The Culture of the Slave Ship: The Middle Passage and Slavery

One of the earliest skills undergraduate candidates of African American history (and other interdisciplinary subjects) have to acquire is the ability to make a distinction between “slavery” and “the slave trade” as different components of US (and Atlantic) history. Whilst this distinction is undoubtedly vitally important, there is a tendency for it to be overemphasised, and it can often serve to mask correlating features between the two subjects. Within the breadth of this essay, it is my intention to demonstrate that there are four characteristics of slave life (in both the Caribbean and the southern United States) which appear frequently within accounts of the slave trade, and these are the ties that bind the two together. These characteristics are, simply put: rebellion and insurrection; the expression of hardships through song and dance; forced removal away from loved ones; and the rape of black women. The fact these four characteristics endure through the slave trade and into slavery gives them a culturally significant place within the realm of African American history. Finally, as a way of bringing these four facets together, I will conclude by illustrating, with the aid of Alexander Falconbridge’s An Account of the Slave Trade on the Coast of Africa (which also serves as a primary text throughout this paper), how the hereditary nature of slavery in the United States made these four characteristics even more dangerous as they became naturalised characteristics and organic occupational qualities of the people they were associated with.

The most enduring image of the slave trade is that of the tightly-packed slave ship. The Brookes’ print, which galvanised support for the abolitionist movement by visualising the inhumane conditions of the slave ship, today inadvertently serves to subvert many of the seedlings of African American culture. When the weather was fair during the Middle Passage, slaves were brought up on deck to exercise, eat, take in some fresh air, and occasionally bath. It is here where we can see the beginnings of African American customs, both in terms of culture and of the modern linguistic descriptions of the people themselves. “African American” implies people or peoples of America, of African origin. The physical connection is made between the “American” and the “African” by the passage of the slave ship: it serves as the bridge across the Atlantic Ocean, and thus it acts as a platform for the birth of an African American cultural standpoint.


Rebellion and Insurrection
Slave rebellions were much feared throughout the South before the civil war, and the same is true aboard slavers during the era of the slave trade. In general terms, the ratio of black slaves to free white men aboard slave ships was similar but not the same as the ratio of white men to black men throughout the West Indies: in each case, the black population was larger than the number of white men. Aboard the Danish slave ship Fredensborg, which sailed from Copenhagen in 1767-8, the ratio of slaves to crewmen was 8.83:1 during the Middle Passage.[i] Robert Harms suggests that the ratio of slaves to European settlers on the French island of Martinique was not quite as extreme: slaves’ outnumbered free people by nearly four to one in 1732.[ii] Aboard the Fredensborg, Captain Ferentz had enough foot irons for 300 slaves, but his decision to carry only 265 could have been made for any one of a multitude of reasons, though a combination of the following motives seems most likely: the desire of the Company that the slaves arrive in as good condition as possible;[iii] the fear that carrying 300 slaves would greatly increase the chance of a successful rebellion; the belief that 300 slaves would be too much of a strain on the ship’s resources;[iv] or the desire of the captain to maintain as humane a ship as possible during the Middle Passage. Whatever his reasoning behind only carrying 265 slaves, the ration of almost nine slaves to each free crewman still posed great danger. Yet with the threat of sickness and disease ever present, it was possible for the ratio of captives to seamen to alter drastically during the Middle Passage. Aboard the Fredensborg, 24 slaves and three crewmen died during the 78-day Atlantic journey, giving an adjusted ratio of 8.93:1. Other ships were far more decimated by sickness, and Falconbridge tells of ships which arrived in the New World with as much as two thirds of their cargo having died during the crossing of the Atlantic.[v] Such a high mortality rate amongst the slaves inevitably reduces the risk of a successful rebellion beginning. The treatment of the ship’s crew was rarely, if at all, better than the treatment of the slaves, and thus the number of seamen could be just as decimated as the number of captives. Falconbridge also writes of a ship belonging to Miles Barber which had lost all its crew except three.[vi]

Resistance to slavery on the plantation was a diverse pursuit, and likewise on the slave ship it took many different guises. The vast majority (if not all) of these forms of resistance aboard a slaver took place whilst on deck: it was in this space that resistance to bondage proved to be most communicative with regard to the slaves’ loss of liberty. When the time to feed the slaves came about, many refused to eat their rations, and Falconbridge details how certain foods which were disliked by the majority of Africans would be thrown into the sea: “most of the slaves have such an aversion to the horse beans that, unless they are narrowly watched, when fed upon deck, they will throw them overboard.”[vii] If the ship was still near the coast, then slaves would often risk their lives to get back to shore by jumping overboard if they were given the chance. The “house” which was erected on deck and kept the sexes apart also served the purpose of stopping the slaves leaping overboard.[viii]

Such issues as these are minor in comparison to an insurrection involving the seizure of guns and weapons by the captives, but such issues were nevertheless problems for the crew to deal with. As Robert Harms has observed, crew members doubled as prison guards, [ix] but they can also be thought of as overseers, essentially serving the same function as an overseer on a plantation. In the case of the plantation, the overseer is accountable to the planter; in the case of the slave ship, the crewmen are answerable to the captain. In each case, a combination of punishment and reward kept the subjects in order. Similarly, if the captives did engage in rebellion by throwing the horse beans overboard, as detailed earlier from the Falconbridge account, then hot coals, Falconbridge also tells us, were often placed near the lips of the insubordinate slaves, “to scorch and burn them. And this has been accompanied with threats, of forcing them to swallow the coals, if they any longer persisted.”[x] Harms’ later observation that the hierarchical command structure on board slave ships meant that a great deal depended upon the will, personality, competence and sanity of the captain can also be applied to the role and functioning of the planter upon the plantation.[xi] One important difference worth noting here, however, is that planters, especially in the West Indies, could be absent from their New World plantations for a considerable period of time; it was not uncommon for West Indian planters to head back to England for ten to twelve months at a time and leave the running of the plantation to either their wives or, more likely, their trusted overseers.[xii] Such an excursion is simply not possible for a captain aboard a slave ship during the crossing of the Atlantic.

The fear of an insurrection aboard a slave ship was so great that preliminary measures were usually taken to make it possible to put down such an uprising quickly, should one occur. Falconbridge informs us, for example, how the partition which kept the male slaves from the female captives had small holes built into it, “wherein blunderbusses are fixed, and sometimes a cannon [because] it is found very convenient for quelling the insurrections that now and then happen.”[xiii] Along with disease and pirates, insurrections were one of the most worrisome aspects of the triangular journey, but exactly how often did slave captains have to put down a rebellion? During the eighteenth century, 284 vessels initially sailing out of either Danish, French or English ports suffered an incident categorised as either “a slave insurrection” or “a planned insurrection was thwarted.”[xiv] As tales of insurrections and attempted insurrections spread amongst slave trading captains, it is almost certain the fear of such events spread with them. Modern statistical studies suggest that about 30% of shipboard rebellions took place on high sea.[xv] How and why is this the case?

