Monthly Archives: May 2024

Jesuit Missionaries.

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            The Protestant Reformation broke the hold of the Catholic Church on much of Europe.  Eventually, the Catholic Church counter-attacked.  One form appeared in the founding of a new religious order, the Society of Jesus, commonly called the Jesuits.  The Jesuits were formally founded in 1540 (lot of “f”s there).  One axis of their work lay in education within Europe. 

Another axis lay in foreign missionary work among pagans.  Francis Xavier left Lisbon for India in 1541, moved on to Indonesia in 1546, then to Japan in 1549.  Other Jesuits established missions in the Congo (1547), Morocco (1548), Brazil (1549), and Ethiopia (1557).  Soon they came to the Americas, reaching northern Florida in 1566, in Virginia in 1570, then establishing missions in Paraguay (see: “The Mission”) and French Canada (see: “Black Robe”).  In the later 16th Century the Jesuits also opened missions in China, the Philippines, and Indochina (the future Vietnam). 

Kipling has a line of verse about adventurers “preaching ahead of the army, skirmishing ahead of the church.”  That was how it was for the Jesuits: they were often out in front of all supporting authority.  They paid the price for leaning forward in a large number of martyrs for the faith.  Indians killed the first Jesuit missionary in Florida, eight missionaries in Virginia, and eight in Canada and up-state New York. 

Take the case of Father Isaac Jogues (1607-1646).  He entered the order in 1624.  A dozen years later his superiors in Canada sent him to a mission among the Hurons at Georgian Bay.  In 1641 he was sent to start a new mission among the Ojibway near Sault (pronounced “soo”) Ste. Marie in Michigan.  The next year he and a fellow Jesuit were travelling with a Huron band back to Quebec.  Near Montreal a group of Mohawks fell upon them.  Taken as prisoners to the Mohawk town near today’s Auriesville, NY (go north on the Hudson River until you get to the Mohawk River, then bang a left), Jogues’s companion and the Hurons were all killed.  The Mohawks made Jogues run the gauntlet three times, then tortured him.  He survived these terrible experiences to spend more than a year as a slave.  Eventually he managed to escape on a Dutch fur trading ship that took him downriver to New Amsterdam (New York).  He returned to France on Christmas Day, 1644.  Everyone had figured that he was dead, so it appeared miraculous that he (well, as much of him as was left after the Mohawks were done with him) had risen from the grave.  He got a hero’s welcome.  He didn’t want a hero’s welcome.  He wanted to go back to New France to continue his missionary work.  He returned to Montreal in 1645.  Here the government sent him to the Mohawk town at Auriesville, NY (yes, that one) as an ambassador.  Still more incredible, after his safe return from this task, he obtained permission to go back to live at Auriesville to conduct his mission.  Three strikes and you’re out: he was accused of being a witch by the Mohawks and killed in October 1646. 

Twenty years later the French felt that they had taken enough guff off of the Mohawks.  The governor of New France, a hard old soldier named the Marquis de Tracy, led an expedition that burned all their villages and the crops in the field, and killed anybody they could get their hands on.  He told that survivors that they should become good Christians like him.  Otherwise, “I’ll be back.”  This seems to have calmed things down for a while. 

            There is a big shrine to the Jesuit martyrs in North America located at Auriesville, NY.  It has a nice view of the Mohawk River.  Probably the last thing Fr. Jogues saw. 

Praying Towns.

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            “Exclusive” Monotheism[1] holds that there is one right way to Heaven.  So, both Catholic and Protestant Christians sought converts from other faiths and from those regarded as “pagans.”  When applied to the New World, this meant that “missionaries” sought to convert Native Americans to some version of Christianity. 

            English Protestant missionary activity seems to have been much less developed than French Catholic missionary activity.  Take the example of New England.  An eminent Puritan preacher named Thomas Hooker (1586-1647) ran a school and John Eliot (1604-1690) assisted him.  The Church of England sought to repress Puritanism and, in 1629, fired Hooker from his preaching job and closed his school.  Hooker bolted for Holland one step ahead of the law.  Then he took ship for Massachusetts.  John Eliot soon followed.  Hooker first attained an eminent position, then fell out with the strict Puritans running Massachusetts.  He soon left for Connecticut.  Eliot, in contrast, thrived.  After a while, Eliot took an interest in preaching to the local Native Americans.  The big barrier here was language.  Eliot set out to learn Algonquin language.  Brave effort!  He was forty and spent most of his time speaking English to other colonists.  As you might expect, progress came slowly. 

