Comments on: Empire Week II: The E Word

By: Caleb

Caleb — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

On behalf of my abolitionists, I have to speak up and say that there were critics of empire in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century too, even though they were still stuck in some of its discursive residues:

E.g., Angelina Grimke, a Southern slaveholder turned Northern abolitionist, writing to Elizabeth Pease, a radical and wealthy Quaker living in Darlington, England, in 1839:

“What a curse have Civilised nations invariably been to the barbarians among whom they have settled–what a hissing & a by-word must we be among the heathen! Look not only at India, but look at the World–Have we not always robbed the ignorant & the defenceless of whatever we wanted. In Africa we wanted men, so we organized a regular system of war, kidnapping, & plunder in order to get what we wanted–In South America we wanted gold & silver and precious stones–here too we resorted to violence & blood. In No. America we wanted land–and here we had recourse to extermination, fraud, persecution, force & fear–rooting up the Aborigines from the land of their fathers & casting them headlong into their graves, or driving them beyond the Rocky Mountains in the midst of cold & hunger, nakedness & disease & death–In Asia we wanted revenue–there heavy taxation was resorted to–and who can paint the horrors which have followed the Conq[u]eror’s [car?], wherever civilized man has set his foot upon the soil of the Savage, & planted the standard of his Christian sovereign.”

By: sharon

sharon — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

Wow, this is shaping up to be a great series. Can’t wait for more. Although re: Porter, I think you’re just a little tease. I shall believe it when I see it.

By: gerry

gerry — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

You are right to emphasize the extent to which all medieval, early modern, and modern empires in the West are haunted by the ghost of the Roman Empire. Rome was the touchstone for all imperial imaginings in the early modern period, and, to judge by the buzz of the last few years, seems pretty pertinent today.
Other roots of empire: the relationship among kingship, empire, and papacy. A medieval European kingdom could be subject to another, greater lord, but an empire was subject to no one but God - and, natcherally, his vicar on earth, the pope. The Holy Roman Emperor and the papacy struggled throughout the eleventh and twelveth centuries over who should appoint bishops, with their considerable estates. There was more to the bad blood between emperor and pope than the turf war of the Investiture Controversy, though. The Emperor might have kings for vassals, but no Emperor was properly Emperor until the pope anointed him. Was this ceremony merely a confirmation of the imperial status, or a sign that the Empire was the gift of the Pope, a gift that could perhaps be revoked? Nor was this merely a medieval concern: when Napoleon was crowned Emperor of the French, he was careful to arrange the ceremony to avoid any suggestion that the French Empire was the pope’s to grant. Pope Pius VII merely blessed the crown. Napoleon set it on his own head.
So what does this have to do with the British Empire? England’s self-conception as an empire was shaped by fundamentally similar tensions between crown and pope. King John’s 1205-1213 dispute over the selection of the Archbishop of Canterbury caused the pope to place England under the interdict, which forbade all church services throughout the country. Fourteenth-century tensions with Rome led to various statues of praemunire , which forbid appeals to foreign rulers (and popes) for justice in a controversy with the king. Henry VIII’s rejection of papal authority was behind an early formal declaration that England was an empire:

An act that the appeals in such cases as have been used to be pursued to the see of Rome shall not be from henceforth had nor used but within this realm. Where, by divers sundry old authentic histories and chronicles, it is manifestly declared and expressed that this realm of England is an empire, and so hath been accepted in the world, governed by one supreme head and king having the dignity and royal estate of the imperial crown of the same, unto whom a body politic, compact of all sorts and degrees of people divided in terms and by names of spiritualty and temporalty, be bounden and owe to bear next to God a natural and humble obedience (he being also institute and furnished by the goodness and sufferance of Almighty God with plenary, whole, and entire power, pre-eminence, authority, prerogative, and jurisdiction to render and yield justice and final determination to all manner of folk residents or subjects within this his realm, in all causes, matters, debates, and contentions happening to occur, insurge, or begin within the limits thereof, without restraint or provocation to any foreign princes or potentates of the world … );
Act in Restraint of Appeals (1533)

And let’s not forget England’s neighbors to the north. The Declaration of Arbroath, one of the most stirring documents of national independence I’ve ever read, was an appeal for papal support in a struggle for “freedom” from English overlordship. To this day, Scotland’s greatest cathedrals have a crown-shaped spire in honor of a papal pronouncement that Scotland had a “crown imperial.” In medieval and early modern Britain, the pope could create an empire, but the possession of an empire nevertheless came signify the rejection of papal authority.

By: Sashi

Sashi — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

Hello Sepoy,

I have been reading Chapati ever since I landed at buleyyah’s blog a while back. Anyway I thought I should bring this essay to your attention as it has echoes with this series you are writing:

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/05/books/review/05GEWE01.htm

Best.
Sashi