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Description
The front cover shows a portrait of a young African American girl. The
title, subtitle, and the edition of the book are printed alongside the
portrait. The logo of Macmillan Learning is on the left, and the authors’
names are at the bottom.
Description
Text on the inside front cover reads as follows.
Succeed in your history course.
Use these tips from the Bedford Tutorials in History to build your note-
taking, reading, and writing skills.
Taking Effective Notes
Lectures and reading assignments present large amounts of information
that can be overwhelming. Here are a few tips for taking effective notes.
(Bullet) Establish Shortcuts to Facilitate Taking Legible Notes
To speed up your note-taking and yet still have notes you can read, use
abbreviations and symbols to indicate commonly used words and ideas.
Text-messaging conventions are transferrable to note-taking—for
example, use “w/o” for “without” and “b/c” for “because.” In your history
class, you can use “c.” for “century” and establish other shortcuts for
commonly used historical terminology.
(Bullet) Organize Your Notes and Be Selective
Every time you begin a new set of notes, include the date and subject at
the top of the page. Focus on the big ideas and include the concrete
examples and details needed to illustrate and support those ideas. Your
goal is to create notes that are brief yet understandable.
Working with Primary Sources
A primary source is a document, object, or image created during the time
period under study. Sometimes, historical documents can be difficult to
understand because of their form or language. Here are questions you
can ask when analyzing primary sources.
(Bullet) Who produced this document, when, and where?
Identifying the author of a primary source is important because it helps
expose the author’s point of view. We need to know something about
how the author or artist viewed the world and how he or she came to
produce the document or visual source.
(Bullet) Who was the intended audience of the document?
There is often a close connection between a document and its intended
audience. The historical importance of a document is partly determined
by who read it.
(Bullet) What are the main points of the document?
While reading, start to make connections between the main points of the
document and the specific choices the author made in style, organization,
content, and emphasis.
(Bullet) What does this document reveal about the time and place in
which it was written?
Often there is no single right answer to this question because readers
bring their own goals and purposes to their analyses and use the
evidence found in the document to draw their own conclusions about the
document’s historical meaning.
Freedom on My Mind
A HISTORY OF AFRICAN AMERICANS
with Documents
THIRD EDITION
Deborah Gray White
Rutgers University
Mia Bay
University of Pennsylvania
Waldo E. Martin Jr.
University of California, Berkeley
Vice President: Leasa Burton
Senior Program Director: Michael Rosenberg
Senior Executive Editor: William J. Lombardo
Director of Content Development: Jane Knetzger
Executive Development Manager: Susan McLaughlin
Senior Development Editor: Cynthia Ward
Assistant Editor: Carly Lewis
Director of Media Editorial: Adam Whitehurst
Media Editor: Mollie Chandler
Marketing Manager: Melissa Rodriguez
Director, Content Management Enhancement: Tracey Kuehn
Senior Managing Editor: Michael Granger
Content Project Manager: Matt Glazer
Senior Workflow Project Manager: Paul Rohloff
Production Supervisor: Robert Cherry
Director of Design, Content Management: Diana Blume
Interior Design: Cia Boynton, Boynton Hue Studio
Cover Design: William Boardman
Cartographer: Mapping Specialist, Ltd.
Permissions Editor: Michael McCarty
Text Permissions Researcher: Udayakumar Kannadasan, Lumina
Datamatics, Inc.
Executive Permissions Editor: Cecilia Varas
Photo Editor: Bruce Carson
Director of Digital Production: Keri deManigold
Executive Media Project Manager: Michelle Camisa
Copyeditor: Kitty Wilson
Composition: Lumina Datamatics, Inc.
Cover Image: Young Girl in Profile, 1948 (toned gelatin silver photo),
Consuelo Kanaga, Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York, USA Gift of
Wallace B. Putnam from the estate of Consuelo Kanaga / Bridgeman
Images.
Copyright © 2021, 2017, 2013 by Bedford/St. Martin’s. All rights
reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a
retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise,
except as may be permitted by law or expressly permitted in writing
by the Publisher.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2020939788
ISBN: 978-1-319-26574-8 (mobi)
1 2 3 4 5 6 25 24 23 22 21 20
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Acknowledgments and copyrights appear on the same page as the
text and art selections they cover; these acknowledgments and
copyrights constitute an extension of the copyright page.
For information, write: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 75 Arlington Street,
Boston, MA 02116
Preface
Why This Book This Way
“Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be
demanded by the oppressed,” wrote Martin Luther King Jr. in his
“Letter from Birmingham City Jail.” Written in April 1963 while he was
incarcerated for participating in a nonviolent protest against racial
segregation, King’s letter was a rebuttal to white religious leaders
who condemned such protests as unwise and untimely. King’s
understanding of freedom also summarizes the remarkable history of
the many generations of African Americans whose experiences are
chronicled in this book. Involuntary migrants to America, the Africans
who became African Americans achieved freedom from slavery only
after centuries of struggle, protest, and outright revolt. Prior to the
Civil War, most were unfree inhabitants of a democratic republic that
took shape around the ideals of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness.” Although largely exempted from these ideals, African
Americans fought for them.
Writing of these enslaved noncitizens in the first chapter of The
Souls of Black Folk (1903), black historian W. E. B. Du Bois
proclaimed, “Few men ever worshipped Freedom with half such
unquestioning faith as did the American Negro.” Du Bois saw a
similar spirit among his contemporaries: he was certain that “there
are to-day no truer exponents of the pure human spirit of the
Declaration of Independence than the American Negroes.” Yet Du
Bois lived in an era when freedom was still the “unattained ideal.”
Segregated and disfranchised in the South, and subject to racial
exploitation and discrimination throughout the nation, black people
still sought “the freedom of life and limb, the freedom to work and
think, the freedom to love and aspire.” Moreover, as long as black
people were not free, America could not be the world’s beacon of
liberty. The black freedom struggle would continue, remaking the
nation as a whole.
Our Approach
Like Du Bois, we, the authors of Freedom on My Mind, take African
Americans’ quest for freedom as the central theme of African
American history and explore all dimensions of that quest, situated
as it must be in the context of American history. Our perspective is
that African American history complicates American history rather
than diverges from it. This idea is woven into our narrative, which
records the paradoxical experiences of a group of people at once the
most American of Americans — in terms of their long history in
America, their vital role in the American economy, and their
enormous impact on American culture — and at the same time the
Americans most consistently excluded from the American dream.
Juxtaposed against American history as a whole, this is a study of a
group of Americans who have had to fight too hard for freedom yet
have been systematically excluded from many of the opportunities
that allowed other groups to experience the United States as a land
of opportunity. This text encourages students to think critically and
analytically about African American history and the historical realities
behind the American dream.
The following themes and emphases are central to our approach:
The principal role of the black freedom struggle in the development
of the American state
Our approach necessitates a study of the troubled relationship
between African Americans and the American democratic state.
Freedom on My Mind underscores the disturbing fact that our
democracy arose within the context of a slaveholding society, though
it ultimately gave way to the democratic forces unleashed by the
Revolution that founded the new nation and the Civil War that
reaffirmed federal sovereignty. Exempt from the universalist
language of the Declaration of Independence — “all men are created
equal” — African Americans have been, as Du Bois insightfully
noted, “a concrete test of the underlying principles of the great
republic.” Most vividly illustrated during the political upheavals of
Reconstruction and the civil rights movement — which is often called
America’s second Reconstruction — African American activism has
been crucial to the evolution of American democratic institutions.
The diversity of African Americans and the African American
experience
Any study of the African American freedom struggle must recognize
the wide diversity of African Americans who participated in it,
whether they did so through open rebellion and visible social protest;
through more covert means of defiance, disobedience, and dissent;
or simply by surviving and persevering in the face of overwhelming
odds. Complicating any conceptions students might have of a single-
minded, monolithic African American collective, Freedom on My
Mind is mindful of black diversity and the ways and means that
gender, class, and ethnicity — as well as region, culture, and politics
— shaped the black experience and the struggle for freedom. The
book explores African Americans’ search for freedom in slave
rebellions, everyday resistance to slavery, the abolitionist movement,
Reconstruction politics, post-emancipation labor struggles, the Great
Migration, military service, civil rights activism, Black Power, and the
Black Lives Matter movement. It shows how American democracy
was shaped by African Americans’ search for, as Du Bois put it,
“human opportunity.”
An emphasis on culture as a vital force in black history
Freedom on My Mind also illuminates the rich and self-affirming
culture blacks established in response to their exclusion from and
often adversarial relationship with American institutions — the life Du
Bois metaphorically characterized as “behind the veil.” The rhythms
and structure of black social and religious life, the contours of black
educational struggles, the music Du Bois described as the “greatest
gift of the Negro people” to the American nation, the parallel
institutions built as a means of self-affirmation and self-defense — all
of these are examined in the context of African Americans’ quest for
freedom, escape from degradation, and inclusion in the nation’s
body politic.
A synthesis that makes black history’s texture and complexity clear
While culture is central to Freedom on My Mind, we offer an
analytical approach to African American culture that enables
students to see it as a central force that both shaped and reflected
other historical developments, rather than as a phenomenon in a
vacuum. How do we process black art — poetry, music, paintings,
novels, sculptures, quilts — without understanding the political,
economic, and social conditions that these pieces express? When
spirituals, jazz, the blues, and rap flow from the economic and social
conditions experienced by multitudes of blacks, how can we not
understand black music as political? Indeed, African American
culture, politics, and identity are inextricably entwined in ways that
call for an approach to this subject that blends social, political,
economic, religious, and cultural history. Such distinctions often
seem arbitrary in American history as a whole and are impossible in
chronicling the experiences of African Americans. How can we
separate the religious and political history of people whose church
leaders have often led their communities from the pulpit and the
political stump? Therefore, Freedom on My Mind sidesteps such
divisions in favor of a synthesis that privileges the sustained interplay
among culture, politics, economics, religion, and social forces in the
African American experience.
Twenty-first-century scholarship for today’s classroom
Each chapter offers a synthesis of the most up-to-date
historiography and historiographical debates in a clear narrative
style. So much has changed since Du Bois pioneered the field of
African American history. Once relegated to black historians and the
oral tradition, African American history as a scholarly endeavor
flowered with the social history revolt of the 1960s, when the events
of the civil rights movement drew new attention to the African
American past and the social upheaval of the 1960s inspired
historians to recover the voices of the voiceless. Women’s history
also became a subject of serious study during this era, and as a
result of all of these changes, we now survey an American history
that has been reconstituted by nearly a half century of sustained
attention to race, class, and gender. Yet although the scholarship
has evolved since Du Bois wrote Souls, we have tried to remain true
to the spirit of that text and write, with “loving emphasis,” the history
of African Americans.
A Textbook and Source Reader in One
We believe that the primary goals of our book — to highlight the
deep connections between black history and the development of
American democracy, illustrate the diversity of black experience,
emphasize the centrality of black culture, and document the
inextricable connections among black culture, politics, economics,
and social and religious life — could not be realized to their fullest
extent through narrative alone. Thus Freedom on My Mind’s unique
chapter structure combines a brief narrative with a Document
Project — a rich, themed set of textual and visual primary
sources. Each Document Project, which is placed at the end of the
chapter narrative and cross-referenced within it, focuses on a
particular chapter topic, from firsthand accounts of the slave trade to
perspectives on the Black Lives Matter movement.