            Still in 1646, he preached his first sermon to some puzzled locals.  That same year, the Massachusetts General Court (the legislature) passed an “Act for the Propagation of the Gospel amongst the Indians.”  In 1649 the English Parliament created “A Corporation for the Promoting and Propagating the Gospel of Jesus Christ in New England” which raised money to support the cause.  Eliot began setting up schools among the Indians. 

            The effort to convert Indians to Christianity coincided with a rapid expansion of the English population in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut.  A “Great Migration” of Puritans took place between the 1640s and the 1660s.  The Indians found themselves increasingly outnumbered and surrounded by English settlers.  A minority of Indians began converting to Christianity.  The converts seem to have hoped that conversion would strengthen their claims to their land in the eyes of the English.  Moreover, war between Indian tribes was endemic, so the converts may have hoped that conversion would make the English join in their defense against enemies.  Finally, diseases also ravaged the Indians disproportionately.  A smallpox epidemic in 1616-1619 killed 90 percent of the Indians of eastern Massachusetts; another in 1633 killed 80 percent of the Pequot tribe.  Perhaps conversion would help fend off the diseases sent by a jealous Christian God? 

Between 1651 and 1675, the General Court created fourteen so-called “praying towns.”  In these towns, Indian converts would not only become Christians, but also would abandon the “savage” life.  They would learn farming and crafts in place of hunting-and-gathering.  They would dress like English people.  They would assimilate into the English way of life.  By 1675 one fifth of New England’s Indians had converted to Christianity and lived in “Praying Towns.”  

That still left 80 percent of the local Indians in search of another solution.  In 1675, “King Philip’s War” began with a surprise attack.  Terrified, the English confined the “Praying Indians” to their towns, moved 500 of them to an island in Boston Harbor, and, in 1677, disbanded 10 of the original 14 towns and placed the rest under government supervision.  John Eliot tried to protest, but it had become dangerous to take the side of the Indians.  Eventually, disease, demoralization, and assimilation caused most of the Indian presence to slowly disappear. 

Was this a foretelling of 250 years of Indian-White relations? 

[1] My own term, so far as I know.

Asking for a Friend.

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Countries have foreign policies for their own advantage, not for the advantage of others. Domestic politics can weigh upon foreign policy. Both statements are true. What happens when domestic politics and foreign policy conflict? things can get messy.

Many Americans are–belatedly–appalled by the human cost of Israel’s attack on Hamas in Gaza. President Joe Biden has been seeking to curb Israel’s war effort. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been turning a deaf ear to Biden’s entreaties and advice and requests. It has been reported that Biden has grown “frustrated” with Netanyahu’s refusal to respond to his master’s voice. (“Angry” or “enraged” or “humiliated” might be better terms.) In particular, the Biden administration has been pushing for a cease-fire, the admission of large amounts of humanitarian aid, and the abandonment of an attack on Rafah. Now Biden has “paused” the delivery to Israel of 3,500 American bombs. These are “offensive” weapons that might be used to attack Hamas troops in an indiscriminate way that leads to awful news stories. At least for the moment, the flow of “defensive” weapons (like air defense weapons) will go on.

At the same time, Netanyahu heads a coalition government that holds a narrow majority in the Knesset. Fourteen Knesset-members have joined with Netanyahu’s party to create that narrow majority. They are all absolutely committed to continuing the fight, invading Rafah, and rejecting any cease-fire. If Netanyahu yields to Biden’s demands, then it is likely that his coalition will disintegrate. Netanyahu may be forced out of office. A more tractable government may come to power.

It’s hard to believe that Biden (or Secretary of State Blinken at least) does not know this. It leads to the question: Is Biden seeking to intervene in the politics of another democracy?

If countries have foreign policies for their own advantage and if a parliamentary majority in Israel thinks it essential to destroy Hamas root and branch, what might Israel do? The obvious answer is “go it alone.” American military aid to Israel is reported to account for 15 percent of its defense budget. It might be difficult over the short-term for Israel to make up this gap.

