The Dark Side of the Enlightenment Part 2: Politics, Freemasonry, Music, Women & Digital Humanities

Part 2 continues my review of the International Society for 18thC Studies Congress in Edinburgh in July. 

Radical and Loyalist Politics

There were panels dealing with economic and political issues, such as Relative Liberties, Political Trails in Britain and France in the 1790s, The French Revolution from Afar (inc. London anti-reflationary press), Providing for the Poor, Scotland and the American Revolution, Jacobite Material Culture, Popular Politics and Radicalism, Queen Charlotte in British Caraciactture 1785-1798, and the identity problem of British Radical Expatriates in France. The one on The Force of the State 1789-1819 had Joe Cozens talk about the Dragoon State and riot control in Britain,  Amanda Goodrich on Henry Redhead Yorke, the mixed race revolutionary in Sheffield, and Robert Poole on military intervention at Peterloo. In the discussion I drew attention to the need for local studies of the reaction to and impact of the Massacre and the repressive laws that followed. (Note 5)

The John Thelwall Society organised two panels. There was one on Scottish Clubs and Societies which included a paper on friendly societies. More general panels had papers on forging a transnational radical identify, Mary Wollstonecraft, the limits of Scottish Protestant unity, Presbyterian politics, political songs in  18thC Netherlands, reason and the claim for equal political liberty, the French revolution’s politics of time, the Society for The Suppression of Vice in Lodon 1800-1825, Burke’s use of history after The Reflections juvenile patriotism and identity in Revolutionary France, revolutionary education in Milan, and Professor Penelope Corfield on the urban/commercial/radical handshake.

I was unable to go to the panel on political participation in 18thC England at which Matthew Grenby (Newcastle) spoke on election ballads in Newcastle, and Edmund Green ((independent scholar) on electoral participation across Metropolitan London 1700-1832. (Note 6)

Freemasonry

This was another cross cutting theme. A panel on assembly, association and sociability had a paper on the Masonic Stage, In the Slavery and Identity panel Susan Snell (the English Grand Lodge’s archivist) spoke on black freemasons, and I talked about Loveless Overton, a Bajan soldier and freemason, the non-foot noted text of which is now on the North East Popular Politics Project database which I edit: ppp.nelh.net.

Music

There was a fascinating panel on song, with papers on William Shield, the Tyneside and Court composer, who turns out to have been a radical and a freemason. The  annual William Shield Festival on Tyneside takes place later this year. Amelie Addison (Leeds Uni) who gave the talk will be speaking at it. Joseph Darby (Keen State College, USA) spoke about subscription based Scottish music publishing. Kirsteen McCue (Glasgow) spoke about the Romantic National Song Network project on national songs published across the British Isles during the period 1750-1850: https://rnsn.glasgow.ac.uk. The site includes a posting by Amelie about Shield: https://rnsn.glasgow.ac.uk/?s=Newcastle

Reference was made to Durham’s musician and music teacher Simon Fleming’s project on subscribers to music. So far he has been able to publish Gender of Subscribers to Eighteenth-Century Music Publications, which can be seen at https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/Qm6rMAJunEQ43hgDiHuQ/full?target=10.1080/14723808.2019.1570752. He writes: ‘One of the most important and valuable resources available to researchers of eighteenth-century social history are the lists of subscribers that were attached to a wide variety of publications. Yet, the study of this type of resource remains one of the areas most neglected by academics. These lists shed considerable light on the nature of those who subscribed to music, including their social status, place of employment, residence, and musical interests. They naturally also provide details as to the gender of individual subscribers.’

For some time I have been drawing attention to the use of subscribers’ lists in other forms of publishing and in a range of organisations lists of paid up members and donors, examples of which are on the North East Popular Politics database. This links back to Joe’s talk on the Dragoon State with the List of Subscribers to the Fund, for the Relief of the Widows, Wives, and Children of Killed and Wounded British Soldiers, Sailors, and Marines in the Expedition to Holland in 1799 ... Together with an abstract of the regulations ... for the management of that fund (1808) (on Google Books), which I have come across since the Congress,  the subscribers including the Ayrshire Fencibles when Loveless Overton was with them.

