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TEMPUSThe harvard College hisTory review

volume Xiii issue 1spring 2012

Editor-in-Chief: Brendan Maione-Downing

With Contributions from: Rebecca Cohen, Ben Wilcox, and

Christina Wong

About Tempus:

Tempus: The Harvard College History Review is the History Department’s

undergraduate journal. Tempus was founded by a pair of undergraduates in 1998

as a forum for for publishing original historical scholarship through which all

students have the opportunity to learn from their peers. Tempus also sponsors

history events and aims to promote an undergraduate community within the

Department. In the spring of 2009, Tempus became an online publication. Visit

us at http://hcs.harvard.edu/tempus to see out the latest issue.

The 2012 Editorial Board:

Brendan Maione-Downing Editor-in-ChiefAnne Marie Creighton Deputy Editor-in-ChiefCody Dales

Nathaniel Hay

Miranda Margowsky

Emily Meyer

Stefan Poltorzyki

Ryan Rossner

Harper Sutherland

Lauren Tiedemann

Julia Wang

Acknowledgements:

The Editorial staff of Tempus would like to express its gratitude for

the support of the Harvard History Department. Special thanks to

Ryan Wilkinson for his help in preparing this manuscript as well as

Harvard faculty and graduate students who were particularly generous

with their time in helping us prepare our features. Tempus also wishes

to again congratulate all who submitted papers for consideration on

the high quality of their work.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

A Note From the Editors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iv Brendan Maione-Downing and Anne Marie Creighton

1. Published by Authority: A Case of Anonymous Authorship in Pre-Revolutionary Rhode Island. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Ben Wilcox

2. “The Desert is Still Their Home”: Changes in O’odham Land, Labor and Culture, 1936-1970 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 Rebecca Cohen

3. Inequalities in Art: The Production and Portrayal of Food During the Dutch Golden Age . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 Christina Wong

4. FEATURE: Exploring Harvard’s Brick Stamp Collection. . . . . . . . . . . 72 Nathaniel Hay

5. FEATURE: Writing About Protest. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76 Eric Larson

iv

Editors’ NotE

Dear Reader,

Welcome to the 2012 Spring Issue of Tempus, Volume XIII Issue I. This semester, we are delighted to present three papers to you. We have been, as ever, consistently impressed by the quality of our submissions. They speak to the quality of undergraduate history research at Harvard; we have found these three particularly compelling.

This semester’s papers have a wide range of topics, both time and place. Two of our papers focus on the physical environment of history: Rebecca Cohen’s “‘The Desert is Still Their Home’” discusses the experience of the Tohono O’odham people in twentieth-century Arizona and Christina Wong’s “Inequalities in Art” focuses on the Golden Age of Dutch art in the seventeenth century. Cohen’s paper examines both the degradation of the environment caused by the rise of cattle ranching and the cultural effects that occurred when the Bureau of Indian Affairs tried to assimilate the Tohono O’odham by moving them from their ancestral lands to America’s cities. Wong’s paper compares the native environments of the three types of food production to the portrayal of their end products in art. Her paper then takes their depictions in art and explains what those may show us about the culture of the Netherlands in general.

Ben Wilcox’s “Published by Authority” is about a more abstract environment, the environment of ideas. His essay explains how authorship was viewed in colonial America by examining the framework into which a pseudonymous pamphlet, one published by ´$XWKRULW\�µ�PLJKW�ÀW��:KHUH�WUXO\�DQRQ\PRXV�SDPSKOHWHHULQJ�ZDV�QRW�XQFRPPRQ�LQ�WKDW�culture, Wilcox takes the pseudonymous exception and uses it to discuss how Americans viewed authorship in general.

v

These three papers, on such diverse topics, are all of the highest quality. As ever, the ZRUN�GRQH�E\�RXU�IHOORZ�XQGHUJUDGXDWHV�PDNHV�XV�SURXG�WR�EH�DIÀOLDWHG�ZLWK�WKH�+LVWRU\�Department at Harvard. We hope you enjoy reading them.

Brendan Maione-Downing Anne Marie CreightonEditor-in-Chief Deputy Editor-in-Chief

Cambridge, May 2012

1Ben Wilcox, “Published by Authority: A Case of Anonymous Authorship in Pre-Revolutionary Rhode Island,” Tempus, 13.1 (Spring 2012), 1-16.

PublishEd by Authority

A CAsE of ANoNymous AuthorshiP iN PrE-rEvolutioNAry rhodE islANd

Ben wilCoX

On November 30th, 1764, a political pamphlet titled The Rights of Colonies Examined went on sale in the British colony of Rhode Island.1 Its title page bore no author’s name, and the sole indicator of any individual contribution to the text was a mysterious signature on WKH�SDPSKOHW·V�ÀQDO�SDJH��3��7KH�SDPSKOHW·V�ÀUVW�FRSLHV�H[KLELWHG�FKHDS�DQG�KDVW\�printing, with confused pagination, scattered misspellings, and an almost indecipherably small font.2 “Liberty,” the text began, “is the greatest blessing that men enjoy, and slavery is the heaviest curse that human nature is capable of.”3 In the following pages, Colonies Examined explored the legal relationship between colonial America and imperial England, criticizing the increasingly burdensome taxes imposed by the British Parliament in the wake of the costly French and Indian War. Such arguments were relatively common in the 1760s, as a growing number of colonists voiced frustration at the end of over a century of British salutary neglect. In its forceful tone and style, the language of Colonies Examined also resembled that of other pamphlets on sale in colonial publishing houses. Even in its anonymity4, Colonies Examined was hardly unique; to the contrary, anonymous and pseudonymous authorship were among the most common devices used by early American pamphleteers and their British forebears.5

1 For simplicity’s sake, the remainder of this essay will refer to the pamphlet as Colonies Examined. Textual citations will refer to the pagination in Volume I of Bernard Bailyn’s Pamphlets of the American Revolution (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1965)which includes The Rights of Colonies Examined and is the authoritative modern edition of the text. 2 I base these observations on the original pamphlets I examined at Houghton Library. Later editions of Colonies Examined, such as the London edition of 1766, do not contain such egregious errors. 3 Hopkins, 507. 4 7KLV�HVVD\�FRQVWUXHV�DQRQ\PLW\�LQ�D�EURDG�VHQVH��HFKRLQJ�5REHUW�*ULIÀQ·V�GHÀQLWLRQ�RI�DQ�DQRQ\PRXV�publication as any that “does not give a reference to the legal name of the empirical writer.” See Robert *ULIÀQ��´$QRQ\PLW\�DQG�$XWKRUVKLS�µ�New Literary History 30.4 (1999), 879-880.5 Bernard Bailyn, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992), 11.

2 Wilcox

What did distinguish Colonies Examined from other political pamphlets on sale in 1764 was a sentence printed prominently across the center of the title page: “Published by Authority.” A common feature on eighteenth-century government documents, OHJLVODWLYH�UHFRUGV��DQG�MXGLFLDO�SDSHUZRUN��´3XEOLVKHG�E\�$XWKRULW\µ�LQGLFDWHG�WKH�RIÀFLDO�endorsement of the Rhode Island colonial government – and its presence on the cover of Colonies Examined lent the pamphlet a unique status among the anti-British diatribes that it otherwise resembled. Today, the author of Colonies Examined is known to be Stephen +RSNLQV��D�SUROLÀF�SROLWLFDO�ZULWHU�DQG�WKH�ORQJ�WLPH�JRYHUQRU�RI�WKH�5KRGH�,VODQG�FRORQ\�in the 1760s. In fact, Hopkins would have been recognized as the author of Colonies Examined by a relatively large coterie of politically aware 18th-century Rhode Islanders.6 But Hopkins’ choice to publish his pamphlet under “Authority” rather than under his own name – or simply as an anonymous pamphlet – was a highly unusual one, both for Hopkins and for American pamphleteers in general.7 This paper seeks to explain Hopkins’ decision by situating it in the political context of Rhode Island in the 1760s and within the intellectual environment of 18th-century pamphlet discourse. In particular, I argue that Hopkins’ authorial representation removed his pamphlet from the factionalism of local Rhode Island politics and allowed Hopkins’ writing to transcend the impermanence of his own political position. Furthermore, by speaking on behalf of Rhode Island, rather than simply as Rhode Island’s sometime governor, Hopkins acquired an authority that encouraged other colonies to rally around his argument. In demonstrating the nuanced motives behind Hopkins’ use of anonymity and state authority, this essay contributes to a recent historiography that seeks more diverse explanations of anonymity. Colonies Examined offers a clear case of anonymous authorship rooted not in fear, but in the desire to establish broad-reaching authority in a contentious and unpredictable political environment.

Stephen Hopkins, the son of a rural Rhode Island farmer, rose to political prominence IURP�XQOLNHO\�FLUFXPVWDQFHV��$Q�DXWRGLGDFW�DQG�WUDLQHG�VXUYH\RU��+RSNLQV�ÀUVW�DWWDLQHG�DQ�

6 Personal conversation with Bernard Bailyn. Hopkins would have been recognized as the author by Rhode Islanders, but would not have been as well-recognized in other colonies and in London. I am indebted to Professor Bailyn for taking the time to answer my questions about the reception of Colonies Examined. 7 Indeed, Colonies Examined is the only political pamphlet I am aware of that was “Published by Authority.” I base this assertion on digital searches for the term “Published by Authority” in Eighteenth Century Collections Online, in 17th-18th Century Burney Collection Newspapers, and in America’s Historical Newspapers, as well as an examination of the pamphlets featured in Bailyn’s Pamphlets of the American Revolution.

3Published By Authority

HOHFWHG�SRVLWLRQ�DV� WKH�WRZQ�FOHUN�RI�&KDSXPLVFRRN�LQ��DW� WKH�DJH�RI� WZHQW\�ÀYH�8 %\�WKH�WLPH�KH�UHDFKHG�WKLUW\�ÀYH��+RSNLQV�KDG�EHHQ�HOHFWHG�VSHDNHU�RI�WKH�5KRGH�,VODQG�General Assembly and had established himself as an authority on matters of commerce and trade.9 In 1754, Hopkins, an early advocate of inter-colonial cooperation in a colony ÀHUFHO\�MHDORXV�RI�LWV�FKDUWHU�ULJKWV��UHSUHVHQWHG�5KRGH�,VODQG�DW�WKH�$OEDQ\�&RQIHUHQFH��an ill-fated attempt to form a colonial council that would have “jurisdiction over Indian affairs” and the power to “raise troops and erect forts for defense.”10 Though the Albany Conference failed, it foreshadowed the enthusiasm for inter-colonial cooperation that would underlie Hopkins’ later arguments in Colonies Examined, and that would, in part, motivate the presentation of his pamphlet as speaking on behalf of Rhode Island itself, rather than merely on behalf of a single Rhode Island politician.

In 1755, Hopkins was elected governor of Rhode Island Colony, and his ascension marked the beginning of over a decade of ruthless factionalism in Rhode Island politics. The roots of the Hopkins-Ward Controversy—as this period in Rhode Island’s history has come to be known—have been the matter of some dispute among historians.11 “Basically,” Paul Campbell has concluded, “the source of the problem involved the increasing prosperity of Providence at the expense of Newport. Political allegiances were soon established along socioeconomic and geographical lines.”12 The result was the degeneration of Rhode Island politics into a personal feud between Hopkins, head of the Providence faction, and Samuel Ward of Newport. In an exchange emblematic of the prevailing political rhetoric, Ward DFFXVHG�+RSNLQV�RI�XVLQJ�´HYHU\�DUW�WR�JDLQ�IRU�KLPVHOI�DQG�KLV�)DPLO\��3RVWV�RI�3URÀW��DQG�

8 William E. Foster, Stephen Hopkins: A Rhode Island Statesman, 2 vols. (Providence: Sidney S. Rider, ��)RVWHU�UHPDLQV�WKH�GHÀQLWLYH�ELRJUDSKHU�RI�+RSNLQV��2WKHU�VRXUFHV�LQFOXGH�0DUJXHULWH�$SSOHWRQ��A Portrait Album of Four Great Rhode Island Leaders (Providence: Rhode Island Historical Society, 1978) and John F. Millar, “Stephen Hopkins: An Architect of Independence” Newport History 53(1980). The absence of high-quality recent scholarship on Hopkins is mystifying and deserving of remedy. For conjecture on why Hopkins is “so little known” to modern historians, see Millar, 32-34.9 John R. Bartlett, ed., Records of the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, 10 vols. (Providence: Providence Press, 1856-65), 21. Hopkins frequently penned essays addressing local commerce in the Providence Gazette. 10 Robert C. Newbold, The Albany Congress and Plan of Union (New York: Vantage Press, 1755), 123. For a discussion of the Albany Plan’s unfriendly reception in Rhode Island, see 156-165. 11 See, for example, the discussion of the controversy in Mark E. Thompson, “The Hopkins-Ward Controversy and the American Revolution in Rhode Island: An Interpretation,” William and Mary Quarterly 16:3(July 1959). Thompson outlines the traditional economic and social interpretations of the development of the factions, before advancing his own argument that “the Ward-Hopkins controversy was the political struggle between similar interests in two different sections” of the Colony. Bernard Bailyn goes so far as to describe the controversy as “devoid of ideological meaning.” See Bailyn, Pamphlets, 501. 12 Paul Campbell, The Rights of Colonies Examined (Providence: Rhode Island Bicentennial Foundation, 1974), 7.

4 Wilcox

WR�PDNH�WKH�PRVW�RI�HYHU\�(PSOR\PHQW�«�VXFK�D�0DQ�LV�LQÁXHQFHG�E\�RWKHU�0RWLYHV�WKDQ�those of Love to God and his Country.”13 Bribery and tit-for-tat exchanges became accepted tactics for Hopkins and Ward as elections grew increasingly bitter. Candidates fought, in Bernard Bailyn’s words, “with every weapon of publicity, vote-corralling, and wire-pulling available to eighteenth-century Americans.”14 By 1760, T.W. Bicknell has remarked, a vote could be bought “for the price of a pig.”15 In a series of hotly contested annual elections, several of which were decided by just a few dozen votes, Hopkins and Ward traded the JRYHUQRUVKLS��VRPHWLPHV�ORVLQJ�DQG�UHJDLQLQJ�WKH�RIÀFH�ZLWKLQ�D�VLQJOH�\HDU�16 Assessing the situation, which he termed “Rhode Islandism,” with a grim weariness, one Providence minister concluded that a “Surer method cannot be taken to ruine a people…For these abominations our land mourns.”17

For all the vitriol spewed over the course of a decade of contested elections, though, Rhode Islanders remained politically united when non-local issues arose. Rhode Island voters elected legislators on the basis of localized political divisions, but they expected their legislators to transcend the particularities of colonial politics when imperial policy encroached on local liberties.18 Rhode Island’s gubernatorial and legislative elections, in RWKHU�ZRUGV��´UHÁHFWHG�RQO\�ORFDO�FRQFHUQV��QRW�WKRVH�ZKLFK�PLJKW�EH�FDOOHG�FRORQLDO�RU�American.”19 Even as they hurled abuse at each other in pamphlets and newspapers, “the Ward and Hopkins factions began to develop an overarching consensus on imperial affairs that they lacked on internal affairs.”20 This remarkable ability to set aside local partisanship LQ�WKH�QDPH�RI�D�XQLÀHG�H[WUD�FRORQLDO�SROLF\�ZRXOG�EH�WKH�GHÀQLQJ�FKDUDFWHULVWLF�RI�5KRGH�Island as it confronted unexpected changes in British colonial policy in the 1760s.

Rhode Island’s unique coupling of local factionalism and broader unity suggests a preliminary motivation for Hopkins’ decision to publish Colonies Examined anonymously and under “Authority.” As Hopkins wrote Colonies Examined in November of 1764,

13 James N. Arnold, ed., “Hopkins-Ward Letters of 1757,” Narragansett Historical Register, IV (1884-1885), 43. The letter, dated April 12, accuses Hopkins of nepotism and of accepting bribes. 14 Bailyn, Pamphlets, 501. 15 T.W. Bicknell, History of the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, 4 vols. (New York: American Historical Society, 1920), 717.16 For a breakdown of who held the Governorship at what times between 1755 and 1765, see Foster’s Ap-pendix Z, 255. 17 Quoted in David S. Lovejoy, The Rights of Colonies Examined (Providence: Rhode Island Bicentennial Foundation, 1974), 29. 18 Ibid., 3. 19 Ibid., 2. 20 William G. McLoughlin, Rhode Island: A Bicentennial History (New York: Norton & Company, 1978), 82.


he was nearing the twenty-third month of his third period21 as governor, and no doubt UHFRJQL]HG�WKDW�WKH�HOHFWLRQV�RI�HDUO\��PLJKW�ZHOO�UHPRYH�KLP�IURP�RIÀFH��DV�WKH\�KDG�before in 1757 and 1762. (Samuel Ward would, in fact, regain the governorship in 1765.) Hopkins was, in short, well accustomed by 1764 to the volatility of Rhode Island politics DQG�WR�WKH�LPSHUPDQHQFH�RI�KLV�RZQ�RIÀFH��%\�SXEOLVKLQJ�KLV�WUDFW�DQRQ\PRXVO\�DQG�XQGHU�“Authority,” Hopkins ensured that his arguments would not be tied to his own ephemeral position – or worse, to the name of an incumbent politician who had been voted out of RIÀFH�²�EXW�ZRXOG�LQVWHDG�VSHDN�RQ�EHKDOI�RI�WKH�HQWLUH�FRORQLDO�JRYHUQPHQW��$QG�FUXFLDOO\��the political consensus forged around non-local issues like imperial taxation meant that Hopkins could honestly presume to speak on behalf of both major political factions in writing Colonies Examined. The authority referenced on the pamphlet’s title page was, in other words, an authentic authority, bestowed on the text by a bipartisan array of Rhode Island politicians. Rhode Island’s political factionalism, and the consequent instability of WKH�JRYHUQRU·V�RIÀFH��WKXV�SURYLGHG�+RSNLQV�ZLWK�D�PRWLYDWLRQ�WR�SXEOLVK�DQRQ\PRXVO\��while the colony-wide consensus around Hopkins’ extra-colonial arguments gave him D� MXVWLÀFDWLRQ� WR� SXEOLVK� XQGHU� ´$XWKRULW\�µ�$� IXOOHU� H[SODQDWLRQ� RI�+RSNLQV·� DXWKRULDO�decision, however, requires a discussion of the sweeping changes in British colonial policy that occurred in the 1760s.

Stephen Hopkins found himself at the helm of Rhode Island colony during a moment of profound economic and political turmoil. For over a century, Rhode Island KDG�EHQHÀWHG�IURP�D�V\VWHP�RI�´EHQLJQ�QHJOHFWµ�WKDW�HVVHQWLDOO\�FUHDWHG�´DQ�H[SHULPHQW�in self-government…with little interference from the mother country.”22 Rhode Islanders ZHUH�SURXG�DQG�ÀHUFHO\�SURWHFWLYH�RI�WKHLU�IRXQGLQJ�FKDUWHU��ZKLFK�JXDUDQWHHG�WKHP�WKH�same rights and liberties “as if they, and every of them, were borne within the realme of England.”23�7KH�ZLGH�EHUWK�JUDQWHG�WR�5KRGH�,VODQG�ZDV�SDUWLFXODUO\�SURÀWDEOH�LQ�WKH�area of commerce, and by 1760 the colony had developed a formidable—and decidedly illicit—trade regime. In particular, Rhode Island merchants practiced a studied ignorance of the Molasses Act of 1733, British enforcement of which had been “so lax and lenient” that traders “felt free to follow their own self-interest in the matter.”24 With England’s

21 I use the word “period” rather than “term” to emphasize that Hopkins had already been elected and removed from the governorship twice, and then elected again, when he wrote Colonies Examined. Some of his previous “periods” as governor included multiple terms. 22 Lovejoy, 5.23 The Charter of the Governor and Company of the English Colony of Rhode Island, John Russell Bartlett, ed., Records of the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations in New England (Providence, 1857), 5. 24 McLoughlin, 85.

6 Wilcox

tacit approval, the Rhode Island sugar trade ballooned, and by the time Hopkins, who had himself invested heavily in the sugar trade,25 became governor, “trade was the principal source of Rhode Island’s livelihood, and molasses was the staple of that trade.”26

The centrality of illicit commerce to Rhode Island’s wealth meant that Rhode Islanders responded angrily to the British Ministry’s 1763 announcement that “suppression of the clandestine and prohibited trade … and the improvement of the revenue” would become its chief priorities.27 The sudden imposition of duties that had been long ignored amounted, in the eyes of colonial merchants, to a “reckless disturbance of a perfectly good economic system.”28�$QG�EHFDXVH�5KRGH�,VODQG�ZDV�XQLTXHO\�YXOQHUDEOH� WR�ÁXFWXDWLRQV�in the sugar trade, the colony “stood to be the most adversely affected by this change in imperial policy.”29 In protest, Stephen Hopkins took up his pen and advocated against the taxes in a two-part newspaper article entitled “An Essay on the Trade of the Northern Colonies.”30 The article appeared in the Providence Gazette, a newspaper founded in 1762 under the editorship of William Goddard, an ally of Hopkins, who generally used his printing press as a weapon with which to attack Samuel Ward. In his essay, Hopkins focused RQ� WKH�VSHFLÀF�HFRQRPLF� LPSOLFDWLRQV�RI� WKH�0RODVVHV�$FW�RQ�5KRGH� ,VODQG�FRPPHUFH��The Act, he argued, amounted “in effect, to a Prohibition which hath never in any Degree increased the Royal Revenue.”31 Hopkins presented statistics describing the major trends in Rhode Island’s commercial activity over the past decade, and proposed, as a compromise, a duty of one half penny per gallon—a tax that Hopkins concluded would have been “cheerfully paid by the merchants.”32 Conspicuously absent from Hopkins’ “Essay on the Trade,” however, is any discussion of parliamentary supremacy, the constitutionality RI�WD[DWLRQ��RU�FRORQLDO�XQLÀFDWLRQ³LVVXHV�WKDW�ZRXOG�SOD\�D�SURPLQHQW�UROH�LQ�Colonies Examined. Instead, “Essay on the Trade” functioned merely as a statement of an economic grievance, largely particular to Rhode Island, which Hopkins hoped that Parliament would redress. Parliament’s fundamental authority to regulate colonial trade, meanwhile, went unquestioned.

25 Foster, 99. 26 Frederick Barnays Weiner, “Rhode Island Merchants and the Sugar Act,” New England Quarterly, 3(July 1930), 465.27 Bartlett, ed., Records … Rhode Island, 375. 28 McLoughlin, 85. Confusingly, the re-imposition of the 1733 Molasses Act is sometimes referred to as the 1764 Sugar Act. For simplicity, I refer to the Molasses Act throughout. 29 Campbell, 11.30 Providence Gazette, January 14 and 21, 1764. 31 Providence Gazette, January 21, 1764.32 Ibid.


In spite of Rhode Island’s protestations, however, the Molasses Act was renewed in April of 1764 and a new period of strict commerce regulation was marked by the arrival of two imperial warships in Rhode Island’s harbors.33 Frustration over the new sugar duty was quickly overshadowed, however, by ominous reports from England of an impending stamp tax. Under Hopkins’ leadership, the Rhode Island General Assembly voted to form a committee that would decide upon measures “… to procure repeal of the Sugar Act ... and prevent the levying of a stamp duty … and generally for the prevention of all such taxes, duties, or impositions … which may be inconsistent with their rights and privileges as British subjects.”34

Hopkins’ emphasis on defending the “rights and privileges as British subjects” VXJJHVWV�D�VKLIW�LQ�UKHWRULF�WKDW�ZRXOG�ÀQG�LWV�IXOO�H[SUHVVLRQ�LQ�Colonies Examined. Mere economic grievances were no longer the focus of Hopkins’ anger; instead, the looming threat of the Stamp Act forced Hopkins to consider more fundamental questions of justice, of constitutionality, and of parliamentary supremacy. Indeed, this change in argumentative DSSURDFK�ZDV�UHÁHFWHG�EURDGO\�DFURVV�WKH�FRORQLHV35 – most notably in James Otis’ highly LQÁXHQWLDO� SDPSKOHW� The Rights of the British Colonies Asserted and Proved, which vociferously attacked the Sugar Act and Stamp Act as not merely economically detrimental but as violations of “the fundamental principles of law.”36 By September of 1764, Hopkins was beginning to draft his own arguments against the Stamp Act, rooted in the same type of rhetoric that Otis had applied from Boston. England’s new colonial policy, he would soon declare, constituted a “manifest violation of long-enjoyed rights” provided by Rhode Island’s founding charter.37 But because this new discourse—centered on rights rather than economics—applied equally to all the colonies, and because the Stamp Act threatened WR�LPSRVH�D�VHYHUH�ÀQDQFLDO�EXUGHQ�RQ�D�FRQVLGHUDEO\�ODUJHU�JURXS�WKDQ�VXJDU�PHUFKDQWV�alone, Hopkins found that his audience for anti-British arguments had suddenly expanded. Unlike his “Essay on the Trade,” which had been written essentially from the standpoint of a Rhode Island merchant attempting to persuade the British Ministry that its policies were illogical, Hopkins’ contribution to anti-Stamp Act literature would need to speak to other colonies as much as it spoke to England.

33 The duty imposed by the Act, however, was lowered to one half of the original 1733 rate – still considerably higher than Hopkins’ proposed rate of one half penny. 34 Bartlett, ed., Records … Rhode Island, 403.35 Campbell, 22.36 Reprinted in Charles F. Mullett, ed., “Some Political Writings of James Otis,” University of Missouri Studies, 4(July 1929), 37 – 101. 37 Bailyn, Pamphlets, 511.