Documentary sources (personal letters, memoirs, poetry, public
petitions, newspaper accounts, and more) and pictorial sources
(photographs, visual arts, cartoons, and propaganda) illuminate the
primary evidence that underpins and complicates the history
students learn. By placing the texts of these historical actors in
conversation with one another, we enable students to witness the
myriad variations of and nuances within black experiences. Together
with a narrative that presents and analyzes their context, these
documents facilitate students’ comprehension of the textured,
complicated story that is the history of African America.
The book’s format provides the convenience and flexibility of a
textbook and source reader in one, allowing instructors to introduce
students to primary-source analysis and the practice of history in one
place. Carefully developed pedagogical elements — including
substantive introductions to the theme, headnotes for each
document, and Questions for Analysis at the close of each project
— help students learn to analyze primary documents and practice
“doing” history. The Document Projects and the pedagogy that
supports them can be used in many ways — from discussion
prompts to writing assignments or essay questions on exams.
New to the Third Edition
To better align Freedom on My Mind with the structure of most
African American history courses and to help students engage with
this important content, we have made a number of changes for the
third edition.
Freedom on My Mind is now offered in Macmillan’s easy-to-use
Achieve Read & Practice e-book platform, which pairs the
Comprehensive Edition e-book with the power of
LearningCurve quizzing. The format is mobile friendly, allowing
students to read and take quizzes on the reading on the device
of their choosing. LearningCurve is an online adaptive learning
tool that promotes mastery of the book’s content and diagnoses
students’ trouble spots, with 110 quiz questions per chapter.
With this adaptive quizzing, students accumulate points toward
a target score as they go, giving the interaction a game-like feel.
Feedback for incorrect responses explains why an answer is
mistaken and directs students back to the text to review before
they attempt to answer the question again. The end result is a
better understanding of the key elements of the text. Instructors
who actively assign LearningCurve report that their students
enjoy using it and come to class more prepared for discussion.
In addition, LearningCurve’s reporting feature gives instructors
insight into student performance and comprehension so that
instructors have the opportunity to intervene before students fall
too far behind in their completion of assignments. It also allows
instructors to quickly diagnose which concepts their students are
struggling with, so they can adjust lectures and activities
accordingly.
A new chapter 1, “African Origins: Beginnings to ca. 1600
. .,” provides an overview of the rich ancestral heritage of
African Americans. Beginning with a discussion of Africa as the
place of origin for humankind, it offers a broad chronological
survey of major African societies around the continent, ending
with West Africa on the eve of European contact. The Document
Project, “Imagining Africa,” looks at the idea of Africa in the
black American imagination, with documents by African
American writers and artists from the colonial period to the
present.
Chapter 2, “From Africa to America, 1441–1808,” has a new
focus on the transatlantic slave trade. This chapter expands on
the previous edition’s coverage of this topic with new material on
the role of enslaved Africans in the conquest and settlement of
New Spain, the effects of the slave trade on Africa, and a new
document — a firsthand account by an enslaved woman
(Florence Hall) of her capture, trek to the coast, and experience
of the Middle Passage.
Chapter 11, “The New Negro Comes of Age, 1915–1930,”
has a new focus on the period spanning World War I and the
1920s. This tighter chronological focus allows for expanded
coverage of the Great Migration, black community aid
organizations in cities of the North, African American women
and the women’s suffrage movement, and the surge in racial
terror with the rebirth of the KKK. A new Document Project, “The
Harlem/New Negro Renaissance,” features work by African
American scholars, writers, visual artists, and musicians.
A new chapter 12, “Catastrophe, Recovery, and Renewal,
1930–1942,” is dedicated to African American life and activism
during the Great Depression and New Deal. In addition to
expanded coverage of the effects of the Great Depression on
African American workers and the strategies that African
Americans employed to survive, the chapter gives greater
attention to the Communist Party’s appeal, civil rights organizing
in the 1930, African American art in a global context, and the
Chicago Renaissance.
A major revision of chapter 17, “African Americans in the
Twenty-First Century,” offers an up-to-date analysis of current
trends and events. The Document Project offers a closer look at
the Black Lives Matter movement from its founding through to
the national protests following the killing of George Floyd.
New scholarship throughout. Every chapter has been
updated to reflect the latest scholarship, from details on slavery
in colonial New England, to updated statistics on the magnitude
of racial terror lynching, to new insights into mass incarceration
in the contemporary period. This new scholarship is also
reflected in the “Suggested References,” which is now placed
within the Chapter Review as a resource for students’ own
research. A full list of changes by chapter is available in the
“Guide to Changing Editions,” available at
macmillanlearning.com.
Three new Document Projects — “Imagining Africa” in chapter
1, “The Harlem/New Negro Renaissance” in chapter 12, and “All
Africa’s Children” on contemporary black immigrants in chapter
16 — allow students to practice “doing” history with fresh and
engaging themes. In addition to these entirely new Document
Projects, there are new textual and visual sources within
existing Document Projects, such as an interview with Ona
Judge, addresses from Reconstruction-era political conventions,
and the lyrics from Nina Simone’s “Mississippi Goddam.” As in
previous editions, substantive introductions, document
headnotes, and Questions for Analysis support students as
they work with these documents.
New maps, figures, and photos; new map questions. With,
the new coverage comes several new maps and several new
“By the Numbers” figures: of Africa, lynching by state, the
foreign-born black population in the United States, and
incarceration trends; these additions bring the total number of
maps and figures to 40. The map captions now contain
questions that encourage students to look for meaning within
the maps. New photos in every chapter — among them “The
Door of No Return,” a plantation slave wedding, a redlining map
of Detroit, and Gloria Richardson organizing in Cambridge,
Maryland — enhance the engaging narrative.
Pop-up definitions in the e-book and an expanded glossary.
As a study aid for students, key terms are bolded within each
chapter, listed in the Chapter Review, and defined in the end-of-
book Glossary. Students who read the interactive e-book within
Achieve Read & Practice can scroll over a bolded term to
access a pop-up definition.
Acknowledgments
In completing this book, we owe thanks to the many talented and
generous friends, colleagues, and editors who have provided us with
suggestions, critiques, and much careful reading along the way.
Foremost among them is the hardworking group of scholar-teachers
who reviewed the second edition for us. We are deeply grateful to
them for their insights and suggestions, and we hope we do them
justice in the third edition. We thank Marcus Anthony Allen, North
Carolina A&T State University; Eva Semien Baham, Dillard
University; Travis D. Boyce, University of Northern Colorado; Richard
A. Buckelew, Bethune-Cookman University; Heather Cooper,
University of Iowa; Valerie Grim, Indiana University-Bloomington;
Carmen Harris, University of South Carolina Upstate; Worth Kamili
Hayes, Tuskegee University; Dr. Marilyn K. Howard, Columbus State
Community College; Karen Sotiropoulos, Cleveland State University;
Cornelius St. Mark, Savannah State University; Robert D. Taber,
Fayetteville State University; Eric M. Washington, Calvin College.
We remain grateful to reviewers of the first edition, whose advice is
still reflected in the narrative and Document Projects: Luther Adams,
University of Washington Tacoma; Ezrah Aharone, Delaware State
University; Jacqueline Akins, Community College of Philadelphia;
Okey P. Akubeze, University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee; Lauren K.
Anderson, Luther College; Scott Barton, East Central University;
Diane L. Beers, Holyoke Community College; Dan Berger, University
of Washington Bothell; Christopher Bonner, University of Maryland;
Susan Bragg, Georgia Southwestern State University; Lester
Brooks, Anne Arundel Community College; E. Tsekani Browne,
Montgomery College; Monica L. Butler, Seminole State College of
Florida; Thomas L. Bynum, Middle Tennessee State University; Erin
D. Chapman, George Washington University; Meredith Clark-Wiltz,
Franklin College; Alexandra Cornelius, Florida International
University; Julie Davis, Cerritos College; John Kyle Day, University of
Arkansas at Monticello; Dorothy Drinkard-Hawkshawe, East
Tennessee State University; Nancy J. Duke, Daytona State College,
Daytona Beach; Reginald K. Ellis, Florida A&M University; Keona K.
Ervin, University of Missouri–Columbia; Joshua David Farrington,
Eastern Kentucky University; Marvin Fletcher, Ohio University; Amy
Forss, Metropolitan Community College; Delia C. Gillis, University of
Central Missouri; Kevin D. Greene, The University of Southern
Mississippi; LaVerne Gyant, Northern Illinois University; Timothy
Hack, Middlesex County College; Kenneth M. Hamilton, Southern
Methodist University; Martin Hardeman, Eastern Illinois University;
Jarvis Hargrove, North Carolina Central University; Jim C. Harper II,
North Carolina Central University; Margaret Harris, Southern New
Hampshire University; Patricia Herb, North Central State College;
Elizabeth Herbin-Triant, University of Massachusetts Lowell; Pippa
Holloway, Middle Tennessee State University; Marilyn Howard,
Columbus State Community College; Carol Sue Humphrey,
Oklahoma Baptist University; Bryan Jack, Southern Illinois University
Edwardsville; Jerry Rafiki Jenkins, Palomar College; Karen J. Johns,
University of Nebraska at Omaha; Winifred M. Johnson, Bethune-
Cookman University; Gary Jones, American International College;
Ishmael Kimbrough III, Bakersfield College; Michelle Kuhl, University
of Wisconsin Oshkosh; Lynda Lamarre, Georgia Military College;
Renee Lansley, Framingham State University; Talitha LeFlouria,
University of Virginia; Monroe Little, Indiana University–Purdue
University Indianapolis; Margaret A. Lowe, Bridgewater State
University; Vince Lowery, University of Wisconsin–Green Bay;
Robert Luckett, Jackson State University; Steven Lurenz, Mesa
Community College; Peggy Macdonald, Florida Polytechnic
University; Bruce Mactavish, Washburn University; Gerald McCarthy,
St. Thomas Aquinas College; Suzanne McCormack, Community
College of Rhode Island; Anthony Merritt, San Diego State
University; Karen K. Miller, Boston College; Steven Millner, San Jose
State University; Billie J. Moore, El Camino Compton Center; Maggi
M. Morehouse, Coastal Carolina University; Lynda Morgan, Mount
Holyoke College; Earl Mulderink, Southern Utah University;
Cassandra Newby-Alexander, Norfolk State University; Victor D.
Padilla Jr., Wright College; N. Josiah Pamoja, Georgia Military
College, Fairburn; Leslie Patrick, Bucknell University; Abigail
Perkiss, Kean University; Alex Peshkoff, Cosumnes River College;
Melvin Pritchard, West Valley College; Margaret Reed, Northern
Virginia Community College, Annandale Campus; Stephanie
Richmond, Norfolk State University; John Riedl, Montgomery
College; Natalie J. Ring, University of Texas at Dallas; Maria Teresa
Romero, Saddleback College; Tara Ross, Onondaga Community
College; Selena Sanderfer, Western Kentucky University; Jonathan
D. Sassi, CUNY–College of Staten Island; Gerald Schumacher,
Nunez Community College; Gary Shea, Center for Advanced
Studies and the Arts; Tobin Shearer, University of Montana; John
Howard Smith, Texas A&M University–Commerce; Solomon Smith,
Georgia Southern University; Pamela A. Smoot, Southern Illinois
University Carbondale; Karen Sotiropoulos, Cleveland State
University; Melissa M. Soto-Schwartz, Cuyahoga Community
College; Idris Kabir Syed, Kent State University; Linda D. Tomlinson,
Fayetteville State University; Felicia A. Viator, University of
California, Berkeley; Eric M. Washington, Calvin College; and
Joanne G. Woodard, University of North Texas.
