Born April 30th 1888 John Crowe Ransom became the “Dean of 20th Century Poets and Critics” in the 1920s. As leader of a group called “The Fugitives” and through the dozen or so editions of the magazine called “The Fugitive” they represent a movement of Southern Poetry from sentimentalism to Agrarianism. They felt industrialization was unnatural for mankind who thrived spiritually in an agrarian culture. This on the surface sounds like Henry David Thoreau on Walden Pond, but in reality it harked back to ante-bellum Southern slave plantations. Very spiritual if you were a master, not so much fun for the slaves. I wonder what the perception of the Fugitives was from the Harlem Renaissance?
Piazza Piece; by John Crowe Ransom
— I am a gentleman in a dustcoat trying to make you hear. Your ears are soft and small and listen to an old man not at all, they want the young men’s whispering and sighing. But see the roses on your trellis dying and hear the spectral singing of the moon; for I must have my lovely lady soon, I am a gentleman in a dustcoat trying.
— I am a lady young in beauty waiting until my truelove comes, and then we kiss. But what grey man among the vines is this whose words are dry and faint as in a dream? Back from my trellis, Sir, before I scream! I am a lady young in beauty waiting.
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The history of the horse in America told by white people is well known. The horse existed in the Americas in ancient times but went extinct. When the Spaniards arrived some of the horses they brought escaped and they spread through the American west. Then the native peoples began riding horses.
The history of the horse in America told by native peoples is that they always had horses. This history has always been ignored or discounted or dismissed by Western academics because it is oral history and was not written down or published in a reputable journal.
Collin, as someone from a Native American culture is understandably focused on the truth of native oral history and culture. As an Irishman I grew up in a post-holocaust and post-colonial culture and I appreciate how this dominates the narrative. It takes generations of independence and achievement for a culture to shed the mentality of the oppressed and downtrodden. It takes herculean efforts to shed the crude stereotypes placed on us by the oppressors. Native American peoples have not secured their independence and they wrestle with the discrimination, the alcoholism, drugs and lack of education. The right wing media never report on aboriginal affairs that have a positive slant. They only want the stories of murder, rape and drunk driving.
Right wing media is poised to dismiss any claim that native peoples had horses and will continue to do so until indisputable fossil evidence is presented.
I am very interested in three aspects of this research. 1. Why the Spaniards lied about the horses. 2. Why it suited other colonial nations to maintain the lie and 3. How maintaining the lie led Westerners to ignore their own evidence.
Why the Spaniards lied about the horses.
Taxes.
Horses are not cheap and never were. The horses brought by the Spaniards were few, and were difficult to transport on the small ships of the day. Our history tells us that the native peoples never saw a horse before and they thought a mounted horseman was a new type of animal. They ran in fear from the cavalry and that’s how a few conquistadores defeated huge armies of Aztecs, Incas and Mayans.
But if the conquistadores found wild horses in New Mexico and Argentina this would be a problem for them. The Spanish Crown owned the newly discovered lands. The Spanish Royal Family would own any wild animals on that land, including horses. If you captured wild horses or bred your fine Spanish stallions using native wild mares you had to pay tax to the King. To avoid paying tax you simply needed to claim that the “wild” horses were the offspring of your escaped property gone feral.
It was in the interest of the Spanish to lie about the origin of wild horses for tax reasons.
Why it suited other colonial nations to maintain the lie.
Colonizing nations justify their displacement of native peoples by rendering the natives as sub-human savages. Native religions are portrayed as savage bloody affairs. Native learning is dismissed and even destroyed. The Spanish priests burned native codices and reduced native glyph forms of writing to simple pictographs. In Spain, and later in France, Britain and the Netherlands the horse was a mark of nobility. It did not suit the colonial nations to have “painted savages” gadding about on horseback. It sent the wrong message. It was more convenient to deny that the natives had a history of horse ownership.
If native peoples only acquired horses after the arrival of the Spanish then the argument can be made that the natives do not in fact “own” any horses. They have either “found” escaped horses or worse still, they have stolen them.
How maintaining the lie led Westerners to ignore their own evidence.
Early explorers collected ample evidence of horse cultures from widely separated parts of both North and South America. Spanish explorers were informed of the horse cultures of the Choctaw, Cherokee and Chickasaw, Creek and Seminole Indian tribes in the modern Carolinas. One of the Spaniards thus informed commented “I would say that according to the investigations I have made, these people were too barbarous and uncivilized to have horses.”
