entered London on May 4, 1483, in an impressive ceremony, while Queen Elizabeth took her daughters, younger son, and all her movables with her into the sanctuary of Westminster Abbey, after failing to attract support for an armed force to challenge Gloucester’s possession of the king. The majority of the dead king’s councilors, including Hastings, initially approved of Gloucester’s actions and quickly affirmed his appointment as protector, giving him, according to the Croyland Chronicle, ‘‘power to order and forbid in any matter, just like another king’’ (cited in Pronay 1986). Meanwhile the young king himself, treated with all due deference by Gloucester and the rest of the nobility, was lodged first in the London house of the bishop of London and later in the royal apartments of the Tower of London, as he awaited his coronation, set for June 22. Once installed as protector, Gloucester’s right-hand man turned out to By deposing and then perhaps murdering his be Buckingham and not Hastings, the nephew Edward V and his younger brother, late king’s closest friend and confi- Richard III revived the Wars of the Roses, dante, who apparently expected a sig- thereby destroying himself and his dynasty nificant quid pro quo from Gloucester and making possible the rule of the House for his earlier support. Hastings was of Tudor under King Henry VII. (Corel)



apparently resentful, remaining outwardly cordial while maintaining personal access to the king in the tower. If not before, by Friday, June 13, Gloucester had irrevocably decided to usurp the crown. At a meeting of the council in the tower on that morning, Gloucester accused Hastings; Thomas Rotherham, archbishop of York; and John Morton, bishop of Ely, of conspiring with the Wydevilles to gain possession of the king. Hastings was hustled out to the Tower Green and summarily beheaded, while Rotherham and Morton were taken into custody. By now an overawed council agreed with the protector’s demands that the king should not be crowned without the presence of his younger brother, the Duke of York, still in the sanctuary of Westminster Abbey with his mother and sisters. On June 16, Thomas Bourchier, archbishop of Canterbury, removed the young prince from the abbey and reunited him with his brother in the tower. At the same time, Gloucester secured custody of Clarence’s six-year-old son, the Earl of Warwick, the only other direct male descendant of the House of York. With all the male scions of the House of York in his possession, Gloucester set his usurpation into motion. On June 17, parliament was canceled as plans for the coronation were abandoned. The pretext that Gloucester chose as ‘‘colour for this act of usurpation’’ was the ‘‘discovery’’ that Edward IV’s children were illegitimate, because, according to Robert Stillington, bishop of Bath and Wells, a longtime adherent of Clarence and foe of the Wydevilles, Edward had entered into a binding precontract with lady Eleanor Butler before his marriage to the queen. On Sunday, June 22, Gloucester and a host of other notables came to Saint Paul’s Cross to hear friar Ralph Shaa preach that ‘‘bastard slips shall not take root.’’ Three days later, Gloucester mounted the throne as Richard III. By this time, Earl Rivers and the king’s half brother, Richard Grey, had also been summarily executed. While Richard had indeed been ruthless in his dogged pursuit of the crown in the face of allegedly relentless factional hostility, what exactly happened to The Tower of London The Tower of London is actually a multibuilding complex north of the Thames River and just east of London. Originally built as a fortress in the 11th century, the tower is protected by a moat and two defensive walls. The tower has also long been the home to wild ravens, which in modern times are cared for by the royal ravenmaster, the bulk of the raven population having died of shock during the World War II bombing of London. Over the centuries, the tower has been used as a prison and a place of torture for dissidents. In addition to the princes, other famous prisoners have included Queen Elizabeth I, Guy Fawkes, Sir Walter Raleigh, Thomas More, and Anne and Jane Boleyn. The ghost of Anne Boleyn is said to wander the grounds of the tower, carrying her severed head.


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the princes nonetheless remains English history’s greatest unsolved mystery. Shortly after his uncle seized the throne, the deposed Edward V and his brother completely disappeared from view and contemporary comment. Dominic Mancini, an Italian cleric visiting London during much of 1483, reported that the princes were still seen shooting butts on the Tower Green at the end of June and related how the ex-king’s physician, Augustine, reported that ‘‘the young king, like a victim prepared for sacrifice, sought remission of sins by daily confession and penance, because he believed that death was facing him’’ (Mancini 1936). Mancini’s observations, however, are the last recorded contemporary sightings of the princes, who henceforth disappeared completely from the historical record. At this point, the prosecution has failed to produce a corpus delecti, the fact of a crime actually being committed. The Defense Following Richard’s coronation and subsequent reign, the princes are simply not mentioned in the historical record. Only after Richard had died at Bosworth Field did any contemporaries speculate on the likely fate of the princes. But apparently by the fall of 1483, it was widely rumored that the princes were dead, which served as the catalyst for Buckingham’s rebellion in October, fought, according to the Croyland Chronicle, to place the exiled Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond, a descendant of the Lancastrian royal house, on the throne, because Tudor vowed to marry Edward IV’s eldest daughter, Elizabeth of York, and unite the two rival dynasties. It is entirely possible that Buckingham, who had enjoyed great favor from Richard before his rebellion, a situation that perhaps had encouraged Hastings’s alleged treason, arranged for the princes to be murdered to smooth Tudor’s, or even perhaps his own, path to the throne. The continuation of the Chronicle describing Richard’s reign, written early in the succeeding reign of Henry VII, mentioned that Buckingham repented of his support for Richard III and left London at the same time that rumors began circulating concerning the princes’ fate. However, Richard swiftly crushed Buckingham’s rebellion and beheaded its ringleader without mercy, who took whatever secrets he had concerning the fate of the princes with him to his grave. If dynastic security was the primary motivation for the actual murder of the princes (which, remember, has never actually been proven!), then Buckingham and Tudor had just as much of a vested interest in seeing the princes succumb to unnatural deaths as did Richard III. Tudor-era historian Polydore Vergil, in his Anglica Historia, described Buckingham’s dynastic pretensions in a particularly lively section of his narrative, as Richard III accused Buckingham: ‘‘What now, duke Henry, will yow chalenge unto you that right of Henry the Fourth wherby he wyckedly usurpid the crowne, and so make open for yourself the way therunto?’’ (Vergil 1555). What all this amounts to is a smattering of circumstantial



evidence against Richard, enough to indict, but far short of an actual conviction, as both Buckingham and Tudor also look like probable suspects. As Buckingham and Tudor are just as likely assailants as King Richard, the dowager queen, Elizabeth Wydeville, provides highly contradictory and unreliable testimony and behavior that continues to befuddle scenarios envisioning Richard’s guilt in the murder of the princes. Were she alive, even if she had knowledge of potentially damning testimony, the prosecution would probably have declined to call her to the witness stand, because her testimony (and character) would have been destroyed under cross-examination. Before Buckingham’s rebellion, Elizabeth had agreed to a dynastic deal hatched by Margaret Beaufort, Tudor’s mother, for the marriage of Henry Tudor and Elizabeth of York, which suggests that she was aware or suspected that her sons were dead. If, in fact, she knew her sons were dead, Elizabeth remained focused on securing her surviving children’s dynastic rights, despite the vividly described grieving mother scene in the narrative of Thomas More’s (2005) The History of King Richard III. Following the failure of Buckingham’s rebellion, the queen’s emotionless, realpolitik attitude was fully revealed on March 1, 1484, when she and her daughters left sanctuary and were reconciled to King Richard and his royal court. There are several plausible explanations for her rapprochement with the man who had executed her brother and son and who was widely rumored to have instigated the deaths her two younger sons as well. One is that Elizabeth knew the princes were still alive, or had died natural deaths. The other is that she was simply tired of remaining in sanctuary and accepted the reality of the present administration. Elizabeth lived until 1492, but no viable contemporary or later source mentions any of her views regarding the fate of her two younger sons. Elizabeth did not apparently enjoy a cordial relation with her son-in-law, Henry VII, who shut her up in the Abbey of Bermondsey in 1487, after she had inexplicably lent her support to the Yorkist pretender, Lambert Simnel, which defies any rational interpretation of her possible motivations. Like the Duke of Buckingham, Elizabeth Wydeville went to her grave perhaps with some knowledge of the true story of the fate of her sons. As there are no contemporary accounts of what exactly happened to the princes, all subsequent accounts of Richard’s supposed guilt in the fate of the princes were manufactured after his death, during the reigns of the first two Tudor kings, Henry VII and VIII, long after the supposed ‘‘fact’’ of the prince’s demise sometime in the later half of 1483. While centuries of historians have uncritically accepted Thomas More’s interpretation of a physically and morally corrupt, infanticidal tyrant, 20th-century historians have successfully reopened the case and cast grave doubts on nearly all of More’s assertions concerning Richard’s character and crimes, including the murder of the princes he so richly described. Richard’s modern defense reached the larger popular culture with the publication of Josephine Tey’s 1951 novel, The Daughter of Time, which, among other


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things, exposes the weaknesses and biases of More’s History, a narrative allegedly based in part on the personal recollections of John Morton, formerly bishop of Ely. Morton escaped confinement during Buckingham’s rebellion late in 1483, having been incarcerated following the June 13 coup, which resulted in the summary beheading of Hastings, and made his way to Henry Tudor in Brittany. Described by Dominic Mancini as a man ‘‘of great resource and daring, for he had been trained in party intrigue since King Henry’s [VI] time’’ (1936), Morton emerged in Henry VII’s reign as lord chancellor, cardinal, and perhaps the principal architect of Richard III’s historical character assassination. More’s History has also been explained as a rhetorical, humanistic literary exercise, rather than a precise history, perhaps offering to the youthful Henry VIII an example of how a prince ought not to behave. In the words of Jeremy Potter, More’s work was ‘‘a literary exercise in the dramatic presentation of villainy’’ (1991) that bore little relationship to the historical King Richard. More’s book, however, is the first to describe Sir James Tyrell’s alleged murder of the princes, a story reproduced and embellished in every subsequent work of 16th-century history, through the chroniclers Edward Hall, Ralph Holinshed, and finally, the bard of Avon himself, William Shakespeare. What More did not reveal, however, was the contradictory and shady relationship that existed between James Tyrell and Henry VII. Tyrell, in fact, enjoyed great favor under Henry VII, recovering the offices he held under Richard III and enjoying frequent employment in the king’s service. In June and July 1486, Henry VII issued to Tyrell two pardons for unspecified offences without explanation. Why would Henry VII refrain from publicly acknowledging the murder of the princes if he knew Tyrell was in fact the murderer? Unless, of course, it was Tudor, not Richard, who had arranged for the princes to be done away with. Only later in the reign, in 1502, when Tyrell had provided aid and comfort to the renegade Yorkist prince Edmund, Earl of Suffolk, in his capacity as lieutenant of Guisnes, was he convicted and executed for treason. How and why Henry VII allowed Tyrell’s supposed guilt in the princes’ murder to be known, if he in fact did anything of the sort, long after the fact of the deed, remains a mystery, as does how More himself got hold of the story. Polydore Vergil failed to relate Tyrell’s supposed confession, as did Bernard Andre, tutor to Henry VII’s sons and the author of his biography. Writing in the early 17th century, Francis Bacon let it be known that Henry VII allowed knowledge of Tyrell’s guilt to be circulated. Ultimately the full historical disclosure of the career of Tyrell, and of his highly suspicious relationship with Henry VII, only serves to cast further doubt on Richard as suspect number one. However, before we proceed to our closing arguments, we must admit one final piece of evidence, which was the discovery of the bones of two preteen children found under a staircase in the Tower of London in 1674. The location roughly fits with Thomas More’s account of the disposal of the princes’ bodies.



King Charles II had the remains interred in an urn in Westminster Abbey, where they have remained ever since, which has further contributed to Richard’s enduring reputation as their murderer. In 1933, however, the remains were examined by scientists armed with the rudimentary forensic science of their day, who rendered an inconclusive verdict regarding their identity or their sex. Since that time, subsequent British monarchs have forbid further scientific analysis of the remains. It is unlikely that the monarchy will ever allow their examination again, despite the state of forensic science today, which could easily identify their DNA. Conclusion Ultimately what all the admissible evidence adds up to is an ironclad case of reasonable doubt. No contemporary account points the finger directly at Richard for the murder of the princes; only subsequent accounts labor to convince us of his guilt. However, considering his bloody path to the throne, Richard remains the most likely circumstantial candidate. Like a medieval O. J. Simpson, Richard’s repeated acquittals in courts of law do not erase the strong presumption of unproven guilt in the larger court of public and historical opinion. As historian Charles Ross once pointed out, even Paul Murray Kendall, Richard’s most vigorous modern defender, admits ‘‘the most powerful indictment of Richard is the plain and massive fact that the princes disappeared from view after he assumed the throne, and were never reported to have been seen alive. This fact . . . weighs heavily against the indications of his innocence’’ (1981). If he was guilty, Richard did have a large body of powerful and bloody precedents to draw on: Edward II’s probable murder at the hands of his queen, Isabella, and her paramour, Roger De Mortimer, in 1327; Thomas of Woodstock’s probable murder on the orders of Richard II in 1397; and Richard II’s own untimely demise on the probable orders of his supplanter, Henry IV, the first Lancastrian king, in 1400. The precedents closer in time to 1483 were just as ruthless and far more numerous. Henry VI’s ferocious queen, Margaret of Anjou, beheaded every Yorkist lord she could get her hands on and placed a paper crown on the severed head of Richard, Duke of York, following the Lancastrian victory at 1460 Battle of Wakefield. Edward IV dispatched the decrepit old Henry VI 11 years later following the 1471 Battle of Teweksbury after Henry’s son, 17-year-old Edward of Lancaster, had perished during that battle. Indeed, if Edward had survived Teweksbury, Edward IV could hardly have allowed the youth to live without putting his recently regained crown at continued dynastic risk. Perceiving the same threat, the Wydevilles succeeded in destroying George, Duke of Clarence. This was the political culture in which all of our suspects were constrained to participate in. In 1499, 14 years after his accession, Richard’s supplanter, Henry


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VII, beheaded the hapless Edward, Earl of Warwick, son of George, Duke of Clarence, and the last direct male descendant of the House of York, during the negotiations for the betrothal of his eldest son and heir, Arthur, prince of Wales, and Catherine of Aragon, youngest daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain. Nevertheless, despite the circumstantial evidence that weighs heavily against him, there is no contemporary account of the fate of the princes. Dominic Mancini summed it up best in his account of the usurpation and subsequent disappearance of Edward V, as he wrote, ‘‘I have seen many men burst forth into tears and lamentations when mention was made of him after his removal from men’s sights; and already there was a suspicion that he had been done away with, and by what manner of death, so far I have not at all discovered’’ (1936). References and Further Reading Bruce, John, ed. History of the Arrivall of Edward IV, in England and the Finall Recouerye of His Kingdomes from Henry VI A.D. M.CCCC.LXXI. London: Camden Society, 1838. Hanham, Alison. Richard III and His Early Historians. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1975. Hicks, Michael. ‘‘The Changing Role of the Wydeville’s in Yorkist Politics to 1483.’’ In Patronage, Pedigree, and Power. Edited by Charles Ross. New York: Alan Sutton, Rowman and Littlefield, 1979. Kendall, Paul Murray. Richard the Third. London: George Allen and Unwin, 1955. Mancini, Dominic. The Usurpation of Richard III. Edited by C. A. J. Armstrong. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1936. More, Thomas. The History of King Richard III. Edited by George M. Logan, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005. Potter, Jeremy. Good King Richard? An Account of Richard III and His Reputation. London: Constable, 1983. Potter, Jeremy. ‘‘Richard III’s Historians: Adverse and Favorable Views.’’ Richard III Society (1991). Available online at http://www.r3.org/bookcase/misc /potter.html (accessed August 10, 2010). Pronay, Nicholas, and John Cox, eds. Crowland Chronicle Continuations, 1459–1486. London: Alan Sutton, 1986. Ross, Charles. Richard III. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981. Shakespeare, William. The Tragedy of King Richard III. Edited by John Jowett. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001. Tey, Josephine. The Daughter of Time. New York: Macmillan, 1951. Vergil, Polydore. Anglica Historia, London: 1555.



CON A prolonged dynastic struggle for kingship ripped through England in the 15th century. The Wars of the Roses (1455–1485) pitted the House of Lancaster (the emblem of which was a red rose) against the House of York (symbolized by a white rose). The throne passed from house to house, and deceptions, betrayals, judicial executions, and murders were among the tactics employed to obtain and secure power. Among the Yorkists was Richard, Duke of Gloucester, younger brother of King Edward IV. Richard seized power soon after his brother’s death in 1483 despite the fact that Edward IV had two living sons (Edward and Richard) who were in line to inherit the throne. Richard of Gloucester became Richard III. The Wars of the Roses ended in 1485 when Henry Tudor’s forces defeated those of Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth. Henry became King Henry VII, founder of the Tudor Dynasty. Richard III’s battered remains were ignominiously trussed over a horse’s back and carried off to an obscure burial without honors. Richard III’s reign lasted only 25 months, but his notoriety was such that his name is, even today, among the most recognized of any English monarch. He may be the most controversial ruler England has ever had, exceeding in that regard even King John. It is true, as his rehabilitators point out, that Richard III has been unjustly maligned. It is highly unlikely that he was born after two years in his mother’s womb with a full set of teeth, or that he had a predilection in infancy for devouring frogs. The death of saintly, feeble Henry VI in the Tower of London cannot justifiably be ascribed to Richard, even though a 1910 examination of Henry’s skull found it to be ‘‘much broken,’’ suggesting that his unhappy end was precipitated by something other than the ‘‘pure displeasure and melancholy’’ mentioned in Yorkist propaganda. Nor did Richard III stab Prince Edward of Lancaster to death. Edward (Henry VI’s son) died fighting at the battle of Tewkesbury. It is no longer the current view that Richard III drowned his brother, George, Duke of Clarence, in a butt of Malmsey, nor is it likely that he murdered him by any other means. But acquitting Richard III of the aforementioned three deaths still leaves him accountable for the untimely demise of William, Lord Hastings; Richard Grey; Sir Richard Haute; Anthony Woodville, Earl Rivers; Sir Thomas Vaughan; Sir Thomas Saint Leger; William Colyngbourne; and Henry Stafford, Duke of Buckingham, all of whom, according to Charles Wood (1978) in ‘‘Who Killed the Little Princes in the Tower,’’ lost their heads because Richard feared conspiracies against his power and person. As we shall see, the death of the little princes fits neatly into the pattern of elimination used by Richard III against those thought likely to pose a threat. One of the key events of Richard III’s reign was the sequestration in the summer of 1483 of his nephews, Edward V and Richard, Duke of York, in the Tower of London. The little princes, aged 9 and 12 when they were shut away, disappeared mysteriously while under their uncle’s protection. Rumors flew that


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View of England’s Tower of London. Built in the 11th century, the Tower of London has served as a royal residence and a prison, as well as a site for beheadings and hangings. (Philip Lange/Dreamstime.com)

Richard had arranged their deaths to consolidate his power, and no contemporary writer expressed a different opinion. Historians who wrote during the reign of Henry VII were even more emphatic in their accusations. ‘‘What is so special,’’ asks Jeremy Potter, former chairman of the Richard III Society, ‘‘about Richard III’s alleged villainy when compared with that of, say, Henry IV, Edward IV, and Henry VII—to name but three usurping regicides—or numerous other bloodstained 15th-century toughies?’’ (cited in Wood 1978). The answer, of course, is that these were the forlorn children of his brother who were, supposedly, under his protection. Modern apologists for Richard, in attempts to rehabilitate his reputation, have engendered a debate with historians who subscribe to the traditional view that he caused the murder of his nephews. They urge that Richard was innocent. He did not, they assert, have a motive for the murders and could not have been guilty of ordering such a heinous act against his beloved brother’s sons. They point to bits and pieces of historical evidence and conjectures derived from them in their less-than-convincing exculpatory attempts. The usual apologist view is that Henry VII ordered the murders at some point early in his reign after Richard III had been killed at Bosworth. Even if, they continue, the little princes died during the reign of Richard III, the reprehensible deed was accomplished without his knowledge and contrary to his wishes.



This section will take the traditional point of view that Richard III, aware that his claims on the throne were tenuous and that his power could be easily undermined by an uprising consolidated around a figure more popular than himself, was guilty of arranging the murder of the little princes in the Tower of London. Political and Historical Background to the Murders Richard of Gloucester, as well as his most trusted advisers, hailed from the north of England. In southern England, where London and the royal court were located, people viewed the north with singular distrust. Northerners were considered wild, bellicose, licentious, and unfamiliar with the culture of the capital. Richard came south after the death of Edward IV (April 9, 1483) to keep an eye on his brother’s minor children, especially Edward, the oldest of the two princes, who reigned briefly without being crowned as King Edward V. Edward IV’s queen was Elizabeth Wydeville, mother of the little princes and their sisters. Soon after Edward IV’s demise, Richard dismissed the friends and advisers surrounding Edward V (on April 30) and had his own men escort the young king to London, where he was housed in apartments at the Tower of London. Elizabeth, highly alarmed, took refuge with her remaining children at Westminster Abbey. Richard officially became Edward V’s protector on May 10. He persuaded Elizabeth to allow Edward’s younger brother, Richard, Duke of York, to join him at London Tower on the pretense that Edward was lonesome and needed a playmate. He arranged his own coronation (July 6) as King Richard III instead of crowning Edward V, the rightful heir. Richard’s pretense for seizing the throne was that the children of Edward IV were illegitimate and therefore legally unable to succeed to the kingship. This ruse was based on an allegation that Edward IV had entered into a ‘‘troth plight,’’ a precontract for marriage, with Lady Eleanor Butler before his marriage to Elizabeth Wydeville, rendering invalid the marriage from which the little princes were born. By midsummer, Richard’s spies had been alerted to some sort of plot, the exact nature of which was not known. A faction favoring the restoration of Edward V reportedly wanted to spirit Edward’s sisters to a safe haven overseas because of concerns that some malefactor might eliminate the male heirs. (If the male issue of Edward IV died, whatever rights they possessed to the crown would pass to their oldest sister, Elizabeth of York.) Richard responded by encircling Westminster Abbey and environs, where Elizabeth Wydeville and her daughters were in sanctuary, with armed men. In late July, Richard III embarked on a royal ‘‘progress’’ to portions of the kingdom in an effort to win friends and solidify his support. The country acquiesced in Richard’s usurpation, but acquiescence was not by any means in 15thcentury England a guarantee of stability. Those who understood the law knew well that the petition deposing Edward V was not legally valid. If Edward IV’s


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marriage to Elizabeth Wydeville was null and void on the grounds of a previous ‘‘troth plight,’’ it needed to be proved by means of a thorough investigation conducted by the church. Such disputes relating to marriage contracts were not unusual in the 15th century, and Richard and his advisers probably foresaw that canon lawyers, if given the chance, would decide in favor of Edward IV’s children. He must have realized that many citizens, especially in the south, still considered Edward V the rightful king, even after the dissemination of convoluted stories about illegitimacy. Richard was apprehensive even in his better moments and must have realized that, while the princes were alive, his throne was insecure and his person was at risk. Richard III’s decision to permanently eliminate the threat posed by his nephews may have occurred even before he usurped the throne. It certainly lodged firmly in his mind once the rumblings of rebellion stirred shortly after his July 6, 1483, coronation. Contemporary and Near Contemporary Accounts Relating to the Fate of the Princes It isn’t necessary to rely on accounts composed in the Tudor era, which have often been suspected of bias against Richard III, to sort out what happened in the ensuing months. Historians who want to cut through the myths surrounding Richard should look first at contemporary and near-contemporary records, histories, and other available documents. A number of documents, including reports and chronicles written before Henry VII’s ascendancy in 1485 (or soon thereafter) have survived. The observations and allegations they contain can be studied and evaluated. Who were these authors and why should we lend credence to their accounts? An Italian cleric and humanist writer named Dominic Mancini penned the most substantial contemporary narrative of events surrounding the disappearance of the little princes. He came to England in 1482 as a member of a diplomatic mission and wrote in Latin under the name Dominicus Mancinus. Living in London during the turbulent months following Edward IV’s death, he had ample opportunities to observe, listen, and learn. His patron, Angelo Cato, archbishop of Vienne, recalled him around the time of Richard III’s coronation. Mancini left London on July 6, 1483. Cato asked Mancini to record his impressions of the troubled situation in England. The resulting manuscript, an indispensable source for the events of April to July 1483, was completed in December, while his memories were still fresh. He recorded that Richard was adept at dissimulation, extremely ambitious, and lusted uncontrollably for power. He was, Mancini wrote, ruthless in his disposal of men, like Hastings, who stood in his way. His ruthlessness extended to the usurpation of his own nephew’s crown. Mancini noted that as soon as Hastings was beheaded on June 20, servants formerly appointed to take care of the little princes were ‘‘debarred access.’’ The



boys, no longer seen playing in the tower gardens, ‘‘were withdrawn into the inner apartments of the Tower proper and day by day began to be seen more rarely behind the bars and windows, till at length they ceased to appear altogether. . . . The physician Argentine, the last of his attendants whose services the king enjoyed, reported that the young king, like a victim prepared for sacrifice, sought remission of his sins by daily confession and penance, because he believed that death was facing him’’ (Mancinus 1969). Mancini reported that even in July there were widespread suspicions that Edward V had been murdered. A collection of signet letters and memorandums about political participants and the sequence of events during the protectorate and reign of Richard have come down to us and are preserved in the British Library as ‘‘Harleian Manuscript 433.’’ A document therein dated July 14, 1483, authorized payment of wages (the last such payment) to 14 men for their services to Edward IV and to ‘‘Edward Bastard, late called King Edward V.’’ Richard III’s career as a whole, including his short reign, is described in a contemporary narrative written at the Benedictine abbey of Crowland in Lincolnshire by an unidentified hand. Although the identity of the author has never been positively confirmed, it is obvious that he was intelligent and well informed about contemporary events. He is sometimes thought to have been John Russell, bishop of Lincoln, a doctor of canon law. Russell was Edward IV’s keeper of the privy seal in the 1470s and served as Richard III’s chancellor from 1483 to 1485. He was present at Crowland in April 1486. Entries in the Crowland Chronicle dealing with Richard III, known as the ‘‘second continuation,’’ were composed over 10 days at the end of April that year. The author of the Crowland Chronicle Continuation wrote that in 1483 rumors were circulating that the little princes had come to a violent end and that their sisters might be taken overseas in disguise to save them from a similar fate. A later addition specifically accused Richard III of killing ‘‘his brother’s progeny’’ (Pronay and Cox 1986). Other contemporary and near-contemporary evidence is unanimous in corroborating that the rumors circulating in the summer and fall of 1483 about foul play at the Tower of London were essentially true. The Great Chronicle of London (1938), a manuscript at London’s Guildhall Library, notes that in 1484, after Easter, ‘‘much whysperyng was among the people that the kyng had put the childyr of King Edward to deth.’’ Philippe de Commynes, writing in 1498 at the behest of Angelo Cato, recorded his memories about the court of Louis XI of France. Louis XI, who supported a wide and reputedly efficient network of spies, was convinced by mid-August 1483 that Richard III had arranged for and accomplished the murder of his nephews. On January 15, 1484, Guillaume de Rochefort, the chancellor of France, warned the Estates General about the dangers of having a child king (Charles VIII was then only 14). He asked the Estates to remember the fate of Edward IV’s children, who were ‘‘put to death with impunity, and the royal crown transferred to their murderer.’’ (Dockray 1997)


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Thomas More’s Sifting and Weighing of Reports about the Princes’ Deaths Richard’s rehabilitators have sometimes disparaged Thomas More’s biography of Richard III as mere Tudor propaganda. But More (who later was made a saint) was a professional lawyer with considerable experience in investigating crimes, weighing evidence, and evaluating probabilities. Although he was just a child in 1483, he knew many people familiar with the events of Richard III’s reign. Among those in More’s political circles were men who had inside information about late-15th-century political events. He was aware of conflicting versions and went to some lengths to sort out the facts and reconstruct what probably happened in his The History of King Richard III. ‘‘I shall rehearse you the dolorous end,’’ he writes, ‘‘of those babes, not after every way that I have heard, but after that way . . . heard by such men and by such means as methinketh [it would be difficult for it not to] be true’’ (More 2005: 97). More started working on his manuscript around 1513 but left it unfinished and unpublished. There is no reason to suppose that More was influenced by Tudor pressures to malign Richard III during its composition. His narrative does contain some demonstrable errors, and many of the speeches he includes are imaginative reconstructions. In this practice he followed the example of classical authors such as Sallust and Tacitus. Like other Renaissance scholars, More looked to classical models. He was virulently opposed to tyranny, and his depiction of Richard III sometimes portrays the king as a dramatic stereotype of oppressive evil. His comparison, for example, of Edward IV as a good ruler with Richard III as a bad ruler is redolent of passages in Tacitus in which the Emperor Augustus is compared to his unworthy successor, Tiberius. Such dramatic flourishes should not get in the way of a balanced assessment and

Thomas More Thomas More (1478–1535) was an English politician and author whose biography of Richard III was the principal source for Shakespeare’s play of the same name. He’s best known for his book Utopia, a word he coined for an ideal society; though the book is meant to be a satire, it’s not always successful, and the society he described has been as much an influence as his mockery of it. Even his Utopian alphabet, a simplified script reminiscent in intent of Mark Twain’s later satire of spelling reforms, informed the development of shorthand. A pious Catholic, More opposed Henry VIII’s assumption of control over the Church of England and had campaigned against the Protestantism of Martin Luther and others. When he refused to swear allegiance to the newly crowned Anne Boleyn by means of an antipapal oath, he was convicted of high treason and executed.



appreciation of the information that More collected, upon which the history is based. Historians should at least give serious consideration to More’s basic characterizations and narrative of events, despite the presence of flaws. His account, in its broader outlines, is probably very close to the truth. The reported facts, as sifted and arranged by More, are as follows. Richard III, following his coronation, set off on a ‘‘progress,’’ touring parts of the realm accompanied by an entourage, for the purpose of showing himself to the people in hopes of earning their affection and gaining their loyalty. During his stay at Warwick, which he reached on August 8, Richard gave orders that the princes needed to be eliminated. He first sent a messenger to Robert Brackenbury, constable of the tower, directing him to put the children to death. The constable, although one of Richard’s handpicked men, demurred, being too cautious or too overwhelmed by the enormity of the act. ‘‘Ah, who shall a man trust?’’ Richard exclaimed. One of his spies recommended James Tyrell, a knight who had performed dangerous and secret work for Richard on a previous occasion. Richard gave Tyrell a letter addressed to Brackenbury, ordering the constable to surrender the tower’s keys for one night. Tyrell decided that the princes could be murdered most easily and discretely in their beds. He enlisted the help of Miles Forest, an experienced murderer, and his own horse keeper, John Dighton. ‘‘[T]his Miles Forest and John Dighton about midnight (the innocent children lying in their beds) came into the chamber and suddenly lapped them up among the clothes— so bewrapped them and entangled them, keeping down by force the featherbed and pillows hard unto their mouths . . . that smothered and stifled, their breth failing, they gave up to God their innocent souls . . ., leaving to their tormentors their bodies dead in the bed.’’ The henchmen then fetched Tyrell to prove that the princes were dead. He ‘‘caused those murderers to bury them at the stairfoot, meetly deep in the ground under a great heap of stones’’ (More 2005: 100). Forensic Corroboration In 1674 workmen digging during renovations at the tower unearthed the skeletal remains of two children buried in a box under or near a staircase in the White Tower (a fortified keep within the larger enclosure). The bones were assumed to belong to the little princes who had disappeared without a trace 191 years before. King Charles II ordered the bones removed from the tower and had them ceremoniously deposited in Henry VII’s chapel at Westminster Abbey in a sealed urn designed by the architect Christopher Wren. In 1933 Lawrence Tanner, the archivist of Westminster Abbey, and Professor William Wright secured permission to unseal the urn and examine its contents in the presence of a dental surgeon, George Northcroft, who specialized in the treatment of children’s teeth. They discovered that many bones were missing from the human skeletons and that the bones of various animals were mixed


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in. A fairly complete human skull and another fragmentary human skull were in the urn, confirming the presence of two humans. Teeth and bones were thoroughly examined. According to Lawrence Tanner and William Wright in ‘‘Recent Investigations,’’ the researchers determined that the smaller remains were those of a child between 9 and 11 years old and that the remains showing more advanced growth belonged to a child between the ages of 12 and 13. A noteworthy characteristic of the remains of the older child was that an extensive stain, blood red above and brown below, fluid in origin, had discolored the area from the orbits to the angles of the lower jaw. It was, the researchers, concluded, a bloodstain. The parts of the facial skeleton had been separated, lending credence to the traditional account of the deaths, that the boys had been smothered under a feather bed and pillows and that the murderers had pressed down hard on their mouths. ‘‘The evidence that the bones in the urn are those of the princes is . . . as conclusive as could be desired,’’ the researchers reported, ‘‘[and] their ages were such that their death occurred during the reign of their usurping uncle, Richard III. . . . We can say with confidence that by no possibility could either, or both, have been still alive on the 22nd August 1485, the date of Henry VII’s accession.’’ ‘‘On the historical side,’’ the investigators continued, ‘‘there is at least a reasonable probability that the traditional story of the murder, as told by More, is in its main outlines true’’ (Tanner and Wright 1933). After five days of on-site examination and description, the human bones were replaced in the urn with a statement on parchment detailing what had been done. The urn was resealed. To date no permission has been obtained for a reexamination that would afford an opportunity for DNA analysis, which was unknown in the 1930s. The presence of animal bones in the urn, including duck, fish, chicken, rabbit, sheep, pig, and ox bones, can be explained, according to Tanner and Wright. The area over the secret burial hole, under or near stairs, accumulated quantities of kitchen waste in the 19 decades between the murders and the discovery of the remains. Such refuse would gradually have become submerged as the level of the soil built up. The workmen did not know in 1674 the significance of what they had found, smashed open the box, and threw the human bones onto a pile with other diggings. When Charles II ordered the royal remains removed from the tower, some of the human bones could no longer be located and some animal bones were inadvertently mixed in. Alternative Explanations It has sometimes been suggested that someone other than Richard III committed the murders, unbeknownst to him. The three names most often mentioned as alternatives to Richard are Henry VII, the Duke of Buckingham, and the Duke of Norfolk. Henry VII was not in any position to have the princes murdered



before he came to the throne in August 1485. The weight of contemporary authority points to the strong probability that the princes, last seen in the summer of 1483, were long dead by 1485. Buckingham, despite his ambitions, did not have a believable practical motive for the murders and would not have undertaken such a serious initiative without authorization from Richard III. Norfolk did have a financial motive for wanting the death of the youngest prince, Richard, Duke of York. The fact that young Richard had been declared illegitimate by parliament did not deprive him of the inheritance he stood to gain through the Mowbray Dukes of Norfolk, deriving from the early death of his child bride, Anne Mowbray. But it is not credible that Norfolk would have dared to commit such an act unless authorized to do so by Richard III. Some of Richard III’s supporters have hinted that the boys may have died of natural causes while incarcerated in the tower. Plague and the mysterious ‘‘sweating sickness’’ were both frequently fatal. The drinking water in the tower was considered unsanitary even by 15th-century standards. But if the princes had died a natural death, it would have been distinctly to Richard’s advantage to display their bodies in public to allay suspicions that they had met with violence. A public funeral would have put the usurper in a more sympathetic light. He could have built support by exhibiting grief for his dead nephews, either real or fictitious. If an innocent explanation for the much-discussed disappearance of the little princes existed, Richard would have offered it. The fact that he made no such explanation strongly suggests that there was none to be made. Conclusion Contemporary authorities who discuss the probable date of the murders agree that the princes died sometime between the end of July 1483 and the end of September 1483. Most probably the slaughter occurred between August 7 and August 15. Richard III, at Warwick on his ‘‘progress’’ that week, sent Tyrell on a mission to the tower. If the dates are correct, Edward V was then just under 13 years old, and his brother Richard, Duke of York, was nearly 10. The skeletal evidence from the urn at Westminster Abbey shows that the two children were approximately 10 and 13 when they were killed. These dates and ages are not compatible with theories that Henry VII murdered the princes after he became king in 1485. The skeletons in the urn were not those of children aged 12 and 15. Why, we may ask, if the princes were alive during Richard III’s turbulent and dangerous reign, didn’t he produce them for the public to see? In October 1483 a rebellion broke out in his kingdom in favor of Henry Tudor. Prominent Yorkists gave their support to Henry. Elizabeth Wydeville backed him with the understanding that, after winning the throne, he would marry her daughter (Edward V’s sister), Elizabeth of York. The Wydevilles would not under any circumstances have supported Henry if the princes had still been alive at that time. Richard III


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made no attempt to silence rumors about the death of the princes or to stabilize his position by showing that they were alive. His failure to take advantage of such an opportunity strongly suggests that the boys had already died. The accusations could have been easily dispelled if Richard III were innocent. When Lambert Simnel led a rebellion against Henry VII in 1487, impersonating the Earl of Warwick, Henry paraded the real Warwick through the streets of London to expose the imposture. But Richard could not publicly display the princes because they were dead, and he could not dispel the rumors because they were true. In 1502 James Tyrell was awaiting execution following charges of conspiring with the Earl of Suffolk, a Yorkist pretender to the throne. Perhaps out of concern for their salvation, Tyrell and his old servant, John Dighton, made confessions in which they provided details about the death of the little princes. Their confessions were not made public by the Tudor authorities, but several versions found their way into circulation. Tyrell was beheaded, but Dighton, who was not arraigned, went free and openly told the story of the murders to anyone who would listen. Some historians have been puzzled about why Henry VII did not publish the confessions, which would have discredited Richard III and precluded future attempts by Yorkist pretenders claiming to be one of the vanished princes. Perkin Warbeck, for example, had led a rebellion against Henry in the late 1490s under the pretense that he was Richard, Duke of York, still alive after escaping the tower and living abroad in anonymity. But Henry VII was not inclined to remind the public of royal murders. He had himself recently arranged the beheading of the last Plantagenet male, the Earl of Warwick, on trumped up charges of conspiracy with Warbeck. Richard III’s apologists have often suggested that he had no motive for murdering the little princes, especially after parliament declared them illegitimate. But Henry VI had been restored to his throne after parliament had officially declared that he was a usurper. Edward IV had recovered his throne by an Act of Attainder. The Tudors showed little confidence in acts that disinherited their enemies and, instead, chose to ensure stability by means of judicial murder. As Niccol o Machiavelli wrote in his notorious tract on effective (‘‘Machiavellian’’) governance, The Prince, a ruler who wants to survive must know how to do wrong. He ‘‘should not worry too much about conspiracies, as long as his people are devoted to him; but when they are hostile . . . he should fear everything and everybody’’ (1977). Richard III did have compelling motives for killing the princes. His claim to the throne was weak. He was uncertain of his support. He suspected that Edward V, unjustly deposed, would serve as a convenient, invigorating rallying point for his enemies, for the sundry conspirators whom he constantly feared. He seemed to be in a constant state of nervous agitation throughout his reign and was often seen working a dagger, which he carried at his side, in and out of its sheath. In addition to motive, he had ample opportunity. The hapless children were secluded in a stronghold under the control of his men.



The exculpatory arguments put forward by Richard III’s apologists ignore the full context of the situation between April 1483 and August 1485, dismiss inferences about Richard’s character and state of mind that can be drawn from his known ruthless aggressions, and generally attempt to bathe him in an unreasonably positive light. The fact that his reputation suffered from attacks by Tudor detractors does mean that he was innocent. What actually happened to the little princes will always be subject to debate. But no one saw them alive after Richard III assumed the throne. Early accounts agree that they were murdered. There were many precedents in medieval England for dynastic murders, considered a wise precaution under circumstances analogous to those in which Richard III found himself in the summer of 1483. Considering the overall historical context and what we know about Richard III’s character, it is highly likely that he instigated the murders of Edward V and his brother in the Tower of London. At the very least he was guilty of precipitating their deaths as a result of malicious neglect while they were incarcerated under his ‘‘protection.’’ As the proverb reminds us, ‘‘desperate times call for desperate measures,’’ and perhaps it is less than fair to paint Richard III, as Shakespeare’s Richard III does, as an intrinsically evil, vile schemer deliberately ‘‘determined to prove a villain.’’ But the thoughts expressed by Shakespeare’s Richard (in Act 5, Scene 3), on the night before Bosworth may come close to capturing the Machiavellian expediency of his reign and, by extension, the nature of his character: Conscience is but a word that cowards use, Devised at first to keep the strong in awe; Our strong arms be our conscience, swords our law. (Shakespeare 2008)

References and Further Reading Commynes, Phillippe de. Memoirs: The Reign of Louis XI, 1461–1483. Harmondsworth, Middlesex, UK: Penguin, 1972. Dockray, Keith. Richard III: A Source Book. Thrupp, Stroud, Gloucestershire, UK: Sutton, 1997. Jenkins, Elizabeth. The Princes in the Tower. London: Hamish Hamilton, 1978. Machiavelli, Niccolo. The Prince. New York: Norton Critical Editions, 1977. Mancinus, Dominicus. The Usurpation of Richard the Third, 2nd ed. Edited and trans. by C. A. J. Armstrong. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1969. More, Sir Thomas. The History of King Richard III. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005.


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Pronay, Nicholas, and John Cox, eds. Crowland Chronicle Continuations: 1459–1486. London: Alan Sutton Publishing for Richard III and Yorkist History Trust, 1986. Ross, Charles. Richard III. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981. Shakespeare, William. Richard III. New York: Modern Library, 2008. St. Aubyn, Giles. The Year of Three Kings. London: William Collins Sons, 1983. Tanner, Lawrence E., and William Wright. ‘‘Recent Investigations Regarding the Fate of the Princes in the Tower.’’ Archaeologia (1933): 1–26. Thomas, A. H., and I. D. Thornley, eds. Great Chronicle of London. London: Guildhall Library, 1938. Wood, Charles T. ‘‘Who Killed the Little Princes in the Tower.’’ Harvard Magazine (January–February 1978): 3–40.


7 Columbus intentionally underestimated the circumference of Earth in order to get funding. PRO Talaat Shehata CON Joseph P. Byrne

PRO The assertion here, that Christopher Columbus intentionally underestimated the distance he needed to travel to reach Asia in order to ensure that the Spanish Crown would fund his voyage, leads to other questions. How would Columbus ‘‘intentionally’’ underestimate the circumference of the Earth to help secure funding from the Portuguese and then the Spanish monarchy? What would justify the Spanish monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella’s combined decision to fund a voyage based on a circumference for the Earth that was less than an actual, factual, and accepted reading of its measurements? The Crown had very mathematically and navigationally savvy authorities and committee members (the Talavera Commission, named after Hernando de Talavera, Queen Isabella’s main confessor, who had been named to head the committee) to oversee the adventure. Over 500 years later, have the actions of the principal players borne fruit? Finally, what have been the positive and negative consequences of their individual and collective decisions? The answers to all of these questions will lead to the conclusion that it was in Columbus’s interest to make his proposed voyage to Asia appear a simpler matter than he knew it to be. First, to define a circumference, we need to brush up on our geometry principles. In the early Greek mathematician Euclid’s Elements, he does not provide a clear definition as to a circumference’s constructs. He does allude to its general form and outline. He equates the circumference with the shape of the circle. He emphasizes that when referring to a circumference, he was not discussing the measurement(s) within or diameter of the circle’s interior; instead, he refers to it in the general all-encompassing form, outline, or shaped contour of a circle. During Columbus’s days, and into the present, the circle is defined as encompassing its own circumference, length and all. A simple measure is that of the product pi times the diameter’s length, or the product pi times twice the measurement of the radius. The numerical value often given pi is around 3.14159. The first letter for the word circumference in Greek is the pi symbol, as in periphereia. 141 © 2011 ABC-Clio. All Rights Reserved.

142 | Columbus underestimated the circumference of the Earth

Cristobal Colon (Christopher Columbus’s Spanish name) wrote most of his works in his native Castilian tongue. Most of his accomplishments had been in the service of Castile. He had been self-taught in Portuguese, from his youth and into his early adulthood. There has never surfaced any solid historical evidence of him receiving or being grounded in any formal education. His local dialect was Ligurian, which never had a written format associated with it. So, as a result, when he came of age, his primary focus was on how to acquire and improve his verbal and written skills through his region’s Castilian language. His command of the Italian language was nonexistent. He never wrote or carried on business in Italian, which, to a great extent is rather ironic, since in the United States and other parts of Europe, he’s celebrated annually as a ‘‘native’’ son by most first-, second-, third-, and fourth-generation Italians. To better understand Columbus the man, it is critical to better understand Columbus, the youth, who worked for years beside his father. It’s very clear from the start that Columbus was, although emerging as the master seaman and maritime discoverer that he became in the 15th and early 16th centuries, first and foremost a first-class merchant. He helped his father in his wool and wine business. A shrewd businessman, he always had his priorities straight (i.e., how one consistently needed to secure and continue to increase the profit margins of the goods being bartered or traded as the never-ending bottom line). He was able to learn all the skills of a successful merchant and tradesman, at a very early and tender age, from his father. With his growing acquaintance with the rough and tumble of seafarers’ lives and their often arduous and very challenging livelihoods, especially in the high seas, Columbus grew hardened in many ways, yet flexible in others. That, as the years rolled on, would define the complex historical and fascinating character that would emerge as the quintessential Christopher Columbus of folklore and legend. What factors motivated the youthful Columbus to later become fixated on finding a new maritime passage to Japan, China, and Asia? In the never-ending quest for raw wool material and wine, young Columbus would, on behalf of his father and their business, take diverse voyages along the European and West African coasts. His travels were so widespread that they included the Genoese city of Chios, French Marseille, England, the Flanders, Iceland, Ireland, and Tunis in North Africa, Lagos, Nigeria, and deep into the African Gold Coast. It was following his voyage to the African Gold Coast that the idea began to germinate in his mind; that is, if the Portuguese and Europeans were able to sail so deep south along the West African Coast in quest of gold and treasures, then they should be as successful, possibly even more so, if they were to venture out into uncharted western oceans, which would lead them to a much shorter passageway (thereby eliminating western Europe’s dependence on traditional road routes, caravans, bribes, and graft that since ancient times had grown to be much more exorbitant in their prices) to the riches that Europe had grown accustomed to acquiring from


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the legendary Silk Road, over many centuries, from China. It would also illuminate encounters with the hostile tribal groups, not to mention their dreaded Muslim North African and West Asian neighbors, with whom King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella were engaged in a very violent insurrection to remove Muslim Moorish presence in Granada and Spain’s other moderate to small cities. China had for centuries established itself as the gold standard for all future trade. Columbus grew up in an expanding European naval and maritime period, which was dominated by Portuguese skill and expertise but still subordinate to the most sophisticated and technological seafaring global fleets of the Chinese Song Dynasties. This was specifically the case. With their mastery of the compass’s use, the Chinese merchant marine and naval ships had established total dominance over the North Pacific Ocean lanes and much of the Indian Ocean lanes, which navigated around the Indian subcontinent and reached as far as Africa’s eastern shores. It was seamless. They didn’t need a Vasco de Gama to circumnavigate the Cape of Good Hope to reach the East and many of the Indonesian islands, where Europe would clamor to acquire its fine silks and spices. The Chinese were already there. They were the ‘‘East’’ that all future West European navigators, including Christopher Columbus, often stumbled over to figure new ways to get to their natural resources and finished goods. Most of the goods acquired by the Chinese in their eastern waters and lanes were much less expensive for the average Chinese merchant and consumer. That was so, even if they traveled to Spanish, Portuguese, or Venetian ports to acquire the goods they needed. Why should they have bothered? They wisely didn’t. The ‘‘fire-sales’’ were regularly taking place closer to their own shores. All the Imperial government needed to do for China to maintain its reach, as they did with the well-known Ming Dynasty Admiral Zheng He, was project Chinese naval might as occurred in 1405 with gigantic displays of newly constructed armadas and ships, as it slowly traveled out of the Yangzi River and into the East China Sea. This occurred years prior to Christopher Columbus’s birth, but it is very much a cultural recognition, if not appreciation, across synergetic cultural fault lines, that Columbus grew into adulthood surrounded by numerous intriguing tales of China, its military might and economic power, and its people’s social and cultural context within the society. The Imperial government continued to regularly build, upgrade, and reinforce these naval and merchant marine vessels to make certain that the North Pacific region, with its seemingly never-ending archipelagos and islands, the Indian Ocean, and the East African coast remained stable and secure for continued profitable commercial acquisitions and gains for their nationals. In his early 20s, Columbus, working as a deckhand on a return voyage from the African interior, in Lagos, Nigeria, experienced the trauma of having the ship he was working on sunk by a French mercenary ship. He would tread water for hours, until reaching Portugal’s shores. Having no financial means of supporting himself, he headed to the capital city of Lisbon. Upon arrival in Lisbon, he was



fortunate to find a decent and caring Portuguese family to provide him with shelter and some living expenses, which he diligently worked off. In 1479 the governor of the island of Porto Santo gave his daughter Dona Felipe Perestrello away in marriage to Christopher Columbus. The island that Dona Felipe Perestrello’s father resided on was one of the group of islands identified with the Madeira Islands. After residing in Lisbon, then going back to reside with Dona’s parents in Porto Santo, Columbus and his wife were blessed with the birth of their only child, whom they named Diego. With his new responsibilities, Columbus continued to dedicate his efforts to becoming a more skillful and profitable merchant. With his continuing and regular visits to the gulf coast of Africa and other more distant parts of the West African coastlines, Columbus’s obsession with finding a new passageway west to Japan and China grew much stronger. As a merchant, first and foremost, he contemplated the riches in gold, silver, other goods, and vast real estate that might lie out there, beyond the reach of all Europeans. If only he, through the aid of the Portuguese Crown or some other rich and strong benefactor(s), could have a few trips funded across the Atlantic Ocean for such a specific purpose. He would call it the ‘‘Enterprise of the Indies.’’ According to his calculations, it was too good an opportunity to be passed up by any of the competing European monarchs. He would attempt to appeal to each of their growing political, economic, and naval needs and self-interest during this new Age of Discovery and Exploration, increasing nationalism, and gradually evolving imperialism, to seize and gain more control over a larger global empire. Being a devout Christian, he was described by his illegitimate son Ferdinand, who after Columbus’s death, would later be recognized by scholars as his sole and most accurate biographer, as being ‘‘so strict in matters of religion, he might have been taken for a member of a religious order.’’ (McCrank 1993: 236) He would use that shared common religious theme and sentiment for the conversion of native people he might encounter in his ‘‘Enterprise of the Indies’’ into the Christian fold as yet another means by which he might gain funding from the European ‘‘Christian’’ monarchs that he might encounter in making the greatest sales pitch in his long career as a naval sea merchant. So, even decades prior to the arrival of the first Spanish missionaries in the Caribbean, Central and South America’s coastlines, and that of the earliest Calvinist pioneers, who settled the East Coast shores of the ‘‘new’’ North American continent, Columbus had set the tone for the Bible-thumping proselytizing Christianity that became a regular feature of North and South America’s religious history. Columbus would infuse a mystical quality of his very practical venture into one of capitalism’s earliest experiments on a grand scale of mass accumulation and consumption of the silver, gold, diamond, pearl, and spice finds and treasures, with the newly introduced slave system into the Atlantic economic and political systems of trade, on the three continents of Africa, South America, and North America. His adventure would result in a regular exchange of goods, the


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conflicts and synergy between the Old and New Worlds in the areas of religion, vast technological differences, the insidious onslaught and decimation of a large percentage of the Native American populations by different diseases unknown earlier to them, food production and regular warfare within Native American tribal groups and against all other foreign (as the Spanish, British, and French) intruders, and finally, the gradual emergence of regular episodes of violence and resistance against enslavement and exploitation. They would all be a direct outcome of the goals that Columbus had set for himself, Spain, and the rest of Europe. He strongly believed, or so he had all others convinced, that he was divinely inspired, and that gave this mission the most steadfast sense of purpose. Now, the trick was to convince the European monarchs of the divinity of such a mission, so that they and the appointed royal committees that would look into Columbus’s proposal would equally share in his passion, zeal, and purpose. It would be a hard undertaking, if viewed by any other measure. But the most significant historical development of these meetings and their future consequences was that it would be a pivotal moment in world history, where the ancient and medieval Mediterranean-dominated world, along with the medieval and postmedieval Indian Ocean and Pacific Ocean Chinese-dominated world, would never again be the same. They would recede and give way to a new global world order, dominated by West Europeans, for the first time in their history overtaking all their global competitors within a few brief centuries, and show both its constructive and negative qualities in the formulation of a postmedieval and free-enterprise, scientific, and more rational modern world. Therefore, doing the decent and loyal thing as a native son, Columbus took his offer to the Portuguese King John II. After having a royal maritime committee scrupulously give his proposal a quick once over, the shrewd maritime experts that they were refused Columbus’s construing of the figures. That is, he suggested that a long voyage to Japan from the Canary Islands would be a mere 2,400 nautical miles. Instead, the committee elders were quite wise to the fact that such a journey would never be less than around 10,600 nautical miles. He clearly had consciously underestimated the circumference of the Earth, and specifically Asia’s distance from the point of origin in the Canaries. What would have caused Columbus to fudge the figures? First, Columbus’s overwhelming ambitions appeared to dictate what bogus information he would be willing to put across to the committee members. Second, there was the fear that if he provided them with the accurate figures, which he and they already knew as longtime sea navigators, he’d have his funding refused because it would be too costly and equally hazardous for his ships and seamen to make such a potentially deadly voyage into the unknown. For Columbus, this second option would have been a glaring lose-lose situation. So, he rationalized, a little fudging of the numbers and facts wouldn’t hurt the overall venture, especially if the committee members fell for the sleightof-hand ploy. They were too wise and tried for a scheme such as the one that



Columbus sought to lob by them. Finally, if the pitch didn’t work with them, he knew he always had a handful of other European monarchs who would be more than willing to consider his grand proposals. Their gluttonous capacity for more and more wealth and power was incalculable. As a tradesman and merchant, Columbus had grown to be a very shrewd judge of human character. In 1485, Dona Felipe had passed away. Christopher was left with Diego, his only son by her. After being refused by the Portuguese, Christopher and Diego, hand in hand, traveled to Spain for the next Portrait said to be of Christopher Columbus sales pitch. During his stay in Corby Sebastiano del Piombo, 1519. (Library of doba, he met Beatriz Enriquez de Harana, who would later become his Congress) mistress and the mother of his second son, Ferdinand. Columbus had Antonio de Marchena, a very learned Franciscan friar, intercede for him with King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella. Despite the fact that Hernando de Talavera was Isabella’s confessor and head of the commission to which Columbus’s plans were to be presented, members of the commission, like their Portuguese counterparts, were equally suspicious of Columbus’s loose ways with fudging the numbers and facts. They refused his proposal. Ferdinand and Isabella consoled Columbus’s rejection by the royal commission and continued to pay him for his services to the Crown. Ferdinand and Isabella had already had their minds set on taking that gamble, with the finances they knew they would need, in order to consolidate their power in Spain after the expulsion of the Muslim Moors; but also just as important, because of their jockeying for position of supremacy, among fellow European monarchs, with an expanding Spanish imperial reach and presence in the Old and New Worlds. The only matter where any serious disagreement arose between Columbus and the Spanish monarchs was the issue of him being granted the title of ‘‘Admiral of the Ocean Sea, Viceroy, and Governor.’’ There were also contracts and ultimate capitulation by the Spanish monarchs to Columbus (in what now is historically known as the Capitulations of Santa Fe) on matters of real estate ownership of any new property he might lay claim to for the Spanish Crown, himself, and all his future descendants. Finally, Columbus asked that in all new land ‘‘discovered,’’ Columbus and his descendants


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would automatically acquire 10 percent of all items and goods traded and produced; along with 10 percent of all earnings from the gold, silver, gems, pearls, and all other valuable treasures discovered. Ferdinand in particular was rather hesitant to provide Columbus with all that he had wished for and ultimately demanded from the Spanish Crown. This would later emerge as a very serious sticking point between Ferdinand and Columbus; especially, once his hunches proved accurate regarding the gold, silver, treasures, and riches of the New World. But, Ferdinand and Isabella, being very competitive cousins of the Portuguese King Joco II-Joco (Jo~ao) the ‘‘Perfect,’’ were not to be later outmaneuvered by him or any of their other cousins, within the intimate European royal family disputes that often surfaced. They were determined to acquire more wealth and power to help in the financing of their future anticipated wars of conquest and overall domestic unification. A comical development after the return of Columbus from his first trip to the New World was when he was invited by the Portuguese King Joco II-Joco to stop by Lisbon on his way back to Spain to be received as a conquering hero. King Joco, despite turning Columbus down for his bold ideas about a voyage to the New World, with the help of his appointed royal maritime committees, was not about to be overshadowed by his cousins Ferdinand and Isabella’s moment of triumph, after having agreed to fund Columbus’s voyage. It was useful that King Joco II’s great-uncle was Henry the Navigator. He had become famous for subduing the Moors along the Moroccan shores and had gone deep into West and Central Africa to attempt to lay claim and control over the very important gold trade that cut through numerous West African states and tribal grounds. So, King Joco, in his attempt to later ‘‘rope in’’ Columbus and the Spanish monarchs’ bounty, shrewdly embraced Columbus’s accomplishment as brilliant and beyond reproach, showering him with effusive phrases at each opportunity that presented itself when they mingled with the Portuguese. King Joco also decided to deceitfully, or in chutzpa-like fashion, like a fox in a hen house, lay claim to any treasures brought back from the New World, since in the Eighth Article of the 1479 Treaty of Alcagovas, it was stipulated that all territories parallel and directly opposite to the West African coast, and south of the Canary Islands, would be considered Portugal’s. Ferdinand and Isabella were seething at the suggestion, and they immediately outmaneuvered King Joco by going to a higher authority, the pope. They based their argument on an old statute, from the times of the Crusades. The statute basically affirmed the right of good ‘‘Christian’’ soldiers and authorities to seize all heathen property, so that the Catholic faith could continue to grow and expand. Pope Alexander VI, famous historically for many of his antireligious antics (having seven children out of wedlock and having purchased the papacy instead of being appointed to the office by his hard work, contributions, and piety), thought it was a no-brainer—he would side with Ferdinand and Isabella. It also helped that he was a Spaniard, who had always had



very strong ties to his homeland. Also, one final and very important point, once the pope publicly made his decision, there was no grievance process allowed for anyone to dispute his holy edict. The game was over for King Joco and the Portuguese before it had even started. But, to not get too far ahead of ourselves, let’s rejoin the Spanish Royal Commission’s negative report and Ferdinand’s early reticence toward Columbus’s demands, prior to gaining permission and funding from Ferdinand and Isabella for his first voyage. Columbus found himself, once again, faced with yet another rejection similar to the one he received in Lisbon. Disappointed, but yet unperturbed, he took his young son Diego, got on a mule, and proceeded on his journey to Seville. At Seville, Columbus intended to take a ship to France to continue his sales pitch to the French monarch, Charles VIII. One of the most forgotten, but equally most pivotal personalities in world history, Isabella’s court official Luis De Santangel was so disappointed by the Spanish monarchs and Royal Commission’s decision that he pleaded with Queen Isabella to rescind her and Ferdinand’s decision. He felt that Spain would emerge from this entire affair as either the greatest loser if they didn’t agree to Columbus’s terms, or the greatest winners, as at least two and a half centuries of future Spanish gold, silver, and rare treasure and trade acquisitions and Atlantic trade dominance would later attest. Isabella, finally swayed by Santangel’s passionate, persuasive tactics, had a court courier intercept Columbus a few miles prior to his arrival at Granada, on his later trek to Seville. The rest is history. All matters being at least momentarily resolved by the principal parties; Columbus got three caravels, the Ni~ na, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria. The Ni~ na and the Pinta were given to Vicente Ya~ nez Pinz on and Martin Alonso Pinz on, respectively, to command. Columbus assumed command for the Santa Maria. With the voyage costing in the vicinity of $14,000, they set sail on the morning of August 3, 1492, from the port of Palos, Spain, for their unknown voyage to the New World. Columbus’s primary fixation, which remained with him throughout his other three voyages to the New World, was how he and his men could penetrate into the interior of ‘‘Asia,’’ instead of regularly merely ‘‘touching base’’ at its fringes. When his men later landed on the shores of Cuba, he would send appointed emissaries, failing of course, to the ‘‘Great Khan’’ of China. He was completely clueless as to the fact that he had touched upon a whole new continent. The only inkling of the fact that he was onto something much grander than he had ever anticipated was when he used scripture to buttress his ‘‘Enterprise of the Indies’’ plan. He referred to the Orinoco, a river he came upon in South America, as being of Paradise’s four rivers. He also declared on his third voyage, which began from Spanish shores on May 30, 1498, that upon arriving at the Gulf of Praia, located on Venezuela’s coast, he believed ‘‘that this is a very great continent, until today unknown.’’ As for Columbus, he had not internalized and digested the stark reality of a new continent; but, instead, with his


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Columbus’s First Impressions of America When Christopher Columbus first arrived in the Caribbean, his descriptions of the people he found there were recorded for posterity by a man who would later be noted for his defense of the Americas’ indigenous populations, Bartolome de las Casas: As I saw that they were very friendly to us, and perceived that they could be much more easily converted to our holy faith by gentle means than by force, I presented them with some red caps, and strings of beads to wear upon the neck, and many other trifles of small value, wherewith they were much delighted, and became wonderfully attached to us. Afterwards they came swimming to the boats, bringing parrots, balls of cotton thread, javelins and many other things which they exchanged for articles we gave them, such as glass beads, and hawk’s bells; which trade was carried on with the utmost good will. But they seemed on the whole to me, to be a very poor people. They all go completely naked, even the women, though I saw but one girl. All whom I saw, were young, not above thirty years of age, well made, with fine shapes and faces; their hair short, and coarse like that of a horse’s tail, combed toward the forehead, except a small portion which they suffer to hang down behind, and never cut. . . . Weapons they have none, nor are acquainted with them, for I showed them swords which they grasped by the blades, and cut themselves through ignorance. They have no iron, their javelins being without it, and nothing more than sticks, though some have fish-bones or other things at the ends. They are all of a good size and stature, and handsomely formed. I saw some with scars of wounds upon their bodies, and demanded by signs the cause of them; they answered me in the same way, that there came people from the other islands in the neighborhood who endeavored to make prisoners of them, and they defended themselves. I thought then, and still believe, that these were from the continent. It appears to me, that the people are ingenious, and would be good servants; and I am of opinion that they would very readily become Christians, as they appear to have no religion. Source: Christopher Columbus and Bartolome de las Casas. Personal Narrative of the First Voyage of Columbus to America. Philadelphia: Thomas B. Wait and Son, 1827.

passionate and religious predilections, he was convinced that he had finally come upon the Garden of Eden, as described in the Bible. Having landed safely in what is present-day San Salvador, October 12, 1492, on his first voyage, Columbus in his already self-imposed state of denial in many matters religious, which often bled as we’ve seen into his professional duties and discoveries, called out to his ‘‘indios’’ receiving native population party. The reason for that was that he was convinced he had come upon the East Indies. Many of the wiser men surrounding him, and mapmakers in Spain, immediately recognized the errors of his ways and that he had come upon the



Arawaks and the group of neighboring islands they had inhabited for generations. But, despite that, the first voyage and his return to Spain in March 14, 1493, was his finest hour. The Spanish populace and the royal family celebrated Columbus and his men’s accomplishments as returned conquering heroes. But, by the second voyage, which began September 5, 1493, and ended March 10, 1496, the novelty of his voyage and accomplishments began to fade. Prior to the end of his second voyage, he had to rush back to Spain to try to defend the honor of his brothers, who had been accused by the authorities with gross negligence in governance and cruelty to the native inhabitants. By the third voyage, Ferdinand began to exert more of his ‘‘royal’’ authority and appointed a new governor in the island of Hispaniola, in the New World, by all indications, cutting into Columbus’s authority as the ‘‘supreme’’ viceroy and governor of the territory. The Spanish Crown’s newly appointed governor, Francisco de Bobadillaas, shortly after assuming command of Hispaniola, put Columbus and his brothers in chains and sent them back to Spain. Upon arrival, Ferdinand and Isabella publicly showed their deep displeasure at what and how their ‘‘Admiral of the Ocean Sea, Viceroy, and Governor’’ had been treated. Privately, Ferdinand and his surrounding sycophants walked away with silently shared smiles, proud of the fact that they had cut the ‘‘Admiral of the Ocean Sea’’ down to size. Now they could gradually begin to deny him and his descendants the legal share of the obscene riches that would come to Spain and the monarchy from the New World. This would also include the back pay for Columbus’s officers and sea crew, which until he died in Valladolid, Spain, on May 20, 1506, he continued to fight the Crown and Spanish government to reimburse them with. Whether Columbus intentionally underestimated the circumference of the Earth in order to get funding is historically a moot point. The reality is that if Columbus had not had the backing of any one of the European sovereigns of his day, he never would have brought about the historical consciousness of the globe to attain its current level of realization. Columbus’s endeavors helped set in motion forces that even he had never contemplated. Instead of remaining in a frozen periphery status to the mainstream of global events, the American continent, with ongoing western expansion from Europe and other nations and into its deepest hinder lands, would in a few short centuries be poised to define the innate essence of the mainstream. The new political, economic, cultural, and social experimentation that would regularly occur in these new settled shores—such as the American Revolution in 1776 and the Slave Rebellion in Haiti, and the revolutions of the early 19th century in South America, with revolutionaries as Simon Bolivar and others—would impact Europe and, in time, most nations of the world. No matter what most scholars or readers might think of Columbus’s ‘‘fudging’’ of the truth when it came to the Earth’s circumference, it might be concluded that with 500 years of hindsight for us to mine and benefit from, it would not be exercising too much stretch to


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one’s historical imagination if one concluded that instead of calling Columbus ‘‘divine,’’ as his sailors and officers often did in recognition of his mastery of the oceans, we could call what his bold actions brought forth as having a transformative impact on human history, both for good and bad. We’ve also been touched in our daily postmodern lives by what Columbus accomplished. One could argue that the world, with many of the negative and positives weighed alongside each other, is a much better world for the tenacity and conviction that Columbus brought to it. He left it a much more vibrant and competitive place than he had found it. Hope for a better life in the New World became, and continues to be, the new and undiminished mantra. Therefore, in the attempt to address his fudging of the facts about Earth’s circumference, maybe future generations can humanely give him a little slack. He clearly seems to have earned it. References and Further Reading Anderson, E. W. The Principles of Navigation. New York: American Elsevier Pub. Co., 1966. Andrews, Charles M. ‘‘The Acts of Trade.’’ In Cambridge History of the British Empire, Vol. 1. Edited by J. Holland Rose et al. New York: Cambridge University Press: 1929. Bigelow, Bill, and Hans Koning. Columbus: His Enterprise: Exploding the Myth. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1992. Dugard, Martin. Last Voyage of Columbus: Being the Epic Tale of the Great Captain’s Fourth Expedition, Including Accounts of Mutiny, Shipwreck, and Discovery. New York: Little, Brown, 2006. Fredrick J. Pohl, and L. B. Loeb. ‘‘Americo Vespucci—Pioneer Celo-Navigator.’’ In United States Naval Institute Proceedings (Vol. 83, No. 4, pp. 396– 403). Annapolis: United States Naval Academy, 1957. Horwitz, Tony. A Voyage Long and Strange: Rediscovering the New World. New York: Holt, 2008. Kaplan, Lawrence S. Colonies into Nation: American Diplomacy, 1763–1801. New York: Macmillan, 1972. McCrank, Lawrence J. Discovery in the Archives of Spain and Portugal: Quincentenary Essays, 1492–1992. Binghamton, NY: Haworth Press, 1993. McNeill, William H. The Rise of the West. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963. Morison, Samuel Eliot, ed. and trans. Admiral of the Ocean Sea: A Life of Christopher Columbus. New York: Little, Brown, 1991. Morison, Samuel Eliot, ed. and trans. Journals and Other Documents on the Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus. New York: Little, Brown, 1964.