Our debt to the many brilliant editors at Bedford/St. Martin’s is
equally immeasurable. We are grateful to the team at Bedford/St.
Martin’s (Macmillan Learning): Michael Rosenberg, William J.
Lombardo, and Cynthia Ward, who guided us through the revision
process and suggested many improvements. Matt Glazer did a
masterful job seeing the book through the production process.
Melissa Rodriguez in the marketing department understood how to
communicate our vision to teachers; they and the members of
college sales forces did wonderful work in helping this book reach
the classroom. We also thank the rest of our editorial and production
team for their dedicated efforts: Media Editor Mollie Chandler;
Assistant Editor Carly Lewis; copyeditor Kitty Wilson; proofreaders
Jon Preimesberger and Jananee Sekar; indexer Michael Ferreira; art
researchers Bruce Carson and Cecilia Varas; and text permissions
researcher Michael McCarty. Many thanks to all of you for your
contributions to this new edition of Freedom on My Mind.
In writing this book, we have also relied on a large number of
talented scholars and friends within the academy to supply us with
guidance, editorial expertise, bright ideas, research assistance, and
many other forms of support, and we would like to thank them here.
The enormous — but by no means comprehensive — list of
colleagues, friends, students, and former students to whom we are
indebted includes Isra Ali, Marsha Barrett, Rachel Bernard, Melissa
Cooper, John Day, Jeff Dowd, Joseph L. Duong, Ann Fabian, Jared
Farmer, Larissa Fergeson, Krystal Frazier, Raymond Gavins, Sharon
Harley, Nancy Hewitt, Martha Jones, Stephanie Jones-Rogers, Mia
Kissil, Christopher Lehman, Thomas Lekan, Emily Lieb, Leon F.
Litwack, Julie Livingston, David Lucander, Catherine L. Macklin,
Jaime Martinez, Story Matkin-Rawn, Gregory Mixon, Donna Murch,
Kimberly Phillips, Alicia Rodriguez, David Schoebun, Karcheik Sims-
Alvarado, Jason Sokol, Melissa Stein, Ellen Stroud, Melissa Stuckey,
Anantha Sudakar, Patricia Sullivan, Keith Wailoo, Dara Walker, and
Wendy Wright. Deborah would especially like to thank Maya White
Pascual for her invaluable assistance with many of the documents in
the last third of the book. Her insight, skill, and talent were absolutely
indispensable.
Finally, all three of us are grateful to our families and loved ones for
the support and forbearance that they showed us during our work on
this book.
Deborah Gray White
Mia Bay
Waldo E. Martin Jr.
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Brief Contents
CHAPTER 1 African Origins, Beginnings to ca. 1600 . .
CHAPTER 2 From Africa to America, 1441–1808
CHAPTER 3 Slavery in North America, 1619–1740
CHAPTER 4 African Americans in the Age of Revolution, 1741–
1783
CHAPTER 5 Slavery and Freedom in the New Republic, 1775–
1820
CHAPTER 6 Black Life in the Slave South, 1820–1860
CHAPTER 7 The Northern Black Freedom Struggle and the
Coming of the Civil War, 1830–1860
CHAPTER 8 Freedom Rising: The Civil War, 1861–1865
CHAPTER 9 Reconstruction: The Making and Unmaking of a
Revolution, 1865–1877
CHAPTER 10 Black Life and Culture during the Nadir, 1877–
1915
CHAPTER 11 The New Negro Comes of Age, 1915–1930
CHAPTER 12 Catastrophe, Recovery, and Renewal, 1930–1942
CHAPTER 13 Fighting for a Double Victory in the World War II
Era, 1938–1950
CHAPTER 14 The Early Civil Rights Movement, 1945–1963
CHAPTER 15 Multiple Meanings of Freedom: The Movement
Broadens, 1961–1976
CHAPTER 16 Racial Progress in an Era of Backlash and
Change, 1965–2000
CHAPTER 17 African Americans in the Twenty-First Century
Contents
Preface
Versions and Supplements
Maps and Figures
Introduction: The Study of African American History
Description
The figurine has a face with large lips, raised eyebrows, a broad nose,
and large eyes with a small tiara type crown on the top of the head. It
also has heavy jewelry around the neck and bracelets on the right arm.
Her chest is unclothed.
CHAPTER 1 African Origins, Beginnings to ca. 1600 . .
CHAPTER VIGNETTE: “What Is Africa to Me?” The
Ancestral Origins of Black Americans
Africa: Humanity’s Homeland
A Varied Landscape
The African Origins of Humankind
Peopling a Continent
Ancient Societies of Africa
Egypt
Nubia, Kush, and Aksum
The Nok and the Bantu
West Africa’s Medieval Empires
Ghana
Mali
The Songhay
West Africa in the Sixteenth Century
Religious Beliefs and Practices
Kinship Ties and Political Alliances
Benin, Wealth, and Power
Slavery in West Africa
Conclusion: Transatlantic Ties
Chapter 1 Review
DOCUMENT PROJECT: Imagining Africa
P W , On Being Brought from Africa to
America, 1773
B , The Petition of Belinda, 1782
J R , On the Egyptians as Africans, 1827
G H. J , The Sphinx Builder Speaks, 1919
C M K , Outcast, 1922
Honoring African American History with a Kente Cloth Stole
CHAPTER 2 From Africa to America, 1441–1808
CHAPTER VIGNETTE: Enslaved Africans and the
Portuguese Prince
The Rise of the Transatlantic Slave Trade
Europe on the Eve of the Slave Trade
Maritime Expeditions and First Contacts
The Enslavement of Indigenous Peoples
The First Africans in the Americas
The Business of Slave Trading
The Middle Passage
Capture and Confinement
On the Slave Coast
Inside the Slave Ship
Hardship and Misery on Board
Conclusion: The Slave Trade’s Diaspora
Chapter 2 Review
DOCUMENT PROJECT: Firsthand Accounts of the Slave
Trade
O E , The Interesting Narrative of the Life of
Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African, 1789
F H , Memoirs of the Life of Florence Hall,
1810
J B J ., General Observations on the
Management of Slaves, 1700
A F , An Account of the Slave
Trade on the Coast of Africa, 1788
The Brig Sally’s Log, 1765
Description
The advertisement reads as follows.
Exploring the Variety of Random
Documents with Different Content
one of those littlenesses which appear too frequently in his letters and
in all his writings. Descartes in fact could not bear to think that
another, even though not an enemy, had discovered anything. In the
preceding page he says: C’est une chose ridicule que de vouloir
employer la raison du levier dans la poulie, ce qui est, si j’ai bonne
mémoire, une imagination de Guide Ubalde. Yet this imagination is
demonstrated in all our elementary books on mechanics.
In 44. Galileo, in a treatise entitled, Delle Cose che stanno
Hydrostatics nell’Acqua, lays down the principles of hydrostatics
and
pneumatics. already established by Stevin, and among others what is
called the hydrostatical paradox. Whether he was
acquainted with Stevin’s writings, may be perhaps doubted; it does
not appear that he mentions them. The more difficult science of
hydraulics was entirely created by two disciples of Galileo, Castellio
and Torricelli. It is one everywhere of high importance, and
especially in Italy. The work of Castellio, Della Misura dell’Acque
Correnti, and a continuation, were published at Rome, in 1628. His
practical skill in hydraulics, displayed in carrying off the stagnant
waters of the Arno, and in many other public works, seems to have
exceeded his theoretical science. An error, into which he fell,
supposing the velocity of fluids to be as the height down which they
had descended, led to false results. Torricelli proved that it was as
the square root of the altitude. The latter of these two was still more
distinguished by his discovery of the barometer. The principle of the
syphon or sucking-pump, and the impossibility of raising water in it
more than about thirty-three feet, were both well known; but even
Galileo had recourse to the clumsy explanation that nature limited
her supposed horror of a vacuum to this altitude. It occurred to the
sagacity of Torricelli that the weight of the atmospheric column
pressing upon the fluid which supplied the pump was the cause of
this rise above its level; and that the degree of rise was
consequently the measure of that weight. That the air had weight
was known, indeed, to Galileo and Descartes; and the latter not only
had some notion of determining it by means of a tube filled with
mercury, but in a passage which seems to have been much
overlooked, distinctly suggests as one reason why water will not rise
above eighteen brasses in a pump, “the weight of the water which
counterbalances that of the air.”[637] Torricelli happily thought of using
mercury, a fluid thirteen times heavier, instead of water, and thus
invented a portable instrument by which the variations of the
mercurial column might be readily observed. These he found to
fluctuate between certain well known limits, and in circumstances
which might justly be ascribed to the variations of atmospheric
gravity. This discovery he made in 1643; and in 1648, Pascal, by his
celebrated experiment on the Puy de Dome, established the theory
of atmospheric pressure beyond dispute. He found a considerable
difference in the height of the mercury at the bottom and the top of
that mountain; and a smaller yet perceptible variation was proved on
taking the barometer to the top of one of the loftiest churches in
Paris.
[637] Vol. vii., p. 437.
Optics.— 45. The science of optics was so far from falling behind
Discoveries of
other branches of physics in this period, that, including
Kepler.
the two great practical discoveries which illustrate it, no
former or later generation has witnessed such an advance. Kepler
began, in the year 1604, by one of his first works, Paralipomena ad
Vitellionem, a title somewhat more modest than he was apt to
assume. In this supplement to the great Polish philosopher of the
middle ages, he first explained the structure of the human eye, and
its adaptation to the purposes of vision. Porta and Maurolycus had
made important discoveries, but left the great problem untouched.
Kepler had the sagacity to perceive the use of the retina as the
canvas on which images were painted. In his treatise, says Montucla,
we are not to expect the precision of our own age; but it is full of
ideas novel and worthy of a man of genius. He traced the causes of
imperfect vision in its two principal cases, where the rays of light
converge to a point before or behind the retina. Several other optical
phenomena are well explained by Kepler; but he was unable to
master the great enigma of the science, the law of refraction. To this
he turned his attention again in 1611, when he published a treatise
on Dioptrics. He here first laid the foundation of that science. The
angle of refraction, which Maurolycus had supposed equal to that of
incidence, he here assumed to be one third of it; which, though very
erroneous as a general theorem, was sufficiently accurate for the
Invention of sort of glasses he employed. It was his object to explain
the the principle of the telescope; and in this he well
telescope.
succeeded. That admirable invention was then quite
recent. Whatever endeavours have been made to carry up the art of
assisting vision by means of a tube to much more ancient times, it
seems to be fully proved that no one had made use of combined
lenses for that purpose. The slight benefit which a hollow tube
affords by obstructing the lateral ray, must have been early familiar,
and will account for passages which have been construed to imply
what the writers never dreamed of.[638] The real inventor of the
telescope is not certainly known. Metius of Alkmaer long enjoyed
that honour; but the best claim seems to be that of Zachary Jens, a
dealer in spectacles at Middleburg. The date of the invention, or at
least of its publicity, is referred, beyond dispute, to 1609. The news
of so wonderful a novelty spread rapidly through Europe; and in the
same year, Galileo, as has been mentioned, having heard of the
discovery, constructed, by his own sagacity, the instrument which he
exhibited at Venice. It is, however, unreasonable to regard himself as
the inventor; and in this respect his Italian panegyrists have gone
too far. The original sort of telescope, and the only one employed in
Europe for above thirty years, was formed of a convex object-glass
with a concave eye-glass. This, however, has the disadvantage of
diminishing too much the space which can be taken in at one point
of view; “so that,” says Montucla, “one can hardly believe that it
could render astronomy such service as it did in the hands of a
Galileo or a Scheiner.” Kepler saw the principle upon which another
kind might be framed with both glasses convex. This is now called
the astronomical telescope, and was first employed a little before the
middle of the century. The former, called the Dutch telescope, is
chiefly used for short spying-glasses.