John Cabot heard accounts of horse peoples. Francis Drake claimed to have seen large wild horse herds in Oregon. In the timescale within which this happened escaped horses would have had to breed like rabbits and explode across the continent like the hordes of Genghis Khan to populate the continent from a handful of escaped mounts in Mexico to reach Oregon, New England and South Carolina. The accounts were dismissed, minimized or credited to the escaped horses theory because it made a better story to cast the natives as barbarians.
To this day Western archeologists appear to place a higher burden of proof on horse finds in the Americas than in any other field. There is a continued refusal to accept the indigenous horse theory in favor of the Colonial narrative.
The Horse; by Ronald Duncan
Where in this wide world can man find nobility without pride, friendship without envy, or beauty without vanity? Here where grace is laced with muscle and strength by gentleness confined. He serves without servility; he has fought without enmity. There is nothing so powerful, nothing less violent; there is nothing so quick, nothing more patient.
England’s past has been borne on his back. All our history is in his industry. We are his heirs; He is our inheritance.
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Shoddy is originally a Yorkshire word. In the early 19th Century woolen millers experimented with ways of using waste wool fiber and recycled woolen rags to produce a quality cloth. In modern terms the initiative was a paragon of recycling. Many Yorkshire Mills still bear signs advertising their “Shoddy Cloth”. So how did Shoddy fall from grace to become a term for bad workmanship? For this you can blame the “Shoddy Millionaires”.
In every war you will find war profiteers. The US Civil War was no exception. The high quality Brooks Brothers Menswear had a name for making quality uniforms for the officers of the Union Army. Unfortunately they also developed a reputation for making uniforms for ordinary troopers that literally fell off their backs.
In a bid to mass produce Union Uniforms the manufacturers cast about for ways to meet the demand for cloth. Shoddy appeared to be a good solution. Mix the recycled fabric with virgin raw wool and weave it into good cloth. Shoddy works well in thick cloth such as blankets. Military uniforms need to be hard wearing and the best example of a good military cloth is cavalry twill. It is a wool cloth woven from high quality long strand wool. The long strands bind the fabric together. Because shoddy is made from recovered wool some of the threads can be very short. The US Civil War manufacturers may also have used waste cotton, which is a far inferior product to waste wool.
Exposed to hard wear and bad weather the shoddy made uniforms began to fall apart. They had very poor rain resistance, and when wet were more prone to shred. When a soldier heard he was getting a “Shoddy” uniform he despaired. Shoddy came to be associated with bad workmanship. Furthermore the term was applied to other goods besides the cloth. Boots issued partly cobbled using cardboard which fell apart in the rain were called shoddy boots. Anything badly made came to be termed shoddy goods.
In the early days of the war many Union regiments turned up in their state issued uniforms. Good quality but highly confusing. The state uniforms of Winconsin, Iowa and Vermont were grey, the color of the confederacy. When they were offered blue shoddy uniforms the troopers refused to give up their good quality state cloth. As a result there are accounts of Union troops shooting at grey outfitted Union units. In winter troopers died of frostbite when their shoddy great coats fell apart.
In 1864 ex Union Veteran Henry Morford published his novel “Days of Shoddy” a polemic against the war profiteers and the public officials who turned a blind eye or actively profited from the war.
Back in Yorkshire the millers began to realize that the name of their cloth was a by-word for bad quality and they had to stop using it. It is more commonly called recycled wool now.
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Concord is defined as agreement or harmony between people or groups. The Concord supersonic jet was so named because it was a joint initiative of Britain and France. Thus it is amusing that the “shot heard round the world” was fired near Concord in Massachusetts on this day April 19th, in 1775. Writing his Concord Hymn for the erection of the Obelisk in 1836 gave Emerson the benefit of hindsight.
He could see that the shots fired on that day went on to resonate in the French revolution of 1789 and the Irish rebellion of 1798 and in Haiti, Venezuela, Columbia, Peru, Chile, Argentina and so on.