Prior to answering these questions directly, let us look again briefly at Falconbridge’s account, as he speaks rather candidly of slave uprisings:

as very few of the negroes can so far brook the loss of their liberty … they are ever upon the watch to take advantage of the least negligence in their oppressors. Insurrections are frequently the consequence; which are seldom suppressed without much bloodshed. Sometimes they are successful and the whole ship’s company is cut off.[xvi]

Whilst below deck, slaves remained shackled together in pairs, making an uprising there very unlikely. Further discouragement would also be garnered from the conditions of their captivity there, which consisted of temperatures of over 100 degrees (especially if the ocean was rough as this would result in the air vents being closed[xvii]), and vomit, mucus, blood and faeces spread across the deck as, in Falconbridge’s words, to make it look like a slaughter house.[xviii]

The only possible opportunity for rebellion amongst the slaves presented itself when they came on deck. Some slave captains, however, did not share a similar view; they considered an uprising unlikely as they thought the Africans realised that they had no way of navigating the ship back to their homeland or to safety. As Robert Harms has written about the French ship the Diligent:

Now that they were on the high seas, the crew of the Diligent became less strict about shackling the men. Many slaving captains believed that the captives were unlikely to rebel on high sea because they would be unable to sail the ship back to land if the rebellion succeeded. Even if the rebellious slaves kept some crew members alive to sail the ship, they could not trust them to actually sail to their desired destination.[xix]

Similarly, Svalesen’s analysis reveals similar difficulties: navigation of the ship would be a severe challenge for the slaves, and would also be compounded by their limited understanding of geography, not to mention their inadequate knowledge of winds, sea currents and weather patterns; should landfall have been reached, however, there was always the risk of falling into the grasp of enemies once more and being sold into bondage again. So whilst riots could break out, the chance of freedom was small.[xx]

Alexander Falconbridge ends his Account with “A Short Description of such Parts of the Coast of Guinea,” within which insurrections and rebellious Africans feature again. When detailing the inhabitants of the Gold Coast, Falconbridge asserts that they are “very bold and resolute, and insurrections happen more frequently among them, when on shipboard, than amongst the negroes of any other part of the coast.”[xxi] What Falconbridge demonstrates here is an understanding of diverse cultural identities amongst the inhabitants to of Africa. Falconbridge does not treat Africans as one generic people, but rather, by ascribing one set of people as being more “bold and resolute” than Africans from other regions, he shows a potential understanding of cultural nuances which would, via the slave trade, be carried over into the southern United States, the Caribbean, and other parts of the New World.

Singing of Hardships
These texts by Falconbridge and Harms reveal the importance of vocal expression and expression through the medium of dance, often with musical accompaniment. Robert Harms informs us that advice was once given to slave captains to purchase musical instruments from the slaves’ homeland, prior to departing Africa.[xxii] What this suggests is a deep understanding of differing cultural tastes between the music of Europe and the music of Africa, although Harms also says that French slavers carried accordion players as standard.[xxiii] Whether these musicians played this or a hurdy-gurdy, they were probably chosen because they could produce a sound akin to that of a one man band, requiring no other accompaniment.

Regardless of the specifics, there appears to be some conception among European traders of what Olaudah Equiano would explain in his narrative, namely that “every great event, such as a triumphant return from battle, or other cause of public rejoicing is celebrated in public dances, which are accompanied with songs and music suited to the occasion.”[xxiv] The ceremonial value of dancing and singing among the majority of African peoples would have been apparent to early European travellers and traders. As Fabre has noted, whether it was “ceremonial or celebratory, dramatic or theatrical, parodic or satiric, [dancing] was pervasive everywhere.”[xxv] Such physical exercise would assume new meanings and fresh significance aboard slave ships.

It appears from Falconbridge’s Account that English slavers paid little attention to elaborate musical instruments such as accordions, employing as they did a single drum to function as musical supplement for the slaves.[xxvi] Both Harms and Falconbridge highlight the significance of dancing as an occupation to maintain the health of the captives. Falconbridge’s eye witness account emphasises that the dancing on deck was for exercise, suggesting it was something which the captives no longer entered into out of their own free will but were rather forced into it by the powers that be: indeed, dancing without sufficient agility would often result in a flogging for the guilty slave.[xxvii] Visually, it is difficult to imagine such dancing appearing as beautiful if the slaves remained shackled together whilst on deck, but even if they were granted the free use of their limbs, it is unlikely they were able to achieve much aesthetically, having been forced to suffer such horrific conditions below deck and being plied with insufficient food and water. In addition to these limitations, the pitching and rolling of the vessel would have made energetic, pleasing dancing difficult, if not impossible, for the fittest and healthiest human beings, let alone enslaved Africans who feared the white people who had captured them would soon eat them once they became fat enough.

We need not consider that the dancing of the slaves on the deck of the slave ship was dancing which was void of significance. Harms and Falconbridge consider the dancing only monocausally (namely that the slaves were forced into dancing to “maintain” their health), and neither man wastes ink musing as to whether or not the movement of the slaves was expressive of their feelings. Fabre expresses ideas about slave ship dancing as communication of personal hardships most succinctly. Dance, she says,

…stages the various moods and moments of the slave ship experience - the temptation to surrender and despair, the suffering and humiliations, the awakening of energies, the call for daring or insurgent acts. Improvised, and yet purposeful, … all moods, emotions and ideas are made physically present through the body in carefully orchestrated gestures that suggest … certain basic African rhythms; the body, that was so central to the lived and felt Middle Passage experience, is entrusted with the task of representation and figuration, just as it also must perform the acts the dance may induce.[xxviii]

Aside from the forced dancing, slaves were also encouraged to sing, though this should also be understood as an activity which was entered into without coercive force by the captives. Whilst Robert Harms tells how singing was supposed to be done by the slaves as they scrubbed the slave deck,[xxix] Alexander Falconbridge informs us that “their songs are generally, as may naturally be expected, melancholy lamentations of their exile from their native country.”[xxx] Between the two, we have the beginnings of one of the features of future plantation fields: African voices singing “sorrow songs”, to borrow Du Bois’s phrase, whilst toiling away under the guise of the white man. Du Bois’s The Souls of Black Folk closes its final paragraph, “Of the Sorrow Songs,” with a few bars of music from a spiritual called “Let Us Cheer the Weary Traveller.” The ability to express feelings and emotions through dance and song aboard slavers would stand African captives in good stead. What the slaves brought with them across the Atlantic was the ability to communicate through song and dance; future generations would use these tools of communication to escape bondage and gain freedom during the life of Harriet Tubman. Actions, which in Africa were expressive of celebrations, festivities and community-orientated “events” such as births, marriages and deaths, were carried over to the New World and passed down to future generations, and became the ways by which slaves could release themselves from captivity.

Forced Removal Away from Loved Ones
What is clear from the connections between the singing aboard the slavers and the singing on the plantations is that traits enforced upon the captives by captains of the slave ships served as precursors to similar future events. Similarly, early on in his account of the slave trade, Alexander Falconbridge notes how a partition was erected on the deck of the slave ship, which served to keep the sexes apart.[xxxi] This physical separation is dehumanising as humanity of course depends upon the mingling of the sexes to prolong. Nevertheless, it bears the same function as what would happen in the coming centuries when slaveholders would sell individual slaves, regardless of the family connections that particular slave might have to persons remaining on his estate. In both cases there is a breaking up of human bonds; on the one hand it is done along lines of sex, and on the other it is done more randomly. Whilst slaves sold out of their family units were often let go by their masters for financial reasons, they were also sold away to avoid potential rebellions, which was part of the logic behind separating male slaves from female slaves on the slave ships. The breaking of ties with loved ones and family members was one of the most painful elements of both slavery and the slave trade, and one which caused the slaves great emotional pain. For most, the Middle Passage followed on from such painful separations, and on initial inspection it may appear to the historian that the deck of the slave ship could not possibly be represented as a site for the sale of slaves. In the coming paragraphs, it will be demonstrated that removal from loved ones was actually associated with the decks of slavers, although admittedly not during the crossing of the Atlantic and only either in the New World or on the West Coast of Africa.