[638] Even Dutens, whose sole aim is to depreciate those whom modern
science has most revered, cannot pretend to show that the ancients
made use of glasses to assist vision. Origine des Découvertes, i., 218.
Of the 46. The microscope has also been ascribed to Galileo;
microscope. and so far with better cause, that we have no proof of
his having known the previous invention. It appears, however, to
have originated, like the telescope, in Holland, and perhaps at an
earlier time. Cornelius Drebbel, who exhibited the microscope in
London about 1620, has often passed for the inventor. It is
suspected by Montucla that the first microscopes had concave eye-
glasses; and that the present form with two convex glasses is not
older than the invention of the astronomical telescope.
Antonio de 47. Antonio de Dominis, the celebrated archbishop of
Dominis. Spalatro, in a book published in 1611, though written
several years before, De Radiis Lucis in Vitris Perspectivis et Iride,
explained more of the phenomena of the rainbow than was then
understood. The varieties of colour had baffled all inquirers, though
the bow itself was well known to be the reflection of solar light from
drops of rain. Antonio de Dominis, to account for these, had
recourse to refraction, the known means of giving colour to the solar
ray; and guiding himself by the experiment of placing between the
eye and the sun a glass bottle of water, from the lower side of which
light issued in the same order of colours as in the rainbow, he
inferred that after two refractions and one intermediate reflection
within the drop, the ray came to the eye tinged with different
colours, according to the angle at which it had entered. Kepler,
doubtless ignorant of De Dominis’s book, had suggested nearly the
same. “This, though not a complete theory of the rainbow, and
though it left a great deal to occupy the attention, first of Descartes,
and afterwards of Newton, was probably just, and carried the
explanation as far as the principles then understood allowed it to go.
The discovery itself may be considered as an anomaly in science, as
it is one of a very refined and subtle nature, made by a man who
has given no other indication of much scientific sagacity or
acuteness. In many things, his writings show great ignorance of
principles of optics well known in his time, so that Boscovich, an
excellent judge in such matters, has said of him, ‘Homo opticarum
rerum supra quod patiatur ea ætas imperitissimus.’”[639] Montucla is
hardly less severe on De Dominis, who, in fact, was a man of more
ingenious than solid understanding.
[639] Playfair, Dissertation on Physical Philosophy, p. 119.
Dioptrics of 48. Descartes announced to the world in his Dioptrics,
Descartes.— 1637, that he had at length solved the mystery which
Law of
refraction. had concealed the law of refraction. He showed that the
sine of the angle of incidence at which the ray enters,
has, in the same medium, a constant ratio to that of the angle at
which it is refracted, or bent in passing through. But this ratio varies
according to the medium; some having a much more refractive
power than others. This was a law of beautiful simplicity as well as
extensive usefulness; but such was the fatality, as we would desire
to call it, which attended Descartes, that this discovery had been
indisputably made twenty years before by a Dutch geometer of great
reputation, Willibrod Snell. The treatise of Snell had never been
published; but we have the evidence both of Vossius and Huygens,
that Hortensius, a Dutch professor, had publicly taught the discovery
of his countryman. Descartes had long lived in Holland; privately, it
is true, and by his own account reading few books; so that in this, as
in other instances, we may be charitable in our suspicions; yet it is
unfortunate that he should perpetually stand in need of such
indulgence.
Disputed by49. Fermat did not inquire whether Descartes was the
Fermat. original discoverer of the law of refraction but disputed
its truth. Descartes, indeed, had not contented himself with
experimentally ascertaining it, but, in his usual manner, endeavoured
to show the path of the ray by direct reasoning. The hypothesis he
brought forward seemed not very probable to Fermat, nor would it
be permitted at present. His rival, however, fell into the same error;
and starting from an equally dubious supposition of his own,
endeavoured to establish the true law of refraction. He was surprised
to find that, after a calculation founded upon his own principle, the
real truth of a constant ratio between the sines of the angles came
out according to the theorem of Descartes. Though he did not the
more admit the validity of the latter’s hypothetical reasoning, he
finally retired from the controversy with an elegant compliment to
his adversary.
Curves of 50. In the Dioptrics of Descartes, several other curious
Descartes. theorems are contained. He demonstrated that there are
peculiar curves, of which lenses may be constructed, by the
refraction from whose superficies all the incident rays will converge
to a focal point, instead of being spread, as in ordinary lenses, over
a certain extent of surface, commonly called its spherical aberration.
The effect of employing such curves of glass would be an increase of
illumination, and a more perfect distinctness of image. These curves
were called the ovals of Descartes; but the elliptic or hyperbolic
speculum would answer nearly the same purpose. The latter kind
has been frequently attempted; but, on account of the difficulties in
working them, if there were no other objection, none but spherical
lenses are in use. In Descartes’s theory, he explained the equality of
the angles of incidence and reflection in the case of light, correctly
as to the result, though with the assumption of a false principle of
his own, that no motion is lost in the collision of hard bodies such as
he conceived light to be. Its perfect elasticity makes his
demonstration true.
Theory of the51. Descartes carried the theory of the rainbow beyond
rainbow. the point where Antonio de Dominis had left it. He gave
the true explanation of the outer bow, by a second intermediate
reflection of the solar ray within the drop: and he seems to have
answered the question most naturally asked, though far from being
of obvious solution, why all this refracted light should only strike the
eye in two arches with certain angles and diameters, instead of
pouring its prismatic lustre over all the rain-drops of the cloud. He
found that no pencil of light continued, after undergoing the
processes of refraction and reflection in the drop, to be composed of
parallel rays, and consequently to possess that degree of density
which fits it to excite sensation in our eyes, except the two which
make those angles with the axis drawn from the sun to an opposite
point at which the two bows are perceived.
CHAPTER XXVI.
HISTORY OF SOME OTHER PROVINCES OF LITERATURE
FROM 1600 TO 1650.
Sect. I.
ON NATURAL HISTORY.
Zoology—Fabricius on Language of Brutes—Botany.
Aldrovandus.1. The vast collections of Aldrovandus on zoology,
though they may be considered as representing to us the knowledge
of the sixteenth century, were, as has been seen before, only
published in a small part before its close. The fourth and concluding
part of his Ornithology appeared in 1603; the History of Insects in
1604. Aldrovandus himself died in 1605. The posthumous volumes
appeared in considerable intervals: that on molluscous animals and
zoophytes in 1606; on fishes and cetacea in 1613; on whole-hoofed
quadrupeds in 1616; on digitate quadrupeds, both viviparous and
oviparous, in 1637; on serpents in 1640; and on cloven-hoofed
quadrupeds in 1642. There are also volumes on plants and minerals.
These were all printed at Bologna, and most of them afterwards at
Frankfort; but a complete collection is very rare.
Clusius. 2. In the Exotica of Clusius, 1605, a miscellaneous
volume on natural history, chiefly, but not wholly, consisting of
translations or extracts from older works, we find several new
species of simiæ, the manis, or scaly ant-eater of the old world, the
three-toed sloth, and one or two armadillos. We may add also the
since extinguished race, that phœnix of ornithologists, the much-
lamented dodo. This portly bird is delineated by Clusius, such as it
then existed in the Mauritius.
Rio and 3. In 1648, Piso on the Materia Medica of Brazil,
Marcgraf. together with Marcgraf’s Natural History of the same
country, was published at Leyden, with notes by De Laet. The
descriptions of Marcgraf are good, and enable us to identify the
animals. They correct the imperfect notions of Gesner, and add
several species which do not appear in his work, or perhaps in that
of Aldrovandus: such as the tamandua, or Brasilian ant-eater;
several of the family of cavies; the coati-mondi, which Gesner had
perhaps meant in a defective description; the lama, the pacos, the
jaguar, and some smaller feline animals; the prehensile porcupine,
and several ruminants. But some, at least, of these had been already
described in the histories of the West Indies, by Hernandez d’Oviedo,
Acosta, and Herrera.
Jonston. 4. Jonston, a Pole of Scots origin, collected the
information of his predecessors in a Natural History of Animals,
published in successive parts from 1648 to 1652. The History of
Quadrupeds appeared in the latter year. “The text,” says Cuvier, “is
extracted, with some taste, from Gesner, Aldrovandus, Marcgraf, and
Mouffet; and it answered its purpose as an elementary work in
natural history, till Linnæus taught a more accurate method of
classifying, naming, and describing animals. Even Linnæus cites him
continually.”[640] I find in Jonston a pretty good account of the
chimpanzee (Orang-otang Indorum, ab Angola delatus), taken
perhaps from the Observationes Medicæ of Tulpius.[641] The
delineations in Jonston being from copper-plates, are superior to the
coarse wood-cuts of Gesner, but fails sometimes very greatly in
exactness. In his notions of classification, being little else than a
compiler, it may be supposed that he did not advance a step beyond
his predecessors. The Theatrum Insectorum by Mouffet, an English
physician of the preceding century, was published in 1634; it seems
to be compiled in a considerable degree from the unpublished
papers of Gesner and foreign naturalists, whom the author has
rather too servilely copied. Haller, however, is said to have placed
Mouffet above all entomologists before the age of Swammerdam.[642]
[640] Biogr. Univ.
[641] Grotius; Epist. ad Gallos, p. 21., gives an account of a chimpanzee,
monstrum hominis dicam an bestiæ? and refers to Tulpius. The doubt
of Grotius as to the possible humanity of this quam similis turpissima
bestia nobis, is not so strange as the much graver language of
Linnæus.
[642] Biogr. Univ. Chalmers. I am no judge of the merits of the book; but if
the following sentence of the English translation does it no injustice,
Mouffet must have taken little pains to do more than transcribe. “In
Germany and England I do not hear that there are any grasshoppers at
all; but if there be, they are in both countries called Bow-krickets, or
Baulm-krickets,” p. 989. This translation is subjoined to Topsell’s History
of Four-footed Beasts, collected out of Gesner and others, in an edition
of 1658. The first edition of Topsell’s very ordinary composition was in
1608.
Fabricius on5. We may place under the head of zoology a short
the languageessay by Fabricius de Aquapendente on the language of
of brutes.
brutes; a subject very curious in itself, and which has by
no means sufficiently attracted notice even in this experimental age.