Nef, John U. War and Human Progress. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1950. Palmer, Robert R. The Age of Democratic Revolution, Vol. 1. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1959. Sauer, Carl Ortwin. The Early Spanish Main. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966. Vignaud, Henri. Histoire critique de la grande enterprise De Christophe Colomb, 2 vols. Paris: Welter, 1911. Young, Filson. Christopher Columbus. New York: IndyPublish, 2009.

CON In the quincentennial year of 1992, the world took a long, hard look at Christopher Columbus and his ‘‘Enterprise of the Indies.’’ Historians began the task of creating new and definitive editions and translations of the documents related to him; they contextualized him by reexamining the Old World from which he sailed and the New World that he opened to European influence and conquest, for good and for ill. The year saw the publication or reprinting of dozens of books and articles outlining Columbus’s personal life, dreams, career, and achievements in a generally favorable light. On the other hand, some historians and others sympathetic to the tragic history of Native and African peoples in the post-Columbian Americas emphasized the brutality of the Iberian colonization and exploitation, the beginnings of the transatlantic slave trade, and Columbus’s own flaws as a human being and administrator. Rather than celebrating the ‘‘Admiral of the Ocean Sea,’’ they decried him as slaver, charlatan, and father of Amerindian genocide. Rather than ‘‘noble visionary,’’ he was dubbed ‘‘obsessed,’’ ‘‘self-righteous,’’ ‘‘racist,’’ ‘‘arrogant,’’ and ‘‘incapable of telling the truth.’’

The Controversy over What Columbus Believed One element in this controversy was the origin of his ‘‘Enterprise’’ in his own mind. By at least the mid-1480s this Genoese merchant and sometime sailor had formulated a plan for crossing the Atlantic Ocean in order to reach what many believed would be the coastal waters and eastern archipelagos of the Asian continent. When he tried to sell his idea to King Jo~ao II of Portugal in 1484, he was sent away. Relocating to Castile, he soon began pitching his vision to the Spanish monarchs, Ferdinand and Isabella. As with Jo~ao, they were advised by their experts against taking the risks that supporting Columbus’s voyage would entail. Instead of dismissing him, however, they held Columbus at bay until 1492. As a frustrated Columbus was on the verge of visiting the French court to make the


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same proposal, Isabella relented and provided the required men, ships, and supplies. The rest is history. In fact, Columbus’s calculations and assumptions concerning such a voyage were quite incorrect; no one argues about that. As with all things Columbus, however, his denigrators claim that Columbus was a charlatan who knew quite well that the geographic elements of his proposal were not only flawed, but also wrong. These elements rested on two fundamental assumptions: (1) the distance of circumference of the Earth at the equator; and (2) the portion (or percentage) of that circumference covered by the Atlantic Ocean between Europe and Asia, which Columbus would have to cross (no one having even dreamed of the existence of the Americas). The latter issue was directly related to the distance, as a percentage of the circumference, across the Eurasian landmass from Spain eastward to farthest China: if, for example, Eurasia covered 50 percent of the distance, then the Atlantic covered the other 50 percent. For Columbus’s plan to work, the distance across the open Atlantic had to be minimal, which meant that (1) the circumference of the Earth (no educated person at that time thought the Earth was anything but more or less spherical) had to be as small as possible; and (2) the extent of the Eurasian landmass had to be as large as possible. Clearly, both the Portuguese and Spanish court experts who denied Columbus their support believed that the distance across the Atlantic to Asia was too great to cross, at least with ships and navigational technologies as they were. With no America in the picture, they were certainly correct. Of course, if there were areas of dry land in the ocean between Europe and Asia, then a ship or squadron of ships could island hop across, landing as needed for food, water, rest, and repair. Tales and theories abounded about such isles. After all, Europe had its British Isles and Azores, and Africa its Canaries, Madeiras, and Cape Verde Islands, so why discount stories of Cipangu (Japan) and literally thousands of islands mentioned by the 13th-century Venetian merchant and traveler Marco Polo? Why discount the mid-Atlantic islands supposedly reached by the Irish monk Saint Brendan on his (mythical) Atlantic voyage? Why discount the traditions of Antillia, the Hesperides, the Amazons, and Brazil? Columbus, and many others, did not discount the possibility of such islands between Europe and Asia, in fact he came to count on them existing. So, the world that Columbus presented to the Iberian monarchs was small, its Eurasian landmass quite extensive, and its eastern waters amply provided with islands—richly endowed islands, he assured them—that stretched well into the western Atlantic. Did he actually believe this to be the case, or was he knowingly presenting a false picture in order to convince the rulers to accept and fund his venture? The great majority of historians from his earliest biographers to most writing today have accepted that, while obsessive, Columbus fully accepted his ‘‘crossable Atlantic’’ theory. Revisionists, who generally hate Columbus and what followed in his wake, try to argue that he could not have believed in a ‘‘crossable



Atlantic,’’ and that his proposal was filled with carefully orchestrated lies. The problems in sorting this out are that (1) we do not have the texts of Columbus’s proposals to either throne; (2) nor do we have the reports of the experts arguing against the proposals. Moreover, we have only inferential evidence for what Columbus believed and when he believed it. Even if Columbus had clearly outlined for posterity his beliefs and their rationale, need we not be skeptical? The controversy, then, has to focus on the question, could Columbus have believed in a ‘‘crossable Atlantic’’? This takes us into ‘‘Columbus’s worlds,’’ as some have called it: what he experienced, read, and heard before he made his proposals that convinced him that he could make the voyage that none before him ever had. Columbus’s Sources Our knowledge of the life and beliefs of Christopher Columbus comes from his own writings and the biographical material provided by his son Fernan (or Ferdinand) Columbus (or Hispanized as Col on) and Columbus’s friend the famous champion of the natives of New Spain and bishop of Chiapas, Bertolome de las Casas. Columbus’s own writings that shed light on this controversy include his records of his first voyage, in which he reflected on his beliefs, and marginal notes—glosses or postils—in several printed books that comprised his personal library. These were preserved by his son and exist today as part of the Biblioteca colombina (Columbian Library) in the Chapter Library of the Cathedral of Seville, Spain. In his biography of his father, Fernan clearly states that Columbus’s vision was shaped by three factors: his own experiences at sea, his conversations with other mariners, and his reading of classical and medieval sources on what was known as ‘‘cosmography,’’ or the physical structure of the known world. Though Fernan privileges Columbus’s reading as the principal impetus, seeking to paint his father as a scholar, most modern historians believe the ‘‘Enterprise’’ began with his own experiences. Christopher Columbus was born in 1451 into a family of weavers and cloth merchants in Genoa, one of Italy’s ancient maritime cities. Situated on a narrow strip of coastline, Genoa had had a long history of naval and mercantile success, but its glory days were past when Christopher began his career. Fernan claims that Columbus first went to sea when he was 14, probably accompanying family goods if true. In his early years around docks and warehouses he no doubt picked up much lore that derived from centuries of Mediterranean voyaging and more recent expeditions into the Atlantic to reach English, Flemish, and Scandinavian markets. We only have glimpses of his own experiences, but it seems that he sailed as far east as the Aegean island of Chios, and, perhaps in 1470, traveled the Atlantic to England or Flanders on family business. A turning point came in August 1476, when the 25-year-old Columbus was shipwrecked during a French ambush at sea off the coast of Portugal. He came ashore near Lisbon,


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Portugal’s capital, and from that time never again gave much thought to the Mediterranean. He claimed that the following February found him sailing northwest beyond the famed island of ‘‘Tile’’ (classical Thule; probably Iceland), which ancient writers considered the known world’s westernmost point. He noted that is was much farther west than the second-century Roman geographer Ptolemy—who probably had Shetland Island in mind—had indicated. By the early 1480s Columbus had married the Portuguese noblewoman Felipa Moniz e Perestrella, whose father was governor of the Madeiras Islands. Columbus presumably spent no little time among the islands when not in Lisbon. He also spent time in the Spanish-controlled Canary Islands, studying the winds and currents and absorbing local lore. At some point in the early 1480s he sailed down the African coast as far as the new Portuguese settlement at S~ao Jorge da Mina, south of Cape Bojador on the Guinea coast. Significantly, this was below the equator and populated, and thus dispelled a venerable myth that humans could not survive below the equator. In addition to providing important information about winds and currents, these ocean voyages also allowed Columbus to test his theories about the length of a degree, or 1/360 of the Earth’s circumference at the equator, or so Columbus recorded. This determination was crucial since its value determined the Earth’s circumference. During his time in the islands he is also thought to have seen, and certainly he heard of, flotsam (debris) that washed up on island shores from points west. Human-made wooden artifacts, the remains of unfamiliar trees, and even human corpses were known to float ashore on islands from Ireland to the Cape Verdes after storms that rode in from the west. While this evidence did not prove that western isles (or Asian ones) were within sailing distance, they certainly suggested it, and further implied that the currents and winds that propelled junk could propel sailing ships. The vastness of the Atlantic had spawned speculation about Atlantic isles since antiquity. The 15th century had seen the rediscovery of the Madeira archipelago (Romans had called them the Purple Islands), the discovery of the Azores and Cape Verde islands, and the colonization of the Canaries; the notion that there were none left to be discovered was virtually illogical. Both native and European mariners claimed to have sighted distant shorelines while deep in the Atlantic, seemingly confirming the existence of islands long imagined. One tradition has it that a dying Portuguese ship’s pilot (the ‘‘unnamed pilot’’) conveyed to Columbus the details of his unexpected landing on the legendary island of Antillia, the storm-tossed return from which killed his entire crew. Some suspicious historians even came to believe that Columbus himself had reached the Atlantic’s far shores, and only wanted the royal support to lay claim to them (a notion long since discarded). If mariners’ tales of nearby islands were false but titillating, the details they provided of open ocean winds and currents were crucial to Columbus’s calculations.



But Columbus was not alone in treating rumors of undiscovered islands seriously. Marco Polo had claimed there were 1,378, and the Catalan Atlas of 1375 indicated there were 7,548. In fact, kings Afonso V and Jo~ao II of Portugal had made charters for explorers venturing into the Atlantic long before Columbus ever broached the subject. On February 19, 1462, Afonso made a grant to Jo~ao Vogado of the islands of Lovo and Capraria, supposedly landed on by the sixthcentury Irish monk Saint Brendan. A dozen years later he granted a charter to Fern~ao Teles to all islands he should discover up to Antillia, as long as they were not in the vicinity of the Guinea coast. On June 30, 1484, the year Jo~ao II sent Columbus away for his unreasonable proposal, he granted a royal charter to Fern~ao Domingos do Arcoan for all lands he intended to discover in the Atlantic. And on March 3, 1486, two years after Columbus left Portugal for Castile, Jo~ao granted the mythical island of Antillia to Ferdinand van Olm (Fern~ao Dulmo, a Flemish resident of the Azores), based on his proposed voyage of discovery. The king also promised royal military aid to subjugate the populace if needed. Perhaps significantly, none of these grants indicated mentioned Asia, and this may indicate the main reason for Columbus’s lack of success in Lisbon. The grant to Dulmo was to be the last before 1492, what with the successful voyage around Africa of Portuguese explorer Bartolomeu Dias (1486–1488). This last, and earth-shattering voyage, may well have been prompted by the failure of Jose Vizinho to cross the African continent to the Indian Ocean, a fact he reported to the Portuguese court in 1485. This was also a fact that supported Columbus’s belief that west-east landmass distances were far greater than generally supposed, and thus the distance across the Atlantic far less. A Matter of Degrees What of the circumference of Earth and the distance in miles from Portugal, or its islands, to Cathay (China) or its eastern outlier, Cipangu? To answer these questions 15th-century Europe looked backward to the writings of classical and medieval writers on ‘‘cosmography.’’ This was fully in line with the intellectual pursuits we label Renaissance or humanistic and is behind Fernan’s claims that his father drew his initial inspiration from the Greeks and Romans, rather than the salty seadogs of his own day. Modern biographers generally accept that Columbus’s reading helped confirm his ideas rather than shape them, however, and that it was vital in bolstering his proposals to the intellectuals at court. We have to begin with the texts that Columbus actually owned and annotated and that are now in the Biblioteca colombina. We know their publication dates, and thus can provide a terminus post quem, or date before which Columbus could not have owned them. But does this mean that Columbus could not have read other, earlier copies of the same works, perhaps even in manuscript form (Columbus was three when Gutenberg invented the printing press)? It does not, though no evidence


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Just How Long Is a Mile? There have been many definitions of a ‘ mile’’ of length, which have been used in different parts of the world at different times in history. Perhaps the earliest definition was the Roman mile, or mille, which was supposed to be the distance that a legion could march in 1,000 paces. The Romans placed milestones along their numerous roads at approximately 1,520-meter distances from one another. Britain, Scotland, Ireland, and France had mile measurements during the Middle Ages, which ranged from approximately 1,600 meters to over 2,000 meters. The modern mile was established in 1592 by the British Parliament as measuring eight furlongs, which works out to approximately 1,609 meters. With all of this uncertainty, it should not be a surprise that Columbus might have been confused!

supports either side of this debate. And so most modern biographers assume he first read the copies he owned. The Geography of Claudius Ptolemy was considered the most authoritative ‘‘cosmographic’’ work of the ancient world. It was written about 148 CE, first translated into Latin in 1406 in Florence by Jacobus Angelus, and first printed in 1475, with four additional editions by 1492. Columbus’s copy was printed in Vicenza in 1478 and has none of the maps of other editions. Ptolemy posited that the Eurasian landmass was continuous, that islands indeed peppered the sea between its two ends, but that it covered only one half of the globe (177 degrees), leaving a vast expanse of ocean. But how vast? This depended on the size of a degree of longitude. The ancient Greeks measured in ‘‘stades’’ (hence our word stadium), eight of which made up a ‘‘mile’’ if they were Olympian, but only 7.5 of which made up a mile if they were Phileterian, the standard used during Roman times. The Greek scientist and philosopher Aristotle posited that the Earth’s circumference was 400,000 stades, and that a degree consisted of 1,111.11 stades, or 138.9 Roman miles, making the Earth’s circumference some 50,000 miles. Either the famous scientist Archimedes or Dicaearchus of Messana (the source is unclear) ventured that the real number was 300,000 stades. The Greco-Roman astronomer Eratosthenes, who actually bothered to carry out a fascinating experiment to determine the figure scientifically, found it to be 250,000 stades, though he fudged it to 252,000 to get a degree equal to an even 700 stades (252,000 ‚ 360), or 87.5 Roman miles. By Ptolemy’s time, the number of miles comprising a degree had been lowered to 66.66 miles (Posidonius) and 62.5 miles (Strabo), which would have made the total distance 22,500 Roman miles, the figure accepted by Ptolemy and his contemporary Marinus of Tyre. Ptolemy’s work was well known to medieval Islamic scholars, including the ninth-century expert on Ptolemy, Alfraganus (al-Farghani), who witnessed an Erastothenes-like experiment in the Syrian desert by one of the Caliph’s astronomers and reported it in his Elements of Astronomy. This purportedly proved the



Ptolemy’s map of the world, printed at Ulm in 1482. (Library of Congress)

degree to be 56.666 Roman miles, which would make the total distance 20,400 miles, a far cry from Aristotle’s 50,000. The problem was that Alfraganus’s mile was not the same as the Roman mile, in fact it was rather longer: Roman mile was 1,481.75 meters, Arab mile was 1,973.5 meters (the modern mile is 1,609.34 meters; the equatorial circumference is in fact 24,901.5 modern miles). This was a fact that may have been known by the scholars of the day, but Columbus was not among them: a mile was a mile. He had found the figures that supported his adventure: a degree at the equator of 56.66 miles and a total circumference of 20,400 miles. Interestingly, Columbus claimed to have confirmed Alfraganus’s 56.66-mile degree during his coasting of Guinea. Now Columbus had probably not read Alfraganus, even in the 12th-century Latin translation of John of Spain and Gerhard of Cremona. The late 14th-century cardinal and University of Paris theologian Pierre d’Ailly, however, did, and recounted the whole controversy, in his Imago mundi (Description of the World) of 1410. D’Ailly’s work was a compendium of information drawn from numerous Greek and Arab sources and the medieval geographic writings of John of Hollywood (Johannes de Sacrobosco) and Roger Bacon. Columbus’s well-thumbed copy was printed between 1480 and 1483 and bound with two other, shorter cosmographical works. Together these were annotated with 863 postils, the Imago itself containing 475. Many of these glossed d’Ailly’s discussion of the west-east


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extent of the Eurasian landmass. Columbus was seeking the largest reasonable estimate, which would minimize the extent of ocean waters. Ptolemy had estimated that the globe was covered half with land and half with water. Marinus of Tyre, with whom he debates in the Geography, accepted the figure passed down from Aristotle through Pliny the Elder and the philosopher and playwright Seneca: three-eighths water and five-eighths land. Somewhat simplistically, Marinus used this to claim that Eurasia extended around five-eighths of the globe, or 225 degrees, leaving 135 degrees of ocean. Columbus started with Marinus’s figure and calculated in several other factors to reduce the 135 degrees. First he added 28 degrees to the mainland to account for the discoveries reported by Venetian Marco Polo in his Travels. Polo’s famous travelogue through Asia was first published between 1302 and 1314 by Friar Pipino of Bolgna, and Columbus’s copy was printed in Antwerp in 1485–1486, after he had presented his plan to Jo~ao. This contained some 366 notes, most of which were in Columbus’s hand. The fame of Polo’s book and its centrality to Columbus’s enterprise virtually guarantee he had read it before acquiring the Antwerp edition. In any case, Polo told the West about Cipangu, Japan, which he claimed lay 1,500 miles off China’s coast, or 26.5 degrees by Columbus’s reckoning. He rounded it up to 30 degrees and added an additional nine degrees to account for the Canaries, from which he would launch his voyage across the Atlantic. Doing the math (9 þ 28 þ 30 = 67) resulted in fewer degrees of open ocean his voyage would cover, or a total of 68 degrees (135–67). Since Marinus claimed that the world was 22,500 miles in circumference rather than 20,400 (Columbus’s figure), Columbus cut roughly 10 percent of the number of degrees to an even 60, or one-sixth of the 360-degree circumference. He found further satisfaction with this figure in the apocryphal Fourth Book of Esdras, a nonbiblical Hebrew religious text given some authority by Saint Augustine, the greatest among early Christian theologians. In 4 Esdras 42 and 47 the author claimed that during Creation, God covered one-seventh of the Earth with water and six-sevenths with dry land. Some of this water, of course, filled the Black, Baltic, and Mediterranean Seas and the Indian Ocean, leaving still less in the Atlantic basin. Columbus’s 60-degree distance meant a voyage of 3,400 miles (60 56.66) at the equator and somewhat less as one moved the path north or south. Esdras’s quasi-biblical one-seventh meant 51 degrees, or 2,914 miles across the Atlantic, but this would include the distance from Asia to Japan and Europe to the Canaries, reducing open ocean to 51–39 degrees, or a scant 12 degrees or 680 miles, an admittedly absurd figure, even for Columbus. Instead he subtracted the nine degrees (Lisbon-Canaries) from the 51 degrees of Esdras and landed on the round figure of 2,400 Roman miles from the Canaries to Asia, or about 42.36 degrees. He could further justify the reduction by noting that he would not be tracing the equator, along which line the degree is greatest in length, but farther north, where the degree was smaller. If Esdras was correct, Columbus was overestimating the distance.



One last important source that helped Columbus affirm his plan was the famous letter sent by the well-respected Florentine physician and astronomer Paolo dal Pozzo Toscanelli. In 1474 Portugal’s King Afonso requested Toscanelli’s opinion on the shortest route from Europe to Asia. In response, Toscanelli sent a detailed reply (June 25, 1474) that would have encouraged the king and that ended up in Columbus’s hands a half dozen years later. Most scholars reckon that he acquired it through his new noble in-laws who held positions at court in Lisbon. It included a map ‘‘that set Columbus’s mind ablaze,’’ according to Las Casas. Columbus supposedly wrote to Toscanelli anew around 1480 (Toscanelli died in 1482) and received an encouraging introduction along with essentially a copy of the original letter and a new sea chart that included the ‘‘island’’ of Antillia and Cipangu. The only surviving document, however, is a copy of Toscanelli’s letter in Columbus’s hand on the flypage of his printed copy of Historia rerum by Italian cardinal Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini (published in 1477 and containing some 877 postils), another of Columbus’s cosmographical books. Like Columbus’s, Toscanelli’s views were shaped by Ptolemy and the ancients, and Marco Polo’s influence appears in specific place names. Toscanelli placed ‘‘the Indies’’ directly across the Atlantic from ‘‘the Western Isles’’ (the Canaries). He described the unimaginable wealth of East Asia, and claimed to have actually conversed with an ambassador from China. In the introduction to the disputed second letter, Toscanelli supposedly wrote ‘‘the voyage laid down is not only possible but true, certain, honorable, very advantageous, and most glorious among Christians’’ (quoted in Taviani 1985: 175). The Florentine estimated that the distance to be covered was some 3,000 miles, though interrupted by Antillia and Cipangu, while Columbus stuck by his 2,400-mile calculation. The importance of the reassurance provided by the writings of Toscanelli, Piccolomini (later Pope Pius II, whose work even discusses the tantalizing prospect of an undiscovered continent), D’Ailly, and others should not be underestimated. Time and again Columbus repeats in his postils ‘‘not a great distance to sail’’ and ‘‘short space of sea.’’ Though none of his written sources were composed by mariners, and certainly none had crossed the ocean, several made it clear that such a voyage was not only possible, but would take but a few days. Important cartographers, like Martin Behaim, who in 1492 placed Cipangu in the middle of a rather narrow Atlantic (about 90 degrees, half of which—Portugal to Cipangu—would have been 45 degrees, very close to Columbus’s 42 degrees), also provided an encouraging vision of what many others, however, considered impossible. Assessing Columbus And so it was that Columbus absorbed the calculations, rumors, estimations, and evidence that supported his quest, and let the rest run off him. He knew both sides of the argument, and importantly there were two sides. Columbus did not


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convey his conclusions without accumulating the kind of evidence that would sway, if not convince, the royal committees. The only record of Columbus’s appearance before King Jo~ao II, that printed in Decades of Asia (1552) by the Portuguese historian Jo~ao de Barros, describes Columbus as vain, boastful, and a ‘‘big talker’’ whose ideas about reaching Cipangu (or even its existence) were not grounded in fact. Perhaps they were not at that point. Italian historian Paolo Taviani believes that Columbus only consulted the classic texts after having been rejected by Jo~ao, and traveled to Castile: his initial failure drove him to find confirmatory evidence of the type most likely to sway court intellectuals. De Barros seems to confirm this, as he states that Columbus claimed before Jo~ao that his plan was based upon Marco Polo’s claims, the discoveries made since the days of Prince Henry the Navigator, his discussions with Portuguese mariners about their discoveries, and his knowledge of the experiences of foreign sailors. By the time he pitched his plan to the Castilians in 1486, however, he had found what he had needed. Of course, Ferdinand and Isabella’s experts had no agenda except to serve their masters faithfully, and easily accepted the less extreme conclusions of Ptolemy and others that appeared to make a transatlantic voyage unacceptably risky. When the Spanish monarchs finally relented in 1492, it was in the face of the opposition of their own advisers and at the behest of Columbus supporter and chief financial minister Luis Santangel, who counseled that the risk of a few men and ships was well worth the possibility of monopolizing the trade in the wealth of far Asia. Ferdinand had just witnessed the eastern luxury and riches of the defeated Muslims in recently conquered Granada: could he really dismiss the gamble Columbus proposed? And a gamble it was, as the last scene of the Reconquista had all but emptied the royal coffers. Does this imply anything about unscrupulous collection or massaging of information? Does it in any way imply that Columbus believed one thing and advertised another? Historian Valerie Flint concluded that ‘‘it may never be possible accurately to draw a line between that which Christopher Columbus truly believed, and that which he exploited for effect’’ (Flint 1992: xx). Like the royal experts, Columbus picked and chose his sources and drew the conclusions that suited him best. After all, although Columbus was asking the monarchs for ships and contingent riches, he was placing his own life on the line. Historically, this was the boldness of Columbus. His was no unique quest: with cartographers, astronomers, merchants, explorers, and kings he shared the vision of reaching Asia by crossing the Atlantic. But he pressed his case with the vigor of a man possessed. His voyages began the first sustained contact between the Eastern and Western Hemispheres since the migration across the Bering ice. Those who decry this contact, who view as an unmitigated disaster the ‘‘Age of Discovery’’ (as far as Europe was concerned, Columbus did discover the Americas, whatever he thought them to be), see fit to tar Columbus with every brush they can find. Indeed, recent research has provided strong



evidence that Columbus participated in the Spanish Crown’s slave trade with North Africa before his voyage; and many of his actions as expedition leader and colonial administrator were deplorable. Columbus’s critics, however, interpret his entire record (for that’s all anyone can do) in the dimmest of lights, in our case claiming that he consciously falsified the ‘‘cosmographical’’ evidence to support his agenda. In fact, when claiming that Columbus lied and natives died, are his critics not doing the same kind of manipulation of evidence to support their agenda? This is not to deny or even downplay the importance of the natural and human-made ravages that came in the wake of the Enterprise of the Indies: disease, violence, slavery, dispossession, and cultural destruction are just a few of the tragic and reprehensible elements of the so-called Columbian Exchange. It is, however, to ensure that the historical record is not twisted to serve contemporary agendas, however noble their cause may seem to be. References and Further Reading Ayala, Juan de. A Letter to Ferdinand and Isabella, 1503. Trans. by Charles E. Nowell. Commentators. Trans. and ed. by Lynn Thorndike. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1949. Bacon, Roger. The Opus Maius of Roger Bacon. Trans. by Robert Belle Burke. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1928; reprinted Sterling, VA: Thoemmes Press, 2000. Bushman, Claudia L. America Discovers Columbus: How an Italian Explorer Became an American Hero. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1992. Colon, Fernando. The History of the Life and Deeds of the Admiral Don Christopher Columbus. Turnhout: Brepols, 2004. Columbus, Christopher. The Book of Prophecies Edited by Christopher Columbus. Trans. by Blair Sullivan. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997. Columbus, Christopher. The Diario of Christopher Columbus’s First Voyage to America, 1492–1493. Edited and trans. by Oliver Dunn and James E. Kelly, Jr. Norman: University of Oklahoma, 1989. Columbus, Christopher. A Synoptic Edition of the Log of Columbus’s First Voyage. Trans. by Cynthia Chamberlin and Blair Sullivan. Turnhout: Brepols, 1999. Davidson, Miles H. Columbus Then and Now: A Life Reexamined. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997. de las Casas, Bartolome. Las Casas on Columbus: Background and the Second and Fourth Voyages. Edited and trans. by Nigel Griffen. Turnhout: Brepols, 1999. Fernandez-Armesto, Felipe. Columbus and the Conquest of the Impossible. London: Phoenix Press, 2000.


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Flint, Valerie J. The Imaginative Landscape of Christopher Columbus. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992. Granzotto, Gianni. Christopher Columbus: The Dream and the Obsession. New York: Doubleday, 1985. Koning, Hans. Columbus, His Enterprise. London: Latin American Bureau, 1991. Morison, Samuel Eliot. Admiral of the Ocean Sea: A Life of Christopher Columbus. Boston: Little, Brown, 1970. Nader, Helen, and Rebecca Catz. ‘‘Christopher Columbus.’’ In The Christopher Columbus Encyclopedia (pp. 161–204). New York: Simon and Schuster, 1992. Nunn, George E. The Geographical Conceptions of Columbus: A Critical Consideration of Four Problems. New York: Octagon, 1977; orig. New York: American Geographical Society, 1924. Phillips, William D., and Carla Rahn Phillips. The Worlds of Christopher Columbus. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992. Pliny the Elder. Natural History. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1944. Polo, Marco. The Travels of Marco Polo. Trans. by William Marsden. New York: Modern Library, 2001. Ptolemy, Claudius. Ptolemy’s Geography: An Annotated Translation of the Theoretical Chapters. Edited and trans. by J. Lennart Berggren and Alexander Jones. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000. Randles, W. G. L. ‘‘The Evaluation of Columbus’s ‘India’ Project by Portuguese and Spanish Cosmographers in the Light of the Geographical Evidence of the Period.’’ Imago Mundi 42 (1990): 50–64. Sacrobosco, Johannes de (John of Hollywood). The Sphere of Sacrobosco and Its Commentators, L. Thorndike, ed, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1949; Sale, Kirkpatrick. The Conquest of Paradise: Christopher Columbus and the Columbian Legacy. New York: Knopf, 1990. Taviani, Paolo Emilio. Christopher Columbus: The Grand Design. Trans. by William Weaver. London: Orbis, 1985. Todorov, Tzvetan. The Conquest of America. Trans. by Richard Howard. New York: Harper Row, 1984. Vignaud. Henry. Toscanelli and Columbus: The Letter and Chart of Toscanelli. New York: Ayer, 1971; original pub. London: Sands, 1902. Wilford, John Noble. The Mysterious History of Columbus: An Exploration of the Man, the Myth, the Legacy. New York: Knopf, 1991.


8 European pathogens caused the decline of Cahokia and Mississippian mound builders. PRO Chris Howell CON James Seelye

PRO The idea that diseases played a large role in the Columbian exchange, especially in catastrophically reducing pre-Columbian native populations in the Americas, has gained increasing acceptance in the scholarly community beginning with the work of Alfred Crosby in the early 1970s. Crosby popularized the idea of the Columbian exchange as the complex set of exchanges between the Western and Eastern Hemispheres involving people, flora, fauna, technology, and diseases, resulting in an almost complete replacement of American native people in the Western Hemisphere or Americas with immigrants from the Eastern Hemisphere or the Afro-Eurasian landmasses. As the name suggests, most of the research on the catastrophic historical impact of diseases on indigenous peoples of the Americas focuses upon contacts, conquests, and exchanges between the two hemispheres from the time of Christopher Columbus and his four voyages to the Americas between 1492 and 1508. However, in North America, another group of Europeans, the Norse Vikings who settled and lived in Greenland between 1000–1450, may well have brought an earlier ‘‘Norse exchange’’ that could have contributed to the fall of pre-Columbian North America’s most urbanized civilization, the Mississippian mound builders, including the largest known city of native North America, Cahokia, near modern Saint Louis. Evidence for this intriguing possibility comes from three main sources. First is the Icelandic sagas, oral traditions of Scandinavian voyages and settlements across the North Atlantic, written down between the 12th and 16th centuries as a series of stories, many recorded while the Greenland colony near North America was still in existence. The two most important concerning the Norse in North America are the Greenlanders saga and Erik the Red’s saga, written several centuries after the attempted settlement of Vinland in North America by the Norse. The two most important sources for the Norse Greenland colony are Ari Porgilsson’s Icelanders Book and the Land Book, both written during the existence of the Greenland Norse settlement between 985 and 1450. As with 165 © 2011 ABC-Clio. All Rights Reserved.

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many oral traditions, numerous written versions were recorded, often leading to varying historical interpretations. However, much like Heinrich Schliemann’s rediscovery of legendary Troy using the Homeric epics, Helge and Anne Ingestad used the Icelandic sagas as guides in ‘‘rediscovering’’ the Norse settlement in North America at L’Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland. The Ingestads used the 16th-century Skaholt map to help predict the latitude of the settlement, indicating just how historically accurate the sagas could be. The saga evidence led to the finding of Norse settlements in North America, and when coupled with Norse eastern and western settlements in Greenland and Mississippian mound-building sites like Cahokia, represent the second form of evidence, archaeological data. These sites and their associated artifacts are an important crosscheck for the oral and written traditions of both the Norse and the Native Americans as they can be roughly dated and precisely located. The third form of evidence comes from Native American myths and legends passed down in oral traditions until written down in the later European colonial period. The Wallam Olum or Red Record of the Lenni Lenape or grandfathers of the Algonquin-speaking tribes, including the Delaware Indians, may well be the most important native counterpart of the Norse Icelandic sagas. The Wallam Olum is a record of migrations of Algonquin ancestors into northeast North America, overrunning Cahokia along the way, apparently filling a regional power vacuum created about the time of Norse settlements there. All three forms of evidence—oral traditions, written versions, and archaeological remains—may well point to a much larger impact for the Norse and especially for diseases brought with Norse settlement and trade, into the pre-Columbian world of the Mississippians in eastern North America. Research into the past is by nature a tenuous proposition with most of the evidence not surviving the ravages of time, and with the rest often frustratingly ambiguous and open to multiple interpretations. Nevertheless, the case will be made here that Norse settlements across the North Atlantic, especially the Greenland settlement established by the family of Erik the Red by 1000, led to repeated contacts and exchanges with Native Americans both via Norse voyages to the North American mainland and via Native American travels and voyages to Greenland. Most of the contact took place between 985–1450, involving the Norse Greenlanders and at least five Native American communities, including the subpolar Dorsett, Inuit, and Thule, as well as Native American tribes in northeastern North America including the Beotuk, Micmac, and Iroquois. Some of these cross-cultural contacts were purposeful, some accidental. All of the contacts had the potential to create ‘‘disease vectors’’ by placing Native Americans, Norse, and disease-carrying domesticated animals from the Old World together, including cattle, pigs, sheep, goats, and dogs. Some exchanges were peaceful, others violent. But all had the potential to spread through close contact the epidemics and pandemics that devastated later Native American populations in the


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Columbian exchange. Further, the highly mobile nature of the Inuit, using sleds and dogs by land and skin boats by sea, gave them a range from Alaska to Greenland and from Hudson Bay to the Great Lakes. Since the more mobile groups like the Inuit had only arrived in the Americas from Siberia and Eurasia, they had already been exposed to domesticated animal and Old World diseases not experienced by many Native American groups in North America whose ancestors had been in the region since the last Ice Age, well before the exposure to Old World domesticated animals and diseases. Thus the more immune subpolar groups, often referred to as Eskimos (Inuit, Thule), could pick up diseases associated with the Norse colony in Greenland and spread these diseases by chance along travel routes from Greenland to as far away as the Great Lakes. Finally, the Norse attempts to settle and harvest resources on the North American mainland led mainly by the four children of Erik the Red, Thorvald, Leif, Freyda, and Thorstein, resulted in mobile Norse ships placing cattle and possibly other domesticates on the mainland of North America as early as 1000. Though these settlements ultimately failed, they led to repeated accidental and purposeful voyages to North America for resources such as timber and iron ore during the entire five-century occupation of Greenland by the Norse. There was more than enough contact in both quality and quantity to greatly increase the potential for diseases to migrate from the Old World to the New World, just as happened in the later Columbian exchange (up to 90 percent mortality rates) and possibly with the similar devastating results for Native American populations, of which the largest and most densely populated in North America was at Cahokia. This interplay of contact, trade, disease, and conflict between hemispheres was most common in eastern North America between 1000–1450. Those time and space parameters fit roughly with the rise and fall of Mississippian civilization, a series of mound-building settlements along the Mississippi, Missouri, and Ohio rivers’ drainages. These sites had the most urbanized, least mobile populations of natives in pre-Columbian North America, and thus were the most likely to be devastated by any disease episodes brought into the region along land or water trade networks. Possibly associated with the Muskegon language family of natives, these mound builders also had a lineage that placed them in eastern North America as far back as 3,000 years ago, meaning most had not been exposed to Old World disease pandemics and epidemics as the later arriving Inuit were. Most of the mound-building sites associated with the Adena, Hopewell, and Mississippian cultures were linked by river canoe travel on the Mississippi, Ohio, and Missouri rivers’ drainages and included were part of a complex trade network linking densely urbanized sites spanning eastern North America and including the Great Lakes and Saint Lawrence River. This meant the Mississippian civilization arose around the time of the attempted settlement of Vinland by Leif Erikson and other children of Erik the Red and would later decline just as the Norse Greenland settlement declined.



All of the circumstantial evidence suggests just how likely it must have been that these Norse settlers probably unknowingly brought early disease episodes into North America. If evidence can place diseased Norse and their farm animals in close proximity to Native North Americans between 1000–1450, the probability of pandemics or epidemics increases dramatically. Further, if those disease vectors are likely and common among the Norse Greenland settlements, they would be transferred to Native American populations such as the Dorsett, Inuit, and Micmac and Beotuk whom the Norse came in contact with in the subarctic. The Dorsett and Beotuk territory declined upon arrival of the Norse, but the hardy and mobile, more disease-resistant Inuit and Micmac expanded into it using sled dogs and skin boats, which represented an ideal means by which disease might be spread far from Norse population in rapid fashion. Both the subpolar Inuit and the more temperate climate Micmac represented ideal vectors by which pathogens could travel and emerge into the Mississippian world south of the Great Lakes. Both groups migrated from Siberia across the subarctic well after Old World pandemics and epidemics associated with domesticated animals and urban populations had repeatedly ravaged the Old World. The Inuit in particular would have been much more immune to disease the Norse brought in from the Old World than would those at older lineage cultures such as the moundbuilding communities. The Inuit and Micmac would thus be the likely carriers as would their sled dogs and possibly the wild caribou herds in terms of location between the Norse in Greenland and the mound builders at sites like Cahokia. It would be the Old World pathogens carried on Inuit and Micmac dogsleds and skin boats into the vast trading network of rivers and lakes controlled by the Mississippian mound builders where we might expect the biggest disease impact. The devastating impacts of later Columbian exchange disease episodes such as the 1540s Hernando de Soto expedition into the southeast of North America are well documented and historically look similar to earlier Norse and native interactions. The difference is the Norse settlements were permanent, longerlived, and far larger than these later expeditions. Additionally, the potential disease vectors and trade networks between Greenland and the Mississippian homelands had a much greater geographic reach than later European expeditions in the 16th century. The Norse Greenland settlement lasted 450 years, numbered over 5,000 people, and contained several thousand domesticated cattle, sheep, goats, pigs, and dogs—all known carriers of later disease pandemics that would ravage Native American populations in the Columbian exchange. Numerous Norse expeditions were sent to North American lands known as Helluland (probably Baffin Island), Markland (probably Labrador), and Vinland (probably Newfoundland and the Saint Lawrence River areas south) with known voyages between 985 and 1350. Further, the highly mobile Inuit were visiting Greenland between 1000 and 1500, both with dogsleds and by skin boats. Norse voyages to North America from Greenland for timber, iron ore, ivory, and furs along with


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Inuit travel to Greenland for Eastern Hemisphere trade goods like metal and glass ensured contact across five centuries. Why were Old World diseases so devastating to many Native American populations? Research on the role of diseases in the process of reducing Native American populations by up to 90 percent in the pre-Columbian Americas focuses on post-Columbus times, especially 1500–1800. This research has convincingly made the case for repeated pandemic and epidemic disease episodes, usually associated with Eastern Hemisphere domesticated animals such as cattle, sheep, goats, pigs, and chickens in forms such as smallpox, chickenpox, cattle pox, and swine, sheep, and chicken flu, catastrophically reducing Native American populations who had few animals to domesticate (turkeys, dogs, llamas and other camelids, guinea pigs, and a few ducks) and thus almost no built up immunities to diseases that had ravaged the Eastern Hemisphere over 10,000 years of domesticated animal history. Such long-term, high-population, and high-contact rate disease vectors and their catastrophic impacts on indigenous populations are well understood for later Columbian exchange contacts. The Spanish conquests of Mexico and Peru are historic examples in which permanent settlements from the Eastern Hemisphere, with its 10,000 years of domesticate animal diseases flowing into Native American populations, resulted in multiple pandemics and epidemics across three centuries that reduced some population to a tenth of their numbers. Eventually, the question of a ‘‘Norse exchange’’ with Native North America may not be one of the role of disease, but one of just how large that impact was, if other historical examples may serve as a guide. Evidence from Norse Sagas The Scandinavian peoples, mainly from modern Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and Finland, began to expand out of their homeland in waves possibly associated with climate and population changes during the European Middle Ages from the 7th to the 14th centuries. Though often associated with Viking raiding and trading activities, these migrations and invasions were often about finding new land for settlement, whether it was Swedish Rus and Finns in Russia and even Byzantium; Danes in England, France, and the Mediterranean; or Norwegians in Ireland, Iceland, Greenland, and, eventually, North America. Most expeditions were actually planned by the Northmen or Norse, who traveled by ships along coasts looking for raiding, trading, and settlement opportunities. The Norse reached the British Isles by the 8th century, including Ireland, and then moved into the Faeroes Islands and Iceland by the ninth century. It was mainly Norwegians and some Celtic populations who settled in these areas, bringing domesticated animals like sheep, goat, pigs, cattle, and Norwegian elk hounds along with a host of Eastern Hemisphere diseases.



From this historical context emerged Erik the Red, a powerful but outlawed clan leader, who was being forced out of Iceland due to poor behavior, even for a Viking! It would be his family who would eventually settle Greenland and attempt to settle and explore parts of North America. Our evidence comes mainly from the Icelandic sagas referred to as the Greenlanders saga and Erik the Red’s saga as well as occasional references in other sagas to places such as Greenland, Helluland, Markland, and Vinland and Hop. In reality, these sagas were originally oral traditions passed down for several centuries before they were put in written form, often associated with the literary movement in Iceland. Erik sought to escape his dilemma in the Old World by exploring to the west and creating a new settlement in lands to the northwest of Iceland. Previous explorers like Gunnbjorn, son of Ulf the Crow, were consistently blown off course from Iceland to the west, in the early ninth century. Even a relative of Erik’s family, Naebjorn Galti attempted to explore the area around 978, though he was murdered in a mutiny. Erik left Iceland and found this land (southern Greenland), which he explored for three years before returning to Iceland to recruit for a settlement expedition. Erik the Red named the land Greenland to help attract settlers to this area that faced North America across the Labrador Sea. His expedition left for Greenland with about 25 boats, of which about 14 safely arrived just after 984, indicating just how dangerous North Atlantic waters were. Some no doubt were blown off course, possibly toward North America, a common problem for other Norse navigators in these waters. In the next decade three more fleets followed to Greenland, and by 1000, over 500 settlers along with domesticated animals arrived to set up a larger eastern settlement and a smaller western settlement of perhaps 100 people. They found an empty land that had clear signs of previous occupation, probably by the Dorsett people of sub-Arctic North America. Greenland was in the midst of a climatic warming trend, and grazing land was plentiful for cattle, pigs, sheep, and goats until a cooling trend emerged in the 14th century. According to Erik the Red’s saga, following settlement in Greenland, Erik the Red’s son Leif Erikson left for Norway to serve the king and report on Greenland. The king sent Leif back to Greenland to spread Christianity, but on Leif’s return voyage to Greenland his crew was blown off course, landing somewhere in North America. He described the area as full of wild wheat, berries, and grapevines, with large maple trees, naming it Vinland the Good according to Erik the Red’s saga. Leif also rescued a lost ship of other Norse, indicating just how common it was to be blown off course to North America when heading for Greenland or Iceland in the North Atlantic. However, the Greenlander saga gives credit to Bjarni Herj olfson for sighting North America. Bjarni came seeking his father in Greenland only to be blown off course to North America. Supposedly, Bjarni did not let his crew on shore until he sailed north and found Greenland. It is then that Leif bought Bjarni’s


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L’Anse aux Meadows: Europeans in America Nearly 500 Years before Columbus Very little doubt remains that the Norse sailors arrived in the Americas centuries before Christopher Columbus and even built permanent structures. At the very northern tip of the island of Newfoundland is L’Anse aux Meadows, which is now preserved by Parks Canada and recognized as a United Nations World Heritage Site. At L’Anse, the remains of several timber-and-sod buildings attest to the Viking presence in the region. Around the year 1000, Leif Erikson, son of the Norse King Erik the Red, landed at the site, naming it Vinland. Others followed Leif, constructing the permanent structures found there today. One commonality that they shared with later European explorers was conflict with the indigenous populations of the region in which they settled, which forced them to leave the area and go back to Greenland within a decade.

ship and made an exploratory voyage to Vinland, returning with news of pasture, berries, and days with more sun than in Greenland or Iceland. Erik the Red’s other son, Thorvald, then took Leif’s ship and attempted to settle the land Leif had described. He found Vinland and Leif’s camp called Leifsbodir (possibly L’Anse aux Meadows) where he and his crew of 30 explored for several seasons. A fight broke out with natives and Thorvald died of an arrow wound and was buried in Vinland. Contact with the Native Americans, possibly Beotuk near Labrador, represented an early opportunity for disease spread, but it would not be the only time. Thorvald’s brother Thorstein Erikson, sought the body for burial, but was blown off course and forced to return to Greenland. Thorstein died upon return to Greenland as part of an epidemic fever outbreak, one of many Norse Greenland disease episodes documented in the sagas and indicating just how virulent Greenland would have been as a diseasebreeding area. Thorstein’s wife, Gutrid, apparently survived the time of fever, and then wed an Icelandic merchant named Thorfinn Karlsefni. According to Erik the Red’s saga it was Thorfinn who led a large settlement expedition to Vinland consisting of between 60 and 250 people on at least two ships. Even Erik the Red’s half daughter, Freydis, who had married one of the expedition members, went along. The group sailed north along Greenland and then west to Baffin Island (Helluland) before turning south to the North America mainland of Labrador (perhaps Markland). Here they let ashore two Celtic runners to explore the land to the south where the land was declared good, and the expedition wintered, releasing cattle ashore but having to rely upon whale meat when starvation set in. Eventually spring brought better fishing and hunting, and the expedition, still seeking Vinland, split into two, with a small group heading north and the main group under Thorfinn heading south. The northern group was blown off course to



Ireland where most perished. The south group fared better, settling near a lake that flowed down into a river and out to sea. They named it Hop and built a settlement there. Thorfinn’s son Snorri was born then, indicating the presence of infants, and possibly infant disease susceptibilities to minor respiratory infections that could easily be picked up by natives from the Norse. This would further increase the breadth of diseases natives would have been exposed to. Natives were encountered at Hop. These were possibly the Micmac who inhabited the region from Labrador to the Great Lakes and Saint Lawrence River and who have legends of blue-eyed people bringing misfortune. These natives in nine canoes left for the south. That winter, once again, cattle were allowed to pasture freely, increasing the likelihood of encounter with the Native Americans who were by this time watching the foreign Norse at Hop. In spring the Native American canoes came in large numbers, bringing hides for trade and seeking red cloth and weapons. Thorfinn Karlsefni forbade trade in metal weapons with the Skraelings as the Norse called them, but did offer milk, perhaps cow’s milk, which the Native Americans consumed. This encounter and the consumption of milk, a completely new drink for the natives, presented a prime opportunity for disease spread, either human to human or animal to human, as the small Norse cattle, including a bull, still roamed freely. The bull scared off the natives who came back en masse, and a battle broke out between the two groups. The natives even brought and used simple catapults, driving the Norse into rocky crags. The presence of catapults in the battle probably indicates just how far south the Norse were, perhaps even in the Saint Lawrence River area. Catapults were generally used on wooden stockade villages like those associated with the Algonquian and Iroquois speakers or even with Mississippian sites. They were not associated with warfare among small nomadic bands of Inuit in the subarctic area. One wonders if some disease was not already setting in among the native people, and they resolved to drive out the foreign Norse who brought such troubles to their land. Many Skraeling and several Norse were recorded as killed in the battle. The Norse expedition thought it wise to move back north, killing five more natives along the way before settling at a land they called Straumsfjord. Thorfinn Karlsefni took the boat and searched for the northern expedition without success. Thorfinn then returned to Hop for several months, but Freydis and others remained behind, possibly constructing a second settlement, which Thorfinn returned to that winter. All told, the expedition stayed three winters before leaving Vinland. On the way back to Greenland they captured a family of natives and brought them back to Greenland. Apparently two native boys did survive the diseases, probably indicating an increased level of immunity as suggested for the Inuit. The natives did mention that larger tribes with kings lived inland from them, possibly a reference to Great Lakes area tribes. Thorfinn Karlsefni eventually returned to Iceland with his son who was born in Vinland, Snorri. Snorri’s offspring included the bishop of Iceland, and it is in Iceland at


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that time the sagas concerning Greenland and North America become oral traditions. Vinland or Winland was mentioned in the work of Adam of Bremen in 1075 and indicates that information about the area was being disseminated back to Europe even as the Icelandic sagas were still in oral forms. Finally, Erik’s daughter Freydis attempted to settle Vinland yet again with partners Helgi and Finnbogi. However, after apparently heading back to Vinland settlements already constructed by Leif, Freydis conspired to kill the rival settlements of Helgi and Finnbogi and their people, personally doing away with the five women. Freydis and her group failed to stay and returned again to Greenland where Leif found out about the killings but took no action. Eventually Erik the Red’s children and relations led five separate voyages to the south and west, labeling the territories Helluland, Markland, and Vinland in the sagas. One settlement they established at L’Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland has been excavated and could be the Leifsbudir or even Hop settlement of the sagas, if indeed those were separate settlements. It eventually had eight buildings and up to 80 settlers along with farm animals. A variety of Norse artifacts were excavated at this site, including 99 iron nails and cape brooches. Reflecting on the Norse voyages to North America between 970 and 1030, several pieces of evidence suggest the likelihood of disease spread and possible implications for the rise of Mississippian civilization at about the same time. First, several hundred Norse encountered at least an equal number of natives, whether Inuit in the north, or Beotuk and Micmac in the south, over the equivalent of several years. The contact was intensive, including trade, warfare, close human and animal contact, and consumption of foreign food and drink. The red cloth traded by Karlsefni’s expedition proved ideal in the later Columbian exchange for transport of diseases like smallpox. Certainly, the consumption of milk by natives and contact with the cattle released to graze provided ample opportunity for disease to transfer from animal to human. The taking of natives back to Greenland certainly resulted in exposure where a number of disease episodes such as the fever that killed Erik’s son Thorvald had already impacted the Norse. Norse saga references seem to place them in the area northeast of emerging Mississippian civilization, probably around the Saint Lawrence River mouth. The references by the natives taken back to Greenland indicate denser populations into the interior as well. If a major outbreak hit Native Americans at this time, it might have led to population decline or territorial changes that allowed expanding Mississippian civilization to grow into these more north and easterly regions, or at least gave them less impeded room for growth along major waterways. Because of differential mortuary ritual practices and the catastrophic nature of diseases, population estimates are really no more than ‘‘guesstimates’’ for much of Native America at this time. Later records from the Columbian exchange indicate that fields of Native American remains might be found after diseases entered their communities, with no one to perform the burial rituals that archaeologists so rely upon for population



Artist’s rendering of a market at Cahokia, about 1150–1200 CE. Cahokia was the largest prehistoric city north of Mexico and was a religious, political, economic, and cultural center. (Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site, painting by Michael Hampshire)

preservation and estimation. Population estimates for pre-Columbian North America range anywhere from less than 1 million to over 12 million, and this after a century of research and debate. So population estimates are of little use when compared to changes in territorial power for this era. Population estimates aside, all of the early exploration and settlement did leave tangible clues of Norse and Native American interactions across eastern North America and at least hint at the possibility of correlation between the rise of Mississippian civilization and the entrance of the Norse. A silver penny made in Norway before 1080 was found during excavations at an archaeology site in Maine where it had been modified into a pendant. The site and others inland also contain special forms of chert or stone for making tools, found nowhere else but in Labrador. Such long-distance trade networks extended inland to the Great Lakes and Ohio River, providing easy paths by which disease vectors may have emerged. Contact directly into North America by diseasecarrying Old World people and animals by 1000 makes this a prime date to look for territorial changes among Native Americans in eastern North America due to disease outbreaks. On the eastern seaboard, the rise of Inuit and Micmac power bases, replacing the shrinking territory and power of older Dorsett and Beotuk peoples, fits well with their proximity to Greenland Norse colonies. The rise of Mississippian civilization from older mound-building civilizations of the Adena and Hopewell on the Ohio River drainage also fits chronologically. Even Cahokia, the largest site in pre-Columbian


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North America, is a close fit. Its meteoric rise and control of the river trade system from the confluence of the Missouri and Mississippi rivers near modern Saint Louis began in the 10th century. Cahokia sits many miles north and upstream from the mouth of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers’ confluence and thus was not in direct line with any disease epidemics brought in from the attempted Norse settlement of Vinland and North America. However, their territorial reach would soon grow to include areas such as the Ohio River, placing Mississippian civilization in the direct path by which diseases from the Norse settlers might spread by water below the Great Lakes region. Voyages to Greenland, mainly from Iceland, would take place for the next four centuries, with the last recorded voyage taking place around 1407. The Norse Greenlanders were dependent on Norway for most ships and iron, because so few iron ores and timber were available in Greenland. This meant voyages when possible to Markland for those resources and more contact with Native Americans. Greenland exported walrus and narwhal ivory, seal and walrus skin rope, polar bear pelts, as well as falcons to Europe. Thus disease vectors in both directions were present during the entire period of the Greenland colony. However, cooling climates and increasing ice lessened the number of voyages by as early as the13th century. Worse yet, in Greenland itself the sagas and archaeology finds indicate the Norse response was to bring in more food supply such as their favorite meat, pigs, along with cattle for dairy products, horses for transport, and sheep and goats for marginal grazing lands. All these animals proved lethal as disease carriers and vectors for later Native Americans encountering Eastern Hemisphere people in the later Columbian exchange. Pigs, for instance, apparently were devastating to natives on the de Soto expedition of 1539–1543. Thus Mississippian civilization probably arose just as the most likely time for a disease epidemic or even pandemic was receding due to the failure of the Vinland Norse colony by Eric the Red’s children. But a disease incubator of sorts, the Norse Greenland colony itself, with its 5,000 members and even more domesticated animals, represented a constant threat to the north, a threat that became worse as the Norse colony fell upon hard climatic times and more desperately sought resources from both North America and from ships back in Europe. Some Norse arrived sick in Greenland, and disease episodes in the colony were common throughout its existence. A larger eastern settlement and a smaller western settlement were established, both in the southwest area of Greenland, where richer grasslands allowed for more farm animal feed and longer growing seasons. As the climate cooled, the Norse food supply was reversed, with terrestrial foods increasingly replaced by maritime foods. Although few fish bones are found in Norse Greenlander trash middens, the Norse usually made fish ‘‘porridge’’ out of the fish, eating bones and all, especially in drought times. These trends, too, brought the ever more malnourished and sickly Norse and their animals into increasing contact and conflict with the Inuit over the maritime food



supply, providing further opportunity for disease to spread. Such hard times were ideal for the spread of the Black Death and bubonic plagues that devastated Europe and even Iceland by 1402 and beyond. The status of the Black Death, whether it hit Greenland, is still unknown, but other pandemics and epidemics from later Columbian exchange times might provide a model for what the Black Death could have done to Native American communities. The Norse did not have to visit North America in order to spread disease. Inuit legends and records by Ivar Bardarson, the steward of church property in Greenland, indicate the Inuit helped knock out the last of the Norse in the western settlement, some 300 miles northwest of the larger eastern settlement around Erik the Red’s estate at Bratthalid. Bardarson, in the Story of the Greenlanders, relates that he took a force to the west settlement in the mid-1300s to push back the Inuit, who were apparently moving down from north Greenland as the climate worsened. Competition over the northern hunting grounds for ivory was at the center of the conflict. He found only a deserted settlement with the cattle, sheep, goats, and horses roaming wild. Later, both Inuit legends and sagas indicate even the eastern settlement was raided by the Inuit, with 18 Norse killed. Such close contact did not require Norse voyages to North America for diseases to spread. The Inuit themselves could become the primary vector. Interestingly the major port of the eastern settlement was Herjolfsnes, closest to the harvest of ivory in the north, closest to the vital resources of timber and iron ore in Markland, and also the most used port of the Greenland colony for European ships. Even after Scandinavian ships stopped calling at the eastern settlements, other European ships may have continued to arrive at the port based on clothing styles discovered at the local church cemetery. Basque traditions hold that they established a whaling port in Newfoundland around 1372. Perhaps English and German pirates visited Greenland as well. They raided Iceland and may have traveled to Greenland just before 1400, about the time the bubonic plague hit Iceland hard. An Inuit legend recorded by Niels Egede, a Dane who grew up in Greenland, supports this late interaction by European raiders into the Greenland Norse settlement. The legend indicates three ships from the southwest came to plunder and killed some of the Norse who in turn managed to capture one ship before the other two escaped. The next year a larger pirate fleet arrived and plundered extensively. Norse survivors sailed south, leaving some behind. In the third year yet another pirate fleet arrived off Greenland, and the remaining Inuit and Norse who could fled to the highlands, returning in the autumn to find that farms had been destroyed and the last inhabitants taken away. If such a legend has some historical basis, it opens up even more opportunities for disease vectors into Native American communities. First, it indicates Inuit and Norse may have been living or trading side by side. Second, pirate ships may have continued on into North America or been blown off course there when returning to Europe. Third,


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the Greenlander Norse may have used the captured ship to launch yet another voyage for timber to Markland. All are possibilities that increase the number of potential contacts for disease spread from European to Native American populations. As late as the 1540s, ships bound for Iceland were being blown off course to Greenland. One crew found what may be the last surviving member of the old Greenland Norse colony. He was an old man found dead with his knife and patched clothing at the edge of the sea. The last historical references to Greenland begin with a familiar story—a merchant ship to Iceland blown off course to Greenland. This leads to a Christian ceremony for the wedding of Sigrid Bjornsdottir and Thorstein Olafsson, one of the merchants on the ship, at the Hvalsey Church or main church of the eastern settlement in 1408. The merchants also witnessed a burning at the stake of an adulterous man. The church was tied to the papacy in Rome and had become quite powerful in the Greenlander affairs since its inception with Leif Erikson in the 11th century. Some missionary activity to Vinland was also noted but has never been confirmed via archaeology. Pope Alexander VI suggested a voyage to reestablish contact with the Greenlanders, whom he believed had not seen a ship for some 80 years by the late 14th century. However, other records indicate ships did occasionally arrive and that Norse Greenlanders did occasionally leave. Nicolus Germanus records the Danish cartographer Claudius Clavus as visiting and mapping Greenland in 1420 (the Danish Crown had technically taken over Greenland in the late 1300s). Peter Groenlindiger records a Norse Greenlander as visiting Norway in 1426. It is entirely possible that on some of these ships Europeans and others who were not Norse at all were visiting and were blown off course to Vinland or other parts of North America. This opens the possibility of even further disease transmission opportunities without diseases needing to originate or pass through an existing Norse Greenland colony. One story from the sagas indicates just how common this may have been. This is the legend of Great Ireland, a land supposedly located many days’ sail west of Ireland and near Vinland the Good. According to Ari the Wise of Iceland, his ancestor Are Marson had been visited in Great Ireland by ships blown off course around 983 and further that a man named Bjorn Asbrandson who set sail from Iceland around 1000 was also blown off course and resided in Great Ireland. Neither could escape and instead were employed with great esteem by the local chieftains or Indians. Gudleif Gudlaugson, according to the Eyrbyggja saga, was shipwrecked on Great Ireland in 1029, and his party was rescued and then sent away by Asbrandson who advised them not to return as the locals were apt to change their minds often about strangers on ships. While these stories have yet to be confirmed archaeologically, they indicate just how common contact between natives and Europeans could be, regardless of the Greenland Norse colony. Regardless of when the last Norse ceased to exist on Greenland, the dates are of great interest concerning the demise of Mississippian culture. It is in the



mid-15th century that Algonquin and Iroquois legends indicate a time of troubles and separation from ancestral homelands. Archaeology data from Mississippian sites generally indicate that many Mississippian sites in the north begin to decline or were abandoned during this same century. It is to the Native American myths and legends as well as archaeological evidence that we now turn to for confirmation of the impact of the Norse Exchange in mainland North America. Native American Evidence The Dorsett culture associated with Baffin Island, Greenland, and parts of subarctic Canada, were the native inhabitants when the Norse Greenland settlement was founded by Erik the Red just before 1000. Interestingly they had already abandoned Greenland, according to the ruins found by Erik’s settlers. Soon they would lose control of much of northeast arctic North America due to the combined presence of the Norse to the east and the Inuit from the west. Possessing neither the sleds and hide boats of the Inuit nor the longboats of the Norse, Dorsett people may well have been reduced by both European pathogens from sick Norse and their domesticated animals brought en masse along with Norse settlement. The power vacuum was filled by the incoming Inuit, ideally suited to the subarctic environment, with adaptations ranging from igloo housing and sled dogs to bows and arrows, and custom skin clothing and hide boats with waterproof suits. The Inuit Eskimos first replaced the retreating Dorsett culture by around 1000 and then, eventually, after repeated interactions, came to dominate the declining Norse settlements in Greenland by the 16th century. Thus the Inuit, with their superior land and sea mobility, territory, and trade routes stretching from Norse Greenland down to Newfoundland and the Great Lakes, were an ideal disease vector or conduit for Old World, Eastern Hemisphere diseases. This was true when the Norse first arrived just as Mississippian settlements began to boom, and it was true during the Norse decline in Greenland, just as Mississippian settlements were in decline. The Inuit were the ones who killed off the last of Norse in the western settlement, according to both Norse and Inuit sources. They were in close quarters with both disease-ridden Norse and their sickly animals. Inuit traders and trade goods could travel by land down to the Great Lakes region and the Beotuk and Micmac territories, and by sea even farther. Inuit stories were gathered by anthropologist H. J. Rink in 1858, as illustrated by Inuit artist Aron of Kangeg. The Inuit called the Norse the ‘‘Kablunet’’ and had both cooperative and competitive relations with them. Inuit stories make clear that they were living and working with the last of the Norse Greenlanders, perhaps in the larger, eastern settlement. Because the Inuit had spread quickly from their Siberia origins across subarctic North America, immunities had developed in their ancestry to domesticated animals back in Eurasia. Thus they were probable disease carriers but not necessarily decimated by Eurasian diseases from Norse


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contact. However, the groups south of the Great Lakes, especially the widespread traders of the Mississippian civilization that emerged from the much older mound-building tradition, had no such immunities. The Micmac controlled much of Quebec, Labrador, and Newfoundland at the time of the Norse Greenland settlement. Like the Inuit in the north, who expanded with the arrival of the Norse Greenland, the Micmac expanded into northeastern North America just as Erik the Red’s children attempted to settle Newfoundland and Vinland. The Newfoundland Beotuk Indians declined on Newfoundland just as the Dorsett had in Greenland. Such patterns of power changes in regions are difficult to tie archaeologically directly to disease, but they are suggestive. Certainly we can say that as soon as the Norse arrived, major shifts in population and territorial control began to take place associated with the Norse in Greenland and the Norse in Vinland. The territory impacted stretched from the Saint Lawrence River and the Great Lakes in the south to the Labrador Sea in the northeast, directly across from the Norse Greenland western and eastern settlements. Further evidence of just how significant the power changes were in eastern North America comes from the Lenni Lenape or the ancestral Delaware Native Americans. Their legends indicate they migrated in an easterly migration route from Siberia into northwest North American and then down through Mississippian territory, possibly Cahokia, finally arriving east of the Great Lakes and into the Iroquois area south of the Huron and Micmac tribes. Their legends are one of the few to have survived the Columbian exchange intact and in permanent symbolic form on wooden tablets with red symbols known as the Wallam Olum. Considered the ‘‘grandfathers’’ of most Algonquian-speaking tribes, the most widespread of all linguistic families of Native Americans in North America, their oral traditions are unique for their breadth and scope. Today the last of the Lenni Lenape are in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, due to the reservation system movements of the historic period. Researcher David McCutchen, who worked for 15 years on the translation of the Wallam Olum, translated the story based partly on the wood tablet symbols and partly on oral stories confirmed by the elders of the tribe in 1980. If the Wallum Olam or red record is accurate, it may contain evidence of the Lenni Lenape journey into the plains of North America, where their small nomadic populations allied with early Iroquois to push out the last of the Mississippians at Cahokia in a joint migration and attack. The record makes clear that a large city was conquered near the Missouri and Mississippi rivers’ confluence, and that its descendants eventually fled south, possibly to reemerge as the moundbuilding Natchez of historic times. Natchez legends indicate they were founded by people moving from the north along the Mississippi after a great catastrophe. Could this have been the one described in the Wallam Olum? According to that record, the Lenni Lenape moved through the lands of this great city with permission, but the city king became alarmed at how many people were moving through and attacked them. The Lenni Lenape allied with other enemies of the city, the



Iroquois to the east, and eventually defeated the urbanites, forcing them to move south. Several strands of the legend are worth looking at in detail. First, if this site was Cahokia or another large Mississippian site that was head of a Mississippian chiefdom or territory, their population would normally be far greater than a nomadic, migrating group like the Lenni Lenape or Delaware could overcome. Second, only a weak and declining Mississippian civilization would have allowed such migrating groups through its territory or would have assessed the migrating tribal population to be large versus their sedentary farming population. Third, the Lenni Lenape were migrating into the northeast for a reason, perhaps because of a power vacuum or population decline in the mound builders. Finally, since they were nomadic and similar to the Inuit in their late arrival from Asian (Siberian) origins, the Lenni Lenape, like the Inuit, were not as vulnerable to old diseases as the older mound-builder populations might have been. All of this may indicate a much-reduced Mississippian population, reeling from the effects of population reduction, possibly due to disease episodes. Archaeological data indicate many mound-building sites (Aztalan, Toltec Mounds, Marksville, Cahokia) were well fortified and dealt with war on a regular basis. It seems unlikely that migrating groups would have the capability of knocking out the most prolific native civilizations in North America unless something was amiss internally. Interestingly, after the Delaware moved into the Mississippian lands, they began to use many of the mounds and geoglyphs in their sacred ceremonies even though they were originally nomadic and without any known architecture on the plains. William Romain asserts that the Delaware eventually utilized mound-builder structures for yearly renewal ceremonies as if the Delaware had taken over the old moundbuilding areas. Again this seems highly unlikely that a newly arrived migrating group could just push aside a two-millennium mound-building tradition and appropriate their most sacred sites unless something else such as a catastrophe had taken place to weaken the Mississippian mound builders. Although much debate by archaeologists still exists as to exactly who and what qualifies as Mississippian, the term is used here to describe most of the cultures of the Mississippi and Ohio rivers’ drainages as well as those in southeast North America who were associated with the later prehistoric mound sites. Their tradition stems from earlier mound builders known as the Adena and Hopewell along the Ohio River basin. Sites such as Aztalan in Wisconsin, Cahokia in Missouri, Etowah in Georgia, and Moundsville in Alabama are all classic examples. Because these densely populated sites are often connected by major river valleys as well as integrated land trade networks, disease vectors were more likely via these transportation routes. Certainly, at Cahokia, the large numbers of elite burials associated with the early occupation of the site are not noted for the later occupation period, when stockade walls and water control problems become the norm. But no matter how well or poorly researchers using archaeological data


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can place the rise, fall, and territory of native cultures in North America, certain problems cannot be overcome, at least at this point in time. Conclusion The biggest issue in dealing with ancestral North American communities is that the populations were always somewhat mobile or semisedentary. This makes it extremely difficult to determine actual population as Charles Mann (2005) has summarized in the nearly century-long attempt by the research community to grasp demographic data for pre-Columbian North America and indeed the entire Western Hemisphere before 500 years ago. Thus implications of population decline or impact as diseases possibly moved in via Norse, Norse animals, and native contact are difficult to prove or disprove. So while we can make inferences about the Mississippians and about general changes in power distribution across native North America, with the arrival and settlement of the Greenland Norse colony we cannot be sure that they are tied together. However, the timing is extremely intriguing. The arrival of seafarers from the Old World or Eastern Hemisphere in the 10th century fits well with the rise of Mississippian civilization, especially its largest set of earthworks at Cahokia near modern Saint Louis. Remember, many of the Norse ships arrived accidentally after being blown off course, so we cannot be sure when the possibility for first contact and early disease vectors came into existence. Iceland, for instance, had been settled since the eighth century, and the Norse sagas indicate just how common it was for seafarers heading to and from Iceland to find themselves blown off course to Greenland or North America instead. Without question, the attempts to settle Vinland by Erik the Red’s children placed all the necessary elements for disease spread from European to Native American communities directly in North America during the 10th century. Further, the decline of Mississippian civilization may well be tied to the decline of Norse Greenland. In the 14th century the Norse Greenland western settlement declined and was overrun by the Inuit. This historic scenario places highly mobile and partly immune Native Americans directly inside of increasingly sickly and diseased Norse communities that are on the decline. The same holds true for the final 15th-century collapse of the larger eastern settlement, including Erik the Red’s old estate at Bratthalid and the main church at Hvarsley. Either one of these episodes or the increasing ship traffic from Europe culminating in the Columbus expeditions of 1492–1508 could have produced the right scenario to spread diseases into the Native American Mississippian world, helping to bring about its downfall. The most likely places to have been hit would have been the places with the most contact points and the largest concentrated populations, an apt description for Cahokia, which sat with its river canoe trade fleets at the conjunction of the Mississippi and Missouri rivers, just upstream from the Ohio River. The Ohio River flowed from the lands of northeastern North America,



where Norse diseases would have first hit native communities that had no immunities, unlike the Inuit communities who had some immunities due to relatively recent travel from Siberia, and due to their 450-year proximity to Norse Greenland. We must not forget too, the Black Death and bubonic plague outbreaks that swept into Europe in 1347 near Naples, Italy. By 1402 even Iceland was devastated, and it seems possible that Greenland too, or even North America may have been hit, especially if diseased sailors or their clothing, a common conduit for the spread of the plague, made it to resource-poor Norse Greenland or to inquisitive communities of Native Americans via ships blown off course from Iceland or seeking resources from Vinland or Markland for Greenland. While it cannot be conclusively demonstrated on the level that modern civilization can track modern pandemics and epidemics, the likelihood that major disease episodes, as part of a ‘‘Norse exchange,’’ probably hit native North American populations is strong based on a number of factors. First, the impact of later disease episodes often associated with sick immigrants and farm animals from the Eastern Hemisphere is now well documented and demonstrated for the later Columbian exchange as the work of Noble David Cook (1998) and Alfred Crosby (1972) has demonstrated. Similar historical circumstances existed for the Norse exchange. Second, the presence of sporadic Norse–Native American interactions for almost half a millennium greatly increases the opportunities for disease dissemination. Over 5,000 Norse and several thousand farm animals were eventually present in Greenland and some even briefly in North America at Vinland from the 10th to the 13th centuries. Third, the timing of the Norse in Greenland and the rise and fall of Mississippian civilization is remarkably coincidental. The lack of historical writing for Native American communities means we can only tighten down the timelines so much. But they do fit together at present. Fourth, more immune and mobile groups such as the Inuit and Micmac provided hosts and disease vectors whereby diseases originating in the Old World traveled through the Norse Greenland colony into subarctic native populations and finally into the densely populated Mississippian realm, where little immunity existed. Finally, both Norse and Native American lore, history, and archaeology indicate the near constant presence of disease in some form in Norse Greenland. Occasional contact, whether accidental or purposeful, by land or by sea, provided the opportunity for disease vectors to become major shapers in parts of the preColumbian world. What remains now is for definitive evidence, probably archaeological in nature, to provide one positive example, much as finding L’Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland did to legitimize the stories of Vinland in the Icelandic sagas. The major roadblock is perhaps just how much has been lost in historic times concerning the Columbian exchange and concerning Mississippian and mound-building civilizations. These sites would be primary in looking for the initial paths of epidemics into Cahokia and Mississippian worlds in general. Just


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think if the written records and archaeological evidence no longer existed for the initial introduction of the Black Death into Europe via Mongols besieging Kaffa in the Black Sea, or for the Mediterranean merchants carrying it into the south Italian peninsula. We might also be debating if the Mongols had anything to do with the mysterious changes in European power distribution and population about the time of the Renaissance as we now debate about the Norse role in preColumbian North America.