8 Wilcox

When Stephen Hopkins made the decision to publish his Colonies Examined under “Authority,” he invoked a long legacy of government-approved publishing that had its roots in late seventeenth-century newspaper printing. Beginning in the 1690s, royally appointed governors in the colonies were authorized by the Crown to censor and control the printing and distribution of political news.38 Colonial governments exercised that authority enthusiastically, as a Boston publisher learned in 1690 when he issued a three-page journal titled Publick Occurrences. Within four days, the Massachusetts governor had condemned the document for having been published “without the least Privity or Countenance of Authority.”39�,W�ZDV�QHDUO\�ÀIWHHQ�\HDUV�EHIRUH�DQRWKHU�QHZVSDSHU�ZDV�SXEOLVKHG�LQ�FRORQLDO�$PHULFD��DQG�WKH�ÀUVW�WR�VXUYLYH�LWV�LQIDQF\�FDUULHG�WKH�OHJHQG�´3XEOLVKHG�E\�$XWKRULW\µ�RQ�its banner.40 This was, Jeffrey Pasley has observed, “both a seal of approval and a general WUXWKµ�VLQFH�WKH�SDSHU·V�SXEOLVKHU��%RVWRQ·V�SRVWPDVWHU��´DOORZHG�RIÀFLDOV�WR�YHW�HDFK�LVVXH�before publication.”41 The imprimatur “Published by Authority,” then, had its roots in the very earliest attempts at freedom of the press in colonial America, and grew to indicate the very literal approval of a colonial government, which was given broad powers to decide what was and was not worthy of print.

In the early eighteenth century, however, colonial politicians began to see a relatively IUHH�SUHVV� DV� D�SRWHQWLDO�EHQHÀW�� DQG� WKH�SUDFWLFH�RI� UHTXLULQJ�DOO�SULQWHG�PDWHULDO� WR�EH�“Published by Authority” began to wane. By the 1720s royal governors in the colonies had largely abandoned their efforts to authorize every publication..42 Instead, a selective freedom of the press emerged, wherein colonial printers could freely criticize the British monarchy, though criticisms aimed closer to home typically still resulted in punishment.43 ,Q� WKH� PHDQWLPH�� WKH� LPSULPDWXU� ´3XEOLVKHG� E\� $XWKRULW\µ� EHJDQ� WR� PDUN� RIÀFLDO�government documents, rather than simply articles and essays that the colonial government had deemed worthy of public consumption. By the mid-18th century, “Published by Authority” appeared with increasing frequency on legislative records, court decisions, and

38 Richard D. Brown, “The Shifting Freedoms of the Press in the Eighteenth Century” in Hugh Amory and David Hall, eds., A History of The Book in America: The Colonial Book in the Atlantic World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 367.39 Clyde Augustus Duniway, The Development of Freedom of the Press in Massachusetts (New York: Long-mans, Green, and Co., 1906), 68-69. Italics mine. 40 I refer here to the Boston News-Letter. 41 Jeffrey L. Pasley, The Tyranny of Printers: Newspaper Politics in the Early American Republic (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 2001), 30. James Franklin’s New England Courant, for H[DPSOH��RPLWWHG�´3XEOLVKHG�E\�$XWKRULW\µ�IURP�LWV�PDVWKHDG�ZKHQ�LW�ZDV�ÀUVW�SXEOLVKHG�LQ��42 Brown, 386.43 Pasley, 32.


public notices, but rarely on news or editorial print.44 Printers who earned the right to print government documents under “Authority” acquired “a substantial source of income”—and typically protected that privilege by refraining from printing anything that might be read as controversial by the colonial power structure.45 By the 1760s, then, “Published by Authority” had come to denote not simply a publication that had passed the scrutiny of the public censors, but a document that was truly an intellectual, or administrative, product of the colonial government.

In mid-November, 1764, Stephen Hopkins presented his Colonies Examined to the Rhode Island General Assembly. After deliberating, the Assembly ordered the pamphlet printed “in behalf of the Governor and Company of this Colony,” and then went further, instructing Rhode Island’s trade agent to carry the pamphlet to London and have it reprinted there. Throughout the process, the Assembly concluded, the agent should work “in conjunction with the other [colonies’] agents, as they shall think will be most for the advantage of the colonies.”46 And so it was that Colonies Examined came to be published under “Authority.” By gaining the approval of the General Assembly to print his pamphlet DV�D� VWDWH�GRFXPHQW��+RSNLQV�JDYH� LW� DQ�DXUD�RI�RIÀFLDO�REMHFWLYLW\� WKDW�FRXOG�QRW�KDYH�been achieved under the name of an individual. By the mid-18th century “Published by $XWKRULW\µ�KDG�FRPH�WR�GHVLJQDWH�GRFXPHQWV�WKDW�ZHUH�WKH�RIÀFLDO�SURGXFWV�RI�JRYHUQPHQW�ZRUN�²�DQG�WKDW�UHSUHVHQWHG�WKH�JRYHUQPHQW·V�XQLÀHG�SHUVSHFWLYH�RQ�DQ�LVVXH��+RSNLQV·�XQLTXH�SRVLWLRQ�DV�WKH�JRYHUQRU�RI�D�FRORQ\�LQ�ZKLFK�WKH�FRQVHQVXV�YLHZ�ZDV�RQH�RI�ÀHUFH�anti-British sentiment afforded him the unusual ability to back his arguments with the RIÀFLDO�VHDO�RI�DSSURYDO�RI�WKH�FRORQLDO�JRYHUQPHQW�

Marshalling that authority behind his own writing served an important purpose for Hopkins, as he hoped that Colonies Examined would resonate not just within Rhode Island, but throughout the colonies and across the Atlantic. After all, Hopkins, who had been an early supporter of colonial cooperation during the 1754 Albany Conference, saw quite clearly that an effective opposition to the Stamp Act would require a powerful coalition of colonies. Publishing under “Authority” permitted Hopkins to speak to other colonies on EHKDOI�RI�DQ�HQWLUH��XQLÀHG�5KRGH�,VODQG��+RSNLQV·�UKHWRULF�LQ�Colonies Examined reinforced his emphasis on colonial cooperation, and contrasted starkly with his language in “An Essay on the Trade.” Whereas “An Essay on the Trade” grounded itself in the interests of

44 I base this observation on a wide-ranging, though by no means exhaustive, examination of documents featuring the term “Published by Authority” from the 18th century. As late as the mid-20th century, the seal “Published by Authority” continued to be a common feature of public documents in several states. 45 Bernard A. Weisberger, The American Newspaperman (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961), 12.46 Bartlett, ed., Records … Rhode Island, 403.

10 Wilcox

Rhode Islanders, or of northern colonists, Colonies Examined repeatedly invoked the rights of “Americans.” “Surely if the colonies had been fully heard [before the imposition of the recent duties],” Hopkins argued, “the liberties and properties of the Americans would not have been so much disregarded.”47 Hopkins’ rhetorical style also reinforced the sense that it had been written not by an individual, but by a collective and authoritative body. Hopkins consistently speaks as “we” or “us,” often in the impersonal tone of an objective historian recounting well-known facts. “Permit us,” Hopkins writes at one point, “to examine what hath generally been the condition of colonies with respect to freedom.”48 His concluding paragraphs abandon the pamphlet’s objective tone, but retain a sense of inter-colonial unity as Hopkins crafts a paean to the earliest colonists:

:H�ÀQDOO\�EHJ�OHDYH�WR�DVVHUW�WKDW�WKH�ÀUVW�SODQWHUV�RI�WKHVH�FRORQLHV�ZHUH�SLRXV�Christians, were faithful subjects, who, with a fortitude and perseverance little known and less considered, settled these wild countries, by God’s goodness and their own amazing labors.49

Hopkins’ rhetoric thus had the dual effect of invoking a sense of unity among the colonies DQG�RI�FUHDWLQJ�WKH�LPSUHVVLRQ�WKDW�KH�ZDV�VSHDNLQJ�RQ�EHKDOI�RI�D�FROOHFWLYH��XQLÀHG�HQWLW\��Hopkins’ romantic portrayal of the early history of America had the additional effect of encouraging the sympathies in readers from other colonies. As word of Colonies Examined spread, it began to sell in Boston and New York, where it was advertised as “Just Published in Providence—The Rights of Colonies Examined—Published by Authority.”50 The total absence of authorial ascription in advertisements outside of Rhode Island suggests that Colonies Examined was, in fact, received precisely as Hopkins had hoped – namely, as a product of government authority rather than of individual protest.

It is also indicative of the effectiveness of publishing under “Authority” that the main rebuttal to Hopkins’ pamphlet sought to characterize Colonies Examined not as a state document but as the product of an incompetent, uneducated politician. The rebuttal, written by Martin Howard Jr. but published anonymously under the title A Letter from A Gentleman at Halifax to his Friend in Rhode-Island, operated under the pretense of being a letter from an informed citizen in Nova Scotia. In reality, Howard was a resident of Newport, but by imitating a far-off loyalist who nonetheless knew Hopkins’ identity, Hopkins sought to

47 Bailyn, Pamphlets, 520. Emphasis Hopkins’. 48 Hopkins, 509. I am sensitive to the fact that Hopkins may have been employing the royal we, but Hopkins’ uses of “we” and “us” are ambiguous. At times they seem clearly to refer to a collective body of speakers, at other times they seem to invoke Hopkins alone. 49 Ibid., 522.50 The Boston Post-Boy, December 31, 1764.


undermine the veil of anonymity that strengthened Hopkins’ position.51 Howard began by criticizing the grammar of “Mr. H-p---s, your governor,” whom he claimed “does not know a noun substantive from an adjective…in his profoundly stupid ignorance.”52 Poking fun of Hopkins’ rural upbringing, Howard declared Hopkins a “ragged country fellow” who hardly deserved the “honor” of a governorship.53 Clearly Howard recognized the persuasive force of a document published by the colonial government, and sought to diminish its impact by maligning its author as unauthoritative. Other portions of Letter from a Gentleman challenged Hopkins’ representativeness of “the general temper and conduct of the Americans,” and wondered aloud how such “libel” could be “contained in a pamphlet published by authority.”54 “However false and scandalous it may be,” Howard ZURWH�UHYHDOLQJO\��D�SDPSKOHW�SXEOLVKHG�E\�DXWKRULW\�ZRXOG�KDYH�DQ�LQÁXHQFH�WKDW�´FDQ�never be effaced.”55 Martin Howard’s response to Hopkins thus clearly illustrates that, by writing with the authority of Rhode Island, rather than merely the authority of an individual Rhode Islander, Hopkins made a more compelling appeal to other colonies that American rights as a whole were being infringed upon.

Furthermore, by printing under “Authority” Hopkins channeled the prevailing understanding of the role of the press as a unifying force for the public against the overarching powers of a corrupt executive in England. “Colonial Americans,” observes Richard Buel, viewed the press … as an instrument by which the mass of the people might seek to compensate for some of the disadvantages they labored under in their struggle ZLWK�WKH�H[HFXWLYH��6SHFLÀFDOO\�LW�RIIHUHG�D�UHPHG\�IRU�WKH�SHRSOH·V�PRVW�FKURQLF�DLOPHQW��disunity.56

%\�SUHVHQWLQJ�DQ�DUJXPHQW� WR� WKH�FRORQLHV�RQ�EHKDOI�RI� D�XQLÀHG�5KRGH� ,VODQG��Hopkins reinforced the ethos of unity that underlay the boom in political pamphleteering 51 Throughout this paper, I have presented Rhode Island as a colony that agreed, above all, on the egregiousness of British taxation policy. Howard, a local judge and minor politician in Newport, appears initially to be an exception to that consensus, but his biography ultimately evidences the strength of Rhode Island’s anti-Crown sentiment. Howard’s small group of Newport loyalists, often referred to as the “contaminated knot” or “Newport junta” by Rhode Islanders, was so widely despised that after the publication of Letter from a Gentleman�WKHLU�HIÀJLHV�ZHUH�EXUQHG�LQ�1HZSRUW��7KH�QH[W�GD\��+RZDUG�DQG�KLV�FROOHDJXHV�ÁHG�5KRGH�,VODQG�for England, never to return. See Bailyn, Pamphlets, 530.52 Howard, 527.53 Bailyn, Ideological Origins, 11.54 Howard, 533, 542. Emphasis Howard’s. It apparently did not occur to Howard that it would be strange for a writer from Halifax to claim to better represent the “general temper” of Americans.55 Ibid., 542.56 Richard Buel, “Freedom of the Press in Revolutionary America: The Evolution of Libertarianism, 1760 – 1820” in Bernard Bailyn and John B. Hench, eds., The Press and the American Revolution (Worcester: American Antiquarian Society, 1980), 72.

12 Wilcox

that accompanied the American Revolution. Indeed, Hopkins’ very decision to publish Colonies Examined as a pamphlet, rather than as a newspaper article in the partisan Providence Gazette, bespoke a desire for a format that would demonstrate unity. The press, Hopkins realized, was capable of cultivating a sense of unity in different types of groups. Typically, Hopkins used the Providence Gazette to encourage unity in his own political faction. In this case, however, given the particulars of his argument and the broad scope of his audience, a pamphlet offered a medium that fostered unity not only among Rhode Islanders, but throughout the colonies. In many ways then, Hopkins’ decision to publish anonymously and under “Authority” was in keeping with an intellectual context that emphasized unity and a political context that offered Hopkins only an impermanent and partial authority.

This paper contributes to a movement in studies of authorship that seeks broader, more nuanced understandings of the historical motivations behind anonymous authorship. Traditionally, historians have seen anonymity as a refuge from harm or embarrassment, particularly for authors of controversial political texts. Archer Taylor and Frederic Mother articulated this viewpoint in 1951, observing that “Very practical considerations touching life and limb have guided many who wrote…disputed political texts. A disguise saved them from being drawn into controversy or protected them from physical danger.”57 Considering anonymity in seventeenth-century Germany, Martin Muslow more recently noted that “it was frequent practice to publish polemical, heterodox, or somewhat explosive material anonymously or pseudonymously.”58 In such a context, those who “unmasked radical authors” became “dangerous persecutors.”59 It is not surprising, then, that “the most familiar anonymous texts of the Enlightenment are those that put their authors at risk of persecution, whether for libel, sedition, immorality, or irreligion.”60 Meanwhile, historians of female authorship have traditionally viewed female anonymous authorship as a “defensive mechanism” against societies trained to expect male authority.61 Yet these perceptions of anonymity as a purely defensive means by which an author can write without fear have been challenged, particularly by scholars like Robert Griffen who have 57 Archer Taylor and Fredric J. Mosher. The Bibliographical History of Anonyma and Pseudonyma (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1951), 82. 58 Martin Muslow, “Practices of Unmasking: Polyhistors, Correspondence, and the Birth of Dictionaries of Pseudonymity in Seventeenth-Century Germany,” Journal of the History of Ideas 67:2 (April 2006), 220. 59 Ibid., 243.60 Mary Terrall, “The Uses of Anonymity in the Age of Reason” in Giulio Biogioli and Peter Galison eds., 6FLHQWLÀF�$XWKRUVKLS��&UHGLW�DQG�,QWHOOHFWXDO�3URSHUW\�LQ�6FLHQFH�(New York: Taylor & Francis Books, 2003), 92.61 Margaret J. M. Ezell. “Reading Pseudonyms in Seventeenth-Century English Coterie Literature,” Essays in Literature��6SULQJ��(]HOO�FULWLFL]HV�WKLV�WUDGLWLRQDO�YLHZ��ÀQGLQJ�LW�́ VWDWLFµ�DQG�́ WUDQVKLVWRULFDO�µ


realized that “the phenomenon of anonymity itself as a centuries-long cultural practice” has not been analyzed satisfyingly on a broad scale.62 Echoing the arguments of many of his FROOHDJXHV��*ULIÀQ�KDV�ZDUQHG�KLVWRULDQV�´QRW�WR�WDNH�DQRQ\PLW\�DV�D�VWDWLF�SUDFWLFH�ZLWK�D�known and familiar meaning, but to historicize it properly in each case.”63

:LWK�WKDW�PHWKRGRORJ\�LQ�PLQG��D�QXPEHU�RI�KLVWRULDQV�KDYH�LGHQWLÀHG�LQVWDQFHV�in which anonymous authorship functions not merely as a defense mechanism, but rather as a tool by which authors establish a greater authority than would have been possible in publishing under a single name. Mary Terrall, for example, has examined “the uses of anonymity in the Age of Reason” and has found that “institutions and individuals, in fact, manipulated authorial invisibility for a variety of purposes.”64 And though anonymity, Terrall continues,

often correlated with vulnerability on the part of the author, this was by no means always the case. Writers chose to keep their identities secret for a variety of reasons related to other aspects of their public status. Ironically enough, anonymity could become a resource for making and defending reputation.65

7KRXJK�7HUUDOO�JRHV�RQ�WR�GLVFXVV�WKH�XVH�RI�DQRQ\PLW\�DV�D�WRRO�IRU�HVWDEOLVKLQJ�VFLHQWLÀF�authority, she could just as easily have been describing Hopkins’ motives in publishing Colonies Examined anonymously and by “Authority.” As the governor of Rhode Island colony, Hopkins was not a vulnerable writer resisting unfavorable social norms, nor did his arguments place him in immediate physical danger. To the contrary, his arguments ZHUH�VR�ZLGHO\�DFFHSWHG�WKDW�+RSNLQV·�SULQFLSDO�ULYDO�SDPSKOHWHHU��0DUWLQ�+RZDUG�-U��ÁHG�the colony for fear of his own safety. Yet, in spite of his popularity and the considerable appeal of his pamphlet, anonymity still offered Hopkins a “resource” because it allowed him to transcend his “public status” and link his argument to a broader body politic. As the governor of Rhode Island, Hopkins held certain authority—but being published under “Authority” made Colonies Examined the voice of the Rhode Island government, an 62 *ULIÀQ��63 ,ELG��&XUUHQW�KLVWRULRJUDSKLFDO�GHEDWHV�RQ�DXWKRUVKLS�KDYH�WKHLU�URRWV�LQ�0LFKHO�)RXFDXOW·V�LQÁXHQWLDO�(though now largely discredited) essay “What is an Author?” See Michel Foucault, “What is an Author” in Language, Counter-Memory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews, ed. Donald Bouchard (Cornell UP, 1977), 113-38. For more recent examples of scholars who have sought nuanced and localized historicizations of authorship, see Roger Chartier, “Foucault’s Chiasmus. Authorship between Science and Literature in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries,” in Biagioli and Galison eds., 6FLHQWLÀF�$XWKRUVKLS��Credit and Intellectual Property in Science (2003), pp. 13-31. See also Martha Woodmansee, “The Genius and the Copyright: Economic and Legal Conditions of the Emergence of the Author,” Eighteenth-Century Studies 17 (1984), 425-48. Finally see, more broadly, Harold Love, Attributing Authorship (Cambridge University Press, 2002).64 Terrall, 91.65 Ibid., 92.

14 Wilcox

authority that no individual could hope to rival. Stephen Hopkins’ Colonies Examined thus demonstrates the importance of properly historicizing individual cases of anonymous authorship, and reveals the nuanced motivations, far beyond mere fear, that encouraged authors like Hopkins to pursue anonymity.

This essay has examined a highly unusual authorial decision in colonial America, and has sought to explain that decision by situating it in the precise political, intellectual, and publishing contexts in which it was made. Stephen Hopkins, above all, sought anonymity and the authority of the state as a remedy for the impermanence of his own political position. But the ideological content of his argument, and the need for colonial unity in the face of the Stamp Act, added to the importance of speaking on behalf of Rhode Island colony rather than simply as its occasional governor. Furthermore, by publishing under “Authority,” Hopkins contributed to a discourse that increasingly saw value in FRORQLDO�XQLW\��VLQFH�KLV�SDPSKOHW�DSSHDUHG�DV�DQ�RIÀFLDO�GRFXPHQW�RI�5KRGH�,VODQG�FRORQ\�but repeatedly invoked the interests of Americans, rather than simply Rhode Islanders. Finally, by publishing his argument as an independent pamphlet, rather than in the partisan Providence Gazette that typically housed Hopkins’ writing, Hopkins sought to separate himself from the factionalism that dominated Rhode Island politics and speak instead WR� WKH� ´VWXEERUQ�� SXJQDFLRXV�� DQG� FRFNVXUHµ� DVVHUWLRQV�RI� FKDUWHU� ULJKWV� WKDW� XQLÀHG�DOO�Rhode Islanders.66 In doing so, Hopkins made use of anonymity in a way that was far from defensive. Instead, anonymity allowed Hopkins to transcend individual authority and attain a more compelling, permanent, and convincing authorial representation.

66 McLoughlin, 84.


bibliogrAPhy

Appleton, Marguerite. A Portrait Album of Four Great Rhode Island Leaders. Providence: Rhode Island Historical Society, 1978.

Arnold, James N. “Hopkins-Ward Letters of 1757.” Narragansett Historical Register 4 (1885).

Bailyn, Bernard. Pamphlets of the American Revolution, 1750-1776. The John Harvard Library. Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1965.

———. The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1992.

Bicknell, Thomas Williams. The History of the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations. New York, 1920.

Brown, Richard D. “The Shifting Freedoms of the Press in the Eighteenth Century.” In A History of the Book in America: The Colonial Book in the Atlantic World, edited by Hugh Amory and David Hall. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.

Buel, Richard. “Freedom of the Press in Revolutionary America: The Evolution of Libertarianism, 1760 - 1820.” In The Press and the American Revolution, edited by Bernard Bailyn and John B. Hench. Worcester: American Antiquarian Society, 1980.

Charles F. Mullet, ed. “Some Political Writings of James Otis.” University of Missouri Studies 4, no. 3 (July 1929): 37-101.

Duniway, C. A. The Development of Freedom of the Press in Massachusetts. Harvard Historical Studies ; V. 12. Vol. v. 12, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1906.

Ezell, Margaret J.M. “Reading Pseudonyms in Seventeenth-Century English Coterie Literature.” Essays in Literature 21 (1994).

Foster, William E. Stephen Hopkins, a Rhode Island Statesman. A Study in the Political History of the Eighteenth Century. Rhode Island Historical Tracts ; [1st ser.], no. 19, Providence: S. S. Rider, 1884.

*ULIÀQ��5REHUW��´$QRQ\PLW\�DQG�$XWKRUVKLS�µ�New Literary History 30, no. 4 (1999): 879-80.

Hopkins, Stephen, and Paul Campbell. The Rights of Colonies Examined. Rhode Island Revolutionary Heritage Series. Vol. no. 2, Providence: Rhode Island Bicentennial Foundation, 1974.

16 Wilcox

Lovejoy, David S. Rhode Island Politics and the American Revolution, 1760-1776. Providence: Brown University Press, 1958.

McLoughlin, William Gerald. Rhode Island : A Bicentennial History. The States and the Nation Series. New York: W. W. Norton, 1978.

Millar, John F. “Stephen Hopkins: An Architect of Independence.” Newport History 53 (1980).

Mulsow, Martin. “Practices of Unmasking: Polyhistors, Correspondence, and the Birth of Dictionaries of Pseudonymity in Seventeenth-Century Germany.” Journal of the History of Ideas 67, no. 2 (2006): 219-50.

Newbold, Robert C. The Albany Congress and Plan of Union of 1754. [1st] ed. New York: Vantage Press, 1955.

Pasley, Jeffrey L. “The Tyranny of Printers”: Newspaper Politics in the Early American Republic. Jeffersonian America. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 2001.

Rhode, Island, and John Russell ed Bartlett. Records of the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, in New England. Printed by Order of the General Assembly. Providence: A. C. Greene and brothers, state printers [etc.], 1856.

Rhode Island, Colony, and John Russell ed Bartlett. Records of the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations in New England. New York: AMS Press, 1968.

Taylor, Archer, and Fredric John Mosher. The Bibliographical History of Anonyma and Pseudonyma. Chicago: published for the Newberry Library by the University of Chicago Press, 1951.

Terrall, Mary. “The Uses of Anonymity in the Age of Reason.” In 6FLHQWLÀF�$XWKRUVKLS��Credit and Intellectual Property in Science, edited by Mario Biogioli and Pater Galison. New York: Taylor & Francis Books, 2003.

Thompson, Mack E. “The Ward-Hopkins Controversy and the American Revolution in Rhode Island: An Interpretation.” The William and Mary Quarterly 16, no. 3 (1959): 363-75.

Weisberger, Bernard A. The American Newspaperman. The Chicago History of American Civilization. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961.

Wiener, Frederick Bernays. “The Rhode Island Merchants and the Sugar Act.” The New England Quarterly 3, no. 3 (1930): 464-500.

17

“thE dEsErt is still thEir homE”ChANgEs iN o’odhAm lANd, lAbor ANd CulturE, 1936-1970

reBeCCa Cohen

On December 24, 1936, Danny Lopez was born under a mesquite tree in Gu Oidak (Big Field), a small village just southwest of Sells, the largest town on the main Tohono O’odham reservation in southern Arizona (Figure 1.1). In 1972, more than thirty years later, Lopez brought historian Bernard Fontana to Gu Oidak; he pointed to a patch on the ground and recalled that that was the very piece of earth on which he emerged into the world. By this time, Lopez relished his intimate connection to the land. He had become a champion of cultural revitalization for the tribe, poet, singer of traditional O’odham songs, student and teacher of O’odham traditional basket weaving and dancing, traditional farmer, and community organizer. He fervently believed that O’odham tribal beliefs and culture contained solutions to improving the quality of life on the reservation. But this was not always the case. For much of the 20th century, he did not see the value in pursuing these goals; like many other tribal members, O’odham traditional culture remained at the periphery of his life, overshadowed by more pressing economic concerns and relegated to the domain of conservative tribal elders and a few yearly festivals.