It cannot be said that Fabricius enters thoroughly into the problem,
much less exhausts it. He divides the subject into six questions:—
1. Whether brutes have a language, and of what kind: 2. How far it
differs from that of man, and whether the languages of different
species differ from one another: 3. What is its use: 4. In what
modes animals express their affections: 5. What means we have of
understanding their language: 6. What is their organ of speech. The
affirmative of the first question he proves by authority of several
writers, confirmed by experience, especially of hunters, shepherds,
and cowherds, who know by the difference of sounds what animals
mean to express. It may be objected that brutes utter sounds, but
do not speak. But this is merely as we define speech; and he
attempts to show that brutes by varying their utterance do all that
we do by literal sounds. This leads to the solution of the second
question. Men agree with brutes in having speech, and in forming
elementary sounds of determinate time; but ours is more complex;
these elementary sounds, which he calls articulos, or joints of the
voice, being quicker and more numerous. Man, again, forms his
sounds more by means of the lips and tongue, which are softer in
him than they are in brutes. Hence, his speech runs into great
variety and complication, which we call language, while that of
animals within the same species is much more uniform.
6. The question as to the use of speech to brutes is not difficult. But
he seems to confine this utility to the expression of particular
emotions, and does not meddle with the more curious inquiry,
whether they have a capacity of communicating specific facts to one
another; and if they have, whether this is done through the organs
of the voice. The fourth question is, in how many modes animals
express their feelings. These are by look, by gesture, by sound, by
voice, by language. Fabricius tells us that he had seen a dog,
meaning to expel another dog from the place he wished himself to
occupy, begin by looking fierce, then use meaning gestures, then
growl, and finally bark. Inferior animals, such as worms, have only
the two former sorts of communication. Fishes, at least some kinds,
have a power of emitting a sound, though not properly a voice; this
may be by the fins or gills. To insects also he seems to deny voice,
much more language, though they declare their feelings by sound.
Even of oxen, stags, and some other quadrupeds, he would rather
say that they have no voice than language. But cats, dogs, and
birds, have a proper language. All, however, are excelled by man,
who is truly called μεροψ, from his more clear and distinct
articulations.
7. In the fifth place, however difficult it may appear to understand
the language of brutes, we know that they understand what is said
to them; how much more, therefore, ought we, superior in reason,
to understand them. He proceeds from hence to an analysis of the
passions, which he reduces to four: joy, desire, grief, and fear.
Having thus drawn our map of the passions, we must ascertain by
observation what are the articulations of which any species of
animals is capable, which cannot be done by description. His own
experiments were made on the dog and the hen. Their articulations
are sometimes complex; as, when a dog wants to come into his
master’s chamber, he begins by a shrill small yelp, expressive of
desire, which becomes deeper, so as to denote a mingled desire and
annoyance, and ends in a lamentable howl of the latter feeling
alone. Fabricius gives several other rules deduced from observation
of dogs, but ends by confessing that he has not fully attained his
object, which was to furnish everyone with a compendious method
of understanding the language of animals: the inquirer must
therefore proceed upon these rudiments, and make out more by
observation and good canine society. He shows finally, from the
different structure of the organs of speech, that no brute can ever
rival man; their chief instrument being the throat, which we use only
for vowel sounds. Two important questions are hardly touched in this
little treatise: first, as has been said, whether brutes can
communicate specific facts to each other; and secondly, to what
extent they can associate ideas with the language of man. These
ought to occupy our excellent naturalists.
Botany— 8. Columna, belonging to the Colonna family, and one of
Columna. the greatest botanists of the sixteenth century,
maintained the honour of that science during the present period,
which his long life embraced. In the academy of the Lincei, founded
by Prince Fredric Cesi about 1606, and to which the revival of
natural philosophy is greatly due Columna took a conspicuous share.
His Ecphrasis, a history of rare plants, was published in two parts at
Rome, in 1606 and 1616. In this he laid down the true basis of the
science, by establishing the distinction of genera, which Gesner,
Cæsalpin, and Camerarius had already conceived, but which it was
left for Columna to confirm and employ. He alone, of all the
contemporary botanists, seems to have appreciated the luminous
ideas which Cæsalpin had bequeathed to posterity.[643] In his
posthumous observations on the natural history of Mexico by
Hernandez, he still farther developed the philosophy of botanical
arrangements. Columna is the first who used copper instead of wood
to delineate plants; an improvement which soon became general.
This was in the Φυτοβασανος, sive Plantarum aliquot Historia, 1594.
There are errors in this work; but it is remarkable for the accuracy of
the descriptions, and for the correctness and beauty of the figures.
[644]
[643] Biogr. Univ.
[644] Id. Sprengel.
John and 9. Two brothers, John and Gaspar Bauhin, inferior in
Gaspar philosophy to Columna, made more copious additions to
Bauhin.
the nomenclature and description of plants. The elder,
who was born in 1541, and had acquired some celebrity as a
botanist in the last century, lived to complete, but not to publish, an
Historia Plantarum Universalis, which did not appear till 1650. It
contains the descriptions of 5,000 species, and the figures of 3,577,
but small and ill executed. His brother, though much younger, had
preceded him, not only by the Phytopinax in 1596, but by his chief
work, the Pinax Theatri Botanici, in 1623. “Gaspar Bauhin,” says a
modern botanist, “is inferior to his brother in his descriptions and in
sagacity; but his delineations are better, and his synonyms more
complete. They are both below Clusius in description, and below
several older botanists in their figures. In their arrangement they
follow Lobel, and have neglected the lights which Cæsalpin and
Columna had held out. Their chief praise is to have brought together
a great deal of knowledge acquired by their predecessors, but the
merit of both has been exaggerated.”[645]
[645] Biog. Univ. Pulteney speaks more highly of John Bauhin. “That which
Gesner performed for zoology, John Bauhin effected in botany. It is, in
reality, a repository of all that was valuable in the ancients, in his
immediate predecessors, and in the discoveries of his own time,
relating to the history of vegetables, and is executed with that accuracy
and critical judgment which can only be exhibited by superior talents.”
Hist. of Botany in England, i. 190.
Parkinson. 10. Johnson, in 1636, published an edition of Gerard’s
Herbal. But the Theatrum Botanicum of Parkinson, in 1640, is a
work, says Pulteney, of much more originality than Gerard’s and it
contains abundantly more matter. We find in it near 3,800 plants;
but many descriptions recur more than once. The arrangement is in
seventeen classes, partly according to the known or supposed
qualities of the plant, and partly according to their external
character.[646] “This heterogeneous classification, which seems to be
founded on that of Dodoens, shows the small advances that had
been made towards any truly scientific distribution; on the contrary,
Gerard, Johnson, and Parkinson, had rather gone back, by not
sufficiently pursuing the example of Lobel.”
[646] P. 146.
Sect. II.
ON ANATOMY AND MEDICINE.
Claims of early Writers to the Discovery of the Circulation of the
Blood—Harvey—Lacteal Vessels discovered by Asellius—Medicine.
11. The first important discovery that was made public in
Valves of the
veins this century was that of the valves of the veins; which is
discovered.
justly ascribed to Fabricius de Aquapendente, a
professor at Padua; because, though some of these valves are
described even by Berenger, and further observations were made on
the subject by Sylvius, Vesalius, and other anatomists, yet Fallopius
himself had in this instance thrown back the science by denying their
existence, and no one before Fabricius had generalised the
discovery. This he did in his public lectures as early as 1524; but his
tract De Venarum Ostiolis appeared in 1603. This discovery, as well
as that of Harvey, has been attributed to Father Paul Sarpi, whose
immense reputation in the north of Italy accredited every tale
favourable to his glory. But there seems to be no sort of ground for
either supposition.
Theory of the12. The discovery of a general circulation in the blood
blood’s has done such honour to Harvey’s name, and has been
circulation.
claimed for so many others, that it deserves more
consideration than we can usually give to anatomical science.
According to Galen, and the general theory of anatomists formed by
his writings, the arterial blood flows from the heart to the
extremities, and returns again by the same channels, the venous
blood being propelled, in like manner, to and from the liver. The
discovery attributed to Harvey was, that the arteries communicate
with the veins, and that all the blood returns to the heart by the
latter vessels. Besides this general or systemic circulation, there is
one called the pulmonary, in which the blood is carried by certain
arteries through the lungs, and returned again by corresponding
veins, preparatory to its being sent into the general sanguineous
system; so that its course is through a double series of ramified
vessels, each beginning and terminating at the heart, but not at the
same side of the heart; the left side, which from a cavity called its
ventricle throws out the arterial blood by the aorta, and by another
called its auricle receives that which has passed through the lungs
by the pulmonary vein, being separated by a solid septum from the
right side, which, by means of similar cavities, receives the blood of
all the veins, excepting those of the lungs, and throws it out into the
pulmonary artery. It is thus evident, that the word pulmonary
circulation is not strictly proper, there being only one for the whole
body.
Sometimes 13. The famous work of Servetus, Christianismi
ascribed to Restitutio, has excited the attention of the literary part
Servetus.
of the world, only by the unhappy fate it brought upon
the author, and its extreme scarcity, but by a remarkable passage
wherein he has been supposed to describe the circulation of the
blood. That Servetus had a just idea of the pulmonary circulation
and the aeration of the blood in the lungs, is manifest by this
passage, and is denied by no one; but it has been the opinion of
anatomists that he did not apprehend the return of the mass of the
blood through the veins to the right auricle of the heart.[647]
[647] In the first volume of this work, p. 643, I have observed that Levasseur
had come much nearer to the theory of a general circulation than
Servetus. But the passage in Levasseur, which I knew only from the
quotation in Portal, Hist. de l’Anatomie, i., 373, does not, on consulting
the book itself, bear out the inference which Portal seems to deduce;
and he has, not quite rightly, omitted all expressions which he thought
erroneous. Thus Levasseur precedes the first sentence of Portal’s
quotation by the following: Intus (in corde) sunt sinus seu ventriculi
duo tantum, septo quodam medio discreti, per cujus foramina sanguis
et spiritus communicatur. In utroque duo vasa habentur. For this he
quotes Galen; and the perforation of the septum of the heart is known
to be one of Galen’s errors. Upon the whole, there seems no ground
for believing that Levasseur was acquainted with the general
circulation; and though his language may at first lead us to believe that
he speaks of that through the lungs, even this is not distinctly made
out. Sprengel, in his History of Medicine, does not mention the name of
Levasseur (or Vassæus, as he was called in Latin) among those who
anticipated, in any degree, the discovery of circulation. The book
quoted by Portal is Vassæus in Anatomen Corporis Humani Tabulæ
Quatuor, several times printed between 1540 and 1560.
Andrès (Origine e Progressio d’Ogni Litteratura, vol. xiv., p. 37) has put
in a claim for a Spanish farrier, by name Reina, who, in a book printed
in 1552, but of which there seems to have been an earlier edition
(Libro di Maniscalcheria hecho y ordenado por Francisco de la Reyna),
asserts, in few and plain words, as Andrès quotes them in Italian, that
the blood goes in a circle through all the limbs. I do not know that the
book has been seen by anyone else; and it would be desirable to
examine the context, since other writers have seemed to know the
truth without really apprehending it.
That Servetus was only acquainted with the pulmonary circulation, has
been the general opinion. Portal, though in one place he speaks with
less precision, repeatedly limits the discovery to this; and Sprengel
does not entertain the least suspicion that it went farther. Andrès (xiv.