Women

There were panels on Aphra Behn, Mary Wollstonecraft, Jane Austen and Women’s Artists as well as on a wide range of women’s literature, artists, and writers, and other panels inc. papers on women in business, cross dressing,  and Ann Lister (in panels on The Cries of Queen Identities and Homo- and Heterosexual Identities). (Note 7)

Digital Humanities

Issues relating to digital humanities have been a growing topic of discussion at the Annual British Conference. They were an important feature of the ISCECS Congress. There were sessions on the issues,  one on getting started and some on specific projects such as the Sterne Digital Library, Scottish case law, and the Georgian papers in the Royal Archives at Windsor. Although Andrew Prescott (Prof of DH, Glasgow), was at the Congress, he gave a talk on freemasonry having previously been the Director of the Centre for Research into Freemasonry at Sheffield University. (Note 8)

The Scale of the Congress

The 1,600 delegates included large contingents from North America and across Europe but also many from China, India (where a Society has recently been set up), Japan and Korea. The organisation of the Congress was highly complex with 477 panels and roundtable discussions spread across several University buildings, plus plenary sessions and evening events including receptions, a concert, a quiz and a Ceilidh. The organisation committee did a fantastic job, supported throughout the week by a group of student volunteers and the University’s Edinburgh First team.

The Costs

The Congress was expensive, so a lot of students were able to be there thanks to a large bursary fund, plus some academics without alternative funding. The Congress and the BSECS Annual Conference remain costly for independent historians who have no funding support mechanisms they can apply to. It is to be hoped that a bursary could be set up, especially for those who want to give a paper. (Note 9)

What Next?

It is to be hoped that many of the issues discussed will continue to be debated between participants, especially the dialogue started at the BAME round-table. One method will be through essays based on talks in a proposed special issue of journal of the British Society. The January annual conference of the British Society will enable further discussion, particularly in relation to issues relating to nature and the change of environments as a result of industrialisation, the re-shaping of country estates, new forms of transport and enclosures, but particularly the exhaustion of soils on the West Indian islands as a result of sugar mono-culture. The next Congress in 2023 will be in Rome.

Notes

(5)    See for example John Charlton’s The Wind from Peterloo. 1819 - Newcastle’s great reform demonstration, which I published last year under my History & Social Action Publications imprint. I have also published The Importance of the Peterloo Massacre of 1819: A personal discussion triggered by Mike Leigh’s film and a Long 18thC Seminar. I will be giving a talk on Croydon’s Peterloo links for the Croydon Natural History & Scientific Society in November. Joe and Katrina are reaching a wider public audience through their articles on Peterloo in the August issue of History Today.

(6)    The North East Labour History Society’s North East Popular Politics Project database which I edit contains a great deal of information about electoral politics in the long 18thC in the North East: ppp.nelh.net. The electoral politics project to be co-ordinated by Matthew Grenby received its funding approval two weeks before the Conference. The detailed brief about it is awaited.

(7) Since the Congress I have come across the report from Bath about a colleague of Loveless Overton, Sarah Penelope Stanley, who was discharged from the Ayreshire Fecibles following her sex being discovered after being kicked by her horse. The Bath Mayor funded her return back to the City. (The Lady’s Magazine. September 1799. p. 428)

(8)    What happened to the digital archive Andrew set up is a cautionary tale. Years after he left the English Grand Lodge ceased funding the Centre. This was particularly galling for me as a graduate member of the Sheffield University Court of Governors I had successfully lobbied for Chinese walls between the Centre and the Grand Lodge. Some time after the Centre was closed the University took the digital resource off the internet. Interestingly the joint paper that Andrew and I wrote as an introduction to black freemasonry was put up on a Lodge website in the United States at:

http://www.newjerseygrandlodge.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Black-Freemasonry.pdf

A collection of Andrew’s papers have been posted on http://www.themasonictrowel.com/ebooks/freemasonry/eb0067.pdf. Following a workshop on DH issues Andrew organised last year I discussed some of the issues in two blog postings at:

http://historyandsocialaction.blogspot.com/2018/06/diversity-amongst-documents-part-1.html

http://historyandsocialaction.blogspot.com/2018/06/diversity-among-documents-part-2.html 