Although Lopez was only one member of a large and diverse tribal community, the trajectory of his life and eventual advocacy on behalf of the importance of teaching and revitalizing many O’odham traditions illuminates the dynamic forces that shaped Tohono O’odham life and culture between the 1930s and 1970s. Lopez grew up on the reservation in the mid-twentieth century, a time of political, economic, environmental, and cultural change during which the traditional O’odham lifestyle based around farming and foraging that had helped sustain the tribe in the harsh landscape of the Sonoran desert for hundreds of years disintegrated.1

The O’odham had historically been at the mercy of natural rainfall, their sustenance dependent upon unpredictable patterns of cloudburst and drought. Bound by harsh 1 Fontana and Schaefer, Of Earth and Little Rain: The Papago Indians, 184; Tom Beal, “Danny’s Gone, But He Helped His O’odham Culture Live On,” Arizona Daily Star, October 22, 2008.

Rebecca Cohen, “‘!e Desert is Still their Home’: Changes in O’odham Land, Labor and Culture 1936-1970,” Tempus 13.1 (Spring 2012), 17-41.

18 Cohen

environmental constraints, a deep and abiding respect for the land and its ability to give and take emerged as a central aspect of tribal culture. Called the O’odham Himdag (“the Desert People’s Way”), this unique, all-encompassing philosophy guided the tribe’s ethics and actions, rooted in the desert landscape. The Himdag prescribes a spiritual understanding of the complex reciprocal relationships that bind plant, animal, and human life together in a careful balancing act, waxing and waning with the abundance or scarcity of precious water. The Himdag also describes the maintenance of a certain balance within individuals, in which “the mental, physical, and spiritual health” of each person links to the well-being of the tribal community as a whole through participation in storytelling, arts, and a shared spirituality.2 Ruth Underhill, an anthropologist who in the early twentieth century spent many years working among the Tohono O’odham recording their traditional songs and stories, eloquently summarized their relationship with the desert environment in 1936: “Land, to me, was a possession to be claimed and fought over by farmers, builders, exploiters—yes— and patriots,” she wrote. “For [the O’odham], I was to learn, it is the ODQG�WKDW�SRVVHVVHV�WKH�SHRSOH��,WV�LQÁXHQFH��LQ�WLPH��VKDSHV�WKHLU�ERGLHV��WKHLU�ODQJXDJH��even their religion.”3 To understand the O’odham landscape and how O’odham have used desert resources, then, is to understand the sweep of O’odham history.

Until the beginning of the twentieth century, the O’odham lived according to the rhythms and cycles of the annual rains; they were adept at capturing and utilizing every drop RI�ZDWHU�IRU�WKH�SURGXFWLRQ�RI�IRRG��,Q�WKH�VXPPHUV��WKH\�OLYHG�E\�WKHLU�ÀHOGV�LQ�WKH�YDOOH\V��and in the winter, they established villages by springs or wells in the nearby foothills.4 The O’odham took advantage of violent summer rain storms using what they call Ak Chin IDUPLQJ��D�QHWZRUN�RI�GLYHUVLRQ�GLNHV�FDSWXUHG�WKHVH�EXUVWV�RI�KHDY\��ÁRRGLQJ�UDLQV�DQG�FKDQQHOHG�WKHP�WR�ÀHOGV�LQ�WKH�GHVHUW�YDOOH\V��,Q�DGGLWLRQ�WR�WKLV�GLNH�QHWZRUN��WKH�WULEH�built brush dams to capture the water that raced down arroyos into their adjacent cultivated ÀHOGV��,Q�WKH�VDQG\�VRLO��PHQ�SODQWHG�VHHGV�RI�%DZɩ (tepary beans), Ha:l (O’odham Squash), and Huñ (O’odham corn), all carefully selected over generations for maximum drought resistance. O’odham gathered the fruit of prickly pear and saguaro cactus along with cholla cactus buds throughout the year. In the spring and summer, women gathered plants such DV�EXUVDJH�� ODPE·V�TXDUWHU�� VHHGV�� DQG� URRWV� IURP�DURXQG� WKH�ÀHOG�YLOODJHV��0L[HG�FURS�

2 Teri Knutson Woods, Karen Blaine, and Lauri Francisco, “O’odham Himdag as a Source of Strength and Wellness Among the Tohono O’odham of Southern Arizona and Northern Sonora, Mexico,” Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare 29, no. 1 (March 2002): 41; Tohono O’odham Community College, “What Is Himdag?”, n.d., http://www.tocc.cc.az.us/himdag_policy.htm (accessed February 25, 2012).3 Ruth Murray Underhill, Papago Woman (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1979), 3.4 David Rich. Lewis, Neither Wolf Nor Dog: American Indians, Environment, and Agrarian Change (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 123–128, 134.

19“The Desert is Still Their Home”

agriculture combined with extensive foraging allowed the O’odham to rely on a variety of resources, safeguarding against hunger and scarcity in the event of crop failure.5

The O’odham people developed these foodways informed by the belief that their RZQ�DFWLRQV�LQÁXHQFHG�WKH�UHJXODULW\�DQG�GHSHQGDELOLW\�RI�UDLQIDOO��7KH�SODQWLQJ�VHDVRQ��monthly calendar, and spiritual celebrations revolved around rain and the power of the O’odham to invoke the clouds and their life-giving waters. Agriculture was therefore not just a physical act or occupation; it required an emotional and creative investment. The O’odham produced speeches, songs, ceremonies, and rituals that they believed were necessary for crops to grow abundantly and to keep a balance between the human and nonhuman inhabitants of the Papaguería.

This way of life continued up until the early 20th century.6 In 1936, Tohono O’odham farmers living on the reservation cultivated almost 13,000 acres of land. Although most participated in the wage labor economy, almost 80 percent of all tribal members still practiced some form of subsistence agriculture.7 In the mid 1930s, when Danny Lopez was born, the O’odham were no longer isolated, culturally and economically, from the wave of modernity sweeping across the greater United States. O’odham families on and off the reservation adapted to changing environmental and economic forces, trying to strike a EDODQFH�EHWZHHQ�UHWDLQLQJ�FXOWXUDO�WUDGLWLRQV�DQG�VXUYLYLQJ�ÀQDQFLDOO\�DV�WKH\�WUDQVLWLRQHG�from the O’odham subsistence economy to the American consumer economy. These shifts in Tohono O’odham culture, agriculture, and foodways simultaneously evolved slowly over the course of nearly a century and occurred very rapidly and dramatically.8 Lopez was born into a family that, like most O’odham families in the early twentieth century, GHSHQGHG�RQ�WKH�ODQG�IRU�VXEVLVWHQFH�WKURXJK�ÁRRG�IDUPLQJ��IRUDJLQJ��FKRSSLQJ�ZRRG��DQG�grazing cattle. By 1970, only half of the over 9,000 registered tribal members lived on any of the three reservations; they earned a living through a mixture of cattle raising, mineral lease payments, and tribal and federal government relief. By 1983, fewer than 1,000 acres

5 Ibid., 123–128.6 The Spanish established missions in the Papaguería beginning in 1687 and introduced various European crops like such as wheat, which the O’odham readily incorporated into existing seasonal farming patterns. In the 19th�FHQWXU\��WKH�WULEH�EHJDQ�WR�IHHO�WKH�ÀUVW�VHULRXV�FKDQJHV�ZURXJKW�E\�LQFUHDVHG�$PHULFDQ�SROLWLFDO�control in Southwestern territories. In 1874 President Ulysses S. Grant signed an executive order formally creating the San Xavier reservation, and in 1916, the Tohono O’odhM Nation took on its contemporary political boundaries when Woodrow Wilson designated 2.75 million acres for a main O’odham reservation. (Lewis, Neither Wolf Nor Dog,135-142; Erickson, Sharing the Desert, 78, 104).7 Eric V. Meeks, Border Citizens: The Making of Indians, Mexicans, and Anglos in Arizona (Austin: Uni-versity of Texas Press, 2007), 136.8 Lewis, Neither Wolf Nor Dog, 165; Gary Paul Nabhan, The Desert Smells Like Rain: A Naturalist in O’Odham Country (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2002), 47.

20 Cohen

RI�WUDGLWLRQDO�DN�FKLQ�ÁRRG�IDUPHG�ÀHOGV�H[LVWHG��$ORQJ�ZLWK�VXEVLVWHQFH�IDUPLQJ��PDQ\�unique cultural traditions began to disappear.

Realizing what was happening, however, many O’odham began to seek out the words, songs, and rituals of the past. Lopez was at the forefront of these cultural revitalization efforts, which blossomed through traditional agriculture, foodways, and language, and re-ignited the tribe’s cultural connection to the desert landscape. By tracing the shifting environmental, economic, political, and cultural transformations that the Tohono O’odham population, and Danny Lopez in particular, experienced in the mid-twentieth century, we can better understand the rise of traditional agriculture and foodways beginning in the late 1970s.

ENviroNmENtAl dEgrAdAtioN & thE risE of WAgE lAbor

Almost all changes within Tohono O’odham culture in the 1930s and 1940s can be traced back to the environmental impacts of ranching. Increasing numbers of cattle put new pressures on the scarce water resources of the fragile Sonoran desert, and the landscape of the Papaguería became overgrazed, eroded, and dry. Cattle were originally introduced to the Tohono O’odham by the Spanish in the early nineteenth century. By 1959, more than 50 percent of all O’odham families owned cattle that they ate themselves, sold to others for cash, or kept for Catholic feasts. Livestock provided food and money, but cattle-derived incomes were unevenly distributed. Most O’odham families owned fewer than ten head of cattle, while around 5 percent of O’odham owned about 80 percent of the herds on the reservation.9�$SSUR[LPDWHO\�RQH�ÀIWK�RI�WKH�WRWDO�LQFRPH�RQ�WKH�UHVHUYDWLRQ�was derived from cattle in 1950, but the majority of wealth was concentrated in the hands of only a dozen or so families. Ironically, the deterioration of reservation lands as a result of large-scale cattle ranching did the most damage to the poorest families with the smallest herds. As the size of herds increased throughout the twentieth century, they outstripped the Papaguería’s carrying capacity, leading to serious soil erosion and prolonged, more intense periods of drought.10

A 1914 report estimated the ecological carrying capacity of the reservation to be approximately 11,000 head of cattle, but placed the actual number of cattle between 30,000 9 �,Q��HFRQRPLVW�:LOOLDP�+��0HW]OHU�HVWLPDWHG�WKDW�RQO\�ÀYH�IDPLOLHV�RQ�WKH�UHVHUYDWLRQ�RZQHG�EHWZHHQ�ÀYH�KXQGUHG�DQG�RQH�WKRXVDQG�KHDG�RI�FDWWOH��1LQH�IDPLOLHV�RZQHG�EHWZHHQ�RQH�KXQGUHG�DQG�ÀYH�KXQGUHG�KHDG��WHQ�IDPLOLHV�RZQHG�EHWZHHQ�ÀIW\�DQG�RQH�KXQGUHG�KHDG��WKLUW\�IDPLOLHV�RZQHG�EHWZHHQ�WHQ�DQG�ÀIW\��DQG�IRXU�KXQGUHG�IDPLOLHV�RZQHG�OHVV�WKDQ�WHQ�KHDG��0DQXHO�HW�DO��Dressing For the Window, 527).10 Sherry Bowen, “Papago Tribes Gather to Hear Range Problem,” Arizona Daily Star, October 7, 1934. AHSTLA; Edward Holland Spicer, Cycles of Conquest: The Impact of Spain, Mexico, and the United States on the Indians of the Southwest, 1533-1960. (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1962), 550, 556.


and 50,000 head.11 The deterioration of reservation lands invited a new level of federal government intervention into individuals’ lives and permanently changed the political landscape. The year Danny Lopez was born, the BIA estimated approximately 20,000 cattle roamed the Papaguería.12 In keeping with nationwide New Deal policies, the Bureau of Indian Affairs tried to spur soil conservation and decrease overgrazing by setting caps on herd sizes. In 1936, representatives from 21 reservation villages signed a binding agreement to create a range conservation plan, which necessitated the delineation of grazing districts and the creation of a tribal-wide council containing representatives from each district. This effort to limit environmental degradation led directly to the O’odham adoption of the Indian Reorganization Act (also known as the “Indian New Deal”), federal legislation that restored management of tribal assets and natural resources to new, democratically-elected tribal councils.13 As a result, the tribal government became not only the most prominent SROLWLFDO�DXWKRULW\�LQ�WKH�3DSDJXHUtD��EXW�DOVR�WKH�SULPDU\�ERG\�WKURXJK�ZKLFK�VLJQLÀFDQW�land use and development decisions were subsequently made.

The BIA’s caps and the tribal council’s range conservation plan failed to curb erosion, however. Many O’odham objected to cutting their herds down and disliked the blame such measures seemed to place on the tribe for irresponsible grazing.14 Peter Blaine, a former Chairman of the tribe, refuted the idea that O’odham were solely responsible for environmental degradation. Instead, in a 1981 memoir, he claimed it was nature itself that caused erosion: “Sometimes the winter rains were too late and sometimes too early to help the grass on the range. I say that we never overgrazed! The thing that cut down our cattle was drought. If the drought hits, the grass dies…if it rains, good. If not, then we are hurt.”15 Blaine argued that the tribe was not liable for large-scale environmental change, and the best they could do was to adapt to the uncontrollable and varied patterns of nature. “If cattle are going to die, let them die,” Blaine told his interviewer, “but they will die right here on the reservation. Right here in their home country. That was the answer that we gave the white man and his Agency.”16

11 Henry F. Manuel, Juliann Ramon, and Bernard L. Fontana, “Dressing for the Window: Papago Indians and Economic Development,” in American Indian Economic Development, ed. Sam Stanley (Chicago: Mouton Publishers, 1978), 529.12 Bernice Consulich, “Papago Is Money and Tin Can Conscious Due to Depression,” Arizona Daily Star, April 7, 1936. AHSTLA.13 Spicer, Cycles of Conquest, 561.14 Consulich, “Papago Is Money and Tin Can Conscious Due to Depression.”15 Peter Blaine and Michael S. Adams, Papagos and Politics (Tucson: Arizona Historical Society, 1981), 78.16 Ibid.

22 Cohen

7KH� SROLWLFL]HG� QDWXUH� RI� FDWWOH� UHGXFWLRQ� SURJUDPV� KLJKOLJKWHG� WKH� FRQÁLFWLQJ�cultural values at play in the 1930s and 1940s, and the limits of implementing Western VFLHQWLÀF� UDQJH�PDQDJHPHQW� SURJUDPV� LQ� D� WULEDO� FRPPXQLW\� ZLWK� D� YHU\� GLIIHUHQW�conception of human relationships with the natural environment. The repercussions of long-term range deterioration would haunt the tribe throughout the rest of the century, however. A 1952 article in the Tucson Citizen partly blamed the unmanageable cattle population for the demise of ak chin farming on the reservation, noting that the subsequent increase in water runoff prevented adequate irrigation of crops.17 Severe droughts that killed thousands of cattle continued to strike the reservation, even as recently as 2002.18

Although the degraded environmental condition of the reservation was likely the result of both natural forces and human miscalculation, the federal government’s systemic depletion of area water resources and urban development projects in Tucson exacerbated the problem. Water had always been at the center of O’odham life and culture; crop cultivation and wild food harvests depended on unpredictable seasonal rainfall. Many O’odham believed that if they did not perform their yearly rain-bringing ceremonies, the storms would not come.19 The tribe had struggled with the municipal government over water rights since the late nineteenth century, but the post-World War II population boom in Tucson put an unprecedented strain on groundwater resources. Between 1940 and 1950, the population of the Southwest grew by 50 percent.20 As Tucson expanded, water that subsistence farmers had depended on for centuries began to disappear. In 1952, the city drilled a series of wells along the bounds of the San Xavier district of the reservation and in the Avra and Altar valleys, which resulted in a lowering of the water table. Streams that ran through the main Sells reservation dried up, and at San Xavier, it was nearly impossible to continue farming by 1960. Throughout the 1950s, the tribal government invested over one million dollars to develop water sources, but it was only through litigation that they were ÀQDOO\�DEOH�WR�UHFRYHU�WKHLU�ULSDULDQ�ULJKWV�LQ�WKH��V�21 Like overgrazing, water scarcity PDGH�VXEVLVWHQFH�IDUPLQJ�PXFK�PRUH�GLIÀFXOW�DQG�IRUFHG�PDQ\�2·RGKDP�WR�SDUWLFLSDWH�LQ�a more varied wage labor economy. 17 Lew McLeneghan, “Papagos Eye Long-Range Rehabilitation,” Tucson Citizen, April 25, 1952. AHST-LA; Eric Volante, “Guard Ordered to Haul Hay for Starving O’odham Cattle,” Arizona Daily Star, August 14, 1987. AHSTLA; Carmen Duarte, “Drought Hits Hard on O’odham Lands,” Arizona Daily Star, July 15, 2002. AHSTLA.18 Raymond Anderson, “Papago Drought Losses: The Numbers Game,” Arizona Daily Star, August 11, 1974. AHSTLA.19 See Underhill, Papago Woman; Underhill, Singing for Power. 20 Henry F. Dobyns, Papagos in the Cotton Fields (Tucson: University of Arizona, Dept. of Anthropology, 1951), 2.21 Erickson et al., Sharing the Desert, 165.


'DQQ\�/RSH]·V�HDUO\� OLIH�H[HPSOLÀHV� WKHVH�FKDQJHV�DQG� WKHLU� LPSDFW��+LV� IDWKHU�earned money for the family by chopping wood and working on livestock roundups to buy food to supplement smaller subsistence harvests, and later the entire family spent seasons picking cotton on the large, Anglo-owned farms north of the reservation in Maricopa County.22 But as Edward Spicer has noted, this pattern was broadly applicable to most tribal communities in the Southwest. As Anglo-American large-scale agriculture expanded, diverting resources from the already marginal environments within which tribes farmed, Native families were unable to produce enough food for themselves. The early twentieth century was marked by a steady move away from subsistence farming across the entire Southwest.23

The widespread participation of O’odham families in the wage labor economy was not itself a force of cultural assimilation, however, until the early 1950s. As historian Eric V. Meeks has written, despite prevailing notions that the transition from subsistence to wage labor automatically leads to a breakdown in cultural autonomy, the Tohono O’odham ZHUH�H[WUHPHO\�ÁH[LEOH�DQG�DGDSWHG�RII�UHVHUYDWLRQ�IDUP�ZRUN�LQWR�SUH�H[LVWLQJ�SDWWHUQV�of migration and subsistence.24 This applied particularly to O’odham who participated in industrial Pima cotton agriculture. As Meeks explains, the pre-Contact seasonal migration IURP�VXPPHU�ÀHOG�YLOODJHV�WR�ZLQWHU�PRXQWDLQ�YLOODJHV�FKDQJHG�DV�RSSRUWXQLWLHV�DURVH�IRU�2·RGKDP�WR�VHOO�WKHLU�ODERU�LQ�ÀHOGV�DQG�PLQHV�DW�WKH�EHJLQQLQJ�RI�WKH��th century. Even in the years before European contact, the O’odham had spent part of the year harvesting ZLWK� WKH�3LPD� LQ� WKHLU�QRUWKHUQ�ÀHOGV�RQ� WKH�*LOD�5LYHU� LQ�H[FKDQJH�IRU� IRRG�DQG� WUDGH�goods.25 This pattern only shifted after World War I, when new irrigation systems installed by the federal government allowed Anglo farmers to exploit booming national demand for cotton.26 A combination of international incidents and environmental factors—Egypt cut off cotton exports to the United States and boll weevils destroyed the South’s cotton crop in the early 1940s—coupled with rising demand for pneumatic tires that required cotton reinforcing cords, transformed Arizona into one of the United States’ major cotton growing centers. Before the Great Depression hit, Anglo farmers drew their labor force primarily from Tohono O’odham and Pima populations. After World War II, the demand for seasonal

22 Danny Lopez, “Poetics and Politics Interview,” 1992, 7.23 Spicer, Cycles of Conquest, 543.24 Eric V Meeks, “The Tohono O’Odham, Wage Labor, and Resistant Adaptation, 1900-1930,” Western Historical Quarterly 34, no. 4 (Winter 2003): 471.25 Ibid., 473.26 Ibid., 475.

24 Cohen

cotton pickers reached an all-time high, with over one million acres under cultivation in Arizona alone.27

In his landmark 1961 ethnographic study of Tohono O’odham workers on southwestern Arizona cotton farms, Henry F. Dobyns outlined what he believed to be the PDLQ� UHDVRQV�ZK\�2·RGKDP� OHIW� WKHLU� UHVHUYDWLRQ�KRPHV� WR�ZRUN� LQ� WKHVH�FRWWRQ�ÀHOGV��He observed that O’odham became more dependent on clothing and other material goods that could only be acquired in the cash economy. The O’odham also needed to buy food WR�VXSSOHPHQW�WKH�GLPLQLVKHG�DJULFXOWXUDO�\LHOGV�RI�DN�FKLQ�ÀHOGV��6RPH�PHPEHUV�RI�WKH�tribe worked on the farms so that their children could attend Arizona public schools, which were deemed better than tribal or federal boarding schools. Others moved to the labor camps because they were old and unable to provide for themselves; they followed their children and grandchildren. Some also had purely social motivations, which spoke to the remarkable cohesion of traditional villages: if most village residents went to work in a particular cotton camp, it was likely that their neighbors would follow, even if they did not necessarily need the income.28

These O’odham laborers found that it was possible to preserve larger kin networks and maintain traditional agricultural practices for half the year at their homes on the reservation while still earning wages half the year on the cotton farms. Danny Lopez and his family participated in this migratory trend, which allowed the O’odham to retain a distinctive cultural identity deeply rooted in the land-based traditions of the Papaguería. The strength of these extended kin networks and their prevalence marked one of the most distinctive cultural differences between Native populations and Anglo-Americans during this time period. The extended family served as a stable anchor in the shifting economic, political, and cultural tides of the mid-twentieth century and, according to Spicer, “functioned in strong competition with the day and boarding schools as the molder of [Native] individuals’ goals and social attitudes.”29

Cattle herding, the transition to a mixed wage labor economy, and cotton farming, then, did not break apart O’odham communities. But as wage labor became a larger part of the year-round O’odham life, the convenience of purchasing food overcame the cultural attachment to traditionally farmed and foraged foods. In 1949, an academic study concluded that over half the food eaten on the reservation was purchased, and included what the authors referred to as “lower-class Mexican or Yaqui [a poorer tribe outside of Tucson]”

27 Meeks, Border Citizens, 165.28 Dobyns, Papagos in the Cotton Fields, 84.29 Spicer, Cycles of Conquest, 479.


food: coffee, tortillas, and beans.30 Families continued to forage cholla buds, seasonal wild greens, and cactus fruit and to grow a small amount of corn, squash, and beans, but these foods made up a smaller percentage of the O’odham diet every year. Even while wage labor became a larger part of life and subsistence farming faded into the background, the deep cultural connection to the Papaguería and desert landscape persisted. The 1949 study made a special note of this fact:

[The tribe’s] standard of living and satisfaction they derive from their way of life cannot be measured in terms of dollars and cents, though they are coming to feel the necessity of cash and to value the things it can procure....But the Papago still live on the land that has been theirs for centuries…and this is important because their land is all-important to them. All the Desert People—even those who leave the Reservation to take jobs—keep their roots in the land. They always have their IDPLO\��WKHLU�YLOODJH��WKHLU�ÀHOGV�WR�UHWXUQ�WR��7KH�GHVHUW�LV�VWLOO�WKHLU�KRPH��7R�PRVW�of them it is still important whether rain comes or not…they watch carefully the ÁHHWLQJ�FORXGV�DQG�DUH�ZRUULHG�DQG�UHVWOHVV�ZKHQ�QR�UDLQ�IDOOV��ZKHQ�WKH�GHVHUW�begins to look brown, when seeds will lie dormant under the soil or unused in storehouses. And they feel happy when the rains come—soft and cold in the winter, in sheets in the summer—for the rains mean a desert green and beautiful with grass DQG�ÁRZHUV��SOHQW\�RI�FRUQ�DQG�EHDQV�DQG�VTXDVK�DW�WKH�KDUYHVW��DQG�KRUVHV�DQG�cows that are fat and healthy.31

By pointing out that the tribe’s standard of living and satisfaction—implying they are the same thing—could not be measured in terms of dollars and cents, the anthropologists presaged an issue that would challenge the tribe in the second half of the twentieth century: the need to confront and conform to mainstream American, money-based metrics of well-being. The passage also suggests that in addition to the instrumental value of rainfall in providing physical sustenance, there was an incommensurable aspect of the O’odham’s attachment to the landscape. In contrast to most of the post-World War II United States population, for whom material wealth and the comforts of the expanding middle class were becoming the strongest markers of cultural identity, many O’odham remained culturally autonomous, rooted in the land and appreciative of its natural processes.

Over the course of those few decades, the tribe did become more integrated into the wage labor economy, and the burgeoning cattle industry brought about a stronger :HVWHUQ�LQÁXHQFHG� SDWWHUQ� RI� IDUPLQJ� DQG� ODQG� XVH�� 0HDQZKLOH�� WKH� HQYLURQPHQWDO�degradation wrought by overgrazing contributed to a decline in ak chin farming. Despite those factors, O’odham families were able to retain their traditional values and culture by

30 Alice Joseph, Rosamond B. Spicer, and Jane Chesky, The Desert People: a Study of the Papago Indians (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1949), 44–45.31 Ibid., 39.