The hamlet of Concord became the flashpoint of the American Revolutionary War because the militia stored their military matériel there for a time. They had plenty of advance warning that the British regulars were coming up from Boston to take the weapons and powder, so they moved it to other stores. But the redcoats did not know this. They met the first militia at Lexington and shots were exchanged and the first men died.
The militia proved no opposition to trained professional soldiers and the redcoats pushed on to Concord, only to find it a wasted trip. They then fought a tactical retreat all the way to Boston.
In statistical terms the actions at Lexington and Concord are a foreshadowing of the conflict to come. At the outset the 77 militia at Lexington were outnumbered 10 to 1 by the regulars. By the time the British reached Boston the ever growing militia numbers had swelled to 4,000 men. The reinforced British numbered only 1,500. By the end of the day the militia suffered 50 killed and 40 wounded – a mark of the accuracy of British musketry. On the other hand the British lost 73 killed, 174 wounded and 53 missing. Perhaps the 53 missing were local recruits, or troopers with American wives or girlfriends?
Concord Hymn; by Ralph Waldo Emerson
By the rude bridge that arched the flood, their flag to April’s breeze unfurled, here once the embattled farmers stood, and fired the shot heard round the world.
The foe long since in silence slept; alike the conqueror silent sleeps; and Time the ruined bridge has swept; down the dark stream which seaward creeps.
On this green bank, by this soft stream, we set today a votive stone; that memory may their deed redeem, when, like our sires, our sons are gone.
Spirit, that made those heroes dare, to die, and leave their children free, bid Time and Nature gently spare the shaft we raise to them and thee.
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The three fifths compromise was an amendment to US Articles of Confederation which was proposed on April 18th, 1783. It was ratified in the 1787 constitutional convention. It is one of the most poorly understood and misinterpreted ratios in history. Radical black activists have interpreted the compromise as something that values a slave at only 3/5ths of a free citizen.
This is not what the ratio does, but I have heard it used this way frequently.
To understand the ratio you must first understand what it meant in terms of representation and funding. If the ratio were intending to devalue the life value of a slave vis a vis a free man you would expect that the slave states would want to set the slave value at Zero and the Northern anti-slavery states to value a slave the same as a free citizen. But the opposite is actually true.
Slave states wanted to secure additional seats in federal congress. They also wanted to secure additional funding from federal transfers. So they argued that every slave should count as a human being in calculating the population of slave states. This way they would have more seats in congress if seat numbers were dictated by population alone. They had no intention of giving the franchise to slaves. What they wanted was more seats elected by fewer citizens.
They also wanted more money. A slave may not vote or pay taxes, but they walk on roads and drink public water so they represent a cost to the state. The slave states wanted funding shared by headcount, not by voter numbers or tax-payers.
The Northern states felt that slaves should not be included in calculations to determine how many congressional seats a state received. They also felt that since slaves had no entitlement to schooling, healthcare, public transport or services then the federal purse should not be subsidizing slave owners with transfers from the public purse.
The Northern Anti-Slavery states wanted to count a slave as a zero. The pro-slavery states wanted to count a slave as a 1. The 3/5ths compromise was never intended to set a “value” on a slave. It was a compromise by the Northern States to strip the slave states of as much power and funding as they could push through.
While many black activists misuse the ratio to mean something else, the same can be said of white supremacists.
Here the 3/5ths ratio is used as a central motif by the poet to highlight the case of Santina Rao who was racially profiled in a store in Halifax Nova Scotia and ended up on the ground with a broken wrist, a concussion and multiple injuries to her neck and arms. She was violently arrested by three police in front of her baby and toddler. The police pushed for a conviction. The Crown Prosecution Service voided the charges. The 1946 theatre incident refers to Viola Desmond who was something of a Nova Scotia Rosa Parks. “How not to ECE” is a highly racially stereotyped poster from Yarmouth Community College Nova Scotia which warns that you don’t want black girls in booty shorts and box braids caring for your young white baby.
Three Fifths; by Angela Bowden
Three fifths of a human when they threw her down like an animal punching her on the ground, in front of everybody and no one made a sound.
And ⅗ s were her toddlers as they watched in horror while strangers handled them uninvited without love.
Like a resurrection her trauma flowed in a living stream over the many rocks of ages and her many stories spill out.