References and Further Reading Cook, David Noble. Born to Die: Disease and New World Conquest, 1492– 1650. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Crosby Jr., Alfred W. The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1972. De la Vega, Garcilaso. The Florida of the Inca: The De Soto Story. Translated by John and Jeannette Varner. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1988. Diamond, Jerod. Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. New York: Penguin, 2005. Fowler, Melvin. ‘‘Cahokia Atlas.’’ Illinois Historical Society, Springfield. 1989. Available at http://libsysdigi.library.uiuc.edu/oca/Books2008-06/cahokiaatlashist00fowl/ (accessed June 10, 2010). Jones, Gwyn. A History of the Vikings. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984. Mann, Charles. 1491: New Revelations of the Americas before Columbus. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005. McCutchen, David, trans. The Red Record: The Wallam Olum. Garden City Park, NY: Avery, 1993. Pauketat, Timothy. Ancient Cahokia and the Mississippians. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Roesdahl, Else. The Vikings, rev. 2nd ed. Translated by S. Margeson and K. Williams. New York: Penguin, 1998. Romain, William. Mysteries of the Hopewell: Astronomers, Geometers, and Magicians of the Eastern Woodlands. Akron, OH: University of Akron Press, 2008. Sephton, J., trans. ‘‘The Saga of Erik the Red.’’ Translated from the old Norse ‘Eirıks saga rauða’ in 1880. Available at http://www.sagadb.org/eiriks _saga_rauda.en (accessed June 10, 2010). Waskey, Andrew. ‘‘Micmacs.’’ In The Encyclopedia of North American Colonial Conflicts to 1775, Vol. 2. Edited by S. Tucker. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2008: 484.



CON Cahokia was an impressive settlement. It flourished for centuries before the arrival of Europeans. It was settled in approximately the 10th century and was finally abandoned around 300 years later. Scholars have long studied and disagreed over the causes of the decline and abandonment. Reasons that have been postulated include warfare, disease, internal and external rebellion, and environmental factors. There is also a contingent that feels Cahokia only declined because of the introduction of European pathogens to which the residents had no natural immunity. While it is true that between 90 and 95 percent of all indigenous peoples died within 100 years of first contact with Europeans, the evidence is clear that Cahokia declined and was in fact abandoned long before its inhabitants could have ever breathed in the toxins Europeans exhaled. To get the best picture of why Cahokia declined and was ultimately abandoned, the reader is best served by looking to ethnohistory. Ethnohistory is a blend of disciplines, particularly history, anthropology, and archaeology. Taken individually, no single discipline can provide a compelling enough explanation for the question asked here. However, taken together, the evidence is overwhelming. Scholars and researchers have proven the reasons Cahokia was abandoned, and it was a sum of factors, all centered on environmental degradation. Cahokia was located on the middle Mississippi River floodplain, a good location as far as the environment was concerned. It was located near a diversity of smaller habitats that included open water and other wetlands, which provided a source of protein in fish. However, more important, the soil in the region was optimally suited for corn cultivation. Along the floodplain, Cahokia grew and residents grew multicrop gardens (Yerkes 2005). This strategy worked for a long time and may have continued to work if Cahokia had remained a small, relatively dispersed area. However, as it continued to grow and thrive, it became a religious and cultural center for the Mississippian peoples. Its population rose, perhaps to as many as 30,000 inhabitants at its peak, and the environment could not handle it. Demands on wood and fuel for construction increased to the point the environment suffered irreparable damage. Erosion and runoff increased, and flooding worsened, particularly during the summer growing season. The consequences of this, including economic and social, proved disastrous for Cahokia, especially when the crops failed. As a result, the inhabitants of Cahokia were left with no choice but to disperse to other areas. Cahokia was located in an area known as the American Bottom. The American Bottom is a floodplain located just below the confluence of the Illinois, Missouri, and Mississippi rivers, and has a variety of woodland landscapes, including some that are submerged part of the year. There are many lowland areas that are constantly under the threat of flooding. There are also many higher, well-drained areas and prairie land. As a result the inhabitants of


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Cahokia had a variety of plant and animal life to help sustain them, in addition to the rich soil. Evidence uncovered by researchers indicates that the inhabitants of Cahokia had a fairly diverse diet of fish, amphibians, reptiles, mussels, birds, and mammals. Their findings point toward fish being a primary food source, with deer being a distant second. They may have eaten dogs on occasion as well. The residents also gathered a variety of nuts, seeds, fruits, and greens. They also cultivated tobacco, squash, and gourds. Interestingly, beans have not been found, so it seems the people of Cahokia only partook in two of the three sister crops. Corn was the number one food source, and it was the most widely produced and consumed (Yerkes 2005). In the years leading up to the emergence of Mississippian groups, hunting became more efficient with better weaponry, namely the bow and arrow. Corn was far from new to the region Cahokia developed. Evidence shows that it first appeared in the area at least 1,000 years before Cahokia emerged. However, it appears that corn took hundreds of years to catch on and become a staple of the local diet. Once people developed more static communities, the populations in individual areas exploded. A reliable, stable food source was needed, and corn provided well. Altogether, the diversity in dietary options led the residents of Cahokia to enjoy large annual feasts. They served many purposes, including many political functions, tribute, alliance building, and warfare. In addition, the evidence show that feasts at Cahokia included specialized goods made by skilled artisans at the request of the elites and the ruling chiefs. A number of settlements were located in the region around Cahokia. They were all part of what anthropologists refer to as the Mississippian peoples. They were well known for building elaborate mounds. Cahokia, as the main religious and political center, had the largest number of mounds, and there were clearly delineated areas for royalty, ceremonial use, and class boundaries (Ambrose et al. 2003). Cahokia eventually became the paramount location, and its rivals either joined with Cahokia or were removed through warfare. At its peak, Cahokia was the largest population center north of the Rio Grande prior to European contact. Monk’s Mound The focal point of Cahokia, both in its prime and today, is Monk’s Mound. Named after a community of Trappist monks who lived in the vicinity and grew vegetables on the first terrace of the two that remain, its 16-acre base is larger than any of the Egyptian pyramids. At the top of the mound, a wooden temple that was over 100 feet long was home to the ‘ Great Sun,’’ the spiritual and temporal ruler of the city. Between Monk’s Mound and the nearby Mound of the Ruler-Priest, a plaza of almost 50 acres formed the central ceremonial location for most of the over 10,000 Cahokians, not to mention their main sports arena, where chunkey, a twoplayer game played with a stone wheel and spears, was played.



Monks Mound at Cahokia in southern Illinois near St. Louis, Missouri, is the largest prehistoric earthen structure in the Americas. It is 100 feet high and covers more than 14 acres and contains an estimated 22 million cubic feet of earth. Monks Mound was at the center of the Cahokia community, which included about 120 mounds over a five to six square-mile area. (Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site)

The mounds at Cahokia and of the Mississippian people that are so well known were constructed with baskets of earth dug from areas that seemed to exist for that purpose. Some of those dirt sources have been located today. It seems apparent that there was an overall predetermined plan in place in order to manage such a large project that had a great number of laborers involved. By the time Cahokia was completed, the surrounding landscape and environment had been transformed. The overall size of land covered was impressive, and at least 120 mounds were constructed. Monks Mound is the most impressive mound that survives. It is a large, multileveled platform located within what used to be the primary ceremonial area. Taken together, it seems that the most compelling evidence for the decline and abandonment of Cahokia was a congruence of factors. Overall, the separate factors led to extreme environmental disruption. These factors include changes in climate, warfare, leadership shortcomings and failures, internal strife, and a disruption of long-standing relationships with nearby groups. However, it seems that in the search for the one main cause of Cahokia’s abandonment, the issue of food takes center stage. Within the region of Cahokia, the procurement and


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production of food was focused around the location itself. This was possible because of the variety and diversity of habitats within the floodplain and other nearby areas. This strategy of maintaining sustenance works well for dispersed populations. However, take the same environment as Cahokia was located and factor in the concentration of large numbers of people, and the consequences were devastating over time (Young 2000). Anthropological evidence provides a mass of evidence that within Cahokia and its surrounding area, widespread environmental degradation took place and exerted an overwhelming impact on the capability of the area to produce food for its residents. This was exacerbated by myriad other factors discussed previously. For example, demands on wood and fuel resources were intense. After the construction of Monk’s Mound, a massive palisade was built around the central portion of Cahokia, and excavations have shown it was then rebuilt at least three times. A number of additional palisades have been discovered at other sites near Cahokia, although on a smaller scale (Dalan 2003). These, too, show evidence of being rebuilt. Furthermore, a number of burnt dwellings were located. This provides ample evidence for both internal and external strife, all factors in the decline of Cahokia, not to mention the increased stress on the environment. Archaeologists and anthropologists have concluded that the residents of Cahokia used a great deal of wood. Mississippian people built structures known as wall-trench buildings, and each of those used an average of 80 posts. If a household of five people had two structures each, a population of 25,000 residents would have used at least 800,000 wall posts. A tree certainly would have provided more than one post, but they were also used for roofing, furniture, watercraft, palisade construction, and fuel. Finally, untold numbers of trees were cut down to make room for crop production. All of these factors impacted the environment greatly, especially when it appears that the region did not have all that much wood to begin with. The terrain of the American Bottom is a mixture of habitats. These include lakes, ponds, creeks, floodplains, and prairies. Prairies may have occupied half the land. Trees were largely restricted due to topographical reasons. A variety of trees grew in the region, including oak, hickory, cottonwood, willow, elm, ash, sycamore, mulberry, and walnut. Experts estimated the total number of trees in the region at approximately 600,000. The best woods in the region for building and fuel would have been rather rapidly used up in the earlier stages of Cahokia’s development, leaving those who came later to make due with what was left. Water issues hastened the decline of Cahokia as well. The overexploitation of wood created many issues the inhabitants could not have been aware of. Due to its location, Cahokia would have experienced serious flooding after each heavy rain. Water runoff would have increased, and the land’s capacity to absorb excess water would have decreased. In addition, the flooding would have been devastating to the cornfields that the inhabitants planted in the bottomland area around the settlement. Cahokia relied quite heavily on the production of



that crop, and its reduction and eventual ruin would have been catastrophic for its residents. The agricultural capacity of Cahokia was destroyed and literally smothered during the later years of its occupation. The fields surrounding it were sloping, and the higher woodlands in the area had been disturbed too rapidly for natural replacement. With every rainstorm came more heavily eroded surfaces. One side effect of that was the deposit of less and less fertile soil in the cornfields. Furthermore, Cahokia Creek and its smaller tributaries were changed into ever widening, yet shallower, channels. The sum of these factors is a higher risk of flooding during the summer, just when the corn crop was growing at its peak. The higher levels of water and the increased amount of poor sediments infiltrating the soil would have resulted in not only flooding, but also large pools of standing water. The soil became saturated, and the crops would have literally suffocated. Finally, the residents would not have been able to rely on game such as deer, because the local population would have felt the effects of environmental degradation as well, and their numbers would have been eradicated. The social and economic factors of these issues were staggering and ultimately insurmountable. The main issue was the decline in crop production and its final failures. Cahokia was in the perfect position to experience the worst effects. It was located downstream and had the largest concentration of residents in the entire area. All of those residents depended heavily upon a reliable harvest. However, they could not and did not foresee the consequences of their actions upon the environment, and as such could not and did not take any preventative measures. Once the severe rate of environmental degradation began, it was too late to stop. Scholars and researchers have uncovered ample evidence to prove both the rapid deterioration in the conditions of both life and the environment around Cahokia, and the fact that the residents of the area reacted to the reality of their situation by abandoning it and starting anew elsewhere. Archaeologists and anthropologists also discovered other events that took place simultaneously with those described above. It appears that many residents of the region decided to move to higher ground within the area, and there was also a general trend of migration back into the interior upland areas. By approximately 1350, the complex community centered at Cahokia had been abandoned. This is long before any of its inhabitants were exposed to European pathogens, as has been postulated by some scholars. There was no one single cause of Cahokia’s abandonment. Rather, it was a confluence of causes, all described above. The three main factors were the size and concentration of Cahokia’s population, the availability of wood in the region, and the effects of erosion on agricultural capabilities, particularly with regards to corn. Furthermore, the abandonment of Cahokia did not occur overnight. It appears it took between 50 to 100 years, during which time people gradually left. The crisis of Cahokia began during what scholars refer to as the Stirling phase


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(1100–1200). It gradually became worse, and reached a climax during the Moorehead phase (1200–1275). By the end of the Sand Prairie phase (1275– 1350), Cahokia was nearly completely abandoned. References and Further Reading Ambrose, Stanley H., Jane Buikstra, and Harold W. Krueger. ‘‘Status and Gender Differences in Diet at Mound 72, Cahokia, Revealed by Isotopic Analysis of Bone.’’ Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 22 (2003): 217–26. Chappell, Sally A. Kitt. Cahokia: Mirror of the Cosmos. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002. Dalan, Rinita A., et al. Envisioning Cahokia: A Landscape Perspective. DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2003. Woods, William I. ‘‘Population Nucleation, Intensive Agriculture, and Environmental Degradation: The Cahokia Example.’’ Agriculture and Human Values 21 (2004): 255–61. Yerkes, Richard W. ‘‘Bone Chemistry, Body Parts, and Growth Marks: Evaluating Ohio Hopewell and Cahokia Mississippian Seasonality, Subsistence, Ritual, and Feasting.’’ American Antiquity 70, 2 (2005): 241–65. Young, Biloine Whiting, and Melvin L. Fowler. Cahokia: The Great Native American Metropolis. Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2000.


9 Shakespeare’s plays were written by someone other than William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon. PRO Alexander Hugo Schulenburg CON Jeffrey Mifflin

PRO William Shakespeare is universally considered the greatest playwright in the English language and his works are performed and studied the world over, both in their original language and in translation. Based on documentary evidence from both his lifetime and the decade after his death, the author William Shakespeare is commonly identified with William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon, England, a local trader and property investor who was also involved as a shareholder and actor in the London theater company that performed most of Shakespeare’s plays. However, doubts about the authorship of Shakespeare’s works were first raised in the late 18th century by the Rev. James Wilmot, rector of Barton-onthe-Heath, to the north of Stratford, who was puzzled by the lack of local references in his works. Since the mid-19th century, those doubts have grown steadily and have resulted in a veritable library of books on the Shakespeare authorship question. Doubters have even included notable actors like John Gielgud, Derek Jacobi, Jeremy Irons, and Michael York. Among the academic establishment, however, the Shakespeare authorship debate is almost entirely frowned upon. Others ask what difference a knowledge of Shakespeare’s true identity makes to his works or to one’s appreciation of them. The authorship question falls into two separate though consequential parts: Are there reasonable grounds for doubting that William Shakespeare of Stratford was the author of Shakespeare’s plays?, and if so, Who is more likely to have been their true author? John Michell’s (1996) Who Wrote Shakespeare? is highly recommended as a balanced, single volume introduction to the debate. A brief word on terminology is in order. The claim that William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon was the author of the plays published under his name is usually referred to as the ‘‘orthodox’’ position and its proponents as Stratfordians. Those who question the orthodox position have been referred to pejoratively as heretics, deviationists, and anti-Stratfordians, but usually refer to themselves with reference to the alternative author they propose, such as the Baconians (who propose Francis Bacon), the Oxfordians (who propose the Earl of Oxford), and the 191 © 2011 ABC-Clio. All Rights Reserved.

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Marlovians (who propose Christopher Marlowe). There are also the Groupists who propose that the works were a collaborative effort. In order to distinguish William Shakespeare of Stratford from the author of the works, anti-Stratfordians sometimes spell his name Shakspere, the spelling he used himself, while referring to the author as Shake-speare, a hyphenated version found on some editions of his work. For ease of reading, this chapter will distinguish between William Shakespeare the author and Shakespeare of Stratford the man. References to ‘Shakespeare’s works’ are always to be read as to the author. Shakespeare of Stratford’s Biography A William Shakespeare (at that time spelled Shakspere) was baptized on April 26, 1564, in Stratford-upon-Avon, England. He was the son of a local glove maker, who in later years, held the office of bailiff of Stratford. William Shakespeare’s adult life was divided between Stratford, where he had a wife and children and was a local tradesman and property investor, and London, where he had a share in a theater company, the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, for whom he also acted, and where he had property interests in two theaters, the Globe and the Blackfriars. Shakespeare always maintained business interest in Stratford, where he died on April 23, 1616. He is buried in Stratford’s Holy Trinity Church. A monument near his reputed burial place shows him holding a quill and paper. The documentary evidence pertaining to Shakespeare of Stratford’s family, property interests, and involvement in court cases is reasonably extensive, whereas evidence of his life in the London theater is rather meager. Explicit contemporary evidence that Shakespeare of Stratford was a playwright is nonexistent. Listing all 12 known references to his career in the theater may go some way to explaining why there is indeed an issue over whether the Shakespeare of Stratford, who was a man of the theater, was also William Shakespeare the playwright: March 15, 1595: Shakespeare is paid, alongside William Kempe and Richard Burbage, fellow actors in the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, for performing two comedies before the queen. 1598: Named as one of the principal ‘‘comedians’’ acting in Ben Jonsons’s Every Man in His Humour. 1599: Named as one of four lessees of the site of the Globe Theatre, and named elsewhere as being in occupation, along with others, of the Globe. 1602: Named in a diary entry in connection with his fellow actor Richard Burbage. 1603: Named as one of the principal ‘‘tragedians’’ acting in Ben Jonson’s Sejanus, and also named in a royal permit authorizing him and his associates to perform plays.


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1604: Named in accounts as one of several actors who received scarlet cloth to provide a uniform for the royal procession through London. 1608: Named with Burbage in a document pertaining to the transfer of the Globe Theatre. 1613: Paid, together with Burbage, for the design and manufacture of a shield to be carried in a tournament. 1615: Named in a court case as a shareholder in the Globe and in property in Blackfriars. 1616: In his Last Will and Testament Shakespeare of Stratford makes small bequests to John Heminge, Richard Burbage, and Henry Condell, all of the King’s (formerly the Lord Chamberlain’s) Men. While this evidence leaves no doubt that Shakespeare of Stratford had been involved in the London theater, none of these contemporary references connect him with playwriting. Although a number of plays and poems were published under the name of William Shakespeare during that time, and although a number of contemporary writers referred to a poet and playwright by the name of William Shakespeare, there is no direct evidence linking the two. That is, there is no evidence from Shakespeare of Stratford’s lifetime that says that he was also the writer William Shakespeare. Instead, the principal evidence linking the two is the posthumous collection of Shakespeare’s plays published in London in 1623 (seven years after Shakespeare of Stratford’s death) and titled Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies. This volume, commonly called the First Folio, contained 36 plays, some of which had been published previously, either anonymously or under Shakespeare’s name, but some of which are published therein for the first time (Shakespeare 1623). The volume was apparently collated by John Heminge and Henry Condell, two of Shakespeare of Stratford’s former theater colleagues, who also wrote a preface for it. Moreover, in one of the several other commendatory poems to the volume, the author Shakespeare is referred to by the playwright Ben Jonson as ‘‘sweet swan of Avon’’ (that is, of the river Avon, that runs through Stratford-upon-Avon), while another, by Leonard Digges, speaks of Shakespeare’s ‘‘Stratford monument’’ (presumably referring to his church memorial). Given the above, what reasons could there possibly be for questioning the identification of William Shakespeare the playwright with Shakespeare of Stratford? Arguably the main reason for doubting that Shakespeare of Stratford was the author of Shakespeare’s work is that the life and character of Shakespeare of Stratford, as they appear from the documentary record, do not match the life and character that most expect the author of Shakespeare’s works to have had. That is, Shakespeare of Stratford does not appear to have the background, education, life experience, or outlook that would most likely have enabled and inspired him to



write the works of William Shakespeare. After all, as John Southworth has pointed out, ‘‘Shakespeare was able to mould whatever material came his way to an aesthetic expression of his own unique experience of life and of the world around him, or to do so in words that at their finest and best reach to universal truths’’ (2000: 7). Anti-Stratfordians do not necessarily claim that someone of Shakespeare’s humble social and educational background could not have written the plays. Indeed, they propose someone of his background might well have acquired the necessary knowledge, either formally or informally, as well as the life experience on which his works draw, but there is no evidence that Shakespeare of Stratford ever did. Despite this, for some anti-Stratfordians only a member of the aristocracy could match the characteristics they expect of Shakespeare, a claim that Stratfordians condemn as outright snobbery. Shakespeare of Stratford evidently did not shine at whichever school he may have attended, and as it is known for certain that he did not attend university, he cannot, as a pupil, have been singled out for the kind of patronage that enabled others of his background to attend university, such as the playwright Christopher Marlowe, his exact contemporary, who went to Cambridge University, but who had come from a very similar family background, being the son of a shoemaker. Instead, what can be gleaned about Shakespeare of Stratford from the documentary record of his activities in Stratford and in London provides a consistent picture of a small-town businessman with material and social ambitions, who showed little interest in education. He does not appear to have been known locally as an author, and there is no record of his family ever having shown any interest in or awareness of his supposed literary fame (no copy of the First Folio, at the very least, is known to have been owned by them; in fact, no books belonging to Shakespeare of Stratford have ever been found). There are also striking contrasts in the apparently rather conventional outlook of Shakespeare of Stratford and the outlook reflected in Shakespeare’s plays. In Henry VI, Part II (Act 4, Scene 7), for example, the rebel Jack Cade accuses Lord Say of having ‘‘corrupted the youth of the realm in erecting a grammar-school,’’ to which Lord Say replies: [. . .] ignorance is the curse of God Knowledge the wing wherewith we fly to heaven. (Craig 1891)

Shakespeare of Stratford, despite his wealth, is certainly not guilty of Cade’s charge, as he made no educational bequests, either during his lifetime or in his will, and at least one of his daughters was illiterate. By contrast, Edward Alleyn, the first great actor of the Elizabethan era, went as far as founding Dulwich College in London, which thrives to this day.


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Given that the available material on the life of Shakespeare of Stratford is insufficient for full-length biographies, his biographers have resorted to writing primarily about the time and world of Shakespeare (both the man from Stratford and the author), rather than about the man himself, although the plays and poems are often drawn on to speculate about changes in Shakespeare’s opinions and emotional life. Yet, there is nothing in the known life of Shakespeare of Stratford to explain the generally accepted developmental pattern of his work, such as his final period with its emphasis on redemption, reconciliation, and hope. As Brenda James and William Rubinstein have stressed, there is a ‘‘complete lack of any nexus between [Shakespeare of Stratford’s] life and the evolution and development of the plays’’ (2005: 27). Last but not least, the undocumented ‘‘lost years’’ of Shakespeare of Stratford between 1585 (when his twins were born) and 1595 (when he is listed as a member of the Lord Chamberlain’s Men) allow his biographers room to speculate on how those years may have been spent, usually with a view to explaining how the man from Stratford acquired the prodigious knowledge and experience displayed in his work. These lost years have thus variously been claimed to have been spent as a law clerk, a private tutor, a soldier, and so forth, or even several or all of the foregoing. Nor is absence of evidence treated as indicating that something did not happen, but it is instead relied upon for stating that something may have happened, as there is nothing to say that it didn’t. In the absence of circumstantial evidence in favor of these assertions, such speculations are, however, wholly unwarranted and bad historiography. More crucially, assuming that Shakespeare of Stratford did indeed acquire the relevant knowledge and life experience, there is nothing about his documented activities (excepting the plays and poems, if they are his), which would indicate that he was the man who had grown from being the son of a small town tradesmen into the dramatist whose extraordinary mind and imagination one can encounter in his plays. One particularly strange attempt by Stratfordians to dismiss such arguments about the lack of Shakespeare of Stratford’s learning and life experience is in effect to denigrate Shakespeare’s output, claiming that in his own time Shakespeare was viewed merely ‘‘as a writer for the common class’’ (Matus 1994: 290). As for the mismatch between Shakespeare of Stratford’s life and his supposed writings, it has been argued correctly that Shakespeare’s plays and poems not only drew on existing works, but that his writing lay firmly within the literary and theatrical conventions of his time, thus the history plays and the vogue for Italian settings. Shakespeare therefore emerges as little more than a brilliant craftsman, who wrote near formulaic plays as a means of making a living. This is in stark contrast with traditional scholarship on Christopher Marlowe, who is generally portrayed as a great innovator in the field of English drama. Indeed, Stratfordians have discussed at length the debt that Shakespeare’s output owes to Marlowe.



Shakespeare the Poet and Playwright Despite what Stratfordians may claim, no contemporary references to Shakespeare of Stratford identify him definitively as a playwright. Although a ‘‘William Shakespeare’’ is referred to as a playwright and poet, such references are of little value in themselves, as they establish no connection with Shakespeare of Stratford. For example, Francis Meres writes in his Palladis Tamia in 1598 that ‘‘As Plautus and Seneca are accounted the best for Comedy and Tragedy among the Latines: so Shakespeare among the English is the most excellent in both kinds Known as the ‘ Cobbe portrait,’’ this painting for the stage’’ This, however, only by an unknown artist is believed to be the shows that Meres knew plays to have only portrait of William Shakespeare painted been written under the name William during his lifetime. The painting was unveiled Shakespeare, whoever may be hiding behind that name. The same applies to in London in March 2009. (AP Images) entries in an account book of the Master of the Revels, which, alongside some entries of performances at court of several Shakespeare plays, list a Shaxberd in a column headed ‘‘The poets which mayd the plaies.’’ In turn, records of payments to Shakespeare and his fellow actors for the performance of plays reveal nothing about their authorship. Only one reference is usually held up as showing definitively that Shakespeare of Stratford the actor was also a playwright. In his Groatsworth of Wit, published in 1592, the playwright Robert Greene refers to an actor and playwright as ‘‘Shake-scene,’’ which has been taken by most orthodox scholars as a reference to Shakespeare of Stratford. It is also supposedly the first time Shakespeare is alluded to in the context of the London theater and literary scene (surprisingly, Shakespeare of Stratford, who most orthodox scholars argue began his career in acting, does not appear on any lists of actors prior to 1598). Instead, there are good grounds for arguing that the reference is to the actor Edward Alleyn, rather than to Shakespeare of Stratford. Notwithstanding the popularity and unrivaled quality of Shakespeare’s plays, neither Shakespeare of Stratford nor anyone by the name of William Shakespeare is known to have moved in the courtly and literary circles, such as Raleigh’s, in which his works and evident intellectual qualities would have been


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appreciated. Instead, Shakespeare of Stratford appears to have moved only within the circle of his fellow actors and among the people of his hometown. Was this merely because Shakespeare of Stratford was low born and had no university education, although he eventually attained the status of a gentleman, or because he did not in fact possess any of the intellectual qualities evident in the plays and poems of Shakespeare? Moreover, the death of Shakespeare of Stratford passed unnoticed by the literary and theatrical establishment, and the only bequests in his will to anyone associated with the world of the theater were to three of his fellow actors: John Heminge, Richard Burbage, and Henry Condell. Most notably, there is no bequest to Ben Jonson, the playwright who speaks so highly of his friend Shakespeare in the First Folio. Given the doubts about Shakespeare of Stratford, a large number of individuals have over time been proposed as the true authors of Shakespeare’s works. The following sections will examine in brief the kind of evidence that writers have been looking for in support of their respective authorship contenders and will present examples of the evidence for some of them. Searching for Evidence As weak as the case for Shakespeare of Stratford may be, there is of course no direct evidence in support of one or another of the alternative authorship candidates, such as a signed manuscript, although some have argued that hidden ciphers in Shakespeare’s works reveal their true author. Those claims have received particular ridicule by Stratfordians, mostly deservedly so. In their search for evidence, Oxfordians, Marlovians, and others have hence had to focus on circumstantial evidence in support of their chosen candidate. Such evidence is usually sought in the autobiographical aspects of Shakespeare’s works, in their display of personal knowledge and experience, as well as in similarities in the style and themes of Shakespeare’s works and that of a particular authorship candidate. Ciphers and Cryptic Clues Supporters of several candidates, particularly of Francis Bacon, have placed particular emphasis on the presence of ciphers or cryptic clues in Shakespeare’s work, which they claim reveal the true author of those works. These are also said to be found in the works of some of Shakespeare’s contemporaries, who apparently knew of the authorship secret. Oxfordians have, for example, suggested that the cryptic dedication of the 1609 edition of Troilus and Cressida, ‘‘A never writer, to an ever reader,’’ is a play on Oxford’s name, E. Vere (Edward de Vere). They have argued the same with reference to the word ‘‘every’’ in the line from Sonnet 76 that ‘‘every word doth almost tell my name.’’



Hidden Messages The crypto-analysis techniques used by the anti-Stratfordians have been used over the centuries to attempt to extract secret messages from the Bible, among other texts. As early as the 13th century, rabbis and Jewish mystics were using such techniques to uncover revelations in the Old Testament, and more recently, Michael Drosnin’s best-selling Bible Code attracted a great deal of sensational attention. Skeptics point out that we privilege the random occurrences we find meaningful, and so would attach more import to the word ‘ bacon’’ being ‘ discovered’’ in a Shakespearean text than the word ‘ pork.’’ To demonstrate the essential meaninglessness of such findings, Australian television host John Safran used a similar process to point out ‘ hidden messages’’ about the September 11 attacks in the lyrics of Vanilla Ice.

As Elizabethans were fond of ciphers and word puzzles, however, the suggestion that ciphers and other cryptic information may exist in Shakespeare’s works cannot be dismissed out of hand. Autobiography Whereas most Stratfordians have over time come to deny that any of Shakespeare’s works are autobiographical, not least because of the insurmountable mismatch between those works and the documented life of Shakespeare of Stratford, anti-Stratfordians have placed considerable emphasis on what they believe to be the autobiographical aspects of Shakespeare’s writings. Oxfordians have arguably done the most work in this field, scouring the plays and poems for matches with events in their candidate’s life. Oxford is hence noted to have lost £3,000 to a London merchant named Michael Lok (or Lock), just as Antonio, in The Merchant of Venice, posts bond for 3,000 ducats with Shylock. When Jacques is told in As You Like It (Act 4, Scene 1), that ‘‘You have sold your own lands to see other men’s,’’ this is just what Oxford once did to finance his extended stay on the continent. The problem with autobiography as evidence of authorship, however, is that such evidence is only convincing if the autobiographical references or allusions pertain to information that would only have been available to the author. If someone else had access to that same information, perhaps because it was the subject of court or tavern gossip, one may simply be looking at biography, not autobiography. Even as biography, such information is still of interest, however, as it limits the field of authorship candidates to those who moved in the circles in which the relevant biographical information could have been obtained. Would Shakespeare of Stratford, for instance, have heard of the Earl of Oxford’s marital troubles? Might it have been the subject of general gossip or would he have had to move in aristocratic circles?


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Another area of autobiographical evidence is the question of what Shakespeare’s works tell us about the author’s outlook on life, society, politics, and so forth. This has been discussed by Stratfordians as much as by anti-Stratfordians, and there is little agreement on the matter. Was the author of Shakespeare’s works a secret Catholic or not, was he bisexual, did he look down on the common class, and so forth? In the absence of any agreement on these issues, the answers to these questions can easily be made to fit the known views of any of the alternative authorship candidates. Oxford is thus said to match Shakespeare’s aristocratic outlook, while Marlowe’s supposed homosexuality is said to match the sexual orientation of the author of the Sonnets. Personal Experience Although Shakespeare’s works may or may not feature autobiographical references or allusions, they are usually said to be based at least in part on personal experience, whether of hunting, seamanship, the law, or life at court, although there has been extensive debate on whether all such knowledge may instead have been derived from hearsay or books. Arguably, the principal area of investigation has been whether the author of Shakespeare’s works had traveled extensively both in the British Isles and on the continent, or whether information on the settings of his play, whether in Scotland, Denmark, or Italy, was derived solely from travelers’ tales and books. That research has mostly been independent of the merits of any particular authorship candidate, and even Stratfordians have suggested that Shakespeare of Stratford may have traveled to Italy during his ‘‘lost years.’’ There is indeed ample evidence of an acquaintance with Italy beyond mere book learning or secondhand accounts. For example, in Othello (Act 1, Scene 1) Shakespeare writes of ‘‘special officers of night,’’ showing knowledge that in Venice there was a special night police called ‘‘Signori di notte,’’ while in The Merchant of Venice (Act 3, Scene 4) Shakespeare employs the local Italian term traghetto, when he writes ‘‘Unto the traject, to the common ferry / Which trades to Venice.’’ Also, details found in Shakespeare’s Venus and Adonis are derived from a version of Titian’s painting of Venus and Adonis that Shakespeare could only have seen in Italy. Lastly, Shakespeare was clearly influenced by the Italian comedia dell’arte, as is evident especially in Love’s Labour’s Lost. Oxford, for one, is known to have spoken French and Italian and to have traveled extensively on the continent. Although some writers claim apparent geographic errors in Shakespeare’s works as evidence that he had never traveled at all, others have shown that such apparent errors can be explained after a little research. Shakespeare consequently did not err when he places a harbor in Verona, as that city was located on an extensive system of inland shipping canals, which were essential to regional transport.



Style From the perspective of literary rather than historical analysis, the comparison of Shakespeare’s style with the works of other writers is one of the most interesting areas of investigation, but also the most difficult for anti-Stratfordians to tackle. Oxfordians have compared letters and poems in Oxford’s own name with the works of Shakespeare and have found notable similarities, while explaining the apparent difference in the quality of the poems by reference to their youthfulness, as opposed to Oxford’s mature works as Shakespeare. Oxford’s The Rejected Lover, for example, has been compared to Shakespeare’s Lucrece. Marlovians have arguably made the strongest case out of all the candidates where the question of style is concerned. While the claim that Marlowe eventually wrote under Shakespeare’s name is dismissed by those scholars who detect a considerable difference in thematic emphasis between the two writers, it is unintentionally supported by those orthodox scholars of Marlowe who see a thematic progression in the works of what they believe to be by two different writers. A. W. Verity (quoted in Pinksen 2008: 6), for example, argued that in Richard III ‘‘Shakespeare was writing altogether on the lines of Marlowe,’’ while Charles Norman commented that ‘‘much that Shakespeare was to do is found in [Marlowe’s] Edward II in epitome, and all of it is shadowed forth in verse not even he surpassed’’ (quoted in Pinksen 2008: 7). Although such scholars agree that Shakespeare’s works surpassed Marlowe’s, then if Shakespeare was Marlowe, this would be no more than a result of his development as a writer, something that is already evident from those works published under Marlowe’s own name. Stylometric analysis has provided some interesting, albeit conflicting, information on the authorship question. An independent study by T. C. Mendenhall in 1901 into the word length frequencies of different writers demonstrated that frequencies found in texts by Shakespeare and Marlowe matched each other exactly, while a recent analysis by T. Merriam of preferred common words shows eight Shakespeare plays to have an affinity with Marlowe’s works that goes beyond mere influence. Not surprisingly, other studies, employing different stylometric tests, disagree with such findings. Future work in this field will undoubtedly contribute to the debate. The Principal Alternative Authorship Candidates Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, is currently the most popular of the alternative candidates. New books about de Vere are published regularly, and in both the United States and the United Kingdom, there are societies actively promoting his authorship. Edward de Vere was born in about 1550 and was educated first privately, then at Cambridge and at Gray’s Inn. Oxford traveled on the continent from 1575 to


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1576, mainly in France and Italy. Oxford’s first wife was Lord Burghley’s daughter, Anne Cecil, with whom he had two daughters. Well-known scandals included his quarrel in 1579 with Sir Philip Sidney, which nearly resulted in a duel, and his affair in 1581 with Anne Vavasour, one of the queen’s maids of honor. In 1920 Thomas Looney identified Oxford as possessing the very background, learning, and experiences that he assumed the author of Shakespeare’s works would have possessed, including classical learning and knowledge of law, music, Italy, and aristocratic habits and sports (Ogburn 1988). Some Oxfordians even claim Oxford as a leading figure in the Renaissance in England. Notably, two of his uncles, Lord Sheffield and Lord Surrey, were poets, while his uncle and former tutor Arthur Golding had translated Ovid’s Metamorphoses (1567), on which Shakespeare’s works frequently draw. Oxford was also patron of a company of players and was acknowledged in his lifetime as a poet and playwright. Oxford’s extant poems under his own name, as well as his letters, are used to support claims for his authorship of Shakespeare’s works (also, a quarter of the verses highlighted in a Bible said to have belonged to Oxford relate to biblical verses found in Shakespeare’s plays). Moreover, Shakespeare’s plays are said to be full of allusions to events and characters in Oxford’s personal life, and Oxford’s coat of arms as Viscount Bolebec shows a lion brandishing a broken spear. From 1586 onward, Oxford was awarded a grant of £1,000 per annum from Queen Elizabeth, the second highest such annuity, which Oxfordians claim was to provide him with the financial relief necessary to allow him to dedicate himself entirely to his writing, though the evidence is to the contrary. Oxford’s death in 1604 is said to coincide with the end of any new publications by Shakespeare, at least until the First Folio of 1623, which was dedicated, among others, to Oxford’s son-in-law Philip Herbert, Earl of Montgomery. Although the conventional dating of Shakespeare’s plays, based on circumstantial evidence, assigns several to the years after 1604, Oxfordians claim that the orthodox dating is flawed. In its place, they have suggested different dates for most of Shakespeare’s plays, some, such as A Midsummer Nights Dream, as early as 1573 (well before Marlowe’s revolution of blank verse drama). Although Oxford did possess many of the qualities that anti-Stratfordians look for in the true Shakespeare, critics of the case for Oxford have argued that Oxfordians take many aspects of Oxford’s life out of context in order to make them fit a hypothetical biography of Oxford as Shakespeare. Moreover, his public recognition and acclaim as a poet and playwright make it difficult to see why he had to resort to a pseudonym. Christopher Marlowe Willburn Gleason Zeigler first proposed Christopher Marlowe, the poet, playwright, and government spy, as an authorship candidate in 1895. Despite the comparative



soundness of the case made for him since then, Marlovians have been losing out to the Oxfordians in making their case better known. Marlowe, the ‘‘professional’’ candidate for the authorship of Shakespeare’s work, was born in 1564, the same year as Shakespeare, and came from a similar background, being the son of a Canterbury shoemaker. In 1578 Marlowe won a scholarship to the King’s School, Canterbury, and in 1581 he matriculated at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, also on a scholarship. While at Cambridge, Marlowe was recruited into Elizabeth I’s secret service, which was then run by Sir Francis Walsingham and Lord Burghley, and for whom he worked under cover in Holland and possibly France. Marlowe’s first ventures into poetry, most likely while still at Cambridge, were translations into English of Ovid’s Amores and Lucan’s Pharsalia. His first play, Dido, Queen of Carthage, was written in about 1586, and this was followed, probably in order, by Tamburlaine the Great (Parts 1 and 2), Doctor Faustus, The Jew of Malta, Edward II, and The Massacre at Paris, all by 1592, although some were only published after his apparent death on May 30, 1593. Marlowe also wrote some of the most popular poems of the period, The Passionate Shepherd to His Love and Hero and Leander. Some orthodox scholars also think he had a hand in Shakespeare’s Henry VI plays and in Titus Andronicus. Marlowe’s literary patron was Thomas Walsingham, and he was probably a member of Sir Walter Raleigh’s circle. It appears that Marlowe was far from conventional in his outlook on life, and on May 20, 1593, Marlowe was arrested at his patron’s house following accusations of atheism made against him. He had also been implicated by his fellow playwright Thomas Kyd, possibly under torture. Marlowe was brought before the Privy Council but released on bail pending further inquiries. He is officially said to have died in a fight 10 days after his arrest and a few days before the first ever appearance in print of Shakespeare’s name. While Marlowe’s apparent murder in 1593 should provide an even greater obstacle to his authorship claims than Oxford’s early death in 1604, this is not necessarily so, as evidence of his death is far from conclusive (Farey 2005). The official inquest into Marlowe’s death reveals that Marlowe had dined and spent the day at a private house, along with three other men, who are now known to have been connected either to the Elizabethan secret service or to Marlowe’s patron Thomas Walsingham. Toward the end of that day, Marlowe supposedly became violent in a dispute about who was to settle the bill (or ‘‘reckoning’’) and was killed in self-defense by one of his companions, Ingram Frazer. The inquest into his death, before the queen’s coroner, took place two days later. Could it really be a coincidence that when his fellow playwright Kyd had already been arrested and tortured, and when Marlowe is about to be reinterrogated, possibly under torture, that just at that time Marlowe is ‘‘killed’’ by an employee of his patron and his body buried quickly without any independent identification of his corpse? Even orthodox historians doubt the version of


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events as recorded by the inquest, though they suggest that Marlowe was murdered in order to protect some of his associates (possibly Walsingham and Raleigh) from being implicated by him and to spare them embarrassment or even prosecution. Given the individuals involved in such a plot, however, such a scenario does not seem likely on close analysis. Instead, Marlovians suggest that Marlowe’s death was faked, possibly with the aid of his patron, in order to allow him to be spirited away to safety, probably abroad. By pretending that Marlowe had been killed in self-defense, an inquest could be arranged, which would result in an official record of his death, should anyone ever claim in the future that they had seen Marlowe alive. If Marlowe were simply to be assassinated, no such complicated charade would have been required. Marlovians consequently approach the authorship question very differently from other anti-Stratfordians. Quite independent of the Shakespeare authorship question, an analysis of Marlowe’s death leads to the suggestion that he may still have been alive after 1593. This naturally leads to the question what a man of Marlowe’s poetic genius would have done in these circumstances. Marlovians propose that Marlowe would have continued to write, but that his work would henceforth have to be published anonymously or under an assumed name, so as not to endanger those who had helped him escape from England. As it happens, works of Marlowe’s quality and in his style (though one that matured and developed over the years) did indeed continue to appear in print and on stage, but under the name of William Shakespeare, arguably the William Shakespeare of Stratford, who allowed his name to be used and who acted as a play broker of the works supplied to him and his company by Marlowe via intermediaries. Orthodox Shakespeare scholars have always acknowledged that without Marlowe’s groundbreaking work, there would have been no Shakespeare. As stated by the Stratfordian Jonathan Bate (quoted in Pinksen 2008: 12), ‘‘Marlowe did come back from the dead after the Deptford stabbing; his ghost astonishes us as we read and hear the verse of Shakespeare.’’ While the plays that are in Marlowe’s name may show a less accomplished dramatic structure than those ascribed to Shakespeare, this is easily accounted for if one views any such difference as an indication of the development of Marlowe’s work as a whole. And while many Stratfordian scholars like to claim that Marlowe’s work differs considerably from Shakespeare’s in its themes and preoccupations, most orthodox scholars of Marlowe make no such distinctions. For example, Marlowe’s Tamburlaine is said to address, among other issues, ‘‘the division of women’s loyalties in a patriarchal structure, a theme that Shakespeare would later explore at more length in King Lear,’’ while Tamburlaine’s ‘‘combination of stoic fortitude with masochism and vulnerable openness . . . typifies the martial heroes of Shakespeare’s Roman plays’’ (Chedgzoy in Cheney 2004: 249, 258). In fact, orthodox scholars have long pointed out that Shakespeare’s work echoes Marlowe’s work throughout. John Bakeless (quoted in Pinksen 2008: 10)



argues that ‘‘Shakespeare quoted Marlowe or alludes to his plays repeatedly . . . practically the whole of Marlowe’s work as it is know today.’’ In Hamlet, Act 2, Scene 2, for example, Shakespeare alludes at length to Marlowe’s Dido, Queen of Carthage. Given that Marlowe’s plays contain numerous allusions to his own writings, is it not remarkable that when Shakespeare’s plays allude to contemporary works they do so predominantly to Marlowe’s? In As You Like It (Act 3, Scene 5) Shakespeare even quotes a line from Marlowe’s poem Hero and Leander. Shakespeare’s work is generally said to culminate in The Tempest, whose main character, Prospero, a reworking of Marlowe’s Faust character, spends 12 years stranded on an island. The Tempest was first published in the First Folio, where it appears before all other plays, as if it were an introduction to Shakespeare’s work as a whole. No less an orthodox scholar than A. L. Rowse has commented: ‘‘Marlowe’s historic achievement was to marry great poetry to the drama; his was the originating genius. William Shakespeare never forgot him; in his penultimate, valedictory play, The Tempest, he is still echoing Marlowe’s phrases’’ (quoted in Pinksen 2008: 7). One downside of the Marlovian theory, however, is that it does little to fill the biographical void, which many long for with a view to enhancing our understanding of the plays, as nothing is known of Marlowe after his supposed death. Whereas the proponents of Oxford and others write Shakespeare biographies based on what is already known about the lives of their candidate, Marlovians are only able to speculate about Marlowe’s ‘‘posthumous’’ life from the generally accepted developmental stages of the plays and from the story found in the Sonnets. Others Out of the remaining more than 25 authorship candidates for which a case has been made at one time or another, arguably the most prominent are Francis Bacon, William Stanley (the Earl of Derby), Roger Manners (the Earl of Rutland), Sir Henry Neville, and one of several women, Mary Sidney Herbert. Mention should also be made of the Groupist theory, which suggests that Shakespeare’s works were a collaborative effort by any number of individuals, possibly led by either Bacon or Oxford or Mary Sidney. That theory has some small merit, insofar as playwriting in the Elizabethan period was indeed at times a collaborative effort (even Stratfordians acknowledge that Shakespeare had worked with others, such as Fletcher). It is inconceivable, however, that a large number of individuals could have been responsible for Shakespeare’s works and been able to keep that collaboration a secret. Some Poems and Plays in the Light of the Authorship Debate One reason that anti-Stratfordians give in defense of the authorship debate is that all of Shakespeare’s works pose historical and literary problems that cannot easily


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be explained if one assumes they were written by Shakespeare of Stratford. Some problems relating to two works, Hamlet and the Sonnets, are outlined below. Hamlet Hamlet, which was first performed by 1602, is considered to be Shakespeare’s most autobiographical play. Among the many autobiographical aspects identified by Oxfordians is that just as Hamlet’s mother Gertrude remarried with ‘‘unseemely haste,’’ so did Oxford’s mother. The character of Polonius is likewise said to be a caricature of Lord Burghley’s, whose ward Oxford had been, while the verbose letters of Polonius make fun of Burghley’s equally longwinded letters to the queen. Hamlet’s killing of Polonius, who was spying on him from behind a tapestry, is apparently based on a similar event in which Oxford killed a man. Elizabeth I’s resistance to Oxford’s request for permission to travel abroad may be echoed in Hamlet (Act 1, Scene 2), when the king tells Hamlet: It is most retrograde to our desire; And we beseech you, bend you to remain Here, in the cheer and comfort of our eye, Our chiefest courtier, cousin, and our son. (Craig 1891)

Oxford was indeed Elizabeth’s Lord Great Chamberlain and England’s premier earl. Marlovians, on the other hand, point to Hamlet’s speech to the players at court (Act 2, Scene 2), which alludes to Marlowe’s earliest play Dido, Queen of Carthage, which was not printed until 1594. I heard thee speak me a speech once, but it was never acted; Or, if it was, not above once; for the play, I remember, pleased not the million; ‘twas caviare to the general: but it was . . . an excellent play, well digested in the scenes, set down with as much modesty as cunning. . . . One speech in it I chiefly loved; ‘twas neas’ tale to Dido. (Craig 1891)

Although Hamlet subsequently does not actually quote Marlowe’s play, he echoes its content and style. What is intriguing about this passage is that Shakespeare (speaking through Hamlet) is not only familiar with the fact that Dido was not a success, but that he defends the play in terms only its author, Marlowe, would. The Sonnets Shake-speares Sonnets, a collection of 155 short poems first published in 1609, have not only baffled orthodox scholars, they are also arguably the key text in



the authorship debate. As orthodox scholars themselves used to claim, the Sonnets appear to be Shakespeare’s most personal work. F. J. Furnivall commented in 1877, ‘‘no one can understand Shakespeare who does not hold that his Sonnets are autobiographical, and that they explain the depths of the soul of the Shakespeare who wrote the plays’’ (quoted in Pinksen 2008: 93). Similarly, F. S. Boas argued in 1896, ‘‘it is inconceivable that such intensity of passion as the Sonnets reveal should spring from no solid basis of fact’’ (quoted in Pinksen 2008: 93). Given the lack of any demonstrable link between Shakespeare of Stratford’s life and the Sonnets, orthodox scholars nowadays consider the mystery of the Sonnets either unsolvable (as they dare not tackle the authorship issue) or consider them mere literary fancies. Unlike orthodox scholars, who have hence admitted defeat in their attempts to link the Sonnets with any known events or characters in the life of Shakespeare of Stratford, the proponents of alternative candidates have fared considerably better. It may be for this reason that Stratfordians writing on the authorship issue, such as Irvin Matus, avoid the issue of the Sonnets altogether. It has been argued in support of Oxford’s authorship of the Sonnets that in their dedication they are stated to be the work of ‘‘our ever-living poet,’’ everliving being a phrase used only of the dead, and that Oxford had died in 1604, five years before the Sonnets were published. Moreover, the ‘‘ever’’ in ‘‘everliving’’ is considered a barely disguised rendering of E. Vere, Edward de Vere. A similar word play on Oxford’s name can be found in Sonnet 76, which Oxfordians claim is the most direct cryptic clue to Oxford’s authorship: Why write I still all one, ever the same, And keep invention in a noted weed, That every word doth almost tell my name, Showing their birth, and where they did proceed? (Craig 1891)

‘‘Ever’’ the same, and ‘‘every word doth almost tell my name’’ are hence said to confirm Edward de Vere’s authorship by playing on his name. Those lines are generally seen by anti-Stratfordians as confirmation that the author’s identity was hidden behind a pseudonym (why would every word otherwise ‘‘almost’’ tell his name, when the author’s name is supposedly featured on the title page?). As for the first 17 Sonnets, there is almost universal agreement among orthodox scholars that these were composed as a commission from Lord Burghley with a view to encouraging Henry Wriothesley, the young Earl of Southampton, to marry. Both Oxfordians and Marlovians hence rightly wonder why Burghley would have approached the then apparently unknown and untried Shakespeare, when Oxford and Marlowe were well known to him and when both, according to their respective supporters, would have been the obvious choice to supply such poems?


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Unlike the Oxfordians, proponents of Marlowe, however, are the only ones who have succeeded in finding a reasonably coherent and autobiographical explanation for the Sonnets. Marlovians have, for example, highlighted a sequence they call the sonnets of exile and anonymity, Sonnets 25–34, 36, 37, 39, 43–52, 56, 60, 61, 71, 72, 75, 76, 81, 97–99, 109, 113, 114, and 125. It is only in the light of the accusations leveled at Marlowe, and in the light of his faked death and exile, that those sonnets make any sense. Only Marlowe, who was supposedly buried at Deptford, could write in Sonnet 72: My name be buried where my body is, And live no more to shame nor me nor you . . .,

while commenting in Sonnet 121: ’Tis better to be vile than vile esteem’d. . . .

These sentiments also appear in Sonnet 29: When in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes I all alone beweep my outcast state, And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries, And look upon myself, and curse my fate. . . . (Craig 1891)

There is nothing in Shakespeare of Stratford’s documented life that even gives a hint of the disgrace that befell the writer of those sonnets. Interestingly, Shakespeare’s works are filled with characters who need to disguise themselves and who suffer exile and banishment. The author’s personal anguish is probably reflected in Romeo’s declaration (Romeo and Juliet, Act 3, Scene 3): banished is banish’d from the world, And world’s exile is death. Then ‘banished’ Is death mis-term’d. (Craig 1891)

Lastly, Sonnet 81 offers important reflections on writing and fame, which are in stark contrast to what we know of Shakespeare of Stratford: From hence your memory death cannot take, Although in me each part will be forgotten. Your name from hence immortal life shall have, Though I, once gone, to all the world must die: The earth can yield me but a common grave, When you entombed in men’s eyes shall lie.



Your monument shall be my gentle verse, Which eyes not yet created shall o’er-read; (Craig 1891)

As Shakespeare of Stratford is known to have been concerned with his material and social status, he would presumably have delighted in the fame that his written work could bring him. The above lines, however, were clearly written by a man who, despite desiring such fame, knew that these poems would never truly be associated with him, even if the title page proclaimed them as Shake-speare’s Sonnets. The Cover-Up Arguably the most important issues any alternative authorship theory must address are not only why it would have been necessary for the author of Shakespeare’s works to hide his true identity, but also why his true identity had to remain hidden after the author’s death. Considering that many anti-Stratfordians argue that it was known in the relevant circles that Shakespeare of Stratford was not the poet and playwright, it is even more surprising that there is no record, even in private papers, that reveals the possibly ‘‘open secret’’ of that authorship. Anti-Stratfordians have explained the need for secrecy in several ways. Baconians argue that for personal and political reasons, Bacon was unable to acknowledge publicly his poems and plays. Oxfordians and the proponents of other noble candidates likewise claim that as a senior courtier Oxford could not have been seen writing for the public stage, though this does not explain why Oxford would have needed to publish poetical works such as Venus and Adonis, Lucrece, and the Sonnets under a pseudonym. Oxfordians also claim that any records of Oxford’s authorship were destroyed on the orders of Lord Burghley, who had fallen out with his son-in-law over the latter’s treatment of Burghley’s daughter Anne. All these arguments are difficult to sustain, however, and proponents of Bacon, Oxford, and others by far overstate the case for the need to keep their candidate’s authorship a secret, not least posthumously. There was nothing sufficiently dangerous about Bacon’s or any other aristocrat like Oxford’s authorship (or even that of any woman) to merit such lasting secrecy. Only in the case of Marlowe is it easy to see why he and his supporters had sufficient reason to keep his authorship a secret both during and after his lifetime. Considering that Marlowe was a fugitive from the law following his faked death in 1593, there were no circumstances in which Marlowe could ever have resurfaced under his own name, either in the British Isles or abroad. Even after his death, his supporters had to keep his erstwhile survival a secret, so as not to be implicated in his escape. The plays and poems written by Marlowe after 1593 were consequently placed with publishers or with Shakespeare of Stratford, who effectively acted


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as a play broker. This role would have given Shakespeare of Stratford the standing and means to acquire a stake in the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, despite being a newcomer to the world of the London theater, while also allowing him time to pursue his various business interests in his hometown of Stratford. Even assuming that the Lord Chamberlain’s Men suspected that the plays were not by Shakespeare of Stratford, they had nothing to gain from raising the issue. Shakespeare of Stratford even continued to serve as a convenient front man after his death in 1616, and his posthumous role in the coverup was cemented with the 1623 publication of Shakespeare’s collected plays in the First Folio. Conclusion The view that Shakespeare of Stratford was not the author of Shakespeare’s works has gained considerably in popularity in recent decades, yet still struggles against the might of the orthodox Shakespeare industry. Inroads are being made, however. In 2007, for example, Brunel University in London became the first university to offer a postgraduate MA program in Shakespeare authorship studies. A ‘‘Declaration of Reasonable Doubt About the Identity of William Shakespeare,’’ which was launched by the actors Derek Jacobi and Mark Rylance in 2007, has meanwhile attracted a number of academic signatories. Nevertheless, anti-Stratfordian texts are still not being published by any of the major academic publishers or by any of the relevant academic journals. Peer review, meaning peer review by Stratfordians, presumably ensures that antiStratfordian articles, whatever their merits, are kept out of academic journals. Such a Stratfordian ‘‘conspiracy,’’ however, denies anti-Stratfordian scholars the benefits that should come with peer review, which is an essential part of scholarly dialogue. As long as the authorship debate is denied a place within the academic mainstream, scholarship is stifled. Admittedly, anti-Stratfordians have not made it easy for themselves on account of the untrained approach taken by many and the eccentricity of some of their arguments. Under these circumstances, it is easy for Stratfordians to mock anti-Stratfordian arguments. Irvin Matus, for example, in his Shakespeare in Fact, found many key claims against Shakespeare or in favor of one or another candidate to be seriously flawed, as they were based on a misreading of the evidence and on superficial understanding of Elizabethan politics, theater, literature, and so forth. Given that the majority of anti-Stratfordian writers are not experts in the Elizabethan period, and may not even be trained historians or literary scholars at that, this is perhaps not surprising, and should serve as a warning to anti-Stratfordians that their arguments have to be grounded in a thorough knowledge of the period. Stratfordians, however, are similarly guilty of ignoring the facts or subjecting them to unwarranted interpretations.



While anti-Stratfordians are in general agreement on the reasons why Shakespeare of Stratford could not have written Shakespeare’s works, there is no agreement on an alternative authorship candidate. Given the prominence of the Oxfordian theory, Stratfordians have attempted to dismiss the authorship debate in general by focusing on the weaknesses of the arguments in favor of that particular candidate, while largely ignoring the reasons that the debate exists at all. Although the true identity of the author of William Shakespeare’s works has not to date been established definitively, the authorship debate should not be excluded from academic debate. Orthodox scholars of Marlowe in particular should be open to exploring the case for Marlowe, which appears to provide the most straightforward answers to the key questions in the Shakespeare authorship debate.

References and Further Reading Anderson, Mark. Shakespeare By Another Name: The Life of Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford, the Man Who Was Shakespeare. New York: Gotham Books, 2005. Blumenfeld, Samuel L. The Marlowe-Shakespeare Connection: A New Study of the Authorship Question. London: McFarland, 2008. Cheney, Patrick, ed. Cambridge Companion to Christopher Marlowe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Craig, W. J., ed. The Complete Works of William Shakespeare. Oxford: Clarendon, 1891. Farey, Peter. ‘‘Marlowe’s Sudden and Fearful End: Self-Defence, Murder, or Fake?’’ Marlowe Society Research Journal 2 (2005): 27–60. Fields, Bertram. Players: The Mysterious Identity of William Shakespeare. New York: HarperCollins, 2005. Greene, Robert. Groatsworth of Wit. London: 1592. James, Brenda, and William D. Rubinstein. The Truth Will Out: Unmasking the Real Shakespeare. London: Pearson, 2005. Matus, Irvin Leigh. Shakespeare in Fact. New York: Continuum, 1994. Meres. Palladis Tamia, or Wit’s Treasury. London, 1598. Michell, John. Who Wrote Shakespeare? New York: Thames and Hudson, 1996. Ogburn, Charlton. The Mystery of William Shakespeare. London: Penguin, 1988. Pinksen, Daryl. Marlowe’s Ghost: The Blacklisting of the Man Who Was Shakespeare. New York: iUniverse, 2008.


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Shakespeare, William. Mr. William Shakespeare’s Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies, Published According to the True Originall Copies. First Folio. London: Isaac Jaggard and Edward Blount, 1623. Southworth, John. Shakespeare the Player: A Life in the Theatre. Stroud: Sutton Publishing, 2000. Wraight, A. D. The Story that the Sonnets Tell. London: Adam Hart, 1994.

CON The debate over whether or not William Shakespeare authored the great plays and other works that have traditionally been attributed to him is relatively recent in its origins. The first systematic challenges issued in the so-called authorship controversy date from the mid-19th century. Many researchers of various stripes and degrees of skill in presenting a case have since jumped into the debate, and dozens of candidates have been put forward as the ‘‘true’’ author of Shakespeare’s works. Francis Bacon, the Earl of Oxford, Christopher Marlowe, the Earl of Rutland, the Earl of Derby, Walter Raleigh, Queen Elizabeth I, Francis Drake, Anne Whately, Cardinal Wolsey, many additional individuals and various groups of collaborators or conspirators have all been nominated by their proponents over the years. The literature spawned by the controversy has grown to such unwieldy proportions that modern writers have adopted certain standard terms and spellings to avoid increasing the confusion. The author of the plays and sonnets, is, for example, referred to as ‘‘William Shakespeare,’’ because that is the name that appears on the title pages of the published works. The man who was born in Stratfordupon-Avon, Warwickshire, England, in 1564, died there in 1616, and is now buried in Stratford’s Holy Trinity Church under a slab near a monument to the achievements of Shakespeare is referred to as ‘‘William Shakespere’’ (the spelling that most often appears on legal documents that record the few surviving traces of his activities outside the theater). Elizabethan and Jacobean spelling was notoriously inconsistent. Scholars, including the vast majority of professors of literature, who believe that Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare, are called ‘‘Stratfordians’’ and are sometimes referred to as ‘‘the orthodox.’’ Those who believe that someone other than Shakespeare authored the works are called anti-Stratfordians, or heretics. Others who adhere to the theory that a group of authors collaborated to produce the works are called Groupists, some of whom argue for various combinations of noblemen, while others believe that Rosicrucians, Freemasons, or Jesuits are the responsible parties. Those who are convinced that Christopher Marlowe was the author are called Marlovians, supporters of Francis Bacon are Baconians, and proponents of the Earl of Oxford are Oxfordians. Bacon was the leading candidate throughout



much of the controversy’s troubled and confused history, but his star has been considerably eclipsed since the 1920s by Oxford, the other leading nominee. Anti-Stratfordians have spent many lifetimes in the compilation of data, consisting mostly of unexplained facts and inadequately supported speculations. Hundreds of books have been written in an attempt to discredit Shakespeare, including some by apparent cranks and others by earnest scholars who genuinely, but erroneously, believe in the validity of their positions. Understandably, given the welter of confusion among anti-Stratfordians, they have often been at odds with one another despite their shared interest in tearing down Shakespeare. Principal Known Facts about Shakespeare’s Life The voluminous maze of research produced by anti-Stratfordians over the decades has resulted in some useful byproducts, if nothing else. New information about late 16th- and early 17th-century English literature has come to light. It is now apparent that we do not know much about Shakespeare’s personal life, even though the biographical volume in the Yale Shakespeare Series reproduces 97 pages of legal, literary, or theatrical documents referring to him, according to Tucker Brooke (1926) in Shakespeare of Stratford: A Handbook for Students. Briefly stated, the surviving records documenting Shakespeare’s life indicate that he was born in Stratford (1564), married Anne Hathaway (1582), fathered a daughter named Susanna (1583) and twins named Judith and Hamnet (1585), and disappeared from the documentary record (during the so-called lost years) until he was 30, at which time he reappears on lists of actors who played for Queen Elizabeth I. Some jealous remarks, as recounted in Brooke’s work, by rival playwright Robert Greene in 1592 (referring to him as an ‘‘upstart’’) suggest that the man from Stratford was established as a member of London’s theatrical community by that date. By the age of 33 Shakespeare had acquired enough wealth to purchase prime real estate in Stratford, while simultaneously dodging taxes, moving from place to place, and getting involved in quarrels and lawsuits in London. In Stratford he made real estate deals and engaged in various business transactions. In London he bought shares in theatrical enterprises, acted in plays, and wrote poetry. Around 1598 the name Shakespeare or Shake-speare started appearing on the title pages of plays, some of which had been previously published without attribution. He went into semiretirement at Stratford between 1611 and 1613, died there at age 53, and was interred in the town’s parish church (Holy Trinity Church) in 1616. Contemporary allusions to Shakespeare usually refer to the literary works, not to the man himself. He was, however, known to have been a friend of fellow playwright Ben Jonson, who, according to Brooke, described him as follows: ‘‘He was, indeed, honest, and of an open and free nature.’’ The most colorful


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reference to him in the documentary record, again described by Brooke, appears in a diary written in 1601 by a law student named John Manningham, who relates a ribald theatrical anecdote. According to the story, the famous actor Richard Burbage was portraying King Richard III in Shakespeare’s play when he attracted the admiration of a lady in the audience, who invited him to her bedroom later that evening. She instructed him to identify himself as ‘‘Richard III’’ when her servant answered the door. Shakespeare overheard this conversation, went to the lady’s house, entered her darkened boudoir, and enjoyed her attentions before Burbage had a chance to do so. When Burbage arrived and had himself announced as ‘‘Richard III,’’ Shakespeare sent back a message that William the Conqueror preceded Richard III. Manningham clarifies the humor by explaining that Shakespeare’s name was William (Brooke 1926).