With the latter of these two in mind, Robert Harms depicts how “European traders sometimes kidnapped and enslaved Africans who came to their ships to sell food and supplies. British private traders from Bristol and Liverpool were notorious for doing this, and French ships did it as well.”[xxxii] Men who were trying to support their wives and children by selling goods were procured for sale themselves. Indeed, the Diligent first comes into contact with the slave trade in Africa at the Dutch fort at Axim, as the director of the stronghold offers to Captain Mary a single African boy, but a price could not be agreed upon and the transaction fell through.[xxxiii] Alexander Falconbridge’s An Account correlates with this, as he notes how Africans came on board in small and large groups.[xxxiv] With such ruthless means of procuring their cargo, it is no wonder Falconbridge also tells how the arrival of slave ships destroyed the peace and confidence of coastal villages and settlements.[xxxv] As Olaudah Equiano’s slave narrative testifies, a slave could be bought and sold countless times before arriving at the West Coast. This of course meant that making such a long and uncertain journey across such a large distance of land was very likely to sell the individual slave away from loved ones before ever arriving within sight of the European slave ship.

Once the slave ships docked in the New World, their cargo had to be sold on to buyers, and here again the chaos of such transactions is recorded by Falconbridge. Slaves were often sold by scramble:

On a day appointed, the negroes were landed, and placed together in a large yard, belonging to the merchants to whom the ship was consigned. As soon as the hour agreed on arrived, the doors of the yard were suddenly thrown open, and in rushed a considerable number of purchasers, with all the ferocity of brutes. Some instantly seized such of the negroes as they could conveniently lay hold of with their hands. Others, being prepared with several handkerchiefs tied together, encircled with these as many as they were able … It is scarcely possible to describe the confusion of which this mode of selling is productive. It likewise causes much animosity among the purchasers, who … fall out and quarrel with each other. The poor astonished Negroes were so much terrified by these proceedings, that several of them, through fear, climber over the walls of the court yard, and ran wild about the town.[xxxvi]

The terror of being sold on to another human, to becoming the property of someone else, is usurped by such an unruly method of trade as Falconbridge describes here. In the following paragraph, Falconbridge describes a similar sale by scramble in Kingston, Jamaica, with the only significant difference being that the scramble occurred on the deck of the ship: the sales of the ship were dropped over the captives, so as to stop buyers from picking and choosing which Africans they wanted, and once the signal was given the sales were lifted and the scramble ensued.[xxxvii] In such a situation, the deck of the slave ship assumes another menacing facet to its character. The place where, during the Middle Passage, captives were forced to dance, where they were fed, and where they had opportunities to rebel now became the place where they would be purchased into slavery for the rest of their lives.

The Rape of Black Women
The horrors faced by men aboard slavers were documented in the only account of the Middle Passage which has survived the test of time. Olaudah Equiano’s slave narrative gives us some first hand details of what it was like to cross the Atlantic Ocean as cargo. Nevertheless, even this text offers only subjective descriptions of the horrors faced by the male slaves as Equiano was treated more as a youth slave than an adult male slave (hence the reason his text has not been given prominence in this paper). Equiano’s time on deck is notable for many observations of various goings-on, and serves as to positively cross-reference much that I have extracted so far from the first-hand account of Falconbridge and the contemporary material of Harms’ and Svalesen’s work; what Equiano’s narrative is completely vacant of, however, is any detail regarding the life of female slaves.

Alexander Falconbridge gives a general idea of what proportion a single shipment of slaves was made up of women: female slaves seldom exceeded one third of the whole number.[xxxviii] The reasons for this are clear: women slaves would not be as useful on labour intensive sugar, cotton and indigo plantations as their male counterparts, and were better suited to domestic servitude. As the demand for house slaves is unlikely to have been as great as the demand for field slaves, captains of slavers tried to supply fewer female slaves to the New World and more field hands.

Domestic servitude on the plantation located the female slave within the master’s own house; some of her daily or weekly tasks would undoubtedly carry her into the master’s bedroom, where his physical, social and hierarchical power, which was unquestionable, could allow him to make whatever perverse sexual advances he wished. As remarkable as it sounds, a strikingly similar difficulty arose on board slavers, countless decades before. Harms tells how female slaves were given the task of cleaning the officers quarters, which made them easy prey for sexual advances, as did the officer’s easy access to the women’s compartment.[xxxix] Harms also illustrates that there was a distinct awareness amongst the outfitters of French slavers of the possibility of sexual relations occurring between white crewmen and black female slaves, as strict instructions were given to captains with regard to who was allowed to enter the female slave quarters and who had to be present. Nevertheless, French documents of the period are almost completely silent on the subject. This is a similar situation as to what would develop in the coming 125 years around master slave sexual relations in the slave states of America: masters would sleep with their slaves, the community would know of it, and yet very few people, if anyone, would openly write or discuss the problem.[xl]

The abolitionists, however, were open to truth-telling. They were keen to tell of the sexual evils within the slave trade which would shock all people of the late eighteenth century, whether they lived in the New World or the Old. Falconbridge, for example, did not mince his words. “On board some ships, the common sailors are allowed to have intercourse with such of the black women whose consent they can procure,” Falconbridge said, whilst “the officers are permitted to indulge their passions among them at pleasure, and sometimes are guilty of such brutal excesses, as disgrace human nature.”[xli]

So what we have here is institutionalised acceptance of, and ambivalence to, the rape of black women. As slavery developed throughout the South, society turned its back on the sexual abuse of black female slaves in order to maintain a “civilised” manifestation. The central obstacle to any meaningful reform was that the black female slaves who were abused were being abused by the people who owned them. And as they were the property of their abusers, external forces were unlikely to be able to help them in their plight. The female slaves aboard slavers during the eighteenth century were soon to be sold on, and it appears from Falconbridge’s shocking observations that the officers made the most of the presence of female slaves during the Middle Passage to fulfil their carnal desires. During both slavery and the slave trade women were sexually abused; and during both periods there was no relief quickly forthcoming. “Violence could also, and often did, assume sexual dimensions,” wrote Paul Lovejoy, with

rape being common. Sexual violence was extended in Islamic lands to castration, but there was essentially no difference in the ways in which women, and boys onboard ship, were treated — the sexual and personal identity of the individual was denied and only existed for the pleasure of the slave owner or his proxy.[xlii]

The horror of rape was essentially the same for the black female slave, whether it happened on the slave ship or the plantation. The only significant difference between the two is that the latter was often geared towards the increase of the slave population if it occurred in the southern United States. Nevertheless, the initial revulsion of the unwanted sexual advance of the overseer, whether a slave captain or a slave master, is clearly understandable in both instances.

Conclusion
And so the parallels of the slave trade and slavery are such. But the nature of the slave trade is different from that of slavery as slavery is a state of existence resulting from the former commercial enterprise. A close look at Alexander Falconbridge’s preconceptions of slavery within Africa underscores why slavery in the United States was to become such a powerful institution.