(9)    Another cost facing students is that of the books they should be reading on the 18thC. A good source is Postscript Books of remainder books at knockdown prices. Its August catalogue includes books on the British Museum in the Enlightenment, the Castlereagh/Canning duel, Carline of Ansbach, Jane Austen's notebooks,  Whatley on gardening, Gainsborough, Canaletto and Hogarth, Krystyn Lach-Szyrma, Sir John Pringle, Arago’s voyage round the world, William Buchan and medical advice, Regency women, and British ceramics, as well as military books on the French Wars. www.psbooks.co.uk

The Dark Side of the Enlightenment Part 1 - Colonisation, Slavery and Black History

Referring to the massacre of indigenous people in the Iberian American colonies and the impoverishment of the masses in Spain and Portugal as a result of colonisation Voltaire argued that therefore ‘no one has won’.

Colonialism and slavery were central themes at the International Society for 18^th Century Studies held in Edinburgh from 14 to 19 July.  Voltaire’s views were discussed in the closing plenary session on Enlightenment Legacies by Maria das Gracas de Souza of the University of Sao Paolo.

Indigenous peoples and uneven development

Voltaire believed that Europeans were more advanced peoples, and regarded the power of reasoning and understanding of indigenous people’s as not being well developed. The development of science and the arts in Europe had divided people into the ‘enlightened’ and the ‘underdeveloped’, although progress was uneven and not inevitable.

This mix of superiority and pre-‘Marxist’ uneven development theory is interesting at a time when Western Europe’s economy depended on the exploitation of indigenous people, including the enslaved Africans forcibly transported to the Americas. They produced the wealth that afforded the elite, the ‘middle classes’ and the intellectuals to develop the Enlightenment in all its facets. It was 400 years ago that the use of enslaved Affricans by the English began in Virginia. (Note 1) One of the dark aspects of the Enlightenment classification system was the beginning of racial hierarchy developed by Carl Linnaeus, with Africans as the lowest form of human beings, giving pro-slavery advocates justification for it.

It can be argued that the ‘good/light’ side of the Enlightenment in history studies until recently has masked the ‘evil/dark’ side of its colonial economies, ethnic cleansing, brutal treatment of the enslaved and impoverishment of European workers and peasants.

A different perspective on the Enlightenment comes from North, Central and South American and Caribbean historians. They help to challenge those who inhabit the ‘good/light’ Enlightenment comfort zone. The growing evidence of the depth of Scottish involvement in the slavery business is a challenge to those involved in studying the Scottish Enlightenment, given even much respected authors like Thomas Smollett had links with the business.

Colonialism, African Slavery and the Black Presence

The ISCECS programme had panels of talks and roundtables  on Writing Black Atlantic Lives, Caribbean Connections, Jamaica Connections, Colonial Space – Colonial Power (4), Reckoning with Scotland’s Slavery Connections, Fashioning Slavery, Scots, Empire and Identity, 18thC Constructions of Race, Black British Writers, Colonial Encounters, Slavery & Identity (2), and Researching, Writing and Teaching Black and Minority Ethnic Identities: Where are We now? (at University level). There were also individual papers in other panels inc. on Mary Prince, two black female slaves in Buenos Aires 1764-1773, Black British Women in 18^th Portraiture, and concepts of culture and race. One of the German Slavery Identities panels had three papers on black people and non-Europeans.

BAME Academics

In the BAME session Amanda Goodrich (Open University) mentioned the fact that British history BAME academics are now overburdened with requests to attend conferences/workshops etc to talk about diversity and that bursaries are needed to cover their attendance.  She also mentioned that not all BAME academics want to be automatically identified with BAME history and expected to research or teach it and some feel overburdened by this expectation.  They want to choose their area of history. She mentioned the growing issues of  ‘whose history is it’, and whether there should be ‘black history’ and what that means. She  also raised questions about how we research and write BAME history and the difficulties that might arise in the process. 