Convincing Proof of Shakespeare’s Authorship Internal evidence in Shakespeare’s First Folio, comments by Shakespeare’s friend Ben Jonson, and the inscription on the Shakespeare monument in Holy Trinity Church are among the keystones of the Stratfordian case, proving that Shakespeare was Shakespeare. Jonson’s poetic eulogy for Shakespeare in the 1623 First Folio edition of Mr. William Shakespeare’s Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies, Published According to the True Originall Copies, clearly identifies the author of the plays as the man from Stratford (Shakespeare 1623). Baconians, Oxfordians, and other anti-Stratfordians have never convincingly addressed the eulogy’s evidence or found a way to discredit it. Some have claimed that Jonson was surreptitiously praising some other writer, not Shakespeare, whose real identity he knew. The eulogy begins, ‘‘To the memory of my beloved, the author, Mr. William Shakespeare and what he hath left us.’’ Jonson clearly identifies the author as Shakespeare of Stratford when, later in the poem, he refers to him as the ‘‘Sweet Swan of Avon.’’ The Avon is a river, and Stratford is ‘‘Stratford-uponAvon’’ (Shakespeare 1623). Anti-Stratfordians have ineffectually attempted to whittle away at this unambiguous evidence by pointing to supposed contradictions in the poem, often based on an incorrect interpretation of its grammar or on taking lines out of context. Much has been made, for example, of the line ‘‘Thou art a monument without a tomb.’’ Anti-Stratfordians imply this means that Shakespeare was still alive in 1623 when the First Folio was published, even though Shakespeare had been buried at Stratford in 1616. The fuller context reads: Thou art a monument without a tomb, And art alive still, while thy book doth live, And we have wits to read and prayse to give. (Shakespeare 1623)



First Folio Printed in a run of about 1,000 copies in 1623, the First Folio was the first collection of Shakespeare’s plays. Although quartos (cheap pamphlets) of his works had been published before, Mr. William Shakespeare’s Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies was the first near-complete anthology of his plays, lacking only Pericles and The Two Noble Kinsmen. Though it was published too late for Shakespeare himself to have had any input into it or the opportunity to correct the text, it was a professional enough endeavor (selling for about $200 in current U.S. dollars) that it’s relied on as the early authoritative source for the bard’s work. Many of the cruxes—errors deeper than typos, with no clear remedy—in the Shakespearean corpus date to this folio and continue to provide material for scholarly debate.

The context indicates that Jonson is referring to the frequently expressed sensibility that authors do not really die so long as their works are read and appreciated. The immortality of their thoughts figuratively extends their lives as well. A similar sentiment is echoed by the commemorative poem Leonard Digges contributed to the prefatory matter in the First Folio, a poem that clearly links the author of the plays to Shakespeare, the man buried in Stratford. Digges wrote that when time had destroyed the author’s monument in Stratford he would still be memorialized in print by the First Folio: Here we alive shall view thee soon. This Book, When brass and marble fade, shall make thee look Fresh to all ages. (Shakespeare 1623)

William Dugdale, an English antiquarian, made the first drawing of Shakespeare’s monument in Holy Trinity Church in 1653. An engraving based on it appeared in Dugdale’s 1656 book Antiquities of Warwickshire. The image shows a man resting his hands on what appears to be a cushion or sack, perhaps symbolic of a merchant’s occupation. We don’t know who paid for the monument (which was probably chiseled by stonemason Gerald Johnson) or who composed the lines that appear below the effigy, but it had to have been installed sometime between Shakespeare’s death in 1616 and the allusion to the monument by Digges in 1623. The monument has been taken down several times over the years and repaired or repainted. The effigy now bears little resemblance to Dugdale’s depiction, but his various books also contain images of other 17th-century antiquities that are quite different from what we see today. The monument as we know it shows Shakespeare with a goatee and an upturned moustache (as opposed to the drooping moustache in Dugdale’s rendering) and different posture (Shakespeare 1623). The author’s right hand is holding a pen, poised to write on paper. George Verne’s drawing of the monument in 1737


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does show the pen, so if Dugdale’s depiction was ever accurate (which has never been proven), the effigy had been changed by the mid-18th century. Scott McCrea (2005) reproduces the images and explains the discrepancies in The Case for Shakespeare: The End of the Authorship Question. The inscription on the monument in Holy Trinity Church compares Shakespeare to the greatest intellects and artists of past ages, a ‘‘Socrates in his genius, a Virgil in his art,’’ and suggests that he has been reborn on ‘‘Olympus,’’ home of the gods. The monument undoubtedly commemorates a writer (who, as we know, also functioned in his native town as a merchant). The inscription’s closing lines read: ‘‘All that he hath writt / Leaves living art, but page, to serve his witt.’’ The unambiguous implication is that Shakespeare of Stratford was an author of such accomplishment that all succeeding writers would only be fit to be his ‘‘pages’’ or servants. There are plausible explanations for all questions that have been raised about the monument. There is no indication on the sculpture itself that it has ever been substantially altered. Even if the sculpture did once depict a businessman instead of a pen-holding author, a reasonable interpretation would be that the citizens of Stratford did not see many plays and did not hold playwrights in especially high esteem, preferring instead to honor Shakespeare as a local merchant and man of property. Despite clever but specious arguments, there is no convincing evidence that the monument contains encoded messages about Bacon or that it has been deviously altered at some point as part of a conspiracy to lend support to the Stratfordian position. The effigy is carved from a solid block of stone. According to John Michell (1996) in Who Wrote Shakespeare?, modern experts have found no signs of any substantial alterations. The infamous, inelegant inscription on Shakespeare’s burial slab on the floor of Holy Trinity Church, near the monument, has sometimes been cited as an example of the kind of crude verse that an uneducated man would write, in contrast to the elegant style associated with the author of the plays. The slabstone reads: Good Frend for Jesvs Sake Forbeare, To Digg the Dvst Encloased Heare. Blese be ye Man yt Spares Thes Stones. And Cvrst be he yt Moves my Bones. (Roberts 1922)

If Shakespeare actually penned this snippet of doggerel verse, its crudity is easily explained. He knew his audience and, being a literary craftsman, was catering to it. He adapted his style to make the message more meaningful to an ignorant audience of parish clerks, sextons, and gravediggers, just the sort of people who would be in a position to someday empty his grave and reuse it. The intended audience would have better understood and been more receptive to plain speaking



and crude threats than to a more refined inscription. It was common practice for individually buried people to have their bones dug up and cast into a common charnel house, where they would be mixed with other human remains. If the dead were ever called to resurrection, it would be impossible under those circumstances for a man to be reborn with his original body intact. Shakespeare’s Education Anti-Stratfordians often claim that there is an irreconcilable gap between the classical learning exhibited in Shakespeare’s works and Shakespeare’s supposed lack of education, emphasizing that several leading candidates, like Oxford and Bacon, had been well educated in the classics. But it is an unwarranted assumption that Shakespeare had no opportunity to acquire knowledge of classical literature. His father, an alderman in Stratford, was entitled to send his son to the local grammar school at no charge. The school’s records haven’t survived because they were destroyed by fire, but, as Marjorie Garber (2004) argues in her Shakespeare After All, grammar school education in Shakespeare’s day provided a firm grounding in classical subjects. The Latin and Greek classics referenced in Shakespeare’s works were an integral part of the grammar school curriculum. In fact, classical allusions were part of the ‘‘common store of knowledge’’ in the Elizabethan era There is no reason to think that Shakespeare had no access to the books that Shakespeare knew. He may have had well-to-do associates who owned such books and were willing to share them. The fact that books are not detailed in Shakespeare’s will does not mean that the man from Stratford didn’t own them. Other highly literate people of the time died without bequeathing books. Shakespeare may have left whatever books he owned to his daughter, Susanna Hall, as part of the unspecified ‘‘goods’’ and ‘‘chattels’’ that she inherited. Or the will may originally have been supplemented by an attachment no longer extant, an inventory detailing property such as books. Moreover, it is important to remember that some of the greatest English and American authors from various periods, for instance, Benjamin Franklin, Charles Dickens, and Mark Twain, were largely self-educated. The education argument put forward by anti-Stratfordians is deeply tainted by snobbery and elitism. Shakespeare’s Knowledge of the Law Bacon was a lawyer, and Oxford had studied law at Gray’s Inn. Anti-Stratfordians insist that Shakespeare’s works contain so many references to the law that they had to have been written by someone with legal expertise. Nothing is known about Shakespeare’s occupational training, legal or otherwise, but he was often exposed to lawsuits when his father was a Stratford town official. He may have assisted his father (who was illiterate) by writing up legal documents


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or performing other law-related functions. Elizabethans and Jacobeans were highly litigious, and going to court was a common dispute-solving mechanism, even for small disagreements. Shakespeare himself, as the documents indicate, was involved in many lawsuits, and it would be surprising if he had not thereby absorbed some knowledge of legal terminology and procedures. Eric Sams (1995) wrote convincingly in his The Real Shakespeare that Shakespeare may have worked as a law clerk during the so-called lost years. Intriguingly, the renowned Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C., owns a copy of Archaionomia, a legal textbook published in 1568, which would have been a suitable handbook for an Elizabethan law clerk. The name ‘‘Wm. Shakespeare’’ is inscribed on the book’s flyleaf. Even if he had no personal legal expertise, Shakespeare could easily have called on the assistance of an acquaintance well versed in law to help work out the details of law-related dialogue. In any event, the knowledge of jurisprudence exhibited in the plays is not as sophisticated as anti-Stratfordians would like us to believe. Legal matters are not convincingly represented in every lawrelated scene in Shakespeare’s works. Shakespeare’s Familiarity with Aristocratic Ways Bacon and Oxford were both intimately familiar with higher circles of the nobility and court. But Shakespeare did not need to be a nobleman to write about kings, queens, and other highborn individuals. Commoners, servants, actors, and others had frequent chances to observe the nobility. All playwrights in Shakespeare’s day incorporated noble characters in their productions because the play-going public demanded them and troupes liked to cater to the public’s taste. Shakespeare, while acting with the highly regarded companies to which he belonged, played at aristocratic estates and appeared in productions at the royal court, affording ample opportunity to see and learn. His knowledge of aristocratic manners is more apparent in later plays than earlier ones, suggesting that his exposure to high society increased as his fame grew. But the knowledge of courtly protocol exhibited in Shakespeare’s works is not by any means as sophisticated as anti-Stratfordians like to suggest. Shakespeare probably had comfortable relationships with his ‘‘betters.’’ He seems to have thought it possible that he could be accepted into higher social circles. He applied at one point for a coat of arms under the pretense (which was a genealogical fiction) that his lineage dated back to antiquity. In 1596 the Garter King of Arms at the Herald’s Office drafted a coat of arms for Shakespeare showing a falcon supporting a spear. The proposed motto was ‘‘Non sanz Droict,’’ meaning ‘‘not without right.’’ Ben Jonson lampooned his friend’s attempts at social climbing in Every Man Out of His Humour, a play in which the commoner Sogliardo is very puffed up about getting a new coat of arms, for which he paid



The draft of a Grant of Arms and Crest to John Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon, father of playwright William Shakespeare. The document was created by Sir William Dethick, Garter King of Arms, in 1596 and is housed at the College of Arms in London. (Harry Todd/Getty Images)

handsomely. Carlo, a jester, compares the rampant boar in the crest to a ‘‘hog’s cheek and puddings’’ served on a pewter dish, and Sir Puntarvolo, a knight, guffaws that the upstart’s family motto should be ‘‘not without mustard.’’ If Shakespeare was not already capable, at least to some extent, of rubbing elbows with the gentry, he would not have been emboldened to apply for a coat of arms, the granting of which would have bolstered his position in society. He was, we infer, in a position already to speak with and observe the nobility. Michell reproduces the proposed heraldic design with commentary in his book. Anti-Stratfordians argue that Shakespeare’s knowledge of aristocratic sports like falconry and tennis indicates that the author of the plays had to be an aristocrat. But falconry was ubiquitous in Shakespeare’s day. He could easily have observed it firsthand and could have acquired knowledge of technical terms related to falconry from books or acquaintances. As Michell notes, Ben Jonson wrote that use of ‘‘hawking language,’’ not hard to acquire, was an affectation of those who wanted to imitate the gentry’s way of speaking. Many of the references in the plays to falconry involve caring for the birds, not the sport itself, and commoners, not nobles, would have been responsible for falcon tending. Tennis courts were also common in Shakespeare’s day, and many commoners had opportunities to watch nobles play the game. It is also important to bear in mind that Shakespeare’s hometown was not the uncultured and unfrequented backwater that anti-Stratfordians seem to


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believe, or would prefer to think, that it was. An archbishop of Canterbury and a mayor of London, for example, could both trace their origins to StratfordUpon-Avon. Foreign Languages and Distant Settings Oxford, for example, traveled extensively on the continent, lived in Italy, and adopted Italian clothes and mannerisms. Other anti-Stratfordian candidates were probably better acquainted with foreign countries than Shakespeare would have been. Anti-Stratfordians allege that Shakespeare could not have known enough about foreign settings like Italy or Denmark to describe them as they are represented in the plays. In cosmopolitan London, however, Shakespeare must have frequently crossed paths and rubbed elbows with Italians, Frenchmen, demobilized soldiers and sailors, and a wide range of classes and nationalities, affording fertile opportunities for listening to stories and making inquiries about foreign lands. His access to travelers and foreign-born Londoners could have equipped him with whatever he needed to know. We must also take note that the sophistication of Shakespeare’s geographic knowledge has been exaggerated by anti-Stratfordians. Plays set in Italy, for example, make no mention of the canals of Venice, the city’s most salient characteristic. Some have pointed to French dialogue in Shakespeare’s plays and allege that Shakespeare’s command of French could not have been adequate for this purpose. But French tutors were readily available in London, and the man from Stratford would have had many opportunities to learn. Christopher Mountjoy, his Huguenot landlord, was a transplant from France, and Shakespeare could have enlisted his help, or obtained other advice, for composing French-language scenes. Similarly, in London, he could have found occasional assistance with other languages he needed for a verisimilitude of scenes with foreign settings. Did Shakespeare have sufficient knowledge of military and nautical subjects and terminology to allow him to write convincingly about camps and ships, or battles and voyages? Shakespeare’s plays contain indications that the author was familiar with battlefields, the soldier’s life, shipboard jargon, storms at sea, and related matters. The streets of London in the 1590s were chockablock with former soldiers and sailors whom Shakespeare could easily have pumped for information after priming them with a pint or two of ale. Such informants could have provided firsthand accounts of battles on land or life at sea, military maneuvers and discipline, nautical vocabulary, ship’s rigging, and other useful details. The Nonexistence of Manuscripts, Letters, and Diaries Anti-Stratfordians object that no documents in Shakespeare/Shakspeare’s handwriting have survived aside from a few signatures on legal documents, including



three on several pages of Shakespeare’s will. But the absence of handwritten material is not at all surprising. Very few diaries or letters written by commoners during the period in question have been preserved. Paper, handmade and usually imported, was expensive. After a paper document was no longer considered useful, for example, when a manuscript had been set in type, the paper was likely to be reused for some other purpose, such as stiffening the covers of a book. In Shakespeare’s time the author of Shakespeare’s plays had not yet risen to the apotheosis he later attained in the late 18th century. No one thought to preserve handwritten plays if they duplicated texts already available in print. Anti-Stratfordians who think it suspicious that handwritten manuscripts by Shakespeare are no longer extant are insufficiently familiar with basic facts about everyday life in the English Renaissance. Similarly, the apparent lack of fanfare surrounding Shakespeare’s death and burial is not mysterious. By 1616 he had retired and was living away from London. His plays were no longer the latest fashion. He had earned some degree of adulation, but was not in the 17th century the one-of-kind giant of literature that we now consider him to be. At the time of his death in Stratford he was a solid local citizen, a businessman who had written some well-received plays while living in the capital. The Nature of Genius Shakespeare is widely regarded as the greatest literary genius in English and perhaps the greatest writer of any place or time. If he had not been elevated to such heights in the literary canon, there would be no ‘‘authorship controversy.’’ His deification has attracted iconoclasts. Other playwrights, like Ben Jonson, had little formal education, but no one considers it necessary to challenge their authorship. According to Harvard professor Marjorie Garber in Shakespeare After All, there may be a psychological need by some to attribute works of surpassing genius and timelessness to more than one person, to make the author of Shakespeare’s works seem more like a god than a man. But, she confirms, there is no significant reason to doubt Shakespeare’s authorship. Shakespeare was an undisputed genius, and the workings of genius cannot always be explained. Shakespeare, the litigious Stratford property owner, had opportunities to learn things, meet people, and engage in experiences that would have been very useful to a playwright. Raw material lodged in his fertile imagination, fermented, and was in due course molded and crafted into brilliant works of literature. Shakespeare was not a man of normal ability. Few people are graced with such potential. Virginia Woolf, herself a great writer, never ceased to be amazed by his brilliant flights of words and ideas, comparing his writings in her Collected Essays to the incompletely understood process of musical composition. ‘‘From the echo of one word is born another word, for which


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reason, perhaps, the play seems . . . to tremble perpetually on the brink of music’’ (1967: 28). Such writers cannot be judged by the standards that apply to people of normal ability and attainment. Such minds have the ability to absorb information, to expand horizons, and to recast memories, observations, and pieces of book learning into timeless art. Like many great philosophers and artists, Shakespeare was better at posing fundamental questions about life than at providing answers. Yale professor A. D. Nuttall, in Shakespeare the Thinker, observed: ‘‘There is an individual human being behind the plays, but the man himself is elusive, endlessly mobile. . . . [The] plays are the product of a single, remarkable mind’’ (2007: 377). Collaboration and Rewriting Nevertheless, few experts believe that Shakespeare actually penned every word contained in Shakespeare’s plays. It is well known that he (like all of his contemporary playwrights) collaborated on plays or rewrote the works of earlier dramatists to update them and make them more current, appealing, and marketable. A story from the late 17th century, for example, relates that the tragedy Titus Andronicus, attributed to Shakespeare and published in the First Folio, was actually an older play that Shakespeare rewrote. According to Michell, Edward Ravenscroft, who was revising the play in 1678 for a new staging, spoke with old men who had been involved in the London theater and were familiar with early 17th-century stage lore. ‘‘I have been told,’’ wrote Ravenscroft, ‘‘by some anciently conversant with the stage that it was not originally his but brought by a private author to be acted, and he only gave some master-touches to one or two of the principal parts or characters.’’ Titus Andronicus is not Shakespeare at his best, but Ravenscoft’s information calls attention to what was a common and widely accepted practice in the Elizabethan and Jacobean theater world. As Brian Vickers (2002) argues in his Shakespeare, Co-Author, plays were passed from one author to another and were sometimes revised spontaneously during a run. They typically had to be wrestled into shape in only four to six weeks. Collaboration was a standard practice. It is well established that Shakespeare borrowed from historical writings such as Plutarch’s Lives and Holinshed’s Chronicles. It is also plausible that he adapted a number of older plays that were part of his troupe’s repertoire and that the plays, as improved by him, became famous. Such refurbished plays could subsequently have been published under his own name without mention of the less brilliant contributions of previous hands. In Shakespeare’s time originality was not considered important. Audiences were not concerned about who wrote a play so long as they were entertained, or moved, and felt as they strolled away from the theater that they had gotten their money’s worth. Shakespeare was a



brilliant rewrite artist, occasionally acquiring manuscripts of old or inferior plays and recasting them for dramatic effect, injecting psychological insight, rewriting humdrum dialogue, and transforming them into magnificent poetry and drama. Anti-Stratfordian Fallacies A researcher can sometimes become so obsessively focused on a theory, so single-mindedly absorbed, that inconclusive results seem like truth. Gaps in the record and logical inconsistencies fade away because of the power of belief, or desire to believe. Anti-Stratfordians have too frequently focused on evidence in isolation without perceiving the overall picture and coming to reasonable, balanced conclusions. They tend to be wishful thinkers who twist scattered bits and pieces of evidence. They are not adept at reading historical traces and have little understanding of historical context. We may well respond, as Gertrude did in Hamlet, Act 2, Scene 2, to the windbag Polonius, ‘‘More matter, with less art.’’ Some Baconians, for example, have resorted to crypto-analysis, a highly contrived line of investigation that scours Shakespearean texts for secret codes that supposedly reveal Bacon as the true author and purportedly explain his reasons for wanting anonymity. The ‘‘secret’’ is typically embedded in an anagram, which, ingeniously unscrambled, yields a Latin phrase replete with strained abbreviations (like ‘‘F. Baconis’’) and various cryptic and obscure references. Crypto-analysis is closely related to the Victorian era’s fascination with occult phenomena. Such crypto-analytic techniques can distort texts in ways that seemingly, but speciously, support any proposition. The process has been thoroughly discredited by William and Elizabeth Friedman (1957), in The Shakespearean Ciphers Examined, and by others. Baconians have, over the years, squabbled among themselves and split into subgroups, several of which have strayed to the fringes of reason and coherence. Some have argued that Bacon was the rightful heir to the English throne, as revealed by crypto-analytic evidence that he was born of a clandestine marriage between the Earl of Leicester and Queen Elizabeth. Others are discontented with the theory that Bacon wrote only Shakespeare and advocate that he also produced the works of Montaigne, Cervantes, Spencer, and Marlowe. Professors of English literature who specialize in Shakespearean studies overwhelmingly believe that Shakespeare, the man from Stratford, was Shakespeare, the author. Readers with balanced judgment and adequate preparation in history are not likely to be swayed by the convoluted arguments and unconvincing assertions brought to bear by anti-Stratfordians against Shakespeare’s authorship. Among Bacon’s bona fide writings is his famous discussion of inductive reasoning (The New Organon, first published in 1620), wherein he pointed to the danger of reaching conclusions on the basis of personal experiences, individual predilections, and limited examples. He disparaged prejudices and preconceived attitudes (calling them ‘‘idols’’) and urged their abandonment (Bacon 2000).


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Those who think that only a college-educated courtier like Oxford or Bacon could have written the works of Shakespeare fall into precisely the trap against which Bacon warned. Several anti-Stratfordian candidates, like Bacon and Oxford, were multifaceted and brilliant. Some were quintessential Renaissance men. But Stratford’s William Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare’s works. References and Further Reading Bacon, Francis. The New Organon. Edited by Lisa Jardine and Michael Silverthorne. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Brooke, Tucker. Shakespeare of Stratford, a Handbook for Students. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, The Yale Shakespeare, 1926. Dugdale, William. The Antiquities of Warwickshire Illustrated; from Records, Leiger-Books, Manuscripts, Charters, Evidences, Tombes, and Armes: Beautified with Maps, Prospects, and Portraitures. London: Thomas Warren, 1656. Friedman, William, and Elizabeth Friedman. The Shakespearean Ciphers Examined: An Analysis of Cryptographic Systems Used as Evidence that Some Author Other Than William Shakespeare Wrote the Plays Commonly Attributed to Him. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1957. Garber, Marjorie. Shakespeare After All. New York: Anchor, 2004. McCrea, Scott. The Case for Shakespeare: The End of the Authorship Question. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2005. Michell, John. Who Wrote Shakespeare? New York: Thames and Hudson, 1996. Nuttall, A. D. Shakespeare the Thinker. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007. Roberts, Kate Louise, comp. Hoyt’s New Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations. New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1922. Sams, Eric. The Real Shakespeare: Retrieving the Early Years, 1564–1594. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995. Shakespeare, William. Mr. William Shakespeare’s Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies, Published According to the True Originall Copies. First Folio. London: Isaac Jaggard and Edward Blount, 1623. Vickers, Brian. Shakespeare, Co-Author: A Historical Study of Five Collaborative Plays. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002. Woolf, Virginia. Collected Essays, Vol. I. New York: Harcourt, Brace, and World, 1967.


10 Galileo willfully violated the injunctions of the Inquisition and was thus guilty at his 1633 trial. PRO Joseph P. Byrne CON Arthur K. Steinberg

PRO In the spring of 1633, the Florentine astronomer and mathematician Galileo Galilei was tried for heresy and convicted of ‘‘vehement suspicion of heresy’’ by the Holy Office of the Universal Inquisition of the Catholic Church in Rome. His error was the holding and teaching of four ideas that were central to the astronomical ideas of the Polish priest and astronomer Nicholas Copernicus (the ‘‘Copernican revolution’’), who had died 90 years earlier: Earth is not at the center of the universe; the sun is at the center of the universe; the sun does not move; Earth both rotates on its axis and revolves around the sun in a circular path, along with the planets. As noted by Maurice Finocchiaro (1989) in The Galileo Affair: A Documentary History, despite a centuries-long tradition that denied these four claims, Catholic theological authorities had not made any definitive statements regarding them until 1616, when the censors of the Congregation for the Index of Prohibited Books suspended publication, sales, and even reading of Copernicus’s key text On the Revolutions, and prohibited and condemned an Italian book that explained and defended Copernicus’s ideas as physically true. In so doing, it also condemned ‘‘all other works in which the same is taught.’’ Galileo, who was in Rome at the time and was a well-known proponent of Copernicus’s ideas, received a stern, personal warning from the head of the Holy Office himself against holding or defending Copernicanism. Over the next decade, Galileo steered clear of writing about condemned Copernican ideas altogether. The election of a new and seemingly more liberal pope, however, emboldened Galileo to write a long dialogue in which his characters discussed both Copernicanism and the accepted tradition, generally known as the Ptolemaic model. Though Galileo sought all the proper permissions from church authorities to publish his Dialogue on the Two Chief World Systems, flaws in the process and circumstances beyond Galileo’s control allowed the book to slip through without proper review, and in 1632 it was published in Florence as he had written it. It was brought to the attention of the Holy Office in Rome, 225 © 2011 ABC-Clio. All Rights Reserved.

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which had the work reviewed by panels of theological experts twice. In both cases the experts agreed that the text clearly ‘‘taught’’ Copernican theory as physical truth and thus violated the 1616 ban. The authorities called Galileo to Rome from Florence to answer for his work, and the old and infirm scientist made the burdensome trip in January 1633. Though Galileo was treated with many courtesies, in the end he was forced to admit his ‘‘errors,’’ formally condemn them, and agree never to hold or teach them again. He was to live out the remainder of his life—just under a decade—under house arrest in Florence. From the day the trial ended, Galileo’s experience with Catholic Church authorities has stood as an icon of the struggle between objective and truthseeking science and religious authority that seeks to control knowledge and its dissemination for its own dubious purposes. Many myths surround the event— for example, that Galileo was physically tortured and that he defiantly muttered ‘‘eppure si muove’’ (‘‘and yet it—the earth—moves’’) after formally denying that very statement. These have helped Galileo achieve the status of martyr for the cause of scientific truth in the face of ignorant and intolerant religious dogmatism, especially that based on biblical literalism. In our day, American society wrestles with many issues that have both a political and religious dimension, including the teaching of creationism or intelligent design theory as a viable alternative to the big bang theory and evolution; when a human fetus is deemed a person; and whether public schools should teach the Bible as a cultural text. In Galileo’s day, the Catholic Church and its leaders constituted a powerful authority in Italy that wielded both spiritual and political influence, and its traditions and beliefs held sway throughout the Catholic world. Today, secular science and the secular state have displaced the church as, respectively, an authority on the natural world and the viable political power in it. The very notion of ‘‘heresy’’ and the institution of the Inquisition seem medieval and utterly irrelevant; the idea that one could be imprisoned, let alone tortured or executed, for holding or teaching a scientific theory is unthinkable in the postEnlightenment world. For the historically minded, however, the past must be viewed in its own light, and not through modernist lenses. For many historians and scientists, Galileo’s trial and sentencing were not only a travesty by modern standards; they were incorrect by those of the 17th century. In short, Galileo was framed. If true, this doubly damns the Catholic Church as both intolerant and unscrupulous. Defenders of the church’s actions have long since accepted that Galileo was later proven correct in his beliefs, but they contextualize the church’s decision and defend the process by which it was reached. This debate hinges not on modern ideas of how truth about the natural world is obtained (the church long ago lost that debate), but rather on how one interprets historical documentary evidence, the heart and mind of Galileo, and the Holy Office’s use of the term heresy.


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Evidence that Galileo Was Guilty of Heresy Christian authorities have used the term heresy since the very early church for ideas or claims that contradict official church teaching. The word itself is derived from the Greek word for choice. Christian doctrines (teachings) are many and most often deal with matters of faith and morals, though how this is construed has changed over time. Dogmas, teachings that must be believed by the faithful, include core Christian beliefs, such as the Incarnation of God in Jesus, and Jesus’s historical death and Resurrection. These generally have long histories and were at some point formally defined by a pope or church council. The real problem for the church emerges when a heretic shares his or her ideas with others, especially when these contradict a firmly established dogma. Catholicism teaches that holding a false belief endangers one’s own soul, but teaching it endangers those of the many others who might accept it, and the Bible itself is quite clear about the need to resist false teachers and teachings. The Protestant reformation of the 16th century was sparked by the teachings of Martin Luther. These teachings resonated with many at the time but were condemned as heretical. Western Christianity rapidly unraveled, especially in northern Europe, resulting in a multitude of new Christian denominations that denied the legitimacy of Catholic authority. The Catholic Church was slow to react to these developments, but from the 1540s to 1563, the Council of Trent brought together Catholic bishops and theologians who reaffirmed the validity and centrality of Catholic authority, especially of the pope, and left to church authorities alone the right to interpret the meaning of Holy Scripture (the Bible). At the same time the pope established the Holy Office (1542), a judicial church court was established that tried suspected heretics and punished condemned heretics. Shortly after, the Index of Forbidden Books was reestablished as a means of identifying and censoring printed materials that contained heretical or offensive ideas. Its first edition was published in 1559, and the function of censoring and condemning was placed in the hands of a formal ‘‘Congregation’’ led by important Catholic cardinals in 1572. Neither the Holy Office nor the Index was brand new, but in the face of very successful challenges to church authority, they were reorganized and made devastatingly effective (if only among Catholics). The Catholic Church had long accepted—though not as dogma—the model of the structure of the universe developed by the ancient Greeks and fine tuned by the second-century CE by natural philosopher Ptolemy. Earth held pride of place at the center of the universe and neither changed position nor rotated. The moon, sun, and planets occupied variously explained spherical ‘‘shells’’ and rotated around Earth, while a ‘‘sphere of fixed stars’’ created an outer boundary of the cosmos. Beneath the moon was the physical world of change, decay, and human life as normally experienced. Beyond the moon was a heavenly perfection without change, other than the perfect spherical rotations. And beyond



the fixed stars was heaven itself, to which Jesus literally ascended, according to scripture. Of course, the planets (literally wanderers) did not appear to rotate in a circular fashion, but rather erratically, causing Ptolemy to add many more circular motions to each planet. This ‘‘saved the appearance’’ as observed from Earth, but made a mess of perfect circular motion. Accepting the dissonance between theoretical perfection and observed complications, the church and its scholars made no serious attempts to reconcile the two. Indeed, theologians had found many places in the Bible where the inspired authors seem to support very clearly the static centrality of Earth and the revolution of the sun around it. The model also supported our own common experience (do we sense any motion?) as well as the physics developed by the Greek natural philosopher Aristotle, whose ideas had entered the Christian mainstream in the 13th century. One of his key ideas asserted that the ‘‘sublunar’’ earthly physics were qualitatively different from those of the unchanging heavens beyond the moon, where perfect circular motion was natural. Nicholas Copernicus’s model simplified the picture at a stroke by placing the sun at the center of the universe, and, for the most part, ‘‘saved appearances.’’ It also challenged the entire traditional structure: the cosmology, the physics, the common experience, and, most dangerously, the church’s interpretation of scripture. Because it was embedded in a book—On the Revolutions (1543)—that only appealed to (and could be understood by) a handful of mathematicians and astronomers, Catholic authorities largely ignored it. With the development of the telescope, however, and Galileo’s use of it to study the heavens in the early 1600s, the situation changed. Galileo Galilei was a Florentine—a subject of the Grand Duke of Tuscany. Though interested in painting and medicine, he studied mathematics at Pisa and became a tutor in Siena and Florence. He gained university appointments as a mathematician at Pisa in 1589 and Padua, near Venice, in 1592, where he taught until 1610. In the fall of 1609 he turned his rather crude 15-power (15x) telescope (and later a 20x) to the sky and began a series of (literally) world-shattering discoveries. The moon’s surface was cratered, mountainous, and far from perfect. Jupiter has planets (moons) and revolves around the sun: so could Earth. Saturn, too, seemed to have two moons (its rings seen fuzzily at an angle), and Venus has phases like Earth’s moon, as Copernicus had predicted. In 1611 Galileo visited Rome for a second time, demonstrating his telescope and sharing his thrilling observations with all comers. By 1615 sunspots had become evident, further eroding celestial perfection. Galileo and his telescope were redefining the heavens. But the heavens were the church’s domain. Some critics attacked the telescope as a machine that distorted the vision and created false impressions. Others, such as the Florentine philosopher Ludovico delle Colombe, lined up the scriptural passages that contradicted Copernicus’s conclusions, and the interpretation of whose meaning lay with the church and not natural philosophy.


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Ecclesiastes 1:5 teaches ‘‘The sun rises and sets, and returns to its place’’; I Chronicles 16:30 states ‘‘God made the orb immobile’’; and Psalm 104:5 asserts ‘‘You [God] fixed the Earth on its foundations.’’ When the Bible stated that God allowed the Hebrew leader Joshua to ‘‘stop the sun’’ in the sky to prolong a battle, the church was inclined to take it literally, or as interpreted by the early fathers of church theology, a stance reinforced by the Council of Trent. Galileo responded to these critics with a scornful attitude and a clear vision of his own regarding scriptural authority and human sense experience. In a famous and widely circulated letter to his old student Benedetto Castelli, dated December 21, 1613, Galileo explained that biblical authors actually used simple language of common experience and imagery to teach and ordain those things that are necessary for human salvation. Scripture was always true, but not necessarily literally. When human sense experience, such as his own observations or Copernicus’s conclusions, clearly contradicts the literal sense of scripture, the Bible must be interpreted less literally, since scriptural meaning and sense experience cannot contradict one another. Though this stance seems commonsensical today, even to most Christians, Galileo was treading on thin ice by poking his nose into theological matters. Indeed, the letter was submitted to the Holy Office for review, though no fault was found at the time. The head of the Holy Office at the time was Cardinal Robert Bellarmine, a Jesuit scholar and champion of Catholic orthodoxy. On April 12, 1615, he wrote a letter to the Neapolitan Carmelite theologian Paolo Foscarini, whose very pro-Copernican book had come to his attention. In the letter, Bellarmine

Martin Luther Martin Luther (1483–1546) was a German Catholic monk who became an early reformer and schismatic in the earliest days of the Protestant reformation. Though it is unlikely he set out to have as enormous an effect as he did, he insisted that salvation was attained solely through faith (essentially denying the necessity of the church as a temporal power). When, like many others, he objected to the church’s practice of selling indulgences to pay to rebuild Saint Peter’s Basilica, he wrote a lengthy dispute (his ‘ 95 theses’’), which he presented to his archbishop. Because of 41 heretical statements identified in his theses and his refusal to recant them, he was excommunicated from the church—which succeeded only in forcing him to seek support outside it, among the German princes. Luther’s new sect set forth many principles that have remained important among Protestants, including a distrust of the institution of the church as a mediator between the laity and the divine, the ability of clergy to marry, and the use of the vernacular. In his time, he also made vitriolic attacks against the pope, the anabaptists, and the Jews, the latter of which are sometimes blamed for inspiring much of the anti-Semitism in Germany.



stated that he was willing to accept that the Copernican model indeed saved appearances and had predictive value as a hypothetical model. But he was utterly unwilling to accept the Copernican model as physically true unless it were proven indisputably true. He and Galileo agreed that all of the evidence to date was only that, evidence, and was by no means proof of any of the four Copernican claims. In the absence of such proof, the church had to retain its position. Should undisputable proof emerge, then the church would need to revisit its interpretations and reformulate them in light of agreed upon facts. Scripture could not err, but an interpretation—even one commonly held by the church—could. Bellarmine believed, however, that astronomy could never prove the Copernican model to be physically true. He was also convinced that the subject matter of Copernicanism—cosmology—was indeed a matter of Christian faith, discussed in scripture, and thus properly left to the church and its agents, not to natural philosophy (science) and its acolytes. Direct contradictions to the church’s teachings, however seductive or even correct Copernicanism might have seemed, at least verged on being heretical. Historical Proofs Supporting Galileo’s Guilt In a letter of January 12, 1615, to Galileo from his friend Prince Cesi, the prince noted that Bellarmine had told him personally that Copernicanism is ‘‘heretical’’ and without a doubt contradicts scripture properly interpreted. On February 8, 1615, another friend also passed along good advice: Galileo was warned again to stay away from theological or biblical issues, this time by the sympathetic and powerful Florentine cardinal Maffeo Barberini. Despite these admonitions, in June Galileo resurrected his letter to Castelli on scripture and science and readdressed it to the Florentine grand duchess Christine of Lorraine. He circulated it widely, but did not publish it, lest it fall to the censors of the Index. Galileo followed this with a visit to Rome late in the year to defend himself against ‘‘rivals’’ A leading figure of the scientific revolution, and to use his considerable powers Galileo helped usher in the modern era by of persuasion to further the cause of laying the foundations of mechanics and ex- Copernicanism and convince church authorities of its validity. Without perimental physics. (Library of Congress)


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doubt he firmly accepted Copernicanism and in good faith believed strongly that the church was better served by accepting than resisting it. Unbeknown to him, he had in fact been denounced to the Holy Office. Pressure on the pope and others to allow the free discussion of Copernicanism backfired, and the matter of its defense as fact was sent to the Holy Office. While Galileo was making the rounds of prominent Romans, seeking their support, Bellarmine had Copernicus’s On the Revolutions, as well as several other pro-Copernican works, including Foscarini’s, scrutinized by theological advisers to the Congregation of the Index. Their decision, announced to the Congregation on February 24, was unambiguous and unanimous. As to the sun’s centrality and lack of motion, the notion was absurd and foolish according to natural philosophy and ‘‘formally heretical,’’ because it contradicted scripture, both literally and as interpreted by the church. That Earth moved and was not at the center of the cosmos was equally foolish and absurd philosophically, and at least ‘‘erroneous’’ according to Catholic doctrine. On March 5, the Congregation announced its decision in a formal decree that was ratified by the Holy Office with the pope presiding: the books in question contained ‘‘various heresies and errors.’’ This amounted to a formal condemnation of the ideas that only a pope (or perhaps a Church Council) could overrule, because popes ratified actions of the Holy Office. It was thus not an infallible (incapable of being in error) statement by which the church was eternally bound. Foscarini’s work ‘‘and all other books that teach the same’’ (static sun at the center and rotating Earth revolving around it) were prohibited and condemned. Copernicus’s own work was only subjected to ‘‘suspension until corrected,’’ a process finished a few years later and imposed on all existing copies. It remained much longer, however, on the Index itself (until at least 1681), even in corrected form. The corrections that rehabilitated On the Revolutions imply that the censors were willing to accept Copernicus’s ideas as hypotheses, or one theoretical way to understand the structure of the cosmos, but not to allow his model to be posited as the true, physical form of the cosmos, the mistake for which Foscarini’s work (and later Galileo) suffered. Though Galileo’s name and writings were not formally linked to this decision (apparently thanks to the intervention of Cardinal Barberini), he was by no means immune to its effects. Two days after the advisers rendered their opinion Galileo was summoned to a meeting with Cardinal Bellarmine, whom he knew socially. What one understands about what happened at this meeting in many ways defines whether one accepts the validity of the judgment against Galileo in 1633. In dispute is what specifically was told to Galileo and by whom and the binding effect of the words. Subsequent to reception of the advisers’ report, Pope Paul V, who was acquainted with Galileo and generally sympathetic to him, instructed Bellarmine to warn the astronomer of the impending action of the Congregation of the Index and to admonish him ‘‘to abandon these opinions.’’



Were Galileo openly to refuse, the Dominican father commissioner of the Holy Office, Michelangelo Segizzi (sometimes spelled Seghizzi), was to formalize the admonition into a legally binding injunction, delivered before witnesses and recorded by a notary, against his teaching, defending, or even ‘‘discussing,’’ the condemned propositions. If this failed to elicit Galileo’s agreement, he was to be imprisoned. These were the instructions, according to Finocchiaro in The Galileo Affair, as recorded in the minutes of the Inquisition on February 25, 1616. The following day the cardinal met with Galileo and presented the pope’s own warning; and then things get fuzzy. Did Galileo dutifully (and wisely) accept the cardinal’s message, or did he refuse and trigger Segizzi and his formal injunction? According to the minutes of the next meeting of the Inquisition, Bellarmine reported that Galileo ‘‘acquiesced when warned.’’ Indeed, in a certificate specially prepared at Galileo’s request and dated May 26, 1616, Cardinal Bellarmine denied swirling accusations that Galileo had formally abjured his Copernican positions or had suffered any physical or spiritual punishments or penances at or as a result of the meeting of February 26. Bellarmine indicated that the astronomer had been warned against defending or holding the positions that had been determined to be contrary to the Bible. Neither the minutes nor the certificate mention either Segizzi or a formal injunction that would have been delivered had Galileo not cooperated with Bellarmine. A third document, however, does. It is the ‘‘Special Injunction’’ dated February 26 and proven (by paper and handwriting analysis) over a century ago to be from the time in question and not a later forgery. It purports to record Segizzi’s actions immediately following Bellarmine’s warning. It implies that Galileo did not have the time to accept or reject the cardinal’s admonition before Segizzi laid out the formal injunction against holding, teaching, or defending the offensive ideas ‘‘orally or in writing,’’ under threat of imprisonment and formal proceedings by the Holy Office. The Special Injunction is dated and lists all who were present at this informal meeting, but the problem is that no one signed it. It was thus never a legal document. One explanation is that it was prepared beforehand in expectation of Galileo’s negative response and, since Galileo acquiesced and it was not needed, it was never signed. But then, why was it not discarded? And why did its author portray Segizzi as failing to wait for Galileo’s initial response and instead ‘‘thereafter, indeed immediately’’ confront the Florentine? Since this action would have been in direct contravention of the pope’s instructions and may have had the effect of negating the injunction itself, and puts Segizzi in a bad light, it is very unlikely that it was written beforehand. If a true memorial, then why did no one sign it? The most logical explanation is that Segizzi indeed blurted out his dire message, knowing that his formal injunction with its clear restrictions, presented on behalf of the pope and Holy Office, carried far more weight than the old cardinal’s advice and warning. Segizzi was no amateur in these matters, and he must have calculated that since


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the meeting between Bellarmine and Galileo was not a formal procedure, his intemperate move would not have affected the legal force of the injunction. Also, his action prompted the written Special Injunction in which his message was recorded. Even so, he had acted against the pope’s expressed wishes, and it takes little imagination to see why those present would not have signed off on it. The whole point had been not to get Galileo in trouble if possible, to skirt the formalities embodied in the injunction itself. Bellarmine clearly wanted to bury Segizzi’s action by leaving it out of both the following weeks’ minutes and the certificate he provided to Galileo. This may have been a way of protecting Segizzi against papal wrath or out of Bellarmine’s own at the Dominican’s rashness. Either way, Galileo left that meeting with the clear message that Copernicanism was off limits, a message echoed with the formal verdicts against Copernicus and Fracastorio ‘‘and others that taught the same’’ of March 5. One clear sign that Galileo took very seriously whatever he was told is the fact that he avoided writing about Copernicanism throughout the following eight years. During that time, Bellarmine and Pope Paul died (both in 1621); Segizzi was exiled to a post in Lodi, Italy; and the Florentine cardinal Maffeo Barberini, a close friend of Galileo’s, was elected Pope Urban VIII (1623). Galileo had also made many new enemies by engaging the prominent Jesuit Orazio Grassi in a debate over a comet, even dedicating his brilliant manifesto, The Assayer, to the grateful new pope in 1624. Heartened by his trip to Rome in the same year, Galileo began pushing the envelope on Copernicanism by writing his ‘‘Reply to [Francesco] Ingoli.’’ Ingoli had written against Copernicanism in 1616 and carried out many of the revisions that had rehabilitated On the Revolutions. ‘‘Reply’’ is an attempt to demonstrate his firm understanding of Copernicus’s ideas ‘‘which I then [before the condemnation] considered true,’’ and his ability to parry Ingoli’s arguments against them. ‘‘I was completely wrong in this belief of mine,’’ he goes on, and notes that the ideas in question were ‘‘declared repugnant and suspect,’’ and he has no intention of defending them as true, simply of rebutting Ingoli’s objections as an intellectual exercise. At the end, he alludes to a work in progress on the tides in which he takes the motion of Earth as an hypothesis and deals with the whole debate. Galileo was convinced that the tides were caused by the motion of Earth and considered this his strongest evidence for that motion. Though he was dissuaded from writing on tides, his next work took on the whole Copernican system and earned him the label heretic. Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems (Ptolemaic and Copernican) is a brilliant discussion of the respective merits of the two models. The fictional Aristotelian ‘‘professor’’ Simplicio (very close to ‘‘Simpleton’’ in Italian) defends the status quo, and does so quite clumsily. The nonfictional Florentine Filippo Salviati explains Copernicus’s ideas and undermines Simplicio, and the actual Venetian nobleman Giovanfrancesco Sagredo plays host and generally concurs with the



reasonableness of Salviati’s positions. It is nearly impossible to read, or even read about this work, without being convinced that it is a thinly disguised explanation and defense of that which was neither to be held nor defended, especially by Galileo. Indeed, it is peppered with spring-spined bows to the hypothetical nature of the theories Salviati presents. But the overall effect is clear. Galileo and his manuscript received a very positive reception in Rome in 1630, including an audience with Pope Urban around May 20. Raffaelo Visconti reviewed the work on behalf of the censor’s office and concluded that it was too assertive of the theories and he needed to reduce them to hypotheticals. Galileo returned to Florence to make changes and prepare the text for printing. The death of his patron in Rome, Prince Cesi, and an outbreak of plague reduced Galileo’s ability to communicate with the Eternal City, its censors, and press. The chief censor, the Florentine friend of Galileo, Niccol o Riccardi, had supported Galileo’s project and agreed to review the proof sheets as they came off the Roman press. But Galileo could not get the final manuscript to Rome and sought permission to have it reviewed and approved in Florence by the local ecclesiastical authorities. Under duress, Riccardi granted this permission in the summer of 1631, but he stipulated that the text had to avoid theology and make it clear that its purpose was to show that Roman authorities were aware of even the best arguments in favor of Copernicanism (and condemned it out of conviction rather than ignorance). Further, he had to make it clear that he took Copernicanism to be a hypothesis and not a true description of physical reality; and finally he had to include a statement reflecting the belief by the pope that God could act in any of numerous ways in shaping and maintaining the cosmos as long as they were not logically impossible. In the end, Galileo placed the pope’s sentiment in the mouth of Simplicio, making it appear to be just another weak argument (though Salviati obligingly concurs). Simplicio’s statement that one would have to be ‘‘excessively bold’’ to accept only one possible explanation undermines the church’s position as much as it does Copernicus’s. When eight presentation copies finally appeared in Rome in the fall of 1632, Riccardi wrote to the Florentine authorities that the finished product contained many ‘‘unacceptable’’ things, that distribution would be blocked, and that the Congregation of the Index would review it for formal errors. A commission made up of Riccardi, the papal theologian Agostino Oreggi, and Jesuit Melchior Inchofer formally reviewed Galileo’s Dialogue and reported to the Congregation and the pope in September. In addition to findings that he ‘‘may’’ have ‘‘asserted absolutely’’ the heliocentric theory and ‘‘may’’ have attributed falsely the tidal action to the movement of Earth, they found that he ‘‘may have been deceitfully silent’’ about the 1616 injunction that forbade him outright from dealing with Copernicanism. They had discovered the unsigned document in Galileo’s file and brought it to the attention of the pope and the Congregation. Though modern commentators generally consider this to be without legal


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standing, even in the judicial proceedings of the Holy Office, it is clear that it was henceforth key to the prosecution of Galileo. The astronomer was called to Rome to appear before the Holy Office, which he did for the first time on April 12, 1633. Galileo produced his certificate from Bellarmine and denied recalling the more formal injunction that the court produced. He also denied vehemently that he supported the case for Copernicanism in the Dialogue, claiming—quite disingenuously—that the Dialogue actually supported the status quo. The court took the last claim seriously enough to have Oreggi, Inchofer, and theologian Zaccaria Pasqualigo review the book and report to the court. On April 12 each submitted his report. Oreggi briefly concluded that the Dialogue’s text was clear: Galileo held and defended Copernican ideas. At greater length Pasqualigo concluded that Galileo clearly taught and defended Copernican ideas and was suspect of holding them. Inchofer produced a longer and more detailed analysis, including 27 specific instances by which he demonstrates that Galileo teaches, defends, and holds the opinion of Earth’s movement. Defending or holding violated Bellarmine’s warning and Galileo’s promise; defending, teaching, and holding violated the injunction. Unlike America’s presumption of innocence until guilt is proven, continental systems, including canon law, under which the Inquisition operated, presumed guilt and provided the accused an opportunity to defend himself. Determination of exactly what he was guilty of was the purpose of the ‘‘trial’’ in the spring of 1633. ‘‘Vehement suspicion of heresy’’ falls between the more serious findings of ‘‘formal heresy’’ and ‘‘strong suspicion of heresy’’ and the lesser findings of ‘‘mild suspicion of heresy’’ and various levels of less serious transgressions: erroneous, scandalous, temerarious, and dangerous. As the court made clear in its verdict, Galileo had chosen to hold, teach, and defend propositions he knew had been condemned by the Holy Office and had disobeyed both Bellarmine’s warning and the injunction, the evidence for which the court accepted. These were matters less of doctrinal heresy than of what French historian Leon Garzend called ‘‘inquisitional heresy’’: to deny propositions that scripture clearly supports, or that church doctrine embodies but may not define, or that lower ecclesiastical authorities proclaim. In the end, Galileo’s transgression was a matter of disobedience and flouting of authority as much as it was attachment to a condemned set of ideas. Historical Interpretations Supporting Galileo’s Guilt In his Retrying Galileo, Maurice Finocchiaro traces the history of the Galileo controversy from his own day to the ‘‘rehabilitation’’ of the pioneer scientist by Pope John Paul II in 1992. Supporters of Galileo’s guilt and the validity of the court’s verdict have always been on the defensive and have almost always been Catholic apologists. By the 18th century, the major issues surrounding the trial had faded into obscurity, and defending Galileo’s condemnation seemed pointless. The first



fully reasoned and documented defense came in a series of lectures in 1792 by the Jesuit Girolamo Tiraboschi. He depicted Galileo as rash and morally flawed, while deeming the church correct to defend the literal interpretation of scripture in the absence of clear proof to the contrary. Scientists, Protestants, secular historians, and philosophers and artists have eagerly attacked not only the verdict but also the basis for the process itself: church authority, papal power, the Inquisition, censorship, the very notion of ‘‘heresy.’’ Historically, few had access to the church records necessary to draw a knowledgeable conclusion, and fewer still were (are) sympathetic to the outcome. The simplest questions to ask are: Were Copernicus’s ideas condemned in 1616 and did Galileo continue to hold them as true thereafter? While ‘‘the church’’ never did condemn heliocentrism formally in a papal or consiliar decree, the Holy Office did, and it would be that body that would try those who chose to hold and defend it, as Bellarmine’s message made clear. Until almost the end of his ordeals in 1633, Galileo insisted that he had not ‘‘held or defended’’ Copernicanism since the 1616 condemnation, despite all evidence to the contrary. Galileo had gambled with his Dialogue and lost; though posterity is all the richer for it. Conclusion After 1633, Catholic authorities proceeded against no other Copernican writings or authors. In 1822 the Holy Office formally ruled that Roman Catholics could in good conscience believe in Earth’s motion as physical fact. In 1835 both Copernicus’s and Galileo’s works were taken off the Index (though all of Galileo’s works had been published as early as 1744). By the early 19th century, the physical proofs required by Bellarmine or Barberini had been provided by astronomers, and the Holy Office acted accordingly. Galileo had challenged the authority of the church not only to describe the heavens, but also to interpret scripture (in his Letter to Castelli/Grand Duchess Christina). He insisted that religious authority had to give way before the ‘‘facts’’ suggested (not proved) by the brand new and largely untried methodology of science. With Francis Bacon, Galileo was the founder of scientific method, and yet he firmly expected the millennium-and-a-half-old institution, founded and defined by divine revelation, to bow before his interpretation of his personal experiences, observations, and conclusions. He stood at the head of the centuries-long process that gave intellectual and cultural pride of place to the very methodology he stubbornly pressed. The centralized religious authority Galileo sought to inform ended up being trampled by the scientific revolution he helped spur and the Enlightenment that formally embraced and spread the revolution. Separating natural philosophy (science) from religion and theology was as radical in 1630 as separating church from state was in late 18th-century America. Significantly, echoes of both controversies reverberate in our ongoing national dialogue.


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References and Further Reading Biagioli, Mario. Galileo Courtier: The Practice of Science in the Culture of Absolutism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993. Fantoli, Anibale. Galileo for Copernicanism and for the Church, 2nd ed. Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame University Press, 1996. Finocchiaro, Maurice. The Galileo Affair: A Documentary History. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989. Finocchiaro, Maurice. Retrying Galileo: 1633–1992. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005. Galilei, Galileo. Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems. Translated by Stillman Drake. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2000. Lindberg, David C., and Ronald Numbers, eds. God and Nature: Historical Essays on the Encounter between Christianity and Science. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986. McMullin, Ernan, ed. The Church and Galileo. Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame University Press, 2005. Olson, Richard G. From Science and Religion, 1450–1900: Copernicus to Darwin. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004. Poupard, Paul, ed. Galileo Galilei: Toward a Resolution of 350 Years of Debate. Trans. I. Campbell. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1987. Redondi, Pietro. Galileo Heretic. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989. Roland, Wade. Galilieo’s Mistake: A New Look at the Epic Confrontation between Galileo and the Church. New York: Arcade, 2001. Sharrat, Michael. Galileo, Decisive Innovator. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Shea, William R., and Mariano Artigas. Galileo in Rome. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003. Wallace, William, ed. Reinterpreting Galileo. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1986. Westfall, Richard S. Essays on the Trial of Galileo. Notre Dame, IN: Vatican Observatory, 1989.

CON Catholic hostility toward ‘‘heretical’’ ideas was in part a reaction to forces the church could not control. The international threat from the rise of Protestantism, the northern European competitor, and Islam in the Mediterranean challenged a theological monopoly, which had existed for 1,500 years, the beginning of the Christian era.



Martin Luther, a former Catholic cleric, opposed the concept that one’s faith alone would justify one’s religious beliefs, a problem resolved by purchasing indulgences. At the same time, the church was confronted with the end of feudalism and the rise of nation–states, each of which became their own center of power. States seized the moment to declare their religious independence of Rome; they no longer sent money to the papacy and created their interpretations of religious beliefs that were inimical to Rome. At the same time, another ‘‘ism’’ challenged Rome from the south. Muslim movements in the Mediterranean Sea, the Iberian Peninsula, North Africa, and portions of Central Europe saw the authority of the church recede. Muslim galleys captured Christian galleys, enslaving those who would not convert to Islam, interfered with trade, and threatened portions of the Italian peninsula. Muslim successes on Rhodes and the accomplishments at Malta and other islands caused some concern, but not enough for Christian Europe to oppose this expansion. These territorial losses contributed to the hardening of Catholic dogma and the need to control the religious imperative: papal control and tightening of the sacred scriptures. Since the papacy was the beneficiary of ‘‘truth,’’ theological interpretation became the weapon of choice within which to draw or limit the confines of knowledge. The church viewed rudimentary science as part of philosophy and as subject to the same restrictions. Renaissance ideals and free thought expanded the borders of knowledge to the detriment of the church. Freethinking challenged the ancients’ concepts of the universe and all that they had decreed as the truth. The rising challenges to biology, chemistry, and physics were only the entryway along a path hoping to understand why. Galileo was one of the first soldiers in the struggle to learn, who removed intellectual shackles from the intellects and offered his discoveries to society. Their successes began to challenge the administration of canon and civil law in papal-controlled regions. With the church functioning within the parameters of divine revelation, the fearful pope had to deal with heretics who defied accepted church doctrine. Galileo’s intellectual development occurred at a time when innovation and invention competed with papal fear, a vehicle used to circumvent the intellect and progress. He was born in Pisa, Italy, on February 15, 1564, the unwilling and unintentional threat to the anti-Catholic reformation and rise of Renaissance thought. His father struggled to educate him. At an early age, Galileo became enamored with a thirst to expand knowledge beyond the limits of the ancients, such as Aristotle’s wisdom offered, despite their views that supported traditional church doctrine. Galileo attended a Jesuit monastery to study in a religious environment. Four years later, he informed his father that he wished to be a monk. His father immediately withdrew him from the Jesuit monastery and sent him to Pisa to study medicine in 1581, at the age of 17.


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Despite his father’s wishes, he chose to study science and within a short time discovered the isochronisms of the pendulum and shortly afterward the concept of hydrostatic balance. These accomplishments earned him a reputation in the field of experimental physics. Galileo joined the faculty of the University of Padua and developed an interest in the astronomical Copernicus theory, discussing the position of Earth’s and the sun’s rotations and their intergalactic relation to one another. This interest centered on Copernicus’s 1543 Revolutions of the Celestial Orbs, a work contradicting the Aristotelian belief that Earth was the center of the universe and the sun and all other heavenly bodies revolved around it. This heresy made Christian dogma suspect. The church had taught that man, a special creation, was the center of the universe. If the Copernican theory were correct, what else in Christianity might God’s vicar question? While Galileo’s detractors did not accept his interpretations, he remained intellectually safe and secure as long as he did not attempt to spread his ideas publicly. The pope could avoid the issue. But Galileo recognized the conflict that occurred between science and theology. He corresponded with Johannes Kepler, the eminent German mathematician, who agreed with Galileo’s findings but refused to publish these. Kepler’s reluctance about political and religious concerns and survival as a price for political correctness appeared warranted. He feared the threats of the Inquisition and the reaction to Copernicus’s theories if made public. Despite the growing storm, Galileo invented a ‘‘modern’’ telescope and in 1609 found confirmation of his and Kepler’s Copernican theory. For reaffirmation, he moved his telescope to the garden and observed the Milky Way, the moon and its topography, and Jupiter and its four moons. Galileo idealistically believed his findings would then be acceptable to society; he apparently did not understand the reasons for the growing tide of opposition to his findings or the stranglehold of theology over science. He became more vocal to his colleagues in Florence where he had recently obtained a teaching position. In 1610, shortly after his appointment, he published his telescopic finds in The Starry Messenger. The contents of this work were new for the philosophy of the time. His astronomical findings could have been denied, but since they did not endanger Aristotelian teachings, there was no danger to the church. His idealism ran afoul when he obtained no support. Educated and cultured people refused to read or discuss the findings publicly. Fear of the church was widespread. He corresponded with Kepler, expressing anguish over lack of concern for the truth. Galileo did not appreciate the power of fear encompassing the nascent Renaissance in Italy. He wrote to his tepid and insincere friend Benedetto Castelio, venting his frustrations and publicly stating that science and knowledge were the most important entities for any society rising from the darkness of the medieval period opposing a church-dominated society. He then carried his struggle to the general public, rather than limiting it to the small



Italian scientist Galileo Galilei defends himself before a court of papal judges in 1633, charged with antiscriptural heresy for championing evidence of the pioneering scientific truth that Earth revolves around the sun. Galileo was convicted and committed to house arrest for the last eight years of life. In 1992, 350 years after his death, the Roman Catholic Church admitted its error and declared Galileo correct. (Oxford Science Archive/StockphotoPro)

cadre of educated people. He hoped the more secular-educated elements of society and the Jesuits would be appreciative and accepting of the discoveries. Why? He wrote compulsively about his discoveries in a style that the ‘‘average’’ reader could comprehend. He could not be quashed. His lack of awareness and quest for knowledge consumed him. He noticed a lamp swinging while visiting a cathedral and used his pulse to time the movements and found that the swing time was the same for long and short movements. His discovery would help in the development of the clock. He next began a study in displacement and found some minerals were heavier than water, the Archimedean theory of water displacement. While on the University of Pisa staff, Galileo involved himself in a debate over Aristotle’s laws of nature. The ancient alleged that heavier objects fell faster than light ones. Galileo challenged this belief by climbing to the top of a tower and throwing several objects of different weights and sizes over the side. They landed at the same time, and another cherished belief of the ancients fell. He then developed a


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rudimentary thermometer, a device that would allow a study of temperature variations. The next year he produced a device for raising water from an aquifer, then a military compass for military application used for the accurate aim of cannonballs in war. Not to be outdone, a year later he produced a version of the same implement for land surveying. Galileo pushed his luck, one that led to religious thought. While at Pisa he gave a presentation on Dante’s Inferno. His mathematical skills determined that Lucifer’s face was 2,000 arm-lengths and Nimrod’s face was as long and wide as Saint Peter’s Cone in Rome. His Pisa University presentation may have inspired the Society of Jesus (Jesuits) to examine his intellectual activities. This society had the responsibility of instructing church creed, philosophy, and now questioning Galileo’s scientific findings. Although hostility existed, the church did not feel that he had proven the certainty of his discoveries. No threat existed since the church could allege his findings were hypothetical. In 1611 he visited the Collegium Romanum in Rome and found the Jesuits had replicated his experiments and discoveries. However, Jesuit ‘‘scientists’’ refused to use the telescope, and then Christopher Clavius was instructed to defend the Aristotelian theory. Matters worsened when Galileo and Christoph Scheiner, an important Jesuit, disagreed over sunspots. The session appears to have been intended to protect dogma over science at any cost. This event could be viewed as a warning to Galileo. Later, Tommaso Caccini denounced Galileo from the pulpit for his ‘‘heretical’’ views (Shea 2003). Further consequences arose in 1613 when Galileo’s The Solar Spots appeared. It was subsequently attacked by a Dominican friar named Lorini, a professor of ecclesiastical history who vehemently preached that the Copernicus theory violated the holy scriptures that stated Earth was the center of the universe. Sensing the dangers to church theology, Lorini quoted many biblical passages affirming church dogma. Lorini’s preaching was so vehement that he was forced to apologize for its intensity. He did not withdraw his concern for the church’s position in this moment of danger. Rather than permit the matter to end, Galileo responded in December 1613 with his Letter to Castelli. He averred the truth of the scriptures but argued they must be observed in a figurative sense. He offered an example that defined the ‘‘hand of God’’ as his presence in our lives, not an actual or physical attendance. Galileo cautioned that the Bible was not intended to be a literal interpretation. Further, he cautioned that competing over a correct interpretation of the universe did not attack the holy scriptures. Despite his Solomonic efforts to reconcile the widening chasm between science and theology, all efforts proved futile and the issue became more intense. Lorini sent a copy of Galileo’s Letter to Castelli to the Inquisition on February 7, 1615, with a copy of his comments attached. In it, he alleged that a religious in his convent, Saint Mark, believed the letter challenged the scriptures



and Galileo’s efforts relegated the scriptures to an intellectual position below natural science. Totally unaware of the firestorm he had created, Galileo expanded his views in a Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina. Lorini mollified his actions by informing the Inquisition that Galileo and his supporters were good Christians, but conceited. Lorini’s motives were questionable; he opposed those supporting Galileo. Despite his acting as mediator, he still wanted the issue brought before the church. Lorini’s associate, Tommaso Caccini, traveled to Rome to the Holy Office for the purpose of exposing and questioning Galileo’s errors and those of his advocates. On March 20, Caccini appeared before the Inquisition and expressed his concern that Galileists’ ideas were filling Florence and bringing to question traditional church doctrines and values. Despite his attempts, the efforts of condemnation failed. The attackers had not developed or refined an indictment that could be used by the church. But the church was put on notice of the dangers rising locally and due to the Renaissance in general. It then attempted to resolve the dispute between Galileo and itself. Cardinal Robert Bellarmine investigated the matter. In a previous instance, the case of Paolo Antonio Foscarini, a Carmelite father, had raised the theory of heliocentrism. In the latter’s work, Lettera . . . sopra l’opinione . . . del Copernico, he attempted to reconcile Copernicus’s views and biblical passages that appeared contradictory. The cardinal stated that Copernicus couldn’t be banned but required some editing to make sure the theory was viewed solely as hypothetical. In a further effort to mollify Galileo, Foscarini sent a copy of his work to Bellarmine who responded to both Galileo and Foscarini. He reiterated that the heliocentric theory was dangerous to the church since it questioned its very foundation. The credibility of those philosophers and scholarly theologians supportive of church dogma believed that any scientific explanation would endanger the church by injuring the holy faith and putting the sacred scriptures into question, a mortal blow to Rome. Ballarmine suggested caution to Rome due to the conflict of science and theology. Ballarmine, loyal to Rome, offered rationalizations, hoping to calm all and providing a way of resolving the impasse: the perception of the sun’s and Earth’s movements. He suggested the theories in question be viewed as hypothetical and not the absolute truth with the result that the holy scriptures could be defended. He argued that Galileo’s belief in the truth and intellect fell short of absolute evidence and that the scientist had no solid evidence. His views could not be sustained beyond a reasonable doubt. He learned that truth could not win against church dogma. Given Galileo’s intransigence, his appearance before the Inquisition was certain. That institution arose as a self-defensive mechanism intended to funnel free thought and the intellect into the restraint of religious thought. The Inquisition adopted a means of punishment to assist the wayward on their return to the flock. Christianity


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had survived splintering long before the reformation, as numerous sects through Europe espoused approaches, which to themselves seemed heretical, such as the Donatists, Cathars, Anabaptists, and the followers of Mithra. However, since the Dark Ages, when Rome became dominant, no variations of thought were acceptable. The Protestant revolution made the situation worse, and Islam gains in the Mediterranean only acerbated the situation. The church was compelled to act because of Galileo’s insistence upon recognition of true science. An appearance before the Inquisition, allegedly a trial, could condemn a free thinker to unimaginable horror in the name of God. This conduct was not new; the church feared deviation from doctrine and authority as far back as its beginning. In 325, Constantine, at the Council of Nicea, empowered the church to bring nonbelievers and those who had fallen away back to the true religion. Lacking any civil authority, the church became the bearer for judging the truth. Free of civil restraints, free thought, dissention, and resistance quickly evolved into a justification for persecution, whether one was guilty or not. As early as 1231 Pope Gregory IX had become aware of the growing fragmentation within the Catholic Church and resolved to free thought and inquiry through the Inquisition in order to secure the church. In time, the various popes assumed direct control and developed the agencies required to ferret out nonbelievers. Unfortunately, Galileo fell within Inquisitional jurisdiction. The due process rights were nil: the inquisitor brought charges against anyone for unspecified or general charges. The accused was required to testify against himself after taking an oath on his knees and swearing with a Bible in his hands to tell the truth. He had no right to face his accuser, no right to counsel, sentences could not be appealed, and the accused was examined before two witnesses appointed by the Inquisition. With death or excommunication came confiscation of one’s real and personal property, a motive for accusatory action. The testimony upon which the charges were garnered came from criminals, excommunicated persons, and heretics. The accused was given a summary of the charges and took an oath to speak only the truth, the boundaries of which lay in the sacred scriptures. The means of extracting the ‘‘truth’’ could be torture or fear of torture. The penalties ranged from surrendering your moral values to physical punishment such as submersion in boiling water, loss of limb, or burning and torture in public. The Inquisition could also be lenient: the accused could be compelled to visit church as often as instructed, join pilgrimages, wear a cross of infamy for the rest of his life, or be imprisoned for life. The accused could not deny the jurisdiction of the Inquisition. The refusal was evidence of guilt. Should the church wish to punish one for his refusal to appear, the suspect was given over to the civil authorities who would torture and probably draw blood. The church justified its conduct by affirming its moral inability to torture one through bloodletting. The civil authorities had no



compunction and used whatever means to draw a confession that could be admitted as evidence of guilt. The secular authority had the responsibility of executing the accused. On occasion, if the accused had died during the proceedings, his body could be burned in public. The judge, or inquisitor, would institute the proceedings against the suspected heretic. The Inquisition did not address issues of credibility or motives for witnesses. As many members of the community would testify, this was a tactic that strengthened the general fear and provided intellectual control by the Inquisition. Shortly before Galileo’s activities began to concern the church, Pope Paul III, in 1542, established a permanent institution under the supervision of clerics to defend and spread the faith. This church agency, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, governed the Inquisition’s activities. Its governing board included clerics chosen from the Dominican Order. This body had the jurisdiction to govern Galileo’s conduct. On February 19, 1616, the Holy Office decided that Copernicus’s theory of an immobile sun and Earth rotating with other planets around it was heresy. Supportive of church dogma, it ruled such thoughts as ‘‘foolish, absurd in philosophy, heretical and erroneous in faith.’’ Copernicus’s book, De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium, was immediately placed on the Index, a catalog of forbidden books the church believed would and could harm the faithful and the faith. At the same time, Galileo was admonished for accepting and propagating views not in accord with the church. The inquisitional body, the Qualifiers, issued a report on February 24. It unanimously rendered a verdict that the theory ‘‘in regard to theological truth is at least erroneous in faith.’’ The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith issued a decree on March 5. Galileo was informed of its actions and the Index condemned the printed documents supportive of the Copernicus theory. This was the body that would finally condemn him in 1633. Despite this, Galileo met with the pope, who assured him that as long as he remained pope, Galileo would not be surrendered to the Inquisition’s jurisdiction. Galileo’s actions imply he did not understand the full implications of his approach to science; he apparently ignored the implications of the Inquisition’s decision. However, there is some question about the restrictions imposed on him by the Inquisition, for he was allowed to teach in the hypothetical if it did not challenge the sacred sacraments or dogma (McMullin 2005). Galileo’s intellect did not fathom the significance of his actions. He could not convince the church to divest itself from the controversy because the church now made heliocentrism official doctrine. His reactions indicate he didn’t understand the power of the church and its cherished doctrines nor did he appreciate the powerlessness of the truth against dogma. Copernicus’s De Revolutibus was eventually removed from circulation and added to the Index pending revisions. Galileo continued championing truth apparently without an awareness of the potential intellectual disasters he poised for the church. In 1632, he published


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Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems (the Dialogue), intended to offer the public a balanced view of the competing views of Copernicus and the church. When he failed, Copernicus received a prominent position in the discourse. Galileo was ordered to face the Inquisition for trial. However, timing may have been incidental. He had recently published The Assayer, a work the church found contrary to the transubstantiation of the Eucharist dogma. Even though Galileo’s opponents investigated the charges, no evidence of unorthodoxy was indicated. The Jesuit Order, the right arm of the papacy, was not as lenient as Giovanni de Guevera, a friend of Galileo; it found The Assayer as offensive as the Dialogue. The Jesuits charged that Galileo’s atomism was heretical and contradictory to the Eucharist and protested just as it had over the Copernican doctrine. However, the taint remained and he became more of a target. The question of what to do with Galileo soon developed an international gloss. Spanish cardinals accused Pope Urban VIII of allowing the Inquisition to be lenient. Urban, in defense, formed a commission to examine the Dialogue and to refer its findings to the Inquisition. Urban appointed a commission favorable to his actions relating to Galileo. Unable to protect him any longer, Galileo was summoned by the inquisitor in Florence to appear before the Holy Office in Rome on October 1, 1632, within a month. The charges were heresy, specifically ‘‘for holding as true the false doctrine taught by some that the sun is the center of the world.’’ The ‘‘legal’’ injunction against his condemnation had been sanctioned on February 16, 1616, when he had been instructed to abandon the doctrine in question and not to spread it among those defending it (McMullin 2005). On April 8, 1633, Galileo was informed that he must stand trial before 10 carefully selected cardinals. He realized, finally, that his only choice was to submit to their decision. Four days later he surrendered to the Holy Office. He faced Firenzuola, the Inquisition’s commissary general, who confined Galileo to the Inquisition building until the trial. When the trial began, Galileo, the penitent, appeared in a white shirt and took the required oaths, and Firenzuola deposed the accused concerning meetings he had had with Cardinal Bellarmine and other church officials in 1616. He couldn’t remember all the names of those in attendance 17 years before. He also could not recall the restrictions imposed on him at that meeting. The commissary proposed that Galileo promise not to teach the Copernican theory. Galileo accepted his statement without objection and signed a deposition. He was found guilty and there is no evidence of physical torture. In preparing its sentence, the Inquisition determined his opinions were without foundation and against the holy scriptures. He was instructed to ‘‘desist’’ and not publicly support any of his previous views. He abjured (McMullin 2005). Weeks later the inquisitors debated the fate of Galileo. He accepted the dictates of the church in the hope he would receive a lighter sentence. Seven



Ptolemy Ptolemy (90–168) was a mathematician and astronomer in second-century Roman Egypt, best known for his thorough, systematic approach to science, both his own theories and his compilations of current knowledge. His Almagest (‘‘Great Book’’) was the first such treatment of astronomy, and it proposed a mathematically sophisticated model of the universe in order to account for the observable data of his day. In addition to providing a catalog of the visible stars and planets, the Almagest described a universe of concentric spheres: each planet (and the sun and moon) existed on its own sphere, rotating around Earth, and beyond the planetary spheres was a sphere of stars in fixed positions. The Ptolemaic Earth does not move—everything else moves around it. Ptolemy did not invent the basic notions of his cosmology, but he had the most data to inform it, drawing on Greek, Babylonian, and Mesopotamian sources. Other astronomers had known their models were faulty because the results predicted by their mathematics didn’t match what was observed in the sky. Ptolemy accurately described what could be seen of the world. He remained the dominant figure in astronomy throughout the Middle Ages, for both Europe and the Arabic world.

cardinals demanded his incarceration for life, while a minority suggested he be allowed to modify his Dialogue and it could then continue in circulation. The pope demanded a sentencing and an exact examination of Galileo. When the Inquisition demanded prison for life, Galileo recanted and publicly accepted the Ptolemaic view of the heavens. Galileo concluded his trial with: ‘‘I affirm, therefore, on my conscience, that I do not now hold the condemned opinion and have not held it since the decision of authorities. . . . I am here in your hands—do with me what you please’’ (cited in Linder 2002). He was sentenced to house arrest for the remainder of his life. As part of the sentence, three members of the Inquisition prepared a seven-page evaluation of the Dialogue. They held the book and its author dangerous because they gave life to the Copernican theory, and therefore it was a danger to the life of the church. They had the Dialogue burned and banned any of his other works. A broken man, he was allowed to move to his farm in 1633. He died in 1641, a victim of heresy as the church ordained. He was guilty of a society that opposed free thought and used fear to maintain itself in power. His heresy, convicted by the Inquisition, fell within the parameters of church law for the period. References and Further Reading Fantoli, Anibale. Galileo for Copernicanism and for the Church, 2nd ed. Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame University Press, 1996.