Because she was ⅗ s of a human when they drug her out of the theatre in 1946 like an animal not Viola the successful businesswoman and entrepreneur that she was no no that’s not what they saw ⅗ is what they saw
And ⅗ was the image at the NSCC when the caption read “How not to ECE” and the door displayed a stereotype depicting a black mother suggestive of her inability to nurture.
See ⅗ will decide if you qualify to live or to die exist and survive and black and red became black and dead on the African roulette
and each victim is like your personal wild card today it’s not you but that could be you tomorrow in an hour
⅗ is the weight of humanity’s hate and the fraction used to debate humanness separating the hue from the man because ⅗ is the lie to look through tainted eyes and somehow qualify the terror that we all see!
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When filmmakers present Roman Legions in battle you can rapidly see which of them have consulted real military historians and which ones have no appreciation of the Roman Maniple fighting system.
Both of these images show what is wrong, but you may not spot it at first.
Image on the left. The soldiers present a solid shield wall. Sometimes the legionnaires did form a shield wall, if they were forming a Testudo. But it was an unusual move seldom practiced. In fact some historians question if the Testudo was ever a thing. Holding shields edge to edge looks great on cinema, but in practical terms it is nonsense. The Greeks used to overlap their shields in the Phalanx. The Romans dropped that style of fighting early in their history in the Samnite Wars. They found the hill country of the Apennines exposed the flaws in the Phalanx. So they invented the maniple.
Secondly in the image on the left the ranks behind the lead man are staggered instead of in line. This is just wrong, and I will explain why below.
The picture on the right is much better. The legionnaires are lined up straight behind each other but they are too far back. You possibly think the lines are too far apart, but this is where the image is pretty accurate. They may be half a foot too far apart, but that’s about all. The way the maniple system works is that the front ranks loose their pilums at the opposing force. Each man might carry three of the javelins. They will all be thrown before combat is engaged. The lightest first at range, heaviest last.
Once the troops meet the front man is using his shield and short sword to fight. He is using his scutum as a weapon, not simply for defense. The heavy shield could smash an exposed knee or ankle, or crush an unarmored foot. The shield handle was oriented so it was easy to smash downwards. The edge could strike at the face of the opponent. Between attacks from the scutum the warrior faced the rapid serpent thrusts of the gladius point. Straight arm strikes directly at the body. No slashing or hacking.
Then, when both warriors begin to tire the Roman officers blow their whistles. The man second in line brings his scutum forward around the body of the front man, allowing him to pivot and retreat down that gap between the lines. A new fresh legionnaire now fights at the front. Unless they are fighting fellow Romans it is unlikely the enemy has a version of this move. The bravest and most skillful of warriors cannot outlast three or four fresh opponents.
That little dance move which safely replaces the front man and allows him to retreat for a rest is never shown in re-enactments. Instead the Romans are lined up in a Saxon style shield wall, packed so tight they lose all their flexibility and ability to maneuver. Pure nonsense!
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The Hebrew word for Fortress is Masada. This was the name given to the spectacular natural citadel topped with a flat plateau so it looks like the gods sliced off the mountain top in some primordial battle in the creation of the world.
Natural citadels are good, professionally constructed ones are even better. Masada has a long history as a defensible base. Many of the fortifications now visible date from the days of Herod the Great.
Herod’s father, Antipater, was a client of Julius Caesar, who entrusted him with management of Judean affairs. Herod rose to power under the patronage of Mark Anthony. He was a great builder, tax farmer and administrator.
He captured the fortress from the Hasmoneans and improved the fortifications. He then successfully defended it when besieged by the last Hasmonean king of Judea, the Parthian backed Antigonus. Following his defeat of the Hasmoneans Herod established his own Herodian dynasty and was given the title “King of Judea” by the Roman Senate. He went on to build two palaces on Masada where he could retire to and relax in complete safety.
The most famous incident in the history of Masada occurred a century later during the first Jewish-Roman War. In 66 CE a band of Jewish extremists called the Sicarii took the fortress from the Roman garrison. The fortress fell the way most fortresses do – to a ruse. In 70 CE after future Emperor Titus, under his father Vespasian, broke into the Temple Mount, the numbers of Sicarii increased in Masada. They raided down from the mountain causing general death and destruction in the region and by year 73 the Roman Governor had enough. He sent in the Tenth Legion.