Margot Finn (UCL) summarised the Royal Historical Society’s Race, Ethnicity & Equality Working Group report identifying barriers to equality and diversity in the discipline of history, seeking to achieve on positive change in the environments in which historians of colour in the UK work, and enhancing the wider practice and discipline of History by increasing the presence of racial and ethnic minorities in university: https://royalhistsoc.org/policy/race. Regulus  Allen (Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo) explained her experience teaching in the United States and the work she was undertaking to develop good practice. Srividhya Swaminathan (Long Island University) ) discussed the dangers of ‘ghettoisation’ and the artificial construct of ‘whiteness.’ Ryan Hanley (Bristol) reviewed the development of British Black History studies and publishing and the leading role of non-academics. Several of us at the panel have been involved in such discussions for a long time through the Black History networks and at BSCECS Annual Conferences. (Note 2)

Britain and Suriname

The third paper by Hilde Neus (Anton de Kom University of Suriname) was about 72 coloured women who attempted a court case against the civil guards in 1779. It is a reminder that England and the Britain had direct dealings with Suriname in the 17thC (e.g. colonial control and Aphra Behn), and colonial rule for the Dutch in the French Wars. It was also the subject of Stedman’s book illustrated by William Blake, There will also have been trade links directly between Britain and Suriname and via the Dutch ports given so many merchants trading links. It is possible that most users of the UCL based Legacies of British Slave-ownership database will not realise that if they put into the search box for notes, 72 individuals are listed with Suriname links, including the Austin family, the Scots born James Balfour, John Bent who also owned land in Sussex, the Scots MP James Blair, Colin Campbell of Glasgow and Rotterdam, including those who received British West Indies compensation, and some who became slave owners in Suriname after emancipation in the British West Indies. https://www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs. The Legacies project has helped to revolutionise our understanding of Britain in the long-18thC. (Note 3)

The relationship between academic and non-academic historians

The discussion at the BAME roundtable allowed me to classify two groups of academics: those who value the contribution by non-academics (several of whom were present), and those who do not.   I challenged those academics, whose books weave theories and conclusions on thin evidence, who consider non-academics as not being academically rigorous. I was also critical of large funded research projects which seek to involve non-academic historians and volunteers but do not have enough money in budgets to meet expenses and pay people. (Note 4)

(1)    ‘The purchase of 20 Africans at Jamestown, Virginia during 1619 occurred weeks before the first meeting of the Virginia House of Assembly. The 400th anniversary of the simultaneous beginnings of slavery and democracy in British North America, and the continuing dilemma of democracy and race, provide a context to discuss the experiences of Africans brought here to labor under a brutal system of slavery. This panel examines the history and nature of this first landing of Africans in America, as well as legacies down to our own time. What was the meaning of liberty and community for 17th Century Americans? What does it mean to be American for their descendants and fellow minorities? What resonance do these issues have as the United States faces a Presidential election threatening to become the most racist appeal to voters in living memory?’ Two years later Anthony Johnson was brought to Virginia, but by the mid-century was a slave owner himself .  (Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance & Abolition enewsletter 29 July 2019)

(2)    See my blog postings:

https://historyandsocialaction.blogspot.com/search?q=Georgians

 http://historyandsocialaction.blogspot.com/2018/05/what-si-happening-in-black-british.html

 (3)   The Legacies success rested on the retiring Director Nick Draper, a former banker, whose PhD study opened up the compensation records, and whose academic rigour has been first class. The team’s collaboration with community, family, independent and local historians has been a key part of the project. Without it  I could not have written Croydon’s Connections with the British Slavery Business in Strange Bedfellows. Croydon’s Slave Owners and Historians (Croydon Natural History & Scientific Society. Proceedings. Vol. 20. Part 1. September 2017). Nick’s successor is Professor Matthew Smith, Head, Department of History and Archaeology at the University of the West Indies at Mona, Jamaica. His publications include Liberty, Fraternity, Exile: Haiti and Jamaica After Emancipation (2014) and Red and Black in Haiti: Radicalism, Conflict, and Political Change (2009). The Mona campus is on the former slave plantation owned for a while by Bonds of the Park Hill Estate in Croydon. Without the Legacies project it would be more difficult for Miranda Kaufmann, the author of Black Tudors, to research her current newly commissioned book on Heiresses: Slavery & The Caribbean Marriage Trade. Miranda was at the Congress and is also co-organiser of the What is Happening in British Black History workshops and network which is meeting again on 14 November: http://www.mirandakaufmann.com/blog/call-for-paperswhats-happening-in-black-british-history-xi-deadline-16th-september-2019

(4)    Community led projects like the Kennington Common 1848 Chartist project run by Friends of Kennington Park, have had academics helping, including  Katrina Navikas (Hertfordshire Uni.) The project is perhaps one of the best models I know about. Details can be seen at www.kenningtoncharter.org. At the Friends AGM on 23 July two pamphlets were launched: one about the project, and another containing essays including one by Katrina. As a supporter of the project I published last year my introduction to Lambeth Chartism, and will be publishing one on Lambeth radicalism before Chartism to sell at a talk I am giving at this year’s Lambeth History Fair on 7 September. 