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Finocchiaro, Maurice. The Galileo Affair: A Documentary History. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989. Galilei, Galileo. Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems. Translated by Stillman Drake. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2000 (originally published in 1632). Linder, Doug. ‘‘The Trial of Galileo.’’ 2002. Available at www.law.umkc.edu/ faculty/projects/ftrials/galileo/galileoaccount.html (accessed June 14, 2010). McMullin, Ernan, ed. The Church and Galileo. Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame University Press, 2005. Shea, William R., and Mariano Artigas. Galileo in Rome. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003. Westfall, Richard S. Essays on the Trial of Galileo. Notre Dame, IN: Vatican Observatory, 1989.


11 The Man in the Iron Mask was Count Ercole Antonio Mattioli. PRO Justin Corfield CON Heather K. Michon

PRO Following the French Revolution of 1789 and the execution of King Louis XVI on January 21, 1793, the royalist restrictions on the press were lifted, although new ones were applied by some of the incoming republican administrations. Criticism of the arbitrary nature of members of the French royal family abound during the 1790s, and one of the stories that quickly caught the imagination of the public was that after the mob had stormed the Bastille on July 14, 1789, they had found an iron mask there, which, according to popular stories, a prisoner had been forced to wear so that nobody could look on his face. This story spread throughout the world and the prisoner—who was not found at the time of the storming—became known as the Man in the Iron Mask. However, the story of the Man in the Iron Mask is actually slightly older than this. A prisoner moved from the French state prison at Pignerol in 1687 to the prison at the Isle Sainte-Marguerite had worn a mask, reportedly of steel, and in 1698 a prisoner moved from Isle Sainte-Marguerite to the Bastille in Paris had worn one made from black velvet. The identity of the prisoner was not known for certain, and this led to a large number of theories. The most famous was started by the French philosopher Voltaire, who claimed that the prisoner was a son of Anne of Austria and Cardinal Mazarin, making him an illegitimate older half-brother of King Louis XIV. Because of the nature of the relationship, and, presumably the prisoner looking like either Mazarin or Louis XIV, his face had to be kept from public view. In his book The Vicomte de Bragelonne, initially published in 1848–1850 and translated into English as ‘‘The Man in the Iron Mask,’’ the French writer Alexandre Dumas (1802–1870) transposes the prisoner into being the older twin brother of King Louis XIV. This fanciful theory—encouraged because the prisoner was apparently well treated and shown deference—has led to a number of films based on the book by Dumas. Since then there have been numerous books about trying to trace the identity of the prisoner, some providing detailed explanations of particular theories, others with fanciful suggestions, and others using the genre of novels to explain new ideas. 249 © 2011 ABC-Clio. All Rights Reserved.

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There are a few ‘‘facts’’ known about the Man in the Iron Mask. What is known was that the prisoner was initially held at the fort of Pignerol (modern-day Pinerolo), which was close to the French–Italian border—then a part of France, now a part of Italy. Because of its remote location, the fort was turned into a state prison, operating from the start of French control in 1630. In 1687 the governor of the prison at Pignerol, Benigne d’Auvergne de Saint-Mars, was transferred to become governor of the prison at Isle Sainte-Marguerite, a rocky islet off the coast of Provence. He was notified of his transfer in January and started making arrangements for the move soon afterward. When he did move in May 1687, he took with him one prisoner who was transported in a sedan chair that was covered with an oilcloth. By September it was being reported in Paris that the prisoner in the sedan chair wore a mask made of steel during the transfer. There were also stories that during the prisoner’s incarceration at Pignerol, the governor SaintMars was responsible for cutting the prisoner’s hair and beard when needed, with the prisoner having to wear the mask when anybody else visited his cell. Eleven years later Saint-Mars was appointed as governor of the most infamous French state prison at the Bastille, Paris. He was notified of his appointment in May and made the move in September. On this occasion, he moved, again with one prisoner who was taken in a litter. This time he wore a mask of black velvet. On arrival at the Bastille, the prisoner was immediately taken to the First Chamber of the Basiniere Tower for the first night, and then moved to the Third Chamber of the Bertaudiere Tower on the second day. During his time at the Bastille, the prisoner was held in a cell in solitary confinement with Jacques de Rosarges, the second in command of the prison, having the task of personally feeding him. Apparently he dressed in good clothes trimmed with fine lace, and his food was specially cooked for him and served on a silver plate. Lieutenant Etienne du Junca of the Bastille noted that the prisoner did appear on one occasion wearing a ‘‘mask of black velvet,’’ presumably to protect his identity. He apparently amused himself by playing the guitar. The prisoner fell ill in mid-November 1703 and saw a doctor whom he was told was 64 years old. No other details seem to have been given. The man died on the night of November 19–20, 1703, and apparently his head was removed from the body and destroyed, with his body being buried in the grounds of the parish church of Saint-Paul. The burial certificate issued by the priest at SaintPaul gave the name of the prisoner as ‘‘Markhioly,’’ and his age as 45. All the furniture and clothing in the prison cell and any others owned by the prisoner were then destroyed, his silver plate was melted down, and the walls of his apartment were scraped and whitewashed so that there would be no way any inscriptions made by him could have survived. The only object that survived was a loin cloth, which is now on display at the Louvre. After the French Revolution of 1789, there were attempts by the revolutionary government in France to ascertain the true identity of the Man in the Iron


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Mask. By this time the story had caught the imagination of the public with the story highlighting the abuse of French royal power. In 1770 Baron de Heiss sent evidence to the Journal Encyclop edique explaining his theory that the prisoner was actually Ercole Antonio Matthioli, an Italian politician. Eight years later Louis Dutens, in Correspondence Intercept ee, noted that Madame de Pompadour had asked Louis XV about the identity of the Man in the Iron Mask and was told that the person was ‘‘a minister of an Italian prince.’’ In 1801, Pierre Roux de Fazaillac, a member of the French legislature, claimed that the Man in the Iron Mask was actually a prisoner Ercole Antonio Matthioli, with the story being an amalgamation of the fate of Matthioli and a valet named Eustace D’Auger; and in 1822 Madame de Campan, who had been a lady-in-waiting to Queen MarieAntoinette, confirmed the story. In fact a pamphlet published in Leyden, the Netherlands, as early as 1687 had also identified the prisoner as Matthioli. Ercole Antonio Matthioli was born on December 1, 1640, at Bologna, Italy, and was an ambitious Italian politician who taught law at the University of Bologna. He worked for Charles III, the Duke of Mantua, and was groomed to become his secretary of state. However, before he could get the required promotion, on August 14, 1665, the duke died and his son Charles IV took over. The boy was 13 at the time and as a result, the running of the country was left to his mother, the Dowager Duchess. Matthioli managed to remain a member of the dukedom’s senate, with the title of count, but when the duke came of age, he moved to Venice to indulge his passions as a wanton waster. In the power struggle that resulted, Matthioli was forced from office by a monk named Bulgarini, who was also a political secretary and the lover of the Dowager Duchess. With the duke spending money at such a fast rate, the French decided to use this to their advantage. The Duke of Mantua also held the title of the Marquess of Montferrat, and therefore controlled the strategic fortress of Casale Monferrato. Located on the right bank of the River Po, the castle had been of strategic importance since Roman times. It also had a role in theological history as the place of birth of Ubertino of Casale, a leading Franciscan who plays an important role in Umberto Eco’s famous fictional story The Name of the Rose (1980). However, it was its military significance that was coveted by France. The French king Louis XIV wanted to expand his influence in Italy and was keen to control Casale Monferrato, where he could garrison his soldiers and then threaten Turin, the capital of Savoy. However, they had long decided that although the French would win an initial attack on the city, it would lead to conflict not only with Mantua, but also potentially with Savoy and Austria, which were anxious to dominate the region and preferred a weak Savoy to control by the French. The indebtedness of the Duke of Mantua allowed the French to come up with their plan to buy the fort. Indeed in 1659 Cardinal Mazarin managed to buy the Duchies of Nevers and Rethel from the duke’s father, and absorb them into France. The French plans were further accentuated when the duke became angry



at the Austrians taking over Guastalla in north-central Italy. As a result, King Louis XIV entered into secret negotiations to buy Casale Monferrato. He decided to negotiate through Matthioli, whom he felt could also use it to oust Bulgarini. Matthioli would also be trusted by the duke. Initially the Duke of Mantua felt he could get the French to pay 1 million livres. However the French decided that the most they would pay would be 300,000 livres, with the agreement made at a masked ball in Venice where the duke was finally forced to agree to accept the French offer. The French would pay half of the money in silver when the agreeIllustration from The Man in the Iron Mask, ment was ratified and the remainder based on the story by Alexandre Dumas. when they occupied the city. (Hopkins, Tighe. The Man in the Iron Mask, Matthioli went to France to 1901) negotiate, and King Louis XIV drew up a treaty that Matthioli had to get the duke to sign. Louis XIV was so pleased with the count that he gave him some 200 golden louis and a large diamond. However, soon afterward Isabella Clara of Austria, the Duchess-Regent of Savoy, found out about the secret agreement and contacted the French. By this time the Spanish governor of Milan also knew, and the Spanish offered 600,000 francs for the city. The Duke of Mantua was embarrassed by this and pulled out of the entire deal, leaving the French intensely angry. It seemed obvious that Matthioli had told both the Savoyards and Spanish, and the Austrians soon found out. Matthioli’s exact reasons are not known. It seems that he might have hoped to get one of the other countries to enter a bidding war, and the Spanish certainly did offer more than the French. He may have also been keen to extract some money from the Spanish or another power. The French, embarrassed by this, wanted to get their hands on Matthioli for two reasons. One was that he had a copy of the treaty signed by Louis XIV and awaiting the signature of the duke. The second was quite clearly to get revenge on a man who had betrayed their confidence and made it less likely they would get Casale Monferrato in the short term. However, they did take it in July 1681, with French soldiers moving in on September 30 of that year. They agreed to pay the duke an annual pension of 60,000 livres, appoint him as a general in


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the French forces, and make him a part of any French attack into Italy. By that time Matthioli had disappeared. There is clear evidence that King Louis XIV ordered one of his envoys, Godefroy Comte d’Estrades, to kidnap Matthioli and bring him to France in secrecy. What appears to have transpired was that the French ambassador in Turin invited Matthioli for a hunting expedition outside the city, and during this, he was overcome by 10 or 12 horsemen and taken across the border to Pignerol. It seems the abductors later went into the city to seize his goods and also his valet. In April 1679 Louis stated that ‘‘no one should know what becomes of that man,’’ and the French king assured the Duke of Mantua that Matthioli was in their custody and would not be released without the consent of the duke. Matthioli was then held in solitary confinement at the castle of Pignerol (then in the southeast of France, but now in northwestern Italy) and was reported to have gone mad in the following year. Indeed in 1682 a pamphlet titled ‘‘La Prudenza trionfante di Casale,’’ written in Italian but printed in the German city of Cologne, detailed the entire controversy involving Matthioli, the treaty, and the count’s disappearance. Matthioli was not the only important visitor held at Pignerol. Nicolas Fouquet, the former superintendent of finances for France, was being held in that prison at the time—indeed when Saint-Mars had become governor of the prison in December 1664, Fouquet was his only prisoner—in the Angle Tower until June 1665 when the tower was damaged and he was transferred to La Perouse, returning in 1666 to the Angle Tower with two valets, La Riviere and Champagne. Fouquet had been arrested 20 years earlier, in 1661, and after had been taken to Pignerol. Some accounts have suggested that he was the Man in the Iron Mask. Certainly Fouquet was an important man whom Louis XIV wanted held in prison, unable to contact any of his former colleagues, and had the wealth and connections to cause real trouble for the monarchy, being privy to intimate court secrets, but there is a serious problem with this theory. Fouquet died on March 23, 1680, the year before the prisoner wearing the iron mask was transferred to Isle Saint-Marguerite. There is also a surviving French government report, written in 1687, that on May 2, 1679, a new prisoner was taken to the fortress at Pignerol. This 1687 report goes on to state that the man was ‘‘the secretary of the Duke of Mantua,’’ undoubtedly Matthioli. There was also another prisoner at Pignerol—Eustache Dauger, a former valet, possibly the Eustache Dauger involved in high profile poisoning cases in Paris. He was told not to try to communicate with anybody else on the threat of immediate execution—except, of course, Saint-Mars. Other prisoners were also held in Pignerol with Dauger becoming a valet to Fouquet. In 1681—the year that the French finally took Casale Monferrato—SaintMars was transferred to Isle Saint-Marguerite and took with him two prisoners from Pignerol. One of these wore a mask during the transfer. The reason has been presumed to be able to ensure nobody recognized him during his move. Matthioli was certainly at Pignerol before the transfer, and it is unlikely that he



was left there after Saint-Mars moved. This tends to suggest that Matthioli was one of the two prisoners transferred with the governor, and in 1687 there were written accounts that Matthioli was part of the transfer. This leaves the only option being that he was either the Man in the Iron Mask or the man accompanying the Man in the Iron Mask. If Matthioli was not the Man in the Iron Mask, the question arises as to who that man was. There have been many suggestions. Some reports suggest that Matthioli was kidnapped along with his valet. If these were the two prisoners, it seems extremely unlikely that the valet would wear a mask and Matthioli not. Saint-Mars, in a report in 1688, noted that some people were claiming that the prisoner was Richard Cromwell, the son of Oliver Cromwell. However, by this time Richard Cromwell had returned to England where he was living quietly, perhaps happy that rumors still placed him in France. It was also suggested that he was James, Duke of Monmouth, who had been defeated in 1685 at the Battle of Sedgemoor by his uncle James II, king of England. Some felt that James II would not have executed his nephew, but the main problem with this theory is that the Man in the Iron Mask makes his first appearance in 1681, when Monmouth was still in the limelight in England and the United Provinces (the Netherlands). It has also been suggested that since Nicolas Fouquet had died, perhaps the Man in the Iron Mask was a valet of Fouquet. This is curious because most of the arguments against the Man in the Iron Mask being Matthioli presumed that he was not well-known enough to need to have his face hidden. If Matthioli was not infamous enough, then a valet of Fouquet could hardly be more infamous. In 1687 the next move of the Man in the Iron Mask took place. On this occasion, Saint-Mars moved from Isle Saint-Marguerite to the Bastille in Paris, having been promoted as governor to the main French royal prison. This time he took with him only one prisoner who wore a black velvet mask. Soon after this transfer a pamphlet was published in the Dutch city of Leyden stating that the prisoner in this transfer was Matthioli. It is not known how widely the pamphlet was circulated. A letter to Saint-Mars from the secretary of state in 1697 cautioned the governor not to ‘‘explain to anyone what it is your long time prisoner did.’’ This has led to some people feeling this is enough evidence to show that the Man in the Iron Mask was not Matthioli, as everybody knew what the Mantuan count had done. However, there is the intriguing possibility that Matthioli might also have been engaged in a few more complex political games than has hitherto emerged. Soon after this move, the political situation in Mantua had changed considerably. With Charles IV, Duke of Mantua, becoming a firm French ally, the duke had joined with Louis XIV in the War of Spanish Succession and was declared a traitor by the Austrian Emperor Joseph I in 1701. Two years later Charles IV visited Paris and during that visit, the Man in the Iron Mask died at the Bastille prison and was buried nearby. Some have seen this as a possible coincidence. The most convincing explanation that Matthioli, often described in contemporary


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The Sun King and the Iron Mask Rumors about the parentage of Louis XIV were rampant long before they were immortalized in literature. Many stories of different possible identities for the Man in the Iron Mask have made their rounds through France and the world, but most of them, with the possible exception of Ercole Antonio Matthioli, had to do with attempts to discredit Louis XIV’s legitimacy as king of France. The enmity between Louis XIII and his wife, Anne of Austria, was well known. They had been married for 23 years before their son, and the only heir to the French throne, was born. Rumors flew that the Duc de Beaufort was the younger Louis’s actual father, a fact picked up on by Alexandre Dumas in his Three Musketeers novels. It was even believed by some that it was Beaufort in the iron mask for all of those years. In another version of the iron mask myth, the son-in-law of Anne’s doctor, Marc de Jarrigue de La Morelhie, was imprisoned in the mask because he accidentally stumbled upon evidence showing Louis’s dubious nonroyal parentage.

French documents as Marthioly, was the man who died in 1703 was that the burial register lists the dead person as ‘‘Markhioly,’’ and his age as 45. However, when a doctor had seen him soon before he died, he gave his age as 64, roughly corresponding to the age of Matthioli (who would actually have been 63 at the time). Some have suggested that because so much energy went into preventing people from ascertaining his identity, the name in the burial register must also be false, but it is just as likely that the name was genuine. There was a fanciful theory that the name used was actually a contraction of ‘‘Marquis Ali,’’ referring to Nabo the Moor, a Moorish dwarf valet to Louis XIV’s wife, Marie-Therese, who seems to have had an affair with her and then vanished from the court soon after the birth of a child believed to have been fathered by Nabo. However, it seems unlikely that Nabo the Moor would have had to have his face disguised by an iron mask—there were very few Moorish dwarves around at the time, and the mask, iron or velvet, would hardly hide who he was for long. With the War of Spanish Succession continuing, in April 1706 the French commander in the south, Marshal de Vend^ ome, seized the military initiative and drove back the Savoyards and their Austrian allies and started the siege of Turin, the capital of Savoy. It seemed that Duke Charles IV’s alliance with the French was about to pay off. Eugene of Savoy took to the field against the French and by August had reached Turin. On September 7, at the battle of Turin, Eugene led an unexpected attack on a badly deployed wing of the French army and destroyed the French forces who, over the next two months, withdrew from Italy, retreating across the Alps. It was one of the greatest campaigns of the war, and in 1708 all the lands of the Duke of Mantua were formally seized and handed to the House of Savoy. Charles IV, the last of House of Gonzaga, died in July of that year at Padua. He had married twice but had no children.



The French ambitions in Italy lead one back to the question as to why the French decided to keep Matthioli in such secrecy that he needed to become the Man in the Iron Mask. The traditional view has been that the iron mask was used to conceal the identity of the prisoner because his face was well known. This led Dumas to write his account that the prisoner was a twin brother of Louis XIV (or indeed Louis XIV himself, after a ‘‘swap’’ at court). The face of the king of France was on every coin in the realm, and there were paintings of him around the country. Certainly few people would be able to recognize the face of Matthioli, and with it being well known that he was held a prisoner of the French, the purpose might have been to conceal exactly where Matthioli was being held. The punishment of using the mask might also have served as a warning to other people from double-crossing the French, and the French were always eager to get their hands on the original of the treaty that Matthioli had hidden before his capture. Two other possibilities have also emerged, both also pointing to Matthioli as the Man in the Iron Mask. It has been suggested that the reason why Matthioli might have been held with a mask was not to conceal his identity forever. The fact that a prisoner was held in a mask quickly became well known, and the notoriety would cause people to ask questions. Although the prisoner might have initially been Matthioli, when the state wanted to hide a more senior prisoner, Matthioli (in the mask) could be killed and another prisoner could be substituted at a later stage. Most people would continue to believe that it was still Matthioli and would be none the wiser. This conspiratorial theory means that Matthioli held in the iron mask was essentially the means to disguise future arrests should they take place. There is also another theory that arose to why the mask was used. Part of this can be explained by the fact that there was probably no iron mask. It is now believed that the Man in the Iron Mask actually wore a velvet mask rather than an iron one and also had only worn it when there was some chance of him being seen by other people. There is clearly the possibility that the wearing of the mask might not have been insisted on by the authorities but chosen by the prisoner to conceal his identity. Matthioli had been negotiating in Venice where masks were worn at dances, and indeed the masked ball was used as a place where French agents could meet the Duke of Mantua. Alternatively it could have been revenge by a vengeful French king who, having been tricked by Matthioli, thought a masked ball might have sought to punish him in an unusual manner. Having incarcerated Matthioli with orders for his face to be hidden, the king might not have concerned himself with the fate of a man who had tried to trick him. Courtiers might then have been afraid to mention the matter in the same way as, in the 1970s and 1980s, the family of Moroccan Defense Minister Mohammed Oufkir was held in prison for 15 years essentially because nobody felt themselves able to bring up the fate of the family of a traitor to King Hassan II. There also remains the possibility that Matthioli might have worn the mask at his own request. Both instances where the mask is known to have been worn


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were when going from one prison to another, and Matthioli might have been keen to avoid being recognized by the Savoyards or others whom he betrayed, or he might have worn it to attract attention for himself. Although these are possible, they in no way detract from Matthioli being the Man in the Iron Mask. Many historians have accepted the identification of Matthioli as the Man in the Iron Mask. Marius Topin, in his book L’homme au masque de fer, published in 1870; and Franz Funck-Brentano, in his book, originally published in 1894, both believed that Matthioli was the Man in the Iron Mask after detailed investigations. Indeed Topin suggested that it was likely that a mask—as used for masked balls—was among the possessions of Matthioli when he was seized; there is evidence that the French also seized his baggage at the same time as they kidnapped him, for no other reason than to seize the copy of the proposed treaty Matthioli had been negotiating. Therefore, he might have worn the mask during the transfer for his own reasons, in much the same way that modern prisoners often try to hide their faces from press and television cameras. It might have been that Matthioli had worn the mask to achieve what he had not in his own life. By trying to disguise himself in such an obvious manner, and one which would certainly draw considerable attention to himself, he was trying to do just that—draw attention to himself in the hope that some of his former political allies in Mantua or elsewhere might come to his aid. The last word had best be left to Prince Michael of Greece (1983) who, in his sympathetic biography of Louis XIV, wrote that Matthioli was ‘‘probably the dullest and least romantic, but the most plausible’’ of the candidates for the Man in the Iron Mask. References and Further Reading Funck-Brentano, Franz. Legends of the Bastille. Ingram, TN: Fredonia Books, 2003. Michael of Greece, Prince. Louis XIV: The Other Side of the Sun. London: Orbis, 1983. Noone, John. The Man Behind the Iron Mask. Stroud, UK: Alan Sutton, 1988. Topin, Marius. L’homme au masque de fer. Paris: Didier and Cie, 1870. von Keler, Theodore. The Mystery of the Iron Mask. Girard, KS: Haldeman-Julius, 1923.

CON L’Homme au masque de fer. The Man in the Iron Mask. For three centuries, his identity has remained one of the great unsolved mysteries of history. The rich and powerful of the 18th century made a virtual parlor game of guessing his name and his crime, while commoners turned him into a symbol of royal tyranny.



Historians have devoted countless hours in dusty archives looking for the answer, while novelists, playwrights, and filmmakers have turned him into the tragic centerpiece of their novels, plays, and motion pictures. Yet for all the time spent and all the ink spilled, little more is known about the prisoner today than on the moment he appeared on the historical stage. The Prisoner That moment was the afternoon of Thursday, September 18, 1698. Lieutenant Etienne du Junca, a prison official at the Bastille in Paris, noted the event in his journal. At three o’clock, the newly appointed governor of the prison, Benigne d’Auvergne de Saint-Mars, arrived with his luggage, his staff, and, ‘‘in a litter, a longtime prisoner, whom he had in custody at Pignerol, and whom he kept always masked, and whose name has not been given to me, or recorded.’’ On Saint-Mars’s directions, de Junca had prepared ‘‘the third room in the Bertaudiere tower.’’ There, the unknown prisoner was isolated. ‘‘The prisoner,’’ du Junca noted, ‘‘is to be served and cared for by M de Rosarges,’’ second in command to Governor Saint-Mars. He made only a few appearances in du Junca’s journal before ten o’clock on the night of November 19, 1703, when the ‘‘unknown prisoner who has worn a black velvet mask since his arrival here in 1698’’ died after a single day’s illness. Saint-Mars had him buried in the graveyard at nearby Saint Paul’s, recording his name in the parish records as ‘‘Marchialy’’ and his age as about 45 years. The Legend of the Masked Man An unknown person dying a lonely prison death and consigned to a poorly marked grave in a parish cemetery should have been quickly forgotten. Yet just eight years after his death, the story of the masked prisoner had reached as far as the royal household. Princess Palantine was the sister-in-law of the French king, a prodigious letter-writer with an ear for gossip. On October 15, 1711, she wrote to her aunt Sophie, heiress presumptive to the British throne, that ‘‘a man has lived for long years in the Bastille, masked, and masked he died. Two musketeers were at his side to kill him if he unmasked. He ate and slept in his mask. There must, no doubt, be some reason for this, as other wise he was very well treated, well lodged, and given all that he wanted. He received Holy Communion in his mask; he was very devout and was perpetually reading. No one has ever been able to find out who he was.’’ But just one week later, on October 22, the princess was back at her writing desk with the answer. ‘‘I have just learned who was the masked man who died in the Bastille. His wearing a mask was not due to cruelty. He was an English lord who had been mixed up in the affair of the Duke of Berwick (natural son of James II) against King William.


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He died there so that the King might never know of him.’’ Case closed as far as the princess was concerned, although a quick check of the records shows her conclusion was a false one. In 1717, a 23-year-old budding writer and philosopher then known by his birth name of Francois-Marie Arouet was sent to the Bastille, falsely accused of penning a poem that had scandalized the French court. During his 11-month stay at the prison, he heard the story of the masked prisoner from guards and inmates who had seen or heard of the man during his five years in the Bertaudiere Tower. Thirty-four years later, Arouet, now known by his pseudonym Voltaire, memorialized the story in his Le Si ecle de Louis XIV (The Age of Louis XIV). The black velvet of du Junca’s journals was replaced by the less soothing image of an iron hood permanently riveted over the prisoner’s head, with a ‘‘movable lower jaw held in place by iron springs that made it possible to eat wearing it.’’ In his 1751 history, Voltaire only hinted at the prisoner’s presumed identity. The man, he said, had been treated with extreme courtesy, with staff removing their hats when they entered his cell and politely refusing offers to sit with him while he ate. The governor, Saint-Mars, brought his meals and linens to him. He ate off a silver plate, and his cell was nicely furnished and decorated. In short, the prisoner was treated like someone of high social rank—like royalty. Voltaire waited another 20 years before divulging whom he believed the man to be: in his 1771 Questions sur l’encyclopedie, he stated that the prisoner was none other than the bastard brother of Louis XIV, the illegitimate offspring of Anne of Austria and Cardinal Mazarin. Unlike many that would follow, the story at least carries a kernel of authenticity. Louis XIV ascended to the throne of France in May 1643, just before his fifth birthday. His mother acted as his regent during his youth and adolescence, and she had chosen Cardinal Mazarin to run her regency government. They were probably lovers, and some even believe they secretly married. However, it would have been very difficult to hide a pregnancy in the gossipy French court, particularly given the fact that neither Anne nor Mazarin was very popular. Louis XIV took power when Mazarin finally died in 1661 and ruled France for the next 54 years. Voltaire’s was just one iteration of the prisoner’s life that put him within reach of a throne. The most famous variation on the theme was the one immortalized by Alexandre Dumas in his 1850 novel The Man in the Iron Mask: that the prisoner was the older, identical twin brother of Louis XIV, hidden away to prevent a power struggle for the throne. Other versions made him the illegitimate son of Anne of Austria, this time with the English Duke of Buckingham, or the illegitimate son of Louis XIV himself. Others thought he might be the illegitimate son—or daughter—of the Queen Mother. (The ‘‘man’’ as a woman appears off and on throughout mask literature.) Still others thought he might have been the Duke of Monmouth or some other illegitimate son of England’s King Charles II, or the French playwright Moliere. In 1801, the utterly fantastic rumor



Alexandr e Dumas More than anyone else, Alexandre Dumas has shaped the modern myth of the Man in the Iron Mask. Although the historical accuracy of the myth has never been taken seriously by historians, the idea that the king of France’s older brother could be forced to live out his days inside a prison wearing an iron mask to hide his true identity was originally put forth by Voltaire, later written about by Michel de Cubieres, and finally popularized in the serialized novel written by Dumas during 1848–1850. The novel, actually one volume of a larger work titled Le Vicomte de Bragellone, is a sequel to his earlier and most famous work, The Three Musketeers. He wrote many other works, including his popular The Count of Monte Cristo. But one of his less popular works proved to be his most daring: in Georges: The Planter of the Isle of France, Dumas takes on the issue of mixed races (Dumas himself was part African in his ancestry) and European colonialism.

began to spread that the prisoner, again Louis XIV’s hidden brother, had fathered a child while imprisoned, and the expectant mother had returned to her native Corsica to give birth to their bastard child: an ancestor of the future emperor, Napoleon Bonaparte. These stories, and others like them, were everywhere by the end of the 19th century. In 1901, Tighe Hopkins noted that there were about 40,000 treatises on the prisoner in the famed library of the British Museum, each with their own twist on the tale. Reading at the impossible rate of one a day, he pointed out, it would take a man over 100 years to get through them all (Hopkins 1901). In the 1930s, French historian Maurice Duvivier estimated that at least 1,000 people had been named as candidates (Noone 2003). While ferreting out the identity of the Man in the Iron Mask was a pleasant diversion for armchair historians, for the common people of France, it had become more than an interesting tale to tell over the fire on the cold winter’s night. To many, it was yet another symbol of royalty run amuck. That a man could be incarcerated for a lifetime on the whim of a king, stripped of his name, his identity obliterated behind a mask while he lived on for year after year, summed up much of what was wrong with the system. When the mobs finally stormed the Bastille in July 1789, over eight decades after the prisoner’s death, rumors quickly spread that the rioters had found the skeleton of a man with an iron mask still bolted on his skull deep in the bowels of the hated fortress before they burned it to the ground. Two Candidates Emerge By the early 20th century, researchers had dispensed with virtually all of the prisoner-as-royalty stories. It was an understandable presumption: the man must have been masked because he resembled someone who was famous, and in an


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era before photographs or even widespread distribution of paintings or drawings, there were very few famous faces outside the king and the royal family. From there, the many stories that emerged seem like a logical next step. The second-tier candidates were those who might not resemble somebody famous, but might have been famous in their own right. This was a much smaller field, with even Voltaire noting that ‘‘there did not disappear from Europe any personage of note’’ when the prisoner was believed to have first been sent to jail in the 1660s or 1670s (cited in Hopkins 1901). Drawing on one of the few facts that seemed constant throughout all the various tales of intrigue—that the prisoner had been under the perpetual care of Benigne d’Auvergne de Saint-Mars during his long incarceration—researchers found only two prisoners who might possibly fit that profile: Antonio Ercole Mattioli (or Matthioli) and a man registered as ‘‘Eustache Dauger.’’ The Problem with Mattioli At first glance, Mattioli seems to be the stronger case. A politician in the court of Charles IV, Duke of Mantua, a region in what is now northern Italy, he had become involved in negotiations over the control of the fortress at Casale Monferrato, overlooking the strategic Po River Valley not far from the French border. Louis XVI offered 100,000 crowns for Casale, and Mattioli brokered the secret deal between the duke and the king so effectively that Louis gave him several lavish rewards. But just as the French were about to set out for Casale, Mattioli double-crossed both parties, telling the governments of Venice, Savoy, Spain, and Austria about the deal, probably in hopes of getting greater rewards for his information. Louis was forced to withdraw from Casale and issued an order for Mattioli’s arrest, adding an ominous note to the warrant: Il faudra que personne ne scache ce que cet homme sera devenu—‘‘See that no one knows what becomes of this man.’’ Seized by French agents, he was deposited at the prison at Pignerol under the pseudonym ‘‘Lestang’’ and kept under the harshest conditions, provided with only the bare necessities for survival. He was later transferred to the Fort Royal prison on the isle of Saint-Margaruite (Hopkins 1901). Members of the royal family who came after Louis XIV seemed to think Mattioli was the man in question. Louis XV is said to have told Madame de Pompadour that the prisoner was a ‘‘minister of an Italian prince,’’ while Louis XVI told Marie Antoinette he was a political figure from Mantua. There are, however, several problems with Mattioli as the Man in the Iron Mask. The king’s comment is likely not as ominous as it first seems: to capture Mattioli, his agents had to seize him from Mantua, which could anger the duke or the people of the region. Mattioli’s imprisonment was never a secret; accounts of it appeared in the newspapers as early as 1682. His treachery was well known. More important, he did not follow Saint-Mars when the governor was transferred to Les



Entrance leading to the dungeon of the ‘‘The Man in the Iron Mask’’ at the Castle If, before his transfer to Sainte-Marguerite. (Branger/Roger Viollet/Getty Images)

Exiles in 1781 and wasn’t under his control again until Saint-Mars was sent to Saint-Margaruite in 1687. And Mattioli/Lestang vanishes from prison records by the end of 1694, a good indication that he died sometime that year and making it impossible for him to be the masked figure who arrived in Paris four years later. The Search for Eustache Dauger This left Eustache Dauger. It was long believed to be a pseudonym—many state prisoners were held under false names—but on the assumption that it was a real name, historian Maurice Duvivier (1932) spent several years combing the archives of the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris looking for it or any of its likely variations. There he found Eustache Dauger de Cavoye. Cavoye was born into the minor gentry of the Picardy region in 1637, but grew up at the royal court. His father, Francois Dauger de Cavoye, was a musketeer who rose to the rank of captain of Cardinal Richelieu’s guards. He married a young lady of the court, and they had six sons before his death in battle in 1641. As a child, Eustache was a playmate of King Louis XIV, who was about his age. All six Cavoye sons joined the military, with four ultimately dying in battle. Eustache himself had participated in more than a half-dozen military campaigns by his 21st birthday, but in most respects, he was clearly the black sheep of the family. In 1659, at the age of 22, he was found to have participated in a ‘‘black


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mass’’ held at the Castle de Roissy on Good Friday. Black masses were Satanic, or at least profane, corruptions of the Catholic Mass, and this particular event created a huge scandal, with several military officers losing their positions as a result. Cavoye escaped punishment due to his connections within the court—his brother Louis was one of the king’s chief officials—but it was just the first in a string of catastrophes. His mother all but disowned him in her 1664 will, naming the younger Louis as head of the family. In 1665 Cavoye was forced to sell his army commission after killing a man outside Saint-Germain in Paris following a drunken altercation. Finally, he was caught up in a ‘‘poison scare’’ that swept Paris in 1668 or 1669. Two characters named Le Sage and Abbe Mariette were charged with witchcraft after evidence emerged that they were dispensing love potions and poisons and performing black masses. Some of the highest ranking ladies of the court, including Madame de Montspan, the king’s mistress, were rumored to be implicated, as was Cavoye, who may have assisted in delivering poisons and setting up black masses. With his brother Louis in the Bastille after an ill-advised love affair that had led to a duel, there was no one to protect him. He was supposedly arrested at Dunkirk while trying to escape to England and sent to the prison at Pignerol. Duvivier’s theory was strong: Eustache Dauger de Cavoye’s crimes were shocking in the context of the times, the type of thing to land a person in prison for life. His childhood relationship with the king would have made it difficult for Louis XIV to order his execution. At the same time, he was not someone who was so recognizable that his disappearance would be notable. However, later research showed that while Eustace Dauger de Cavoye was imprisoned sometime around 1669, it was most likely by his own family, and he was sent not to Pignerol, but to Saint-Lazare in Paris, where he died around 1683 (Duvivier 1932). The Valet Scottish author Andrew Lang had another candidate. Governor Saint-Mars was told by the French secretary of war that the prisoner he needed to keep under such close guard was ‘‘only a valet, and does not need much furniture.’’ Lang found records in the British archives that made reference to a servant to a Frenchman living in England in 1669 named Roux de Marsilly. The valet was known only as ‘‘Martin’’ (Lang 1903: 9). Roux de Marsilly was a Huguenot, a French Calvinist. From their beginnings during the reformation in the early 16th century, the Huguenots had struggled to gain power, or at least religious freedom, within the Catholic kingdom. This fight had cost thousands of lives, both on the battlefield and in periodic civilian massacres; tens of thousands of Huguenots left France for new homes as far away as South Africa and the Americas. The conflict eased with the 1598



Edict of Nantes, which granted the Huguenots religious freedom and civil equality within the realm. But the self-styled ‘‘Protector of Catholicism’’ Louis XIV had steadily reversed the rights granted under the edict and would revoke it altogether with the Edict of Fontainebleau in 1685. Marsilly was one of the many Huguenots working to bring about an alliance with Protestant countries to try to win their French brethren greater freedom, either through diplomacy or force. Records in the British archives indicate that he was corresponding with many Protestant sympathizers in England and on the continent. He often used his valet Martin as a messenger. When Marsilly was arrested by the French in Switzerland in the spring of 1669, the rumor spread that he was part of a widespread plot to kill King Louis XIV. He was taken to the Bastille, where he refused to divulge anything about his activities in England. On June 22, 1669, he was publicly tortured and executed. Just before the guards came to take him to the courtyard, he slashed himself with a shard of broken mirror. Officials simply cauterized the wound with a hot iron and continued on. He was stripped naked and staked out on a wooden frame. Government officials made several attempts to get him to confess to an assassination plot, but Masilly denied he knew anything about it, telling his interrogators ‘‘hee never had any evill intention against the Person of the King,’’ according to an English onlooker. He died about two hours later (Lang 1903). After Marsilly’s execution, French officials were keen to talk to Martin and find out what he know of his master’s intrigues. On July 1, 1669, Charles Colbert de Croissy, ambassador to England’s Court of Saint James, wrote Paris that ‘‘Monsieur Joly has spoken to the man Martin and has really persuaded him that, by going to France and telling him all that he knows about Roux, he will play the part of a lad of honor and a good subject.’’ There is some evidence that Martin was not so easily persuaded, apparently telling his interrogators that by returning to France, he realized people would believe he had knowledge about Marsilly and he ‘‘would be kept in prison to make him divulge what he did not know.’’ Sometime between July 2 and 19, Martin vanished from the records, and on July 19, the valet ‘‘Eustache Dauger’’ emerged. That day, Louis XIV’s war minister, the Marquis de Louvois, informed Saint-Mars that the safekeeping of his new prisoner, then being held at Dunkirk, was ‘‘of the last importance to his service.’’ Dauger was to be held in confinement, with no contact with the outside world. His meals were to be served to him by Saint-Mars himself. ‘‘You must never, under any pretenses, listen to what he may wish to tell you. You must threaten him with death if he speaks one word except about his actual needs.’’ Saint-Mars promptly replied that he had told Dauger he would run him through with his sword if the prisoner spoke so much as a single word. Despite this rude introduction, in 1672, Saint-Mars asked that the prisoner be assigned as a valet to the Duc de Lauzun, a high-ranking inmate destined to spend almost a decade at Pignerol. In his letter, Saint-Mars said that Dauger did


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not want to be released and ‘‘would never ask to be set free.’’ Permission was denied, and Louvois ordered he have no contact with Lauzun or other state prisoners. The only real hint of discord came in 1680, as Dauger was tossed into the prison’s dungeon. ‘‘Let me know how Dauger can possibly have done what you tell me,’’ Louvois cryptically asked Saint-Mars, ‘‘and how he got the necessary drugs, as I cannot suppose you supplied them.’’ Generally, Dauger seems to have been little trouble. He ‘‘takes things easily, resigned to the will of God and the King,’’ said Saint-Mars in the late 1780s. He spent most of his time in solitary confinement, spoken to only by Saint-Mars and his lieutenant, a confessor, and a doctor who was allowed to examine the prisoner in Saint-Mars’s presence. When Saint-Mars was transferred to command of the prison at Saint-Margurite near Cannes, he transported Dauger in a sedan chair, his body covered by a piece of oilcloth—a 12-day ordeal that very nearly killed him. On the trip to Paris, he was carried on a litter, eating his meals and sharing a room with Saint-Mars as their group stopped each night at country inns. No matter which prison he was kept at, ‘‘l’ancien prisonnier’’ (the old prisoner) was rarely seen by prison staff. His cells were comfortable, but not lavish, and despite later myths, he seems to have eaten off the same plain plates as all the other prisoners. The lingering mystery of what Martin/Dauger had done to warrant such careful confinement was never spelled out in any of the correspondence. SaintMars guarded Dauger for over 30 years and claimed not to know anything of his identity or his crime. Andrew Lang came to the conclusion that his decadeslong punishment had been ‘‘the mere automatic result of the ‘red tape’ of the old French absolute monarchy,’’ a victim of bureaucracy, who was forced to endure years of isolation by a government that neglected to rescind an order long after the prisoner had ceased to be a threat. (Lang 1903: 5) Not only was the Man in the Iron Mask not masked with iron, he may not have been masked throughout his imprisonment. It is not mentioned in any known correspondence between 1669 and 1698, nor was it part of any known directive by the French government. The first time the mask appears is on the road to Paris in 1698. Apparently, it remained in place for the last five years of Dauger’s life. Conclusion It seems clear from the evidence that the valet Martin was the Man in the Iron Mask—a servant who lived a much stranger life than most. Nothing else is known of him, not his first name or his date of birth, not where he came from, or his religion. His thoughts or feelings about his unique fate are a mystery. What few possessions he carried through his 34 years in jail were destroyed, and his cell sanded and repainted in the days following his death, as went the standard



procedure of the time. But in the words of author Tighe Hopkins, he ‘‘arises and steals from that graveyard of St. Paul’s this ghost that shrouds his face, intent upon an odd revenge, the torment and insoluble conundrum of historian, fabulist, novelist, dramatist, essayist and gossip—the Sphinx of French history: the Man in the Iron Mask.’’ (Hopkins 1901: 24) References and Further Reading Barnes, Arthur Stapylton. The Man of the Mask: A Study in the By-Ways of History. London: Smith, Elder, 1908. Davenport, R. A. History of the Bastille and of Its Principal Captives. London: Thomas Tegg, 1839. Dover, George Agar-Ellis. The True History of the State Prisoner, Commonly Called the Iron Mask. London: J. Murray, 1826. Duvivier, Maurice. Le masque de fer. Paris: Armand Colin, 1932. Francq, H. G. The File of the Man behind the Mask. Winnipeg, Manitoba: Francq, 1984. Furneaux, Rupert. The Man Behind the Mask. The Real Story of the ‘‘Ancient Prisoner.’’ [An Attempt to Identify the ‘‘Man in the Iron Mask’’ as Eustache Ogier de Cavoye. with Plates.] London: Cassell, 1954. Hopkins, Tighe. The Man in the Iron Mask. Leipzig: Bernhard Tauchnitz, 1901. Lang, Andrew. The Valet’s Tragedy: And Other Studies. London: Longmans, Green, 1903. Macdonald, Roger. The Man in the Iron Mask. Cambridge, MA: Da Capo, 2005. Noone, John. The Man behind the Iron Mask. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. Topin, Marius Jean Francois. The Man with the Iron Mask. London: Smith, Elder, 1870. Von Keler, Theodore. The Mystery of the Iron Mask. Girard, KS: Haldeman-Julius, 1923. Williamson, Hugh Ross. Who Was the Man in the Iron Mask?: And Other Historical Mysteries. London: Penguin, 2002. Wilson, Colin. The Mammoth Encyclopedia of the Unsolved. New York: Carroll and Graf, 2000.


12 Prince Louis Charles (Louis XVII), also known as the ‘‘Lost Dauphin,’’ survived captivity during the French Revolution and was allowed to escape in 1795. PRO John Lee CON Lorri Brown

PRO In the mysteries of history, Louis XVII’s story is the most tenacious of them all and the most evocative of the many sympathetic emotions that are aroused by tragedies because of the youthfulness of the victim of the mystery. His name is surrounded by the storm of the French Revolution at its most sadistic and inhumane state when, driven by fear of foreign royal intervention, they executed all known threats, including their own members of the democratic revolution, which started in 1789. They created various instruments to root out enemies of the state. As a result, Louis XVII was imprisoned and suffered a horrible death because of the callousness of his prisoners. However, many still believe and claim that this never happened, or it is clouded with mystery so one cannot decide the issue. After his death, there arose many persons who claimed to be the surviving prisoner who had escaped from the prison, and this section will explore these claims. The history of Louis XVII (March 27, 1785–June 8, 1795) is a horrible tale of intrigue, deception, and revolution that has been kept alive because of the various people who have claimed to be the lost prince of the French throne. The French Revolution (1789–1793) culminated in the overthrow of the French monarchy by the middle and lower social classes of France because Louis XVI could not manage the national debt and finances to help his people. It enacted a constitution and an assembly that guaranteed the rights of men. However, the later part of the revolution became more radical and denounced all royal power, and the people decided to overthrow the monarchy. This was called the Reign of Terror because all of the enemies to the democratic state (royalists, dissenters, and political parties) were rounded up and executed by the guillotine. As a result, the nation became so antimonarchial that it laid the foundation for what would follow with the demise of the royal family. The incident with Louis XVII happened at the height of the French Revolution when the Reign of Terror was beginning for France. Robespierre, the leader 267 © 2011 ABC-Clio. All Rights Reserved.

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of the Reign of Terror, had instituted several government committees to protect the internal security of the government and its leaders from foreign and domestic conspiracies to overthrow the new government. This new French revolutionary government was still very insecure because they had planned to dethrone Louis XVI and his wife, Marie Antoinette. They were afraid that the European monarchies would invade France to ensure the safety of the king and queen. The revolutionary government began the overthrow of the king by capturing Louis XVI and imprisoning Marie Antoinette in the Temple Prison, a medieval fortress in Paris, which was built by the Knights Templar in the 12th century and was made into a prison by the revolutionary government. Antoinette, a Habsburg princess, had three children by Louis XVI: Louis Joseph Marie Therese, and Louis Charles (who became Louis XVII). They imprisoned Louis XVII, the king’s son, in the same tower with his mother, and he became another victim of the French Revolution hatred of royalty. However, Louis XVII also had his supporters in France and around the European continent, who had proclaimed him to be the king of France at the death of his father. After Louis XVII, they would continue to support various people who claimed to be Louis XVII, the ‘‘Lost Dauphin’’ (heir to the throne of France). As a result, there have been over 300 claimants for the title of Louis XVII. Louis Charles or Louis XVII was born on March 27, 1785, to Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette during the French Revolution. He was called Louis Charles, Duke of Normandy (1789–1791). Then he was named Louis Charles (1791–1793). He was finally named Fils de France (son of France) on his birthdates. His position as heir to throne was the reason he gained the title of Dauphin, in French meaning heir to the throne. During his first seven years of his life he had a nanny named Agathe de Ramband, Berceus de Enfant. Madame de Rambaud took care of him during those seven years and was in charge of his discipline and health needs. Then Louis Elisabeth took care of him for the next three years. He grew up in the trappings of royalty until the night when the republican government of the French Revolution overthrew his royal family. The Committee of General Security was a police agency charged with overseeing the local police in Paris. It was to supervise internal enemies and anyone suspected of treason. The committee sent the family to the Tuilleries and then to the Temple Prison. The Dauphin was separated from his father on December 2, 1793, during his father’s trial. On July 3, 1793, commissioners or representatives of the Committee of General Security arrived to divide the royal heir from his mother and sister, Marie Theresa. It is said that Marie Antoinette refused to leave her son and protected his body with hers, but the representatives threatened to kill her and her daughter if she did not release him. She saw the hopelessness of the situation and let Louis go with his captors. Louis cried and begged for his mother to rescue him, but he was dragged into solitary confinement one floor beneath Marie Theresa. At that time, the royalists, or the people loyal to the


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throne, had declared Louis to be the next king of France, but the republicans wanted to stop the possibility of him becoming king. So the little king was only 10 years old when the forces of the republican government abducted him. There are several accounts of what happened to Louis XVII in the Temple Prison. Many accounts describe how he was subjected to sadism, human indignities, and other horrible experiences in the name of the justice of the Reign of Terror, but there is no proof or recorded evidence that this happened. Louis was kept in a room with Antoine Simon and Marie Jeanne, who were cobblers and revolutionists. According to stories, Antoine Simon treated Louis XVII with contempt and abuse. The Dauphin’s head was shaved on January 5, 1794. He was made to testify against his mother in a trial and accuse her of incest and other charges that caused his mother more emotional troubles. In addition, Simon made the son of France drink alcohol and eat in excess. He also made Louis curse like a lower class citizen as well as wear the clothes of the French peasants. They also made him sing the Marseillaise, the national anthem of the French republic. They made him sleep with a prostitute from whom he contracted venereal disease. Louis was also threatened with the guillotine to exact obedience from him. Another story was that the Simons told Louis that his parents had disinherited him and did not like him. He was also called ‘‘Capet’’ as an insult to his royalty, because the kings of France were never called by their surnames, but rather by their royal names. It was used as a term of criticism and to make him feel like a commoner. These stories were never confirmed but were made by the royalists after the French Revolution. Other reports have him being well treated by Marie Jeanne and well fed by this kind woman. However, some believe that the revolutionists may have covered up this story. In 1794 the Simons departed from the prison. The head of the Committee of General Security, Jacques Foche, visited Louis XVII. Later, Jean Jacques Christopher Laurent (1770–1787), the representative of Josephine de Beuharnais, future wife of Napoleon I, saw Louis XVII and released him for a walk and to breathe in clean air. He said that he was in good health and saw no bruises. In March 1795, three government commissioners, J. B. Haund de la Men, J. B. L. Matthener, and J. Devensche, visited him and saw nothing wrong with him either. This may be proof that the reported atrocities were false reports made by the royalists. On May 3, 1795, he was reported to be seriously ill. Some revolutionary accounts state that he was found in the fetal position, full of puss and unable or unwilling to speak because of the abuse that he had suffered. Another republican said that he was sensitive to sound, had diarrhea, and was tubercular. He died on June 8 of tuberculosis, but some said he had a skin problem called scrofula. His body was immediately examined by one of the government’s physicians and he was pronounced dead. The physician also took the opportunity to extract the child’s heart and place it in a bag, which he took with him when he left the house. It was an old French tradition to separate the heart from the body of the French royalty.



The body was not buried, and the king’s son was pronounced dead to the French people by the revolutionary government. The physician kept the heart for many years in a glass jar and then he lost it at a bridge in Paris. The physician recovered the jar many years later and it was kept in a church in Paris until recent times. Marie Therese, his sister, was not allowed to visit the Dauphin or to say prayers for him even though she was in the floor above him. Some false claimants have considered this evidence that the Dauphin could have escaped or that the revolutionary government was attempting to cover up a murder. Many rumors started circulating that the French government had murdered him. As frequent as these rumors were, other rumors circulated that he was alive and had escaped the terrible fate of his parents. It is also reported that Louis XVIII sent out many imposters to deflect other people from finding the Dauphin, because he was a competitor to the throne. In addition, he also prevented Marie Therese from investigating rumors and imposters for the same reasons. It was a sad ending for the Bourbon family. As the years past, thousands of articles and books were written on the disappearance and possible survival of the Dauphin. Pretenders to the Throne One of the first claimants to the thrown was a tailor’s son, Jean-Marie Hervagault (September 20, 1781–May 8, 1812), who said he was removed from the temple in a linen basket. He was the illegitimate son of Duc de Valentois, Prince of Monaco. Other claimants boasted of being removed by means of concealment inside a rocking horse. Hervagault convinced many people that he was 13 when he was really 15 at the time of imprisonment. When the bones of the king were dug up, it was said they looked like they were those of a 15-year-old. Many aristocrats, clergy, and Joseph Fouchs, Duke of Otranto, supported his claim. He also gathered a court at Chalons sur Marne in France that respected him as king of France. However, the claimant’s royal life was stopped when he was tried for swindling and thrown into jail with another pretender, Mathuran Bruneau, who was famous for pretending to be other nobles. The royal family did not back his claim, and his honesty is in question because of his criminal charges. There is another pretender, Ethelbert Louis Hector Alfred, Baron de Richemont, who wrote a dark account of his own escape from the tower in 1832. Richemont (Ethelbert Louis Hector Alfred) claimed that he was Louis in Paris in 1828. In 1842 he was arrested and thrown in jail for 12 years for a minor crime. He escaped and left the country until his return in 1830. He died at Gleize on August 1853 and the name Louis Charles de France was placed on his tombstone until the French government removed it. The best imaginative story was that of the English famous naturalist, John James Audubon, who was truly suspected to be Louis Charles. Audubon was the naturalist who wrote the History of Birds in America. He was an adopted child and


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was about the same age as the Lost Dauphin at his adoption. Audubon also wrote a letter to his wife that said, ‘‘patient, silent, bashful, and yet powerful of physique and of mind, dressed as a common man, I walk the streets! I bow! I ask permission to do this or that! I . . . who should command all!’’ (quoted in Tyler 1937: 57). This story is fantastic in its emotional power, but it is not very believable. There are other stories of the Dauphin being transported to America to hide with the Native Americans. This fantastic story is a claim by Onwarenhiiaki, a Native American who claimed to be the Dauphin after being transported to America by his cousin the Duke of Provence to live with the Iroquois. Another false claimant was a man named Eleazar Williams. He was born and raised in Wisconsin, but he claimed that he was the Dauphin. He said he had amnesia until the age of 13 and had no memory of his childhood. He lived with the Native Americans in New York and became a missionary to them. But in 1850, he claimed that he was the Lost Dauphin and attempted to claim the riches that were associated with the Dauphin. Williams claimed that the Dauphin was concealed in the fourth story of the tower and a wooden figure had replaced his body in his coffin. They also had a deaf mute who would imitate him sitting in the window. He also claimed that A. Barras, who was a friend of Josephine de Beuharnais, future empress of France with Napoleon, decided to save the Dauphin for future reign in France. He said that he concealed the Dauphin in the tower and the Dauphin left in a coffin and was taken from the cemetery. Some said that he looked like the Comte de Provence and he was brought to the United States by the ex-valet of Louis XVII. The city of Green Bay, Wisconsin, erected a statue in honor of Eleazar that claimed that he had similar scars to that of the Dauphin. However, Eleazar Williams was discredited and the royal family did not claim him as their son.

The Lost Dauphin in Wisconsin? Among the many people claiming to be the Lost Dauphin during the early 19th century was Eleazar Williams, one of the early settlers in Wisconsin Territory during the 1820s. Williams was, at various times, an unpopular religious leader, a spy, an Indian negotiator, and a frontier settler, quite a resume for one who, by the late 1830s, was claiming to be the legitimate heir to the French throne. Williams did have a physical resemblance to members of the Bourbon family that ruled France until the Revolution, which may have spurred him to make his claims. In 1841 Prince de Joinville, the youngest son of King Louis Phillip of France, made a tour of the United States, which gave Williams an idea. He arranged to meet the prince because he had been a Native American missionary. However, Williams would go on to use the meeting to claim that Joinville had actually come to see him, knowing his ‘‘true’’ identity. Williams claimed that the prince offered him extravagant wealth if he would only renounce his claim to France’s throne. Of course, the prince denied all aspects of the story.