26 Cohen

incorporating new wage work into existing patterns, and maintaining traditional extended YLOODJH�QHWZRUNV�LQ�WKH�RII�UHVHUYDWLRQ�FRWWRQ�ÀHOGV��7KLV�VWURQJ�URRWHGQHVV�LQ�WKH�ODQG�DQG�attachment to the desert began to erode after WWII, however, as a variety of economic and cultural shifts along with new federal policies pushed O’odham families to leave the reservation; in doing so, they left many of their cultural traditions behind, this time permanently.

off-rEsErvAtioN migrAtioN, EduCAtioN, ANd CulturAl AssimilAtioN

Beginning in the 1940s and continuing for the next thirty years, an exodus from the reservation to urban centers combined with the growth of “formal” (Western) educational systems on the reservation and targeted federal assimilationist policies and programs, posed the biggest threat to the cohesion of the traditional O’odham worldview. Many O’odham moved to the outskirts of Tucson to seek work in the 1940s and 50s after a series of bad GURXJKWV��RWKHUV�VRXJKW�QHZ��PRUH�ÀQDQFLDOO\�UHZDUGLQJ�MREV�XSRQ�UHWXUQLQJ�IURP�PLOLWDU\�service in World War II and the Korean War; yet other families packed up for Tucson when seasonal cotton-picking jobs disappeared. The federal government incentivized the process of migration off the reservation and entrance into urban living through their Relocation program, which operated under the assumption that integrating rural Native communities into the industrial urban economy would ultimately raise their standard of living. For those who remained on the reservation, the proliferation of Western-style education presented a particularly insidious form of cultural repression, inculcating a cycle of cultural shame from which the tribe would take many decades to recover. Ironically, the mounting pressure from a hegemonic American culture on O’odham men and women to accumulate material wealth created a wider socioeconomic gap between the tribe and the rest of the United States during this time. The negative environmental effects of cattle grazing continued to be felt by the poorest of O’odham families, and the relatively new dependence on cattle for food and cash became their greatest liability. 1941 was one of the worst droughts in tribal memory, and many O’odham moved to the outskirts of Tucson to seek work following a string of years in which cattle starved and crops withered. In her autobiographical oral history Desert Indian Woman, tribal elder Frances Manuel refers to it as “The Bad Year”: the cattle that had provided crucial economic stability for her family died in the drought, and she and KHU�KXVEDQG�ZHUH�IRUFHG�WR�PRYH�WR�7XFVRQ�WR�ÀQG�ZDJH�ZRUN�32 Many O’odham families found themselves spending more and more time in the city and less time on the reservation. Manuel recalled that at the beginning of her stay in Tucson, she and her husband returned 32 Frances Sallie Manuel and Deborah Lynn Neff, Desert Indian Woman: Stories and Dreams (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2001), 53.


to the reservation weekly to bring gifts to their children, whom they had left behind with their grandparents. As time went on, her children grew older and eventually left the reservation themselves. Manuel’s visits to the reservation became more sporadic, until she essentially lived in Tucson full time. Forty years later she moved back to her original village permanently, widowed and alone. It took her many years to become reacquainted with the quiet pace of reservation life; after the hustle and bustle of Tucson, she found living alone on the reservation extremely isolating.33 Manuel’s memories exemplify a broader pattern in O’odham off-reservation migration between the 1940s and 1970s: leaving behind the H[WHQGHG� NLQ� QHWZRUNV� ZDV� ERWK� HPRWLRQDOO\� GLIÀFXOW� DQG� D� QHFHVVDU\� VDFULÀFH� LQ� WKH�struggle to keep food on the table.

Further contributing to O’odham families’ decisions to migrate to cities was the mechanization of the cotton industry. Between 1952 and 1962, the number of migrant workers harvesting cotton in southwestern Arizona dropped from around 19,000 to 1,000.34 The Arizona economy moved away from agriculture and toward new industrial, technological, and service industries and thus cotton harvesting positions began to GLVDSSHDU��6WUXJJOLQJ�WR�ÀQG�ZRUN��WKRXVDQGV�RI�2·RGKDP�GHFLGHG�WR�PRYH�WR�7XFVRQ��$�rotating community of several hundred tribal members on the outskirts of the city worked odd jobs and in domestic services for Anglo families.35 Most of the families who left the reservation for Tucson maintained ties to the land through kin networks and returned back to their villages on the weekends or seasonally. But as the years went by, these trips back became more infrequent, and, like Manuel, fewer O’odham returned.36

Tribal members’ exposure to life outside of southern Arizona during military service in World War II and the Korean War also precipitated permanent off-reservation migration. Nearly 25,000 Native Americans fought in World War II, and 10,000 fought in the Korean War.37 Many O’odham men who joined the military (including Danny /RSH]��H[SHULHQFHG�PLGGOH�FODVV�FRQVXPHU�FXOWXUH�IRU�WKH�ÀUVW�WLPH��DQG�WKH�JRRGV�WKH\�encountered (including automobiles, radios, and televisions) became more desirable.38 This increasing contact with mainstream American consumerism posed a challenge to the traditional values that had anchored the O’odham in the Papaguería. The pursuit of personal wealth, a cultural attribute “foreign to the O’odham in earlier times” according to historian 33 Ibid., 53–56, 76–77.34 Meeks, Border Citizens, 167.35 Spicer, Cycles of Conquest, 557.36 Manuel et al., “Dressing for the Window: Papago Indians and Economic Development,” 164.37 Donald Lee Fixico, The Urban Indian Experience in America (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2000), 19.38 Erickson et al., Sharing the Desert, 153; Lopez, “Poetics and Politics Interview,” 3.

28 Cohen

Winston P. Erickson, marginalized village communal activities that had previously played a central role in traditional culture and encouraged O’odham men to pursue wealth-focused careers and participate in leisure activities that required disposable income.39 The absence of O’odham men from the reservation also contributed to a decline in ak chin farming, as ZRPHQ�WRRN�RQ�PRUH�ÀQDQFLDO�UHVSRQVLELOLWLHV�DQG�FRXOG�QRW� WHQG�WR�ÀHOGV�DQG�SHUIRUP�rituals on their own.40 Donald Fixico has argued that Native populations’ participation in the war effort both abroad and on the home front “convinced bureaucrats that the Native American population was ready to leave the reservation.”41

After World War II, the federal government began to play a central role in encouraging permanent settlement off the reservation. By offering transitional support DQG�ÀQDQFLDO�LQFHQWLYHV�WR�WULEDO�PHPEHUV��WKH�JRYHUQPHQW�H[SOLFLWO\�HQFRXUDJHG�SROLWLFDO��economic, and cultural assimilation into American consumer culture. Relocation began in 1951, when the Commissioner of Indian Affairs Dillon S. Myers asked for funding to create the Branch of Placement and Relocation within the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Although in hindsight these policies were incredibly detrimental to tribal communities, at the time many policymakers and bureaucrats believed that a cultural and economic integration into the broader American population would raise Native Americans’ standard of living. By 1954, the BIA relocation program had assisted approximately 6,200 Native Americans in moving into cities in twenty different states, most predominantly Los Angeles and Chicago.42 Public Law 959, also known as the Indian Relocation Act (1956), offered two-year vocational training and apprenticeships to Native men who applied for relocation.43

The BIA portrayed relocation as an attractive option for struggling O’odham families. They distributed pamphlets on reservations across the country that glamorized the relocation process, featuring suburban wood-frame houses enclosed with white picket

39 Military service often laid the foundations of alcoholism in Native American veterans. Many times, 1DWLYH�PHQ�UHWXUQHG�IURP�VHUYLFH�H[SHULHQFHV�LQ�ZKLFK�WKH\�ZHUH�WUHDWHG�ZLWK�UHVSHFW�DQG�GLJQLW\�WR�ÀQG�WKHPVHOYHV�ÀQDQFLDOO\�OLPLWHG��UDFLDOO\�H[FOXGHG��DQG�FXOWXUDOO\�ORRNHG�GRZQ�XSRQ�E\�$QJOR�$PHULFDQV�LQ�Southwestern cities. Bars were magnetic to desperate and desolate veterans. The story of Pima Indian Ira +D\HV��ZKR�ZDV�LPPRUWDOL]HG�LQ�WKH�LFRQLF�SKRWRJUDSK�RI�WKH�ÁDJ�UDLVLQJ�DW�,ZR�-LPD�GXULQJ�:RUOG�:DU�,,��and the irony of his descent into alcoholism and an untimely death was popularized by Johnny Cash’s folk-song “The Ballad of Ira Hayes” and is emblematic of the injustice of Native veterans’ post-war experiences. �%DUVK��´:DU�DQG�WKH�5HFRQÀJXULQJ�RI�$PHULFDQ�,QGLDQ�6RFLHW\�µ��40 Tristan Reader, “The Destruction of the Tohono O’odham Food System” (Tohono O’odham Community Action, n.d.), http://www.tocaonline.org/Oodham_Foods/Entries/2010/3/29_The_Destruction_of_the_To-hono_Oodham_Food_System.html (February 25, 2012).41 Fixico, The Urban Indian Experience in America, 9.42 Ibid., 12.43 Indian Adult Vocational Training Act of 1956, 1956, http://digital.library.okstate.edu/kappler/vol6/html_¿OHV�Y�S��KWPO�S��D��)HEUXDU\��


IHQFHV�DQG�SKRWRJUDSKV�RI�1DWLYH�PHQ�LQ�EXVLQHVV�DWWLUH�VLWWLQJ�LQ�RIÀFH�EXLOGLQJV��7KHVH�propagandistic materials enticed Native families, as historian Donald Fixico has argued, by insinuating that these markers of the successful modern life would be easily available to Natives.44 On the O’odham reservation, the BIA promoted relocation fervently in the Papago Indian News, a monthly newspaper published by the “editorial Board of the Papago Indians.”45 The newspaper existed partly as a result of the Relocation Act itself: in one RI� WKH�SXEOLFDWLRQV·�ÀUVW�SULQWHG� LVVXHV�� WKH�HGLWRUV�H[SODLQ� WKDW�´VLQFH�QRZ� WKH�3DSDJRV�have migrated to more distant places than ever before, to such big cities as Los Angeles, Chicago, etc., surely these people are always anxious to hear the news from their home town of what’s what and who’s who.”46 Emerging in the era of mass exodus from the reservation, the paper served as another venue for BIA relocation propaganda. A monthly ´$JHQF\�5HORFDWLRQ�2IÀFH�1HZVµ�FROXPQ�UHOD\HG�WKH�VWRULHV�RI�2·RGKDP�ZKR�KDG�EHHQ�happily placed in various cities through the program. These short snippets describe a life of ease, excitement and, most importantly, self-improvement. “Word has been received from WKH�/RV�$QJHOHV�ÀHOG�UHORFDWLRQ�RIÀFH��WKDW�WKH�$QGUHZ�-XDQ�IDPLO\�KDV�EHHQ�GRLQJ�YHU\�ZHOO�LQ�&DOLIRUQLD>«@�WKH�ÀHOG�RIÀFH�UHSRUWV�WKDW�$QGUHZ�LV�GRLQJ�YHU\�ZHOO�RQ�KLV�MRE��and with his latest raise is making $2.04 an hour. The family is planning on a trip home to Gila bend for the Christmas holidays,” reads one report.47 In the same issue, another young woman working as a secretary in Los Angeles has found “excellent opportunities for advancement,” and yet another family “[has] proven to be very successful relocatees.”48 7KHVH� UHSRUWV�ZHUH�QRW� IDOVLÀHG�� SHU� VH�� EXW�ZHUH� VKDSHG� WR� UHÁHFW� WKH�SRVLWLYH� DVSHFWV�of relocation. They highlighted the “excellent opportunities for advancement,” and each worker’s “latest raise” indicated the ease of moving up the economic ladder; their emphasis on extensive O’odham social networks— “over two hundred […] Papago friends now OLYH� LQ�/RV�$QJHOHV�� DOO� HPSOR\HG�DQG�GRLQJ�ZHOO�ÀQDQFLDOO\�DQG� VRFLDOO\µ³�UHDVVXUHG�

44 Fixico, The Urban Indian Experience in America, 13.45 The Tohono O’odham entered the Western historical record in the mid sixteenth century as the Papago, a name derived from a mispronunciation of Ba:bawi O’odham meaning “People of the Tepary Beans,” which is how neighboring tribe the Pima (Akimel O’odham) described them to the Spanish Conquistadores ZKHQ�WKH\�ÀUVW�SDVVHG�WKURXJK�WKH�DUHD��,Q��WKH�WULEDO�JRYHUQPHQW�PDGH�WKH�GHFLVLRQ�WR�FKDQJH�WKH�WULEH·V�RIÀFLDO�QDPH�WR�Tohono O’odham meaning “People of the Desert,” the name that more accurately UHÁHFWHG�WKHLU�VHOI�LGHQWLÀFDWLRQ��:LOOLDP�%ULJKW��Native American Placenames of the United States (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2004), 368; Enric Volante, “Name Change by O’odham Inspires Other Tribes,” Arizona Daily Star, January 1, 1994, a quoted in Woods, Blaine, and Francisco, “O’odham Himdag as a Source of Strength and wellness Among the Tohono O’odham of Southern Arizona and Northern Sonora, Mexico,” 35.46 “Ajo News,” Papago Indian News, November 1954. UALSC.47��´$JHQF\�5HORFDWLRQ�2IÀFH�1HZV�µ�Papago Indian News, January 1955. UALSC. 48 Ibid.

30 Cohen

SRWHQWLDO�UHORFDWHHV�WKDW�WKH\�ZRXOG�QRW�EH�DORQH��WKDW�WKH\�ZRXOG�EH�DEOH�WR�ÀW�LQWR�D�WLJKWO\�knit O’odham community hundreds of miles away. These reports purposely excluded the many inconvenient and painful realities that usually accompanied a reservation Indian’s transition from rural to urban living: racism-fueled exclusionary hiring practices, poor BIA VXSSRUW��DQG�WKH�GLIÀFXOW�SV\FKRORJLFDO�DQG�VRFLDO�DGMXVWPHQW��LQ�DGGLWLRQ�WR�WKH�XELTXLWRXV�inner-city problems of shoddy housing and high crime rates.49

Despite these challenges, the O’odham seem to have been among the more “successful” tribes, as measured by their relocation-retention rate. A 1957 report issued E\�D�UHORFDWLRQ�VSHFLDOLVW�LQ�WKH�3KRHQL[�$UHD�%XUHDX�RI�,QGLDQ�$IIDLUV�RIÀFH�QRWHG�WKDW�566 O’odham had successfully relocated to urban areas between 1952 and 1957, which to him was proof that “the tribe [possessed] real stamina and vigor…adaptability and strength of character.”50 But the retention rate was only a number slapped onto a highly variable experience. In the larger context of Native migration to urban centers during the Termination era, many Natives struggled to reconcile their indigenous worldviews with urban modernity.51 As Fixico explains, many Natives retained their traditional values and a native ethos, but the “retention of traditionalism was challenged by urban mainstream values on a daily contact basis.”52 Federal policy and incentives moved thousands of O’odham off the Papaguería, weakening ties to the land and traditional culture and creating new frictions as a Himdag-shaped worldview clashed with urban reality.

This challenge to O’odham cultural values was not limited to urban areas and their pressures to assimilate. On the reservation, church and Bureau-run schools presented a strong challenge to traditional O’odham culture throughout the twentieth century. Continuing an insidious form of cultural trauma that began in the late 1800s, educators instilled in O’odham youth the belief that their tribal traditions were backward and primitive, and

49 Fixico, The Urban Indian Experience in America, 5.50 Ibid., 18.51 The 1950s are widely referred to as the Termination Era. During this time, the federal government pushed to assimilate Native Americans into mainstream American society, politically and culturally—once and for all—by ending the reservation system, terminating federal recognition of the sovereignty of tribes, allowing states to take over federal responsibilities, and incentivizing migration off the reservation and into FLWLHV��7KH�+RXVH�&RQFXUUHQW�5HVROXWLRQ��DOVR�NQRZQ�DV�WKH�7HUPLQDWLRQ�$FW��RI��LGHQWLÀHG�WULEHV�deemed immediately capable of doing without federal services, and withdrew tribal land protections and federal recognition of tribal sovereignty. Over the next two decades, a million acres of tribal land were lost, and many tribal governments were dissolved. The Tohono O’odham did not have their sovereignty revoked, but the policy created an atmosphere of malaise that permeated tribal governments over the next decade, fearful that their tribe could be the next targeted by the federal government for termination. See Donald Lee Fixico, Termination and Relocation: Federal Indian Policy, 1945-1960 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1986).52 Fixico, The Urban Indian Experience in America, 5.


inculcated strong feelings of cultural shame that carried over into the next generation. Here again Danny Lopez’s experiences are revealing. Lopez attended Phoenix Indian School (one of the oldest and largest federally funded Bureau of Indian Affairs boarding schools), entering as a second grader only able to speak O’odham, as was also the case for many of his peers. Most schools had strict English-only policies, and punished O’odham children like Lopez who spoke their own language either in the classroom or while participating in extracurricular activities.53 This systematic repression of traditional culture through rigid education and language assimilation had been the norm in the Southwest since 1877, ZKHQ�&RQJUHVV�ÀUVW�DSSURSULDWHG��WR�WKH�%,$�IRU�WKH�SXUSRVH�RI�´SURJUHVVLYHO\µ�educating Native youth.54 Over time, the educational policies at these schools became less blatantly culturally destructive; during the “Indian New Deal” inaugurated during )'5·V�SUHVLGHQF\��%,$�UHIRUPHU�-RKQ�&ROOLHU�SXW�DQ�HQG�WR�WKH�$JHQF\·V�RIÀFLDO�SROLF\�RI�HGXFDWLRQDO�FXOWXUDO�DVVLPLODWLRQ��+RZHYHU��/RSH]·V�H[SHULHQFH�WHVWLÀHV�WR�WKH�IDFW�WKDW�even into the mid-twentieth century, educators promoted Anglo-American values and belief systems as the only acceptable worldviews. Years of enduring these affronts to traditional culture convinced O’odham youth to abandon traditionalism. Though not as blatant as the “Kill the Indian, Save the Man” policies of the nineteenth century, this pedagogical repression of traditional languages and beliefs was incredibly harmful to adolescents trying to reconcile their tribal heritage with American citizenship. Danny Lopez recalled in a 1992 interview that the Anglo world of celebrities, athletes, and Hollywood became more appealing to young O’odham than tribal traditions during this period. He recalled avoiding participation in his family’s songs and ceremonies. “I wasn’t interested,” he confessed. “I really wasn’t. I was more interested in reading about Joe Louis and Joe DiMaggio and playing basketball or, you know, making a ball out of a sock or something and throwing it at a can, or something like that.”55

The relatively rapid transition from a tribal culture rooted primarily in the mixed labor practices of agriculture and mining wage labor supplemented with subsistence agriculture in the 1930s and 1940s to mostly permanent off-reservation, urban wage labor in the 1950s and 1960s was undoubtedly lucrative for many tribal members. But it also contributed to a breakdown of cultural cohesion. In response to these developments and to the demoralizing pressures of formal education, stagnant economic mobility in most cities, environmental degradation of the reservation landscape and assimilation into the post-

53 Lopez, “Poetics and Politics Interview,” 9; Fontana and Schaefer, Of Earth and Little Rain, 124.54 Colin G Calloway, First Peoples: A Documentary Survey of American Indian History (Boston: Bed-ford/St. Martin’s, 2004), 383.55 Lopez, “Poetics and Politics Interview,” 21.

32 Cohen

WWII American consumer culture, many O’odham no longer felt a sense of connection to the O’odham cultural identity embedded in the desert landscape of the Papaguería.

In a 1960 University of Arizona study, economist William H. Metzler voiced his concerns about the detrimental effects of such a substantial change in a short period of time on Tohono O’odham families, social coherence, and individual morale:

7KH�FKDQJH�WR�ZRUNLQJ�IRU�ZDJHV�LQ�D�PRQH\�HFRQRP\�KDV�EHHQ�D�ÀQDQFLDO�ERRQ�WR�WKH�3DSDJRV«�\HW�WKH�FKDQJH�KDV�EHHQ�PRVW�GLIÀFXOW�DQG�LW�LV�VWLOO�WRR�HDUO\�WR�say that it constitutes a solid gain…the transition to a wage work economy means a change in their entire way of life. They have received very little practical guidance in making this change. The number of failures made during this process is so high as to warrant the misgivings of the Papago people. The number of changes in the direction of personal and social disintegration may be as great as the number in the direction of greater economic security. Their change to a wage economy is practically inevitable and will continue….the sooner a broad program is devised to meet the adjustment problems of these people, the less the social costs will be.56

Metzler recognized and emphasized the crucial trade-off that the O’odham had experienced over the previous few decades; they had given up the social and cultural cohesion that had VR�VWURQJO\�GHÀQHG�2·RGKDP�OLIH�LQ�H[FKDQJH�IRU�ÀQDQFLDO�VWDELOLW\��)RU�'DQQ\�/RSH]��ZKR�moved to Tucson in the mid-1950s and started working for the American Smelting and 5HÀQLQJ�&RPSDQ\��$6$5&2��LQ�D�FRSSHU�PLQH�RQ�WKH�6DQ�;DYLHU�UHVHUYDWLRQ��WKH�FDVK�in his pocket meant that he could enjoy himself at bars and playing pool, but he “didn’t care about who [he] was or where [he] came from.”57 Losing ties to the reservation and O’odham agricultural and cultural traditions led to identity crises for many O’odham—a problematic, but typical occurrence that emerged on reservations across the United States as tribal populations were funneled to urban areas.

A turNiNg PoiNt: PolitiCAl bACklAsh ANd CulturAl sElf-dEtErmiNAtioN

In the mid-1960s, a new national discourse resisted the loss of Native cultural identity in modern American life. As a reaction to the assimilationist federal government policies of the 1950s that sought to terminate the federal trust relationship and revoke special sovereign status to Indian tribes, pan-tribal activist and political organizations started to surface, their members pursuing federal policy change and calling for a renewed recognition of Indian tribes as politically sovereign nations. This movement swept across

56 Manuel et al., “Dressing for the Window,” 534.57 In 1955 Congress returned mineral rights to the O’odham, which gave them the opportunity to economi-cally bene"t from the reservation lands’ mineral resources for the "rst time. Before then, anyone could enter the reservation to prospect on the land without explicit permission from, or compensation due to, the tribe. (Erickson et al., Sharing the Desert, 165); Lopez, “Poetics and Politics Interview,” 3.


WKH�8QLWHG�6WDWHV��HPSRZHULQJ�1DWLYH�$PHULFDQV�WR�ÀJKW�IRU�SROLWLFDO�ULJKWV��DQG�WR�UHQHZ�their connections to traditional tribal culture.

Ironically, it was the Relocation Act of 1956 that did more to provoke the development of a strong, nationwide resurgence of Native ethnicity than any other political or cultural development in this period. By the 1960s, the young, well-educated urban Indians who had moved off their reservations and into urban centers like Los Angeles and San Francisco joined together to form new political organizations and to bring new energy to more established groups like the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI).58 In tandem with the Civil Rights movement spearheaded by African-American political and spiritual leaders, young Indians demanded fair federal Indian policies, monetary compensation for centuries of broken treaties, and the reclamation of ancestral tribal lands and rights. The most militant—and widely known—Native rights organization was the American Indian Movement (AIM), which advocated for and protested on behalf of American Indian political rights and tribal sovereignty. The movement culminated in 1972 with the Trail of Broken Treaties, a cross-country protest organized primarily by AIM and the First Nations of Canada that culminated in Washington, D.C.59 The caravan ended in a takeover and weeklong occupation of the Bureau of Indian Affairs building.60

During this activist upswell, Danny Lopez was working in the ASARCO copper mine and raising his children in Tucson. At some point in the early 1970s, he realized that he did not want his children to grow up without a connection to their O’odham cultural heritage and land. Lopez experienced an awakening that urged him to return to the reservation and seek out the spiritual guidance and knowledge of O’odham elders, the community members who had persisted in keeping traditions alive and skillfully adapting in the face of shifting cultural and economic forces at play:

Seeing my own kids and other kids growing up in Tucson—that said something to me—that I should go out and learn something about where my people came from, learn something about the things that are still there, the things that were still there at the time, and talk with some people who still had the knowledge of ceremonies, and songs, and stories. I could bring it back to the kids in Tucson. So that’s when, I guess you should put it, the calling came about.61

58 Calloway, First Peoples, 457.59 Protestors wrote up a twenty-point list of grievances and demands that outlined speci"c steps the federal government could take to improve living standards for Native Americans, grant religious freedom and protection, recognize and compensate for broken treaties, abolish the Bureau of Indian A#airs, and support economic development on reservations. (Vine Deloria, Behind the Trail of Broken Treaties: an Indian Declaration of Independence (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1985).60 !is very important political event is covered in-depth in Deloria, Behind the Trail of Broken Treaties.61 Lopez, “Poetics and Politics Interview,” 3.

34 Cohen

Lopez’s “calling” was not unique; his reawakening mirrored a national trend of young, urban Indians returning to their homeland reservations in the 1960s in search of the stories, songs, dances and traditions that had been passed down from generation to generation for centuries. Urban Indian activists started to think beyond politics to the cultural underpinnings of indigenous life that had suffered in the context of colonization, mistreatment, and violence.

Over the next thirty years, Lopez and other O’odham activists began to embrace centuries-old traditions that they hoped would combat the poverty and state of dependency that characterized the O’odham reservation and reservations across the country during that time. By 1970, only half of the 9,000 registered O’odham tribal members lived on one of the three reservations. Those who did averaged an annual income of $700, 67 percent of which came from federal aid. Handicraft sales, agriculture and mineral lease payments, cattle sales, and wage work made up the rest.62�2YHU�WKH�FRXUVH�RI�ÀIW\�\HDUV��WKH�HURVLRQ�RI�2·RGKDP�VHOI�VXIÀFLHQF\�UHVXOWHG�LQ�FXOWXUDO�DVVLPLODWLRQ�DQG�D�VHHPLQJO\�LQHVFDSDEOH�tribal dependency on the federal government.