When Falconbridge sets off to Africa, he carries with him the mistaken preconception that African kings breed slaves for bondage. Once he gets there, Falconbridge finds this is not the case:

Previous to me being in this employ[ment], I entertained a belief as many others have done, that the kings and principal men breed negroes for sale, as we do cattle. During the different times I was in the country, I took no little pains to satisfy myself in this particular; but notwithstanding I made many inquiries, I was not able to obtain the least intelligence of this being the case, which it is more than probable I should have done, had such a practice prevailed. All the information I could procure, confirms me in the belief, that to kidnapping, and to crimes … the slave trade owes its chief support.[xliii] (emphasis original)

Falconbridge goes on to highlight kidnapping as the exclusive mode by which slaves are procured, and he proposes a hypothesis that virtually no slaves are taken by means of wars among the Africans because he, as the surgeon of the slave ship, was responsible for checking the bodily health of the slaves, and not once did he find any men with recent wounds.[xliv]

It is the kidnapping of free Africans which Falconbridge detests so much; kidnapping serves as his motive for publishing his narrative of the slave trade. The implied meaning of this, however, is that if slaves had been bred by kings and “principal men” for sale, as he initially thought they were, then the crimes of the Europeans would not be half so bad. Consider once again Robert Harms’s detailing of how European traders took it upon themselves to kidnap and enslave Africans who ventured out to the European vessels to sell food and supplies. The African is seized by the European and reduced to a state of bondage, and, furthermore, is taken away from the family who he is trying to support by selling goods and supplies to the Europeans. Should that African be fortunate enough to be alive when the slaver reaches the New World, he will be sold again, possibly by the scramble method, to a planter of the New World, and any comrades he has met amongst his fellow slaves during the Middle Passage will be lost to him again. There are differences between the first set of ties which the African has broken in Africa and the second set of ties he has broken in the New World, and it is not my intention to be blind to such differences. Indeed, one variation is clear: the African initially passes from freedom into slavery, whereas with the second altering of his condition he is passing from slavery to slavery, as his master moves from being the captain of a slave ship to the planter of the New World. Yet in the same way that scholars have, in recent years, called for a definition of African American culture that transcends the binary categories of oppressor and victim,[xlv] we should look to the similarities of events such as this to consider the Middle Passage as being a journey of African characteristics and cultures into the new World.

I began this paper with an explanation of how the enduring image of the tightly packed slave ship had grown to dominate the ways in which we as scholars, and popular culture as well for that matter, think about and perceive the Middle Passage. The tight packing of slaves below deck is representative of the savagery of the transatlantic slave trade. This is a point which is, I think, quite rightly beyond the realms of reasonable discussion. The deck itself, however, represents that space in between the savage and the civilised; the fact that it offers the chance of rebellion means that it represents the opportunity to escape from, and fight back against, being held in unreasonable and cruelly savage conditions.

Notes
[i] Leif Svalesen, The Slave Ship Fredensborg, Trans. Pat Shaw and Selena Winsnes, (Bloomington, IN: Indiana UP, 2000): 102. The figure of 265 includes 9 male slaves who were used as deck slaves, and although they functioned as crew members, they were themselves an added security risk and any successful mutiny amongst the slaves was likely to involve them in some way.

[ii] Robert Harms, The Diligent: A Voyage Through the Worlds of the Slave Trade, (New York: Basic Books, 2002): 328. More thorough research has been done with regard to slave populations of the New World by Philip D. Curtin. Martinique, Curtin suggests, had a slave population of 55,700 just four years later in 1736, which would give a ratio of very nearly five slaves to each European settler. Philip D. Curtin, The Atlantic Slave Trade: A Census, (Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1969): 78.

[iii] Svalesen, The Slave Ship Fredensborg, 102.

[iv] Ibid., 119.

[v] Alexander Falconbridge, An Account of the Slave Trade on the Coast of Africa, (London: J Phillips, 1788): 29. All quotations from this text have been orthographically adjusted into contemporary English, so for example <> has been used instead of < ſ >.

[vi] Ibid., 48.

[vii] Ibid., 22.

[viii] Ibid., 7.

[ix] Harms, The Diligent, 300.

[x] Falconbridge, An Account, 23.

[xi] Harms, The Diligent, 303.

[xii] For a good study of absenteeism among planters that is both concise and detailed, see: Lowell Joseph Ragatz, “Absentee Landlordism in the British Caribbean, 1750-1833,” in Agricultural History, 5, 1 (Jan. 1931): 7-24.

[xiii] Falconbridge, An Account, 6.

[xiv] The Trans Atlantic Slave Trade Database only three of these 284 were categorised as a planned insurrection that was thwarted. A total of 478 incidents of “African resistance” are recorded within the database for these 100 years.

[xv] Harms, The Diligent, 315.

[xvi] Falconbridge, An Account, 30.

[xvii] Ibid., 24.

[xviii] Ibid., 25.

[xix] Harms, The Diligent, 314.

[xx] Svalesen, The Slave Ship Fredensborg, 115.

[xxi] Falconbridge, An Account, 54.

[xxii] Harms, The Diligent, 295.

[xxiii] Harms, The Diligent, 295. This claim is somewhat suspect, as prototype accordions were not invented until the 1820’s, and yet Harms gets his information from a Universal Dictionary of Commerce published (in French) in Paris in 1723. See: “accordion” The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Music. Michael Kennedy and Joyce Kennedy. Oxford University Press, 2007. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press. University of Manchester. 7 April 2010 It is, however, plausible that these musicians played the hurdy-gurdy, which, dating from the 12th century was the first stringed instrument to have the keyboard principle applied to it. See: “hurdy-gurdy” The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Music. Michael Kennedy and Joyce Kennedy. Oxford University Press, 2007. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press. University of Manchester. 7 April 2010

[xxiv] Olaudah Equiano, The Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African, (New York: Dover Thrift, 1999): 12.

[xxv] Genevieve Fabre, “The Slave Ship Dance,” in Maria Diedrich, Henry Louis Gates Jr and Carl Pedersen (eds), Black Imagination and the Middle Passage, (Oxford: Oxford U.P., 1999): 34. [xxvi] Falconbridge, An Account, 23.

[xxvii] Ibid., 23.

[xxviii] Fabre, “The Slave Ship Dance,” 39.

[xxix] Harms, The Diligent, 310.

[xxx] Falconbridge, An Account, 23.

[xxxi] Falconbridge, An Account, 6.

[xxxii] Harms, The Diligent, 122.

[xxxiii] Ibid., 129.

[xxxiv] Falconbridge, An Account, 8.

[xxxv] Ibid., 9.

[xxxvi] Falconbridge, An Account, 34.

[xxxvii] Ibid., 34-5.

[xxxviii] Ibid., 12.

[xxxix] Harms, The Diligent, 312.

[xl] The silence around mixed race slaves is humorously illustrated in Caroline Lee Hentz, The Planter’s Northern Bride, (Philadelphia: T. B. Peterson, 1854). Moreland, a Southern planter, constantly has trusted “mulatto” slave Albert by his side throughout. Albert’s mixed race genealogy is completely ignored by Hentz, as if the subject of mulatto slaves is completely divorced from the subject of white/black sexual relations.

[xli] Falconbridge, An Account, 23-4.