His true history was that he is a descendant of a Mohawk Native American and a white woman who had been kidnapped by the Mohawks at seven years old. He grew up with the Mohawks, but left as a teenager to become an Episcopal minister and a pioneer to Green Bay, Wisconsin. Also, Eleazar wrote a book about his claim that he titled The Lost Prince, which brought him fame for several years. He did claim until his death that he was Louis Charles, but there was no evidence to support this claim. His head was later exhumed and DNA testing confirmed that he was Native American Louis XVII was the titular king of France from and thus was not Louis Charles. 1793 until 1795. He was the son of King There is another story that stated Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette and spent an imposter had approached Marie his childhood in prison during the early years Theresa, who was walking with her of the French Revolution. His treatment brother-in-law, the Duc de Bury, in there damaged his health, and he died at the a garden near Versailles. The image of 10. (Library of Congress) poster called out to her, ‘‘Sister!’’ Marie Theresa reportedly replied, ‘‘Go away! Go away! It is you who is destroying our family.’’ The imposter ran away from the princess, but it left Marie Therese in hysterics, because of the unsettled nature of her brother’s death. Throughout history there have been between 40 to 300 claimants or pretenders to the throne. These included a person name Lazarre William of New York, another who claimed to be the Dauphin living among Native Americans. The many false claims made illustrate the gripping and emotional opportunity that pretending to be the Dauphin had for his pretenders. There was a drive in those who attempted to take advantage of the royal family and their riches for their own gain. All of these attempts by pretenders have cast some doubt of ever knowing the true fate of the true Dauphin. Possibilities for Louis XVII In spite of these false claimants, there is one who came the closest to being the true Dauphin. This claimant provided evidence that may sufficiently identify him as the Dauphin. He provided photographic evidence as to his similarity to


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those of the royal family, and he may be the physical generation of the Bourbon family and possibly the Dauphin himself. Karl Wilhelm Naundorff (1785?–August 10, 1845) was a German clockand watchmaker who claimed to be the Lost Dauphin. He lived in Spandau in Berlin, Germany, where he became a citizen. In 1822 he was in Brandenburg but was jailed for three years for arson. In two memoirs written in 1827, he wrote that there was a substitute in place of the French king who had escaped in the 1820s to Germany. In 1833 he went to Paris and claimed that he was the son of Louis XVI. Naundorff went to Paris where he spoke to members of the royal family and told them much about their private life with him. He convinced the wet nurse Agatha de Rambaud that he was the Lost Dauphin. People of the court like Etienne de Joly, Louis XVI’s minister of justice, and Jean Bremond, the king’s personal secretary, identified him as the Lost Dauphin. They showed a picture of Naundorff to Marie Theresa, his sister, but she did not recognize him. In 1836, Naundorff sued Marie Theresa for property that belonged to the Dauphin, but Louis Phillippe, the Bourbon king at this time, arrested him and deported him (Cadbury 2003: 100). On January 1, 1860, he thought he would be restored to the throne, but he died before that dream came true. His relatives put an epitaph of his grave stone that read ‘‘Here lays King of France, Louis XVII.’’ His relatives have attempted to press his claims in the French courts during the 19th and 20th centuries. Rene Charles de Bourbon, his grandson, has attempted the claim in the French court, but it was rejected. His family has attempted to put forth his claims on the Internet, where pictures of Naundorff, his father, and his brother are placed beside the pictures of Louis XVII’s family. There is a close resemblance especially in the shape of the nose and the lips, which they claim identifies Naundorff as the Lost Dauphin. There were serious rumors that he was still alive at the time of 1819. There was also proof that he was still among the diplomats who signed the French treaty of 1819 that ended the revolutionary government. Eckert, a diplomat, claimed that many wise men refused to give up the claim that he survived. He also stated that many of these claims suited the royalist, who wanted to elevate the Dauphin to the throne, so the French government never pursued the claims. He also stated that it was odd that the members of the family never wore black or attended his funeral, as if they knew he was still alive. These rumors still continue to haunt the memory of Louis XVII. The legend of Louis Poiret of the Seychelles may be another story indicating that the young Dauphin was still alive after his imprisonment in the tower. His story is that he was taken by a man named Poiret to the Seychelles near Madagascar on the Indian Ocean where he lived his days in Poivre away from his enemies. During the early 19th century, he supposedly worked with the inhabitants on the cotton industry. Then in 1822, he moved to Mahe, another island, and claimed that he was the son of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. In 1857, he



was on his deathbed and told his relatives that he was the Dauphin. There are those in the Seychelles who claim they are descendants of Louis XVII. These three cases are the closest to being true claimants to the throne of France, because of the physical similarities and the intimate details that the people provided to prove their authenticity. The DNA Evidence In 2000 the leading historian of the Lost Dauphin, Philippe Delorme wanted to have the heart that had been preserved tested for DNA evidence to resolve the controversy. He even considered double checking the result through two tests conducted by Jean Jacques Cassimen, professor of genetics at Belgium’s Louvain University, and Ernst Brinkman, professor of Genetics at Germany’s University of Munster. The testing of the Dauphin’s heart is also an interesting contention against the claimants. They took the desiccated heart of the Dauphin and compared it to preserved hair from Marie Antoinette and Marie Theresa. They compared the mitochondrial DNA of each specimen and discovered that there was a 75 percent match between the DNA of the samples (Cadbury 2003: 135). However, Delorme stated that the heart could have belonged to a relative of Marie, but Delorme still feels that there is sufficient evidence that the heart is that of the Dauphin and considers the case closed. It convinced enough historians and the French government that they buried the heart between the coffins of Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI. His descendants attended the funeral and proceedings that interred the heart with his parents. Some skeptics have cast doubt on this evident matching of the DNA by claiming that you cannot determine inheritance through the mother, the heart may have been replaced during the lost period of time between the discovery of the heart and now, and the samples may be too old. The history of the heart is also problematic, because after Pellatin stole the heart, he pickled it in alcohol. Then his student stole the heart and dropped it in a river, but returned it to the doctor after a period of remorse. His wife sent it to the archbishop of Paris where it stayed until the palace was attacked in the Revolution of 1830. The doctor retrieved it. In 1840, the restoration began and the heart was sent to Spain to be with the Bourbon branch of the monarchy. The crystal vase was smashed during the restoration, but the doctor’s son retrieved it. It was returned to Paris and finally placed in a crystal vase at the Royal Crypt at Saint Denis where it rested until 1999. In 2000, when Delorme tested the heart, is was described as being as hard as wood. Critiques of the DNA Test As a result of this research, Phillippe Boiry (author of a book on Naundorff) remains skeptical that any real DNA could have been obtained from the hardened


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surface of the heart, especially since it has endured many exposures to the elements, in particular being dropped by the student into the river. Phillippe de Boiry (2000) claims that there might have been two hearts involved in the escape from the tower. One of the hearts may have belonged to Louis Joseph Xavier Francois, the first son of Louis XVI, who had died in 1789. In addition to this historian, many relatives of the three major claimants remain doubtful about the DNA testing. Naundorff’s relatives requested his grave to be reopened to do more testing. One last claimant actually wrote a response to an e-mail claiming that his ancestor, related to Count Esterhazy, a friend of Marie Antoinette, had taken the child to Hungary. He gave the jailers a large amount of gold to release the prisoner. He was taken to Hungary where Louis XVII lived the remainder of his days unable to forgive the French people for their atrocities toward his family. Thus, the odyssey of the Lost Dauphin continues even up to today. Conclusion The tragic story of the Dauphin and his pretenders has continued for many years since that horrendous time at the tower. It has shown how much interest and passion there is in the mystery of the Lost Dauphin. Many claimants have attempted to persuade the royal family and prove that they are their lost relatives either for money or family ties. Also, although there was conclusive evidence through DNA testing, many people still deny the physical evidence, because the heart that was tested was in poor condition and had endured many trials. As a result, it cast doubts on the identity of the heart as well as whether the Dauphin was still alive. Even to this day, there are still claimants to the throne of the king of France that may continue into the future as long as people are interested in history’s mysteries and the romantic era of royalty. References and Further Reading Bordonove, Georges. Louis XVII et l’enigme du Temple. Paris: Pygmaillian, 1995. Cadbury, Deborah. The Lost King of France: How DNA Solved the Mystery of the Murdered Son. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2003. De Boiry, Phillippe. Le Dossier: Louis XVII, une affaire de couer. Paris: F-X. de Guibert, 2000. Hardin, John. Louis XVI, The Silent King. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1992. ‘‘Heart of Boy Gets Royal Funeral in France.’’ China Daily (June 3, 2004). Available at http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2004-06/03/content_336250 .htm (accessed June 15, 2010).



Platon, Mircea. ‘‘The Reeducation of the Dauphin.’’ Convorbiri Literare (May 2004). Available online at http://convorbiri-literare.dntis.ro/PLATONmai4.html (accessed August 16, 2010). Royale, Madam, Duchess of Angoul^eme. Private Memoirs of What Passed in the Temple, From the Imprisonment of the Royal Family to the Death of the Dauphin. London: John Murray, 1823. Stone, R. J. ‘‘Death in the Temple.’’ Quadrant (June 2005). Tyler, Alice Jaynes. I Who Should Command All. New Haven, CT: Framamat, 1937. Watelle, Michelle. Louis XVII ou le secret de roi. Boucherville, Quebec: Editions de Mortagne, 1990.

CON In June 2004, following an elaborate state funeral, a crystal urn containing a small, petrified human heart was officially laid to rest in the royal crypt of Saint Denis Cathedral in Paris. The heart, believed by both scientists and historians, belongs to Louis XVII, otherwise known as the ‘‘Lost Dauphin.’’ For 209 years, controversies raged about whether Louis escaped during the French Revolution or died in Temple Prison. For all intent and purposes, the official state funeral for Louis XVII should have laid to rest any question about his death. However, this is one historical controversy that continues to be debated. The tale of the Lost Dauphin is one of the best-known controversies in world history. It began during the French Revolution, in the Temple Prison of Paris, where young Louis Charles was held with his family for six years before his death. The true fate of Louis XVII, know to historians, scientists, and royalists as the ‘‘Lost Dauphin,’’ has been long scrutinized. Even before his untimely death, there was speculation that the little king had escaped. Some claimed that sympathetic jailers, who spirited him away to Germany, England, or even the United States, secretly rescued Louis from his prison. Others believe the boy king, who was but 10 years old when he died, did die in Temple Prison and a physician secretly took his heart during the autopsy. Indeed, it is the heart of Louis XVII that is at the center of the controversy. For over 100 years there was no way to determine whether Louis XVII had died or escaped. Over time the true facts of the Lost Dauphin melded with legend and lore. However, thanks to modern science, historians have been able to rule out imposters claiming to be Louis XVII and to positively identify the heart in Saint Denis. DNA tests were first used in 1950 to disprove a German clockmakers claim to the French throne. In 1999 further DNA tests were conducted to prove once and for all that the heart belonged to the Lost Dauphin, Louis XVII (Cadbury 2003). According to the official history of France, Louis XVII, the titular king of France, died of tuberculosis in the Temple Prison in Paris on June 8, 1795.


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However, few people accepted tuberculosis as the cause of death. Some believed neglect and harsh treatment by his jailer, Antoine Simon, killed the king while others whispered of poison and murder. Some declared he wasn’t dead at all, but had been smuggled out of the prison and taken abroad. The rumors surrounding the boy king’s death have continued far beyond the French Revolution. Theories of Louis XVII escaping France to Germany, England, or America have persisted for over 200 years. During the 19th century over 100 men claimed to be the lost king of France, ranging from the probable to the impossible. Some of the better-known claimants included John James Audubon (although he never made a public claim) and a Wisconsin missionary by the name of Eleazer Williams. Williams’s claim was never taken seriously, though there is a Lost Dauphin Road, Lost Dauphin Park, and Lost Louie’s Restaurant in the town of Lawrence, Wisconsin, in his honor. Anthropological studies on the exhumed skull of Eleazer Williams indicate that he was of Native American descent and therefore rule out the possibility of his being the Lost Dauphin. Another claimant from the Seychelle Islands is included in the ‘‘official’’ history of the islands. The 19th-century author Mark Twain parodied these far-fetched claims in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. The most plausible candidate claiming to be the Lost Dauphin was a German clockmaker by the name of Karl Wilhelm Naundorff. Naundorff was able to convince the childhood nurse of Louis XVII that he was indeed Louis XVII. He was officially recognized as a Louis XVII by the Netherlands government and was allowed to take the surname Bourbon. However, genetics testing on a bone removed from the remains of Naundorff in the 1950s proved he did not share the same DNA as other relatives of the Bourbon family. Even after the Naundorff case was laid to rest by the DNA evidence, conspiracy theories that Louis XVII escaped and had spent his life abroad continued to circulate. It wasn’t until 2004, 209 years after the Dauphin was declared dead, that his heart was finally laid to rest at the Basilique Saint Denis in Paris. The story of the Lost Dauphin stretches back to his early childhood. Born on Easter Sunday, March 27, 1785, the second son of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, Louis Charles was not originally the Dauphin of France. The title of Dauphin belonged to his older brother, Louis Joseph, who would inherit the thrown. Right from the beginning, the little prince of France was surrounded by controversy. Whispers through the lavish court at Versailles and beyond to the city of Paris claimed his mother, who was highly unpopular with the French people, had been unfaithful to her husband. Critics, political enemies, and even relatives claimed that a Swedish nobleman, Axel, Count Von Fersen, was really the new prince’s father (Fersen 1971). To his credit, Louis XVI ignored all rumors and innuendos that his newest son was not really his and rejoiced in his growing family. The Dauphin, Louis Joseph, had never been in strong health and by the summer of 1789, his health began to fail rapidly. He died on June 5, from a



combination of tuberculosis, rickets, and pneumonia. Four-year-old Louis Charles then became the Dauphin of France and heir to the French throne. The state of France’s economy at the time of Louis Charles’s birth would play a central role in his short life. For years prior to his birth, French peasants and merchants were unfairly taxed by the government. Thanks to the unequal voting of the Estates General, any attempt at economic reforms were cut short by the nobility, who were lightly taxed. Almost none among the taxpaying public in France had political power, and the very few who made up the nobility, or the Second Estate, effectively exercised veto power over any tax reforms. Taxes on the commoners were kept high, and this, combined with shortages of bread, set the stage for rebellion. Added to this was the newly established United States of America (whom Louis XVI had aided through raised taxes). The French peasants were inspired by the Americans’ success in winning freedom from Great Britain and taxation without representation. While economic conditions rapidly deteriorated during the 1780s, the royal family lived an insular life at Versailles, seven miles outside of Paris. Louis Charles and his older sister Marie Therese, along with their parents, lived a life of unprecedented opulence at Versailles attended by an army of servants and courtiers. While the majority of people in Paris and the rest of France lived in dire poverty, the French Crown spent great sums of money on the intricate rituals of court life. It is estimated that to serve the royal children a simple bowl of soup cost 5,000 livres, because of the cost of the retainers required to actually serve it. At the center of the people’s growing discontent were the king and queen. The queen especially received a great deal of ugly attention, thanks to propaganda published by political enemies. In these scandal sheets, called libelles, the lives of the royal family were common fodder, with numerous accusations that the queen had trysts with many other nobles who were at court. The fact that Louis XVI did not consummate the marriage for seven years only added to the thought that the queen was being unfaithful. Even after the birth of two children, the rumors persisted. The queen’s supposed dalliances led to her portrayal as an aloof monarch who, like Nero, ‘‘fiddled’’ while Paris starved. Marie Antoinette was shown as a promiscuous, frivolous queen, secretly working for her Austrian relations rather than for France. Despite the fact that Marie Antoinette visited poor houses and hospitals, trimmed down her own lifestyle greatly, and gave to various charities, her public image did not improve. During the summer of 1789, France was in the throes of heated political turmoil. Thunderstorms had destroyed the previous year’s crops, making wheat scarce and causing massive bread shortages throughout France. As the summer dragged on, hot and marked with severe storms, discontent among the people grew by leaps and bounds. There were loud rumbles of revolution in the air. In an effort to bolster his own claim to the throne, King Louis XVI’s vile cousin, the Duc de Orleans, had bought up large quantities of flour to increase the


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effects of the shortage. He also hoped to further increase discontent against Louis and Marie Antoinette. All of these events left an uneasy atmosphere in Paris. Added to the problems was the fact that Louis and Marie Antoinette were hardly seen by the public. There were accusations that the king and queen were plotting against the people and were held up in secret meetings. What the public did not know was that the king and queen were with their dying son, away from Versailles at Meudon. Following the storming of the Bastille on July 14, 1789, through the end of the summer into autumn, the French aristocracy began fleeing abroad to other parts of Europe. However, the king and queen stayed in Versailles with their children. Louis XVI continued to try and work with revolutionary forces, to reach a compromise, but was unable to. On October 5, 1789, mobs descended on Versailles. Crowds screamed obscenities at the king and queen, and in the end the royal family was forced to leave Versailles. Louis Charles would never see his childhood home again. Following the royal family’s removal from Versailles Palace, they were housed together at Tulieres Palace in Paris, where the revolutionaries could keep a close eye on them. Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, along with their children, spent four years under house arrest. Their situation did not improve after a failed attempt at escape in June 1791, when they were captured near the German border in the town of Varennes. The royal family remained intact in their palace prison until Louis XVI’s trial and execution on January 21, 1793. Little Louis Charles, not quite eight years old, was now considered by royalists to be Louis XVII, king of France. Several European countries also formally recognized the new king, including England, Portugal, Austria, Russia, and even the United States. In the dead of night on July 3, 1793, guards burst into the royal family’s rooms and demanded to take Louis away from his mother and sister. Marie Antoinette refused and pleaded for nearly an hour before finally relinquishing her son. According the Marie Therese, the guards ‘‘threatened the lives of both him and me and my mother’s maternal tenderness at length forced her to this sacrifice.’’ Louis Charles would never see his mother again. Little is known of Louis’s incarceration at the Temple Prison. According to her memoirs, for many nights following the little king’s removal, Marie Therese and her mother could hear his cries and screams, as he was tortured and beat by the guards. While most of the writings about the little king’s upkeep were destroyed during the French Revolution, it is generally acknowledged that his captors were cruel, to say the least. At first Louis was placed in the care of a cobbler by the name of Antoine Simon by the Committee of General Society. Simon and his wife, Marie Jeanne, were instructed by the government to remove any signs of ‘‘arrogance and royalty’’ from both the king and his sister. Simon was to bring the boy up as a ‘‘good sans culotte,’’ in reference to the name given to the patriots of the French



Revolution. The government hoped to coerce damning evidence out of the boy that they could use against his mother at her upcoming trial. There is much debate as to the extent of the cruelty inflicted on the little king by the Simons. It is generally acknowledged that the Dauphin received clean clothes, decent meals, and was allowed to play with toys retrieved from royal storehouses. He was even allowed to play with the laundry woman’s daughter every two weeks, when she came to fetch the Temple Prison in Paris where the ‘‘Lost Dau- linen for washing. However, there is phin’’ (Prince Louis Charles) was held during no doubt that the Simons were not fit guardians for Louis Charles. There the French Revolution. (Apic/Getty Images) were no school lessons. Instead they taught the little king to sing lewd songs, to use vulgar language, and eat and drink in excess. Simon even asked officials what they wanted done with the boy. ‘‘Citizens, what have you decided about the wolf cub? He has been taught to be insolent, but I shall know how to tame him. Hard luck if he dies because of it! I will not answer for that. After all, what do you want done with him? To deport him? To kill him? To poison him?’’ (Cadbury 2003: 103). In October 1793, the Simons had managed to coerce those in charge to make charges of incest against his mother. While the French Revolution raged outside of the Temple Prison, the ‘‘Orphans of the Temple,’’ as Louis Charles and his sister Marie Therese were known, were locked away, unseen by the public. The siblings were not even aware of the execution of their mother on October 16, 1793. Madame Simon fell ill in January 1794, and she and her husband promptly left the Temple Prison. From this point on, the records of Louis XVII imprisonment were largely destroyed, shrouding the rest of his story in mystery. The sudden departure of the Simons gave rise to rumors that the Simons had smuggled the king out of the prison. At this time Louis, declared to be in good health, was given over to the care of the guards. With no particular guardian, Louis Charles was not seen or spoken to for as long six months. While Marie Therese was kept in relative comfort, accounts of the little king’s upkeep indicate he was placed in a tiny cell and fed a poor diet. His cell was not cleaned nor was he allowed to bathe. Food was pushed through a small barred guichet in the lower half of the door. There was a small window in the cell, but with walls that were several feet thick, it was hard for light to penetrate the gloom of the prison. Those


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who believe that the king escaped Temple Prison often cite the inconsistency of the harsh treatment given to both Louis and Marie Therese. Of course, Marie Therese could never inherit the French throne, as it passed only through the male line. Therefore, it was little Louis Charles who represented a very real threat to the fledging republic, and this explains his cruel treatment. As long as he lived, there would always be a chance the French monarchy could regain power. Under the deplorable living conditions, Louis XVII’s health quickly began to deteriorate. Before he was removed from his mother and sister, Louis had grown into an attractive boy, with fair curls and big blue eyes. However, during his two years of isolation from his family, vermin, bugs, fleas, and scabies covered his skin, rendering him quite unrecognizable. He did not grow properly, with his legs and arm disproportionately long and with rounded shoulders. His wrists, elbows, and knees swelled from infection. This only helped to add credence to stories of his escape. It would have been easy to replace the king with another boy similar in age and appearance. Not until July 1794 was a new guardian appointed to the king, Jean Jacques Christopher Laruent. At this point the king was bathed, clothed, and his room cleaned. In December 1794 government officials finally visited the boy. By this time Louis Charles refused to speak. This spurned new rumors that the king had been replaced by a deaf mute. The royal siblings became useful pawns for the new French government. Outside pressure from the rest of Europe began to demand reports of both Louis XVII and Marie Therese, as part of the formal recognition of the new French government. Within France people began to question what was happening to the brother and sister. The government was quick to squash any rumors of ill treatment of either Louis Charles or Marie Therese. Journalists who dared to criticize the care of Louis and his sister were promptly thrown into jail. In March 1795 a new guardian was appointed to the king by the name of Etienne Lasne. On May 6, 1795, Pierre-Joseph Desault was allowed in to examine the king. The doctor reported the atrocious conditions under which the Lost Dauphin was being held. Less than a month later Desault was dead. The cause was a mysterious illness, but there were mutterings of poison and murder. Two more doctors were called in to care for the king. Jean-Baptiste-Eugenie Dumangin and Philippe-Jean Pelletan tried unsuccessfully to treat all of Louis’s ills. At about two in the afternoon on June 8, 1795, 10-year-old King Louis XVII died. Two of Louis Charles’s jailers witnessed the cadaver, and the following day government officials came to see the body as well. However, none of these officials ever saw the Dauphin in person, and Marie Therese, the most plausible candidate to confirm her brother’s death, was not allowed to view the corpse. The twisted little body was buried on June 10, 1795, at the cemetery of Saint Margurite in an unmarked grave. News of the king’s death was not released until four days later. Following the announcement of Louis XVII’s death, many people who had assisted in the torture and harm of the little boy offered up weak apologies. Some even



suffered mental breakdowns. Madame Tison, who worked with her husband at Temple Prison, was one who suffered a breakdown. She insisted that she had helped the king escape. Madame Simon, who had participated in tortures of the king, claimed the king had visited her in her hospital room. ‘‘My little prince is not dead,’’ she claimed. These confessions, which continued to spill forth for many years following the king’s death, kept public interest in a possible escape theory alive. Many people questioned why the Dauphin had received such inhumane treatment while his sister was left relatively alone. It did not make sense, and increased further speculation that the Dauphin had escaped. While performing the autopsy, Pelletan, the attending physician, secretly removed the heart of Louis XVII and wrapped it in a handkerchief. Removing the king’s heart was in keeping with royal tradition. Pelletan then stored the heart in distilled wine alcohol. In 1815, following the restoration of the Bourbon kings, Pelletan offered the heart to Louis XIII (uncle to Louis XVII). The new king of France refused the gift, however. Pelletan then gave the heart to Monsieur de Quelen, the archbishop of Paris, who kept it hidden in his private library. Following the plundering of the archbishop’s library in 1830, Pelletan’s son retrieved the heart of Louis XVII from among the rubble and stored it in a crystal urn, where it remains today. Pelletan’s son died in 1879 and the heart passed through a series of hands, including the Spanish branch of the Bourbon family. In 1975 the great-granddaughters of Don Carlos de Bourbon returned the heart to Paris to the Duc de Bauffremont, president of the memorial of Saint Denis. Even then the heart was not recognized as that of Louis XVII, but rather a heart of a child lost during the French Revolution. It would take 25 more years to prove it was the heart of the Lost Dauphin. Following the restoration of the French monarchy in 1814 and throughout the rest of the 19th century, men from all over Europe and even the Americas claimed to be the Lost Dauphin. Karl Wilhelm Naundorff, a German clockmaker, was able to convince several people close to the royal family that he was indeed King Louis XVII. He was interviewed by Madame de Rambourd, who had acted as Louis XVII’s maid. Naundorff told her of several incidents at Versailles that few outside of the royal family would know. He also bore a remarkable resemblance to Louis XVII, sharing the same scar on his lip, certain moles, and vaccination marks. Despite all the evidence laid forth, Marie Therese never met with Naundorff. Naundorff made such a fuss about his claim to the throne that he was eventually thrown out of France. He went into exile in England and eventually settled in the Netherlands. He persisted until his death in 1845 that he was indeed the true Louis XVII. The Dutch government officially recognized Naundorff as Louis XVII and allowed him to use the surname Bourbon, and his descendants still carry the Bourbon name. His death certificate even reads ‘‘Louis Charles de Bourbon, aged 60, son of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette.’’ Naundorff’s widow went so far as to sue Marie Therese for her late husband’s ‘‘inheritance,’’ which


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A Claimant Makes His Case One of the many people claiming to be the Lost Dauphin, Augustus Meves, tried to prove his claims by publishing his memoirs as The Authentic Historical Memoirs of Louis Charles, Prince-Royal, Dauphin of France in 1868. The following is his claim: The Dauphin’s escape from the Tower of the Temple is no longer a mysterious problem. The truth that has hitherto been enveloped in a labyrinth of obscurities is now substantially removed. The demise of the son of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette in the Tower of the Temple was but a Republican assertion and not an historical fact, which has benefited the ruling sovereigns of France, since the sacrifice of Louis XVI, to acquiesce in, namely, Napoleon Bonaparte, Louis XVIII, Charles X., the Dukes of Angouleme and Berri (the sons of Charles X.), Marie Therese (the daughter of Louis XVI married to the Duke of Angouleme, consequently in the interest of the house of Charles X), le Cornte de Chambord, the acknowledged legitimate sovereign of France (son of the Duke of Berri), Louis Philippe, the Orleans Family, and, lastly, Louis Napoleon—all have had, and still have, an interest in recognising the authenticity of the Republican announcement, that the son of Louis XVI died in the Temple. Nevertheless, with all this apparent antagonistic array of political influence, with its attendant legions, to annihilate truth, such will be impotent and ineffectual, for sooner or later it will manifest itself; and though it may be lulled to sleep for a while, time will eventually dispel the illusions, that chicanery and artifice have invented. Source: Augustus Meves. The Authentic Historical Memoirs of Louis Charles, Prince-Royal, Dauphin of France. London: William Ridgway, 1868, vi.

was never granted. The Naundorff case has been one of the strongest in the argument that Louis XVII escaped Temple Prison during the revolution. There have been two major tests conducted to determine if Louis Charles died in Temple Prison or escaped his captors. The first test was conducted in 1950. The right humorous bone from Naundorff’s grave was tested against strands of Marie Antoinette’s hair (taken from when she was a child growing up in Austria) and against DNA samples of living relatives of Louis, Queen Anna of Romania and her brother Andre de Bourbon-Parme. Tests showed that Naundorff and the Bourbon relatives did not share the same DNA. Despite the fact that the 1950 genetic testing disproved Naundorff and his descendants were of any relation to the Bourbon family, his descendants and their supporters still insist he was the true Lost Dauphin. The second test was conducted in December 1999 by one of the foremost experts in the case of the Lost Dauphin of France, author Philippe Delorme, who penned Louis XVII: La V erit e (Louis XVII: The Truth). Delorme organized DNA tests in a hope to end the debate about Louis XVII once and for all. A segment of



the heart muscle and a piece of the aorta were removed from the preserved heart. Two public notaries watched as two tissue samples were taken from the preserved heart of the Dauphin, now hard as wood, for DNA testing. The notaries also witnessed the transfer of the heart tissues and the opening of the sealed envelopes within the laboratories. The tests were conducted in two different studies, one by Jean-Jacques Cassiman, a professor of genetics at Belgium’s Louivian University, and the other conducted by Ernst Brinkman of Muenster University in Germany. The 1999 genetics tests were conducted with every effort to use samples free of contamination. The pieces of the heart would be tested using DNA samples obtained for the Naundorff study. They included tissue samples from two maternal relatives of Louis XVII, his aunts Johanna-Gabriela and Maria-Josepha, and a lock of hair belonging to Marie Antoinette. The heart tissue was also tested against the DNA of Queen Anna of Romania and her brother Andre. Both sets of genetic tests showed that the owner of the heart and the Bourbon family descendants shared the same DNA. There is no way to prove 100 percent that the heart in the crystal urn is that of Louis Charles, but most historians generally accept the DNA evidence as proof that the heart is that of the Lost Dauphin. It doesn’t make sense that it would belong to anyone else. The only other plausible explanation is that it belonged to Louis Joseph, the first Dauphin. But the heart does not show any signs of tuberculosis, which killed the prince (Jehaes 2001). Despite the DNA evidence that the heart is that of the lost king of France, many people still maintain that the Dauphin escaped. One reason, according to Delorme, is that people generally prefer a happy ending. Who wants to think of a small child, barely 10 years old, being poisoned, or beaten, or simply so grossly neglected he died from it. It is much easier to imagine that the Simons were really caring people who spirited the Dauphin out of Temple Prison and that he emerged several years later as a German clockmaker or American missionary. No matter which version you want to believe, the evidence put forth in the Delorme study proves that Louis XVII did not escape his cruel fate. He did indeed die in Temple Prison in 1795. Despite the evidence, a small group of critics claim the heart may have been that of Louis Joseph, the older brother of Louis XVII, though there is little evidence to back their statement. Naundorff’s descendants still call themselves Bourbons, refusing to accept the DNA evidence as valid. They have even requested that Naundorff’s grave be reopened for further DNA testing. The Lost Dauphin of France was the victim of the French Revolution and the following Reign of Terror that swept through the country, sending thousands to their deaths. The political pawn of various factions, the Dauphin spent two years locked away from his mother and sister in the Temple Prison, subjected to horrendous treatment by his captors. After his death in 1795, rumors persisted that the boy king had actually escaped Paris and was living abroad, waiting to come home to his throne. For years, imposters from all over Europe claimed to


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be Louis XVII, causing his sister Marie Therese bittersweet hope that he was alive and his uncle, Louis XVIII, concern he would lose his throne. Investigations into the young king’s death brought little evidence of either his demise or survival. Not until the genetics testing in 1999 was there enough evidence for historians to accept that the heart belonged to Louis XVII. In 2004 the French government gave an official funeral for Louis XVII. The crystal urn containing his heart was displayed in a hearse brimming with lilies—the official symbol of the French Crown. Trumpets blared as the heart of Louis XVII was placed in the royal crypt of Saint Denis Basilica, between the remains of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. Finally, the heart of the king, so long one of the most enduring controversies in European history, was laid to rest. References and Further Reading Cadbury, Deborah. The Lost King of France: How DNA Solved the Mystery of the Murdered Son of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. New York: St. Martin’s Griffin Press, 2003. Castelot, Andre. Queen of France: A Biography of Marie Antoinette. New York: Harper, 1957. Cronin, Vincent. Louis & Antoinette. New York: Morrow, 1975. Fersen, Axel Von. Rescue the Queen: A Diary of the French Revolution. London: G. Bell, 1971. Hardman, John. Louis-Phillipe Memories 1773–1793. New York: A Helen and Kurt Wolff Book, 1977. Jehaes, Els, et al. ‘‘Mitochondrial DNA Analysis of the Putative Heart of Louis XVII, Son of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette.’’ European Journal of Human Genetics 9, 3 (March 2001): 185–90. Lang, Sean. European History for Dummies. West Sussex: Wiley, 2006. Mayer, Dorothy Moulton. Marie Antoinette: The Tragic Queen. New York: Coward-McCann, 1968. Nagel, Susan. Marie-Therese, Child of Terror. New York: Bloomsbury, 2008.


13 Charles Darwin got his idea of evolution from ‘‘social Darwinist’’ Herbert Spencer who published first. PRO Ian Morley CON A. J. Angelo

PRO The 1800s, a time of substantial industrial growth in Europe and North America, was also an epoch of massive societal transition and cultural upheaval. Industrialization, for instance, affected the political, cultural, economic, environmental, artistic, and philosophical values of many countries, including the principal industrial nations of Britain, France, Germany, and the United States. Moreover, it was a time when certain individuals of undeniable genius and innovative action attained wide levels of recognition that would have been almost unknown to previous generations in the preindustrial context. Engineers such as Joseph Bazalgette and Isambard Kingdom Brunel gained a huge reputation in British society for having helped establish numerous engineering firsts relating to sewerage systems, shipping, tunneling, and bridging. At the same time, architects such as A. W. N. Pugin and artists such as William Morris helped herald new design aesthetics as part of their crusades to reinvigorate the state of British society, in so doing not only influencing many of their vocational associates but also many in society, given the incessant debates about the moral condition of the environment in which people lived and worked on a day-to-day basis. Additionally literary writers, political philosophers, and social commentators like Charles Dickens, the author of Oliver Twist; Friedrich Engels, writer of The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844; and W. T. Stead, editor of the Pall Mall Gazette, not only engrossed the masses with their musings on contemporary life but moreover to some degree touched on raw social nerves with their realistic descriptions of torpid living conditions for the working classes in places such as London and Manchester, thus helping instigate further discussion about industrial society and its condition. In this way the work of persons like Dickens and Engels was not merely offering sources of amusement to their readers but more so provided both an enlightening and sometimes contentious interpretation of daily life, for they highlighted to the middle classes the harsh realities of day-today living in the industrial age of which they, the affluent classes, knew very little. However, arguably the most divisive of all Victorian writers was Charles 287 © 2011 ABC-Clio. All Rights Reserved.

288 | Charles Darwin got ideas from Herbert Spencer

Darwin, a scientist who promoted a radical thesis of nature’s evolution following extensive worldwide travels and research. Darwin from the late 1850s, in particular, created much hullabaloo over his construal of the development of natural organisms and human society. Traveling from Britain for five years to places such as Argentina, Brazil, Chile, the Galapagos Islands, Australia, New Zealand, Mauritius, and South Africa on the boat the Beagle, the Cambridge-educated Darwin accumulated not only a vast amount of knowledge about the world’s geology but more so of its plethora of flora and fauna (both alive and dead, that is, from fossils). Darwin published many of his notes on the notion of the characteristics and survival of organisms, and his intellectual apogee was arguably reached in 1859 with the publication of On the Origin of Species by Natural Selection, a piece of literature that was perceived as directly challenging the philosophical and theological footing of Victorian society via his outline as to the evolution of nature, and thus humans. Darwin’s attitude and beliefs alarmed many God-fearing members of Western society, drew ridicule from the rather conservative scientific community in Britain and elsewhere, and offended many quarters of the press, which reported rather hysterically that Darwin saw humankind as relations of monkeys. Indeed Darwin’s image as created by the mass media in the late 1850s and 1860s led to his satiric depiction as an ape. Darwin’s view accordingly drew much disdain, especially from the church establishment, which rejected his line of reasoning instantly, given its belief that nature was created by God as stated in the Old Testament’s book of Genesis. Yet regardless of such criticism, Darwin had a monumental philosophical influence by lucidly writing about something rarely commented on and also drawing conclusions that no one had dared print before. So innovative was Darwin’s line of thought and so influential was it on scientific and philosophical exploration that the field of biology in subsequent years became dominated by one concept, evolution by natural selection, a term introduced by Darwin in Origin of Species, although arguably best summarized by the phrase survival of the fittest. Darwin, Spencer, and History While much controversy was created in Victorian society by the nature of Darwin’s thoughts, knowledge, and conclusions, the purpose of this section is not to analyze the disgust of many Victorians toward his ideas but instead to focus on a mystifying matter of historiographical disagreement, one that centers on Darwin’s views on evolution not being truly innovative and original. In other words, Darwin’s ideas, accepted widely as being original, may be said to not be his own but were actually copied from others. Of particular significance to this view is the manner in which history has been written and understood that has, in effect, meant that many ideas created by Darwin’s peers have been subsequently accepted as


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belonging to Darwin himself. In this sense, this section reveals how history has rather inaccurately been written with regard to the subject of natural evolution, and that the debate on the theory of evolution should not be seen to belong exclusively to Charles Darwin but should instead place greater reference to other British individuals such as geologist/publisher Robert Chalmers, author of the influential Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation (1844), biologist/anthropologist/ explorer Alfred Russell Wallace, and, in particular, Herbert Spencer. Spencer, it should be noted, was a philosopher and political theorist who wrote the powerful piece ‘‘Progress: Its Law and Cause’’ (1857) at the time Darwin was composing Origin of Species, and who coined the term ‘‘survival of the fittest,’’ a phrase frequently commented on as originating from Darwin. And as such it is arguable that Darwin’s conclusions on evolutionary theory leaned heavily on the ideas of Herbert Spencer, in so duplicating many of the points originally set down by his peer. Nonetheless, regardless of this slant, the purpose of this section is to neither denigrate Herbert Spencer’s nor Charles Darwin’s work. The latter, as previously stated, made a monumental effect on science and social thinking in Britain and European and North American society from the 1850s. The social Darwinist maxim survival of the fittest that is often referred to as belonging to Darwin himself was actually coined by Spencer in reference to the social and cultural changes in the 1800s and the perceived sense of societal advancement borne from the Industrial Revolution. Put into print in 1864 within Spencer’s monograph Principles of Biology, that is some five years after Darwin’s Origin of Species (1859), the term, a metaphor for the nature of natural evolution, by its very nature and time of publication evidently leaned toward Darwin’s work, which was published some years before, but two points should be noted. First, the idea of endurance by the strongest, as developed by Spencer, was established many years before Darwin put his thoughts on evolutionism into print in the late 1850s and can be found in works such as Spencer’s 1857 composition ‘‘Progress: Its Law and Cause,’’ and second, Spencer was very precise as to the proper meaning of the phrase. To Spencer the term directly applied to the providence of the wealthy and the poor in the context of a laissez-faire–dominated capitalist urbanbased society (Spencer 1857). In his Principles of Biology, Spencer wrote, ‘‘This survival of the fittest, which I have here sought to express in mechanical terms, is that which Mr. Darwin has called ‘natural selection,’ or the preservation of favored races in the struggle for life’’ (Spencer 1864). However, as previously noted, if the crux of the debate as to the idea of natural selection/survival of the fittest belong to Darwin or Spencer and focuses solely on the date of the concept appearing in published form, then the originator of the allegory on evolutionism quite clearly is Darwin. Then again, Darwin’s pioneering work borrowed from Herbert Spencer to such a level that Darwin could be perceived as being a metaphor for Spencer’s system of explanation regarding the subject of evolution and organisms in their



environment. As the philosopher Alexander Bain noted in a letter to Spencer in 1863, Spencer was the father of the philosophy of evolutionism, albeit with Darwin supplying the most significant part of the chain. In light of Bain’s statement, why has Spencer become so overlooked in societal debates on evolution? To answer this, attention has to turn to Spencer’s image as painted by history. Herbert Spencer’s picture as painted by history is, to put it bluntly, far from positive. Not only has Spencer been largely forgotten by mainstream society, and thus from the process in which widely held social history has been written, but when he is referred to, he is frequently painted in such a manner that his image has been smeared as well. To illustrate this point, it is worth considering how the term survival of the fittest, coined by Spencer, has become maligned. To comprehend this, it is imperative to be aware of not only the rise of political correctness in the late 1900s but also of the term’s association with the field of eugenics, a line of thought that has connotations with the racial segregation in the 1800s and 1900s and the political strategies and horrifying actions of the nazis in Germany in the late 1930s and early 1940s against Europe’s Jews and gypsy population. On the one hand, the term has been directly connected to a dark time in world history. On the other hand, the positive effects of Spencer’s term have been overlooked. By way of example, Spencer and his philosophies were vital in shaping the attitude of one of the world’s greatest philanthropists, Andrew Carnegie, described on the Public Broadcasting Service Web site as formerly being the world’s richest man, who donated the vast majority of his wealth to support civic causes like education, pension funds, and peace. By the time of his death, Carnegie had donated a sum akin to about $4.3 billion in today’s monetary terms. Carnegie also authored the influential work The Gospel of Wealth in 1889, a work that softened the perceived harshness of social Darwinism through means of encouraging the rich to involve themselves in benevolence and charitable trusts to assist the daily lives of those less well-off. The Debate Social Darwinism is widely used in academic studies and discussions to describe the notion that concepts/theories of biology can be broadened to relate to the social realm and, in so doing, help to explain the development and disposition of society. In its most basic form, social Darwinism repeats a suggested biological principle that competition between organisms propels developmental transition, albeit evidently in the context of society given the sociological appreciation of the concept. This idea though, as commonly shown through the mention of Darwin and Spencer, is not new and can be seen in many respects to predate the 1850s and 1860s work of Darwin and Spencer. In other words, Darwin and Spencer, frequently penned as being the fathers of social Darwinism, commented on a concept that was somewhat historic. By way of illustration, the demographer


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and political economist Thomas Malthus (1989) touched on the idea in his extensive publications on population transitions before the 19th century with regard to the struggle for existence. The influence of Malthus on Darwin should not be underestimated. In fact so strong was Malthus’s effect on Darwin that direct reference was made to him in Origin of Species, and Darwin himself explained that his work was written in compliance with the doctrines laid down earlier by Malthus. Significantly too, in formulating ideas on social evolution that later became integral to the debate/subject known as social Darwinism, Malthus was not alone. For instance, before the 1850s, that is, the time when Darwin and Spencer were finalizing their theses on nature’s development, other writers put forward suggestions about the character of biological and social evolution. One such writer of note was Robert Chambers, author of the highly controversial 1844 publication Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation. Like Darwin’s subsequent Origin of Species, Chambers’s work was widely read yet was labeled as containing dangerous ideas, a transgression with which Darwin was tarred after Origin of Species was published. Chambers’s book implied that God was not the agent actively sustaining the orders of nature and human society. This was perceived as threatening the social order of society and was believed to provide intellectual ammunition that would create mass moral confusion and, as geology pioneer and Fellow of the Royal Society of London for the Improvement of Natural Knowledge Adam Sedgwick predicted, challenge the entire moral and social constitution of the Western world. Although it is easy to dismiss the influence or shock of debates that make reference to evolutionism, and in so doing social Darwinism, it is nonetheless imperative to view, from the perspective of the early 21st century, the overall discussion on nature and society in an empirically specific manner. In the context of the 19th century, the issue was not so clear-cut. Indeed the debate could

Robert Chambers A Scottish author, Robert Chambers (1802–1871) was especially interested in geology, which he wrote about in several books and devoted attention to in his travel narratives, which focused not on cultural issues so much as geologic explorations and points of interest. In 1844, the year he joined the Geological Society of London (whose previous presidents included Charles Lyell, who had popularized the idea of uniformitarianism), Chambers anonymously published Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation. This book was what we would now call a popular science book, drawing on the discoveries in the field and unifying them into a theory that the entire universe had evolved from more basic forms. Along the way, Chambers embraced and forwarded a Lamarckian theory of biological evolution, knowing such views were controversial. Chambers attributed such processes to the work of God, though not as evidence against a theological origin of the universe.



mean a manner of different things to a plethora of people in light of their moral constitution, scientific knowledge, and attitude toward religion, and despite the name of the concept implying that its source of origin was Charles Darwin, it should be reemphasized that the basic idea of social Darwinism, in fact, predates the work of Darwin. Interestingly the term ‘‘social Darwinism,’’ despite direct reference to Charles Darwin, was not coined when Origin of Species was first published, that is, when debate about evolutionary theory and society was at a crest, but came into being in 1880 in France as Le Darwinisme Social. If truth be told, its usage in English was extremely limited in the 19th century and did not filter at all into the domain of popular culture until the mid-1940s, when Richard Hofstadter, an American historian, produced the seminal work Social Darwinism in American Thought (1945). While it is not my intention to break the true meaning of the term social Darwinism down into small pieces, it is necessary to highlight certain key traits that demonstrate the influence of Herbert Spencer on Charles Darwin. This includes, for example, the role of natural selection, that is, a process of nature by which only the organisms best adapted to their environment tend to survive and transmit their genetic characteristics. When applied to the arena of human society, the process transforms itself to explain the advantage particular individuals or social groups have over others as a result of their genetic virtues. This advantage may express itself in monetary terms in that one social grouping may have financial assets and wealth beyond that of their counterparts. Consequently the wider debate may include matters relating to capitalism, which Spencer gave much attention to, plus the rewards and social advantages it bestows on the owners of industry as contrasted with the numerous inconveniences, hardships, and even burdens presented to the laboring population. Seen in light of a natural order, that is, evolution and natural selection, the strongest are able to survive and success is deserved, whereas poverty is a result of being, among other things, ‘‘unfit.’’ Such a view can also be employed to explain the status of particular social groups, such as ethnic communities within society, and more precisely can be operated as a tool to explain racism. Hence it—and its axioms such as Spencer’s survival of the fittest—can be criticized for having a subtext attached to race. Historical Paradox It is imperative here, in the face of the supposition that Darwin borrowed from Spencer, to investigate the possible influences on Darwin at the time his published work was composed. For instance, it is known that Darwin was aware of Spencer’s ideas. In a letter written in 1870 to zoologist and biological theorist E. Ray Lankester, Darwin made clear his esteem for Spencer: ‘‘by far the greatest living philosopher in England; perhaps equal to any that have lived’’ (Darwin 1887: 301). Moreover, in the preface to Origin of Species, Darwin’s regard for


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the theoretical notions developed by Spencer are made clear. In the foreword, described in Origin of Species as a ‘‘brief sketch of the progress of opinion on the Origin of Species,’’ reference is made to individuals who were for all intents and purposes Darwin’s philosophical predecessors. In the preface of Origin of Species, Darwin comments on Herbert Spencer’s work, composed in 1852, which is work formulated seven years before Origin of Species was first published, with the theories proposed by Spencer described as being produced with great energy, and importantly, ability. At the very least, therefore, it seems that Darwin had an acute awareness of Spencer’s thinking while he was composing his own understanding of evolutionary theory and was in the build-up phase to publishing his Origin of Species (Darwin 1859). Moreover, by 1872, when Origin of Species was in its sixth edition, Darwin had clearly embraced the works of Spencer on a level equal to his own. For instance, Darwin commented on how his own term ‘‘natural selection’’ could be replaced by Spencer’s ‘‘survival of the fittest,’’ which moreover offered more convenience in terms of academic debate (Darwin 1872). To fully appreciate the substance and true meaning of the above-mentioned statement by Darwin, Darwin’s own writing and editing process must be considered. While it may be said that Darwin’s 1872 edition was merely a sixth reprint of his original 1859 composition, to make such an supposition would, quite simply, be inaccurate, because it is acknowledged that Darwin rewrote each new edition so that they were different from previous ones. The sixth edition of Origin of Species was substantially different from the first version. The importance of this point is central to the argument that Darwin openly imitated intellectual notions composed by Herbert Spencer about the theory of evolution. From 1859 to 1872 it is known that Darwin honed his own interpretation of evolutionism and, as a result, rewrote his ground-breaking work numerous times. With each new edition, he rewrote existing sentences, deleted others, and added new ones. On this very subject, the historian Morse Peckham (1959), in The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin: A Variorum Text, calculated the proportion of change and, on average, with each new edition he estimated Darwin Charles Darwin, shortly before the publicachanged 7 percent of his original work. tion of his controversial book The Descent Thus the second edition was 7 percent of Man (1871). (Library of Congress)



different from the first edition, the third edition 14 percent different from the first version, and so forth. In light of Darwin’s modifications, it may be stated that the sixth version contained many sizable and weighty differences in the mention of ideas and people from the initial 1859 text. To illustrate this point, text from the 1859 and 1872 editions of the chapter ‘‘Recapitulation and Conclusion’’ can be compared. In the first edition, Darwin wrote: In the distant future I see open fields for far more important researches. Psychology will be based on a new foundation, that of the necessary acquirement of each mental power and capacity by gradation. Light will be thrown on the origin of man and his history. (Darwin 1859) In the second edition, the original text was changed to: In the future I see open fields for far more important researches. Psychology will be securely based on the foundation already well laid by Mr. Herbert Spencer, that of the necessary acquirement of each mental power and capacity by gradation. Much light will be thrown on the origin of man and his history. (Darwin 1872)

Evolutionary Individuals The early phases of Herbert Spencer’s and Charles Darwin’s careers in many respects were both similar and dissimilar. One major difference was Darwin’s five-year surveying experience on board the Beagle as it traveled around the world documenting and collecting flora and fauna. Spencer instead was not privy to such wondrous geologic and biological hands-on experience. Nonetheless Spencer gained much practical geologic education while working as a civil engineer for the booming rail industry. While both the young Spencer and Darwin were forging their careers and to some extent augmenting their knowledge of the natural world through very different means, both encountered the same important social and scientific publications. Included in the collection of materials read by both Spencer and Darwin was Principles of Geology by Charles Lyell (1830), an influential work that presented a new understanding of rock layering, uniformitarianism as a scientific philosophy, volcanoes, and nature’s evolution. Like others about them, Darwin and Spencer were moved by Lyell’s composition and, as a result, approached the subject of nature and its evolution in an academic manner for the first time, by this means aiding both men’s pursuit to be professional writers and thinkers. Of note, though was, the fact that their approaches to science and matters like nature’s and society’s evolution were greatly different. Darwin, given his education and early career work experience, was interested in nature’s evolution from the perspective of biology. Spencer’s interest


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in evolution was rooted in comprehending human social progress, given the intense debates about the Poor Law, a rudimentary form of welfare state, and his schooling by his uncle, Thomas Spencer, a radical reformist clergyman. Important as well was the fact that just as Darwin and Spencer were both swayed by Lyell, they were also both affected by Thomas Malthus’s An Essay on the Principle of Population (1798). Such was the effect of Malthus on Darwin that in his autobiography, he proclaimed that Malthus provided him with a theory by which to work. In this respect, Lyell and Malthus, as well as other authors, it should be said, had built a conceptual framework within which persons such as Spencer and Darwin could place their own developing ideas about nature—and about society as well—at a later date. In the case of Darwin, following his extensive vocational travels, experiences, and readings, all that was arguably needed to solidify his emergent abstraction of nature and society was a compelling metaphor that could soundly illustrate the core of his ever-expanding biological and social philosophy. Here then is the value of Spencer in the image-driven vocabulary of Charles Darwin. The issue of evolution in nature is a complex one, as is the composition of social Darwinism. The formation of social Darwinism, for instance, not only came about as a result of biological erudition but of social, political, and psychological wisdom as well. To this end, knowledge of social science, political theory, the mind, and biology had to be expertly woven together to produce works on the development of society. While both Spencer and Darwin were pivotal in opening up their field, their backgrounds, schooling, and vocational experiences brought them to the same question, that is, evolution, but from entirely different angles. Hence it may be mentioned that Spencer, with his dexterity in comprehending laissezfaire economics, for instance, was more knowledgeable about social science than Darwin was, at least up to the early 1850s, as his 1851 publication Social Statics reveals. Spencer devised and employed the term fitness as an adjective to explain the ability of people, and thus social groups, to adapt to unfolding social circumstances, such as the conditions of urban life following the Industrial Revolution and the rise of capitalism. It was this term, replicated continually throughout the 1850s and early 1860s, that led to Spencer’s coining of the phrase survival of the fittest in 1864, a term frequently seen as stemming from Charles Darwin, who instead invented the axiom natural selection to describe people’s ability, just like flora and fauna in nature, to endure or perish in their natural environment. However, as Darwin found from firsthand experience, his use of the word selection in terms of describing the evolution of nature, people, and society was academically problematic, given its rather ambiguous meaning, which could easily be negated by drawing on Spencer’s work on fitness and survival. Thus it may be said that Darwin not only consumed some of Spencer’s ideas but arguably that he also exploited them to make his own theory stronger.



So, did Darwin copy Spencer? There is evidence to suggest Darwin not only had a familiarity with Spencer’s work but, moreover, Spencer provided ammunition lacking within the milieu of Darwin’s own social analysis. There is ample proof, too, that Darwin respected Spencer’s work, and as this section has demonstrated clearly, there are strong associations between the writing of Darwin and that by Spencer. For example, Spencer wrote about the psychological element of human development in his 1870 book Principles of Psychology, which explained human evolution in terms of time, space, and causality. Moreover Spencer, an investigator of mathematical descent theory, purposefully sent Darwin a copy of Principles of Psychology because he was known to be working on the idea at that time. And Darwin highlighted within the 1872 edition of Origin of Species his belief that psychology, in the future, would be founded on Herbert Spencer’s work. In other respects, too, the nature of Darwin’s ideas, for example, about understanding human morality, leaned on the work of others, such as Herbert Spencer, even though he and Spencer had fundamentally different approaches to the subject. For instance, Darwin accounted for moral behavior in terms of community selection. Spencer explained human morality in terms of how people inherit and acquire particular social attributes. Even so, when necessary, the nature of Darwin’s line of reasoning meant it could draw on Spencer’s explanation of human morals. One such case in point was Darwin’s rationalization of the large brains humans have in relation to their animal counterparts, a result postulated by Darwin of humans’ need to obtain language, thus making the brain evolve into a highly complex organ that would be heritable over time and would grow with the complexity of linguistic communication. Such reasoning, as noted before, at the very least leaned toward people such as Herbert Spencer. Conclusion The crux of this work has been to demonstrate how Charles Darwin made use of ideas from Herbert Spencer. Darwin himself, given the nature of evolutionism and his own ideas on the subject, was open in many ways to ‘‘using’’ Spencer’s ideas. At the same time, the analysis offered herein has revealed that, in light of Darwin’s influence on mid-to-late society of the 1800s, many ideas associated with the idea of natural and social evolution have come to be passed as ideas borne from Darwin when, in fact, they were composed by others. Thus writers and philosophers like Herbert Spencer have become victims of the writing of historiography about evolutionism. But this is not a call for social Darwinism to be replaced by the phrase social Spencerism, because the claim isn’t being made here that Darwin copied all of Spencer’s work. Instead, first, it is being noted that Darwin leaned on Spencer’s work to solve the failings in his own abstraction of evolution and, second, it would be wholly inaccurate to state that Darwin did not know of


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Spencer’s work nor did not use any of it as well. At the very least, both Darwin and Spencer relied on the same methods and mechanisms to explain matters like human evolution, for example, in terms of mental or moral development, and so some degree of imitation was thus not just possible but in effect likely. At the same time, neither Darwin nor Spencer produced theories of such strength that they were immune from criticism. Both Darwin’s and Spencer’s ideas showed flaws and relied on the work of other writers and researchers, such as their peers, that is, each other, to iron out weaknesses in their own arguments. Both in their own ways established ground-breaking concepts with regard to explaining the evolution of nature and society, but significant to this process is the writing of history, which has devoted much more attention to Charles Darwin than to, and thus largely at the expense of the reputation of, Herbert Spencer. References and Further Reading Athenaeum Collection of Herbert Spencer’s Correspondences. A. Bain to H. Spencer. Letter of 17 November 1863. MS 791 no. 67. University of London Library. Blackledge, Paul, and Graeme Kirkpatrick, eds. Historical Materialism and Social Evolution. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002. Chambers, Robert. Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation. London: John Churchill, 1844. Darwin, Charles R. On the Origin of Species. London: John Murray, 1859, 1872. Darwin, Charles R., with Francis Darwin, ed. Life and Letters of Charles Darwin. London: John Murray, 1887. Hofstadter, R. Social Darwinism in American Thought. Boston: Beacon Press, 1945. Livingston, J. A., and L. Sinclair. Darwin and the Galapagos. Toronto: Canadian Broadcasting Corporation Publications, 1967. Malthus, T. R. An Essay on the Principle of Population. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989. Peckham, Morse, ed. The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin: A Variorum Text. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1959. Public Broadcasting Service. ‘‘The Richest Man in the World: Andrew Carnegie.’’ Available at www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/carnegie/ (accessed June 15, 2010). Spencer, Herbert. Principles of Biology. New York: Appleton, 1864. Spencer, Herbert. ‘‘Progress: Its Law and Causes.’’ Westminster Review 67 (April 1857): 445–65.



CON Much has been written about Charles Darwin: his 19th-century life, his work as a naturalist, and his legacy in modern biology. Every year, as regular as the change in seasons, a new crop of Darwin biographies is published. These biographies add to the impressive number of studies already completed on him. They suggest new ways of considering what we already know about his life. They revisit his work in the field and in the laboratory. They survey the influence he’s had on modern biological thought. These studies raise and attempt to answer questions central to his life and thought. One question that continues to fuel research interests, scholarly controversy, and speculation is how did he come up with his ideas about evolution? I will argue that Darwin did not get his ideas about evolution from Herbert Spencer. It is clear why some might argue the opposite. Spencer published two works in the 1850s that suggest similarities between the two thinkers. Spencer, a sociologist and philosopher, came out with ‘‘The Development Hypothesis’’ (1852) and ‘‘Progress: Its Law and Cause’’ (1857) before Darwin published his Origin of Species (1859). In the first publication, Spencer discusses the rationality with which to assume that species were created through a process of ‘‘modification.’’ This is far more rational, he suggests, than to state that all species appeared as a result of ‘‘special creations.’’ The second work highlights the order of organisms: that individual species developed from simple to complex through a process of differentiation. Both works by Spencer explain that such a process as evolution exists and that it’s driven to some extent by the forces of competition. On the surface of it, there appears to be an issue of priority: Did Darwin draw his ideas about evolution from Spencer? Spencer, after all, did publish first. There were many important influences that played a role in Darwin’s thinking about biology and transmutation. His family, college experiences, voyage on the Beagle, circle of scientific colleagues, and wide reading all contributed to the formation of his ideas. Spencer, however, did not have these experiences. Before turning to direct influences pertinent to Darwin’s life and thought, let’s first consider the background on evolution.

Background on Evolution Theories about evolution were around long before Darwin published Origin of Species. As discussed in Bertrand Russell’s The History of Western Philosophy, one of the earliest known versions came from Empedocles, a philosopher of ancient Greece who made his mark before Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. He suggested that in the first stages of the evolutionary process, there were body parts and organs that coalesced together, as in some primordial soup, sometimes in well-ordered ways and other times not. These ‘‘countless tribes of mortal


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creatures were scattered abroad endowed with all manner of forms, a wonder to behold’’ (Russell 2004: 61). Some forms had the bodies of animals and the faces of men. In other cases, the reverse was true. The end result of the evolutionary process, according to Empedocles, has left us only with the creatures that were able to survive. Ideas about evolution continued to appear just before Darwin’s own era. There were plenty of well-developed theories of transmutations that could have influenced his thinking. Parisian scientists at the turn of the 19th century had much to say on the matter. Etienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, student of the great taxonomist Georges Cuvier, allowed for subtle kinds of transmutations. Species, to his mind, had basic forms. These basic forms did not change in their fundamental nature, but at times they did deviate or degenerate into weak, short-lived versions of the true nature. Saint-Hilaire did not believe in the idea that all species descended from a common ancestral origin. A more famous Parisian was botanist and zoologist Jean Baptiste Lamarck. In Philosophie Zoologique (1809), Lamarck advocated the idea of evolution and proposed some specific details about how it worked. All animals face pressures from their environment. As environmental pressures change, animals respond with new needs that prompt an increase or decrease in the use of certain organs. Organs or capacities that are increased in use are strengthened and enlarged; those that face decreases are weakened and atrophy. Whatever traits parents have acquired in their lifetimes are passed on to their young. Historians of science refer to this as Lamarck’s idea of the inheritance of acquired characteristics. Even closer to home were the writings of Charles’s grandfather, Erasmus Darwin. In Zoonomia (1794–1796), Erasmus focused on medicine and other insights he had gained from his medical training and work as a physician. Folded into the pages of this medical text was a concise statement of evolutionary thought. As noted in Janet Browne’s Charles Darwin: Voyaging (1995), Erasmus

Jean-Baptiste Lamarck A French scientist, Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1744–1829) was an early evolutionist and an influential naturalist who was one of the first to use the terms biology and biologist to refer to his field. Lamarkian evolution was defined by two laws. The law of use and disuse said that the frequent reliance on any trait would strengthen it, while the disuse of such traits would deteriorate them (accounting for the poor or nonexistant eyesight of underground animals, for instance). The law of acquired characteristics, since disproven but demonstrating a key trend in evolutionary observations, said that new traits acquired by both parents would be passed on to the offspring—Lamarck’s essential mechanism of the evolution of a species, as opposed to the simple adaptation that can occur within an individual’s lifespan.



spoke of the possibility that ‘‘all warm-blooded animals have arisen from one living filament’’ (E. Darwin 1794–1796). This was essentially the belief of common ancestry. He also added a vague statement about the capacity of animals to change by their own activity or will. This shared something in common with Lamarck’s idea about needs. Shortly before Charles Darwin or Herbert Spencer made public their claims, a work by Robert Chambers called Vestiges of Natural History of Creation (1844) laid out yet another version of evolutionary thought. Although Vestiges spoke broadly to topics in the sciences—from geology to astronomy, from the origins of life to the origins of language—it received the most attention for its conclusions about evolution. Chambers, who published the work anonymously, understood that the dominant paradigm in biology had long been creationism. The creationist view suggested that a Creator had produced all known species, one by one. What Chambers claimed, from the safety of anonymity, was that a Creator had allowed one species to give rise to another. In other words, evolution was the vehicle of ‘‘Providence.’’ While popular in terms of sales, Vestiges and other versions of evolution produced few changes in biological thought (Chambers 1844). Biologists of the early 19th century generally held to a form of special creationism when explaining the origin of species. Neither Darwin nor Spencer, therefore, can be credited with the idea of evolution. Many others had come before them, arguing, advocating, writing, lecturing, and in other ways passing on ideas about how species and organisms might have developed as a result of modifications and transmutations. The distinguishing character of Darwin’s work, however, was not in presenting to the world a repetition of what had come before. What differentiated him from previous evolutionary theorists as well as Spencer was twofold: the data-driven nature of his version of evolution and the metaphor he used to explain how it worked. Darwin believed, accurately, that all previous British philosopher Herbert Spencer was theories of evolution lacked a substanthe leading proponent of social evolution, tive discussion of the evidence to suplater known as social Darwinism. He coined port the idea. What was needed was the phrase ‘‘survival of the fittest.’’ (Library evolution grounded in data. His Origin of Congress) of Species, several decades in the


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making, aimed to overturn objections by way of evidence. Darwin was also dissatisfied with previous explanations of the mechanism behind evolution. He wanted a law of nature to explain the origin of species the way scientific laws explained other natural phenomenon. If astronomers had successfully explained the movement of the stars and planets without reliance on divine intervention, why couldn’t biologists explain the origin of species in a similar fashion? This question, central to understanding Darwin’s contribution with the idea of natural selection, arrived later in his life. First, and most critically, were the primary influences and lifeshaping experiences. Family Influences and College Experiences Darwin’s father, Robert Waring, influenced Charles’s scientific habits of mind. Robert was a physician who took his son along with him when completing rounds. This gave Charles practice with keeping detailed records of patient histories and case studies. Careful note taking and painstaking record keeping became a hallmark of Darwin’s approach to science. In addition, Robert shared science texts with Charles, encouraged the boy’s interests in chemistry, and kept a garden filled with rare specimens that stimulated the family’s botanical interests. When it came time to leave for college, Robert had left a lasting mark on his son; Charles left to pursue medical training at Edinburgh University. At Edinburgh, Darwin first tried his hand at medical studies in the mid1820s. Coursework in anatomy, surgery, chemistry, and related topics gave him a start in the field. But he soon developed a strong distaste for surgery on cadavers and live patients. Lecture demonstrations at the time were conducted without anesthesia. The shrieks of agony and the sometimes careless butchering of individuals proved too much for Darwin. He turned to quiet reading in natural history and resolved to quit medicine altogether. As he turned away from medicine, Darwin began working closely with Edinburgh professor Robert Grant. Having studied anatomy and embryology in Paris, Grant returned to the university as a lecturer on invertebrate animals. During his training, he had developed an interest in evolutionary theories. Grant shared his excitement about transmutation with Darwin, whom he believed was a kindred spirit of sorts. The primary reason for this was Darwin’s family connection to grandfather Erasmus, known to some as the ‘‘English Lamarck.’’ Darwin later recalled that he had not yet by then developed any substantive interest in evolutionary thought. Aside from casual reading and awareness of the work of his grandfather and others on the topic, he had no serious inclinations toward the view at that time. Grant nevertheless took Darwin to meetings of the Wernerian Natural History Society, introduced him to a prominent circle of scientists, and shared a program of research with him. At some point among all these interactions, Grant



revealed his evolutionary stripes to Darwin. This was a grand admission, because evolutionary thought of the mid-1820s was linked to radical views on politics and religion. The British context made this action somewhat equivalent to confessing affiliation with a radical party or admitting to belief in atheism. Darwin, in his Autobiography, later recalled this admission and mentioned that he ‘‘listened with astonishment,’’ but that the interaction was ‘‘without any effect on my mind’’ (Barlow 1958: 13). At first blush, it’s surprising that Darwin gave little credit to Grant for exposing him to evolutionary lines of thought. This was the first scholar he had contact with who made serious claims about transmutation. But historians often turn to a priority dispute between teacher and student as the reason for this diminution in Darwin’s recollection. As the story goes, Darwin followed a line of research encouraged by Grant. It had to do with microscopic organisms attached to seaweed. When Darwin made a discovery related to the movement of the organism’s ova, he went immediately to Grant with the good news. Grant, in turn, published the findings without mention of Darwin’s contribution to the work. Jealousy and sour grapes appear to have brought the relationship to a close. One thing is certain about their time together: Darwin learned a great deal about the process of scientific research, discovery, and publication. The influence, therefore, however murky on the evolution issue, certainly provided Darwin the intellectual tools with which to conduct his own investigations. He had developed the confidence to work independently as a naturalist. Voyage of the Beagle and Circle of Scientific Colleagues The opportunity of a lifetime presented itself to Darwin at just this moment. He was invited on what is now commonly referred to as the Voyage of the Beagle. At the age of 22, he joined the crew of the Beagle, a ship that ventured across the Atlantic on a five-year (1831–1836) adventure. The expedition gave Darwin an opportunity to explore the flora and fauna of South America and the Galapagos Islands. Darwin worked as a naturalist while on the expedition, collecting specimens that would figure prominently in Origin of Species over two decades later. He gathered fossils wherever they went. He made notes and drawings in his notebooks about the birds, fish, and other animals he saw. He did the same with flowers, trees, and shrubs. Darwin made a point to use all of his recording skills and scientific knowledge to aid him in keeping a comprehensive log of the journey. By the time the Beagle reached the Galapagos Islands off the coast of Ecuador, he had begun to consider the process of species differentiation. He kept two diaries, one on zoology and another on geology. These record his observations of such creatures as polyps, the way they reproduce, and the manner in which reproduction plays a role in differentiation. The interest he had in this area can be described as a holdover of Grant’s influence and his ideas about transmutation. At the same time,


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Darwin’s geologic observations appear to adopt the kind of thinking set out in Charles Lyell’s Principles of Geology (1830–1833). Lyell argued that the present is a key to understanding the past. The geologic processes that we see occurring at present are likely to be the ones present in the past. This argument extended geologic time by orders of magnitude not previously taken seriously. Lyell was asking geologists to dramatically rethink the age of Earth. This rethinking of Earth’s age facilitated the growth of Darwin’s ideas about how new species arise slowly and as a result of modification of earlier ones. Even though Lyell explicitly rejected the ideas of Lamarck and other evolution advocates, Darwin had begun toying with a connection between gradual processes and the rise of new species. The evidence collected while on the Beagle seemed to point in that direction. The turning point for Darwin came less than a year after his return from the voyage. He brought his collections of specimens to the attention of a circle of scientific colleagues. Some agreed to review his fossils; others took his reptiles. John Gould, a respected ornithologist, helped Darwin sort out the bird collection. What they found was remarkable: 13 different species of finches. They had beaks of different shapes and sizes, but they were clearly all finches. What’s more, the labeling system Darwin used for the mockingbird specimens suggested that different species of the same bird inhabited separate closely grouped islands. This appeared to confirm for Darwin what he had been toying with on his voyage: the differences in these species most likely came from gradual development from a common ancestor, rather than through a process of special creation, one by one. At this point, in the spring of 1837, Darwin launched his effort to catalog all of the evidence he had collected on the voyage into a system explained by way of evolution, or ‘‘transmutation’’ as he called it then. ‘‘The Zoology of Archipelagoes will be well worth examining,’’ he noted at the time, reported in David Quammen’s The Reluctant Mr. Darwin, ‘‘for such facts would undermine the stability of species’’ (2006). He had begun working on the evidence vital to his major work, Origin of Species. Twenty years before Spencer published ‘‘Progress: Its Law and Causes,’’ Darwin had become an evolutionist. He did not announce this to the world, but he kept private record of how his thinking on the subject developed. These records appear in a series of notebooks begun the year he launched his cataloging efforts. In a tip of the hat to his grandfather’s evolutionary work, Darwin titled one of these notebooks Zoonomia. His notes are filled with reflections on the reptiles, birds, and mammals he collected on his voyage. It’s also filled with statements about how ‘‘each species changes.’’ These were bold assertions that conflicted with the accepted view of biological thought of the era. What he knew for certain was that species could not be the rigid, immutable forms biologists had long accepted. Rather, he viewed descent from a common ancestor as the more rational, enlightened explanation for the origin of species. The question that remained for him was how exactly the process worked.