July 8, 1970 was a turning point in American federal Indian policy that, correspondingly, changed the course of economic and social development on reservations. ,Q�D�VSHFLDO�0HVVDJH�WR�&RQJUHVV��3UHVLGHQW�5LFKDUG�0��1L[RQ�DQQRXQFHG�DQ�RIÀFLDO�HQG�WR�WKH�WHUPLQDWLRQ�SROLFLHV�WKDW�IRU�WKH�SDVW�WZR�GHFDGHV�KDG�SURGXFHG�DQ[LHW\�DQG�XQUHVW�ÀUVW�among tribal governments, and then more loudly, among urban activists. Nixon described the U.S.’s Native population as “the most deprived and most isolated minority group in our nation, [ranking on the bottom] on virtually every scale of measurement,” vindicating the shouts of Indian-rights activists. But more crucially, Nixon formally recognized that WKH�IHGHUDO�JRYHUQPHQW·V�DFWLRQV�KDG�FUHDWHG�WKRVH�FRQGLWLRQV�LQ�WKH�ÀUVW�SODFH��DQG�ERUH�full responsibility for their “ineffective and demeaning” attempts to better the standard of living for Native Americans since the reservation system’s creation.63 The speech focused RQ�WKH�QHZ�RIÀFLDO�SROLF\�RI�WULEDO�QDWLRQV·�SROLWLFDO�VHOI�GHWHUPLQDWLRQ�DV�WKH�FUX[�RI�D�VHW�of reforms focusing on political, cultural, and economic transitions: tribal members would hold BIA positions; sacred lands seized by the government for national parks and forests would be restored to tribal ownership; and a federal loan fund for economic development projects would increase three-fold from $25 million to $75 million.64

This pivotal decision launched a series of cultural revitalization movements among Indian nations. In January of 1971 at the University of Arizona in Tucson, which emerged 62 Lewis, Neither Wolf Nor Dog, 165–166.63 Richard M. Nixon, “Special Message to the Congress on Indian Affairs,” July 8, 1970, http://www.SUHVLGHQF\�XFVE�HGX�ZV�"SLG ��D[]]�QF�W9HN.��DFFHVVHG�)HEUXDU\��64 Ibid.


as a leader among Native American studies programs at universities across the country, three Native American graduate students gave a public presentation entitled “The Life of the Contemporary Indian” to a large audience. Their talk was in some ways a response to Nixon’s national address and to the release of Dee Brown’s national best seller, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West (1971), both of which caused an upswell in national interest in the history and contemporary conditions of Native Americans.65 The three Navajo students—Carol Kirk, Orville McKinley, and David Jackson—announced at the end of the program that they were planning to start the ÀUVW�HYHU�$PHULFDQ�,QGLDQ�OLWHUDU\�TXDUWHUO\��6XQ�7UDFNV�ZRXOG�EHFRPH�DQ�LPSRUWDQW�QH[XV�for Native American intellectuals and writers over the course of the next ten years. The ÀUVW�YROXPH�RSHQHG�ZLWK�D�SRHP�WKDW�HQFDSVXODWHV�WKH�XUJHQF\�XQGHUO\LQJ�WKH�5HG�3RZHU�movement as it exploded across the United States in the early 1970s. Poetry played a unique UROH�LQ�WKH�PRYHPHQW��,WV�ÁH[LELOLW\�RI�IRUP�DOORZHG�D�PHOGLQJ�RI�ERWK�FUHDWLYH�LQGLJHQRXV�and English descriptive styles and word use, creating the opportunity for tribal—and Pan-,QGLDQ³YRLFHV�WR�EH�KHDUG�DQG�VKDUHG�DFURVV�1RUWK�$PHULFD�IRU�WKH�ÀUVW�WLPH��

The track of the sunacross the skyleaves its shining messageilluminating,strengthening,warming,us who are here,showing us we are not alone.we are yet alive!DQG�WKLV�ÀUH«RXU�ÀUH«shall not die.66

7KLV�RSHQLQJ�SRHP�LV�GHÀDQW��ZLWK�LWV�YRLFH�VWURQJ�DQG�FOHDU��,W�GUDZV�RQ�LPDJHU\�of the sun moving across the sky, implying the passage of time itself as the “shining message”: the proof of indigenous strength and culture and character was its existence in the world after enduring the onslaught of violence, both physical and psychological, over the course of many centuries. Repetition of the present participle—“Illuminating/ strengthening/ warming”— signify the active, vital nature of Indian life and culture,

65 Larry Evers and Ofelia Zepeda, Home Places: Contemporary Native American Writing from Sun Tracks (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1995), 8.66 Larry Evers, The South Corner of Time: Hopi, Navajo, Papago, Yaqui Tribal Literature (Tucson: Sun Tracks, 1980), 11.

36 Cohen

challenging the stereotype of the primitive, archaic Indian whose worldview represented a distant past and had no place in contemporary American life. “We are yet alive!” the SRHWV�MXELODQWO\�SURFODLP��´DQG�WKLV�ÀUH«�RXU�ÀUH«�VKDOO�QRW�GLH�µ�7KH�SRZHUIXO�PHWDSKRU�RI�ÀUH�LV�D�VWDWHPHQW�WR�WKH�ZRUOG�WKDW�GHVSLWH�WKH�SRYHUW\�DQG�KRSHOHVVQHVV�WKDW�SHUYDGHG�UHVHUYDWLRQV��1DWLYH�$PHULFD�LV�VWLOO�WHHPLQJ�ZLWK�OLIH��7KH�SRHW�GHPDQGV�WKDW�WKLV�ÀUH�WDNH�its rightful place in the world, that its value be recognized, appreciated, and celebrated. But it is not only facing outwards from Indian country. Rather, the poem speaks inward, directly to Native people. The sun, “showing us we are not alone./ we are yet alive!” is a marker of solidarity, and the language of the poem similarly draws indigenous peoples together and reminds them of the strength and importance of their lives and cultures. The Red Power movement could only be strong and relevant if Native people were able to overcome the generations of cultural shame and suffering and recognize the immense value of their unique worldviews.

For the Tohono O’odham people, life and culture changed drastically between 1936 and 1970. The environmental pressures of increasing cattle populations combined with city and federal government encroachment upon limited water resources resulted in O’odham participation in the wage labor economy. But it was not until the 1950s when the mechanization of cotton harvesting made manual agricultural labor obsolete, federal policies encouraged tribal members to move off the reservation into cities, and when young O’odham were taught to be ashamed of their heritage that the cultural integrity of the tribe started to crumble. The rise of the Red Power movement and the important political declaration of self-determination in the early 1970s began the important process of revitalizing traditional languages and cultures on reservations and reversing the erosion of O’odham cultural practices. But the process was not simple, nor did it immediately \LHOG�WKH�EHQHÀWV�WKDW�DFWLYLVWV�DQG�SROLWLFLDQV�FODLPHG�LW�ZRXOG��7KH�UHFRYHU\�RI�WUDGLWLRQDO�agriculture and foodways would stay mostly dormant on the reservation throughout the ��V�DV�WKH�:HVWHUQ��LQGXVWULDO�PRGHO�RI�HFRQRPLF�GHYHORSPHQW�KHDYLO\�LQÁXHQFHG�QHZ�agricultural efforts.

Examining these changes in O’odham landscape, life, and labor in early to mid 20th century reveals one example of the mutually constitutive form nature and culture have taken in the Papaguería—that is, how the O’odham have shaped their natural environment and how their community has been shaped by its surroundings. Tracing the O’odham response to environmental and cultural pressures also helps to understand the ideological roots of the Native food sovereignty movement that would rise to prominence on the reservation (and many other indigenous communities in the U.S. and internationally) in


the 1990s, and which is currently blossoming on the reservation as tribal members seek innovative ways to apply the knowledge and lessons of traditional culture and agriculture to the very serious health, environmental, and economic problems they face today.

38 Cohen

APPENdix

Figure 1.1: Map of Tohono O’odham reservation lands in the U.S. and Mexico. Duarte, Carmen, Arizona Daily Star, 2001. Copied in Fazzino, David V. “Traditional Food Security: Tohono O’Odham Traditional

Foods in Transition.”


bibliogrAPhy

arChival sourCes

Arizona Historical Society Tucson Library and Archives (AHSTLA), Tucson, AZ ,QGLDQV�RI�1RUWK�$PHULFD�7RKRQR�2¶RGKDP�DJULFXOWXUH��HSKHPHUD�ÀOHV�,QGLDQV�RI�1RUWK�$PHULFD�7RKRQR�2¶RGKDP�HFRQRPLF�FRQGLWLRQV��HSKHPHUD�ÀOHV�,QGLDQV�RI�1RUWK�$PHULFD�7RKRQR�2¶RGKDP�OLYHVWRFN��HSKHPHUD�ÀOHV�,QGLDQV�RI�1RUWK�$PHULFD�7RKRQR�2¶RGKDP�IRRG��HSKHPHUD�ÀOHV�

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Beal, Tom. “Danny‘s Gone, But He Helped His O‘odham Culture Live On,” Arizona Daily Star, October 22, 2008. http://azstarnet.com/news/local/article_2e5d4337-0e0c-5231-9337-ef4a3b0a7155.html (accessed February 25, 2012).

Blaine, Peter, and Michael S. Adams. Papagos and Politics. Tucson: Arizona Historical Society, 1981.

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Evers, Larry, and Ofelia Zepeda. Home Places: Contemporary Native American Writing from Sun Tracks. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1995.

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Fixico, Donald Lee. Termination and Relocation: Federal Indian Policy, 1945-1960. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1986.

———. The Urban Indian Experience in America. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2000.

Fontana, Bernard L., and John Paul Schaefer. Of Earth and Little Rain: The Papago Indians. Flagstaff, Arizona: Northland Press, 1981.

Indian Adult Vocational Training Act of 1956, 1956. http://digital.library.okstate.edu/NDSSOHU�YRO��KWPOBÀOHV�Y�S��KWPO�S��D��DFFHVVHG�)HEUXDU\��

Joseph, Alice, Rosamond B. Spicer, and Jane Chesky. The Desert People: a Study of the Papago Indians. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1949.

Lewis, David Rich. Neither Wolf Nor Dog: American Indians, Environment, and Agrarian Change. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994.

Lopez, Danny. “Poetics and Politics Interview.” 1992. http://poeticsandpolitics.arizona.edu/lopez/lopez.html (accessed February 25, 2012).

Manuel, Frances Sallie, and Deborah Lynn Neff. Desert Indian Woman: Stories and Dreams. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2001.

Manuel, Henry F., Juliann Ramon, and Bernard L. Fontana. “Dressing for the Window: Papago Indians and Economic Development.” In American Indian Economic Development, edited by Sam Stanley, 511–577. Chicago: Mouton Publishers, 1978.

Meeks, Eric V. “The Tohono O’Odham, Wage Labor, and Resistant Adaptation, 1900-1930.” Western Historical Quarterly 34, no. 4 (Winter 2003): 469–489.

Meeks, Eric V. Border Citizens: The Making of Indians, Mexicans, and Anglos in Arizona. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2007.

Nabhan, Gary Paul. The Desert Smells Like Rain: A Naturalist in O’Odham Country. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2002.

Nixon, Richard M. “Special Message to the Congress on Indian Affairs,” July 8, 1970. KWWS��ZZZ�SUHVLGHQF\�XFVE�HGX�ZV�"SLG ��D[]]�QF�W9HN.��DFFHVVHG�February 25, 2012).

Reader, Tristan.“The Destruction of the Tohono O’odham Food System.” Tohono O’odham Community Action, n.d. http://www.tocaonline.org/Oodham_Foods/Entries/2010/3/29_The_Destruction_of_the_Tohono_Oodham_Food_System.html (accessed February 25, 2012).


Spicer, Edward Holland. Cycles of Conquest: The Impact of Spain, Mexico, and the United States on the Indians of the Southwest, 1533-1960. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1962.

Woods, Teri Knutson, Karen Blaine, and Lauri Francisco. “O’odham Himdag as a Source of Strength and Wellness Among the Tohono O’odham of Southern Arizona and Northern Sonora, Mexico.” Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare 29, no. 1 (March 2002): 35.

42

iNEquAlitiEs iN Art

thE ProduCtioN ANd PortrAyAl of food duriNg thE dutCh goldEN AgE

ChrisTina wong

Lasting from the late sixteenth century to the mid-seventeenth century, the Dutch Golden $JH�ZDV�D�UHPDUNDEOH�ÁRZHULQJ�RI�LQGXVWU\��WUDGH��DQG�ZHDOWK��)URP�LWV�PRQRSRO\�RQ�WUDGH�with Japan to its climate of tolerance for thinkers and scientists, the newly founded Dutch 5HSXEOLF�ÁRXULVKHG��$V�D�UHVXOW�RI�WKH�HQVXLQJ�H[SRQHQWLDO�LQFUHDVH�LQ�FRPPHUFLDO�FDSLWDO��cultural capital grew as well via the production of art. This explosion in art is best known through the celebrated Dutch artists of the time like Rembrandt, Hals, and Vermeer, but just as important was the rise of the anonymous art market, with art catering to a much broader swathe of society than ever before.1

However, this increase in wealth was by no means evenly spread across all sectors of society. The poorer groups of society continued to struggle to survive, working hand-to-mouth or depending on charity.2 These groups might have felt the trickled-down effects of the Golden Age in the form of increased alms, an obligation of the rich, and slightly higher wages, but they certainly never enjoyed the privilege of being art owners. Moreover, the Dutch Golden Age was characterized by urbanization in the western provinces. Cities dominated economic, political, and cultural life; therefore, residents of cities were generally richer than residents of the countryside and also owned more pieces of artwork.3 Still, not all members of urban society were able to own artwork.

1 The art market is called anonymous because artists created works for a general audience instead of tailor-ing them for an individual. Artists also often were anonymous, meaning that buyers bought a piece based on their attraction to the work itself as opposed to the fame of the artist.2 A. T. van Deursen, Plain Lives in a Golden Age, trans. Maateen Ultee (Cambridge: Cambridge Univer-sity Press, 1991), 44, 58-59.3 Jan De Vries and A. Van der Woude, The First Modern Economy, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 507; Ad van der Woude, “The Volume and Value of Paintings in Holland at the Time of the Dutch Republic,” in Art in History, History in Art ed. D. Freedberg and J. de Vries (Santa Monica: Getty Center for History of Art and the Humanities, 1991), 292.

Christina Wong, “Inequalities in Art: The Production and Portrayal of Food During the Dutch Golden Age,” Tempus 13.1 (Spring 2012), 42-71.

43Inequalities in Art

$FFRUGLQJ�WR�-DQ�GH�9ULHV�DQG�$G�YDQ�GHU�:RXGH��WKHUH�ZHUH�ÀYH�OHYHOV�RI�'XWFK�XUEDQ�VRFLHW\��GHÀQHG�E\�GHJUHHV�RI�HFRQRPLF�VWDELOLW\�4 The lower three levels, known as the schamele gemeente, literally “poor community,” accounted for roughly half of the urban population. Members of this sector struggled for basic survival and were thus unlikely to SDUWLFLSDWH� LQ� WKH�DUW�PDUNHW� LQ�DQ\� VLJQLÀFDQW�ZD\��0HDQZKLOH�� WKH�YHU\�KLJKHVW� VRFLDO�level, made up of the few individuals who held actual political power, would commission works rather than buy anonymous pieces produced for the market. It was therefore for the second level, the burgerif or burghers, the single largest group in urban society, that these anonymous artists who produced for the art market painted.5 The burgher class (is class the right word?) was by no means monolithic, with great diversity in wealth and status. Therefore, the market value of art pieces painted for them also varied, allowing non-burghers with incomes comparable to the smalle burgerij to buy art.6

The comparison of city to country life and the differences in urban versus city interests are of critical importance in understanding the content and conventions of Dutch painting, in particular the reasons that artists frequently depicted certain items while ignoring others.7�6SHFLÀFDOO\�� WKLV�SDSHU�ZLOO�H[DPLQH�ZK\�DUWLVWV� LQ� WKH�ZHVWHUQ�KDOI�RI�WKH�'XWFK�5HSXEOLF�PDGH�WKH�FKRLFHV�WKH\�GLG�LQ�SDLQWLQJV�RI�ÀVKLQJ��OLYHVWRFN�KXVEDQGU\��horticulture, and marketplaces and bakeries.8�7KH�ÀUVW� WKUHH� VXEMHFWV�DUH�GLVFXVVHG�KHUH�because they were industries that were closely connected to the creation of Dutch economic dominance and prosperity during its Golden Age. Marketplaces are then discussed not only because they represented the ascendancy of the burgher class, but also they provided 4 The het grauw (vagabonds, beggars, paupers, and other transients) were at the very bottom. Market sellers, peddlers, and hawkers fared slightly better. Domestic servants, sailors, soldiers, and unskilled/low-skills wage earners were at the top of the poorer half of society because they had relatively more stable in-FRPHV��+RZHYHU��EHFDXVH�WKH�ERXQGDULHV�EHWZHHQ�WKHVH�WKUHH�JURXSV�ZHUH�VR�WKLQ²D�VHUYDQW�PLJKW�EH�¿UHG�during a bad trade year and become homeless—they will be alternatively referred to as “the urban poor” or “the common masses” in this paper. (De Vries and Der Woude, 561-562).5 The smalle burgherij (burghers of slim means) included self-employed craftsmen, shopkeepers, govern-ment employees like clerks and supervisors as well as small businesses like shoemakers and smiths—all of whom made around 500 to 600 guilders annually. The broader middle swath of burghers was retailers, bakers, and more successful counterparts of small burgherij shopkeepers who made around 600 to 1,000 guilders annually. The grote burgherif��PDLQO\�PHUFKDQWV�DQG�KLJK�JRYHUQPHQW�RI¿FLDOV��PDGH�RYHU��guilders annually. (De Vries and Der Woude, 563-564).6 The price of a painting could be based on its subject, its size, the fame of the artist, and/or the amount of WLPH�WDNHQ�WR�FRPSOHWH�LW��FRQYH\HG�WKURXJK�WKH�OHYHO�RI�¿QH�GHWDLOV�LQ�WKH�SLHFH�DQG�LWV�VLPLODULW\�WR�RWKHU�pieces completed by the same artist) (Der Woude, 303-308).7 In this paper’s discussion of urban versus rural interests, urban interests should be understood as synony-mous with the interests of burghers.8 The scope of this paper will be limited to the western half of the Dutch Republic, with an emphasis on Holland, because of a lack of sources regarding a functioning art market in the eastern provinces of Gronin-gen, Drenthe, Overijssel, and inner Gelderland.

44 Wong

spaces where urban and rural lives interacted. Bakeries will be discussed in conjunction with marketplaces to contrast perceptions and portrayals of urban food-sellers versus rural food-sellers.

fishEriEs

For centuries, residents of Friesland, Holland, and Zeeland who lived next to rivers, WKH� =XLGHU� =HH� ED\�� DQG� WKH�1RUWK� 6HD�� KDG� GHSHQGHG� RQ� ÀVKLQJ� IRU� WKHLU� OLYHOLKRRG�9 $GYDQFHPHQWV�LQ�WHFKQRORJ\�HQDEOHG�SDUWV�RI�WKLV�ÀVKLQJ�LQGXVWU\�WR�H[SDQG�IURP�GRPHVWLF�markets to international trade. The herring ship, called a buss, was also known as the ´JUHDW� ÀVKHU\µ� EHFDXVH� LW�ZDV� D� IDFWRU\� XQWR� LWVHOI�� DV� KHUULQJ�ZHUH� QRW� VLPSO\� FDXJKW�but also processed (gutted and salted) on board.10 The herring trade generated wealth and established trade connections that were crucial foundations for later Dutch prosperity, as herring was one of the major goods exported to the Baltics.11

7KLV�LV�QRW�WR�VXJJHVW�WKDW�LQODQG�RU�FRDVWDO�ÀVKHULHV�ZHUH�OHVV�LPSRUWDQW�WKDQ�WKH�GHHS�VHD�KHUULQJ�ÀVKHULHV��2QO\�D�VPDOO�SHUFHQWDJH�RI�VDOWHG�KHUULQJ�ZHUH�GLUHFWHG�DW�'XWFK�PDUNHWV��DQG�VR�RWKHU�ÀVKHULHV�ZHUH�UHTXLUHG�IRU�ORFDO�FRQVXPSWLRQ��/RFDWHG�DORQJ�ULYHUV��WKH� =HHODQG�'HOWD�� DQG� DURXQG� WKH� =XLGHU� =HH�� IUHVKZDWHU� ÀVKHULHV�ZHUH� DQ� H[WUHPHO\�important component of the domestic economy; the government of Friesland prohibited WKH�H[SRUW�RI�IUHVKZDWHU�ÀVK��LPSRVLQJ�KHDY\�ÀQHV�DQG�IRUELGGLQJ�WKH�FRQVWUXFWLRQ�RI�VKLSV�WKDW�FRXOG�WUDQVSRUW�ÀVK�RXW�RI�WKH�SURYLQFH��+RZHYHU��WKH�WUDGH�RULHQWHG�SUHMXGLFHV�RI�WKH�Dutch Republic were evident in the language used to differentiate between the types of ÀVKHULHV��7KRVH�ZKR�FRQVXPHG�RU�VROG�WKHLU�FDWFK�ORFDOO\�ZHUH�UHIHUUHG�WR�DV�D�OHVVHU�VRUW�of folk (de schamele gemeente), transforming the economic hierarchy between domestic and international traders into a social distinction.

The intention behind such language was probably to elevate those who participated in the trade�RI�ÀVK��UDWKHU�WKDQ�WKH�ÀVKHUPHQ�WKHPVHOYHV��:LWKLQ�WKH�KHUULQJ�LQGXVWU\��WKHUH�ZHUH� JUHDW� GLVSDULWLHV� LQ� LQFRPH� EHWZHHQ� WKH� ÀVKHUPHQ� DQG� WKH� KHUULQJ� EXVV� LQYHVWRUV�

9 Zuider Zee means the “Southern Sea” and was a shallow bay in the northwestern region of the Nether-lands. Land reclamation separated the Zuider Zee from the North Sea and formed Lake Ijssel. De Vries and Der Woude, 235.10��7KLV�PHWKRG�RI�TXLFNO\�SURFHVVLQJ�KHUULQJ�RQ�ERDUG�KDG�EHHQ�LQYHQWHG�LQ�WKH�¿IWHHQWK�FHQWXU\�WR�HQDEOH�¿VKHUPHQ�WR�WUDYHO�GHHS�LQWR�WKH�1RUWK�6HD�DQG�VWD\�WKHUH�IRU�ZHHNV�ZLWKRXW�WKHLU�FDWFK�URWWLQJ��+RZHYHU��it was not until the sixteenth century, when herring busses large enough to hold a crew of eighteen to thirty men were developed, that individual busses could really produce salted herring for the international market on a large scale (Ibid., 243-244).11 Ibid., 235-6, 419. As will be discussing in the second and third parts of this paper, high importations of Baltic grain kept grain prices low and allowed Dutch farmers to focus on livestock husbandry and horticul-WXUH��ERWK�RI�ZKLFK�ZHUH�EHWWHU�VXLWHG�WR�WKH�VRLO�RI�WKH�ZHVWHUQ�1HWKHUODQGV�DQG�PRUH�SUR¿WDEOH�


ZKR�KDG�ULJKWV�WR�WUDGH�WKH�FDWFK��7KLV�LV�QRW�WR�VD\�WKDW�RQO\�D�VHOHFW�IHZ�SURÀWHG�IURP�WKH�KHUULQJ�ÀVKHULHV��RU�WKDW�ÀVKHUPHQ�ZHUH�H[SOLFLWO\�H[FOXGHG�IURP�EHLQJ�LQYHVWRUV��,W�ZDV�PXFK�PRUH�FRPPRQ�IRU�JURXSV�RI�WHQ�WR�ÀIWHHQ�SHRSOH�WR�IXQG�RQH�KHUULQJ�VKLS�WRJHWKHU�WKDQ�IRU�RQH� LQGLYLGXDO� WR�RZQ�D�KHUULQJ�VKLS�RU�ÁHHW�12 Fishermen could technically be in partnerships but the amount of capital required to continually repair or replace herring busses could only be found in cities. Over time, an inbalance of power developed between the urban and rural parts of coastal provinces, as cities like Enkhuizen, Delft, Rotterdam, 6KLHGDP��DQG�%ULOO�DEVRUEHG�WKH�SURÀWV�RI�WKH�KHUULQJ�WUDGH�ZKLOH�ÀVKLQJ�YLOODJHV�UHPDLQHG�among the poorest parts of Holland.13

%\�WKH�PLGGOH�RI�WKH�VHYHQWHHQWK�FHQWXU\��LW�ZDV�PXFK�PRUH�SURÀWDEOH�WR�LQYHVW�LQ�the trade than the production of herring.14 According to Emanuel van Meteren, a Flemish historian who represented Dutch trading interests in London during the late sixteenth century, few people would have been willing to work for the low wages of a Dutch ÀVKHUPDQ�15 Of course, there were investors who fell from the ranks of the burghers into the common masses because their investments failed. But whereas investors only lost PRQHWDU\�LQYHVWPHQWV�ZKHQ�WKHLU�VKLSV�ZHUH�VXQN��ÀVKHUPHQ�RQ�WKRVH�VKLSV�GLHG��DQG�WKHLU�families were left without their main wage earner. The frequency of storms and privateers (especially during the Anglo-Dutch wars) threatened the stability, even survival, of many ÀVKLQJ�YLOODJHV��+ROODQG·V�ÀVKLQJ�WRZQV�EHFDPH�VR�LPSRYHULVKHG�WKDW�WKH\�ZHUH�JUDQWHG�partial remission of taxes. The large numbers of widows and children in these villages FUHDWHG� D� VLJQLÀFDQW� VWUDLQ�RQ� WKH� OLPLWHG� UHOLHI� IXQGV�RI� YLOODJHV�� WKLV� LQ� WXUQ� VLSKRQHG�village funds from vital public works like maintaining harbors. Without usable harbors, villages had no means of supporting their only industry, creating a cycle of worsening poverty.16

7KH�LQFRQJUXLW\�EHWZHHQ�WKH�LQFUHDVHG�SURÀWDELOLW\�RI�KHUULQJ�DQG�WKH�SOXPPHWLQJ�OLYLQJ�VWDQGDUGV�RI�KHUULQJ�ÀVKHUPHQ�ZDV�PLUURUHG�LQ�WKH�SRUWUD\DO�RI�HDFK�RQH�LQ�DUW; herring were ubiquitous in paintings, while the men who caught them were only rarely depicted. :KLOH�WKH�H[DFW�QXPEHUV�RI�SDLQWLQJV�ZLWK�KHUULQJ�YHUVXV�SDLQWLQJV�ZLWK�ÀVKHUPHQ�DV�WKH�PDLQ�VXEMHFWV�DUH�XQDYDLODEOH��LW�LV�NQRZQ�WKDW�SDLQWLQJV�RI�ÀVKHUPHQ�ZLWK�WKHLU�FDWFK�ZHUH�

12 Deursen, 20-21. Investors in the herring trade tended to be burghers, though they could also be individu-als on the cusp between qualifying as a burgher and being a relatively well-off member of the common masses. In Rotterdam, herring investors included rope makers, pulley-makers, shoemakers, coopers, bakers, butter merchants, and cheese merchants.13 Ibid., 21.14 De Vries and Der Woude, 244-245.15 Deursen, 21.16 Ibid.