[xlii] Paul E. Lovejoy, “The “Middle Passage”: The Enforced Migration of Africans Across the Atlantic.” : 10.

[xliii] Falconbridge, An Account, 15.

[xliv] Ibid., 15-6.

[xlv] Maria Diedrich, et al, “The Middle Passage between History and Fiction: Introductory Remarks,” in Black Imagination and the Middle Passage, 7.

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Diedrich, Maria, Henry Louis Gates, Jr and Carl Pedersen, eds. Black imagination and the Middle Passage. Oxford: Oxford U.P., 1999.

Eltis, David. “A Brief Overview of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade,” Voyages: The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database. Apr. 29, 2010.

Equiano, Olaudah. The Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African. New York: Dover Thrift, 1999.

Falconbridge, Alexander. An Account of the Slave Trade on the Coast of Africa. London: J Phillips, 1788.

Harms, Robert. The Diligent: A Voyage Through the Worlds of the Slave Trade. New York: Basic Books, 2002.

Handler, Jerome S. “Life Histories of Enslaved Africans in Barbados.” Slavery & Abolition. 19.1 (1998): 129 - 40.

---. “Survivors of the Middle Passage: Life Histories of Enslaved Africans in British America.” Slavery & Abolition. 23.1 (2002): 23 - 56.

Hentz, Caroline Lee. The Planter’s Northern Bride. Philadelphia: T. B. Peterson, 1854.

“hurdy-gurdy” The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Music. Michael Kennedy and Joyce Kennedy. Oxford University Press, 2007. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press. University of Manchester. 7 April 2010

Kiple, Kenneth F, and Brian T. Higgins. “Mortality Caused by Dehydration During the Middle Passage.” Social Science History. 13.4 (Winter 1989): 421 - 37.

Lovejoy, Paul E. “The “Middle Passage”: The Enforced Migration of Africans Across the Atlantic.”

Ragatz, Lowell Joseph. “Absentee Landlordism in the British Caribbean, 1750-1833.” Agricultural History. 5.1 (Jan. 1931): 7-24.

Sheridan, Richard B. “The Guinea Surgeons on the Middle Passage: The Provision of Medical Services in the British Slave Trade.” The International Journal of African Historical Studies. 14.4 (1981): 601 - 25.

Svalesen, Leif. The Slave Ship Fredensborg. Trans. Pat Shaw and Selena Winsnes. Bloomington, IN: Indiana U.O., 2000.

Thomas, Hugh. The Slave Trade: The History of the Atlantic Slave Trade, 1440 - 1870. London: Phoenix, 1997.

On Caroline Lee Hentz's "The Planter's Northern Bride"

Throughout Caroline Lee Hentz’s The Planter’s Northern Bride, nothing is more misunderstood and grossly misrepresented than the history of Africa. “For thousands of years past,” writes Hentz, “the Africans have existed in their own country as a separate people, free, as they came from the hands of God; yet what one solitary step have they taken in the great march of civilisation, beneath whose majestic tramp the universe is resounding?” Here, and elsewhere, Hentz fails to communicate the single most important fact which the history of Africa holds dearest: human civilisation and human existence began there. Archaeological discoveries throughout the Sahara and other parts of Africa predate anywhere else on Earth by thousands of years.

In addition to this, the biggest change Africa ever witnessed was what we might call ‘the coming of the white man.’ True, the European trader did not bring the concept of slavery with him: it had been a common practice throughout Africa for thousands of years, as it had throughout the Arab world. The Arab slave traders were trading in African flesh before the white man had barely conceived of a world beyond the Mediterranean. Quite how Hentz can call Africa “separate” when they traded flesh and other goods with Arab peoples is frankly bewildering.

The earliest Portuguese missionaries and explorers took Christianity with them to what was then the Kingdom of the Kongo. This imperial federation of the fifteenth century had approximately two to three million people, and surprised the white evangelists by how similar its social structure was to social stratification back in Europe. There was a monarch; the monarch was chosen by an assembly of clan leaders; the king had in his possession symbols of royal authority; he reviewed his troops; he sat on a throne; away from the king, distances were measured by marching days; and for longer periods of time the lunar month was used. The Portuguese grudgingly recognised in the kingdom a sophisticated and well-developed state.[1] Since then, “the great march of civilisation” as Hentz uses it has left a scar from east to west and from north to south on the breast of Africa, carved there not by native African implements, but by European revolvers and pistols, and by the financial greed and material desire of ‘men’. If Hentz is unwilling to recognise the sophistication and progress of chiefdoms such as the Kingdom of the Kongo, then her blindness to historical fact renders her manuscript void.

1 Adam Hochschild. King Leopold’s Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror and Heroism in Colonial Africa. London: Macmillan, 1998.

On Kara Walker's "Gone, An Historical Romance of a Civil War as It Occurred Between the Dusky Thighs of One Young Negress and Her Heart"

The last part of Kara Walker’s installation Gone, An Historical Romance of a Civil War as It Occurred Between the Dusky Thighs of One Young Negress and Her Heart from 1994 shows a black silhouette literally flying away. Under such a title as the one above, this figure encapsulates the leaving of slavery from the South: it rises up and is banished. Apologies for the quality of the following image.


On another level, however, the figure encapsulates the African American myth / folklore of the slave who, without growing wings or feathers, took off and flew back to his spiritual homeland, and out of bondage. This myth acts as the crux of Toni Morrison’s 1977 novel Song of Solomon, and in many ways this section of Walker’s installation acts as a depiction of the final scene from that novel.

The figure in the air represents the character of Milkman, leaping as Shalimar had, to ride the air. On top of the rock, there sits a round object with possibly a rose coming out of it, which can be understood as the bag Pilate had carried the bones in to bury them. The figure in the bottom left hand corner which looks like a head rising out of the water is Guitar, shrouded in mystery as he tries once again to kill Milkman. The large unorthodox protruding stomach of Milkman’s figure represents the weight of his family history, literally the burden of all he has learnt of his eccentric family history.

White-Indian Relations, Cherokee Removal, and the Supreme Court of the United States

To what extent did the verdicts in Cherokee Nation v. Georgia (1831) and Worcester v. Georgia (1832) reflect wider and / or popular views in Jacksonian America about White - Indian relations?

Within the remit of this essay, I will demonstrate that, through the precise wording of the opinions given in the Supreme Court cases of Cherokee Nation v. The State of Georgia (1831) and Worcester v. The State of Georgia (1832), the Justices of the court, under Chief Justices John Marshall, refuted more than they endorsed certain critical aspects of President Andrew Jackson’s federal Indian policy. It is my intention to further demonstrate that the relationship between white civilisation and American Indian civilisation, after being a ‘political football’ for some time, was manipulated by the Jackson administration, and that the Supreme Court decisions in the aforementioned cases failed to fulfil the Court’s constitutional remit of trying to keep the executive in check.

I will initially establish that the language they used with regard to the ‘civilising’ force of (Eurocentric) American society placed them at odds as a body with President Jackson and his administration, in that the Supreme Court did not align itself to the necessary Jacksonite preamble of removal to west of the Mississippi River for such a change to occur.