Wide Reading In 1838 Darwin found the answer to his question: natural selection. He came to this idea, in part, as a result of his wide reading. His ideas about evolution, as well as all of his other scientific contributions, were informed by a lifelong habit of reading widely in many different fields. He first learned this habit from his family. Family conversations typical of landed gentry stretched across the arts, literature, music, philosophy, history, government, natural science, and social thought. Close to the time he began his notebooks about evolution and the early ideas that led to natural selection, Darwin included insights gleaned from his broad reading interests. He made entries about books on birds, autobiographies of explorers, multivolume biographies of literary figures, studies of South America, and debates in philosophy. One of the most famous of these readings occurred around September 1838. That’s when he read Thomas Malthus’s Essay on the Principle of Population (1798). Some accounts have tended to oversimplify the influence Malthus’s work had on Darwin. They suggest that Darwin’s idea of natural selection directly followed his reading of Essay. This interpretation does not tell the full story. Malthus, a social and political theorist, argued that there are checks and balances on the growth of human populations. If there weren’t, they would grow exponentially. Unchecked growth would result in serious overpopulation. One of the most important checks Malthus identified was starvation. The food supply of any community has limits. There is no such thing as an unlimited stock of food. When the supply is plentiful, populations tend to increase; when there is drought or other forms of disruption in the supply, the result is famine, starvation, and ultimately a decrease in the population. Malthus described other checks on population growth, including birth control, war, extreme poverty, and epidemics. But Darwin was most intrigued by the idea of struggle for food. As Paul Barrett and colleagues note in Charles Darwin’s Notebooks, in one of his notebooks, Darwin scratched out comments about ‘‘the warring of the species as inference from Malthus’’ (1987). From this and other comments, Darwin alludes to Malthus’s influence on his ideas about evolution. Competition for resources such as food create conflicts between species. Some species succeed over others for these resources. The ones that succeed enjoy increases in their population; those that don’t tend to starve and become extinct. It became clear to him why so many species of finches appeared with variations in the size and shapes of beaks. Some populations were better suited for survival than others. Those with traits best suited for survival remained. The rest did not. Changes in the food supply played a role in species transmutation. This insight in the fall of 1838 got Darwin moving several years later toward the idea of natural selection. Darwin’s first use of the phrase natural selection appears in what became a draft of ideas for Origin of Species written in 1842. During the four-year


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period between his insights from Malthus and the draft, Darwin had continued to read widely—this time in the literature on the domestic breeding of animals. With the principles of artificial selection, breeders produce changes in the size, color, and weight of animals. This had long been practiced by those working with cattle, horses, dogs, and other domesticated breeds. The significant conclusion Darwin drew from his reading of Malthus and the breeding literature is that the variety of species found in the wild were a result of ‘‘the natural means of selection.’’ He had produced an analogy between the work of breeders and the process of natural species variation. What occurs artificially among domestic breeding practices can be seen, he suggested, in nature as a result of the warring between species for limited resources. The main differences were the lengths of time used to produce each kind of change. The work performed by breeders would occur quickly. In nature, the same effects arise gradually over remarkably long periods of time. Although Darwin had the data and the mechanism with which to explain evolution, he hesitated. He was in no hurry to produce a final work for many years, although he had discussed the topic with a close circle of scientists. There are at least three main reasons for what scholars refer to as ‘‘Darwin’s Delay.’’ First, he knew that previous theories of evolution had fallen flat because of a lack of supporting data. This was something he knew he had over other evolutionary thinkers. To do the topic justice, he believed the final work must be a multivolume encyclopedic magnum opus that would fell all opposition by the sheer weight of evidence. The desire to produce such a work made him wait before publicly announcing his conclusions. Second, Darwin struggled with a lifetime of illness and family losses. He was prone to vomit if he became too excited or agitated. Intense debate or controversy did not agree with his constitution. What he was proposing in his work would upset the norms of standard biological thought. His weak constitution conflicted with his desire to offer a new scientific paradigm. At crucial points during his work, Darwin also suffered personal setbacks. In the late 1840s and early 1850s, his father died followed by the death of his daughter, Annie. Both losses took a toll on his emotional and professional energy. Third, the publication of Vestiges figured into his delay before coming out with his own version of evolution. The reviews of Chambers’s work were not favorable, despite the number of copies it sold. The last thing Darwin wanted to do was come out with his theory of evolution at a time when the notion was being dismissed by a critical audience. Darwin knew he had an even more challenging task before him in making the case for evolution without reference to divine intervention, a concession Vestiges had made. What Darwin wanted to establish was a law of nature that governed the origin and differentiation of species. Back he went to the idea of a magnum opus of endless proportions. He might have gone his entire life without publishing Origin of Species if not for a discovery by Alfred Russell Wallace. Darwin had left a clean copy of his draft of 1842 in a file with instructions to his wife on how to go about



publishing it if he were to die an untimely death. He might have relied on this as a precaution in case he never published on evolution during his lifetime. This became unnecessary when Wallace entered the picture in 1858. Wallace was a young naturalist conducting field work in Asia. He collected specimens much the same way Darwin had decades earlier. They shared similar observations, had similar habits of reading widely across fields of interest, and had developed a very similar line of thinking about the origin of species. They both had independently developed a theory of evolution by natural selection. In an unusual twist of fate, Wallace decided to reveal his discovery to Darwin. In a package delivered in 1858 containing an explanation of the theory, Wallace requested his thoughts and commentary on the matter. Darwin quickly met with his circle of colleagues, including botanist Joseph Hooker and geologist Charles Lyell. The decision was made to sponsor a joint presentation of papers from Wallace and Darwin at a future meeting of London’s Linnean Society. While this resolved an issue of priority for Darwin, it left him in a race against time to produce the work he had long intended to write on the subject. When it finally appeared the following year, it did so with the title On the Origins of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. The work was an intellectual bombshell that is considered a pillar of modern biology. Conclusion It would be fair to say that there were many influences pertinent to the development of Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution. His father’s interests in medicine and botany gave Darwin his first introduction into the wonders of the natural world. Robert Grant furthered his development as a scientist, trained him in actual research, and shared with Darwin a staunchly held belief in evolutionary thought. The voyage of the Beagle dropped Darwin in a sea of evidence that hinted at descent from common ancestral origin. Cataloging the specimens he had collected on the voyage gave Darwin the confidence to start notebooks that provide the basis for Origin of Species. His wide reading, moreover, helped generate the framework with which placed the evidence for evolution. The result was a theory of evolution unlike any that had come before. This section has argued that Charles Darwin became an evolutionist in the mid-1830s independent of Herbert Spencer’s work. Darwin’s notebooks affirm this and, later, his brief draft of ideas written in 1842 became a first attempt at Origin of Species. Thus, Spencer may have published two works in the 1850s before Darwin went public with his ideas at the end of the decade. But as most Darwin scholars recognize, the ideas for Origin of Species were very long in the making, informed by experiences on the Beagle and unique in the book’s use of data and the metaphor of natural selection. Spencer, in an acknowledgment to


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Darwin’s influence on his work, changed his use of key phrases after Origin of Species made its debut. In the 1852 publication ‘‘The Development Hypothesis,’’ Spencer mentioned the ‘‘Theory of Lamarck.’’ When he republished the article after Origin of Species, he changed the phrasing to the ‘‘Theory of Evolution.’’ As such, Darwin influenced Spencer’s writing, thinking, and selection of phrasing. The question, therefore, is not whether Darwin got his ideas from Spencer. Rather, our attention should be directed to the extent to which Darwin influenced Spencer’s ideas about society. References and Further Reading Barlow, Nora, ed. The Autobiography of Charles Darwin, 1809–1882. London: Collins, 1958. Barrett, Paul H., Peter J. Gautrey, Dandra Herbert, David Kohn, and Sydney Smith, eds. Charles Darwin’s Notebooks, 1936–1844. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1987. Browne, Janet. Charles Darwin: Voyaging. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995. Chambers, Robert. Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation. London: Murray, 1844. Darwin, Charles R. On the Origin of Species. London: Murray, 1859, 1872. Darwin, Charles R., with Francis Darwin, ed. Life and Letters of Charles Darwin. London: Murray, 1887. Darwin, Erasmus. Zoonomia; Or the Laws of Organic Life, 2 vols. London: 1794–1796. Darwin, Francis., ed. The Foundations of the ‘‘Origin of Species’’: Two Essays Written in 1842 and 1844 by Charles Darwin. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1909. Lamarck, Jean-Baptiste. Philosophie Zoologique. Paris: Dentu et L’Auteur, 1809. Lyell, Charles. Principles of Geology: Being an Attempt to Explain the Former Changes of the Earth’s Surface by Reference to Causes Now in Operation. London: Murray, 1830–1833. Malthus, T. R. An Essay on the Principle of Population. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989. Original edition 1798. Quammen, David. The Reluctant Mr. Darwin: An Intimate Portrait of Charles Darwin and the Making of His Theory of Evolution. New York: Norton, 2006. Russell, Bertrand. The History of Western Philosophy. New York: Routledge, 2004. Spencer, Herbert. ‘‘The Development Hypothesis.’’ The Leader (March 20, 1852). Spencer, Herbert. ‘‘Progress: Its Law and Causes.’’ Westminster Review 67 (April 1857): 445–65.


14 Slavery was unprofitable for slave owners. PRO Radica Mahase CON Jerry C. Drake

PRO The profitability of slavery has been exaggerated. There is little doubt that the Atlantic slave trade was profitable to some extent. Undeniably, no commercial venture could last four centuries without making some amount of profit. What is questionable, however, is the amount of profit made. Also questionable is whether the profits of slavery benefited the countries that practiced it or just benefited specific groups such as the slavers and plantation owners. Perhaps the Caribbean historian Eric Williams (1944), who said that slavery financed Britain’s Industrial Revolution, has made the boldest claim that slavery was profitable. Other historians, such as Hugh Thomas (1997), hold that slavery’s profits were too small to have significantly affected the pace of Britain’s economic development. Moreover, the eighteenth century theorist, Adam Smith, who founded the discipline of economics, held that slavery as an institution was inherently unprofitable for the economy as a whole. The debate has continued for almost a century and a half after the abolition of the slave trade. For the past 50 years, newer historians have brought new sources, but not entirely original perspectives, to the debate. The discussion has centered on both theoretical and empirical issues pertaining to the profitability of African slavery. On one level, it has attempted to determine the extent to which certain countries, societies, groups, and individuals benefited from the enslavement of Africans. On another level, there is the comparative aspect of the debate: an endeavor to determine whether slave labor was as profitable as free labor. The most influential addition to the historiography has evaluated the extent to which the slaveholders benefited from their investments in slaves and has assessed the viability of slave economies and analyzed the effects of slavery on the growth and development of certain countries and regions. The topic has stimulated many discussions, but the answers provided have been influenced by the manner in which the question is asked and the perspective(s) of the individuals answering the questions. The way in which profit has been defined and assessed is one of the most problematic aspects of writings on this topic. The total profit 309 © 2011 ABC-Clio. All Rights Reserved.

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calculated depends on the economic historian’s interpretation of what should or should not be included in the calculations. The unprofitability of slavery is normally explained by examining the slave trade and the institution of slavery either as an industry or as a business enterprise. Much of the discussion on unprofitability specifically has centered on the extent to which individuals and companies did not benefit from African slavery. The question arises as to whether slavery was unprofitable for the investors, slave traders, and slave/plantation owners. Some studies, including ‘‘The Fishers of Men: The Profits of the Slave Trade’’ by R. P. Thomas and Richard N. Bean (1974), have examined the unprofitability of slavery to African intermediaries and the slaves themselves. Were there any major differentiations in unprofitability and losses experienced for each of these groups? Was the level of unprofitability more or less constant for all groups involved? Who experienced higher economic losses? The existing historiography has attempted to provide answers for these kinds of questions. The main arguments so far have centered on the extent to which slave traders benefited from the slave trade, the level of profits realized by plantation owners, the extent to which African slavery stimulated industrial developments in Britain, and the manner in which African intermediaries benefited from the institutional enslavement of the African population. The main contributors of the debate on unprofitability so far are those who can be referred to as an ‘‘older generation’’ of historians. Roger Anstey (1975b) gave an estimate of the profitability of the British slave trade for over 50 years in his ‘‘Volume and Profitability’’ and calculated that the rate of return from the slave trade was lower than 30 percent, the figure claimed by some other historians. Joseph E. Inikori (1992) argued that the slave trade was not competitive; it, rather, was monopolistically organized and it yielded high profits. Thomas and Bean, conversely, claimed that the trade was a perfectly competitive industry. B. L. Anderson and David Richardson (1983), in ‘‘Market Structure and Profits of the British African Trade in the Late Eighteenth Century,’’ also argued that the slave trade was competitive and that it resulted in normal profits, therefore History of the Slave Trade Slavery had been practiced in Britain since antiquity, but most forms of slavery were gradually outlawed by the Middle Ages, with rare exceptions (enforced servitude was at one point used as a punishment for Irish Catholics, but this wasn’t the same as the wholesale purchase and sale of people). When the enslavement of Africans began in the 17th century, it was unchallenged in courts and expressly allowed in a 1729 declaration by the attorney general. Other colonial powers such as the Dutch and the French practiced African slavery at the same time, though the practice was (though vast) short-lived: France outlawed it early in 1794, in the aftermath of the French Revolution, and Britain abolished slavery 40 years later.


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profitability was low. Other historians have provided variations of these debates, while some individuals have used new data along with older methods to calculate the degree of unprofitability that existed at various levels. The Slave Trade Economic historians have attempted to calculate the profitability of the slave trade in three ways. The first looks at the competition in the market of slaves. The second examines financial accounts of individual slaving ventures. The third attempts to estimate overall profits from total costs and revenues. Economic historian Eric Williams, in Capitalism and Slavery, claimed that the slave trade was not only highly profitable but that it also provided the capital needed to finance industrial development in Britain. Williams referred to a profit of 30 percent and stated that the profits from the triangular trade influenced Britain’s entire productive system. However, the slave trade was not as profitable as Williams calculated, because he omitted various costs that slave traders had to cover that would decrease profit. Stanley Engerman (1972), in ‘‘The Slave Trade and British Capital Formation in the Eighteenth Century,’’ for example, pointed out that Williams’s calculations of high profit is a result of a comparison between the costs of producing the goods traded for the slaves with the prices received for the slaves. However, this excludes costs of shipping, mortality, and other costs. The calculations of Roger Anstey, in contrast, are probably more realistic. He calculated that the rate of return for the British slave trade was 9.6 percent between 1761 and 1807. He noted that the merchant who invested in the slave trade had to wait for approximately one year before receiving any return on his investment. The slave trade was, in fact, variable, and the profits depended on numerous factors. These included the general risks of the shipping industry, loss of merchants’ vessels and cargoes to privateers or by foundering, and unpredictable factors that influenced trading activities. The level of profitability was also determined by the timing of the slaving expedition, market conditions, the duration of the middle passage, and morbidity and mortality. Added to this, there was a high cost of entrance into the slaving business. Slave shipping was expensive activity. The time needed to outfit a slave ship and the journey itself lasted more than one year. Slavers often had to recruit and pay for a crew double the size of that as other commercial activities to stem revolts on board the ships. Often the insurance was high, because traders needed to cover the value of the ship, the merchandise, and the human cargo as well. They also had to purchase large quantities of food and provisions for the crew and human cargo. Added to this, slave traders were required to purchase various permits, pay many duties, pay fees at each port of call, and pay broker and pilot fees and the wages of the carriers and the boatmen who transported the enslaved Africans and provisions. Some slave traders bought customary presents for



important African rulers or merchants. Most of them had to pay fees for auctioneers, announcers, and duties to officials and churches. There were rumors that various companies were purchasing slaves for about £3 per head and reselling them at £20 in the United States. However, as Hugh Thomas points out in The Slave Trade, the promulgators of this rumor did not consider that the companies had to offset various costs such as the management of forts in Africa and the transportation of cargo from Britain. Furthermore, profit making was not always a constant factor. Richard Bean’s (1971) calculation in ‘‘The British Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, 1650–1775’’ of the estimated profit per slave shows this quite clearly. Bean estimated that for the period from 1651 until 1675, the profit per slave was £14.66. From 1701 to 1720, the profit had decreased to £8.46. The next two decades saw a further decline, and the profit per slave was £3.16. On a more microscopic level, it can be noted that while some slave ships made heavy profits from a journey, others struggled to break even and some experienced heavy losses. This differentiation in profit can be seen when one ship, which had undertaken three journeys, is examined. According to the Davenport Papers, the British slave ship Hawke made a profit of over £7,000 on its first trip in 1779. In 1781 it made almost £10,000. However, on its third journey in 1781, it fell to French privateers. This represented a gross loss higher than the profits made. Other examples of British slave ships experiencing heavy losses can be seen through the discussion of Francis E. Hyde, Bradbury B. Parkinson, and Sheila Marriner (1953) in ‘‘The Nature and Profitability of the Liverpool Slave

Deck plan of a slave ship, showing how captured Africans were arranged as cargo, 1700s. (North Wind Picture Archives)


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Trade,’’ of the case of the May in 1772, which lost more than £1,500, and the Hector, which experienced a loss of £3,000 in 1773. Johannes Postma (1990) has calculated that of the Dutch slaving ships, 113 made a minimum profit of 5 percent, 14 broke even, while 32 incurred losses. Of those that incurred losses, one ship experienced a loss of 37 percent and another had a loss of 48 percent. Thomas noted that during the second half of the 18th century, of the 100 Dutch slave ships, 41 operated at a loss, and profits were barely more than 3 percent. According to Thomas, John Newton, once a slaveholder and later an abolitionist, noted that the slave trade could be seen as a sort of lottery in which every adventurer hoped to gain a prize. Another differentiation can be seen in the type of the slave-trading venture. Profits were made by independent traders more than by national privileged companies. The companies often spent heavy sums on the upkeep of forts, bureaucratic activities, and bribes that were necessary to placate local police and officials at the landing ports. In addition, the staffs of companies often tried to make private profits, which decreased the overall profit of the companies. For example, according to Thomas, the Middleburgh Company made an annual profit of 1.43 percent from 1761 until 1800 as opposed to the 8 percent profit it made from the period 1751 to 1760. In fact, from 1770 until 1800, the Middleburgh Company did not realize any average profit, and its average loss increased progressively. The profits of French slave traders in Bordeaux, Nantes, and La Rochelle, according to Seymour Drescher (1977) in Econocide: British Slavery in the Era of Abolition, was not more than 6 percent and often was as low as 1 percent. The larger slave shipping merchants were only able to realize substantial profits because they invested in other financial ventures such as sugar and coffee plantations. An additional factor determining the levels of profit made was that of the price of a slave. There were distinct variations in the price of enslaved Africans from the 16th to the 19th centuries. According to Thomas, the price of a slave was £5 in the 1670s, but 100 years later an enslaved African was sold for £30 to £50. By the mid-19th century, the price had dropped to an average of £15. Thomas suggested that the decrease in the price of slaves led to considerable damage to the slave trade in general. He also noted that slave traders were rarely paid fully for their cargoes upon delivery, and payments were frequently made in commodities. Thus many buyers purchased slaves on credit, and in the process, they incurred high debts. Profits therefore decreased after the second half of the 18th century as the prices of slaves increased in Africa. In fact, while profits from the slave trade averaged 8 to 10 percent, this rate of profit was the same as for other commercial ventures. Even after 1807 when the slave trade was illegal and the price of slaves increased, the large slaving companies were only able to realize substantial profits when they invested in sugar or coffee plantations. Otherwise they faced the risk of going bankrupt.



The Plantation Economy According to Keith Aufhauser (1974) in ‘‘Profitability of Slavery in the British Caribbean,’’ certain variables are needed before the historian can calculate the profitability of the slaves and slaveholdings within the plantation system. Data pertaining to the productivity per slave, longevity, reproduction and mortality, capital costs and expenditure for the maintenance of the slaves, as well as the process of sugar and rum are necessary for the individual to tabulate the actual profits derived per slave. The limitations in the availability of these types of data have made it difficult to calculate the actual profitability of the slaves within the plantation economy. Nevertheless, historians have attempted to determine the exact extent of the profits realized by plantations. Ulrich B. Phillips (1918), in American Negro Slavery, looked at the southern region of the United States. Here, slaveholders did not realize a profit by the end of the first half of the 19th century. The majority of the slaveholders were barely making enough to cover maintenance and other costs, and only those situated in the most advantageous parts of the region were able to make profits. In Slavery in Mississippi, Charles S. Sydnor (1965) used statistics for the Mississippi area of the United States to show that there was a low rate of return on a large number of plantations. The difference between slavery and the plantation economy has been generally ignored from the existing historiography. Slavery has been used interchangeably with the plantation economy, and the plantation economy has been defined, structured, and assessed around slavery. However, slavery was one part of the plantation economy, and the high state of profitability of the plantation economy should not be translated into the profitability of slavery as a business enterprise. Even if slaveholders and plantation owners realized a profit, this does not mean that slavery was economically profitable. Plantation owners were normally engaged in economic activities either totally independent of slavery or slave labor, or engaged in economic ventures that partially revolved around slave labor such as cocoa, coffee, tobacco, and tea. As L. J. Ragatz (1963) discusses in The Fall of the Planter Class in the British Caribbean: 1776–1833, plantation profits often oscillated because of increases in maintenance costs and fluctuations in the wholesale price of sugar. For the plantation to operate at a state of high profitability, the capital invested per slave had to be low. In The Nature and Properties of the Sugar Cane, G. R. Porter (1830) estimated that the average investment in buildings and utensils in Barbados and Tortola was £25 per slave in the 1820s. Aufhauser calculated that the capital cost per slave was £176.7. This included buildings and utensils, cattle and horses, land and the slave. Solon Robinson noted that the profits of the plantation of Colonel L. M. Williams of South Carolina were very low. The plantation was valued at $160,402. The expenses amounted to $17,894.48. This included the interest of 7 percent on the investment in land, slaves and livestock,


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taxes on slaves and land, medical care, the wages of the three overseers, and the expenditure on tools and equipment. When the income from other sources was added and the average cost of a pound of cotton was derived, Robinson concluded that the plantation was making a profit of about 3 percent. (Govan 1942: 514) Sydnor looked at figures for the profit and loss of plantations in the southern region of the United States and tabulated that the profits of the plantation owners were less than $880 when all expenses had been deducted. Sydnor then concluded that there was a very small rate of return for plantation owners. Added to this, some slaves were more productive and therefore more profitable than others were. A more blatant example can be seen with female house slaves employed in the great house to cater to the needs of the masters and were therefore engaged in activities more of a sexual nature. These were often less productive than the field slaves who were directly engaged in agricultural production. Another differentiation can be seen within the field slaves, when the productivity of the ‘‘great gang’’ is examined against that of the second or third gang. In addition, differences can be seen with the low numbers of slaves employed as skilled slaves or craftsmen. Levels of productivity and maintenance went hand in hand, and it cost more to maintain slaves who were more productive. An exception to this rule could have been the female slave who was employed in the master’s house to provide sexual services to the planter and who was treated in a highly favorable manner. Generally the high cost of maintenance was only met satisfactorily when plantation owners invested in other more lucrative economic activities. Williams has argued that the decline in the profitability of the plantation economy was a key factor influencing the emancipation of enslaved Africans in 1833. He noted that there was an overall decline in the British West Indian sugar economy by the end of the 18th century and that this, more than humanitarian considerations, led to the abolition of slavery. The emergence of the 19th century heralded an era of unprofitability, inefficiency, and fluctuations in the plantation economy. David B. Davis (1987), in ‘‘Reflections on Abolitionism and Ideological Hegemony,’’ noted that African slavery was associated with a state of indebtedness, soil erosion, and deserted properties. In addition, according to David Ryden (1963) in ‘‘Planters, Slaves and Decline,’’ planters adopted new management techniques to cope with the increasing cost of plantation supplies and the low prices of commodities on the international market. First, the sugar planters were highly indebted to British merchants and financiers. Second, soil exhaustion and limited or no technological improvements and changes placed West Indian planters in a situation where they were unable to compete with other sugar-producing colonies. Third, West Indian planters were experiencing unfavorable economic competition, which resulted in desertion of some plantations. These ideas are supported by Ragatz, who noted that there were important economic changes occurring in the West Indian plantation economy and that there was a close



relationship between the decline in productivity and profitability and the abolition of slavery. Capitalism and Industrialization One of the most advocated ‘‘benefits’’ of the enslavement of Africans is the notion that slavery led to the emergence of capitalist enterprises and economies and the rise of industrialization. Williams has postulated that the profits of the slave trade and the plantation economy were sufficiently lucrative to finance the industrial developments that occurred in Britain from the 18th century onward. He argued that the profits made by slave owners were invested in industries in Britain. However, the Williams thesis (as Williams’s arguments became known) omitted the fact that overseas demand for British goods increased because of independent developments outside of Britain. Also, industrial developments in Britain were partially an effect of British demands for imports. According to Drescher, the expansion of purchasing power overseas was transmitted back to British exporters via a network of colonial trading connections. In fact, the actual contribution of profits to British national income was small, usually lower than one-half of 1 percent of the British national income. Drescher calculated that of the total slave profits, only £14,000 per annum was invested in industrial development in Britain. Thus the slave trade contributed 1.59 percent of the total national income of Britain. According to Anstey, if all profits from the slave trade were invested in industries, it would only amount to 7.94 percent. It is correct to say that some profits of the slave trade contributed to the development of specific industries as seen in the relationship between the profits of the Liverpool trade and its contribution to the Lancashire cotton industry. However, it is incorrect to say that the slave trade or slavery was profitable to the extent that it funded the Industrial Revolution in Britain. Also questionable in the Williams thesis is the question of the actual share of the profits invested in British industries, because surely some part of the profits was put aside for consumption purposes, was invested in agriculture, or was reinvested in the slave trade or into the plantation system. Many slave traders and trade holders reinvested some portion of their already meager profits in land and other trading activities. Thus it is hardly likely that the entire profits of the slave trade and slavery were pumped into industries in Britain, and even if this were so, it was still not sufficient to stimulate the level of industrial activities that occurred in Britain. Inikori is probably more correct when he notes that there was indeed a close relationship between slavery and British industrialization. However, this relationship was not as directly related as Williams has made it out to be. A high capital investment from slavery was not directly invested in industries. The relationship was a more indirect one where


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the slave trade contributed to the general growth of trade, transport, and manufacturing. As Barbara L. Solow and Stanley L. Engerman (1987) note in British Capitalism and Caribbean Slavery, West Indian slavery stimulated British overseas trade, provided new markets for exports, and widened the markets for goods produced by enslaved Africans. In fact the profitability of slavery as an economic system was often exaggerated, and there were situations where it actually retarded economic growth rather than fostered development in all areas where it existed. A good illustration of this can be seen with the economic backwardness of the southern region of the United States. In this region, slavery proved to be a deterrent to economic growth. The northern region was able to progress economically at a much faster pace than the southern region. In fact the South was characterized by diminishing commerce and retarded economic growth. Slavery in the American South has been blamed for a lack of economic growth, because slave labor was economically expensive and ineffective. First, slavery hindered industrial and commercial development of the southern region, because capital was frozen in the form of labor and was therefore not available for manufacturing and commerce. Capital was normally tied up in the ownership of slaves and the plantation system so that capital that could have been used to construct factories was concentrated in the ownership of slaves and was inflexible. In addition, planters did not save enough to reinvest in their plantations or in other economic activities. According to Robert Russel (1938), planters lived and operated on the anticipated income from the next crop and not from the income from the preceding crop. Many planters lived on advances, which they obtained from British companies or firms in the northern region. They often used their crops as security so that once there were fluctuations in the prices of crops, they became heavily indebted. As a result, savings were low and capital was not available for investment. As noted by Douglas F. Dowd (1958) in ‘‘The Economics of Slavery in the Ante Bellum South,’’ slavery also hindered the diversification of the southern economy so that the South became dependent on the North. Slave owners preferred to engage their slaves in agricultural activities as opposed to manufacturing activities. The use of slave labor hindered the development of a home market for local industries in the South, where local markets were lacking because the slave labor force either paid little or nothing at all or paid in kind rather than in cash. Thus the propensity for the development of a capitalist system was curbed and there were serious implications on consumption-savings relations. Slavery prevented maximum use of skills and abilities of the labor force. The majority of the enslaved labor force was employed in agriculture rather than as skilled personnel. A social system developed where the white labor force perceived labor as a socially degrading activity and refused to work in this area. Also, the idea that whites should not perform menial jobs such as personal services like cooking and washing became widely accepted and practiced in the



South. There were also situations where whites refused to work alongside African slaves. Consequently the entire labor force in the southern region was underused. Added to this, the use of slave labor may have retarded the implementation of agricultural machinery. This occurred, according to Russel, because slave labor was relatively cheap and labor intensive and was used instead of machinery, and because plantation owners often did not trust their slaves to use expensive, often complicated machines. It became a situation where southern plantations with the most fertile land and efficient supervision were able to profit from the plantation system. In general, however, according to Harold D. Woodman (1963) in ‘‘The Profitability of Slavery,’’ slaveholdings in the South were not profitable, although some individual planters made large profits. Conclusion The profitability of African slavery has often been exaggerated and overemphasized in the historical literature. When attempting to determine the level of profitability that existed, it is imperative to examine the various factors that influenced profitability as well as the differentiations that existed. It is rather difficult to determine the actual extent of (un)profitability that existed as a result of limitations, sources, evidence, and so on. Perhaps this is why the debate has continued in a somewhat unaltered form for all these years. Some of the statistics used in the available studies are questionable if one considers that officials have collected them. Aside from the bias of these officials, they were not always diligent in their statistical recordings and compilations. Furthermore, for actual levels of (un)profitability to be calculated, specific trends in slave ships and plantations that used slave labor must be examined. However, this has been a rather difficult task for economic historians because of the unavailability of records. It is also necessary to define levels at which (un)profitability have been assessed and calculated, because terms like profits, productivity, and costs have varied meanings to different individuals. It has often been the accepted view that the enslavement of Africans was a profitable enterprise whereby various individuals, companies, and economies realized substantial benefits—but this was not the case. References and Further Reading Anderson, B. L., and David Richardson ‘‘Market Structure and Profits of the British African Trade in the Late Eighteenth Century: A Comment’’ The Journal of Economic History, pp. 713–21 (v.43, 1983). Anstey, Roger. The Atlantic Slave Trade and British Abolition 1760–1810. Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1975a. Anstey, Roger. ‘‘The Volume and Profitability of the British Slave Trade, 1761– 1807.’’ In Race and Slavery in the Western Hemisphere: Quantitative


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Studies. Edited by S. L. Engerman and E. D. Genovese. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1975b. Aufhauser, R. Keith. ‘‘Profitability of Slavery in the British Caribbean.’’ Journal of Interdisciplinary History 5, 1 (1974): 45–67. Bean, Richard Nelson. ‘‘The British Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, 1650–1775.’’ PhD thesis, University of Washington, 1971. Davis, David B. ‘‘Reflections on Abolitionism and Ideological Hegemony.’’ American Historical Review 92, 4 (1987). Dowd, Douglas F. ‘‘The Economics of Slavery in the Ante Bellum South: A Comment.’’ Journal of Political Economy 66, 5 (1958): 440–42. Drescher, Seymour. Econocide: British Slavery in the Era of Abolition. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1977. Engerman, Stanley L. ‘‘The Slave Trade and British Capital Formation in the Eighteenth Century: A Comment on the Williams Thesis.’’ Business History Review 85, 4 (1972). Fogel, Robert William. ‘‘Three Phases of Cliometric Research on Slavery and Its Aftermath.’’ American Economic Review 65, 2 (1975): 37–46. Govan, Thomas P. ‘‘Was Plantation Slavery Profitable.’’ Journal of Southern History 8, 4 (1942): 513–35. Hyde, Francis E., Bradbury B. Parkinson, and Sheila Marriner. ‘‘The Nature and Profitability of the Liverpool Slave Trade.’’ The Economic History Review 5, 3 (1953): 368–77. Inikori, Joseph E., and Stanley L. Engerman, eds. The Atlantic Slave Trade: Effects on Economies, Societies, and Peoples in Africa, the Americas and Europe. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1992. Phillips, Ulrich B. American Negro Slavery. New York: Appleton, 1918. Porter, G. R. The Nature and Properties of the Sugar Cane. London: Smith, Elder & Co., 1830. Postma, Johannes. The Dutch in the Atlantic Slave Trade, 1600–1815. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990. Ragatz, L. J. The Fall of the Planter Class in the British Caribbean: 1776– 1833. New York: Octagon Books, 1963. Russel, Robert R. ‘‘The General Effects of Slavery upon Southern Economic Progress.’’ Journal of Southern History 4, 1 (1938): 34–54. Ryden, David. ‘‘Planters, Slaves and Decline.’’ In Capitalism and Slavery—Fifty Years Later: Eric Eustace Williams—A Reassessment of the Man and His Work. Edited by Heather Cateau and Selwyn Carrington. New York: Lang, 2000.



Solow, Barbara L., and Stanley L. Engerman. British Capitalism and Caribbean Slavery. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987. Sydnor, Charles D. Slavery in Mississippi. Gloucester, MA: Smith, 1965. Thomas, Hugh. The Slave Trade. New York: Simon and Schuster Paperbacks, 1997. Thomas, R. P., and Richard N. Bean. ‘‘The Fishers of Men: The Profits of the Slave Trade.’’ Journal of Southern History 34 (1974): 885–914. Williams, Eric. Capitalism and Slavery. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1944. Woodman, Harold D. ‘‘The Profitability of Slavery.’’ Journal of Southern History 29 (1963): 303–25.

CON The question of the profitability of antebellum slavery in the United States has remained a source of discordant debate for nearly two centuries. Prior to the abolition of the South’s so-called peculiar institution, the argument over the profitability of the slave system was waged in the broader social arena between pro-slavery advocates and abolitionists. Following the Civil War, this question became the subject of much rancor among a variety of scholars, chiefly historians and economists. At the heart of the debate resides an apparently simple question: Was slavery a profitable institution? What initially appears to be a rather cut-and-dried query is actually far more complicated. What do we mean by ‘‘profitable’’? Who could be said to have profited from this system? The slave? The owner? The planter class? The South as a region? Or the American nation as a whole? The profitability of slavery is a difficult question to ponder, for the key to the ultimate answer is contingent on the manner in which the original question is postulated. Using an array of primary source data, gleaned largely from plantation records, census material, personal accounts, and other contemporary sources, scholars have created radically divergent interpretations of the question at hand. However, the overarching debate, in all of its many facets, can be reduced to a more simplistic dichotomy: (1) Was slavery as a tool for running a business sufficiently profitable for individual slave owners; and (2) Was slavery as an economic system profitable for the American South as a region? From the point of view of historians, discussion of these central questions has been oriented around the pioneering work of two scholars: Ulrich B. Phillips and Kenneth M. Stampp. Writing more than four decades distant from one another, their answers to the question of slavery’s profitability were diametrically opposed. Introducing his ideas in 1910s, at the height of the Jim Crow era, Phillips (1918) argued that southern slavery produced great wealth for some but was ultimately a moribund institution, leaving Dixie economically backward and subservient to the North. Stampp (1956), working at the dawn of the


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American civil rights movement in the 1950s, conversely argued that slavery was not a dying system but was cruelly efficient and highly profitable. For the past five decades, historians of varying calibers have taken up the mantle of one side or another of this debate. A number of recent scholars have even attempted to reconcile these two schools of thought. The work of Mark M. Smith (1998) is typical of this interpretation. In Debating Slavery, Smith argues that while slavery was profitable for individual slave owners, the system itself was detrimental to the South as a region. However, arguments that deny the profitability of antebellum slavery, either from the perspective of individual business owners or of the South as a whole, are ultimately unsatisfactory. Indeed, slavery was a highly profitable business model that served to concentrate tremendous wealth in the hands of an elite class of southern planters. Further, slavery as an economic system proved to be a tool for the creation of new wealth and economic expansion for a young America marching westward. In the America of today, devoid of any kind of sanctioned race-based slavery, it might be comforting to believe that the South’s peculiar institution was lumbering toward its demise on the eve of the Civil War, as obsolete as vacuum tubes have become to the modern digital generation. Nothing could be further from the truth. On the eve of the Civil War, the South was experiencing tremendous economic growth with an increasing average per capita income outpacing that of the North. Between 1850 and 1860, South Carolina, with the highest percentage of slaveholders in the nation, experienced an increase in real estate and personal property valuation of 90.15 percent, whereas New York’s rate of increase was 70.63 percent. Both were home to major Atlantic ports and served as hubs of international trade, yet the advantage in personal wealth was clearly yielded to the southern state, despite its smaller population. In reality the slaves themselves represented wealth—they were not merely an economic burden to the owners’ balance sheets, but a tangible asset—truly ‘‘human capital.’’ Thus the sad tragedy of slavery is epitomized. Rather than a derelict social construct of the ancient world, antebellum southern slavery was a pathway to individual and collective wealth. As such, the thesis offered by Phillips and others that slavery would have died of its own accord without the acrimony of Civil War is highly dubious. Indeed, American slavery is a case study in economic expediency triumphing over moral clarity. The Nation the Slaves Made The practice of African slavery was introduced into the region that would become the United States at Jamestown, Virginia, in 1619, a little over a decade after the colony’s founding. The slaves’ arrival was precipitated by the need for



an efficient, cost-effective workforce. In 1609 Jamestown settler John Rolfe (the future husband of Pocahontas) introduced a mild variety of tobacco from Bermuda, Nicotiana tabacum, to the fertile soils of Virginia. This forebear of the modern tobacco crop was palatable to the English market, unlike the harsh, rustic variety found growing in the region. By 1612 Rolfe’s plants were producing a paying harvest. At his estate, Varina Farms, Rolfe established the model of plantation agriculture that would endure for more than two centuries. Though he died in 1622 at the age of 37, Rolfe was enriched by the production of tobacco and his innovation placed the struggling Virginia colony on the road to economic prosperity. By 1620, the year after the introduction of the first slaves to Jamestown, the colony produced 119,000 pounds of tobacco—up from 2,500 pounds in 1616. From that point forward, slavery and cash-crop agriculture in the South were conjoined. The transatlantic slave trade existed since approximately 1500. The first slaves to arrive in Jamestown in 1619, aboard a Dutch trading vessel, came as indentured servants—so-called bondsmen, who would eventually be granted their freedom. In 1654 John Casor became the first person to be legally recognized as a slave for life in the lands of the future United States. This precedent allowed for the exponential expansion of slavery throughout the American colonies. The legality of the system itself was gradually codified into English law thereafter. Closely associated with the crops tobacco, sugarcane, and, most prominently cotton, slavery grew rapidly in the American colonies and, subsequently, in the newly minted United States. By the time transatlantic slave trade was outlawed in the United States in 1808, some 300,000 slaves had been directly imported, and an illegal trade in humans continued until the Civil War. Through ‘‘breeding,’’ the domestic slave population also grew rapidly in America, in contrast to other regions where slaves barely reproduced themselves. American slave owners came to see slaves as a form of wealth and thus enhanced their investment by engaging in the internal slave trade. As such there were some 4 million slaves in the United States in 1860; a startling 12.8 percent of the total population, despite the fact that slavery was largely outlawed in the North by 1800. On the eve of the Civil War, the average price of a slave was $500, a record high. Slavery as it existed in the American South came to fruition subsequent to Eli Whitney’s patenting of the cotton gin in 1794. If an argument could be made for the moribund nature of slavery in America, then it must be applied to the period before the introduction of Whitney’s machine. As a case in point, Thomas Jefferson, a Virginia slaveholder and architect of the Declaration of Independence, included a condemnation of slavery in his early draft of the Declaration, referring to it as a ‘‘cruel war raged against human nature itself.’’ Though the Continental Congress struck this language from the document, such an admission by a leading Virginia planter is remarkable—and representative of the fact that slavery was facing a decline in the latter half of the 18th century.


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Following in the wake of Whitney’s invention, slavery experienced a rapid resurgence. The cotton gin allowed for the efficient, economical separation of cotton fibers from seedpods. As such, cotton could be produced cheaply using unskilled labor working in the fields and operating the gins. This allowed for the mass production of cotton in an economy of scale. It also created the need for more land and the expansion of the plantation system into unsettled territories. The American slave system became the most immediate and profitable method of expanding this incipient cotton industry into the Deep South and, eventually, Texas. The institution of slavery as it unfolded across the southland did so in the compacted space of a single human lifespan—then just a little over 60 years. Its arrival in the Mexican territory of Texas in 1821, where slavery was ostensibly illegal, proved to be a contributing factor to the independence and annexation of the Lone Star republic. Texas provides for an interesting case study of the expansion of slavery as a successful economic system. Southerners flowing into Texas established cotton culture in the eastern third of the future state, building tremendous fortunes in the space of only a few short years. Historian Randolph B. Campbell (1989) points out in his An Empire for Slavery that though Texas was a region in which the South’s peculiar institution was introduced late, it was adopted on a scale comparable to that found throughout Dixie. Indeed the expansion of cash crop agriculture based on cotton was a prime motivator in the settlement of the region of Texas. The threat to slavery posed by the centralized Mexican government further proved to be a contributing factor in Texans’ push for independence. Rather than a decadent institution, antebellum southern slavery was expansive and economically vigorous in the years leading up to the Civil War. Following the invention of the cotton gin, it became a brutal tool for opening up southern real estate to the forces of agricultural exploitation. Cotton became king of the Old South because as a cash crop, efficiently produced, it created a pathway for tremendous wealth. Slavery by the Numbers Though nearly 150 years has passed since the start of the Civil War, a good deal of information remains that will allow us to consider both the micro- and macroeconomics of the slave system. Plantation records, census data, newspaper advertisements, personal accounts, and surviving slave narratives all contain information that sheds greater insight on this question. However, it must be understood that this is not a modern line of inquiry. Indeed, slavery’s profitability was a hotly debated issue well before the coming of emancipation. Antebellum abolitionists frequently argued that slavery was a dying, unprofitable institution. They reasoned that the master–slave relationship had degraded



Slaves picking cotton on a plantation. (North Wind Picture Archives)

Abolitionism Though slavery was abolished in Sweden as early as the 14th century, for most of the world, abolitionist movements dated to the 18th century’s burgeoning concerns with human rights and liberty. In many cases, these movements were tied to religious groups—the Quakers in both Britain and the United States, and various evangelical and Methodist groups in the United States. American protests against slavery had begun as early as the 17th century in colonies that did not depend on it economically, and by the turn of the 19th century, most northern states had abolished it on their own devices. The American colony of Liberia, on the west coast of Africa, was founded as a destination for freed slaves.

southern moral standards and character, leading to the corruption of the entire region. The South, they proposed, had fallen into economic backwardness precisely because of the peculiar institution. As such, abolitionists made the case that the institution as a whole was an economic failure. Abolitionists could not attack the profitability of slavery on the part of individual plantation owners, however. There was no specific moral prohibition on profit taking in the antebellum world and as such it was not seen as unsavory. Condemning the planter class for personal enrichment was an argument


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that would have made little sense, thus abolitionists sought to condemn slavery as economically detrimental to the region as a whole. Regardless, many of those who condemned slavery as a corrupt and backward system were forced to admit its profitability for individual slaveholders. For instance, Frederick Law Olmstead (1856), the renowned landscape architect and traveling correspondent, reported firsthand in his A Journey in the Seaboard Slave States the devastating effects of slavery on the moral clime of the Old South. He condemned the institution as retrograde and inefficient, yet he was forced to admit its tremendous profitability for southern planters. Thus the debate has arrived on the doorstep of modern historians. What remains is a confusing litany of propaganda from both sides of the antebellum dispute, drawn largely from the same sets of source data—or, for that matter, no data at all. A puzzling conundrum exists for those who would argue the unprofitability of slavery: its dogged persistence. The capitalist model insists that inefficient, unprofitable business practices will neither endure nor grow. Yet slavery did both. Once again, in considering the question of slavery’s profitability we are essentially bound by the rules of interpretation set by earlier scholars: (1) Was slavery as a tool for running a business sufficiently profitable for individual slave owners; and (2) Was slavery as an economic system profitable for the American South as a region? Let us take these questions in the order they are given and examine ‘‘the numbers’’—the financial data that come to us from the historic record. This is a field many times plowed, and ample information exists from which to draw conclusions. The Profitability of Slavery as a Business As has been stated, the first historian to make a substantive inquiry into this question was Phillips. It must be noted that his work, today, remains largely discredited, not so much for his economic position, but for his overtly paternalistic and racist view of the slave system. Phillips’s essential argument was that slavery, though moribund, was basically benevolent, elevating what Phillips considered to be the degraded nature of African Americans. For Phillips, slavery was a form of social control, a means of protecting whites from the so-called ravages of free blacks. As a result by and large of the odiousness of the racist doctrines expressed in Phillips’s work, the man’s publications have few defenders today. Phillips’s interpretation rapidly became the order of the day for a nation enmeshed in Jim Crow—the de jure system of apartheid that emerged following slavery’s demise. However, in the following decades, a new generation of revisionist historians began to take a closer look at the profitability question. In 1942 Thomas P. Govan became one of the earliest scholars to rebuff Phillips and those writing in his vein. Govan used financial and population data from



census records coupled with extant financial records from plantations to conclude that slavery was a highly profitable business model. In doing so, Govan took a comprehensive view of the notion of profitability. He argued that in calculating the profitability of slavery as a business, earlier historians had failed to understand the concept, insisting that a relationship existed between a given planter’s profit figure and that planter’s investment, when it did not. In short, plantation expenses and the lifestyle of those who resided on the plantation were intertwined. Slavery provided the plantation owner ‘‘value-added’’ profitability in terms of labor: slaves ostensibly purchased to work in the fields could be put to work in other endeavors, such as clearing land, construction projects, household chores, maintenance tasks, and other jobs that in a wage-based business model would require additional expenditure. Further, the planter’s way of life—his clothes, food, household, animals, entertainments, books, and virtually all other expenditures— was inseparable from the operating costs of running the plantation. The equivalent analogy would be a factory owner who lived within the walls of his plant and purchased all of his personal comforts on the balance sheets of the corporation. In this way, even plantations that turned only a small visible ‘‘profit’’ could provide the plantation owner with a tremendously rich lifestyle. Govan’s most startling example of this business model comes from the intact records of the plantation Hopeton from Glynn County, Georgia. Run by the Couper family from before the War of 1812 until the 1850s, the plantation’s records provide consistent evidence of profitability in a continual manner throughout the life of the business. In this calculation, the slave workforce was not a debit, but an asset. During lean years, slaves were hired out or sold to augment profitability, a practice that could not have taken place with a hired workforce. Without the pressures of the traditional labor market (e.g., the inflationary demand of wages), plantation owners could continue production even in difficult years. Further, the expenses of a plantation were all encompassing. The lifestyle of the plantation—regardless of extravagance—was deducted from the expense of the plantation itself, not from the owner’s personal profit. When the pioneering geologist Charles Lyell visited Hopeton in 1845—during a period of decreased profitability throughout the South—he found the Coupers living in lavish style, with a fine estate, a well-stocked library of expensive volumes, and an enslaved workforce of 500, able to cater to any demand the plantation master might have. With this in mind, the question of profitability must extend beyond itemizations of net and gross on a balance sheet. In short, Govan argued, slavery generated tremendous wealth for plantation owners in terms of the capitalized value of their farms and their slave workforce. The plantation was more than just an engine of production; it served as a direct means of providing the master with an often-extravagant lifestyle.


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Stampp expanded on the work of Govan and others in 1956 with the publication of his seminal work, The Peculiar Institution. Though Stampp took a holistic view of the institution of slavery as a system of maintaining social order, as an economic system, and as a business model for individual planters, his conclusions concerning profitability were unequivocal. In short, after analyzing plantation records, sales and pricing data, and census data, Stampp found that slavery delivered for its practitioners an exceptional profit above and beyond the cost of expenditure. Further, Stampp explained, this profitability was not merely the result of the sale of cash crops, but also the result of the hiring out and sale of slaves. Slaves themselves constituted appreciable wealth, unlike the expenditures incurred by a typical labor force. In a chapter dedicated to ‘‘Slavemongering,’’ Stampp explained the use of slaves as a means of augmenting profit. In addition to being hired out or being ‘‘bred’’ for sale, they also served as a form of capital that could be liquidated to clear other debt. In the 1840s, during a period of poor markets in the South, slaveholders routinely reduced their workforces not merely as a means of reducing expenses, but also as a method for generating liquid capital that could then be used to service debt. Such a practice would be impossible with a traditional labor market and thus allowed plantation owners to hold back the rising tide of foreclosure, carrying them to the next economic upturn. Stampp found slavery to be a profitable enterprise for slave owners, regardless of the size of their holdings. Even as slave prices increased throughout the 1850s, small-scale farmers used slavery to their economic advantage. Stampp indicated that the presence of a few slaves on a farm, able to perform work for the cost of food and clothing (which slaves grew and made themselves), meant the difference between subsistence and bankruptcy. For large farmers, slavery was the key to prosperity. Stampp articulated that antebellum observers, even antislavery thinkers such as Olmstead, were forced to admit that slavery-based agriculture provided a better return on investment than any analogous northern business strategy. Following its introduction, Stampp’s work was seen as controversial, overturning four decades of a deeply ingrained interpretive paradigm. Slavery was no longer allowed to be seen as a withering artifact at the time of its abolition, but rather a vigorous vehicle for personal wealth with a far-from-certain demise. In Stampp’s wake came additional refinements of his ideas. Stampp, who was not an economist, lacked many of the intellectual tools to verify his suppositions. This verification came chiefly from the partnership between Robert W. Fogel and Stanley Engerman. Writing from the perspective of economists, these authors confirmed Stampp’s understanding of slavery as a profitable business model. Though earlier authors such as Alfred H. Conrad and John R. Meyer (1958) had attempted to do much the same, Fogel and Engerman’s Time on the Cross (1974) brought



together a litany of quantitative data, gleaned from myriad antebellum sources, to affirm the profitability of slavery. Their argument was grounded in both micro- and macroeconomic principles. They confirmed the conclusion reached by Stampp that, in fact, slavery was a profitable business model, that economic growth experienced in the South in the years leading up to the Civil War was greater than that of the North, and that only the most inefficient farmers and planters failed to extract a profit from their chattel. Fogel and Engerman envisioned southern slavery as a highly specialized labor system, rapidly perfected in the years following the development of the cotton gin. Subsequent to the firm establishment of slavery in the Deep South, slave prices continued to climb, creating a profitable market in the domestic slave trade. If speculating planters were pessimistic about the future of slavery, as the likes of Phillips argued, then their willingness to engage in the sale and purchase of slaves, at inflated prices, belied this fact. Fogel and Engerman’s work created a firestorm among historians that drifted into the popular press. Their stance on the issue of slavery’s profitability quickly overshadowed that of Stampp’s. Over the past three decades, much ink has been spilled in an attempt to refute Fogel and Engerman’s thesis. Fogel, himself, refined his ideas in an additional book in 1988 that backed away from many of the lesser-substantiated claims made in Time on the Cross. Yet today most economic historians concede that the claim that slavery was a profitable business model has been amply verified. In 1995 Robert Whaples conducted a survey of the Economic History Association and found that nearly 100 percent of the membership’s economists and historians agreed with Fogel and Engerman’s profitability thesis. By a further high percentage, a majority of economists and historians agreed that slavery served as an efficient business model for farmers and planters. This is evidence of the sea change Stampp’s original ideas have brought about—indeed, Phillips has been utterly rebuffed. More than a means of social control, the odious system of slavery stood as a pathway to personal economic gain, making its voluntary abolition all the more unlikely. The Profitability of Slavery as an Economic System The notion that slavery was unprofitable and, indeed, detrimental to the economic well-being of the South finds its origins in many quarters. Antebellum observers commented on Dixie’s ‘‘backwardness’’ in comparison to the North. It lacked the kind of industrial and infrastructure development more common above the Mason-Dixon Line. Southerners themselves were tied to the land, isolated in rural communities with little exposure to the educational and spiritual inducements found in the urbanized regions of the country. Abolitionists ascribed this ‘‘backwardness’’ to the institution of slavery—arguing a direct connection, where none exists. Following in their vein, more recent historians, most


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notably Eugene Genovese (1974) in Roll, Jordan, Roll, have made a similar argument. Indeed, the South’s ‘‘backwardness,’’ if we are forced to call it that, was not so much a product of slavery as it was in building an entire economy around the system of cash-crop agriculture. In reality, the backwardness found in the antebellum South is conducive to agricultural-based economies the world over, both before and after the abolition of slavery. The South forced itself into the model of a colonial economy. Large plantations were closed systems, producing much of their own foodstuffs, clothing, and other goods that would normally be purchased as manufactures. The economic system of agriculture, then, as today, was heavily reliant on credit. Credit had to be extended to farmers and planters in the absence of liquid capital, only to be repaid, with interest, at harvest time. Good production years produced repayment and allowed the return of profit, while bad years might leave little profit or, worse, the inability to repay debt. This is a familiar tale common to farmers and planters in the modern world—a world devoid of slavery. In calling the antebellum South ‘‘backward,’’ historians indicate a view of that region as somehow separate and distinct from the total economy of the United States. It is evident that the South lacked the industrial development to persevere as an independent nation, as the Civil War aptly demonstrated. But to measure the antebellum South by the standards of its northern counterpart and ascribe to it the label of ‘‘backward’’ is analogous to the modern observer referring to the present-day Midwest as somehow more ‘‘backward’’ than corresponding regions of the United States. In truth, much of the Midwest lacks industrial development, large-scale urban populations, and major cultural and trading centers. As a region primarily based on an agricultural economy, the Midwest of today, like the South of old, is a colonial economy—incapable of economic subsistence without external capital and markets. Yet that system exists—and persists—devoid of slavery. The key difference, if we continue with this analogy, is that in the decades approaching the onset of the Civil War, the South actually maintained higher per capita income growth for all citizens, both slaveholding and nonslaveholding, than their northern counterparts. Eugene Genovese (1965), in The Political Economy of Slavery, has made the argument that the South’s rapid economic growth was the result of a boom in global demand for cotton beginning in 1820. Somehow, this observation is intended to counterbalance the notion of slavery as a path to wealth. Rather, slavery proved to be the most efficient method for southern planters to fulfill this increased demand. Fogel and colleagues themselves, in Without Consent or Contract, found in refining their ideas that the prewar cotton boom accounted for only about one-fifth of the South’s increase in per capita income. Indeed, the capitalized wealth and income from the slave market, itself, cannot be left



out of the equation. Southerners’ wealth and prosperity was not simply achieved on the backs of slave labor; the slaves themselves constituted much of that wealth. Authors Jeffrey Hummel (1996) in Emancipating Slaves, Enslaving Free Men and Thomas J. DiLorenzo (2002) in The Real Lincoln have revitalized the notion of slavery’s moribund nature by arguing that the slave system had to be propped up through the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act. Following a line of reasoning first offered by abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison (who advocated northern secession in order to achieve this end), DiLorenzo argues that the nullification of the Fugitive Slave Act would have collapsed the slave market through inflation and destroyed slavery as an economic system. DiLorenzo makes the claim—similar to Phillips—that because slavery was so fragile, the Civil War, which he interprets as an act of northern aggression, was utterly unnecessary and the fault of Abraham Lincoln’s near tyrannical leadership. Such a proposal conveniently ignores the case of Texas. As George R. Woolfolk (1956) in ‘‘Planter Capitalism and Slavery: The Labor Thesis’’ and Randolph B. Campbell (1989) in An Empire for Slavery have aptly demonstrated, slavery built tremendous economic prosperity for Texas within the span of only 40 years; this despite the fact that the system was technically illegal there from 1821 until Texas independence in 1836. Further, the effect of the Fugitive Slave Act on the economy of Texas was essentially negated. Texas slaves did not need to escape north of the Mason-Dixon Line to achieve their freedom. Slavery was illegal in Mexico, and the Mexican nation, under its multifarious guises throughout the early 19th century, remained hostile toward the South’s peculiar institution. Texan slaves needed only to make their way to the other side of the Rio Grande as a means of achieving freedom. With whole swaths of the population in the Texas hill country and portions of the state’s southwestern region openly hostile to the forces of slavery and disunion, such escapes occurred frequently. Yet slavery not only persisted in Texas, despite Garrison’s argument, it prospered. Census data show the increase in personal and real property values in Texas between 1850 and 1860, fueled by slavery, to be a shocking 592.44 percent, the third highest rate of growth in the nation. In this light, one sees not a slow fading of a dying system, but a wave of economic prosperity generated by slavery that would have surely flowed across the nation, perhaps eventually to the Pacific Ocean. Conclusion The notion that slavery was an unprofitable system for southerners and the southern economy lacks foundation. Indeed evidence indicates that slavery served as a pathway for tremendous personal wealth and an enhanced lifestyle on the part of slaveholders, while at the same time providing a rapidly increasing level or per capita income and property valuation throughout the South. The


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statement that the South was somehow ‘‘backward’’ as a result of slavery is dependent on one’s definition of ‘‘backwardness.’’ In terms of industrial development and urban growth, the antebellum South was not on par with the North, but in terms of personal wealth and property valuation, the South fared comparably well and thus lacked an economic incentive to change. The arguments over the economic potential of slavery should in no way be tied to the morality of that despicable institution. Historians and economists who argue for the profitability of slavery are not seeking to be apologists for the South’s peculiar institution. To the contrary, this argument supports the notion expressed by many abolitionists that slavery could not be stripped from the South easily. Those who argue the moribund nature of slavery fail to grasp that southerners—even those who were not slaveholders—were willing to fight and die in a war to preserve their way of life and the economic system on which it was built. This act of desperation did not emerge from a sense that slavery was dying, but rather from a feeling that the basis of southern prosperity was being torn away.

References and Further Reading Campbell, Randolph B. An Empire for Slavery: The Peculiar Institution in Texas, 1821–1865. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1989. Conrad, Alfred H., and John R. Meyer. ‘‘The Economics of Slavery in the Ante Bellum South.’’ Journal of Political Economy 66, 1 (1958): 95–130. Deyle, Steven. ‘‘The Irony of Liberty: Origins of the Domestic Slave Trade.’’ Journal of the Early Republic 12, 1 (Spring 1992): 37–62. DiLorenzo, Thomas J. The Real Lincoln: A New Look at Abraham Lincoln, His Agenda, and an Unnecessary War. Roseville, CA: Prima Publishing, 2002. Egerton, Douglas R. ‘‘Markets without a Market Revolution: Southern Planters and Capitalism.’’ Journal of the Early Republic 16, 2 (Special Issue on Capitalism in the Early Republic, Summer 1996): 207–21. Fogel, Robert William and Stanley L. Engerman. Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Negro Slavery. New York: Little, Brown, and Co., 1974. Fogel, Robert William, Ralph A. Galantine, and Richard L. Manning. Without Consent or Contract: The Rise and Fall of American Slavery, Evidence and Methods. New York: Norton, 1988. Foley, Neil. The White Scourge: Mexicans, Blacks, and Poor Whites in Texas Cotton Culture. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997. Freudenberger, Herman, and Jonathan B. Pritchett. ‘‘The Domestic United States Slave Trade: New Evidence.’’ Journal of Interdisciplinary History 21, 3 (Winter 1991): 447–77.



Genovese, Eugene D. The Political Economy of Slavery: Studies in the Economy and Society of the Slave South. New York: Pantheon, 1965. Genovese, Eugene D. Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made. New York: Pantheon, 1974. Govan, Thomas P. ‘‘Was Plantation Slavery Profitable?’’ Journal of Southern History 8, 4 (November 1942): 513–35. Hummel, Jeffrey Rogers. Emancipating Slaves, Enslaving Free Men: A History of the American Civil War. Peru, IL: Open Court, 1996. Olmstead, Frederick Law. A Journey in the Seaboard Slave States; With Remarks on Their Economy. New York: Dix and Edwards, 1856. Phillips, Ulrich Bonnell. American Negro Slavery: A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime. New York: Appleton, 1918. Scarborough, William K. ‘‘The Cotton Gin and Its Bittersweet Harvest.’’ Journal of American History 81, 3 (The Practice of American History: A Special Issue, December 1994): 1238–43. Secretary of the Interior. Statistics of the United States, (Including Mortality, Property, &c.,) in 1860: Compiled from the Original Returns and Being the Final Exhibit of the Eighth Census, Under the Direction of the Secretary of the Interior. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1866. Smith, Mark M. Debating Slavery: Economy and Society in the Antebellum American South. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Stampp, Kenneth M. The Peculiar Institution: Slavery in the Ante-Bellum South. New York: Knopf, 1956. Whaples, Robert. ‘‘Where Is There Consensus among American Economic Historians?’’ Journal of Economic History 55 (1995): 137–47. Woodman, Harold D. ‘‘The Profitability of Slavery: A Historical Perennial.’’ Journal of Southern History 29, 3 (August 1963): 303–25. Woolfolk, George R. ‘‘Planter Capitalism and Slavery: The Labor Thesis.’’ Journal of Negro History 41, 2 (April 1956): 103–16.


15 Lincoln maneuvered the South into firing the first shot at Fort Sumter. PRO Rolando Avila CON Lee Oberman

PRO The United States of America was founded with the principle of compromise as a chief cornerstone, but Abraham Lincoln refused to avert war through compromise. Although the right to secession was a highly controversial and debated issue, Lincoln refused to accept secession on any grounds. In fact, he threatened the use of force if he perceived any threat to the integrity of the Union. More patience and a policy of peace might have allowed cooler heads to prevail. The Union could possibly have been preserved without such a costly war. However, Lincoln’s unwillingness to honor the long-standing American political tradition of compromise and his war policy maneuvered the South into firing the first shot at Fort Sumter, which started the war. Compromise had been a part of American government from the beginning. In 1787 delegates to the Constitutional Convention debated over key issues related to representation, and their compromises shaped the framework of the federal government. Representatives from smaller states feared that they would be at a political disadvantage to larger states. So a compromise was reached that called for proportional representation in the House of Representatives based on population and equal representation of each state in the Senate. Also, representatives from the South protested that slaveholding put them at a disadvantage, since the North comprised many more eligible voters. Consequently, the ThreeFifths Compromise allowed, for the purpose of representation, five slaves to count the same as three free people. The delegate to the Constitutional Convention also wrestled with the tension of states’ rights verses federal rights. Some delegates feared that if the federal government were given too much power, states’ rights would be trampled on. Others feared that if states were given more power than the federal government, this would lead to the creation of separate nation–states instead of one united nation. In order to secure the necessary votes for ratification of the U.S. Constitution, their solution was to create a system in which power was ambiguously shared. Since then, advocates of federal and states’ rights were able to turn to 333 © 2011 ABC-Clio. All Rights Reserved.

334 | Lincoln and the first shots of the Civil War

the Constitution and find support for their respective views on the division of powers. Later, as sectional problems arose, political compromises continued to help smooth out differences. In 1820, for example, the U.S. Congress reached a compromise that allowed Missouri to be admitted to the Union as a slave state and Maine as a free state. But more important, the compromise served to balance political power in the Union, which as a result of the compromise now consisted of 12 free and 12 slave states. Another notable compromise in 1850 sought to please both the North and the South. It admitted California to the Union as a free state, abolished the slave trade in Washington, D.C., created the territories of New Mexico and Utah without restrictions on slavery, and strengthened the fugitive slave laws. In 1860 a protest wave occurred in the South following Lincoln’s election, and more states threatened to secede if Lincoln took office because many Southerners believed Lincoln would abolish slavery. Senator John Crittenden introduced the Crittenden Compromise in the U.S. Senate in an effort to address some of the unrest that was threatening to tear the nation apart. Similar to the Compromise of 1850, the Crittenden Compromise, which was a collection of six constitutional amendments, sought to limit slavery without abolishing it. Although it did not attempt to settle the slavery question for good, it did give hope of a temporary peace as all previous compromises had done. Many representatives from both North and South liked it and began seeking support for it. However, President-elect Lincoln kept silent. Some historians have contended that if Lincoln had supported the compromise, it would have gained the needed support and would have surely passed. However, without Lincoln’s support, the compromise failed and the spirit of compromise faded from Congress. Critics who have claimed that, at best, the compromise would have only postponed war have been somewhat shortsighted, for in all human history peace has been temporary and enjoyed only in installments. Also, those that have claimed that it was better to face the issues and go to war in 1861 than to have put it off have concluded this by looking at history as only a thing of the abstract past. Would these same judges of past virtue venture to say the same about breaking the peace today for political disagreements? Or would they much more likely be inclined to seek out solutions for peace, however temporary? Over the years, the estimates of the casualties of the American Civil War, not including the high civilian casualties, have varied, but the most accepted figures of the military death toll have ranged between 165,000 and 170,000. Furthermore, hundreds of thousands of soldiers were wounded. Many wounded soldiers were affected for the rest of their lives by the loss of limbs and other physical and mental injuries. Soldiers’ families were affected by the losses on the battlefields as well. Since in 1860 most Southerners did not want disunion and most Northerners did not want to press the slavery issue, the high cost of the failure to reach a compromise became ever more apparent and tragic.


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Abraham Lincoln on Slavery Although never a friend of slavery, Abraham Lincoln was certainly willing to tolerate its existence if it would have saved the Union. His ambivalence toward slavery itself can be seen in his speech regarding the repeal of the Missouri Compromise in 1854: Before proceeding, let me say I think I have no prejudice against the Southern people. They are just what we would be in their situation. If slavery did not now exist amongst them, they would not introduce it. If it did now exist amongst us, we should not instantly give it up. This I believe of the masses north and south. Doubtless there are individuals, on both sides, who would not hold slaves under any circumstances; and others who would gladly introduce slavery anew, if it were out of existence. We know that some southern men do free their slaves, go north, and become tip-top abolitionists; while some northern ones go south, and become most cruel slave-masters. When southern people tell us they are no more responsible for the origin of slavery, than we; I acknowledge the fact. When it is said that the institution exists; and that it is very difficult to get rid of it, in any satisfactory way, I can understand and appreciate the saying. I surely will not blame them for not doing what I should not know how to do myself. If all earthly power were given me, I should not know what to do, as to the existing institution. My first impulse would be to free all the slaves, and send them to Liberia—to their own native land. But a moment’s reflection would convince me, that whatever of high hope, (as I think there is) there may be in this, in the long run, its sudden execution is impossible. If they were all landed there in a day, they would all perish in the next ten days; and there are not surplus shipping and surplus money enough in the world to carry them there in many times ten days. What then? Free them all, and keep them among us as underlings? Is it quite certain that this betters their condition? I think I would not hold one in slavery, at any rate; yet the point is not clear enough for me to denounce people upon. What next? Free them, and make them politically and socially, our equals? My own feelings will not admit of this; and if mine would, we well know that those of the great mass of white people will not. Whether this feeling accords with justice and sound judgment, is not the sole question, if indeed, it is any part of it. A universal feeling, whether well or ill-founded, can not be safely disregarded. We can not, then, make them equals. It does seem to me that systems of gradual emancipation might be adopted; but for their tardiness in this, I will not undertake to judge our brethren of the south. When they remind us of their constitutional rights, I acknowledge them, not grudgingly, but fully, and fairly; and I would give them any legislation for the reclaiming of their fugitives, which should not, in its stringency, be more likely to carry a free man into slavery, than our ordinary criminal laws are to hang an innocent one. Source: Abraham Lincoln, Speech at Peoria, Illinois, October 16, 1854.



Those who have contended that going to war was good because it netted slaves their freedom have failed to consider that no one in 1861 knew what the future held in store. Furthermore, Lincoln’s reasons for rejecting secession and going to war had nothing to do with slavery. Lincoln’s reasons were economic. The North was dependent on the South for raw materials (such as cotton for textiles). Lincoln’s reasons were political. Lincoln believed that if any state were allowed to leave the Union, it would establish a precedent so dangerous that it would threaten the safety of the Union in the future. In Lincoln’s opinion, his main objective was to preserve the Union, and if keeping all the slaves bound accomplished this goal, he would do it. Some historians have gone so far as to claim that the Civil War was not necessary in order to bring about the end of American slavery. Their proof for this was that slavery was dying out all over the world. North American states had done away with slavery many years before the war, and slavery was on its way out in many other areas of the Union including Missouri, East Tennessee, and Western Virginia. It would have taken several more years for emancipation to occur without the war, but emancipation was on its way. It would eventually have happened with or without the war. Abraham Lincoln won the presidential election of 1860. However, the election constituted a breakdown of the fragile political party system. Although Lincoln (Northern Republican) won both the popular votes (1,866,452) and electoral votes (180), the South was greatly underrepresented. Stephen Douglas (Southern Democrat) won almost as many popular votes (1,376,957) as Lincoln, but fell astonishingly short on electoral votes (12). John C. Breckinridge (Southern Democrat) received fewer popular votes (849,781) than Douglas, but beat him with electoral votes (72). John Bell (Northern Constitutional Union) won fewer popular votes than any other candidate (588,879), but he also earned more electoral votes (39) than Douglas. The election showed that there was an obvious difference in what people wanted and what the political system votes reflected. To make matters worse, Lincoln did not receive a single popular vote in most of the states in the Deep South. In fact, he did not even appear on the ballots of some southern states. Although 10 of the 11 future Confederate states did not cast a single popular vote for Lincoln, he still became president. Many frustrated Southerners felt that Lincoln was not their president. They believed they had not elected him and he did not represent their interests and values. Although President Lincoln tried to assure the South that he had no intentions of abolishing slavery, they did not believe him. Consequently, the presidential election of 1860 led to the secession crisis. By February 1, 1861, South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas had seceded from the Union and formed the Confederate States of America. The threat of secession was nothing new in 1860. It rested on the constitutional doctrine of state sovereignty. According to this view, states entered the Union voluntarily by state conventions, and they could leave the Union in the same way.