The Heathwall. Battersea's Lost River

Heathwall St was one of the stopping points on the Battersea & Wandsworth Trades Union Council annual John Burns Walk which I led  on  Saturday 3 August.

I explained that it was named after Battersea’s lost river, the Heathwall, also known as Heathwall Sluice, which is buried underground running from the Falcon Brook (also underground) through the Este Rd and Falcon Park, Shaftesbury Park and Queens Rd areas and parallel with Wandsworth Rd to Nine Elms. Its name also survives in Heathwall Park at the end of Robertson St and the Heathwall Pumping Station on the Thames at Tideway. Its course marks the boundary between Wandsworth and Lambeth.

The Heathwall is little known as one of many of the Lost Rivers of London. Jon Newman has now produced a book, part history, part a do-itself yourself walk, about it: The Heathwall. Battersea’s Buried River (Backwater Books).

Its History

Over the centuries its name evolved from Hese/Hyse in Saxon/Norman times to Hethe/Heath. It was one of the many water courses and drainage channels through Battersea’s the waterlogged fields. Its repair and upkeep was left to the individual landowners and its walls to  Westminster Abbey the principal one. From its establishment in the 16thC the Surrey and Kent Sewer Commissioners had to deal with legal squabbles over who should pay for works to improve the drainage system.  By 1700 the fertile and well watered fields of the Heathwall level were some of London’s most productive market gardens.

As the number of buildings grew the system had to cope with more and more household and industrial waste.  From 1774 there was a general sewers rate. In 1847 the Commissioners were replaced in 1847 by the Metropolitan Commission of Sewers, and then in 1855 by the Metropolitan Board of Works. Under its chief engineer John Bazalgette all the rivers in South London bar the Wandle and Ravensbourne were turned into underground sewers. It took 20 years to complete the work. The scheme was not a success and flooding continued. In the end the Heathwall pumping station was opened in 1898. Further capacity was added in 1959/60 and more is being worked on at present.

The Walk

The majority of the book is a description of the walk through the area the Heathwall had flowed. In keeping with Jon’s other walk books it is rich in detail and atmospheric. ‘Outside the gatehouse and to the right, the boundary wall of Glycena Road sits over the line of the Heathwall….. but one can almost re-imagine it flowing past their Gothic castellations like a fantasy moat, defending its respectable tee-total working class residents from the horrors without.’ (p. 19)

It’s a delight to read for those who want to know more about the parts of Battersea and Lambeth along the walk. Readers can use it to do the walk themselves, although it may be advisable to do it in two sections from Price’s Candles to the end of Heathwall Park and then from there to the pumping station via Vauxhall/Nine Elms. For local historians it is an important contribution to our knowledge.Jn'istdle and Ra

Inevitably in order to keep the book to 56 pages and not to overload it with too many details of any particular section of the walk, there is much more information than Jon could not include.

The book is nicely illustrated by David Western, and maps are included.

The Heathwall can be ordered from me sean.creighton1947@btinternet.com

Jon’s Other Books

Battersea’s Global Reach. The Story of Price’s Candles  (History & Social Action Publications)

https://sites.google.com/site/historysocialaction/battersea-s-global-reach

River Effra: South London's Secret Spine

https://www.signalbooks.co.uk/2016/06/river-effra

Battersea Nocturne. A walk through Whistler's Battersea intercut with journal writings and images.

Death on the Brighton Road. An account of a nine mile bike ride from the gallows at Kennington to the gibbet at Smitham Bottom.

Lovely Lambeth. A walk through Blake's Lambeth intercut with poems and images.

Lost in Herne Hill. A walk through John Ruskin's childhood home of Herne Hill - backed by the Herne Hill Society

http://www.thamesispublications.co.uk/shop.php