38), not certainly a medical authority, but conversant with such, and
very partial to Spanish claimants, asserts the same. If a more general
language may be found in some writers, it may be ascribed to their
want of distinguishing the two circulations. A medical friend who, at my
request, perused and considered the passage in Servetus, as it is
quoted in Allwoerden’s life, says in a letter, “All that this passage
implies which has any reference to the greater circulation, may be
comprised in the following points:—1. That the heart transmits a
vivifying principle along the arteries and the blood which they contain
to the anastomosing veins; 2. That this living principle vivifies the liver
and the venous system generally; 3. That the liver produces the blood
itself, and transmits it through the vena cava to the heart, in order to
obtain the vital principle, by performing the lesser circulation, which
Servetus seems perfectly to comprehend.
“Now, according to this view of the passage, all the movement of the
blood implied is that which takes place from the liver, through the vena
cava to the heart, and that of the lesser circulation. It would appear to
me that Servetus is on the brink of the discovery of the circulation; but
that his notions respecting the transmission of his ‘vitalis spiritus,’
diverted his attention from that great movement of the blood itself,
which Harvey discovered.... It is clear, that the quantity of blood sent
to the heart for the elaboration of the vital spiritus, is, according to
Servetus, only that furnished by the liver to the vena cava inferior. But
the blood thus introduced is represented by him as performing the
circulation through the lungs very regularly.”
It appears singular that, while Servetus distinctly knew that the septum
of the heart, paries ille medius, as he calls it, is closed, which Berenger
had discovered, and Vesalius confirmed (though the bulk of anatomists
long afterwards adhered to Galen’s notion of perforation), and
consequently, that some other means must exist for restoring the blood
from the left division of the heart to the right, he should not have seen
the necessity of a system of vessels to carry forward this
communication.
To Columbus. 14. Columbus is acknowledged to have been acquainted
with the pulmonary circulation. He says of his own discovery, that no
one had observed or consigned it to writing before. Arantius,
according to Portal, has described the pulmonary circulation still
better than Columbus, while Sprengel denies that he has described it
all. It is perfectly certain, and is admitted on all sides, that Columbus
did not know the systemic circulation: in what manner he disposed
of the blood does not very clearly appear; but, as he conceived a
passage to exist between the ventricles of the heart, it is probable,
though his words do not lead to this inference, that he supposed the
aerated blood to be transmitted back in this course.[648]
[648] The leading passage in Columbus (De Re Anatomica, lib. vii., p. 177,
edit. 1559), which I have not found quoted by Portal or Sprengel, is as
follows: Inter hos ventriculos septum adest, per quod fere omnes
existimant sanguini a dextro ventriculo ad sinistrum aditum patefieri; id
ut fieret facilius, in transitu ob vitalium spirituum generationem demum
reddi; sed longa errant via; nam sanguis per arteriosam venam ad
pulmonem fertur; ibique attenuatur; deinde cum aere una per arteriam
venalem ad sinistrum cordis ventriculum defertur; quod nemo hactenus
aut animadvertit aut scriptum reliquit; licet maximè et ab omnibus
animadvertendum. He afterwards makes a remark, in which Servetus
had preceded him, that the size of the pulmonary artery (vena
arteriosa) is greater than would be required for the nutrition of the
lungs alone. Whether he knew of the passages in Servetus or no,
notwithstanding his claim of originality is not perhaps manifest: the
coincidence as to the function of the lungs in aerating the blood is
remarkable; but, if Columbus had any direct knowledge of the
Christianismi Restitutio, he did not choose to follow it in the remarkable
discovery that there is no perforation in the septum between the
ventricles.
And to 15. Cæsalpin, whose versatile genius entered upon
Cæsalpin. every field of research, has, in more than one of his
treatises relating to very different topics, and especially in that upon
plants, some remarkable passages on the same subject, which
approach more nearly than any we have seen to a just notion of the
general circulation, and have led several writers to insist on his claim
as a prior discoverer to Harvey. Portal admits that this might be
regarded as a fair pretension, if he were to judge from such
passages; but there are others which contradict this supposition, and
show Cæsalpin to have had a confused and imperfect idea of the
office of the veins. Sprengel, though at first he seems to incline
more towards the pretensions of Cæsalpin, comes ultimately almost
to the same conclusion; and giving the reader the words of most
importance, leaves him to form his own judgment. The Italians are
more confident: Tiraboschi and Corniani, neither of whom are
medical authorities, put in an unhesitating claim for Cæsalpin as the
discoverer of the circulation of the blood not without unfair
reflections on Harvey.[649]
[649] Tiraboschi, x., 49. Corniani, vi., 8. He quotes, on the authority of
another Italian writer, il giudizio di que illustri Inglesi, i fratelli Hunter, i
quali, esaminato bene il processo di questa causa, si maravigliano della
sentenza data in favore del loro concittadino. I must doubt, till more
evidence is produced, whether this be true.
The passage in Cæsalpin’s Quæstiones Peripateticæ is certainly the
most resembling a statement of the entire truth that can be found in
any writer before Harvey. I transcribe it from Dutens’s Origine des
Découvertes, vol. ii., p. 23. Idcirco pulmo per venam arteriis similem ex
dextro cordis ventriculo fervidum hauriens sanguinem, eumque per
anastomosin arteriæ venali reddens, quæ in sinistrum cordis
ventriculum tendit, transmisso interim aere frigido per asperæ arteriæ
canales, qui juxta arteriam venalem protenduntur, non tamen osculis
communicantes, ut putavit Galenus solo, tactu temperat. Huic
sanguinis circulationi ex dextro cordis ventriculo per pulmones in
sinistrum ejusdem ventriculum optimè respondent ea quæ ex
dissectione apparent. Nam duo sunt vasa in dextrum ventriculum
desinentia, duo etiam in sinistrum: duorum autem unum intromittit
tantum, alterum educit, membranis eo ingenio constitutis. Vas igitur
intromittens vena et magna quidem in dextro, quæ cava appellatur;
parva autem in sinistro ex pulmone introducens, cujus unica est tunica,
ut cæterarum venarum. Vas autem educens arteria est magna quidem
in sinistro, quæ aorta appellatur; parva autem in dextro, ad pulmones
derivans, cujus similiter duæ sunt tunicæ, ut in cæteris arteriis.
In the treatise De Plantis we have a similar, but shorter passage. Nam
in animalibus videmus alimentum per venas duci ad cor tanquam ad
officinam caloris insiti, et adepta inibi ultima perfectione, per arterias in
universum corpus distribui agente spiritu, qui ex eodem alimento in
corde gignitur. I have taken this from the article of Cæsalpin in the
Biographie Universelle.
Generally 16. It is thus manifest that several anatomists of the
unknown sixteenth century were on the verge of completely
before Harvey.
detecting the law by which the motion of the blood is
governed; and the language of one is so strong, that we must have
recourse, in order to exclude his claim, to the irresistible fact that he
did not confirm by proof his own theory, nor announce it in such a
manner as to attract the attention of the world. Certainly, when the
doctrine of a general circulation was advanced by Harvey, he both
announced it as a paradox, and was not deceived in expecting that it
would be so accounted. Those again who strove to depreciate his
originality, sought intimations in the writings of the ancients, and
even spread a rumour that he had stolen the papers of Father Paul;
but it does not appear that they talked, like some moderns, of
plagiarism from Levasseur or Cæsalpin.
17. William Harvey first taught the circulation of the
His discovery.
blood in London, in 1619; but his Exercitatio de Motu Cordis was not
published till 1628. He was induced, as is said, to conceive the
probability of this great truth, by reflecting on the final cause of
those valves, which his master, Fabricius de Aquapendente, had
demonstrated in the veins; valves whose structure was such as to
prevent the reflux of the blood towards the extremities. Fabricius
himself seems to have been ignorant of this structure, and certainly
of the circulation; for he presumes that they serve to prevent the
blood from flowing like a river towards the feet and hands, and from
collecting in one part. Harvey followed his own happy conjecture by
a long inductive process of experiments on the effects of ligatures,
and on the observed motion of the blood in living animals.
Unjustly 18. Portal has imputed to Harvey an unfair silence as to
doubted to beServetus, Columbus, Levasseur, and Cæsalpin, who had
original.
all preceded him in the same track. Tiraboschi copies
Portal, and Corniani speaks of the appropriation of Cæsalpin’s
discovery by Harvey. It may be replied, that no one can reasonably
suppose Harvey to have been acquainted with the passage in
Servetus. But the imputation of suppressing the merits of Columbus
is grossly unjust, and founded upon ignorance or forgetfulness of
Harvey’s celebrated Exercitation. In the proœmium to this treatise he
observes, that almost all anatomists have hitherto supposed with
Galen, that the mechanism of the pulse is the same as that of
respiration. But he not less than three times makes an exception for
Columbus, to whom he most expressly refers the theory of a
pulmonary circulation.[650] Of Cæsalpin he certainly says nothing; but
there seems to be no presumption that he was acquainted with that
author’s writings. Were it even true that he had been guided in his
researches by the obscure passages we have quoted, could this set
aside the merit of that patient induction by which he established his
own theory? Cæsalpin asserts at best, what we may say he divined,
but did not know to be true; Harvey asserts what he had
demonstrated. The one is an empiric in a philosophical sense, the
other a legitimate minister of truth. It has been justly said, that he
alone discovers who proves; nor is there a more odious office, or a
more sophistical course of reasoning, than to impair the credit of
great men, as Dutens wasted his erudition in doing, by hunting out
equivocal and insulated passages from older writers, in order to
depreciate the originality of the real teachers of mankind.[651] It may
indeed be thought wonderful that Servetus, Columbus, or Cæsalpin
should not have more distinctly apprehended the consequences of
what they maintained, since it seems difficult to conceive the lesser
circulation without the greater; but the defectiveness of their views
is not to be alledged as a counterbalance to the more steady
sagacity of Harvey. The solution of their falling so short is that they
were right, not indeed quite by guess, but upon insufficient proof;
and that the consciousness of this embarrassing their minds,
prevented them from deducing inferences which now appear
irresistible. In every department of philosophy, the researches of the
first inquirers have often been arrested by similar causes.[652]
[650] Pæne omnes huc usque anatomici medici et philosophi supponunt cum
Galeno eundem usum esse pulsus, quam respirationis. But though he
certainly claims the doctrine of a general circulation as wholly his own,
and counts it a paradox which will startle everyone, he as expressly
refers (p. 38 and 41 of the Exercitatio) that of a pulmonary
transmission of the blood to Columbus, peritissimo, doctissimoque
anatomico; and observes, in his proœmium, as an objection to the
received theory, quomodo probabile est (uti notavit Rualdus Columbus)
tanto sanguine opus esse ad nutritionem pulmonum, cum hoc vas,
vena videlicet arteriosa (hoc est, uti tum loquebantur, arteria
pulmonalis) exsuperet magnitudine utrumque ramum distributionis
venæ cavæ descendentis cruralem, p. 16.
[651] This is the general character of a really learned and interesting work by
Dutens Origine des Découvertes attribuées aux Modernes. Justice is
due to those who have first struck out, even without following up,
original ideas in any science; but not at the expense of those who,
generally without knowledge of what had been said before, have
deduced the same principles from reasoning or from observation, and
carried them out to important consequences. Pascal quotes Montaigne
for the shrewd remark, that we should try a man who says a wise
thing, for we may often find that he does not understand it. Those who
entertain a morbid jealousy of modern philosophy, are glad to avail
themselves of such hunters into obscure antiquity as Dutens, and they
are seconded by all the envious, the uncandid, and by many of the
unreflecting among mankind. With respect to the immediate question,
the passages which Dutens has quoted from Hippocrates and Plato,
have certainly an appearance of expressing a real circulation of the
blood by the words περιοδος and περιφερομενου αἱματος; but others,
and especially one from Nemesius, on which some reliance has been
placed, mean nothing more than the flux and reflux of the blood, which
the contraction and dilatation of the heart was supposed to produce.