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During the War of 1812, New Englanders suffering from economic sanctions were the first to threaten the federal government with secession unless they were given some relief. Also, in 1828, South Carolina planters protested the Tariff of 1828 by threatening to nullify, or choose not to obey, federal laws that hurt its interests. The threat of nullification led to a nine-day debate in Congress between Senator Robert Y. Hayne of South Carolina and Senator Daniel Webster of Massachusetts. Hayne insisted that the federal government had no right to hurt South Carolina, which was a sovereign state. Webster, on the other hand, believed that if a state were allowed to declare an act of the federal government null and void within state limits, this, in essence, would make the state completely autonomous rather than part of a larger and inseparable Union. President Andrew Jackson agreed with Webster and threatened to send troops to enforce federal law, but the nullification crisis was mostly subdued by a congressional compromise tariff in 1833. A variation of the right to secession stated that only Texas, which had been a sovereign nation before it was annexed into the United States, and the original 13 states that signed the Declaration of Independence in 1776 had the right to secede. On the other hand, none of the other states in the Union could claim this right, because the federal government had created them all from governmentowned lands. However, Lincoln denied that any state had the right to secede. During the secession crisis, Lincoln was unmovable. Inseparable Union was an obsession with him. In his first Inaugural Address, on March 4, 1861, he stated that he understood the Constitution to make the Union of the states perpetual. In his view, no government had ever created the means for its own disintegration. He stated that disunion would contradict the Constitution that he was bound to uphold. Consequently, even during the secession crisis, he stated that the Union must remain unbroken. Furthermore, he did not recognize the Confederate States of America (CSA), but, rather, he often referred to them as rebels or Union states that were temporarily in rebellion. As soon as Lincoln took office, he began to feel the great political pressures of his new job. On one side was the radical faction that wanted to teach the South a lesson through as much force as possible. They believed that the preservation of the Abraham Lincoln in 1864. (Library of Congress)



Union was the most important issue at hand. On the other extreme was the peace faction that wanted no destruction of the South at all. In fact, many peace proponents felt it was preferable to allow the South to secede peacefully rather than have war. Although more of a moderate himself, Lincoln tended to side with the radical faction. He did not want to give up any federal fort. As far back as December 22, 1860, when he was still president-elect, he expressed this strongly held view in a letter to Major David Hunter. Lincoln wrote that, in his view, all federal forts should be held, and if they fell they should be retaken. A couple of days later Lincoln heard unconfirmed rumors (rumors that he later found out to be false) that President James Buchanan was considering ordering federal forts in South Carolina to surrender. Lincoln sprang into action and wrote to Senator Lyman Trumbull, instructing him to announce publicly that, if the rumors were true, Lincoln would retake the forts as soon as he was sworn in. Lincoln never strayed from his conviction to hold federal forts. And once he was in office, he did not want to let Fort Sumter go under any circumstances, because he feared that the loss of the fort would hurt the authority and prestige of his new administration and party. A letter from Major Robert Anderson, the commander of Fort Sumter, informed Lincoln that, unless supplies were sent soon, he would be forced to abandon the fort. Therefore, there was great urgency for Lincoln to devise a plan, and he began to consider his options. If he acted aggressively, as many men in his party wanted, he ran the risk of losing more states to the Confederate cause. On the other hand, if he failed to act, he would alienate the radical republicans, which made up the majority of his party. If he ordered the fort to be evacuated or if he let supplies run out so that Anderson would be forced to evacuate, then he ran the risk of appearing weak before the Confederacy and the world, which might improve the Confederacy’s chances for foreign aid or even recognition. He struggled with the complexities of the problem that he knew he alone would have to make a decision on. Lincoln sought advice from his cabinet and from army commander General Winfield Scott. All of the cabinet members, except Montgomery Blair, agreed that sending supplies to the fort would be a mistake, because it would undoubtedly lead to war. In Scott’s opinion, no military force could secure the fort, and he recommended evacuation. However, Blair continued to push for a military operation and recommended Captain Gustavus V. Fox to lead several small supply boats under the cover of darkness. Although his cabinet and Scott advised against it, Lincoln refused to budge from his conviction, which he had held even before he took office, that federal forts must be held or retaken if necessary. So Lincoln sent Fox to Charleston Harbor acting as his agent under the guise of a peace mission. Fox’s real goal, however, was to get familiar with the geography of the harbor and to begin to devise a plan for the best way to enter the harbor with his supply boats. Next, Lincoln sent Ward Hill Lamon, a longtime friend and personal bodyguard, to Charleston so that he could get a sense


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of the sentiment in the area. Governor Francis W. Pickens informed Lamon that any sign of a U.S. warship would draw Confederate fire. However, he would allow a steamer to enter the harbor peacefully to transport the men out of the fort. Lamon promised Pickens that he would soon return with an evacuation order from Lincoln. During this time, Secretary of State William H. Seward, Lincoln’s closest adviser, kept trying to convince Lincoln to evacuate Fort Sumter before it led to war. Seward suggested that Lincoln should hold on to another less contested federal fort that could, just as well, stand as a symbol of federal authority. But Lincoln would not have it. By this point, Fort Sumter had become such an important symbol that it was too late for him to call retreat. However, Seward felt so strongly in his case that he met with Confederate commissioners and informed them that an evacuation would most likely occur soon. Somehow Seward’s plan to evacuate the fort leaked out and many newspapers in New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Cincinnati printed the story. With time running out for Fort Sumter, letter writers and visitors to the White House continued to exert pressure on Lincoln to remain loyal to his party by holding and supplying the fort. However, Lincoln considered the horrifying consequences of a military defeat, which Scott had predicted. How could he take the risk of a doomed military operation? Lincoln also realized that any show of force by the North would alienate peace factions in both the Democrat and Republican parties. Furthermore, it would solidify support for the Confederate cause in the South. But, what if the South fired on the fort first? Would this not convince the border states to stay in the Union and solidify support for the Union cause in the North? Finally, Lincoln saw a clear path within his political constraints and he devised a plan to force the South to fire on the fort. Lincoln would turn the tables on the Confederates. Lincoln sent word to Pickens that Lamon had no authority to speak for him. In other words, there would be no evacuation. Also, Lincoln refused to meet with the Confederate commissioners, which Seward had met with, for fear that this meeting would be construed as recognition of the Confederacy. As a consequence, the Confederate agents sent word to Jefferson Davis that their peace mission had failed. Lincoln sent Fox to New York to assemble a fleet and begin preparations for the supply mission. On the same day, Lincoln, in spite of objections from his cabinet, wrote a notice to Pickens that he would be sending a supply mission that would not attack unless acted on. The notice restated what Lincoln had been ensuring the South all along: There would be no war unless the South brought it about. Robert S. Chew of the State Department arrived by train in Charleston to delivery Lincoln’s message on the same day that the supply expedition departed New York on a three-day voyage to the fort. This gave Confederates ample time to prepare for the arrival of the fleet, and they began immediate preparations.



Why did Lincoln notify the Confederates? Didn’t he know that they would take the notice as a direct challenge? From the point of view of the Confederates, secession was justified on moral, legal, and constitutional grounds, and seceded states had the right to take over public property found within its boarders. So, the moment South Carolina seceded from the Union on December 20, 1860, the forts in South Carolina belonged to the Confederacy and they began taking them. About one week after secession, the South Carolina militia seized Fort Pinckney and Fort Moultrie, and on January 2, 1861, the militia seized Fort Johnson. Fort Sumter was one of the few holdouts. During the waning days of the Buchanan administration, the steamer Star of the West had made an attempt to supply Fort Sumter, but Confederates were able to drive it away by firing cannons in its direction from the shore. To borrow a historian’s analogy, what if Great Britain had kept a fort in Boston or New York Harbor after the American Revolution? Would Americans stand for such an insult and threat to their safety? In the same way, the Confederate government could not allow the federal fort to stand and at the same time claim its independence from the Union. Lincoln knew what he was doing. He was a master politician. Lincoln made calculated moves like a chess master. Rather than rashly taken, his moves were premeditated and cunningly executed. He was able to put the South at a disadvantage. All the pieces were in place. It was now just a matter of time. Would the South let the supply ships accomplish their mission and face humiliation and a serious setback in their efforts to establish themselves as a sovereign nation? Lincoln had put their honor at stake, and they would be forced to fire on the fort. On April 9 the Confederates intercepted Anderson’s mail and discovered a letter to the War Department in which Anderson discussed Lincoln’s plan to supply the fort by force. With this recent discovery, Confederate action became even more urgent. Confederates made one last attempt to avoid bloodshed. They gave Anderson one last opportunity to surrender and evacuate the fort. But, being under orders to stay in the fort and wait for supplies, Anderson declined the offer and, instead, only evacuated women and children. Confederates believed that the Union was exhibiting aggression by refusing to yield the fort. There was no way around it. Confederates had to fire on the fort, and they had to fire on it before the fleet arrived. Otherwise they would have to contend with both the fort and the fleet at the same time. Jefferson Davis ordered General Pierre Beauregard, Confederate commander in Charleston, to capture Fort Sumter at once. On April 12 the Confederates opened fire on the fort. The continuous booming blasts from the cannons woke up Charleston residents who climbed on rooftops to get a better view of the attack. Although the bombardment of the fort lasted for 34 hours, U.S. warships stationed just outside of Charleston Harbor made no attempt to enter the harbor and render aid. In fact, not even the supply boats reached the fort. They were caught in a storm and were forced to land in other ports. Faced with a hopeless situation, Anderson lowered the U.S. flag and


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raised a white flag to surrender. This military failure had achieved Lincoln’s intended objective. By firing on the fort, Confederates had played right into his hands. Lincoln had maneuvered the South into firing the first shot, and, just as Lincoln had expected, news of the aggression unified the North against the rebels. After Fort Sumter fell, Lincoln knew that he had to prepare for war. On April 15, he made a call for 75,000 three-month volunteers from the states to protect Washington. Many governors telegraphed Lincoln that they would easily meet and even exceed their quotas. Many Northerners were appalled by the fact that Confederates had fired on a fort that was flying the U.S. flag. To add insult to injury, many Northerners were angered by the fact that the former federal fort was now flying a Confederate flag instead of a U.S. flag. More than ever before, Fort Sumter became a symbol of southern treachery and northern patriotic fervor. The symbolism of the fort endured throughout the war. In fact, a ceremony was held at Fort Sumter five days after the end of the war. Anderson returned to Fort Sumter with the battle-torn U.S. flag that he had lowered during the surrender, and he raised it up again as a sign of the preservation of the Union and a celebration of the end of the war. About one week before the Confederates fired on Fort Sumter, both the antiadministration and proadministration press accused Lincoln of forcing Southerners into a corner and leaving them no choice but to attack the fort. Editors of the Columbus, Ohio, Crisis, the New York Times, and the Baltimore Sun sounded the alarm. After their prophetic predictions came true, the Providence Daily Post immediately asked why the Civil War had begun and answered that Lincoln was to blame for the war, because he had put the safety of his party above the safety of the country. Davis delivered a speech shortly after the events at Fort Sumter and described Lincoln’s strategy during the crisis as a skillful ‘‘maneuver’’ to force the South to fire on the fort. The speech was later included in his The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government (1881). Davis explained that the fort belonged to the Confederacy, which had been very patient with the North in an effort to avoid war, but Lincoln destroyed these peace efforts by sending a fleet to Fort Sumter. According to Davis, he could not allow the fort to be supplied, because it meant maintaining a threat to Charleston. So, according to Davis, the Confederate attack on the fort was simply an act of self-defense. To paraphrase an analogy that Davis included in order to better clarify his point, to allow the supply of Fort Sumter would have been like not batting away the hand of an aggressor until after he had had a chance to fire into your chest. Alexander Hamilton Stephens, vice president of the CSA, also accused Lincoln of the same manipulation in his A Constitutional View of the Late War between the States (1868). In his view, Lincoln was clearly the aggressor and was to blame for starting the war, because he had made force necessary by refusing to yield forts located in the Confederacy. Under the circumstances, Stephens insisted, all the Confederacy could do was respond in self-defense.



John Nicolay and John Hay, Lincoln’s personal secretaries, praised Lincoln for essentially the same things that critics accused him of during the Fort Sumter crisis in their monumental 10 volume Abraham Lincoln: A History (1890). While many Southerners accused Lincoln of either being a bungler or a cunning villain, Nicolay and Hay proclaimed him a strategic genius. They were both very privileged insiders. As part of their secretarial duties, they were regularly in Lincoln’s presence and overheard and discussed matters before the president. They read through and processed his incoming mail. In fact, they were the first biographers to get access to Lincoln’s personal papers while writing their Lincoln biography. After Lincoln’s death, they wrote that he maneuvered the South to fire the first shot, because he wanted to show the world that, not only was the North right, but also that the South was wrong. In the coming years, John Hay enjoyed an extremely successful political career. Besides these high-profile individuals, many more historians agreed with and further elaborated on the maneuver thesis. Some accused Lincoln’s attempt to provision the fort while at the same time informing the governor of his intentions as silent aggression intended to induce an active aggression from the South. Some of the most notable studies were the following. Charles W. Ramsdell’s ‘‘Lincoln and Fort Sumter’’ in the Journal of Southern History (1937) was the first scholarly analysis of the event and has remained the starting point for researchers. According to Ramsdell, the Confederate government wanted peace and tried to avoid war by negotiating a peace settlement with Lincoln, but he refused to listen. John S. Tilley’s Lincoln Takes Command (1941) was one of the first full-length studies to elaborate on the foundation set by Ramsdell. The book was published during World War II at a time when President Franklin D. Roosevelt was being accused of maneuvering the first shot at Pearl Harbor in order to garner American support to enter the war. In the chapter titled ‘‘Lincoln Got What He Wanted,’’ Tilley accused Lincoln of aggressively pursuing war. David M. Potter’s Lincoln and His Party in the Secession Crisis (1942), also published during World War II, accused Lincoln of being too closed-minded to compromise during the crisis. According to Potter, Lincoln could have averted war if he had been willing to negotiate with the South. Some recent studies that have continued to support the maneuver thesis include Frank van der Linden’s Lincoln: The Road to War (1998) and William Marvel’s Mr. Lincoln Goes to War (2006). Although somewhat dated, Richard N. Current’s Lincoln and the First Shot (1963) has remained the standard and most thorough presentation of both sides of the argument. Even more impressive evidence for the maneuver thesis than the opinions of the contemporary press, contemporary Southerners, contemporary biographers, and later historians has existed since 1861. Lincoln himself admitted to starting the war by maneuvering the South to fire the first shot. On May 1, 1861, Lincoln wrote a letter to Captain Fox in which he explained that Fox’s failure to provision the fort was not worth fretting over. On the other hand,


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according to Lincoln, Fox should take consolation in the fact that the failed mission was justified by the result. Also, on July 3, 1861, Lincoln boasted to Orville Hickman Browning, an old friend and political ally who recorded the conversation in his diary that his plan succeeded just as he had planned and the South’s first shot gave the North a great advantage. After the firing on Fort Sumter, Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina seceded from the Union. This brought the total of Confederate states to 11. Had Lincoln been more open to compromise, the war could possibly have been avoided. Also, had Lincoln not pursued his war policy, the South would not have fired on the fort. These last four states might have remained in the Union, and the South would have had far fewer resources to wage war. As it was, lines were being drawn. For example, Lincoln offered command of the Union Army to Robert E. Lee, but Lee declined the honor and went home to fight for the Southern cause instead. The costly war, which no one could have known would last four long years and result in so much death and destruction, pitted brother against brother. Years ago, historian Charles W. Ramsdell wondered if Lincoln’s feelings of guilt for starting the war had not played a part in deepening his bouts of depression and encouraging his inexplicable charity toward his Southern foes. References and Further Reading Barbee, David Rankin. ‘‘Line of the Blood—Lincoln and the Coming of the War.’’ Tennessee Historical Quarterly. 16, 1 (1957): 3–54. Cothran, Helen, ed. Abraham Lincoln. San Diego, CA: Greenhaven, 2002. Coulter, Ellis Merton. The Confederate States of America, 1861–1865. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1950. Current, Richard N. Lincoln and the First Shot. Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1963. Davis, Jefferson. The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government. New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1881. Marvel, William. Mr. Lincoln Goes to War. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2006. Nicolay, John and John Hay. Abraham Lincoln: A History. New York: The Century Company, 1886–1890. Potter, David M. Lincoln and His Party in the Secession Crisis. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1942. Ramsdell, Charles W. ‘‘Lincoln and Fort Sumter.’’ Journal of Southern History 3, 3 (August 1937): 159–88. Rutledge, Archibald. ‘‘Abraham Lincoln and Fort Sumter.’’ South Atlantic Quarterly. (October 1935): 368–83. Scrugham, Mary. The Peaceable Americans of 1860–1861: A Study of Public Opinion. New York: Columbia University Press, 1921.



Stephens, Alexander Hamilton. A Constitutional View of the Late War between the States. Philadelphia: National Publishing Co., 1868. Swanberg, W. A. First Blood: The Story of Fort Sumter. New York: Scribner’s, 1957. Tilley, John Shipley. Lincoln Takes Command. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1941. Van der Linden, Frank. Lincoln: The Road to War. Golden, CO: Fulcrum, 1998.

CON What causes brothers, friends, relatives, sons, daughters, fathers, and mothers to rise in armed defiance against one another is a question that has plagued mankind since the conception of its civilization on the Fertile Crescent. In this war between neighbors, passion runs deep in the veins of its participants. Habitually the worst kind of war, civil war can call forth destruction of a society’s ideals, peoples, and infrastructure, often leading to cataclysmic change. No matter the grandeur or strength of a civilization, a civil war will bring a country to its knees. With this in mind, the American Civil War brought the great democratic experiment to the point of an abyss. This war outright exterminated at least 618,000 of its citizens, desolated entire geographic regions, and destroyed a culture that had its roots even before the conception of the nation. Historians have debated how this war started ever since the final shots were fired. Initially, following the line that victors write history, the South was automatically blamed for its conception. However, with the passage of time, southern historians have vocally fought for a revision of this idea, often pointing to the focal point of the war, the then president Abraham Lincoln. They strive to demonstrate his instigation of the war. Although now a debate of only academic conjecture, this section will progress through the causes of the war and demonstrate that Lincoln, far from a perfect president, cannot be blamed for starting arguably the worst war in American history. It will conduct this exercise of histography by examining Lincoln’s character and actions, the southern leaders and states, the economic, political, and social differences between the North and the South, and the human condition as a whole as it pertains to the causes of war. Although it is impossible to know the true countenance of another’s soul, it is plausible to re-create a picturesque idea by combining the impacts that nurtured their growth and the actions they took within the confines of the circumstances they endured. This technique of examination is no different, in that it scrutinizes the will behind one of America’s most influential presidents. Lincoln was born on a farm near Hodgenville, Kentucky, in 1809. Several years later his family moved to a 230-acre farm on Knob Creek and buried


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Thomas Lincoln, Abraham Lincoln’s brother, who died in infancy. By 1815, Lincoln was attending school with his sister Sarah, and a year later his family moved again, this time from Kentucky to Spencer County, Indiana. Soon afterward his mother died of milk sickness and his father remarried. From this it is possible to speculate that Lincoln, by age 10, had been raised on farms, witnessed two family deaths, and encountered continuous uprooting of his home life. As the sole male child of a farmer, he undoubtedly conducted household chores and watched his father tirelessly toil the land, which probably created a respect for hard work. The deaths in his immediate family brought him an early realization of mortality, and the constant uprooting and remarrying of his father created an awareness of inevitable change. All of these early childhood impacts would foreshadow motifs in his character as he grew into manhood. By 1823 Lincoln’s father joined an abolitionist Baptist church, and on August 2, 1826, his sister died in childbirth. Lincoln traveled to the South for the first time, helping his friend Allen Gentry with a cargo load to New Orleans. In 1831 he and his cousin and his stepbrother left home and built a flatboat, which Lincoln piloted to New Orleans. Also in this year, Lincoln participated for the first time in the electoral process by casting his first vote and began clerking in a store at New Salem. Now 22 years of age, the influences of the wrongs begot by slavery had been instilled in him by his father and undoubtedly by other church congregation members. Lincoln also showed his fascination with the South and his adventuresome spirit when he volunteered to pilot a flatboat to New Orleans. Additionally, even at this early age, he foreshadowed his desire to make a difference, tempered by the practicality of life, through his participation in voting while providing an income to provide for his basic needs. In 1832 he became a candidate for legislature by championing river navigation improvements, changes in usury laws, and universal education, but he was defeated and placed 8th in a field of 13. In the same year, he was elected captain twice and enlisted and reenlisted seeking action in the Black Hawk War. He then became part owner of the store where he clerked by buying into it for $750 and became postmaster at New Salem. By 1834 he became a deputy surveyor and ran and was elected as an Illinois House Representative. However, a year later his sweetheart Ann Rutledge died. By this time Lincoln had begun to show his leadership qualities. His election to the rank of captain represented what others saw in him as being a capable leader who also had a willingness to be led, as demonstrated through his enlistment under other captains. Additionally, his election to the Illinois House showed he was gaining experience in the electoral process, even amid the ever presence of death that marked his life so tragically. In 1836 Lincoln purchased from the government 47 acres of farm land and began his self-taught studies for practicing law. A year later he made his first attack on slavery by protesting an antiabolitionist resolution and became a law partner with John Stuart and Joshua Speed. In 1842 Lincoln married Mary Todd,



and a year later Lincoln’s first child was born, soon followed by a second in 1846. All within this time frame, Lincoln symbolically connected himself to the land by purchasing acreage, found his occupational home in practicing law, and began his family life. Also by 1846 he won the nomination and became a Whig congressmen and moved to Washington. Here he opposed the Mexican War, proposed an amendment abolishing slavery in Washington, was admitted to practice law before the Supreme Court, and was offered and declined governorship of Oregon. Four years later his second son died after 52 days of agony, but he also celebrated the birth of a third son. In 1851 his father died, and two years later his fourth son was born. In 1858 he gained national attention in debates with Douglas, and on November 6, 1860, he became the first republican to be elected president of the United States. Throughout this time, the idea of death and rebirth is again revisited to him as he gains national attention and eventually becomes the president under a newly organized republican nomination. Amid reports of an assassination plot, Lincoln arrives in Washington in secret and is inaugurated the 16th president on March 4, 1861. On April 15, in a proclamation he called forth 75,000 state militia men to be activated and four days later initiated a blockade of the Deep South. He also suspended habeas corpus in several regions of the United States and increased the size of the regular army and navy. Touched by the death of his friend Colonel Ellsworth, on the fateful day July 4 he sent a formal war message to Congress. By this time Lincoln no longer commanded the initiative, and forces outside his control had now commandeered his circumstances, leaving only a trail of reaction and action by him and his opponents. This stage was set even before he took office, as the division between the North and the South had already brought the confrontation to a point of no return. To dictate that Lincoln sought war or somehow pursued an agenda that he thought would lead to it is a highly ludicrous notion. This is because what primary resources exist all indicate that Lincoln grew up in a loving home and had a strong relationship with his stepmother and children. The numerous personal deaths he endured were probably the cause of his bouts of depression, which he suffered occasionally. Therefore, it is possible to conclude that he new firsthand the suffering that death brought and would, as he did during the Mexican War, oppose war as a means of politics. His opposition to slavery is well known, which dispels any chance of deception. His adventures on the flatboat incline many to believe that he had pleasant thoughts of the South. His study of the law and his numerous research and trial experiences made him an expert of the law. His apparent willingness to remain indifferent to church membership by allying himself to none dispels or at the very lest diminishes a notion of a dominant influence from religion in his politics. He was far from a radical in his belief that slavery was a moral wrong, as the majority of the population pursued the same course, as represented through his election. He never, in any statement or action, publicly or privately recorded,


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worked to abolish slavery where it existed prior to the start of the war. Even before his tenure in office, the Confederate States of America had been created, forcing him to react without compromise or negotiation. As a Unionist he had no choice but to use force to bring back the wayward son into the fold as signified by the use of violence by firing first on Fort Sumter and seizing all federal properties in the South. In essence, he only called up the banner of arms in an attempt to maintain the peace and order. As a governor sometimes calls up the state militia upon its own citizens to restore order, so too did Lincoln use this necessary force. His only recourse would have been to allow the dissolution of the Union, which we could only speculate on as to the results, but would as a whole have inevitably negatively impacted the idea and the state of the great democracy. In Lincoln’s words, which he quoted from the Bible, ‘‘a house divided cannot stand.’’ Also, as stated in his Inaugural Address: ‘‘In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The government will not assail you. . . . You have no oath registered in Heaven to destroy the government, while I shall have the most solemn one to preserve, protect and defend it.’’ Even after the final shots were fired, Lincoln worked to preserve the Union by opposing many of his political supporters in supporting a lenient reconciliation of the South to the Union. In essence, the research surrounding Lincoln’s life supports the theory that he was an ambitious and hardworking man who endured losing many loved ones, suffered from bouts of depression, had a tremulous relationship with his wife, was a gifted orator and law practitioner, had a genteel spirit and firm convictions rooted in law and his own revelations of right and wrong, was compelled to react in preservation of the federal government, democracy, and the Union amid repeated personal tragedies, and in all instances as president prior to the Civil War lacked the initiative to create war, and thus could not have personally induced its start through his personal actions. In contrast to this, southern leaders led their states onto a collision course that inevitably resulted in a divergent track that led away from the Union and the common good of the nation to a more personal venue of economic and social acceptance. Although slavery is commonly referred to as the cause of the Civil War by naive historians, more seasoned veterans of history state that is far from the case. However, most can agree that slavery was the lynch pin that held the antagonism between the North and the South, and without its existence, the war probably would not have occurred. The institution of slavery defined the South’s peculiar economic and social condition, and the defense of it was paramount in keeping the status quo. As often happened throughout time, those in power pursue courses of actions that perpetuate their own place in society. In the 1860s in America, this was no different, proven by the simple fact that in the South, slave owners were the men who held the reins of power in the spheres of politics, economics, and social status. How slavery became to dominate the South requires an explanation that is beyond the scope of this section; suffice to say, the South witnessed the rise of



small farmers to large plantations that needed an abundant and cheap labor force. With the termination of indentured servants, it became common practice to employ slaves to meet their needs. This combined with the economic rise of cotton on the world market, which required a labor-intensive growing and production process, and the South became dependent on the labor of slaves as a feasible economic stopgap to meet the global market demands. However, by 1860, because the importation of African slaves had long since been discontinued, the value of the slave had increased. This led to only approximately 46,000 Southerners owning 20 or more slaves, with fewer than 3,000 owning 100 or more, and only 12 owning 500 or more out of a total population of 5.5 million white Southerners. With this increasingly rare commodity, the prestige of owning slaves coincided with economic prosperity and social influence. In essence, becoming a large plantation owner became the southern American dream. As the future confederate president Jefferson Davis’s father’s story points out, starting as a small farmer, if one worked hard enough he could buy one or two slaves and increase his production. With that increased production he could buy more land and more slaves and eventually rise to prominence. It was no coincidence that the reins of power in the South were held by slave owners and thus their agendas became the agendas of the southern states. Under the guise of ‘‘states’ rights’’ they sought to pursue the maintenance of the agricultural status quo of the South. The most picturesque example of how the South pursued its agenda prior to the start of the Civil War can be found in one of its prominent leaders, John C. Calhoun. Calhoun could be called the South’s political founding father from the 1820s to 1850s. The architect of the South’s defense strategy, he developed a two-point defense system based on the protection of the minority, as in the political minority, of the southern states, based on the argument that the institution of slavery was as beneficial to the slave owners as it was to the slaves themselves. As an active political agent, Calhoun worked tirelessly in pursuing his agenda. For example, he wrote ‘‘South Carolina Exposition and Protest’’ in which he said that states had a constitutional right to nullify federal government actions they considered to be unconstitutional. He also championed that individual states had a legitimate right to leave the Union. Additionally, Calhoun defended slavery as a ‘‘greater good,’’ by promoting the concept that the world existed on a racial social order that was run by self-interested humans. Blacks were inherently inferior, and the institution of slavery brought them a degree of civilization they were unable to attain for themselves. Furthermore, he asserted that the South’s slavery system valued the black slave as an investment that was cared for, as compared to the North’s wage-based system that enslaved people with wages that were barely sufficient to provide for their most basic of needs. How southern leaders were able to incite the ultimate pinnacle of their separatist ideas over cooler political heads can best be explained by sympathizing with the average Southerner at the time. These usually hard-working people believed


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A 19th-century painting of a Southern cotton plantation near the Mississippi River. This romanticized depiction of plantation life shows the production of cotton through slave labor and the wealth of the Southern cotton aristocracy. (Library of Congress)

in the commonly held notion that blacks were inferior and the attainment of slaves was the path toward success, which was supported by biblical Christian beliefs. They complained because of the high tariffs imposed by the federal government, they traveled little and their knowledge of the outside world was that of sensational local papers and community gossip, and they felt besieged by what they believed was an increasingly overpowering northern-run federal government. The average Southerners were Jeffersonian agricultural followers who supported the separatist movement as a necessity for preserving their way of life. As a result they most often overwhelmingly supported the decisions by their legislators to dissolve the Union. The differences facing the North and the South prior to the advent of the Civil War were paramount in lighting its powder keg. These differences can be divided into economical, political, and social gulfs. The disparity of economics between the North and the South was that of night and day. The South remained, for all intents and purposes, a rural agricultural state whose most important product was cotton. In fact, by 1850 the South grew more than 80 percent of the world’s cotton, which represented 57 percent of the total U.S. exports in 1860. Additionally, crops such as tobacco, rice, and sugarcane were staples in many southern state economies. Although the South did have some industry and railroad, most notably in Richmond, Virginia, a center of slave trade and a railroad



hub, the South was far lacking in these areas as compared to the North. As a result, the South became an almost exclusive exporter of agricultural goods and importer of manufactured products. This naturally inclined the populous to favor low tariffs. In contrast, the North was fast becoming an urban population and the nation’s center for manufacturing, commerce, and financing. Products such as lumber, textiles, industrial machinery, and leather were most important to the northern economy. Additionally, Northerners favored high tariffs, as this protected their goods from foreign competition. The political differences between the North and the South polarized the nation into two competing branches that compromised and wrangled for dominance with each other. Initially starting with the conception of the nation, the North and the South from the very start began as two different societies. The North was formed out of the wilderness as an immigrant land for refugees seeking religious freedom; the mountainous terrain and many naturally protected harbors led to small tight-knit communities following the guidance of the ‘‘city on the hill’’ mentality, with large economic trading centers on the coastline. In contrast, the South originally started out with economic ventures whose many river systems allowed for ease of transportation and a more expansive population. As both were dominantly populated by English immigrants, they naturally formed political ties with each other, which axcumulated in the Union following the Revolutionary War. However, as the two grew apart, they fought each other for dominance, which resulted in historical conflicts and compromises such as the Missouri Compromise, Nullification Controversy, 1850 Compromise, Kansas-Nebraska Act, Fugitive Slave Law, and the Dred Scott decision. As a result of these events, the American federal political system fragmented into two camps: those who supported the northern view and those who supported the southern outlook. Eventually, it was the catalyst of American expansion that permanently divided the U.S. political landscape beyond repair. As the nation expanded westward following the Mexican War, determining what to do with the new states became the focal point for the new political battleground, with whomever winning dominance ensuring their view would become the course of the nation. It was not until the southern democrats foresaw final defeat in this venue, combined with the loss of the presidency to a sectional northern republican, that they envisioned the only way to preserve their political strength was to form their own self-government and thereby cement the differences in their relationships with the North. The social differences between the North and the South were the culmination of their economic and political differences. The South was for the most part an open patriotically landed aristocracy based on capitalism. The gentry were supposed to act under certain constraints, and hospitality was the norm. A full third of the population was racially inferior with the vast majority of the rest of the two-thirds comprising small substance farmers. Extended travel was infrequent and slow, as little transportation infrastructure existed. In essence the South was


CON | 351

The Election of 1860 By the time the presidential campaign of 1860 began, the country was already thoroughly divided over the question of slavery. The election itself both reflected those divisions and, in its outcome, exacerbated them to the point of secession for many southern states. For their second attempt at the presidency, the new Republican Party nominated Abraham Lincoln of Illinois. By 1860, the country’s divisions were reflected in the Democratic Party, with Northerners supporting Abraham Lincoln’s longtime nemesis Senator Stephen A. Douglas and Southerners supporting a proslavery candidate, Vice President John C. Breckinridge of Kentucky. Remnants of the Whig and Know-Nothing parties formed a third party, the Constitutional Union Party, and nominated John Bell of Tennessee. On northern ballots, only Lincoln’s and Douglas’s name appeared, and on southern ballots, only Breckinridge’s and Bell’s name appeared. As a result, Lincoln, though he garnered less than 40 percent of the popular vote, won the presidency, as the North had over two-thirds of the nation’s population. The divisions in the country and in the election itself proved too great for the Union to withstand, and the ‘ house divided against itself’’ could not stand.

reminiscent of Old World Europe. In contrast, the North was a bustling industrial center. Manufacturing and infrastructure development ran rampant. The citizenry was of an entrepreneurial spirit with progress fueled by ever increasing immigration. Additionally, as in the South, racism was also rampant, but it was directed toward the newly arriving immigrants instead of the blacks. From the altars of churches and within town squares, the abolition movement grew from a small radical group to mainstream thought. Although most believed in freedom of the slaves in the North, they did not necessarily believe in equality. As a result of these differences, conflict and strife brought about by passions over slavery, economics, and politics inevitably occurred, as the two juggernauts of Americana fought for supremacy while moving in opposite directions. Finally, it can be argued that wars in general are inevitable as a condition of human nature. The great human psychologist Sigmund Freud believed that humans have basic instincts of animal nature that dictate many of their actions. As a result of these basic instincts, wars are an inevitable result. This belief by Freud can be supported by the fact that archaeological evidence exists that points toward civilized violence starting to appear around 6500 BCE with the rise of urban centers. This is further supported by the logical conclusion that if people are prosperous, their less prosperous neighbors will envy and covet what the more prosperous ones have, which will eventually lead them to attempt to take either by force or coercion that wealth. This then forces a defense and increase of hostilities between the haves and have-nots, as resources are finite. Another aspect of the human condition that leads to war is group narcissism, or the personal identification of an individual with a group that he or she idealizes.



This then results in a sense of belonging and an overinflated sense of importance as compared to others not in that group. In an evolved definition, this is nationalism or patriotism. Additionally, rage and projection are other causes of violence and war. Rage is anger about negative events that happen to an individual outside of his or her control. Projection, then, is focusing that anger onto a group or an individual, regardless of who is at fault, with reasons often fabricated or exaggerated in support of the belief. Furthermore, pseudo-innocence is another mentality that follows the human condition. It is allowing an individual to be lured into a false sense of innocence. The individuals and groups almost always believe that they are on the right side of the conflict. Their perspective is limited to their own, and their enemy’s atrocities often become grossly exaggerated. Lastly, the mythical romantic lure of war as an adventure becomes a passage of manhood for many societies, luring recruits away from the hearth and home in pursuit of adventure, wealth, or defense of their home. Here the carnage that war brings is often purposely left out but rather portrayed as pompous parades that precede and follow victorious soldiers. How does all this relate to the topic at hand? Homo sapiens have been at war with one another since the dawn of their civilization. This history of violence has not escaped even to the present day. The American citizens prior to the Civil War and especially in the South recognized their state governments, not the federal government, as the government of their homes. This group narcissism prospered peacefully in state allegiances. The presence of rage and projection was also paramount as the majority of the populations were underprivileged small farmers who toiled constantly on their tiny farms. Their lives obviously were a constant struggle, and they then projected their woes onto the federal government in protest of the high tariffs they were forced to pay for manufactured goods. And with limited travel opportunity and experiences, fueled by sensational local papers and gossip, they then projected their plight as being the result of the Northerners, who ignored laws that required them to return their runaway slaves and who, in their eyes, supported violent abolitionist actions, such as John Brown’s Harper’s Ferry raid. Also, pseudo-innocence was found in the psyche of the common Southerners as they fought for what they perceived as independence from a tyrannical federal government. They believed slavery was a better institution than the factory-driven economy of the North and that their way of life was a more authentically American ideal. In essence, they believed they were besieged by the northern-run federal government, and as such, had no choice but to withdraw from the Union and risk war as a possibility. Additionally, using selected passages from the Bible, they thought God was on their side, and since they were fighting against an aggressor on their own soil, they were in the right to defend their homes. Lastly, the short and relatively easily won Mexican War created a sense of euphoria that war was an adventure and that the upcoming war was going to be short lived and an opportunity for personal glory.


CON | 353

The American Civil War did not start through any one man’s actions. There were many reasons why it started. In essence, it could be argued that it was inevitable given the plethora of differences between the North and South and their constant struggle for supremacy. Lincoln, as president prior to the Civil War, made no recorded statements on abolishing slavery where it already existed. Instead he believed, like many others at that time, that slavery was a dying institution and that it would eventually die on its own accord, as it gradually became less economically feasible. His only military action was in resupplying a few scattered posts that were still in federal hands. And in that he emphasized his only intent was to supply the necessities for life for the beleaguered garrisons. Even the former president James Buchanan agreed that the South had no right to secede from the Union, but because his term was nearly completed, he had little power to stop it. His attempt to call for 75,000 volunteers was a necessary risk, as many soldiers of the already pitifully small Union Army had converted to the Confederate cause. In essence, what is known about Lincoln indicates he would not have ended slavery in the South, probably would have worked to stop its spreading in the west, and condemned it morally, but he would have taken no action that he thought would lead to the dissolution of the Union. This is proven by the fact that he worked hard and risked alienating the border states in preservation of the Union by bringing the southern states back into the fold with the call of the volunteers. These volunteers were most likely Lincoln’s last attempt to maintain the Union; however, his bluff was called by the Confederate states, and war erupted. Lincoln was backed into a corner even before he took office; the Confederate States of America had already been created, with all negotation attempts failing miserably and with the southern states only offering monetary compensation for federal property taken. In essence, the American Civil War started even before Lincoln took office. Southern leaders made the deciding vote and were determined to follow that course to the bitter end, rather than live under the Union banner. Facing this, Lincoln, a man who was witnessing his country’s dissolution right before his eyes, could only react to his circumstances and not dictate them, as the nation was already torn apart by its own differences of economic, political, social, and psychological causes.

References and Further Reading Carwardine, Richard J. Lincoln: A Life of Purpose and Power. New York: Knopf, 2006. Donald, David. Lincoln. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1995. Fehrenbacher, Don E. Prelude to Greatness: Lincoln in the 1850s. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1962.



Jaffa, Harry V. Crisis of the House Divided: An Interpretation of the Issues in the Lincoln-Douglas Debates. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1959; reprinted 1982. Johannsen, Robert W. Stephen A. Douglas. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1973; reprinted 1997. LeShan, Lawrence L. The Psychology of War: Comprehending Its Mystique and Its Madness. Chicago: Noble Press, 1992. Lincoln, Abraham. Abraham Lincoln: Speeches and Writings, 1832–1858. Edited by Don E. Fehrenbacher. New York: Literary Classics of the United States, 1989. Lincoln, Abraham. The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln. 9 vols. Edited by Roy P. Basler. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1953. Neely, Mark E., Jr. The Abraham Lincoln Encyclopedia. New York: McGrawHill, 1982. Weigley, Russell. A Great Civil War: a Military and Political History, 1861– 1865. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000.


Index

abolitionism, 324 absolutism, 237 Acoma, 30 African slavery, 309–310, 315, 318, 321 Agar-Ellis, George, 266 Alagonakkara, King, 70 Alexander VI, Pope, 147, 177 Ali, Marquis, 255 Allen, George, 127 Alleyn, Edward, 194 Altar Rock, 4 American Civil War, 332, 334, 344, 353 Americas, 2 Amerindian populations, 17 Amherst, Sir Jeffrey, 107 Anasazi, 25–26, 33, 35 ancestral Puebloans, 25; construction dating, 40–41; Great Houses, 27–28; historical interpretations, 31–32; and kivas, 41–42; landscaping evidence, 42–43; monumental architecture, 39–40; pictographic and astronomical alignment evidence, 43–45; road networks, 32–33; and sight lines, 28–31, 34; solar and lunar cosmology of major buildings, 33–34; spiritual alignment theory, 37–39 ancient Cahokia, 183 ancient Maya, 58, 66–68 ancient Mesoamerica, 67

Anderson, Major Robert, 338 Anderson, Rasmus B., 13 Andre, Bernard, 125 Andrew, Arthur, 58 Andronicus, Titus, 202, 221 Angelus, Jacobus, 157 Anna, Queen, 283–284 Anstey, Roger, 310–311 anti-Stratfordians, 191, 192, 194, 198, 199, 200–206, 208–213, 216–219, 220, 222. See also Stratfordians Antoinette, Queen Marie, 251, 261, 268, 272–275, 277–279, 282–285 Appleman, William, 116 Arkansas River, 10 ‘‘Asian pot wreck,’’ 75 Atlantic Ocean, 1, 4 Augustine, Saint, 159 Augustus, Emperor, 133 AVM (Ave Maria), 3, 8 Bacon, Francis, 125, 191, 197, 204, 211, 236 Bacon, Roger, 99, 158, 162 Baffin Island, 1, 17 Bakeless, John, 203 Bao, Admiral Hong, 74 Barberini, Cardinal, 231 Bardarson, Ivar, 7, 176 Basler, Roy P., 354 Bastard, Edward, 132 355


356 | Index

Bean, Richard, 310, 312, 320 Beaufort, Margaret, 124 Becker County, 4 Bell, John, 336 Bellarmine, Cardinal Robert, 229, 231, 242, 245 ‘‘Big Ole,’’ 9 biological superiority thesis, 100 Bjarni. See Herj olfson, Bjarni Black Death, 19, 52, 109, 176, 182–183 Black Hawk War, 345 Blegen, Theodore C., 5 Blount, Edward, 211, 223 Boleyn, Anne, 122 Boleyn, Jane, 122 Bolivar, Simon, 150 Bonaparte, Napoleon, 260, 283 Bosworth, Battle of, 117, 128 Bouquet, Colonel Henry, 107 Bourchier, Thomas, 122 Brackenbury, Robert, 134 Brand, Donald D., 26 Breckinridge, John C., 336, 351 Breda, Olaus J., 3, 5 Bremond, Jean, 273 Brinkman, Ernst, 274 British African Trade, 310, 318 British archives, 263–264 British Museum, 260 British Royal Navy, 70 British Slavery, 313, 319 Brooke, Tucker, 212 Brugge, David, 35 Buchanan, James, 338, 353 Buikstra, Jane, 189 Burbage, Richard, 192–193, 197 Burke, Edmund, III, 116 Burke, Robert Belle, 162 Burns, Jackson, 10 Butler, Lady Eleanor, 122, 130 Cahokia: abandonment of, 186, 188; inhabitants of, 184–185

Calhoun, John C., 348 Calvin, William, 34 Campbell, Randolph B., 323, 330 Canterbury, 122, 202, 219 Cape Bojador, 155 Cape of Good Hope, 71, 73, 78, 93, 143 Cape Town, 102 Cape Verdes, 155 capitalism, 316–318 Caribbean Slavery, 319 Carlson, John, 37 Carnegie, Andrew, 290 Casor, John, 322 Cassiman, Jean-Jacques, 284 Catholicism, 227 Cato, Angelo, 131–132 Catz, Rebecca, 163 Cecil, Anne, 201 Celestial Empire, 97 Celestial Orbs, 239 Celtic populations, 169 Cesi, Prince, 230, 234 Chaco Canyon, 25, 32 Chaco Phenomenon, 25 Chaco World Database, 27 Chacra Mesa, 29 Chamberlin, Cynthia, 162 Chambers, Robert, 291, 300 Charles, Louis, 267, 268, 270, 272, 277–284; DNA evidence, 274, critiques, 274–275; possibilities for, 272–274; throne pretenders, 270–272 Charles, Rene, 273 Charles II, 135 Charles III, 251 Charles IV, 254–255, 261 Charles VIII, 132, 148 Charles X, 283 Chase, Arlen, 62 Chase, Diane, 67


Index | 357

Cheng Ho’s Voyages, 70–71 Chew, Robert S., 339 Chicago, 3 Chien-wen, Emperor, 70 Chinese explorations, 69; arguments against, 71–74; Cheng Ho’s Voyages, 70–71; Chinese presence in Americas, evidence of, 74–77; early claims, 69–70; histographical considerations, 89–90; learning from evidences, 82–85; Menzies narratives, 86–89; Menzies thesis, 85–86; recent evidences, 77; treasure fleets, 82 Chippewa River, 4 ‘‘Ch-Li,’’ 76 Christian, Carl, 12 Churchill, Winston, 297 Clara, Isabella, 252 Cnoyen, Jacob, 6 Colbert, Charles, 264 Coldsmith, Don, 10 Colin, Armand, 266 Colon, Cristobal, 142 Columbus, Christopher, 73, 78, 105, 141, 142, 143–144, 146, 149, 165, 171; assessment of, 160–162; and Earth circumference issue, 141, Columbus’s sources, 154–156, controversies, 152–154, degrees, 156–160 Colyngbourne, William, 128 Condell, Henry, 193, 197 Confederate States of America (CSA), 337 Conrad, Alfred H., 327 Cook, Captain James, 77 Copernicanism, 225, 230–231, 233–235, 236, 246 Copernicus, Nicholas, 228, 241–242, 244 Cordell, Linda, 32

Cormant Lake, 4 cosmography, 154, 156 Cox, John, 127, 139 Crisis, Harry V., 354 Crittenden, Senator John, 334 crossable Atlantic theory, 153–154 Dakota War, 4 Dalecarlian Runes, 8 Darwin, Charles, 287, 289, 292–298, 300, 306–307; circle of scientific colleagues, 302–303; family influences and college experiences, 301–302; and Spencer, Herbert, 287, debate, 290–292, evolution background, 298–301, evolutionary individuals, 294–296, historical paradox, 292–294; wide reading, 304–306 Darwin, Francis, 297, 307 Darwin’s Delay, 305 Davis, David B., 315 Davis, Hiram, 23 Davis, Jefferson, 339–340 Denis, Saint, 274, 276, 282 dependent territory, 76 Desault, Pierre-Joseph, 281 Dethick, Sir William, 218 Devil’s Island, 73 Dickens, Charles, 216, 287 Digges, Leonard, 193 Dighton, John, 134, 137 DiLorenzo, Thomas J., 330 DiPeso, Charles, 37 Disko Bay, 21 Dittert Ruin, 43 Donahue, Joey B., 47 Donatists, 243 Douglas, Stephen, 336 Douglas County, 2 Dowd, Douglas F., 317 Doyel, David, 39


358 | Index

Dugdale, William, 214 Dumas, Alexandre, 249, 252, 255, 259, 260 Dutens, Louis, 251 Ecuyer, Captain, 107 Edward II, 126, 200, 202 Edward IV, 118–120, 122, 126–133, 137 Edward V, 121, 127–128, 130–132, 136–138 Egypt, 71; pyramids, 185 Eliot, Samuel, 11, 151, 163 Elisabeth, Louis, 268 Elizabeth, Queen, 120–121, 201, 222 El Morro Valley, 30 Engerman, Stanley, 311, 327 English Lamarck, 301 Enriquez, Beatriz, 146 Enterprise of the Indies, 144, 148, 152, 162 Eriksson, Leif, 1–2, 11, 16, 167, 171, 177 Erik the Red saga, 15–16 Europe: and Eastern technologies, 93; biology factor, 100–102; technology factor, 94–100 European pathogens: and Cahokia and Mississippian mound builders decline, 165; Native American evidence, 178–181; North Sagas evidence, 169–178 evolutionary individuals, 294–296 evolution background, 298–301 Fajada Butte, 44 Faulmann, Karl, 14 Felipe, Dona, 146 Ferdinand, King, 143, 146 Ferguson, William, 36 Finocchiaro, Maurice, 225, 235 Fitzhugh, William W., 22–23 Flom, George Tobias, 4, 5 Foche, Jacques, 269

Fogel, Robert W., 327 Fogelblad, Sven, 6, 8 Fort Alexandria, 9 Fort Sumter firing, 333 Foscarini, Paolo Antonio, 242 Fouchs, Joseph, 270 Fouquet, Nicolas, 253–254 ‘‘1421 hypothesis.’’ See Menzies, Gavin Fowler, Andrew, 40 Fox, Captain, 342 Fran, Marius Jean, 266 Francois, Louis Joseph Xavier, 275 Franklin, Benjamin, 216 Frazer, Ingram, 202 Freud, Sigmund, 351 Friedel, David, 62–63, 67 Friedman, Elizabeth, 222–223 Frontier Thesis, 108 Fugitive Slave Act, 330 Galantine, Ralph A., 331 Galilei, Galileo, 225; guilty of heresy, evidence, 227–230, historical proofs, 230–235, support to, historical interpretation, 235–236 Gann, Thomas, 59 Garber, Marjorie, 216, 220 Gautrey, Peter J., 307 Genovese, Eugene, 329 Germanus, Nicolus, 177 Ghost Dance, 114 Gielgud, John, 191 Gill, Richardson, 55, 59 Gleason, Wilbur, 201 ‘‘GNOMEDAL,’’ 10 Godthab, 1 Gokstad vessel, 14 Govan, Thomas P., 325 Gran, John, 6 Gran, Walter, 6 Grant, Robert, 301, 306


Index | 359

Great Lakes, 4 Greenland, 1, 21 Greenlander saga, 15–16 Greenland Inuit, 21 Gregory IX, Pope, 243 Grey, Richard, 119, 122, 128 Griffen, Nigel, 162 Griswold, Sylvanus, 58 Groenlindiger, Peter, 177 Haas, Jonathan, 26 Hagen, S. N., 7 Hall, Robert A., Jr., 5 Hall, Susanna, 216 Hamilton, Alexander, 344 Hamlet, 205 Han Dynasty, 98 Hardrada, Harold, 95 Hart, Adam, 211 Haskins, Charles H., 5 Hastings, Battle of, 95 Haute, Sir Richard, 128 ‘‘hawking language,’’ 218 Hay, John, 342–343 Hayes, Alden, 28 Hayne, Senator Robert Y., 337 Heavener rock carvings, 15 Heavener Runestone, 10 Helluland, 1 Heminge, John, 193, 197 Henry III, 120 Henry IV, 126, 129 Henry VI, 118–120, 126, 128, 137, 194 Henry VII, 123–125, 129, 131, 134–137 Herbert, Dandra, 307 Herbert, Mary Sidney, 204 Herjolfson, Bjarni, 1, 2, 170 Hervagault, Jean-Marie, 270 Hewett, Edgar, 36 Hicks, Michael, 120

Hofstadter, Richard, 292 Holand, Hjalmar, 3, 4, 6 Holy Grail, 14 Hualpa, 74 Huckleberry Finn, 277 Hudson Bay, 167 Huerfano Butte, 30 Hummel, Jeffrey, 330 Hunter, Major David, 338 Hyde, Francis E., 312 Iberian colonization, 152 Iceland, 1 Icelandic sagas, 15–17 Incas, 34, 74, 98, 101, 183 India, 70–71, 73, 82, 88, 93–94, 97–98, 104 ‘‘Indian almanac,’’ 2 industrialization, 316–318 Ingstad, Anne, 8 Ingstad, Helge, 8, 9 Inikori, Joseph E., 310, 316 inquisitional heresy, 235 Iowa, 3 Isabella, Queen, 141, 143, 146, 148 Islam, 83, 88, 104, 237–238, 243 Islamic world, 98 Italy, 182, 199, 201, 219, 226, 233, 238–239, 250–251, 253, 255 Jackson, Andrew, 337 Jacobi, Derek, 191 Jaggard, Isaac, 211, 223 James, Brenda, 195 Japan, 66, 96, 108, 142, 144–145, 153, 159 Jaynes, Alice, 276 Jeanne, Marie, 279 Jefferson, Thomas, 322 Jianwen, Emperor, 83 Joco, King, 147–148


360 | Index

John Paul II, Pope, 235 Jones, Alexander, 163 Jonson, Ben, 192, 197, 217–218, 220 Joseph, Louis, 277, 284 Judd, Neil Morton, 6, 36 Kablunet, 178 Kansas-Nebraska Act, 350 Kantner, John, 32 Karaka, 74 Karaknath, 74 Karlsefni, Thorfinn, 16, 172 Kayenta, 30 Keeley, Lawrence, 62 Kehoe, Alice Beck, 8 Kelley, Charles, 46 Kelley, Ellen Abbott, 37, 46 Kelly, James E., 162 Kempe, William, 192 Kensington, 19–21 Kensington Runestone, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8 Kepler, Johannes, 239 Kereluk, Dylan, 9 Kin Bineola, 29 Kin Klizhin, 30 Kin Ya’a, 28–30 kivas, 26, 32, 33, 38, 39, 40, 41; and Ancestral Puebloans, 41–42, 43, 45 Klethla Valley, 30 Knights Templar, 14 Knutson, Paul, 7 Kohn, David, 307 Krueger, Harold W., 189 Kublai Khan, Emperor, 96

Lankester, Ray, 292 L’Anse aux Meadows, 8, 9, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 74, 166, 171, 173, 182 Laurent, Jean Jacques Christopher, 269, 281 LeBlanc, Steve, 30, 31 Lee, Robert E., 343 Leigh, Irvin, 210 Lekson, Stephen, 27, 39, 42, 45, 47 Levathes, Louise, 79 libelles, 278 Lincoln, Abraham, 330–331, 333, 335–337, 343, 345, 351, 354; and Fort Sumter firing, 333; on slavery, 335 Lister, Robert, 37 Ljungstr€ om, Claes J., 6 Logan, George M., 127 Looney, Thomas, 201 Lost Dauphin, 276 Louise, Kate, 223 Louis XI, 132, 138 Louis XIII, 255, 282 Louis XIV, 249, 252–257, 259–261, 263–264 Louis XV, 251, 261 Louis XVI, 261, 267–268, 273–275, 277–279, 282–283, 285 Louis XVII, 267–269, 271–277, 279, 281–285 Louis XVIII, 270, 283, 285 Luckmann, Thomas, 115 Luther, Martin, 133, 227, 229, 238 Lyell, Charles, 294, 301, 303

Labrador, 1 Lamarck, Jean-Baptiste, 299 Lamarckian theory of biological evolution, 291 ‘‘Land of Flat Stone,’’ 1 ‘‘Land of Woods,’’ 1 Landsverk, Ole G., 7 Lang, Andrew, 265

Madoc, Welsh Prince, 10 Magnus II, King, 7 Malthus, Thomas, 295 Man in the Iron Mask: and Count Ercole Antonio Mattioli, 249–257 Mann, Charles, 181 Manning, Richard L., 331 Marcus, Joyce, 62


Index | 361

Markland, 1 Marlovian theory, 204 Marlowe, Christopher, 192, 195, 201, 210–211 Marriner, Sheila, 312, 319 Marsden, William, 163 Martin, Simon, 62 Marx, Karl, 93, 97 Massey, Keith, 8 Matthioli, Ercole Antonio, 251–257, 261; and Man in the Iron Mask, 249–257 Matus, Irvin, 206, 209 Maya, 50 Mayan kingdoms, 49; archaeology, 63–64; civilization collapses, 51; civilization rise, 50; controversy, 61; declination, 50–51, disease as reason, 51–53, environmental reasons, 53–56, political reasons, 56–57; epigraphy, 62–63 Mazarin, Cardinal, 251, 259 McCrea, Scott, 215 McElroy, Linda S., 78 McKillop, Heather, 59 McNeill, William, 100, 106 Medok, 10 Menzies, Gavin, 72–73, 77, 79, 85, 90; 1421: The Year China Discovered America, 70 ‘‘Menzies-bashers,’’ 80 Menzies narratives, 86–89 Menzies thesis, 85–86 Mercator, Gerardus, 6 Meres, Francis, 196 Merton, Ellis, 343 Mesa, Anderson, 30 Mesoamerican, 37 Meves, Augustus, 283 Mexican War, 346, 350, 352 Mexico, 27, 32, 36, 60, 74–76, 79, 101, 174, 330

Meyer, John R., 327, 331 Michael, Prince, 257 Michell, John, 191, 215 Midwest Archaeological Conference, 7 Mifflin, Houghton, 68, 343 military superiority thesis, 94, 100 Ming Dynasty, 70, 81–82, 84 Mississippian civilization, 167, 173–175, 179, 181–182 Mississippi River, 10 Monge, Alf, 10 Mongolia, 95 More, Thomas, 122, 124–125, 133 Morris, William, 287 Morton, John, 122, 125 Moulton, Dorothy, 285 Mountjoy, Christopher, 219 Mowbray, Anne, 136 Murray, John, 276, 297 Murray, Paul, 127 Napoleon, Louis, 283 Natchez, 179 Native Americans, 4, 8, 10, 17, 106, 109, 114, 145, 166–167, 171–176, 178–179, 182, 271–272, 277 natural selection, 289 Naundorff, Karl Wilhelm, 273, 277, 282 Navajos, 36 Neville, Sir Henry, 204 Newfoundland, 1, 8 New River area, 30 Newton, John, 313 Niantic, 15 Nicolay, John, 342 Nielsen, Richard, 5, 8 Nihuatori, 74 Noble, David, 183 Noble, John, 163 noble savage, 110 Norman, Charles, 200


362 | Index

Norse, 1 Norsemen, 1 North America, 1–2, 4, 7–17, 19, 74, 77, 102, 144, 165, 167–171, 174–177, 179–182 North America, exploration by the Norse, 1; archaeological record, 15; documentary evidence in Greenland, 21; Kensington, Minnesota, 19–21; rune stones in Mainland North America, 18–19; Vinland Voyages according to the Icelandic sagas, 15–17 Northcroft, George, 134 Norway, 2, 3 Oddsson, Gisli, 7 Oddsson, Enridi, 21 Ogham, Celtic, 14 Ohman, Olof, 2, 4, 8 Ohmans, the, 3, 6 Old Icelandic language, 16 Olum, Wallam, 179 Pacey, Arnold, 100 Padula, Alfred, 116 Palace, Cliff, 43 Paul, Pope, 233 Paul III, Pope, 244 Paul V, Pope, 231 Peckham, Morse, 293 Perry, Admiral, 108 Peru, 76 Philippe, Louis, 273, 283 Phillips, Carla Rahn, 163 Pinzon, Martin Alonso, 148 Pinzon, Vincente Ya~ nez, 148 Pius II, Pope, 160 Pohl, Frederick Julius, 10, 152 Poiret, Louis, 273 Portuguese, 69, 73–74, 77, 88, 97, 100, 112, 141–143, 146–148

Postma, Johannes, 313 Poteau River, 10 Poteau Runestone, 10 Potter, Jeremy, 125, 129 Pritchett, Jonathan B., 331 Probsthain, Arthur, 78 Ptolemy, 157, 159–161, 163, 228, 246 Pueblo Alto, 29 Pueblo Pintado, 29 Purple Islands, 155 Qianlong, Emperor, 97 Rafn, Carl Christian, 6, 16 Raleigh, Sir Walter, 122, 211 Ramsdell, Charles W., 342 Rankin, David, 343 Red Horn, 8 Renaissance, 80, 90, 183, 201, 238, 242 Rhode Island, 15 Richard II, 126 Richard III, 117, 121–123, 125, 127–139, 200, 213; alternative explanation, 135–136; defense, 123–126; fate of the princes, 131–132; forensic corroboration, 134–135; historical background, 118–120, 130–131; political background, 130–131; prosecution’s case, 120–123; Thomas More’s reports, 133–134 Richardson, David, 310, 318 Richelieu, Cardinal, 262 Riddle, James, 32 Ridgway, William, 283 Rio Grande areas, 32 Robert, John, 116 Robinson, Solon, 314 Rogers, Jeffrey, 332 Rohn, Arthur, 43


Index | 363

Roll, Eugene D., 332 Romain, William, 180 Roney, John, 43 Ross, Charles, 127 Rotherham, Thomas, 122 Rouge, Baton, 331 Roux, Pierre, 251 Rubinstein, William, 195 r unakefli, 20 Runestone Museum, 8, 9 rune stones, 19 Russel, Robert, 317 Russell, Bertrand, 298 Russell, John, 132 Ryden, David, 315 Rylance, Mark, 209 Saint Laurence River, 4, 16 Saint-Lazare, 263 Saint-Margaruite, 261–262 Saint-Mars, 250, 253–254, 258–259, 261–262, 264–265 Sams, Eric, 217 Sandnes, 1 Satanazes, 73 Scandinavia, 12, 13, 18, 19, 20; Americans, 12, 19; heritage, 2; languages, 3, 5; markets, 154; peoples, 169; population, 9; settlers, 6; ships, 176; University, 3; voyages and settlements, 165 Schele, Linda, 62 Schliemann, Heinrich, 166 Sebastian, Lynne, 41 Sedgemoor, Battle of, 254 Segizzi, Michelangelo, 232 Seine, Marie, 269 Senne, Marie, 269 ‘‘Shake-scene,’’ 196 Shakespeare, William: anti-Stratfordian fallacies, 222–223; autobiography, 198–199; biography,

192–196; collaboration and rewriting, 221–222; education, 216; familiarity with aristocratic ways, 217–219; foreign languages and distant settings, 219; knowledge of law, 216–217; life, principle factors known about, 212–213; literary genius, 220–221; manuscripts, letters, and diaries nonexistence, 219–220; personal experience, 199; poet and playwright, 196–197; style, 200 Shakespeare’s plays, 191; authorship debates, 204–208, 213–216; ciphers and cryptic clues, 197–198; cover-up, 208–209; Hamlet, 205; principal alternative authorship candidates, 204, de Vere, Edward (Earl of Oxford), 200–201, Marlowe, Christopher, 201–204; Sonnets, 205–208 Shawnee Runestone, 10 Sidney, Mary, 204 Sidney, Sir Philip, 201 Sigvatsson, Erlingur, 21 Silverstein, Jay, 67 Simnel, Lambert, 124, 137 Simon, Antoine, 269, 277, 279 Simpson, James, 36 Sinclair, Rolf M., 47 single catastrophe theory, 51 skraeling, 17 slavery, 309; capitalism and industrialization, 316–318; Lincoln on, 335; by numbers, 323–325; plantation economy, 314–316; profitability, as business, 325–328, as economic system, 328–330; slave trade, 311–314; and United States, 321–323 Smith, Adam, 104, 309 Smithsonian Institute, 1, 6


364 | Index

Snorri, 9 social Darwinism, 292 Solow, Barbara L., 317 Solstice Project, 33, 38 Sonnets, 205–208 Sonora areas, 32 Spencer, Herbert, 287–290, 292–294, 296–298, 300, 302, 304, 306; and Darwin, Charles, 287, debate, 290–292, evolution background, 298–301, evolutionary individuals, 294–296, historical paradox, 292–294 Spencer, Thomas, 295 Spirit Pond, 19 Stampp, Kenneth M., 320 Stanley, William, 204 ‘‘star wars,’’ 62–65 Stein, John, 40 Stephens, Alexander Hamilton, 341 Stillington, Robert, 122 Stratfordians, 191, 194–197, 199, 206, 209, 210. See also antiStratfordians Stuart, David, 63 Stuart, John, 345 Sullivan, Blair, 162 Sweden, 2–3, 6–8, 18, 96, 169, 324 Switzerland, 264 Sydnor, Charles S., 314 Tanner, Lawrence, 134–135 Tauchnitz, Bernhard, 266 Tegg, Thomas, 266 Temple Prison, 268–269, 276, 279–280, 282–284 Teweksbury, Battle of, 119, 126 Tey, Josephine, 124 Thalbitzer, William, 7 Theresa, Marie, 268, 272–274 Therese, Louis Joseph Marie, 268 Thomas, Hugh, 309, 312

Thordarson, Bjarni, 21 Thorndike, Lynn, 162 Tikal, 50, 53–55, 57–58, 61–66 Topin, Marius, 257 Tori, 74 Toscanelli, Pozzo, 160 tower kivas, 27, 29, 31, 32, 41 transmutation, 303 treasure ships, 97 Trillin, Calvin, 19 troth plight, 130, 131 Trumbull, Senator Lyman, 338 Tsin Kletzin, 28, 29 Tudor, Henry, 117, 124–125, 136 Turkey Varangian Guard, 1 Twain, Mark, 133, 216 Tyrell, Sir James, 125, 137 Una Vida, 28 Urban, Pope, 234 Varner, Jeannette, 183 Vaughan, Sir Thomas, 121, 128 Vavasour, Anne, 201 Verde Valley, 30 Vickers, Brian, 221 Vietnam, 70, 83 Vikings, 1, 2, 4, 14 Vinland, 1, 2 Vinland map, 1 Vinland sagas, 16 Vinland voyages: according to the Icelandic sagas, 15–17 Visconti, Raffaelo, 234 Wahlgren, Erik, 9, 10 Wakefield, Battle of, 126 Wallace, Alfred Russell, 305 Walsingham, Sir Francis, 202 Walsingham, Thomas, 202 Waring, Robert, 301 Warren, Thomas, 223


Index | 365

Washington, John Macrea, 25 Webster, David, 59, 63 Webster, Senator Daniel, 337 Whaples, Robert, 328 Whately, Anne, 211 ‘‘white mist,’’ 76 William, Robert, 319, 331 Williams, Eleazar, 271 Williams, Eric, 309, 311, 319 Williamson, Ray, 37, 44 Wilmot, James, 191 Wilson, Jack, 114 Winchell, N. H., 5, 7 Winchell, Newton Horace, 4 Windes, Thomas, 28, 35, 37 Wisconsin missionary, 277 Wolf, Kirsten, 22–23 Wolsey, Cardinal, 211 Wolter, Scott F., 7, 14 Wood, Charles, 128

Woodman, Harold D., 318 Woodville, Anthony, 128 Wright, Ronald, 62 Wright, William, 134–135, 139 Wriothesley, Henry, 206 Wydeville, Anthony, 119 Wydeville, Elizabeth, 119, 124 Xuan Zong, Emperor, 72 Yajaw Te’ K’inich II, 63 Yuan Dynasty, 76 Yucatan, 55–56, 59–60, 64–65 Yung-lo, Emperor, 71, 77 Zheng, 69, 77, 79, 81–84, 86–87 Zhou Man, 69, 77, 87 Zhou Wen, 87 Zoncho, 73 Zuni, 30


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