One possibility–probably far-fetched–is for Israel to turn to China. China is opposing the United States in several parts of the world. Notably, it is supporting the Russian war against Ukraine. It is fending off heavy American pressure to stop this policy. China might be willing to do the same for Israel, at least over the short-term. Obviously, that would strain the China-Iran relationship. But it would also send shocks through the American alliance system. Probably would do the same with American domestic politics. Turn-about is fair play.

Fiscal Problems and Inflation.

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            Seeking to build a better world for whatever followed the Second World War, in 1944 the United States led the reconstruction of an international financial system.  The so-called “Bretton Woods System” included the International Monetary Fund (IMF).  The IMF’s mission is “to foster global monetary cooperation, secure financial stability, facilitate international trade, promote high employment and sustainable economic growth, and reduce poverty around the world.”  Basically, this meant helping countries that had got themselves into a financial jam.  Give them money in return for spending and tax reforms. 

In recent years, says the IMF, tax cuts and increased spending in the United States have led to large budget deficits.  Donald Trump sponsored a substantial temporary tax cut; Trump and Joe Biden both sponsored spending bills to deal with the economic effects of Covid; Biden sponsored a stimulus bill; in 2021 Congress passed the substantial infrastructure bill; Biden sponsored generous additional spending to subsidize the development of semi-conductor manufacturing in the United States; and Biden has lavished money on shifting from carbon-based energy to other “green” sources. 

These deficits have been financed by borrowing.  Government spending then pumps money into the economy.  As a counter-cyclical measure to fight off a recession, such policies make sense.  However, says the IMF, the American economy is suffering from inflation attended by high levels of growth, consumption, and expanding employment, not a recession. 

Two problems arise in this view.  On the one hand, the deficit spending creates “short-term risks to the disinflation process” being pursued by the Federal Reserve Bank.  That is, the government is blunting the work of the high-interest policy being used to reduce inflation.[1]  Second, the scale of the borrowing “is out of line with long-term fiscal stability.”[2]  That is, one of these days, big spending cuts and tax increases will be necessary to prevent bankruptcy. 

“That’s ridiculous,” replied several spokespeople for the Biden administration.  According to Jared Bernstein, chairman of President Biden’s Council of Economic Advisers, “I don’t think that the recent inflation story supports an excessive demand story…. We’ve been able to maintain historically low unemployment while getting significant disinflation.”  According to a Brookings Institution report, the Covid stimulus came to an end about the time that the new deficit spending began.  Hence it did not increase the large deficits of those year, merely kept them at about the same level.[3]  Many of the recent price increases (car insurance, home insurance, medical services, financial services, and housing prices) are one-time bumps, says the White House. 

What if Bernstein is making the best case for his boss and the economists at the IMF are correct?  The IMF has no dog in this fight.  They’re just used to sorting out banana republics. 

[1] The rapid pace of efforts to reduce—not reverse—inflation undertaken by the Federal Reserve Bank brought rapid progress.  Until they didn’t.  According to the NYT, “new data show that progress stalling out and, by many measures, beginning to reverse.”  Earlier this week, the Federal Reserve Board declined to cut interest rates.  It did not suggest that it would raise rates again.  What with an election looming. 

[2] Jim Tankersley, “Split Beliefs on Dug-In Inflation and the Deficit’s Influence On It,” NYT, 30 April 2024. 

[3] Although I think that was the IMF’s point. 

The Struggle for Mastery on the Central West African Coast, 1640-1710.

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            The Struggle for Mastery on the Central West African Coast, 1641—1709.[1] 

            When Portuguese explorers reached the coast of West Central Africa in the late Fifteenth Century, they encountered the Kingdom of Kongo.  The two kingdoms began to trade, while the Portuguese also encouraged the growth of Christianity.  Soon, African slaves became an increasingly important part of the trade. 