From the first European settlers in North America, the white man had tried to ‘civilise’ the ‘savage’ Indian: this fact alone acts as a marker of difference between the two cultures. Therefore one can expect that Western ideas of sovereignty with regard to the Indian tribes and nations would not fit comfortably with the latter: it is my intention to illustrate that not only was sovereignty (or supposed sovereignty) a central concern (albeit implicitly) of the Justices, but that their efforts to uphold it fell woefully short due to the Court misunderstanding the importance of tribal sovereignty to the Cherokees. Such a disaster was made worse in the face of hostility from both the Federal Government and the State Government of Georgia towards the Cherokees.

The debate over tribal sovereignty is critical as it composes a key element of the ‘foreign nation’ issue. Attacks upon Cherokee sovereignty were attacks upon their very right to call themselves a ‘nation’. Certainly the Jacksonites refused to acknowledge them as such, and Georgians and Georgia state legislators even less so.[1] I further show that Marshall and the Justices acted in the best interests of the Cherokee Nation (in terms of morality), even in the 1831 case, and would have announced the Cherokees ‘foreign’ if it were not for the commerce clause in the Constitution.

I then conclude that, although the Cherokees sought a friend in Chief Justice John Marshall, they indeed found a man very different from Old Hickory in the White House who was trying to remove them forcibly from their spiritual lands. Nevertheless, regardless of their acceptance of aspects of white culture (including the ratification of a constitution), their ties to sovereignty, and their ability to govern themselves, they were, in the end, let down and betrayed by the highest court in the United States. The body of the U.S. Government designed to curtail excessive executive and legislative extremes within the borders of the United States failed to define the white - Indian relationship explicitly and conclusively enough, allowing the other two branches of Government to ravage a nation which had once sought protection under it.

Chief Justice Marshall, it ought to be noted, was not unaccustomed to presiding over constitutionally significant Supreme Court cases (Marshall was in charge for Marbury v. Madison in 1803, let us not forget). As his judicial stint drew towards a close, he took it upon himself to define, for the benefit of the Federal Government, the apparently novel political relationship of the tribal nations with the United States.[2] This striving towards an almost conclusional definition of an undoubtedly complex relationship requires close scrutiny of Marshall’s cases involving American Indian tribes. Emphasis upon the refutation and verification of popular notions of White - Indian relations is necessary to place the cases and Marshall within the wider historical context of Jeffersonian America. How does the peculiar relationship between the American Indian tribes and the United States manifest itself in Supreme Court cases through the middle decades of the nineteenth century, a century which was engulfed initially by the issue, and later the execution of, both forced and voluntary removal of indigenous peoples?

Ever since Europeans had ‘discovered’ North America, they generally considered themselves as being more ‘civilised’ than the Native tribes and nations they found there. They defined their ‘civilised’ way of life through the existence of this new ‘savage’ Other. After the United States had won its freedom from Great Britain, president after president had spoken of ‘civilising’ the Indians. When Jackson assumed the presidency, he continued the country’s quest to civilise the Natives, but his method of doing so was inextricably linked to their prior removal west of the Mississippi. Whereas separation had once been one of a number of options for southern Indian tribes, Jackson made it compulsory. More extreme than Jackson were the politicians who advocated removing the Indians and leaving them there. Some, known as gradualists, emphasised the need to ‘civilise’ the natives. Jackson put the two together. As Weeks notes, “[o]nce physically separated from Americans, Indians would no longer impede white settlement and enterprise. At that point Gradualists would have sufficient time to implement their civilisation measures successfully.”[3]

The Marshall court had to take into account the manner in which ‘white civilisation’ was being constantly pushed on the Cherokees. At the very least, the Justices had to acknowledge that it was a force of some magnitude, due to Samuel A. Worcester, the named defendant in the second of the Cherokee cases, being a missionary trying to spread western ‘civilisation’ in the Cherokee nation when his initial detention was made. Nevertheless, specific mentions of the quest to bring Eurocentric ‘civilisation’ to that particular nation were made by the Justices. In delivering the opinion of the Court, Chief Justice Marshall observed that the Cherokee Nation was “in a state of pupilage. Their relation to the United States resembles that of a ward to his guardian.”[4] Embedded in the word ‘pupilage’ is the notion not only of a hierarchical relationship, but a relationship where one nation assumes the role of the teacher, and the other nation becomes the pupil. Marshall’s use of the word ‘pupilage’ is fundamental because education was critical to the entire programme of civilisation. On a national scale, Marshall invokes the idea that the Cherokees were currently in a learning process, guided by the United States, and this ideology was as present on the ground as it was in the upper echelons of the U.S. Government. By the time the second Cherokee case was decided by the Supreme Court, the education of Indians was being funded by the Federal Government to the tune of $21,000 a year.[5] Chief Justice Marshall kept the judiciary in line with the legislature in speaking of the Cherokees assuming a position akin to pupilage: since 1818 education had been seen by the House Committee on Indian Affairs as a useful means of influencing future Indian - white relations.[6] This position gained strong momentum with the appointment, within the executive, of Thomas McKenney to the head of the Indian Bureau as Andrew Jackson first assumed office in 1828.

Some doubt may remain as to whether Marshall, in delivering the opinion of the court, was merely making an observation as to the current state of things, or whether he was actively supporting such a position in doing so. If some doubt remains, a firmer endorsement of such a position can be found in the supporting opinion of Justice Johnson. With regard to agricultural education, Johnson observes: “it is said, that we have extended to them the means and inducement to become agricultural and civilized. It is true: and the immediate object of that policy was so obvious as probably to have intercepted the view of ulterior consequences.”[7] The means and ways of agriculture were undoubtedly a characteristic of Western civilisation if the hunter-gatherer culture was the survival method of the ‘savage’ Indians. Unlike the theoretical overall goal of ‘civilisation’, agricultural living could be more easily observed and taught and measured. To that extent, the introduction of farming had been something of a success among the Cherokees.[8] So much so, in fact, that Jeremiah Evarts, the secretary of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, used this newfound agriculture as a theme against Indian removal to west of the Mississippi. His argument was based around fears that such removal to vast open land would counteract the Cherokees adaptation of Western farming methods.[9] Evarts was the Christian talisman of the campaign against the removal of the Cherokees to west of the Mississippi. Justice Johnson’s statement puts him in alignment with the man who, as Francis Prucha has put it, “became the single most important opponent of President Jackson on the Indian removal issue.”[10]

How did this new ‘civilised’ behaviour of the Cherokee nation change white - Indian relations, if at all? Justice Thompson comments in his dissenting opinion that “[the Cherokee nation] retains its usages and customs and self government, greatly improved by the civilization which it has been the policy of the United States to encourage and foster among them.”[11] If these tribes ‘retained their customs,’ then one has to ask: is a conflict here between American and Cherokee customs? It appears that, for Thompson, the federal policy with regard to The Civilisation Programme is yet to have a usurping effect with regard to traditional / historic Cherokee life. In his view, the two work together in equality, each one contributing to a life ‘greatly improved’ than the one which preceded it.