46 Wong

relatively rare.17 Herring were pointed to as almost a symbol of Dutch prosperity, allowing the Republic to rise to wealth from humble origins. Fishermen, on the other hand, did not have such special meaning to consumers and were also less accessible to artists, who would KDYH�KDG�WR�WUDYHO�RXWVLGH�RI�FLW\�ZDOOV�WR�REVHUYH�ÀVKHUPHQ�DW�ZRUN�

Urban burghers constituted the majority of both investors in the herring trade and buyers in the art market—the centrality is thus unsurprising. When these burghers looked upon a breakfast scene such as Pieter Claesz’s Still Life with Stoneware Jug, Wine Glass, Herring, and Bread��WKH\�GLG�QRW�MXVW�VHH�D�SODLQ�ÀVK�VXUURXQGHG�E\�V\PEROV�RI�UHODWLYH�wealth (white bread that only the burghers could afford, a knife with a polished handle, an ornate römer goblet, a silver serving plate, and a silver-topped stoneware jug) (Fig.1). For them, the simple herring at the center could very well have been how they acquired the wealth to buy the peripheral objects. Even for potential buyers who had no direct ties to the herring trade, the herring was commonly held up as an example of “how great things �DQG�SURÀWV��JUHZ�IURP�KXPEOH�EHJLQQLQJV�µ18 Though one might have expected Claesz to devote the most attention to the wine glass, the most expensive of the items displayed, it is the herring that seems to have taken the most time. Every individual scale gleams; the VLOYHU� SODWH� UHÁHFWV� WKH� ERWWRP�RI� WKH� KHUULQJ�� HPSKDVL]LQJ� ERWK� WKH� DUWLVW·V�PHWLFXORXV�attention to realism and that the herring was deserving of such expensive dinnerware. This particular painting, with its small size, minimal details other than the herring, and uniform amber-brown tone, was one of Claesz’s quicker creations for the market; it would KDYH�EHHQ�UHODWLYHO\�LQH[SHQVLYH��DIIRUGDEOH�WR�WKH�ORZHU�EXUJKHUV�DV�ZHOO�DV�PRUH�DIÁXHQW�farmers. Repeated again and again in depictions of both wealthy and modest settings, the herring, ever shimmering and never garnished, occupied an important position in both art and society in the Dutch Golden Age.

7KH�VDPH�FDQQRW�EH�VDLG�RI�WKH�KHUULQJ�ÀVKHUPHQ��:KLOH�WKH�KHUULQJ�ZDV�VHHQ�DV�foundational to the Dutch Republic’s economic dominance of the international market, this KLJK�UHJDUG�ZDV�QRW�H[WHQGHG�WR�WKH�SHRSOH�ZKR�WRLOHG�GDLO\�WR�FDWFK�DQG�SUHSDUH�WKH�ÀVK��Fishermen were not viewed in an especially negative light, but did not have any metaphoric YDOXH�VSHFLÀF�WR�WKHP��)RU�XUEDQ�GHQL]HQV��FRQVXPHUV�DQG�DUWLVWV�DOLNH��WKH�ÀVKHUPDQ�ZDV�only one of many occupations that represented the honest, hardworking ethic and modest

17��7KLV�GRHV�QRW�LQFOXGH�LPDJHV�RI�¿VK�PDUNHWV��%HFDXVH�¿VK�YHQGRUV�ZHUH�RI�ERWK�JHQGHUV�DQG�FRXOG�EH�¿VKHUPHQ¶V�IDPLO\�PHPEHUV��FRQYHQWLRQV�RI�KRZ�WR�SRUWUD\�¿VK�YHQGRUV�ZHUH�OLNHO\�GLIIHUHQW�WKDQ�RI�KRZ�WR�SRUWUD\�¿VKHUPHQ��$GGLWLRQDOO\��EHFDXVH�WKH�GDLO\�IRRG�PDUNHWV�ZHUH�VHSDUDWH�DUHQDV�LQ�ZKLFK�SHRSOH�IURP�GLIIHUHQW�VHFWRUV�RI�VRFLHW\�LQWHUDFWHG��¿VK�PDUNHWV�DQG�WKHLU�SRUWUD\DO�ZLOO�EH�GLVFXVVHG�ODWHU�LQ�FRQ-junction with other marketplaces in Section IV.18 Simon Schama, The Embarrassment of Riches, (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1987), 165.


lifestyle advocated by Calvinist preachers.19 Artists had no incentive to specialize in the GHSLFWLRQ�RI�ÀVKHUPHQ�EHFDXVH�WKHUH�ZDV�QR�EURDG�GHPRJUDSKLF�WKDW�UHODWHG�VSHFLÀFDOO\�WR�ÀVKHUPHQ��7KRVH�ZKR�ZRXOG�KDYH�EHHQ�PRVW�GUDZQ�WR�SDLQWLQJV�IHDWXULQJ�ÀVKHUPHQ��WKH�ÀVKHUPHQ�WKHPVHOYHV�DQG�WKHLU�IDPLOLHV��OLYHG�D�PHDJHU�H[LVWHQFH�DQG�FRXOG�QRW�DIIRUG�even relatively cheap works.20 This was all the more true for the widows and remaining IDPLO\�PHPEHUV�RI�WKRVH�ÀVKHUPHQ�ZKR�GLHG�DW�VHD�DQG�ZKR�ZHUH�XWWHUO\�GHSHQGDQW�RQ�charity.21

$QRWKHU�UHDVRQ�IRU�WKH�ORZ�YROXPH�RI�ÀVKHUPHQ�FHQWHUHG�DUW�ZDV�SHUKDSV�EHFDXVH�DUWLVWV�KDG�IHZ�RSSRUWXQLWLHV�WR�REVHUYH�ÀVKLQJ��HVSHFLDOO\�RQ�WKH�RSHQ�VHD� 22 For example, in his series on the Four Elements, Claes Jansz Clock’s print Water�IHDWXUHG�D�ÀVKHUPDQ�with his tools—a spike, a pail, a net on the end of a pole and a basket (Fig. 2).23 The appeal RI� WKH� SULQW�ZDV� QRW� LQ� WKH� ÀVKHUPDQ�� KRZHYHU�� EXW� LQ� WKH� FROOHFWLRQ� DV� D�ZKROH� ��7KH�other Four Elements—Earth, Fire, and Air—were respectively represented by a farmer, a blacksmith, and a falconer. Together, these prints’ occupations represented how the Dutch had conquered the elements and fashioned them to suit their needs, a notion of particular appeal for a country reclaimed from the sea.24 Additionally, the tools portrayed in Water are QRW�WKRVH�RI�WKH�RFHDQ�ÀVKHUPDQ�EXW�UDWKHU�RI�WKH�LQODQG�ÀVKHUPDQ³WKH�QHW�DW�WKH�HQG�RI�D�pole, the small pail, the reed basket and the spike, these all would only have been useful for FDWFKLQJ�ÀVK�LQ�FORVH�SUR[LPLW\��$UHQW�$UHQWV]��RQH�RI�WKH�IHZ�DUWLVWV�WR�SRUWUD\�ÀVKHUPHQ��

19��7KHUH�ZDV�QR�JXDUDQWHH�WKDW�ZDJH�HDUQHUV�UHFHLYHG�D�ZDJH�VXI¿FLHQW�WR�VXSSRUW�WKHPVHOYHV��DV�ZDJHV�were only set to be proportional to the value of the work completed. Tenant farmers and many menial urban laborers were also understood to be hard workers who lived the lifestyle they earned (Deursen, 58).20 Most paintings produced for the art market were not created by famous artists and cost between one and fourteen guilders (Der Woude, 318).21 Fewer rural families had paintings than urban families, and rural families who bought paintings were usually those who owned at least ten milking cows (or had the equivalent economic power thereof). Given WKDW�PDQ\�¿VKLQJ�YLOODJHV�ZHUH�IRUFHG�WR�FKRRVH�EHWZHHQ�VXSSRUWLQJ�WKHLU�ZLGRZV��RUSKDQV��DQG�QHHG\�RU�maintaining their harbors, the low number of families who would have had the same economic status as a farmer with ten milking cows can be imagined (Ibid., 292, 296).22��7KLV�LV�QRW�WR�VD\�WKDW�WKHUH�ZHUH�DEVROXWHO\�QR�¿VKHUPHQ�ZKR�RZQHG�SDLQWLQJV²ZKHWKHU�WKH\�GHSLFWHG�¿VKHUPHQ�RU�QRW��7KH�GDPSQHVV�RI�KRXVHV�LQ�WKH�1HWKHUODQGV�FDXVHG�PDQ\�SDLQWLQJV�WR�EH�GHVWUR\HG�ZLWKLQ�one generation. In the moist, salty air of villages on the coast, perhaps there actually were more paintings that depicted life on the coast that merely do not survive to the present day . (Ibid., 294).23 At the turn of the sixteenth into the seventeenth century, there was a general trend in Dutch art to SRUWUD\�LGHDV�XVLQJ�UHDOLVWLF�¿JXUHV�UDWKHU�WKDQ�LGHDOL]HG�SHUVRQL¿FDWLRQV��7KLV�)RXU�(OHPHQWV�VHULHV�FRXOG�EH�PHUHO\�D�UHÀHFWLRQ�RI�WKH�SHUYDVLYH�QDWXUH�RI�'XWFK�5HDOLVP�EXW�HYHQ�DV�DQ�DUWLVWLF�WUHQG��WKLV�EHOLHV�D�cultural need to use tangible items or people as a root on allegorical meaning. Christopher Brown, Scenes of Everyday Life: Dutch Genre Painting of the Seventeenth Century (London: Faber and Faber Limited, 1984), 34-35.24 This idea is derived from Simon Schama’s overarching theme in The Embarrassment of Riches, wherein he described the Dutch Republic’s parallel tensions between conquering the ocean and temptation.

48 Wong

SDLQWHG�LQODQG�ÀVKHUPHQ�H[FOXVLYHO\��LQ�KLV�Fishermen and Farmers��RQH�FDQ�ÀQG�WKH�VSLNH�XVHG�IRU�VSHDULQJ�FRDVWDO�DQG�ULYHU�ÀVK��)LJ��,URQLFDOO\��WKRXJK�LQODQG�ÀVKHUPHQ�ZHUH�nominally de schamele gemeente, Dutch citizens probably perceived them as more actively FRQWULEXWLQJ�WR�WKH�'XWFK�HFRQRP\�WKDQ�RSHQ�VHD�ÀVKHUPHQ��,W�ZDV�WKH�GDLO\�FDWFKHV�RI�LQODQG�DQG�FRDVWDO�ÀVKHUPHQ�WKDW�EXUJKHUV�EDUWHUHG�RYHU�DW�ORFDO�PDUNHWV��QRW�WKH�SUHVHUYHG�herring destined for foreign consumption. When Arentsz took his inspirational strolls DURXQG�$PVWHUGDP��LW�ZDV�ULYHU�ÀVKHUPHQ�ZKRP�KH�HQFRXQWHUHG�DQG�VNHWFKHG��QRW�KHUULQJ�ÀVKHUPHQ�RQ�WKHLU�EXVVHV�LQ�WKH�1RUWK�6HD�25�,QODQG�ÀVKHUPHQ�ZHUH�LQWHJUDWHG�LQWR�'XWFK�VRFLHW\�WKURXJK�ORFDO�PDUNHWV�LQ�D�ZD\�KHUULQJ�ÀVKHUPHQ�ZHUH�QRW�

Even in seascapes, where one might expect them to be featured more prominently, ÀVKHUPHQ�ZHUH�RIWHQ�UHOHJDWHG�WR�WKH�EDFNJURXQG��DV�PHUH�IUDPLQJ�GHYLFHV��,Q�:LOOHP�YDQ�Diest’s A Calm with Fishing Boats and Fishermen in the Foreground, the rolling clouds and the calm sea are the main subjects, while the boats are given intricate details, from the ULJJLQJ�RI�WKH�VDLOV�WR�WKH�ULSSOH�LQ�WKH�FDQYDV��)LJ��7KH�ÀVKHUPHQ�ZHUH�UHGXFHG�WR�PHUH�VSHFNV�RQ�WKH�ERDW��HDVLO\�RYHUORRNHG�LI�QRW�IRU�WKH�WLWOH�RI�WKH�SDLQWLQJ��WKHLU�FDWFK�JORULÀHG�just as they themselves are ignored.

livEstoCk husbANdry

/LNH� WKH�KHUULQJ� WUDGH�� WKH�FDWWOH� LQGXVWU\�ZDV�DQRWKHU�ÀQDQFLDO�EDFNERQH�RI� WKH�Dutch Republic. Cattle were raised for dairy products and beef, both of which were traded in domestic and foreign markets. The local beef in particular was supported by burghers’ higher living standards of living and by demand for salted meat, especially during the Anglo-Dutch Wars.26 The trade in cattle and dairy products created links between a number of the provinces, joining the inland farmers to the coastal merchants.27 Livestock husbandry, including breeding, the domestic sale of cattle between provinces, the production of butter, cheese, and commercial milk, and slaughtering, provided an example of the close

25 Since the late-sixteenth and early-seventeenth century, it had been a tradition amongst Amsterdam art-ists to draw landscapes based on what they observed in nature rather construct landscapes from observing other masters’ works. Artists, including Visscher and Rembrandt, would take walks along established paths into the countryside of Amsterdam and later create paintings documenting what they saw. Many of these artists’ landscapes can be pinpointed to an exact location (Boudewijn Bakker, Landscapes of Rembrandt: His Favourite Walks [Bussum: Thoth, 1999], 16-21.)26 Jan Bieleman, Five Centuries of Farming: A short history of Dutch Agriculture 1500-2000 (Wagenin-gen: Wageningen Academic Publishers, 2010), 54-55.27 De Vries and Der Woude, 209. Cattle sales were limited to farmers who could afford to raise a substan-tial number of cattle. In the provinces of Utrecht and Gelderland, small farmers and agricultural laborers—collectively referred to as cotters—survived on seasonal work provided by the larger farmers and through integrating their small household economies with the investments of urban burghers looking for cheap labor.


integration between the agricultural and trade sectors. The transition from arable farming WR�OLYHVWRFN�UHDULQJ�ZDV�WKH�ÀUVW�VWHS�WRZDUGV�VSHFLDOL]DWLRQ�LQ�WKH�UXUDO�VHFWRU��WKH�FDWWOH�industry then specialized further by region, and by the mid-seventeenth century, different SURYLQFHV�KDG�EHFRPH�NQRZQ�IRU�VSHFLÀF�SURGXFWV��

Because the peat and clay soils of the maritime zones of the Dutch Republic, including the provinces of Holland, Zeeland, and parts of Utrecht, were not suitable for growing wheat, many farmers in these regions chose to focus on livestock husbandry.28 The shift from attempting to grow grains in bogs to livestock farming was encouraged by the relatively high price of livestock products compared to grain.29 While populations across Europe increased from 1500 to 1650 and grain prices rose even higher, the Dutch Republic was able to maintain uniquely low prices through large-scale importation of Baltic grain.30 This stabilization of grain prices and supply enabled the success of the livestock industry on the maritime coast. The change in rural scenery was captured in landscapes like Polder Het Grootslag. (Fig. 5) Het Grootslag was a small farming village near the city of Enkhuizen, so close that in the painting one can see the city in the top left corner. This is indicative of the close connection between agriculture and trade throughout the Dutch Republic. $JULFXOWXUH�LQ�+ROODQG�ZDV�GHÀQHG�E\�OLYHVWRFN�KXVEDQGU\�UDWKHU�WKDQ�DUDEOH�IDUPLQJ��DV�evidenced by the presence of grazing cows interspersed by small lots that were dedicated to harvesting hay. From the large dimensions of this piece, one can infer that its owner was quite wealthy. Similar to the mindsets of burghers who owned paintings of herring but QRW�RI�ÀVKHUPHQ��WKH�DUWLVW�SRUWUD\HG�WKH�SURVSHULW\�RI�QHDU�HQGOHVV�JUD]LQJ�JURXQGV�ZKLOH�downplaying the lives of the farmers.

In Holland and Friesland, between the end of the sixteenth century and the middle of the seventeenth century, the average heads of cattle per farm rose from fourteen or ÀIWHHQ�WR�DURXQG�WZHQW\�ÀYH�31 Livestock husbandry was by no means an assured road to prosperity but the high demand for dairy products both domestically and internationally meant that dairy farmers had relatively stable livelihoods.32�,Q�RUGHU�WR�PD[LPL]H�SURÀWV��dairy farms in the maritime zone began to specialize in certain types of dairy production and even stopped raising cows altogether. This created a large demand for heifers and young dairy cows and a small supply of calves (as calves were born annually to stimulate 28 Ibid., 20329 Bieleman, 49-50.30 This price status was the most evident in Holland—the majority of imported grain was delivered to Am-sterdam, where it was stored until it was disseminated to the rest of the Dutch Republic through the market system (De Vries and Der Woude, 198).31 Fifteen of them tended to be milk cows (Bieleman, 50-51).32 Ibid., 51-52.

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milk streams but sold immediately afterwards). Therefore, the farmers in certain provinces or neighboring regions specialized in breeding and selling cattle.33 Friesland and Groningen provided the bulk of heifers and young dairy cows for Holland cattle dealers.34 Young oxen came from Jutland, though dairy cows were also sent to slaughterhouses after a few years.35

Milk, cheese, and butter were the main products of the cattle industry and were accessible to many sectors: farmers themselves, non-farming residents of village (innkeepers, surgeons, shopkeepers, bakers, etc.), local city residents, and even international consumers.36 The dairy industry thus brought the eating habits of people from a variety of economic backgrounds into parallel. Farmers could use the income from selling these dairy products to buy other food items, such as pricier fruits and vegetables, enjoyed by burghers. Beef production became important, as a rise in urban standards of living meant more burghers could afford to eat fresh meat regularly. Salted or smoked meats were also in high demand for naval ships and trade merchants’ ships.37�5XUDO�UHVLGHQWV�DOO�EHQHÀWHG�from the increased prevalence of cattle throughout the countryside. While they might not have been able to buy meat on a regular basis, owners of livestock would enjoy fresh meat during slaughter season each year and store smoked meat for the coming year.38 Though there is less research about the prevalence of small livestock on farms, it is known that sheep and pigs must have been even more common than cattle. Cattle were a risky investment EHFDXVH�WKH�KLJK�SURÀWV�ZHUH�SDUDOOHOHG�E\�KLJK�FRVWV�RI�PDLQWHQDQFH��DQG�FDWWOH�RIWHQ�GLG�not survive the extreme seasonal temperature changes in northern Holland. Indeed, many IDUPHUV�FKRVH�WR�UDLVH�ÁRFNV�RI�VKHHS�LQVWHDG�DQG�VROG�JUHHQ�VKHHS�FKHHVHV�39 Pork was the most commonly eaten meat so at least some livestock farmers must have either raised large numbers of pigs in addition to their other specialty (cows or sheep) or specialized in raising pigs.40

Hubert Van Ravesteyn’s Barn Interior records the wide variety of livestock a farming family might have: a few heads of cattle, a couple goats, some sheep, a chicken, 33 Breeding was based on rudimentary knowledge at best; there were vague conceptions about a connec-tion between a cow’s color and character. Dutch cows owed their health and vigor to the mixture of many gene pools because cows came together in Holland from such a wide region (Donna R. Barnes and Ruud Spruit, Food for Thought: Food and drink in seventeenth-century Dutch art and life [Hoorn: Westfries Museum, 2010], 32).34 Bieleman, 54.35 Barnes and Spruit, 25-26.36 De Vries and Der Woude, 517-519.37 Bieleman, 55.38 Barnes and Spruit, 26-28. 39 Deursen, 16.40 Barnes and Spruit, 77.


and even a dog. (Fig. 6) Though specialization may have occurred on a provincial scale, individual families and farms could not afford to bet their livelihood on a single type of livestock. The milk from the two heads of cattle, assuming that they were cows, could be made into high quality cheese and butter for the market. If they were bulls, then in the fall, they would have been slaughtered and their meat preserved to provide the family with meat through the winter. The chickens would have provided the family with fresh eggs that enriched an otherwise plain diet. The greater numbers of goat and sheep meant that they were the chief source of this family’s income and personal diet: drinking goat milk meant cow milk could be saved for the market, and sheep cheese was also sold in the marketplace.41 Barn Interior is a medium sized painting with a fair amount of bright colors and details like the wool of the sheep and individual hairs of the goats. It was clearly intended for the home of a burgher, not the farmers depicted. It was not a simple depiction of farming life, but rather a painting with layers of meaning. There is a playful element to the painting; the child dismounting from the goat combined with the disarray of pots and spoons suggests that some rambunctious mischief just occurred, while his mother looks on with displeasure. There is also a moral aspect to the depiction, as the presence of so many animals alongside the hardworking farmer’s wife highlights the necessity of hard work for acquiring material wealth, a message of particular appeal for the Dutch Calvinists.

The range of avenues by which one could make a decent living from livestock husbandry meant that these farmers of the western provinces were generally able to participate in the art market. They might not have been able to afford the more expensive paintings but they could have certainly afforded prints, drawings, or very cheap paintings on wood, costing no more than a few stuivers.42 Artists would thus have had more incentive WR�FUHDWH�SDLQWLQJV�RI�DQG�IRU�OLYHVWRFN�IDUPHUV�WKDQ�RI�RU�IRU�ÀVKHUPHQ��3DLQWLQJV�SURGXFHG�for farmers to hang in their homes were not necessarily always related to farms but shared limits on the complexity and details. Paintings of farmers and dairy products were equally in vogue with burghers.43 This was because there was a much greater degree of overlap between the lives of burghers and farmers than there was between the lives of burghers and ÀVKHUPHQ��)LVKHUPHQ�DQG�EXUJKHUV�UHDOO\�RQO\�LQWHUDFWHG�WKURXJK�ÀVK�PDUNHWV�EXW�IDUPHUV�lived and worked in greater physical proximity to cities. Burghers might even own land in the countryside and have tenant farmers. Every autumn, wealthier burghers would pick a 41 It is unknown whether goat cheese was made and sold during this time.42 Der Woude, 297.43 That is, paintings that mainly depicted farmers, livestock, and/or dairy products were roughly equal in YROXPH�WR�HDFK�RWKHU��XQOLNH�WKH�ODUJH�GLVSDULW\�EHWZHHQ�SDLQWLQJV�RI�KHUULQJ�DQG�SDLQWLQJV�RI�¿VKHUPHQ��Ultimately, landscapes were more popular and common than any of these genre or still life paintings (Ibid., 320).

52 Wong

KHDG�RI�OLYHVWRFN�IURP�WKH�ÁRFN�RI�D�IDUPHU�DQG�SD\�WKH�IDUPHU�WR�VODXJKWHU�WKH�DQLPDO�DQG�smoke the meat for them. As each province became renowned for different products, cities took pride in the quality of butters or cheeses sold in their stores.44

Paintings of farmers depicted both men and women engaged in agricultural work. Farmers were potent metaphoric symbols, representing the virtues of honest work and frugal living because production still occurred on the scale of small family farms.45 Women in particular were in charge of the production cheese and butter.46 The dairy industry was thus a way for women to demonstrate their importance in Dutch society and their contributions to economic prosperity. A series of twenty-four anonymous painted panels, from the second half of the sixteenth century, depicts women with a variety of props that related to agriculture or dairy products. Woman from Hoogwoud, Woman from Oudendijk, and Woman from Benningbroek each show a well-dressed woman carrying one or two rounds of cheese (Fig. 7, Fig. 8, Fig. 9). Woman from Wadwaay features a woman with a butter churner, and Woman from Jisp features a woman hold a cheese mold (Fig. 10 and Fig. 11).