            Like a stone dropped into a pond, the slave trade sent out a ring of ever-widening ripples.  Political leaders saw the income from the trade as the key to increasing their own power.[2]  On the one hand, the slave trade added to all the other motives for expansion through conquest by African states.  Leading the way, the Kingdom of Kongo sought to conquer neighboring territories whose people could be sold to the Portuguese.  Other states soon learned by example or figured it out on their own.  On the other hand, the allure of the trade affected the internal stability of the monarchy.  The kings of Kongo long monopolized the slave trade to establish dominance over the great nobility.   For their part, ambitious nobles hoped to by-pass the royal monopoly in order to increase their own power and independence.[3] 

            The willingness of the Portuguese to buy slaves from sources other than the royal monopoly became a continuing bone of contention.  The eventual arrival of other European traders on the coast of West Central Africa would increase the disputes. 

From the 1560s onward, the problem of the succession to the throne of Kongo undermined central authority.  Because the succession was elective, kings won the throne by conciliating powerful noblemen.  The short reigns—and often violent–deaths of a series of kings demonstrate the depth of the turmoil: Garcia I (r. 1624-1626, overthrown); Ambrosio I (r. 1626-1631, murdered); Alvaro IV (r. 1631-1636, poisoned); Alvaro V (r. 1636, killed in battle); and Alvaro VI (1636-1641, died of natural causes).  Factional struggles continued through the 1600s. 

To make matters worse, kings traditionally deputized family members to rule the individual provinces.  During the disorder of the early 17th Century, several of these appointed officials managed to entrench their positions, looking to make them hereditary in their families.  Often, those deputies received license to expand their territory. 

The territory or county of Sonyo/Soyo had been a part of the Kingdom of Kongo since at least the 15th Century.  By accident of Nature, it occupied what would become a strategically important part of the kingdom of Kongo.  Located in the northwest corner of the kingdom, it fronted on both the Atlantic Ocean and the Congo River.  It also possessed a potential port at Mpinda on a sheltered bay near the mouth of the Congo.  This created the possibility that Sonyo would serve as the intermediary between European traders and the interior of the continent.  Portuguese traders and African rulers soon combined to fulfilled that potential.  Moreover, under King Alvaro II (r. 1587-1614), Sonyo expanded its autonomy.  As time passed, the territory of Sonyo/Soyo became a serious concern to the monarchy. 

The Da Silva family posed a different kind of threat to the Kingdom of Kongo.  First, Antonio da Silva, Duke of Mbamba,[4] came close to gaining autonomy in his territories, which adjoined those of Sonyo.  After the death of King Alvaro II (r. 1587-1614), da Silva had become a king-maker, raising up and then toppling Kings Bernardo II (r. 1614-1615) and Alvaro III (r. 1615-1622). 

Fearing these “over-mighty subjects,” King Alvaro III resorted to tried-and-true measures to deal with these problems.  When Duke Antonio da Silva died in 1620, Alvaro III put in his own candidate, the future King Pedro II, as duke.  Early in his reign, King Pedro II (r. 1622-1624) followed the example of Alvaro III.  He placed a trusted relative named Paulo in the position of Duke of Soyo.  Paulo would govern Soyo from 1626 to 1641. 

The Da Silvas had lost Mbamba, but they weren’t done.  In 1636, a Daniel da Silva marched an army toward the capital under the pretense of trying to rescue the young King Alvaro IV (r. 1631-1636) from evil counselors.  Da Silva’s army suffered a complete defeat and he was killed in the battle.   In 1641, another Daniel da Silva, probably the son of the previous Daniel, seized possession of Sonyo upon the death of Count Paulo.  This seizure coincided with the arrival on the throne of King Garcia II (r. 1641-1661). 

These internal problems created external problems.  Because the state lacked the internal resources to deal with its enemies, the kings of Kongo learned to try to balance foreign powers against each other.  In the 17th Century, Kongo came under pressure from Lunda people from the east.  The Kongolese called these people the Yaka.  To fight off the Yaka, King Alvaro II revived the alliance with the Portuguese.  In return for hundreds of Portuguese musketeers, he agreed that the Portuguese could establish a colony south of Kongo in Loanda.  Thereafter, the Portuguese continually sought to expand the reach of their authority, trespassing on Kongolese territory in the process.  In part, the Portuguese sought to stop the practice along the southern fringes of Kongo of providing a sanctuary for run-away slaves. 