This is when you see how Romans were just on a different level when it came to using engineering to win wars. To begin they built a circumvallation surrounding the massif. The defenders could no longer sortie out for resupply. Although as they were amply supplied with water in the fortress the defenders had a considerable advantage over the Romans sweating it out on the shores of the Dead Sea.
Next the Roman Engineers selected a suitable natural rock spur as a foundation. Along the spine of the spur they built a ramp and a trackway. Then they built a siege tower with a battering ram. They hauled the tower up the mountain, battered down the walls and breached the fortress. You can imagine what it must be like to be a defender in such circumstances. There is no doubt about what the Romans are doing. It’s just that you never ever considered that any attacking force would attempt what seems like such an impossible task. And you see them doing it, day by day, meter by meter, getting closer and closer. Death has a clock.
History reports that the Romans leaped into the fortress only to find that all the Sicarii were dead, in a mass suicide. Other sources contest this tale, and the archaeology has never supported it. But the manner of the assault makes the story believable. Josephus is the key source for the tale.
In modern Israel Masada has become a symbol for the defense of the nation. Masada is to Israel what the Alamo is to Texas. After completing basic training Israeli Armored Corps troopers often climb the mountain at night with torches, and greet the sunrise with the words “Masada shall not fall again.” As a tourist these days you can invade by cable car.
Masada; by Daniela Danz (Trans: Monika Cassel)
And then when you stand where it is quiet so that you notice when thought ends and listening begins when listening ends and seeing begins when a bird flies when you glide as a black bird and scream when you start to speak in the clear air and can speak of nothing but the light as if it were the first light when you cast a shadow on the rock and say my shadow stays and the rock passes away when at this moment it is true that it is good to attempt the entire mission you can call the desert by its name
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We had the POTUS visiting this week. Joe Biden is proud to be an Irish American and we here in Ireland are happy to support him in his vision of what that means.
I did some research work for the Irish Tourist Board some years ago. We looked at what different nations knew about Ireland, how they could be encouraged to visit on holidays and their reactions to the differences between what they expected and what they experienced.
A good example of this was an initiative to bring central European travel agents – mostly Germans – to Ireland during the winter. They were collected in coaches in Europe, driven to France, boarded a ferry and sailed to Ireland. As the coach emerged and began the drive from Rosslare towards Dublin the coach erupted with shocked reactions. Having travelled North in Winter from snowy Central European countries they were expecting to arrive in something that looked like Iceland in the Winter.
Instead they arrived in typically snowless, green Ireland with our mild winter temperatures that seldom threaten the freezing point. It was a revelation to the travel agents. They had an alternative to Ski holidays and Sun breaks in the Canary Islands. They now send tourists on Irish Winter breaks for walking, cycling and city breaks.
Of all the groups we surveyed the Americans were our biggest problem. The Central Europeans knew they didn’t know much, and were not upset when the assumptions they held turned out to be wrong. But Americans are different. They know everything about Ireland. Like Joe Biden, they have been drip fed on a diet of misinformation all their lives. When they travel to Ireland many of them are expecting to see the exact type of twee hyperreal simulacrum that Tom Paris created in Star Trek Voyager S6 E11. He creates a town called Fair Haven which is a parade of Irish-American stereotypes which bear no reality to anywhere in modern Ireland.
Practically every Irish-American I have met tells me that their ancestor travelled in the Famine. There is no doubt the Famine was a major trigger. A million Irish emigrated during the Famine, many to England, more to Canada and Australia, some to South America and some to the USA. Not all Irish arrived in America during the Famine. In fact Irish people were emigrating in a steady stream from the 1840’s up until the 1920’s when American nativists began to clamp down on those huddled masses.
Even after the floodgates were closed the Irish continued to trickle into the USA in smaller numbers and still do to this day. But the direction of travel was not only in one way. This is another myth. I have a relative to moved to New York in 1902 but returned in 1908. Some wanted to come home, others made the money they wanted and returned, some failed to find the promised land they were expecting. My wife’s grandfather similarly moved to Boston, set up in business, worked a decade, and then returned home to West Cork.
Modern Irish who emigrate to the USA are often not perceived as immigrants at all. Our English is fluent and we don’t speak in an American Stage-Irish accent. We don’t introduce conversations with “Top of the morning to you” nor do we sing sad songs into our pints. It is the Irish-Americans who are more likely to be found in the Irish clubs, singing emigrant songs and dancing Irish reels. We come across more like WASPs. We are educated, qualified and articulate. Americans simply assume we are Americans. If we say “I’m actually Irish” they think we mean “Irish-American”.
