My grandmother’s aunt, Ms. Ida Hoyt, put together several scrapbooks in the 1890s. The pages are quite frayed today, but most of the images are still in good shape. With this post I provide several images that she clipped from magazines, which I suspect were from the 1880s or 1890s.
Detail of the main gatekeeper
to be continued
My grandmother’s aunt, Ms. Ida Hoyt, owned an 1873 geography textbook entitled An Elementary Treatise on Physical Geography by D. M. Warren (published by Cowperthwait & Co of Philadelphia). For Part 1, click here;for Part 2, click here; for Part 3, click here. The racial and ethnocentric hubris of the author, reflecting his time, is quite evident in the text, as can be seen above and below.
My grandmother’s aunt, Ms. Ida Hoyt, owned an 1873 geography textbook entitled An Elementary Treatise on Physical Geography by D. M. Warren (published by Cowperthwait & Co of Philadelphia). For Part 1, click here and for Part 2, click here. A vital part of geography at the time was the issue of “race,” which was as misunderstood after the American Civil War as before it. “Arabs” were admitted into the Caucasian Race, on a par with the “Western Hunter.” The five major racial categories are shown below.
My grandmother’s aunt, Ms. Ida Hoyt, owned an 1873 geography textbook entitled An Elementary Treatise on Physical Geography by D. M. Warren (published by Cowperthwait & Co of Philadelphia). The book itself, which I recently leafed through, is falling apart, but it is worth taking a brief look at some of the lithographic images. The text itself shows how far we have come since 1873, especially for the dated views of “race” and the ethnocentric views of the time. I will start with several of the images, as shown here.
[These remarks were written on the train back to New York after the 1997 AAA meetings in Washington. I had earlier provided extemporaneous remarks on the subject at the business meeting of the Middle East Section. I found these in a set of old files and decided such a confession is timeless, at least in my case. And this year I will again be presenting papers at both AAA and MESA. ]
The idea of “Area Studies,” especially those areas where several centuries of Western colonialism have helped define the modern boundaries, is under attack. One of the more besieged areas is the Middle East, once the Near East and part of the politically uncorrected Orient as such. I am not particularly interested in defending Area Studies as such. But I am dismayed at the weakening of Middle East Studies programs at major universities. As an anthropologist who encourages other anthropologists to work in the Middle East, I appreciate the teaching of Middle Eastern languages, literature, culture, history, politics, economics, etc. as potentially useful information for ethnography. I do not know how trying to learn “too much†about the region could distort one’s anthropologizing.
Each fall I have a major decision to make: should I go to AAA or MESA? Continue reading Airing out on Area Studies: Confessions of a Middle East Area Specialist
U.S. Powhatan, which made four trips to Japan from 1857-1860
In the mid-19th century a number of American ships sailed to and from Japan. One of these was the U.S. frigate Hartford. An account of the voyage is given by H. P. Blanchard in his A Visit to Japan in 1860, which is online at archive.org. He made a brief stop at Aden, but unfortunately reflected the ethnocentric fear of his day that falling into the hands of any of the “wild” Arabs would be instant death. It appears that most of his time was spent entertaining the ladies and listening to the military band.
Robert Clive and Mir Jafar after the Battle of Plassey, 1757, by Francis Hayman
In 1894, as Queen Victoria smiled upon the empire upon which the sun never was allowed to set, the British literary historian Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall wrote a book that was to go through five editions by 1910 and reprints for a decade after. This was The Rise and Expansion of the British Dominion in India, published by Murray in London (I am using the 1919 edition, only recently ejected from my university library collection). This was, of course, before the fall, before India achieved independence from the Raj lords in 1947. As the 19th century came to a close, Lyall could boast that “the existing relations between India and England constitute a political situation unprecedented in the world’s history†(p. 3). Although Edward Said was aware of the biased Orientalist notions of Lyall, this particular book appears to have escaped Said’s justifiable wrath. He thus missed the telling remark that the “Indian people were, from the beginning, so far from objecting to the English dominion in India that they co-operated willingly in promoting it†(p. 3). Perhaps Lyall prefigures Gramsci in this respect; both understand the power of hegemony. Lyall, by the way, was also a poet, who once wrote a diatribe in verse, called Theology in Extremis, against attempts in India to convert British prisoners to Islam.
Lyall, not to be confused with his fellow civil servant and Arabist namesake, Charles James Lyall, was also concerned about the future of British India. He teases the reader with a quote made by Sir James Mackintosh that “England has lost a great dominion in North America in 1783 and had won another in India in 1805,†adding that “it was still uncertain whether the former as any real loss, or the latter any permanent gain†(p. 353). Another historian, Spencer Walpole, opined “Centuries hence, some philosophical historian … will relate the history of the British in India as a romantic episode which has had no appreciable effect upon the progress of the human family†(p. 353). Perhaps the episode was not romantic for people under British rule in India and the appreciable effect took place mainly on Indian bodies on the Indian continent. But Walpole seems quite prescient to me.
The future had to be more British rule, as Lyall saw it. Continue reading British Dominion in India
Area: 219,000 sq. mi
Population: 2,750,000
Government: Absolute Monarchy
Scenes: Morocco Leather; City of Morocco; Street Scene in Morocco
previous post I began a series on coffee advertising cards with Middle Eastern themes. One of the most colorful collections is that provided by the Arbuckle Coffee Company. In my great, great aunt’s album there were several Middle Eastern and North African nations represented, but she did not have all the cards. Here is a final potpourri from Arbuckle’s 1889 series, starting with Morocco above. Continue reading Tabsir Redux: Mocha Musings #4: Morocco to Afghanistan