The peculiarities of this equality were not unique, however. Indeed, this opinion aligns itself among other views of the time: it garners support in the face of the force of white supremacy, and its unquestioned superiority to every other race. At a time when the ideology of white supremacy was making the enslavement of Africans the norm, some men of influence still managed to question the effect of white supremacy towards American Indians, especially the five ‘civilised’ tribes. In 1830, the Daily National Journal of Washington, D.C. began an editorial-style analysis of the current situation with: “If there be really that unmeasurable moral and intellectual difference between the citizens of the United States, and the Cherokee and other civilised Indians, which the Georgia and Jackson logicians pretend that there is, we think it ought to be evident in the intercourse which takes place between us.” This cuts to the heart of the debate, asking to see, once and for all, the difference - the visible, tangible difference - between the ‘civilised’ Cherokee, and the ‘civilised’ American. The editorial draws distinct parallels between the editor of the Cherokee Phoenix and the United States Secretary of War, freely mentioning them in the same breath, as if they were cut from the same cloth. As the article continues, it openly invites the reader to draw comparisons between the two (and exclude any differences there may be), thus attacking the current relationship between Indians and Americans as cultivated by federal and state legislative and executive policy makers:

The letter which we publish a few days since from the Secretary of War to the Cherokee nation, is, we presume, intended by the Government of the United States, to be the standard of our intellectual and moral capacity. Whether high or low, it is to be received as the standard on the one side. On the other, the Editor of the Cherokee Phoenix has exhibited the Indian standard of moral and intellectual character, and as our readers have formed their opinions of Mr. Eaton’s letter, we think it due to the Indians that the language of their Editor should also be read. It may be mortifying to our pride, as we set ourselves so far above our red brethren, and consider them beyond the reach of civilization, to see our Secretary of War put here [illegible] by a Cherokee Editor - not with the tomahawk and scalping knife, or any such savage appendage, but with the pen, that only weapon to which moral and intellectual capacity resorts, either for offensive or defensive warfare; but we must bear the mortification. Let our readers peruse the criticism of the Cherokee, and make their own comments.

We published in our last copy a letter from the Secretary of War to the agent of the Creek nation, and which was forwarded to the agent of the Cherokees as [illegible] applicable to them. It is indeed applicable to the people of this nation, if the criterion which Mr. Eaton sets forth is to be taken as correct …

It is for the candid reader to say whether such logic is worth any thing, or, in other words, whether the refusal of the terms contained in the Indian bill will make the Indian a perfect savage. And put him beyond the possibility of reform; for the whole communication is but a series of false premises and arguments to prove that an “Indian will still be an Indian,” - that he cannot be civilised … [12]

There can be little doubt that political motivations were present when composing such a piece as this. One has to enquire, though, if a newspaper editor would be willing to question the unquestionable by probing the validity of white supremacy, just to spite a president who’s popularity was, at the time, definitely under the microscope?[13] It seems to me more likely the unforgiving nature of the policies put into effect by the Jacksonites were raising such difficult questions within the factions of American society left rueing the initial election of Jackson himself.

Regardless of how this sudden scepticism of white supremacy arose, the author of the piece (who remains unnamed) asked for readers to ‘bear the mortification’ of seeing themselves in the same light as the Cherokees: he highlights the indifference between the white man and the red man, but instead of dwelling upon it, he asked the reader to move on, to look to the future, to ‘peruse the criticism of the Cherokee, and make their own comments’ and their own judgement by considering both, equally.

The alleged savagery of the Cherokee nation is considered by both the author of the newspaper piece and the Justices of the Supreme Court as being a previous state of existence. The change, they agree, has been made. Justice Thompson speaks of “the progress made in civilization by the Cherokee Indians”[14] in the past tense, acknowledging that any possible social change white America could ask the Cherokees to make has been done: to the same end, the newspaper article of the previous year states that no longer is warfare done ‘with the tomahawk and scalping knife, or any such savage appendage, but with the pen, that only weapon to which moral and intellectual capacity resorts.’ The progress of the Indians in the direction of Eurocentric American life, whether it was the adoption of Western methods of farming, the establishment of a constitution, the use of the pen as a diplomatic weapon in place of a knife, or the retention of aspects of traditional culture as parallel to adaptation to certain aspects of white American life - this progress was a strong line of argument for the anti-Jacksonites in the presidential campaign of 1832, and for the twenty four previous months and longer they highlighted it, in order to suggest that the policies of the Jackson administration, the Federal Government, and the state of Georgia were warped into a condition where Indian removal was the only possible outcome, regardless of whatever action had been taken / was to be taken in the future by the statesmen of the Cherokee nation. From the wording of their opinions in the Cherokee cases, the Justices aligned themselves within this school of thought, along with publications such as the Daily National Journal and, of course, the Cherokee Phoenix: John Marshall, a long-time critic of Andrew Jackson’s, was quite at home there.

By 1832 the Cherokee issue was in the presidential election debating circle dwarfed, admittedly, by the debate over the national debt and Jackson’s attitude and actions towards the second Bank of the United States. It remained, however, a campaign issue, and ultimately cost the incumbent some votes. Most of these votes were in the north east of the United States, and thus mattered very little, but it was there, among northern philanthropists, that the idea of letting the Cherokees stay garnered the most support. Justice McLean, being only an Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, could take a more outspoken stance than John Marshall, who, as Chief Justice delivering the opinion of the Court, had to walk a finer line - McLean was able to sum up the developments of the Cherokee nation and speak openly about letting them stay on their ancestral land. In his opinion in the Worcester case, he wrote: “are not those nations of Indians who have made some advances in civilization, better neighbours than those who are still in a savage state?”[15] The word ‘neighbours’ has connotations of the Cherokee nation becoming a state of the Union, alongside and separate from Georgia. Regardless of whether he meant to imply this or not, Justice McLean now felt confident to manipulate the ‘civilising’ adaptations of the red man as a vehicle for allowing him to stay upon him spiritual home.

In his American Indian Sovereignty and the U.S. Supreme Court, David Wilkins suggests two main dimensions of tribal sovereignty: the first is a political/legal dimension, and the second is a broader cultural/spiritual dimension.[16] The breadth of this second element does not always stop it from being easily lost amongst the finer legal and political details of studies focusing on Supreme Court cases involving American Indian tribes. When sovereignty is so largely and strongly assumed from cultural and spiritual traits unique to the indigenous North American nations, the sovereignty manifests itself in ways not akin to Western legal thought and can appear out of place in Western legal procedures.

Chief Justice John Marshall observed in 1831’s Cherokee Nation v. Georgia opinion that “the relation of the Indians to the United States is marked by peculiar and cardinal distinctions which exist no where else.”[17] This peculiarity, I believe, was derived as much from the uniqueness of the construction of American Indian sovereignty as it was from the fumbling attempts of the United States judiciary (and the wider Federal Government) to wrestle some meaning out of it. At a time when two of the three branches of the Federal Government (as well as State Governments such as Georgia) were pushing hard for the removal of the Cherokee nation, these ‘peculiar and cardinal distinctions’ become of the utmost importance and today they demand a lot of attention with regard to how they work in favour of but also against the sovereignty of the Indians in question.