So the problem is that many Irish Americans have internalized Ireland as some form of Brigadoon, a romanticized landscape cobbled together from the inherited memories of grand and great grand parents. When these people arrive to Ireland on holiday they need to be carefully shepherded about to limit their exposure to the harsh realities of modern Irish life.
Below is a poem read for Joe Biden’s waiting crowd by our former President Mary Robinson. Mary was a student in Trinity College with Eavan Boland and they had a lifelong association.
The Emigrant Irish; by Eavan Boland
Like oil lamps we put them out the back,
of our houses, of our minds. We had lights better than, newer than and then a time came, this time and now we need them. Their dread, makeshift example.
They would have thrived on our necessities. What they survived we could not even live. By their lights now it is time to imagine how they stood there, what they stood with, that their possessions may become our power.
Cardboard. Iron. Their hardships parcelled in them. Patience. Fortitude. Long-suffering in the bruise-coloured dusk of the New World.
And all the old songs. And nothing to lose.
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When the daggers descended on Julius Caesar on March 14th, 44 BC the 18 year old Octavian was in Apollonia which is situated in modern Albania, convenient for a rapid crossing of the Adriatic and a fast ride up the Via Appia to Rome. His officers urged caution and advised the young cadet to go to Macedonia and assess events from a safe distance.
Octavian had other ideas. He had no interest in allowing the decisions of others to shape his future. He knew that if he was to have any future he needed to be at the decision table. So to Rome he went.
Subsequent events proved his decision to be correct, but it could so easily have gone wrong. In Rome Mark Anthony was shocked to find that Caesar had left everything to his obscure grand nephew, making Octavian the richest man in the Roman World. In response Anthony spread rumors that Octavian had secured his inheritance by granting sexual favours to Caesar. Anthony generally did his best to dismiss Octavian as a clueless boy. At the same time Octavian was touring Italy building relationships with former Caesar clients and loyalists. He resisted Mark Anthony’s demands to release cash from Caesar’s will.
Anthony had loyal veteran legions but he did not have cash. He well knew that even the most stalwart friends can drift away when the war chest is empty. So in 43 BC Mark Anthony moved north to besiege Mutina, where Decimus Brutus, one of the leading conspirators, was holed up in the city. Mark Anthony could claim both vengeance for Caesars assassination and pay his soldiers with the spoils, killing two birds with one stone.
In Rome the political situation was fluid. Cicero was having his day in the sun, regaling the senate with his 14 Philippics, speeches intended to eviscerate Mark Anthony and the hard line pro-Caesar faction.
The republican Optimates and the more moderate of the Populares factions were trying to hold the Senate together. The Optimate leaders had fled East to raise armies for the battles they knew were coming. Mark Anthony was doing the same for the Populares. The Senate directed Aulus Hirtius and Gaius Vibius Pansa, the consuls of 43 BC, to take legions north to relieve Decimus Brutus.
Had he been in Macedonia this might have been the end for Octavian. Instead it was his opportunity. To this point he was a nobody with a will. The events of April 43 BC would make him a leading contender for primacy in Rome. He was able to assemble old veterans loyal to Julius Caesar and offer them to the Senatorial effort.
Hirtius and Octavian arrived at Forum Gallorum in early April with five legions and established a camp. Two of these legions were Caesars veterans, but the other three were recalled from retirement by Octavian’s busy tour of Italy. They waited for Gaius Pansa to arrive with his four legions of new recruits.
Mark Anthony was a terrible politician and a worse strategist, but he was an able field commander. He was not a man to sit back and let the enemy take the fight to him. So he launched a surprise attack on Pansa’s green troops on a marshy section of the road near Forum Gallorum. The resulting battle was a confused affair in the swamps and in the dark as veteran legions of Caesar on both sides fought professionally and tenaciously, as the recruits skirmished ineffectively. Anthony eventually secured the victory, but when Pansa’s troops retreated to their camp he gave up the fight. He wanted to return to Mutina.