King Garcia II (r. 1641-1661) vainly sought to reassert royal power.  First, the Dutch were brought in to help fend off the Portuguese.  The ensuing war see-sawed between victory and defeat.  Dutch warships and soldiers soon expelled the Portuguese from Loanda and helped Garcia II suppress several rebellions within Kongo.  However, the Dutch declined to press on against the main Portuguese colony in Angola, signing a peace treaty in 1643.  A renewal of the war in 1646 went better, but then ended in defeat with the arrival of the remarkable Portuguese leader Salvador da Sa.  De Sa soon drove out the Dutch, then began harrying the southern edges of Kongo.[5]  Other tinder also piled up during the 1650s.  Kongo continued to offer sanctuary to runaway slaves from Angola and began to explore a possible alliance with the Spanish. 

Garcia’s chief domestic preoccupation lay in the north in the rebellious territory of Sonyo, where Daniel da Silva claimed independence from the Kingdom of Kongo.  Expeditions launched by Garcia in 1645 and 1646 both came to grief.  Thereafter, Sonyo maintained effective independence despite the refusal of the Kingdom of Kongo to formally recognize the fact. 

By the time he died in 1661, Garcia II had failed to resolve the chief internal and external threats to the Kingdom of Kongo.  His successor, Antonio I (r. 1661-1665) launched a war against the Portuguese, only to be killed in battle, along with many of his chief noblemen.  The vacuum of power led to a forty year-long civil war.  Different factions fought for Kongo itself, while the counts of Soyo increased their independence by defeating both invasions from Loango and by the Portuguese.  Paulo da Silva, Count of Sonyo at the time of the battle that killed King Antonio I, sought to bend the rival claimants to the Kongo throne to his own purposes. 

By 1670 Count Paulo had died, being succeeded by Count Estêvão da Silva.  One of the pretenders to the Kongolese throne called in the Portuguese to help crush Sonyo and end the meddling of the Da Silvas.  Estêvão fell in an early defeat, but his brother Pedro smashed the Portuguese and their African allies in a rematch in October 1670.  Thereafter, the Portuguese kept clear of Soyo. 

However, the rulers of Sonyo remained anxious.  The long civil wars in Kongo had fractured and impoverished the kingdom.  It may have appeared that either a decisive victory, or the emergence of new kingdoms from the ruins of the old kingdom, would depend upon drawing upon new resources from outside the old kingdom.  In any event, the rulers of Sonyo sought to bolster their position through continuing contacts with the Dutch and appeals directly to Rome for Papal recognition of an independent Sonyo.  Moreover, Count Antonio II Barreto da Silva shifted the focus of Soyo’s policy toward the north bank of the Congo River.  During the 1680s he fought wars with both the independent kingdoms of Kakongo and Ngoyo.  These wars could be interpreted as an attempt to add soldiers and resources to those of Soyo in anticipation of a new struggle for power within Kingo. 

[1] I got the title for this section from A.J.P Taylor, The Struggle for Mastery in Europe, 1848-1918 (1954). Sheer piracy, except that Taylor got it from Heinrich Friedjung, Der Kampf um die Vorherrschaft in Deutschland 1859 bis 1866 (1897). 

[2] In what follows, there is a marked similarity to the role of “conflict diamonds” and “conflict minerals” in modern African strife.  In this early case, however, it was the trade in “conflict humans.”  See: Greg Campbell, Blood Diamonds: Tracing the Deadly Path of the World’s Most Precious Stones (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2002), and Philippe Le Billon, Wars of Plunder: Conflicts, Profits and the Politics of Resources (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014). 

[3] What follows is largely based on the works of John K. Thornton, The Kingdom of Kongo: Civil War and Transition, 1641–1718 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1983); Warfare in Atlantic Africa, 1500–1800 (London: Routledge, 1999); Linda M. Heywood and John K. Thornton, Central Africans, Atlantic Creoles, and the Foundation of the Americas, 1585-1660, (Cambridge University Press, 2007); and A History of West Central Africa to 1850 (Cambridge University Press, 2020);

[4] A large territory bordered by Portuguese territory in the south, the County of Sonyo on the north, and the Atlantic Ocean on the west. 

[5] See: Mark Meuwese, Brothers in Arms, Partners in Trade: Dutch-Indigenous Alliances in the Atlantic World, 1595-1674 (Brill, 2011) and C. R. Boxer, Salvador de Sá and the struggle for Brazil and Angola, 1602-1686 (Greenwood Press, 1975).