Things Noted Here and There

by Cliopatria

Eric Rauchway follows his post,"toward an increased focus on political history," POTUS, 1 February, with a second,"toward an increased focus on political history, part ii: the globalizing," POTUS, 8 February.

Jonathan Dresner,"Colonialogy," Frog in a Well, 7 February, argues for a new word, encompassing the study of imperialism, colonialism, and post-colonial discourses, pro and con.

Glenn and Helen Reynolds interview James L. Swanson, the author of Manhunt: The Twelve Day Chase for Lincoln's Killer. I'm running past my technical expertise here, but Glenn says that you don't need iPod to listen to the interview. You can hear it directly or subscribe to it on iTunes.

Scott Jaschik,"Fiasco at AAUP," Inside Higher Ed, 9 February, reports on an AAUP embarrassment of its own making.

Apart from Anne Applebaum's"A Cartoon's Portrait of America," Washington Post, 8 February, the recent controversy about the Danish cartoons that have provoked riots and boycotts has produced too little thoughtful commentary. Beyond what appeared at Cliopatria, one might begin with Riots in France, SSRC essays by social scientists on last year's events. Scott Martens,"The Liberalism of Fools?" A Fistful of Euros, 8 February, links the French riots to recent events; Global Voices has extraordinary coverage of international blogs on the issue (just scroll down); Nathanael Robinson's"Iconoclasm without Idolatry?" at Rhine River is exceptionally thoughtful; and Brian Ulrich writes about the iconoclasm of Wahhabi Islam in Saudi Arabia. (Thanks to Brian and Nathanael for the tips.)

Unlike my friends on the Secular Left and the Randy Right, I don't think this is much ado about nothing, or, as Hitchens would have it, much due. In recent years, I've often thought that Christianity is the"odd man out" among the three great western religions, suspect by both Jews and Muslims of having gravely compromised the monotheistic assumptions the three religions share. There is a Christian iconoclasm, of course, more evident among Protestants than its other forms, but I wonder if Christianity's" compromise" inclined it, somehow, to a much greater willingness to represent the divine. And does Islam's inclination to refer to Mohammed as"holy" represent anything like such a compromise?"Holy Moses," after all, is no more than a rock band from hell.

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Louis Nelson Proyect - 2/9/2006

I don't know. It elicited this response from an Indian subscriber to PEN-L, where it was also posted:

I agree with this "last straw" theory. I believe that the "religion"
explanation is just propaganda by the colonialists to dehumanize the local
populations and give credence to the theory of the "white man's burden" to
civilize the natives. This reminds me of the present anti-Muslim
propaganda campaign where the main beef Muslims have with the west is that they are "infidels". If the western public buys the dumb idea that Muslims become suicide bombers because they want to go to heaven and spend
eternity with 72 virgins, it makes it harder for the common man to
identify and sympathise with the Muslim world. Religion is certainly a
much more convenient explanation than say oil-geopolitics or the abuses of
neo-imperialism.

--raghu.

Jonathan Dresner - 2/9/2006

Sepoy had some very interesting posts about that episode here, here and here.

It doesn't seem like a terribly good analogy to what's going on now, but that's just at first glance.

Louis Nelson Proyect - 2/9/2006

Historians like J.A.B. Palmer and John Kaye trace the origins of the soldiers' rebellion at Meerut, in which South Asian soldiers rose up against their colonial officers, to the Lee-Enfield Rifle. It was developed at the Enfield arsenal by James P. Lee and fired a .303 caliber ammunition that had to manually loaded before firing. Loading involved biting the end of the cartridge, which was greased in pig fat and beef tallow. This presented a problem for native soldiers, as pig fat is a haraam, or forbidden, substance to Muslims, and beef fat is, likewise, deemed inauspicious for certain Hindus. Thus, the revolt occurred as a reaction to this particular intrusion into Hindu and Muslim culture, and then caught on as a national rebellion. Palmer dramatically relates this discovery, according to Captain Wright, commanding the Rifle Instruction Depot:

"Somewhere about the end of the third week in January 1857, a khalasi, that is to say a labourer, accosted a high Brahmin sepoy and asked for a drink of water from his lotah (water-pot). The Brahmin refused on the score of caste. The khalasi then said, 'You will soon lose your caste, as ere long you will have to bite cartridges covered with the fat of pigs and cows,' or, it is added, 'words to that effect.'" (Palmer 15)

Furthermore, historians taking similar positions argue that British legislation that interfered with traditional Hindu or Muslim religious practices were a source of antagonism. Palmer and Kaye also argue throughout their respective work that the prohibition practices such as saathi (often transliterated "sati"), or the ritual suicide of widows on their husbands' funeral pyres, became a source of outrage. In other words, the growing intrusion of western culture became the impetus for rebellious soldiers, fearful that their culture was being annihilated.

The long-belabored significance of the Lee-Enfield cartridge is challenged by the work of historians like Marx, Collier, Majumdar, Chaudhuri, and Malleson (see citations below). These historians argue that the actions of soldiers at Meerut was the "last straw" for South Asians who had been victims of British cultural and class based oppression and antagonism, and discard the notion that religion played an overwhelmingly vital role in fomenting revolt. For them, the root causes of the insurgency cannot be traced to a single, well-defined set of events and causes, but rather stemmed from an on-going set of conflicts.

full: http://www.english.emory.edu/Bahri/Mutiny.html

Jonathan Dresner - 2/9/2006

I have a chicken and egg problem, but one thing about the Christian Compromise, as you (sort of) put it, is that Christianity, in both its Roman and Orthodox forms, made use of images as tools of education and proselytization among illiterate populations. Buddhism did much the same thing, which is why there's so much great Buddhist art (especially statuary, which served much the same purpose as stained glass in medieval Europe): it's a visual sermon, a non-textual reference work.

Judaism spread more by storytelling than by artistry; Islam spread by creating communities of praxis; both rejected symbolic representations very early on as part of their foundational myths, but they had to have alternatives...