Theoretically, all these women could be farmer’s wives; however, some of them are so ornately dressed that it is hard to imagine them actually making the cheese they hold or using the tools in their hands.47 The three women holding rounds of cheese have especially lavish dresses—gold clasps and buttons decorated their collars and sleeves. The two exceptions are the woman from Wadwaay, whose small gold clasps on her collar are to an extent balanced by her apron negated any sense of extravagance, and the woman from Jisp, who wears no accessories and is dressed in somber black.48 The differences may 44 Bieleman, 51-53. Alongside livestock husbandry, farmers on peat lands reserved a small plot of land IURP�JURZLQJ�JUDVV�WR�JURZ�KHPS��DQ�LPSRUWDQW�FURS�IRU�WKH�FUHDWLRQ�RI�¿EHUV�XVHG�WR�PDNH�FDQYDV��¿VKLQJ�nets, and ropes. Therefore, there was also an increased amount of integration between the various sectors of DJULFXOWXUH��¿VKLQJ�ZLWK�IDUPLQJ�ZLWK�OLYHVWRFN�KXVEDQGU\��45 Deursen, 12-13.46 Women processed milk twice a day, immediately after it was milked from the cows. Morning milk tended to be sweeter and fuller than evening milk. Cream was skimmed off the top to make churn butter, and some of the milk was sold to households of nearby towns. A milkmaid carried two buckets of milk on her shoulders using a yoke and went door to door until they were sold. The rest of the morning milk and most of the evening milk (which tended to be less creamy) was used to make cheeses. This was a laborious process and not always rewarding. If bacteria got into the cheese at any point, it might generate gas within the cheese and cause it to burst within weeks. And though the Dutch were meticulous with cleaning their tools, the very water they used often was contaminated (Barnes and Spruit, 35).47 The conclusion that these women are dressed better than an average farmer’s wife is based on a com-parison with the clothing of the woman in Van Ravesteyn’s Barn Interior.48 This does not mean that the clothing was cheap; black satins and silks were popular with burghers because they appeared to be in line with Calvinist dress prescriptions while demonstrating the wearers’ af-ÀXHQFH�


stem from the fact that these were commissioned portraits, but the fact that they are part RI�D�ODUJHU�VHULHV�RI�SDQHOV�VXJJHVWV�WKDW�WKH\�ZHUH�QRW�PHDQW�WR�UHSUHVHQW�VSHFLÀF�ZRPHQ��Additionally, very few farmers’ wives would have been able to afford the dresses depicted in these paintings or to commission portraits.49 Indeed, the labeling of the women by city name rather than name indicates that the portraits were meant to depict something unique DERXW�HDFK�RI�WKHVH�FLWLHV��SHUKDSV�WKH�FLWLHV�WKHPVHOYHV�³DOO�ÀYH�RI�WKH�WRZQV�DUH�ORFDWHG�on the Northern Holland peninsula, which was famous for it high-quality cheese.50

7KHVH�SDQHOV�PD\�KDYH�EHHQ�PHDQW�WR�EH�D�UHÁHFWLRQV�RI�WKH�UHODWLYH�SURVSHULW\�RI�these cities. Hoogwoud, Oudendijk, and Benningbroek were cheese-making regions (as the cheese was really produced in the rural area surrounding the city), so perhaps their IHPDOH�SHUVRQLÀFDWLRQV�ZHUH�GUHVVHG�EHWWHU�EHFDXVH�WKHVH�FLWLHV�ZHUH�ULFKHU��,I�:DGZD\�GLG�specialize in producing butter, then it could have still been relatively prosperous as there was always a market for butter, but since butter was considered the specialty of southern Holland, Wadway butter likely did not fetch the highest prices.51 Lastly, Jisp appears to be an anomaly because the woman holds a cheese-making tool but is not dressed very ornately. However, Jisp was the furthest from Hoorn, the town to which all cheese was transported before being exported to France and southern Europe.52 It may then have been PRUH�GLIÀFXOW�IRU�LWV�IDUPHUV�WR�WUDQVSRUW�FKHHVH�WR�+RRUQ��DQG��-LVS·V�FKHHVH�ZDV�SUREDEO\�sold in the domestic rather than international market. These sales would still have been SURÀWDEOH�EHFDXVH�WKHUH�ZDV�JUHDW�GRPHVWLF�GHPDQG�IRU�FKHHVH�DQG�EXWWHU�EXW�QRW�WR�WKH�same degree as sales on the international market. The difference between the dress of the women from Hoogwoud, Oudendijk, and Bennenbroek and the dress of the women from Wadway and Jisp could have also been indicative of socioeconomic differences. The three women who held rounds of cheese had gold adornments on their cuffs, which would have been highly inconvenient for working. The other two women with tools had plainer sleeves that conceivably could have been rolled up, enabling the women to actually make butter DQG�FKHHVH��7KH�ÀUVW�WKUHH�ZRPHQ�UHSUHVHQWHG�WKH�ZLYHV�RI�EXUJKHUV��SHUKDSV�VKRZLQJ�D�recent purchase, while the other two women represented farmers’ wives displaying their trade tools.

The questions of who would have bought these panels, whether they were collected DV� D� VHW�� DQG� ZKHUH� WKH\� ZRXOG� KDYH� EHHQ� GLVSOD\HG� DUH� GLIÀFXOW� WR� DQVZHU� VLQFH� WKH�49 Der Woude, 311.50 For example, Woman from Enkhuizen showed a similarly well-dressed woman holding a herring, and WKH�PDMRULW\�RI�SUR¿WV�IURP�WKH�KHUULQJ�WUDGH�ZHQW�WR�(KNKXL]HQ��1RW�LQFOXGHG�LQ�¿JXUHV�OLVW�EXW�DYDLODEOH�at http://www.rijksmuseum.nl/collectie/zoeken/asset.jsp?id=SK-C-1503&lang=en); Bieleman, 51-53.51 Ibid., 53.52 Ibid., 51-53.

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provenance of the series is unknown. As the panels are not attributed to any individual artist or artists, they were most likely produced for the art market. If so, perhaps there was a female audience to whom these works would have appealed—that is, women who had both the money to buy art and control over their household’s interior decoration. They may have been hung in kitchens, placing pieces that featured women in women’s typical domain. Alternatively, these paintings might have transcended this connection between a domestic topic and domestic physical space if their owners valued them as depictions of wealth (the cheese and the butter) that could be showcased in more public realms of the house. In either scenario, it is striking that depictions of women from one sector of society FRXOG�DSSHDO�WR�DQ\�RWKHU�VHFWRU�RI�VRFLHW\��,W�LV�PRUH�GLIÀFXOW�WR�LPDJLQH�VLPLODU�GHSLFWLRQV�of men—merely posing and not engaged in any activity—being popular. Generally, men were shown in the act of working, as Calvinist ideals greatly emphasized hard work, and thereby invariably had agency.53�7KH�ÀYH�SDLQWLQJV�LQ�D�VHQVH�FDSWXUH�WKH�WHQVLRQV�RI�'XWFK�society, as the women hold with their contributions to the economy while they themselves DUH�REMHFWLÀHG�DV�LWHPV�RI�GLVSOD\��:RPHQ�ZHUH�FUXFLDO�WR�WKH�SURGXFWLYH�DELOLW\�RI�UXUDO�families, but giving women too much agency and responsibility had the danger of upsetting existing gender roles.54 Paintings such as these were a compromise between documenting women’s contributions and preserving their subordinate role.

hortiCulturE

Vegetables had always played an important part in the Dutch diet. During the IRXUWHHQWK�DQG�ÀIWHHQWK�FHQWXULHV�� WKH�UXUDO�DQG�XUEDQ�VHFWRUV�ZHUH�HDFK�UHVSRQVLEOH�IRU�growing their own vegetables. Farmers consumed what they grew on their private gardens and orchards while those in the cities cultivated their own vegetables within the city walls.55 However, as the urban population increased, urban gardens and orchards were cleared for building new homes and storefronts.

In Holland, horticulture arose as a type of farming clustered around the vicinity of FLWLHV��3URIHVVLRQDO�PDUNHW�JDUGHQV�ZHUH�ÀUVW�HVWDEOLVKHG�DURXQG�/HLGHQ�DQG�'HOIW�DQG�ODWHU�around towns including De Langedijk, Enkhuizen, Amsterdam, and Rotterdam. Each of

53 Brown, 88.54 Ravesteyn’s Barn Interior also showed both a man and a woman working together to complete the daily farm chores. The woman is actually in the foreground, actively scrubbing a deep dish while the man tends to the animals in the background. Both partners played crucial roles in successfully maintaining the busi-ness of their farmstead. 55 Barnes and Spruit, 35.


these zones specialized in certain vegetables: De Langedijk cultivated onions, horseradish, carrots, and parsnips; Enkhuizen cultivated cabbage and carrots.56

0RUH�VR�WKDQ�ÀVKHUPHQ�RU�OLYHVWRFN�IDUPHUV��KRUWLFXOWXUH�IDUPHUV�ZHUH�FRQFHUQHG�about orienting their crops to the market than for self-sustenance. Farmers to focused on the development of new crops like the Horn (orange) carrot and huge heads of cabbage WKDW�FRXOG�EH�JUHHQ�RU�SLQN��WKHVH�QHZ�FURSV�ÀUVW�DSSHDUHG�LQ�SDLQWLQJV�LQ�WKH�PLGGOH�RI�the sixteenth century.57 From the beginning to the end of the seventeenth century, Leiden and Delft horticulture farmers changed from growing “coarse” vegetables like cabbages, FDUURWV��WXUQLSV��DQG�RQLRQV�WR�´ÀQHµ�YHJHWDEOHV�VXFK�DV�OHWWXFH��VSLQDFK��DQG�FDXOLÁRZHU�58 7KLV�FKDQJH�UHÁHFWHG�WKH�LQFUHDVHG�ZHDOWK�RI�FLW\�EXUJKHUV��ZKR�FRXOG�QRZ�DIIRUG�WKH�PRUH�expensive vegetables. Vegetables’ prices depended on their ease of cultivation as well as their seasonal availability. Hardy fruits and vegetables like apples, cabbages, onions, white turnips, and carrots which did not spoil easily and were sold almost year-round were the lowest in price. Only burghers could afford the more expensive fruits and vegetables, which included melons, berries, peaches, cherries, plums, peas, artichokes, green beans, FDXOLÁRZHU�� DQG� FXFXPEHUV�59� ,PSRUWHG� LWHPV� OLNH� FLWUXV� IUXLW�� SRPHJUDQDWHV�� ÀJV�� DQG�olives were even more expensive.60

Still life paintings of vegetables and fruit were popular among both burghers and farmers; after landscapes, still life was the most prevalent category of paintings.61 After examining a sample of paintings of horticultural products, one will notice that certain items appear much more often than others: onions, cabbages, and carrots.62 It was accepted that painters of vegetables and fruits often took artistic license and depicted items that ripened 56 Linda Stone-Ferrier, “Market Scenes as Viewed by an Art Historian,” in Art in History, History in Art ed. D. Freedberg and J. de Vries (Santa Monica: Getty Center for History of Art and the Humanities, 1991), 31; Bieleman, 56.57 Stone-Ferrier, 39; Gillian Riley, The Dutch Table: Gastronomy in the Golden Age of the Netherlands (San Francisco: Pomegranate Artbooks, 1994), 12-13.58 Stone-Ferrier, 39.59 Barnes and Spruit, 53.60 Ibid.61 Der Woude, 320.62 Examples include Floris Claesz van Dijck’s Still Life with Vegetables and Fruits, which can be found in William A. Brandenburg, “Market Scenes as Viewed by a Plant Biologist,” in Art in History, History in Art ed. D. Freedberg and J. de Vries (Santa Monica: Getty Center for History of Art and the Humanities, 1991), 61. In this painting, a woman is surrounded by many baskets of fruits and vegetables. In the background, -HVXV�LV�VKRZQ�LQ�GHHS�GLVFXVVLRQ�ZLWK�WZR�PHQ�EXW�WKH�HPSKDVLV�RI�WKH�SDLQWLQJ�LV�GH¿QLWHO\�WKH�DEXQGDQFH�of horticulture products in the foreground. Expensive bunches of asparagus and heads of artichokes are shown along with carrots, enormous heads of lettuce, and a hanging bundle of onions. The juxtaposition of expensive and inexpensive produce in the same setting demonstrated that both types of goods were equally valued: one as a demonstration of economic ability and the other as an acknowledgement of modest roots.

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in different seasons together for aesthetic effect. But given this freedom, why were these three produce items so popular with still life artists?63

Onions, cabbages, and carrots had moral resonance for Dutch viewers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. As a group, these three “coarse” vegetables made up the core of the farmer and the urban poor’s diet. In the beginning of the seventeenth century, wealthier burghers elected to eat these vegetables to demonstrate an attachment WR�WKH�YLUWXH�RI�PRGHVW\��$V�WKH�SULFHV�RI�WKH�ÀQH�YHJHWDEOHV�FRQWLQXHG�WR�GURS�XQWLO�WKH�SULFH�GLIIHUHQFH�EHWZHHQ�FRDUVH�DQG�ÀQH�YHJHWDEOHV�ZDV�QHJOLJLEOH�WR�D�EXUJKHU��WKRXJK��LW�EHFDPH�PXFK�PRUH�WHPSWLQJ�WR�LQGXOJH�LQ�WKH�ÀQH�YHJHWDEOHV�64 Hanging paintings of onions, cabbages, and carrots was a way to indicate that one remembered the virtues of a modest livelihood even if one chose to consume more expensive foods. Cabbages and carrots were popular in particular because they represented Dutch innovations in breeding new varieties; for instance, both items occupy a prominent place, nearly in the very center, in Van Ravesteyn’s Barn Interior, discussed earlier.65

Onions and carrots were featured in Woman from Broek, a piece from the series of women holding agricultural products, indicating that the relatively low prices of these crops did not mean hinder the city’s prosperity (Fig. 12). The woman was just as well dressed as her counterparts from the previously discussed cities of Holland, though Broek is actually located in Friesland. She holds a bunch of onions in her right hand, tied together by their stalks just as they would have been when sold in the market.66 In the crook of her left arm, she carries a basket brimming with orange carrots. One thus has visual evidence that horticulture spread from Holland to the other western provinces and that innovations like the Horn carrot disseminated rather quickly. Given her expensive dress, adorned with gold clasps and buttons, it is unlikely that she is intended to represent a a market vendor; instead, she appears to have just returned from her daily shopping at the marketplace. The contrast between her costly dress and the inexpensive produce underscored the ideal that HYHQ�WKH�DIÁXHQW�FRXOG�FKRRVH�WR�OLYH�PRGHVWO\��+HU�OHIW�ÀQJHU�SRLQWV�WR�WKH�RQLRQV��SHUKDSV�meaning to to indicate that she had made these “lowly” vegetables were bought not out of necessity by conscious choice.

'XWFK� DUWLVWV� GLG� QRW� DOZD\V� UHO\� RQ� ÁRRGLQJ� WKH� FDQYDV� ZLWK� IRRG� WR� FRQYH\�prosperity. Adriaen Corta’s Still Life with Asparagus is an example of simple still life

63 Artists also showed out-of-season fruits and vegetables next to each other to demonstrate the overall abundance of the Dutch Republic, and the range of produce Dutch citizens enjoyed (Barnes and Spruit, 58). 64 Stone-Ferrier, 39.65 Ibid.66 Barnes and Spruit, 53.


paintings focusing on a single luxurious item (Fig. 13) Asparagus, one of the more expensive produce items, could stand on its own and still radiate a sense of wealth. It is a rather small piece of art, painted on paper and then mounted on a panel. It is unclear whether or not the piece was sold as a work on paper and was later mounted or was sold pre-mounted. If it was sold as a work on paper, then it was likely intended for a more modest sector of the economy than the previously discussed paintings, especially given its size. The extreme focus on the asparagus along with its bright illumination in contrast to the otherwise pitch-dark setting VXJJHVWV�D�JORULÀHG��HYHQ�DOWDU�OLNH�VHWWLQJ��7KLV�VRUW�RI�SLHFH�ZRXOG�KDYH�DSSHDOHG�HLWKHU�to a wealthy art collector who appreciated the aesthetic qualities, or to individuals who regarded asparagus as something to be looked up to, representing a type of lifestyle they FRXOG�QRW� DIIRUG��3RRUHU� EXUJKHUV� DQG� IDUPHUV�ZRXOG�YHU\�RFFDVLRQDOO\� VSOXUJH�RQ�ÀQH�vegetables, and so would be somewhat familiar with them, but normally made do with the coarser ones.67 Rich burghers would probably have regarded the asparagus as a rather normal part of their diet and would likely have thought such veneration excessive. Thus, in many instances, what vegetables one ate and what vegetables one displayed were often quite different.68

mArkEtPlACEs

The open-air markets of cities, like Amsterdam, Rotterdam, and Delft, created a shared space in which urban and rural populations interacted with one another. Markets were important places of public life; even in the seventeenth century they were recognized as landmarks, with Tobias van Domselaer devoting an entire section of his 1665 history of Amsterdam to the vegetable and carrot market.69 Every morning, the wives of farmers and ÀVKHUPHQ��WKRXJK�RFFDVLRQDOO\�WKH�PHQ�DV�ZHOO��ZRXOG�HQWHU�WKH�FLWLHV�WR�VHOO�WKHLU�JRRGV�70 People had incentives to form personal relationships, vendors wanting to maintain regular customers and buyers hoping for discounts.71

However, though markets were shared locales, differences in urban and rural interests pervaded. The growth of markets should be seen as the extension of urban power into the country, as their control of trade networks and ownership of much of the rural land

67 Asparagus was not so expensive that one could afford to buy a painting of them before being able to afford the actual product.68 This negative correlation of higher wealth and displaying more modest vegetables was not perfect. Urban residents could usually afford more paintings and larger paintings than rural residents, so they might have had paintings depicting both expensive and inexpensive produce and foodstuffs.69 Stone-Ferrier, 37.70 Ibid., 31.71 Barnes and Spruit, 55.

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bound together large segments of the population through commerce.72 Though sellers and customers may have developed friendships, whether class divisions were actually bridged LV�GLIÀFXOW� WR�DVVHVV��VLQFH�PHPEHUV�RI�WKH�XUEDQ�SRSXODWLRQ�KDG�WKH�FKRLFH�RI�ZKHUH�WR�spend their money while members of the rural population vied for their attention. Indeed, some villagers desired to create their own marketplaces because their needs were not being met in the city market, vendors hoping for less competition and buyers thinking they could get lower prices in a more localized market. All efforts to establish village markets were met with strong resistance from the urban sector, and in some regions, legislation forbid villages from holding market transactions independent of the city.73 Some rural markets were set up but most lacked the infrastructure and governance that made urban markets so appealing.

Urban markets were governed by city administrators, with regulations dictating the days and times when markets were open and the responsibilities of vendors.74 Ideally, there ZHUH�VHSDUDWH�PDUNHWV�IRU�WKH�VDOH�RI�YHJHWDEOHV�DQG�IUXLWV��IUHVKZDWHU�ÀVK��VDOWZDWHU�ÀVK��and poultry.75 In reality, not every city or village had the money or the space to be so precise with its differentiation of markets. Amsterdam was perhaps the most famous of the Dutch markets and was one of the most stringent in terms of market regulation. Amsterdam city RIÀFLDOV�LPSRVHG�VWULFW�UHJXODWLRQV�WR�PDLQWDLQ�KLJK�TXDOLW\�VWDQGDUGV�RI�IRRGVWXIIV�VROG�LQ�markets and cleanliness. The boundaries of each sub-market were carefully observed and the sale of rotten or “defective” vegetables or fruits was not allowed.76 Fish markets were only allowed to operate in the mornings because the afternoon sun would have rotted the ÀVK�

Rural and urban food vendors fared quite differently in terms of income and social regard; this is evident when one compares bakers to marketplace vendors. Bread was the core of the Dutch diet; everyone ate bread at least once a day, usually for three out of four meals.77 People of modest means and people on charity ate a coarser, darker bread made IURP�U\H�ZKLOH�ULFKHU�IDPLOLHV�DWH�ZKLWH�EUHDG�PDGH�IURP�ZKHDW�ÁRXU�78 Unlike other parts 72 De Vries and Van der Woude, 507.73 Stone-Ferrier, 41.74 Barnes and Spruit, 54-55.75 Ibid., 53-61.76 Stone-Ferrier, 42.77 Peter G. Rose, ed. and trans., The Sensible Cook (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1989), 6. Overall, the Dutch enjoyed a higher standard of living that the rest of Europe. With the exception of the extremely poor, everyone consumed four meals a day: breakfast, a meal at noon that was the main meal of the day, an afternoon meal, and a light evening meal. Bread was consumed at breakfast, the afternoon meal, and the evening meal. Barnes and Spruit, 87.78 Barnes and Spruit, 63.


of the meal, which were prepared at home, bread had to be bought from bakers because most people did not have an oven in their kitchen. While some people—mostly rural folk who did not have access to a professional baker—may have baked simple rolls themselves, the vast majority of the population bought their daily bread from bakeries.79 Bakers belonged to a guild, and their recipes were guarded secrets, relayed to apprentices only orally in order to keep them from slipping into cookbooks.80 Thus, to be a baker was a sort of honor, and to become one required access to privileged information. Rural individuals with ovens could not become professional bakers even though they had the equipment as baking guilds pressured city governments to suppress commercial bread production outside of city walls.81 A beginning baker would have needed a substantial amount of capital to purchase the differing types of rye and wheat for making dark and white bread and the various tins and dishes needed to bake them.82

The disparity in income between bakers and market vendors (farmers) becomes apparent when one learns that a baker could afford to commission a portrait. Around 1658, Arend Oostwaert, a Leiden baker, and his wife Catharina Keyzerswaert contracted Jan Steen to paint them a marriage portrait-genre (Fig. 14). The couple is shown at work, displaying the fruits of their labor: pretzels are hung from pegs, rolls stacked on a rack, the wife holding a piece of rusk, a hard bread that was baked twice while the husband carries a duivekater loaf, a bread made for special occasions, on a large baker’s peel, as if he had just taken it out of the oven .83 A young, almost cherub-like boy blows a horn on the right, a departure from how bakers were depicted, as it was usually they who blew the horn to announce the arrival of freshly baked bread.84 This job was cast onto this little helper presumably in order to fully depict the baker’s face.

In contrast to this portrait-genre piece, depictions of marketplaces and vendors were not as idealized. Artistic license was usually taken so that out-of-season items could be displayed side-by-side or so that salt and freshwater catches could be shown next to each other, but depictions of the vendors were rarely altered.85 Gabriel Metsu went even 79 In order to bake bread, one also had to have an oven, which most urban households lacked. Urban KRXVHKROGV�WKDW�GLG�KDYH�RYHQV�KDG�WKHP�EXLOW�LQWR�D�ZDOO�RI�WKH�¿UHSODFH��5XUDO�KRXVHKROGV�EXLOW�RYHQV�WKDW�were a separate structure from the house (Barnes and Spruit, 63; Rose, 16).80 Ibid.81 Inferred from the high level of city resistance to the Wormer biscuit makers (Van Deursen, Plain Lives, 17).82 Barnes and Spruit, 63.83 H. P. Chapman, Wouter T. Kloek, and Arthur K. Wheelock, Jr., Jan Steen: Painter and Storyteller, ed. by G. M. C. Jansen (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996), 122-124.84 Ibid.85 Barnes and Spruit, 58, 60.

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further, refusing to combine products from different seasons or idealize them.86 Given that Metsu lived on the street where the Amsterdam vegetable market took place, snapshots of regular marketplace interactions can be found in his works, such as The Vegetable Market in Amsterdam (Fig. 15).87 The piece is based on an excerpt from Gerbrand Adriaensz Bredero’s play, Moortje. Metsu depicts one of the play’s characters, Monsieur Cockroach, walking through the Amsterdam market bragging about how he could easily manipulate WKH�ZHDOWK\� E\�ÁDWWHULQJ� DQG� IDZQLQJ� RQ� WKHP�� KH� GHPRQVWUDWHV� WKH� VNLOO� LQ� WKH� FHQWHU�of the painting by wooing a well-dressed housewife. However, The Vegetable Market in Amsterdam� LV�QRW�VLPSO\�DQ�LOOXVWUDWLRQ�RI�D�ÀFWLRQDO�VRWU\��EXW�DOVR�SURYLGHV�D�ZLQGRZ�into every day happenings at the markets. While both Monsieur Cockroach and the lady he encounters are dressed in their theatrical costumes, the rest of the scene is populated with realistic marketplace occurrences.88 In one corner, a housewife appears to be haggling quite heatedly with a vegetable vendor. The vendor looks at the viewer incredulously, as if she cannot believe the unreasonableness of her potential customer. The vendor’s stand is loaded with the large cabbages and orange carrots that were such a source of Dutch pride.89 In the lower right hand corner, a dog stares at a chicken that has escaped its coop; not too far away, another chicken has comfortably tucked itself onto the ground.

$� PRUH� ÀFWLRQDOL]HG� PDUNHW� VFHQH� LV� -RDFKLP�:WHZDHO·V� The Market Woman, showing an extravagant overabundance of fruit and vegetables that is unlikely to have actually existed In reality(Fig. 16). While the actual produce the vendor is selling, including cabbage, carrots, onions and apples, all of which were available year-round, is reasonable, the arrangement in a jumbled mess, especially the more luxury vegetables like artichoke and dill peppers, is unrealistic. Such a mixture of different items was useful aesthetically for paintings, but in reality would have been perplexing to buyers. Indeed, the goal of The Market Woman was not to accurately portray a market stall but to convey a moral message. The customer’s child has just found a dented apple in the lot, and though the vendor attempts to explain this, the customer remains skeptical of the vendor’s honesty. This scenario is mirrored in an emblem from Jacob Cats’ Moral Emblems; it is paired with a poem titled “One Rotten Apple Infects All in the Basket.”90 As a social proverb, it is a 86 Stone-Ferrier, 39.87 Ibid., 49.88 Ibid., 46-47.89 Ibid., 39.90 Jacob Cats, “One Rotten Apple Infects All in the Basket” in Moral Emblems, trans. and ed. Richard Pigot (London: Longman, Green, Longman, and Roberts, 1860), 101. An emblem typically consisted of a moral statement, a picture, and explanatory text. Cats, also known as Father Cats, published multiple emblem books; Moral Emblems was an English collection and translation of selections from Cats’ many works.