See Dutens, vol. ii., p. 8-13. Mr. Coleridge has been deceived in the
same manner by some lines of Jordano Bruno, which he takes to
describe the circulation of the blood: whereas, they merely express its
movement to and fro, meat et remeat, which might be by the same
system of vessels.
[652] The biographer of Harvey in the Biographie Universelle strongly
vindicates his claim. Tous les hommes instruits conviennent aujourd’hui
que Harvey est la véritable auteur de cette belle découverte.... Césalpin
pressentoit la circulation artérielle, en supposant que le sang rétourne
des extrémités au cœur; mais ces assertions ne furent point prouvées;
elles ne se trouvèrent étayées par aucune expérience, par aucun fait;
et l’on peut dire de Césalpin qu’il divina presque la grande circulation
dont les lois lui furent totalement inconnues; la découverte en était
réservée a Guillaume Harvey.
Harvey’s 19. Harvey is the author of a treatise on generation,
treatise on wherein he maintains that all animals, including men,
Generation.
are derived from an egg. In this book, we first find an
argument maintained against spontaneous generation, which, in the
case of the lower animals, had been generally received. Sprengel
thinks this treatise prolix, and not equal to the author’s reputation.
[653] It was first published in 1651.
[653] Hist. de la Médécine, iv., 299. Portal, ii., 477.
Lacteals 20. Next in importance to the discovery of Harvey, is
discovered by that of Assellius as to the lacteal vessels. Eustachius had
Assellius.
observed the thoracic duct in a horse. But Asellius, more by chance,
as he owns, than by reflection, perceived the lacteals in a fat dog
whom he opened soon after it had eaten. This was in 1622, and his
treatise, De Lacteis Venis, was published in 1627.[654] Harvey did not
assent to this discovery, and endeavoured to dispute the use of the
vessels; nor is it to his honour that even to the end of his life he
disregarded the subsequent confirmation that Pecquet and Bartholin
had furnished.[655] The former detected the common origin of the
lacteal and lymphatic vessels in 1647, though his work on the
subject was not published till 1651. But Olaus Rudbeck was the first
who clearly distinguished these two kinds of vessels.
[654] Portal, ii., 461. Sprengel, iv., 201. Peiresc soon after this got the body
of a man fresh hanged after a good supper, and had the pleasure of
confirming the discovery of Asellius by his own eyes. Gassendi, Vita
Peirescii, p. 177.
[655] Sprengel, iv., 203.
Optical 21. Scheiner, the Jesuit, proved that the retina is the
discoveries of
organ of sight, and that the humours serve only to
Scheiner.
refract the rays which paint the object on the optic
nerve. This was in a treatise entitled, Oculus, hoc est, Fundamentum
Opticum, 1619.[656] The writings of several anatomists of this period,
such as Riolan, Vesling, Bartholin, contain partial accessions to the
science; but it seems to have been less enriched by great
discoveries, after those already named, than in the preceding
century.
[656] Sprengel, iv., 270.
Medicine—Van22. The mystical medicine of Paracelsus continued to
Helmont. have many advocates in Germany. A new class of
enthusiasts sprung from the same school, and calling themselves
Rosicrucians, pretended to cure diseases by faith and imagination. A
true Rosicrucian, they held, had only to look on a patient to cure
him. The analogy of magnetism, revived in the last and present age,
was commonly employed.[657] Of this school the most eminent was
Van Helmont, who combined the Paracelsian superstitions with some
original ideas of his own. His general idea of medicine was that its
business was to regulate the archæus, an immaterial principle of life
and health; to which, like Paracelsus, he attributed a mysterious
being and efficacy. The seat of the archæus is in the stomach; and it
is to be effected either by a scheme of diet or through the
imagination. Sprengel praises Van Helmont for overthrowing many
current errors, and for announcing principles since pursued.[658] The
French physicians adhered to the Hippocratic school, in opposition to
what Sprengel calls the Chemiatric, which, more or less, may be
reckoned that of Paracelsus. The Italians were still renowned in
medicine. Sanctorius, De Medicina Statica, 1614, seems the only
work to which we need allude. It is loaded with eulogy by Portal,
Tiraboschi, and other writers.[659]
[657] All in nature, says Croll of Hesse, one of the principal theosophists in
medicine, is living; all that lives has its vital force, or astrum, which
cannot act without a body, but passes from one to another. All things in
the macrocosm are found also in the microcosm. The inward or astral
man is Gabalis, from which the science is named. This Gabalis or
imagination, is as a magnet to external objects, which it thus attracts.
Medicines act by a magnetic force. Sprengel, iii., 362.
[658] Vol. v., p. 22.
[659] Portal, ii., 391. Tiraboschi, xi., 270. Biog. Univ.
Sect. III.
On Oriental Literature—Hebrew Learning—Arabic and other Eastern
Languages.
Diffusion of23. During no period of equal length, since the revival of
Hebrew. letters, has the knowledge of the Hebrew language
been, apparently, so much diffused among the literary world as in
that before us. The frequent sprinkling of its characters in works of
the most miscellaneous erudition, will strike the eye of every one
who habitually consults them. Nor was this learning by any means
so much confined to the clergy as it has been in later times, though
their order naturally furnished the greater portion of those who
laboured in that field. Some of the chief Hebraists of this age were
laymen. The study of this language prevailed most in the protestant
countries of Europe, and it was cultivated with much zeal in England.
The period between the last years of Elizabeth and the Restoration,
may be reckoned that in which a knowledge of Hebrew has been
most usual among our divines.
Language not 24. Upon this subject, I can only assert what I collect to
studied in the
be the verdict of judicious critics.[660] It seems that the
best method.
Hebrew language was not yet sufficiently studied in the
method most likely to give an insight into its principles, by
comparing it with all the cognate tongues, latterly called Semitic,
spoken in the neighbouring parts of Asia, and manifestly springing
from a common source. Postel, indeed, had made some attempts at
this in the last century, but his learning was very slight; and
Schindler published in 1612 a Lexicon Pentaglottum, in which the
Arabic, as well as Syriac and Chaldaic, were placed in apposition with
the Hebrew text. Louis De Dieu, whose “Remarks on all the Books of
the Old Testament,” were published at Leyden in 1648, has
frequently recourse to some of the kindred languages, in order to
explain the Hebrew.[661] But the first instructors in the latter had
been Jewish rabbis; and the Hebraists of the sixteenth age had
imbibed a prejudice, not unnatural though unfounded, that their
teachers were best conversant with the language of their
forefathers.[662] They had derived from the same source an
extravagant notion of the beauty, antiquity, and capacity of the
Hebrew; and, combining this with still more chimerical dreams of a
mystical philosophy, lost sight of all real principles of criticism.
[660] The fifth volume of Eichhorn’s Geschichte der Cultur is devoted to the
progress of Oriental literature in Europe, not very full in characterising
the various productions it mentions, but analytically arranged, and
highly useful for reference. Jenisch, in his preface to Meninski’s
Thesaurus (Vienna, 1780), has traced a sketch of the same subject. We
may have trusted in some respects to Simon, Histoire Critique du Vieux
Testament. The biographical dictionaries, English and French, have, of
course, been resorted to.
[661] Simon, Hist. Critique du Vieux Testament, p. 494.
[662] This was not the case with Luther, who rejected the authority of the
rabbis, and thought none but Christians could understand the Old
Testament. Simon, p. 375. But Munster, Fagius, and several others,
who are found in the Critici Sacri, gave way to the prejudice in favour
of rabbinical opinions, and their commentaries are consequently too
Judaical, p. 496.
The Buxtorfs.25. The most eminent Hebrew scholars of this age were
the two Buxtorfs of Basle, father and son, both devoted to the
rabbinical school. The elder, who had become distinguished before
the end of the preceding century, published a grammar in 1609,
which long continued to be reckoned the best, and a lexicon of
Hebrew, Chaldee, and Syriac, in 1623, which was not superseded for
more than a hundred years. Many other works relating to these
three dialects, as well as to that of the later Jews, do honour to the
erudition of the elder Buxtorf; but he is considered as representing a
class of Hebraists which, in the more comprehensive Orientalism of
the eighteenth century, has lost much of its credit. The son trod
closely in his father’s footsteps, whom he succeeded as professor of
Hebrew at Basle. They held this chair between them more than
seventy years. The younger Buxtorf was engaged in controversies
which had not begun in his father’s lifetime. Morin, one of those
learned protestants who had gone over to the church of Rome,
systematically laboured to establish the authority of those versions
which the church had approved, by weakening that of the text which
passed for original.[663] Hence, he endeavoured to show, though this
could not logically do much for his object, that the Samaritan
Pentateuch, lately brought to Europe, which is not in a different
language, but merely the Hebrew written in Samaritan characters, is
deserving of preference above what is called the Masoretic text,
from which the protestant versions are taken. The variations
between these are sufficiently numerous to affect a favourite
hypothesis, borrowed from the rabbis, but strenuously maintained by
the generality of protestants, that the Hebrew text of the Masoretic
recension is perfectly incorrupt.[664] Morin’s opinion was opposed by
Buxtorf and Hottinger, and by other writers even of the Romish
church. It has, however, been countenanced by Simon and
Kennicott. The integrity, at least, of the Hebrew copyist, was
gradually given up, and it has since been shown that they differ
greatly among themselves. The Samaritan Pentateuch was first
published in 1645, several years after this controversy began, by
Sionita, editor of the Parisian Polyglott. This edition, sometimes
called by the name of Le Jay, contains most that is in the Polyglott of
Antwerp, with the addition of the Syriac and Arabic versions of the
Old Testament.
[663] Simon, p. 522.
[664] Id. p. 522. Eichhorn, v., 464.
Vowel points 26. An epoch was made in Hebrew criticism by a work of
rejected by Louis Cappel, professor of that language at Saumur, the
Cappel.
Arcanum Punctuationis Revelatum, in 1624. He
maintained in this an opinion promulgated by Elias Levita, and held
by the first reformers and many other protestants of the highest
authority, though contrary to that vulgar orthodoxy which is always
omnivorous, that the vowel points of Hebrew were invented by
certain Jews of Tiberias in the sixth century. They had been
generally deemed coeval with the language, or at least brought in by
Esdras through divine inspiration. It is not surprising that such an
hypothesis clashed with the prejudices of mankind, and Cappel was
obliged to publish his work in Holland. The protestants looked upon
it as too great a concession in favour of the Vulgate; which having
been translated before the Masoretic punctuation, on Cappel’s
hypothesis, had been applied to the text, might now claim to stand
on higher ground, and was not to be judged by these innovations.
After twenty years, the younger Buxtorf endeavoured to vindicate
the antiquity of vowel-points; but it is now confessed that the victory
remained with Cappel, who has been styled the father of Hebrew
criticism. His principal work is the Critica Sacra, published at Paris in
1650, wherein he still farther discredits the existing manuscripts of
the Hebrew scriptures, as well as the Masoretic punctuation.[665]
[665] Simon, Eichhorn, &c. A detailed account of this controversy about
vowel-points between Cappel and the Buxtorfs will be found in the
12th volume of the Bibliothèque Universelle; and a shorter précis in
Eichhorn’s Einleitung in das alte Testament, vol. i., p. 242.