Then the victorious but exhausted troops of Anthony were smashed by a fresh legion under Hirtius and the outcome of the battle was reversed. Anthony’s troops broke and scattered and made their way back north. Octavian’s key role in all of this, according to Anthony, was to guard the camp.
Six days later the senatorial legions arrived at Mutina and this time they defeated Anthony, broke his siege and drove him to the West. Hirtius was killed in battle. Pansa died later of his wounds. Rome was leaderless and Octavian stood at the head of an army. From callow youth he had risen to seasoned military leader. Anthony now knew he could not ignore the boy.
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On April 10th 1545 the Spanish founded the settlement of Villa Imperial de Carlos V. It lies at the foot of Cerro Potosi which is nicknamed “Rich Mountain”. The Spanish found Silver Ore and it is said the entire mountain is made of silver. Within 30 years the City of Potosi was the largest city in the new world. At the peak of its production in the latter half of the 16th Century Potosi was producing 60% of all the silver mined in the world.
The Spanish constructed a mint and produced the eight real silver coin also known as the Spanish Dollar, a Peso, or most famously “Pieces of Eight”.
Silver flowed out of Potosi in three main directions. Some went down the River Plate to Buenos Aires and across the Atlantic to Spain. Most was packed on trains of mules and llamas and taken to the Pacific Coast. From there some was sailed to Panama City where it was loaded back onto mules for the crossing of the Isthmus of Panama to the town of Portobello. There it was loaded onto the Atlantic Treasure Ships, so beloved of British, French and Dutch privateers and pirates. So much silver flowed into Spain that the world value of silver was depreciated.
Even more of the Silver moved in the opposite direction. In Acapulco, Mexico the silver was loaded onto the Manilla treasure fleet bound for the Spanish Phillipines. Asia was the target for much of the silver because most Asians had no interest in European goods. They were selling tea, silk, ceramics and most importantly spices. They wanted silver to pay for these goods.
The Spaniards had silver to spare, but for other nations silver was a problem. The Dutch, the Portuguese, French and English developed elaborate trade systems to acquire silver in asia sufficient to fill their holds with precious spices. For example the Dutch invented the Amsterdam stock exchange to raise funds and founded the East India Company. The company built factories to process goods from the far east. They smuggled tea into England, breaking the British East India Company monopoly, kicking off the Anglo-Dutch Wars. They also broke the English monopoly in the Americas. The Boston Tea Party was significantly part of this struggle.
A Dutch ship, carrying what silver it could raise in Europe, and whatever goods might sell along the way, would sail to Asia via the Cape of Good Hope, offloading manufactured goods in exchange for fresh food and Cape made wine. They might pick up cotton and timber in India. They could sell this in the Spice Islands and pick up some spices, but not enough to fill a ship. They needed to make their silver go further. So they brought spices to China which they exchanged for tea, silks and ceramics. They took these to Japan where they could sell them in Nagasaki in exchange for silver. They could bring Japanese goods back to the spice islands and increase their stock of silver until they could fill a ship with tea, spice, silk and porcelain.
Dutch traders had to figure out what they could manufacture or trade to the Spaniards who had so much of the necessary silver. The flow of silver out of Europe was so one directional that some economies refused to permit its export. The Dutch took over the Island of Taiwan from the Spanish and turned it into the export economy of Dutch Formosa. They imported Chinese workers to farm cash crops and treated them as little more than slaves. The goal was to get more silver from China. They repeated the exercise with some of the small islands that grew nutmeg and cloves. In Sri-Lanka they brokered a deal with the native king to expel the British, in exchage for access to cinnamon.
The English developed other solutions to the silver problem. They stole tea plants from the Chinese and set up their own tea plantations in Assam and Darjeeling in India. Around Calcutta (modern Kolkata) they established Opium Poppy farming. The processed opium was smuggled into China in exchage for silver. The silver was the brought to the Pearl River where the Europeans were restricted to a single trade entry point in Canton. The Chinese attempted to put an end to the Opium smuggling and this resulted in the Opium Wars.
By the 19th Century Europe simply did not have sufficient silver to maintain the one sided trade relationship imposed by Qing China. Ultimately the Chinese refusal to engage in open trade with European powers resulted in the demise of China as a world power. So, strangely, the foundation of a small settlement at the foot of a Bolivian Mountain led in a roundabout way to the demise of Imperial China.
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