ZDUQLQJ� WR�DYRLG�EDG�FRPSDQ\��DV�D�PDUNHW�VSHFLÀF� LGLRP�� LW� LV�DOVR�D�ZDUQLQJ� WR�RQO\�buy from vendors with stringent quality control on their products, justifying strict urban regulations. The large size of The Market Woman set it apart from works like Still Life with Asparagus that farmers could have afforded, but even without this size differentiation, the message of the piece was obviously directed at urban residents. The selection of someone from the rural community to represent bad company and dishonesty shows that it was socially acceptable and economically safe to vilify rural vendors in art because they did not PDNH�XS�D�VLJQLÀFDQW�SHUFHQWDJH�RI�WKH�EX\HUV�

CoNClusioN

Lodovico Guicciardini, an Italian resident of Antwerp, described sixteenth-century +ROODQG�DV�D�SODFH�RI�́ PDQ\�ÀQH�WRZQV�DQG�ORYHO\�YLOODJHV��JUHDW�PHQ�DQG�ZRPHQ��H[FHOOHQW�cattle, immense riches and power.”91 He emphasized that though the Netherlands did not produce much wheat, wine, or lumber, its mastery and control of trade networks meant that it could import these items and enjoy them in greater abundance than even the producing regions.92 With the creation of these trade networks, cities rose to great prominence within the Dutch Republic as they were the centers of economic power and housed the highest members of the social hierarchy.

7KH�DUW�PDUNHW�H[HPSOLÀHG�KRZ�WKH�LQWHUHVWV�RI�WKH�UHVW�RI�WKH�FRXQWU\�ZHUH�EURXJKW�LQWR�DOLJQPHQW�ZLWK�WKH�LQWHUHVWV�RI�WKH�FLWLHV��7KH�ÀUVW�FRQFHUQ�RI�DUWLVWV�ZKHQ�WKH\�FUHDWHG�ZRUNV�ZDV�ZKDW�ZRXOG�DSSHDO�WR�WKH�EXUJKHUV��7KHUHIRUH��KHUULQJ�ÀVK³DQ�LQYHVWPHQW�RI�PDQ\�EXUJKHUV³ZDV�HPSKDVL]HG�RYHU�WKH�ÀVKHUPHQ��:RPHQ��ZKR�SOD\HG�D�YLWDO�UROH�LQ�IDUP�HFRQRP\��ZHUH�PRUH�SDVVLYH�LQ�EXUJKHUV·�FLUFOHV�VR�WKH\�KDG�WR�EH�REMHFWLÀHG�DQG�PDGH�secondary to their work in paintings. Burghers could afford expensive and hard to grow ´ÀQH�YHJHWDEOHVµ�LQ�WKHLU�GDLO\�PHDOV�EXW�ZLVKHG�WR�GHPRQVWUDWH�WKHLU�PRUH�PRGHVW�URRWV��so onions, cabbage, and carrots were prevalent throughout still life paintings of vegetables. When paintings held moral lessons, a transgressor or violator of that moral value needed to EH�SUHVHQW��EHFDXVH�EXUJKHUV�ZKR�ERXJKW�WKHVH�SDLQWLQJV�ZRXOG�QRW�ZDQW�WR�EH�LGHQWLÀHG�as a villain, members of the rural community were cast into that role instead. Overall, the Dutch Golden Age did see a rise in living standards for most Dutch citizens, but that LQFUHDVH�LQ�ZHDOWK�EHQHÀWHG�WKH�XUEDQ�FODVVHV�PXFK�PRUH�WKDQ�WKH�UXUDO�RQHV��$QG�ZLWK�WKDW�imbalance in wealth came an imbalance in artistic representation evident even today.

91 Lodovico Guicciardini, “The Low Countries Seen By an Italian” excerpts in The Low Countries in Early Modern Times ed. H. H. Rowen, (New York: Walker and Company, 1972), 6-7.92 Ibid, 9.

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bibliogrAPhy

Bakker, Boudewijn. Landscapes of Rembrandt: His Favourite Walks. Bussum: Thoth, 1998.

Barnes, Donna R, and Ruud Spruit. Food for Thought: Food and drink in seventeenth-century Dutch art and life. Hoorn: Westfries Museum, 2010.

Bieleman, Jan. Five Centuries of Farming: A short history of Dutch Agriculture, 1500-2000. Wageningen: Wageningen Academic Publishers, 2010.

Brandenburg, Willem A. “Market Scenes as Viewed by a Plant Biologist,” in Art in His-tory, History in Art. Edited by David Freedberg and Jan de Vries. Santa Monica: Getty Center for History of Art and the Humanities, 1991.

Brown, Christopher. Scenes of Everyday Life: Dutch Genre Painting of the Seventeenth Century. London: Faber and Faber Limited, 1984.

Cats, Jacob. “One Rotten Apple Infects All in the Basket” in Moral Emblems. Translated and Edited by Richard Pigot. London: Longman, Green, Longman, and Roberts, 1860.

Chapman, H. Perry, Wouter Th. Kloek, and Arthur K. Wheelock, Jr. Jan Steen: Painter and Storyteller. Edited by Guido M. C. Jansen. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996.

De Vries, Jan and Ad van der Woude. The First Modern Economy. Cambridge: Cam-bridge University Press, 1997.

Der Woude, Ad van. “The Volume and Value of Paintings in Holland at the Time of the Dutch Republic,” in Art in History, History in Art. Edited by David Freedberg and Jan de Vries. Santa Monica: Getty Center for History of Art and the Humanities, 1991.

Deursen, A.T. van. Plain Lives in a Golden Age. Translated by Maarten Ultee. Cam-bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991.

Guicciardini, Lodovico. “The Low Countries Seen By an Italian” Excerpts in The Low Countries in Early Modern Times. Edited by H. H. Rowen. New York: Walker and Company, 1972.

Riley, Gillian. The Dutch Table: Gastronomy in the Golden Age of the Netherlands. San Francisco: Pomegranate Artbooks, 1994.

Schama, Simon. The Embarrassment of Riches. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1987.


Stone-Ferrier, Linda. “Market Scenes as Viewed by an Art Historian,” in Art in History, History in Art. Edited by David Freedberg and Jan de Vries. Santa Monica: Getty Center for History of Art and the Humanities, 1991.

The Sensible Cook. Translated and Edited by Peter G. Rose. Syracuse: Syracuse Univer-sity Press, 1989.

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figurEs

Figure 1Pieter Claesz, Dutch, about 1597-1660.Still Life with Stoneware Jug, Wine Glass, Herring, and Bread, 1642.Oil on Panel, 29.8 x 35.8 cm.Robert and Ruth Remis Gallery, 13.458. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

Figure 2Nicolaes Jansz. Clock, Dutch, c. 1576-active until 1602.Water, 1597.Print, 191 x 127 mm.RP-P-1894-A-18319. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.


Figure 3Arent Arentsz, Dutch, 1585–1631.Fishermen and Farmers, 1625-1631.Oil on Panel, 25.5 x 50.5 cm.SK-A-1448. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.

Figure 4Willem van Diest, Dutch, before 1610-after 1663.A Calm with Fishing Boats and Fishermen in the Foreground.Oil on Panel, 31.4 x 42.5 cm.Private collection (auctioned in Amsterdam in 2007).

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Figure 5Anonymous, Dutch.Polder Het Grootslag, 1590-1610.60 x 138 cm.On loan to the Zuiderzee Museum from the municipal collection of the city of Enkhuizen.

Figure 6Hubert Van Ravesteyn, Dutch, 1638-1691.Barn Interior.Panel, 62.8 x 90.7 cm.AANKOOP 1907. Dordrechts Museum, Dordrecht.


Figure 7Anonymous, Dutch. Woman from Hoogwoud. 1550-1574.Oil on Panel, 42 x 29 cm.SK-C-1508. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.

Figure 8Anonymous, Dutch. Woman from Oudendijk. 1550-1574.Oil on Panel, 42 x 29 cm.SK-C-1495. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

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Figure 9Anonymous, Dutch. Woman from Benningbroek. 1550-1574.Oil on Panel, 42 x 29 cm.SK-C-1510. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.

Figure 10Anonymous, Dutch. Woman from Wadway. 1550-1574.Oil on Panel, 42 x 29 cm.SK-C-1502. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.


Figure 11Anonymous, Dutch. Woman from Jisp. 1550-1574.Oil on Panel, 42 x 29 cm.SK-C-1505. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.

Figure 12Anonymous, Dutch. Woman from Broek. 1550-1574.Oil on Panel, 42 x 29 cm.SK-C-1496. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.

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Figure 13Adriaen Corta, Dutch, c.1663- after 1707.Still Life with Asparagus, 1697.Oil on paper mounted on panel, 20 x 20.5 cm.SK-A-2099. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.

Figure 14Jan Havicksz Steen, Dutch, 1626-1679.Leiden Baker Arend Oostwaert and His Wife Catherina Keyzerswaert, c.1658.Oil on Panel, 38 x 32 cm.SK-A-390. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.


Figure 15Gabriel Metsu, Dutch, 1629-1667.The Vegetable Market in Amsterdam, 1661-1662.97 x 84 cm.Collection of Louis XVI, INV. 1460. Louvre, Paris.

Figure 16Joachim Antonius Wtewael, Dutch, 1566-1638.The Market Woman, c. 1618.118.8 x 161.3 cm.2262. Centraal Museum, Utrecht.

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fEAturE:

ExPloriNg hArvArd’s briCk stAmP CollECtioN

naThaniel hay, Tempus sTaff

Across the entablature of the Pantheon, inscribed in large Roman capitals, is written “M · AGRIPPA · L · F · COS · TERTIUM · FECIT.”1 As any classicist worth his salt will know, Agrippa, Augustus’ prime minister, held his third consulship in 27 BC; thus, for FHQWXULHV��LW�ZDV�EHOLHYHG�WKDW�WKH�PRVW�LQÁXHQWLDO�GRPH�LQ�WKH�:HVW�ZDV�EXLOW�GXULQJ�WKH�WLPH�RI�$XJXVWXV��,Q�IDFW��WKH�HGLÀFH�LV�RI�+DGULDQLF�FRQVWUXFWLRQ��FRPLQJ�VRPH�RQH�KXQGUHG�ÀIW\�\HDUV�ODWHU��UHSODFLQJ�LQ�D�WRWDOO\�QHZ�DQG�LQQRYDWLYH�VW\OH�$JLSSD·V�3DQWKHRQ�WKDW�KDG�burned down. In emulation of Augustus and reverence towards his administration, though, Hadrian refrained from putting his own name on the new Pantheon, restoring the original dedicatory inscription.2 The ruse was not discovered until 1892, when archaeologists under *HRUJH�&KHGDQQH�GHÀQLWLYHO\�SURYHG�WKDW� WKH�EXLOGLQJ�ZDV�RI� WKH�HDUO\�VHFRQG�FHQWXU\��The primary pieces of evidence they used were brick stamps.

Augustus’ boast of having “found Rome a city of brick and left it a city of marble” notwithstanding, the preferred building material in Roman construction was brick, either left unadorned or encased in a veneer of marble sheeting.3 To meet the high demand, brick-making developed into an entire industry, complete with standardized organization and specialized occupational roles. The land from which the clay to make the bricks was collected was called the ÀJOLQD, and the estate owner the dominus. There was then an RIÀFLQDWRU or even RIÀFLQDWUL[ (in the female form) who led the brick production and supervised the laborers, of either free or enslaved status. The relation of the RIÀFLQDWRU to 1 “M[arcus] Agrippa son of L[ucius] in his third consulship built [this].”2��+DGULDQ�ZDV�QRW�WKH�¿UVW�WR�GR�WKLV��)RU�LQVWDQFH��XSRQ�UHQRYDWLQJ�WKH�7KHDWHU�RI�3RPSH\��$XJXVWXV�maintained the original reference to Pompey, the great rival of his great-uncle and adoptive father Julius Caesar. For attestations of Augustus’ inscription policy, see Res Gestae 20, Suetonius, Div. Aug. 31.5 and Dio Cassius 53, 2, 4-5. For that of Hadrian, see Historia Augusta, Vita Had. 9.10. Note that all emperors did not display such modesty — in the 200s, upon restoring the Pantheon, Septimius Severus and Caracalla added their own names to the entablature, though in an inscription much smaller than Agrippa’s.3��&DVVLXV�'LR��F�I��³KH�VR�EHDXWL¿HG�LW�WKDW�KH�FRXOG�MXVWO\�ERDVW�WKDW�KH�KDG�IRXQG�LW�EXLOW�RI�EULFN�and left it in marble.” (Suetonius, Div. Aug. 28.3).

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the dominus was complex and varied across ÀJOLQDH: it could be everything from a joint venture between businessmen, to an employer-employee arrangement, even to a master-slave relationship.

During the drying process, some bricks would be impressed with a stamp. Not every brick was stamped; the proportion varied among the various ÀJOLQDH. It was by no means a traditional practice in Rome, with only occasional attestations around the peninsula WR�WKH�HQG�RI�WKH�ÀUVW�FHQWXU\�$'��7KH�ÀUVW�GDWHG�EULFN�VWDPS�ZH�KDYH�LV�IURP�$'��DQ�innovation that seems to have come from one individual, Marcus Rutullius Lupus, a well-WR�GR�HTXHVWULDQ�XQGHU�7UDMDQ��2YHU�WKH�QH[W�ÀIWHHQ�\HDUV�DQG�VHHPLQJO\�RXW�RI�QRZKHUH��WKH�SUDFWLFH�H[SORGHG��XQWLO�LQ�$'��ZH�ÀQG�RYHU��GLIIHUHQW�VWDPSV��7KH�SXUSRVH�RI�stamping remains unclear: its function may have been assisting taxation, keeping inventory, or perhaps even trademarking and advertising, as older, “seasoned” bricks were preferred to fresh ones. Despite their unclear purpose, brick stamps are incredibly informative, usually providing some combination of the name of the ÀJOLQD, of the dominus, and the RIÀFLQDWRU, sometimes with a symbol identifying the region or the family. This was often combined with the consular year, an addition invaluable for dating. Though due to spatial limitations words were compressed and often abbreviated to single letters, the vocabulary is simple enough to make reading brick stamps relatively easy.

While Harvard does not have the bricks of the Pantheon itself, its sizeable collection is often overlooked and is generally unknown to the undergraduate population. As pieces of material culture from Antiquity, they provide a window onto a variety of facets of Roman civilization. For instance, they help us understand Roman industry and business practices, everyday activities that were often considered too mundane to be described in the written records. One brick from Harvard’s collection, dating from some time between 59 and 93, reads: “T · GREI · IANVARI · EX · F · C · D · D · V · Q · F,” or in expanded form, “T. Grei Ianuari ex f(iglinis) C(aninianis) D(uorum) D(omitiorum); v(aleat) q(ui) f(ecit).”4 This translates to “Titus Greius Ianuarius, from the ÁLJOLQD of Caninia of the two Domitians; fare well he who made [this].” In this stamp we learn that Greius was the RIÀFLQDWRU for the EULFNÀHOGV�LQ�&DQLQLD��RZQHG�E\�WKH�WZR�'RPLWLDQV��UHIHUULQJ�QRW�WR�WKH�HPSHURU�'RPLWLDQ�and his secret twin but rather to the two adopted sons of Gnaeus Domitius Afer. Beyond the question of identity, in these bricks we see glimpses of Roman cooperative business ventures and ownership shared among multiple people, brothers in this case. The last part of the epigraph, wishing well upon the makers, is indicative of Roman superstition and mysticism, as well as pride among the laboring classes. Manumitted slaves usually depicted the tools of their particular trade on their tombstones, suggesting self-conceptions 4 HUCP4647.9 (1977.216.2399).

74

RI�GLJQLW\�DQG�DIÀOLDWLRQ�ZLWK�RWKHU�ZRUNHUV��)RU�XQNQRZQ�UHDVRQV��WKH�SKUDVH�´9�Ã�4�Ã�)µ�dropped out of favor by the end of the century.

As with many sectors of Roman culture, over time the brick industry fell increasingly under the direct control of the emperor and his household. Another specimen from the Harvard collection from the mid-second century is inscribed “IMP · ANTONINO · II · ET · [[BALBIN]] BR{I}TTIO · COS · D · P · Q · S · P · D · O · ARABI · SER,” abbreviated from “Imp(eratore) Antonino II et Br[u]ttio cos.; de p(raedis) Q. S(ervili) P(vdentis), d(oliare) o(pus) Arabi ser(vi).”5 The entire inscription can be translated to “In the second consulship of emperor Antoninus and Balbinus Br[i]ttius; from the praediae (synonym for ÁLJOLQDH) of Quintus Servilus Pudentis, the brick workers Arab slaves.” It was normal for the emperor to receive larger billing in the consular lists; what is very unusual in this brick stamp is that the original has been recut, changing BALBIN to BRTTIO, though the BABLBIN remains plainly readable and BRTTIO is probably a misspelling of BRITTIO. It would KDYH�EHHQ�PXFK�PRUH�GLIÀFXOW�WR�UHFDUYH�D�VWDPS�LQVWHDG�RI�MXVW�PDNLQJ�D�QHZ�RQH��VR�LW�is unclear why this stamp was recut in this case, and poorly at that. The misspelling of Bruttius serves as a reminder tht despite the plethora of inscriptions on public monuments, only a small proportion of the Roman populace could actually read. Another rare element LV�WKH�UHIHUHQFH�WR�WKH�ODERUHUV�WKHPVHOYHV�RQ�WKH�VWDPS��ZKR�LQ�WKLV�FDVH�DUH�LGHQWLÀHG�DV�slaves. Slavery pervaded every part of Roman civilization; at the same time, not all slaves were alike, some living comfortably as tutors in wealthy households, others toiling to their GHDWKV�LQ�WKH�VDOW�PLQHV��,Q�WKLV�FDVH��LW�LV�LQWHUHVWLQJ�WR�QRWH�WKDW�WKH�VODYHV�DUH�VSHFLÀHG�DV�Arabian, and that Arabian is not abbreviated.

Imperial monopolization of brick production was complete by the third century XQGHU�WKH�HPSHURU�'LRFOHWLDQ��DV�VKRZQ�LQ�RQH�ÀQDO�H[DPSOH�IURP�+DUYDUG·V�FROOHFWLRQ��LQVFULEHG�´6� Ã�3� Ã�&� Ã�2)�)95� Ã�6� Ã� ,�µ�RU�´6�XPPDH��S�ULYDWDH��&�DHVDUXP��RI�ÀFLQD��Fvr(iana), s(tatio) I (prima).6� � 7KH� EULFN� FRPHV� IURP� ´6� Ã� ,�µ� WKH� ÀUVW� ´VWDWLRQµ� LQ� WKH�RI�ÀFLQD��or ÀJOLQD, of Furiana, suggesting a division of the ÀJXOLQD into sub-units and Roman conceptions of spatial organization. What is more interesting is the reference to the RIÀFLQDWRUHV��ZKR�DUH�QR�ORQJHU�LGHQWLÀHG�E\�LQGLYLGXDO�QDPH�EXW�UDWKHU�´V�XPPDH��S�ULYDWDH�� F�DHVDUXP��µ� WKH� RIÀFHUV� RI� WKH� HPSHURUV�� $V�ZLWK� WKH� HYROXWLRQ� RI� 5RPDQ�farming in earlier centuries, gone were the smaller, independent operators, now absorbed into vast estates controlled by the wealthy, in this case the emperor and his family. The brick is indicative of the widespread nature of Diocletian’s reforms, which included the division of the empire among four tetrarchs, the setting of price controls and wage maximums, and, 5 HUCP4647.20 (SINV901.7).6 HUCP4647.15 (1977.216.2940)

75

in this case, the reorganization of the brick industry. The later Roman Empire, termed the Dominate, was one in which the emperor exercised more rigid control than in the earlier 3ULQFLSDWH��LQGHHG��EULFN�PDNLQJ�ZRXOG�UHPDLQ�DQ�LPSHULDO�PRQRSRO\�XQWLO�DW�OHDVW�WKH�ÀIWK�FHQWXU\��DW�ZKLFK�SRLQW�ZH�ÀQG�EULFNV�LQVFULEHG�ZLWK�WKH�QDPHV�QRW�RI�5RPDQV�EXW�RI�*RWKV�and their kings, Theodoric and Athalaric.

Thus, in addition to being an invaluable resource for dating buildings, Roman bricks in themselves provide a wealth of information about the world in which they were created, on topics ranging from Roman business practices to the governmental structure, IURP�SHUVRQDO�VHOI�LGHQWLÀFDWLRQ�DQG�LGHQWLW\�SROLWLFV�WR�VRFLDO�VWDELOLW\�XQGHU�WKH�YDULRXV�emperors. A wide array of them sit undisturbed in Harvard’s collections, waiting to share their secrets. For further information and to request access to the collection, contact Susanne Ebbinghaus, the curator for ancient art.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bloch, Herbert. I bolli laterizi e la storia edilizia Romana. Rome, 1947.

Bloch, Herbert. “Indices to the Roman Brick-Stamps.” HSCP 58-59 (1948), pp. 1-104.

Bodel, John P. Roman Brick Stamps in the Kelsey Museum. Ann Arbor, 1983.

Opper, Thorsten. +DGULDQ��(PSLUH�DQG�&RQÁLFW. Cambridge, 2008. Esp. pp. 106-9.

:HOVK��-DUUHWW��´5RPDQ�%ULFN�6WDPSV�µ�8QSXEOLVKHG�0DQXVFULSW��ODVW�PRGLÀHG�$SULO�� 2008. Microsoft Word File.

Special Thanks to Professor Coleman

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fEAturE:

WritiNg About ProtEst

dr. eriC larson, hisTory and liTeraTure

Several factors often lead students to study social protest: it’s spectacular, it’s VSRQWDQHRXV��DQG�LW·V�D�IRUP�RI�VSHHFK�IRU�WKH�RSSUHVVHG�DQG�GRZQWURGGHQ��ZKR�RIWHQ�ÀQG�their voices excluded or co-opted by social elites.

Unfortunately, the sources available to historians often distort the very characteristics students hope to interpret. And, protest leaders themselves often massage the meaning of these contentious forms of collective action. Protests, frankly, are often considerably more manufactured than meets the eye.

The production of protest, however, is often as compelling as the public action itself, and examining the disjunctures between the demands and values protesters express, the organizing process behind the protest, and the way commentators and critics represent it all often unveils unspoken tensions that can lead historians to complicate the very questions of spontaneity, spectacle, and social inequality they originally found interesting. Because RI�WKH�UHFHQW�HIÁRUHVFHQFH�RI�GUDPDWLF�PDVV�PDUFKHV�DQG�XUEDQ�RFFXSDWLRQV�²�DV�ZLWK�WKH�Arab Spring and the Occupy Wall Street movement – the following comments about source materials speak most directly to students interested in those forms of dissent, and not the less-public “weapons of the weak” that, in fact, are just as important to human history.Newspapers are often students’ starting points for research on social protest, partly because newspapers are some of the most widely available sources available to scholars. In some historical contexts, and unlike some other kinds of sources, newspapers have presented themselves as objectively depicting the world. While history students likely know that QR�VRXUFH� LV�D� WUDQVSDUHQW� UHÁHFWLRQ�RI� UHDOLW\�� WKH\�VKRXOG�DOVR�UHVLVW�XVLQJ�QHZVSDSHUV�as mere repositories of basic information like dates and names (and only moderately reliable ones, at that). That’s because the political nature of newspaper coverage opens doors for historians, even if the most politically charged media landscape can burden them

77

with endless searching and cross-referencing to establish even the most banal location, quotation, or organizational name.

Seeking out, in secondary literature or other sources, the history or economic relationships of a newspaper’s publisher, editors, readers, and advertisers is always important, but such knowledge shouldn’t lead researchers to interpret stories or images as simply the expressions of the static “party line” of the editorial board. I recommend, in fact, critically cross-referencing a newspaper’s coverage of a protest or social movement with that of another periodical. Comparing and contrasting that coverage will better enable you to diagnose the society’s divisions, anxieties, and assumptions – including shared assumptions – that often drive journalistic interpretations of the news.

� 0\�UHFHQW�ZRUN�RQ�ODWH�WZHQWLHWK�FHQWXU\�SROLWLFDO�FRQÁLFWV�RYHU�PXOWLFXOWXUDOLVP�in the U.S. and Mexico provides a useful example of how source materials distort social meanings of contentious collective action even as newspapers – in this case, two from the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca – generated questions that led me to re-evaluate my other source materials. Though the slogans and banners of the indigenous political organization I was studying suggested that its principal demand was to end the militarization of rural life, a close reading of two months worth of all political articles – and not just those that pertained to this particular organization – in two highly partisan newspapers led me to question my early conclusion. The articles suggested that despite the government’s claim WR� YDOXH� FLWL]HQ� SDUWLFLSDWLRQ� LQ� SROLWLFV�� JRYHUQPHQW� RIÀFLDOV� DQG� FROXPQLVWV� UHJXODUO\�noted that some citizens’ testimonies, voices, or even votes were of dubious validity. These citizens, the commentators implied or stated, were mere “acarreados,” or masses trucked in from elsewhere for a small pay-off from a corrupt “strongman.”

Though seventy years of single-party rule had indeed bred corruption, by tabulating references to acarreados, I found that elites usually deployed the term when the contingents of people in question expressed disagreement with government policy. When I returned to my interviews with organizational members, I realized that Zapotec women often returned to the theme of how much it meant to them to simply participate in the 1990s-era protests – regardless of the bold-faced demand of the moment. Two described, without my prompting, how no one had tricked or bribed them into going, and one even mentioned, in passing, that she hadn’t been an acarreada. Newspapers, in this case, opened up a whole new avenue of inquiry. They led me to see that, particularly for indigenous women, the organization in question was important less for its stance on militarization and more for how its members used it to validate their participation in public life, and to hold the government to its oft-repeated claim that it was leading Mexico through a “transition to democracy.”

olume xiii i 1 s - harvard computer society · as an examination of the pamphlets featured in...

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