Hebrew 27. The rabbinical literature, meaning as well the Talmud
scholars. and other ancient books, as those of the later ages since
the revival of intellectual pursuits among the Jews of Spain and the
East, gave occupation to a considerable class of scholars. Several of
these belong to England, such as Ainsworth, Godwin, Lightfoot,
Selden, and Pococke. The antiquities of Judaism were illustrated by
Cunæus in Jus Regium Hebræorum, 1623, and especially by Selden,
both in the Uxor Hebraica, and in the treatise De Jure Naturali et
Gentium juxta Hebræos. But no one has left a more durable
reputation in this literature than Bochart, a protestant minister at
Caen. His Geographia Sacra, published in 1646, is not the most
famous of his works, but the only one which falls within this period.
It displays great learning and sagacity; but it was impossible, as has
been justly observed, that he could thoroughly elucidate this subject
at a time when we knew comparatively little of modern Asia, and
had few good books of travels. A similar observation might of course
be applied to his Hierozoicon, on the animals mentioned in Scripture.
Both these works, however, were much extolled in the seventeenth
century.
Chaldee and 28. In the Chaldee and Syriac languages, which
Syriac. approach so closely to Hebrew, that the best scholars in
the latter are rarely unacquainted with them, besides the Buxtorfs,
we find Ferrari, author of a Syriac lexicon, published at Rome in
1622; Louis de Dieu of Leyden, whose Syriac grammar appeared in
1626; and the Syriac translation of the Old Testament in the Parisian
Polyglott, edited by Gabriel Sionita, in 1642. A Syriac college for the
Maronites of Libanus, was founded at Rome by Gregory XIII.; but it
did not as yet produce anything of importance.
Arabic. 29. But a language incomparably more rich in literary
treasures, and long neglected by Europe, began now to take a
conspicuous place in the annals of learning. Scaliger deserves the
glory of being the first real Arabic scholar; for Postel, Christman, and
a very few more of the sixteenth century, are hardly worth notice.
His friend, Casaubon, who extols his acquirements, as usual, very
highly, devoted himself some time to this study. But Scaliger made
use of the language chiefly to enlarge his own vast sphere of
erudition. He published nothing on the subject; but his collections
became the base of Rapheling’s Arabic lexicon; and it is said that
they were far more extensive than what appears in that work. He
Erpenius. who properly added this language to the domain of
learning was Erpenius, a native of Gorcum, who, at an early age,
had gained so unrivalled an acquaintance with the Oriental
languages as to be appointed professor of them at Leyden in 1613.
He edited the same year the above-mentioned lexicon of Rapheling,
and published a grammar, which might not only be accounted the
first composed in Europe that deserved the name, but became the
guide to most later scholars. Erpenius gave several other works to
the world, chiefly connected with the Arabic version of the
Golius. Scriptures.[666] Golius, his successor in the Oriental chair
at Leyden, besides publishing a lexicon of the language, which is
said to be still the most copious, elaborate, and complete that has
appeared,[667] and several editions of Arabic writings, poetical and
historical, contributed still more extensively to bring the range of
Arabian literature before the world. He enriched with a hundred and
fifty manuscripts, collected in his travels, the library of Leyden, to
which Scaliger had bequeathed forty.[668] The manuscripts belonging
to Erpenius found their way to Cambridge; while, partly by the
munificence of Laud, partly by later accessions, the Bodleian Library
at Oxford became extremely rich in this line. The much larger
collection in the Escurial seems to have been chiefly formed under
Philip III. England was now as conspicuous in Arabian as in Hebrew
learning. Selden, Greaves, and Pococke, especially the last, who was
probably equal to any Oriental scholar whom Europe had hitherto
produced, by translations of the historical and philosophical writings
of the Saracenic period, gave a larger compass to general erudition.
[669]
[666] Biogr. Univ.
[667] Jenisch, præfatio in Meninski Thesaurus Linguarum Orientalium, p.
110.
[668] Biogr. Univ.
[669] Jenisch, Eichhorn, Biogr. Universelle, Biogr. Britannica.
30. The remaining languages of the East are of less
Other Eastern
languages. importance. The Turkish had attracted some degree of
attention in the sixteenth century; but the first grammar was
published by Megiser, in 1612, a very slight performance; and a
better at Paris, by Du Ryer, in 1630.[670] The Persic grammar was
given at Rome by Raymondi, in 1614; by De Dieu, at Leyden, in
1639; by Greaves, at London, in 1641 and 1649.[671] An Armenian
dictionary, by Rivoli, in 1621, seems the only accession to our
knowledge of that ancient language during this period.[672]
Athanasius Kircher, a man of immense erudition, restored the Coptic,
of which Europe had been wholly ignorant. Those farther eastward
had not yet begun to enter much into the studies of Europe. Nothing
was known of the Indian; but some Chinese manuscripts had been
brought to Rome and Madrid as early as 1580; and not long
afterwards, two Jesuits, Roger and Ricci, both missionaries in China,
were the first who acquired a sufficient knowledge of the language
to translate from it.[673] But scarcely any farther advance took place
before the middle of the century.
[670] Eichhorn, v., 367.
[671] Id. 320.
[672] Eichhorn, 351.
[673] Id. 64.
Sect. IV.
On Geography and History.
Purchas’s 31. Purchas, an English clergyman, imbued by nature,
Pilgrim. like Hakluyt, with a strong bias towards geographical
studies, after having formed an extensive library in that department,
and consulted, as he professes, above 1,200 authors, published the
first volume of his Pilgrim, a collection of voyages in all parts of the
world, in 1613; four more followed in 1625. The accuracy of this
useful compiler has been denied by those who have had better
means of knowledge, and probably is inferior to that of Hakluyt; but
his labour was far more comprehensive. The Pilgrim was at all
events a great source of knowledge to the contemporaries of
Purchas.[674]
[674] Biogr. Univ. Pinkerton’s Collection of Voyages and Travels. The latter
does not value Purchas highly for correctness.
Olearius and 32. Olearius was ambassador from the Duke of Holstein
Pietro della to Moscovy and Persia from 1633 to 1639. His travels, in
Valle.
German, were published in 1647, and have been several
times reprinted and translated. He has well described the barbarism
of Russia and the despotism of Persia; he is diffuse and episodical,
but not wearisome; he observes well and relates faithfully: all who
have known the countries he has visited are said to speak well of
him.[675] Pietro della Valle is a far more amusing writer. He has
thrown his travels over Syria and Persia into the form of letters
written from time to time, and which he professes to have recovered
from his correspondents. This perhaps is not a very probable story,
both on account of the length of the letters, and the want of that
reference to the present time and to small passing events which
authentic letters commonly exhibit. His observations, however, on all
the countries he visited, especially Persia, are apparently such as
consist with the knowledge we have obtained from later travellers.
Gibbon says that none have better observed Persia, but his vanity
and prolixity are insufferable. Yet I think that Della Valle can hardly
be reckoned tedious; and if he is a little egotistical, the usual and
almost laudable characteristic of travellers, this gives a liveliness and
racy air to his narrative. What his wife, the Lady Maani, an Assyrian
Christian, whom he met with at Bagdad, and who accompanied him
through his long wanderings, may really have been, we can only
judge from his eulogies on her beauty, her fidelity, and her courage;
but she throws an air of romance over his adventures, not
unpleasing to the reader. The travels of Pietro della Valle took place
from 1614 to 1626; but the book was first published at Rome in
1650, and has been translated into different languages.
[675] Biogr. Univ.
Lexicon of 33. The Lexicon Geographicum of Ferrari, in 1627, was
Ferrari. the chief general work on geography; it is alphabetical,
and contains 9,600 articles. The errors have been corrected in later
editions, so that the first would probably be required in order to
estimate the knowledge of its author’s age.[676]
[676] Salfi, xi., 418. Biogr. Universelle.
Maps of 34. The best measure, perhaps, of geographical science,
Blaew. are the maps published from time to time, as perfectly
for the most part, we may presume, as their editors could render
them. If we compare the map of the world in the “Theatrum Orbis
Terrarum sive Novus Atlas” of Blaew, in 1648, with that of the
edition of Ortelius, published at Antwerp in 1612, the improvements
will not appear exceedingly great. America is still separated from
Asia by the straights of Anian about lat. 60; but the coast to the
south is made to trend away more than before; on the N.E. coast we
find Davis’s Sea, and Estotiland has vanished to give way to
Greenland. Canada is still most inaccurate, though there is a general
idea of lakes and rivers better than in Ortelius. Scandinavia is far
better, and tolerably correct. In the South, Terra del Fuego
terminates in Cape Horn, instead of being united to Terra Australis;
but in the East, Corea appears as an oblong island; the Sea of Aral is
now set down, and the wall of China is placed north of the fiftieth
parallel. India is very much too small, and the shape of the Caspian
Sea is wholly inaccurate. But a comparison with the map in Hakluyt,
mentioned in our second volume, will not exhibit so much superiority
of Blaew’s Atlas. The latter, however, shows more knowledge of the
interior country, especially in North America, and a better outline in
many parts, of the Asiatic coast. The maps of particular regions in
Europe are on a large scale, and numerous. Speed’s maps 1646,
appear by no means inferior to those of Blaew; but several of the
errors are the same. Considering the progress of commerce,
especially that of the Dutch, during this half century, we may rather
be surprised at the defective state of these maps.
Davila and 35. Two histories of general reputation were published in
Bentivoglio. the Italian language during these fifty years; one of the
civil wars in France by Davila, in 1630, and another of those in
Flanders by Cardinal Bentivoglio. Both of these had the advantage of
interesting subjects; they had been sufficiently conversant with the
actors to know much and to judge well, without that particular
responsibility which tempts an historian to prevarication. They were
both men of cool and sedate tempers, accustomed to think policy a
game in which the strong play with the weak, obtuse, especially the
former, in moral sentiment, but on this account not inclined to
calumniate an opposite party, or to withhold admiration from
intellectual power. Both these histories may be read over and over
with pleasure; if Davila is too refined, if he is not altogether faithful,
if his style wants the elegance of some older Italians, he more than
redeems all this by the importance of his subject, the variety and
picturesqueness of his narration, and the acuteness of his
reflections. Bentivoglio is reckoned, as a writer, among the very first
of his age.
Mendoza’s 36. The History of the War of Granada, that is, the
Wars of rebellion of the Moriscos in 1565, by the famous Diego
Granada.
de Mendoza, was published posthumously in 1610. It is
placed by the Spaniards themselves on a level with the most
Mezeray. renowned of the ancients. The French have now their
first general historian, Mezeray, a writer esteemed for his lively style
and bold sense, but little read, of course, in an age like the last or
our own, which have demanded an exactness in matter of fact, and
an extent of historical erudition, which was formerly unknown. We
English now began, in England, to cultivate historical
historians. composition, and with so much success, that the present
period was far more productive of such works as deserve
remembrance than a whole century that next followed. But the most
English considerable of these have already been mentioned.
histories. Lord Herbert of Cherbury’s History of Henry VIII. ought
here to be added to the list, as a book of good authority, relatively at
least to any that preceded, and written in a manly and judicious
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