The crusade towards the removal of American Indian nations was well under way by the time Chief Justice Marshall re-examined and reiterated his Doctrine of Discovery in 1832’s Worcester v. Georgia case. The formal positioning of the Federal Government at the time of the opinion was far from one of outright hostility towards the Indian tribes: up until the last five years, Indians usually sold lands to the settlers as they demanded it, allowing the President and Congress to portray the cession as one which had been voluntary. The treaties the Indians signed showed no signs of the agitation and threats which had often preceded its writing.[18]

The treaty remained the central form of communication and interpretation of power between Indian tribes and the Federal Government, but with the election of Andrew Jackson to the presidency in 1828 their importance was dented somewhat: for years, Jackson had considered the making of treaties with the Indians a farcical activity at best, and in March 1817 he complained to the then President James Monroe of the absurdity of making treaties with the Indians.[19] Nevertheless, treaties remained of great significance to the judiciary, even if the head of the executive had little time for them. This difference in attitudes is imperative: not only does it highlight the political gulf between Marshall and Jackson, it also serves as an identifier as to each man’s stance on the question of Indian sovereignty. Jackson loathed the concept of the treaty because it suggested the Indians had jurisdiction, power, authority, and legitimate sovereignty over where they resided.[20] Marshall liked the concept of the treaty for the very same reason, as is evident in the Cherokee case opinions. In ruling on Worcester v. Georgia, Marshall carefully describes his Doctrine of Discovery through his reciting of the Treaty of Hopewell from 1785. His description of the wording is worth noting:

The English, the French, and the Spaniards, were equally competitors for their friendship and their aid. Not well acquainted with the exact meaning of words, nor supposing it to be material whether they were called the subjects, or the children of their father in Europe; lavish in professions of duty and affection, in return for the rich presents they received; so long as their actual independence was untouched, and their right to self government acknowledged, they were willing to profess dependence on the power which furnished supplies of which they were in absolute need, and restrained dangerous intruders from entering their country.[21]

Marshall’s emphasis of the Cherokee’s ease with acquiring any title which the settlers were wishing to apply to them should be considered only alongside his later observation that “it [is] reasonable to suppose, that the Indians … could not write, and most probably could not read [and] certainly were not critical judges of our language.”[22] Whether he intended to or not, Marshall implies that those who were wording the treaty - the settlers - did so in a way which gave two different meanings to the settlers and the Indians. To use Marshall’s example, the Indians would not distinguish between ‘allotted’ and ‘marked out’ land. The inclusion of the former rather than the latter would be interpreted by judicial authorities as land which had been given from one party to another (from the settlers to the Indians) rather than just assumed by the Indians.

Also manifested in the above quote is the notion that the Cherokees were, in fact, ‘domestic dependent nations.’ It was this assertion a year earlier in Cherokee Nation v. Georgia that resulted in Marshall deciding not to decide the case, so to speak. It was a case in which he could not agree with the counsel’s argument that the Cherokee’s were a sovereign foreign nation as defined by the Constitution, yet nor could he agree with the administration’s defence (although no counsel for Georgia turned up to either of the Cherokee cases) that the tribes were at the mercy of Georgia.[23] For a Supreme Court Chief Justice who had set out to contextualise and give substance and meaning to the relationship of the Federal Government to the American Indians, Marshall’s inability and unwillingness to conclusively rule either way in the first of the two Cherokee cases led him to undertake two unusual measures. First, he urged the dissenting Justice Thompson to write an opinion (which he initially did not plan to do), and, second, he included in his own opinion guidance for how to bring another case before the Supreme Court.[24]

On initial inspection, Chief Justice Marshall’s examination of sovereignty in relation to the Cherokee nation and its relationship to the United States appears inconsistent from one case to the next. In 1831’s Cherokee Nation case, he writes that “[t]hey never have been recognised as holding sovereignty over the territory they occupy,”[25] but twelve months later he was quoting Swiss philosopher Vattel and asserting that “‘Tributary and feudatory states,’ says Vattel, ‘do not thereby cease to be sovereign and independent states, so long as self government and sovereign and independent authority are left in the administration of the state.’”[26] How can the two co-exist together? Had Marshall’s personal opinion altered so much in less than twelve months?

The critical difference between the two centres on the way in which each case came to the Supreme Court. In 1831 the Cherokee nation filed as a sovereign nation independent of the United States (hence the case name), but Marshall felt that the Commerce clause (“To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes”[27]) of the Constitution was proof enough that the Cherokees were not, in the eyes of the Constitution, a foreign nation. So while they were not a sovereign, independent nation, they did still retain the right to sovereign authority and self-government.

Nevertheless, Marshall later asserts that it “cannot be questioned that the right of sovereignty, as well as soil, was notoriously asserted and exercised by the European discoverers.”[28] Marshall’s observation is purely that: an observation. This observation was, however, a desired reality for many pro-Jackson newspapers. In 1830, the Louisville Public Advertiser, which at the time was the most powerful newspaper in Kentucky,[29] showed no willingness to halt the sweeping away of the ‘red man’ by the ‘white tide’. In support of removal to West of the Mississippi River, the Advertiser remembers that “the increase of the whites … caused the tribes of the north to be swept from the face of the earth, as with a “sweeping pestilence” - and the tribes of the south must inevitably “share the same fate,” unless they consent to emigrate beyond the Mississippi.”[30] The lack of sentimentality for the loss of many indigenous peoples and so many varied and numbered unique cultures further emphasises the force of the white invasion of North America: one which, for not only the Louisville Public Advertiser, but for many Jacksonites, was set to continue in the coming decade.

Moreover, Marshall’s brief historical observation is not followed by any statement asserting that such a trend either does or should continue by 1831. The statement holds within it one word upon which it pivots: notoriously. The word carried with it the same meaning in 1831 as it does today: “with depreciative or unfavourable connotations.”[31] Without the word, the statement becomes ambivalent towards to Indians, but with its inclusion, Marshall takes a stance against the prolonging of such policies, highlighting their ‘notoriousness’. He takes the first tentative steps towards defending Indian sovereignty, which was nullified under European sovereignty, but in a case where he was ruling them not a sovereign nation in the guise of the Constitution, he was limited in what he could say.

The Jacksonites’ acceptance of the utter inevitability of the indigenous peoples of the south suffering the same fate as the tribes who used to inhabit the north of the United States is not shared by the Justices of the Supreme Court. It is against such single-minded views that they were writing. Through the entire editorial, at no point is assimilation and the retaining of their historic sovereignty over their ancestral lands even thought of as a possible alternative solution to annihilation. Indian claims to sovereignty appear utterly futile in the face of such harsh sentences, but newspapermen who opposed the Jacksonites understood the situation differently.

The Norwich Courier newspaper took an educated stance towards Chief Justice Marshall’s non-decision in the 1831 Cherokee Nation case. It understood the legal correctness of the decision taken by Marshall, but observed that it did not really matter at all. [32] What should be of the utmost concern was the morality of the Cherokee cause. Chief Justice Marshall was in full agreement with this, as early on he stated that “if courts were permitted to indulge their sympathies, a case better calculated to excite them can scarcely be imagined.”[33] As the contention of the sovereignty of the Cherokee nation got in the way of the morals, a new case seemed inevitable, and once it came in the form of Worcester v. Georgia, Marshall intended to indulge himself.

As the debate over the Cherokee nation’s claim to sovereignty with regard to their spiritual lands continued through 1830, the Baltimore Republican dragged up old sentiments of John Quincy Adams from 1802, in which he asks: “[b]ut what is the right of a huntsman to the forest of a thousand miles, over which he has accidentally roamed in quest of prey?”[34] This is another instance where the cultural divide between the European immigrants to North America and the native peoples manifests itself in relation to the definition, understanding and execution of ‘sovereignty.’ Whereas white Americans had established individualism as a fundamental trait of life in the New World, inherent as it was in ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,’ such a term as ‘individualism’ was most foreign to tribesmen who were living in a culture where the tribe was sovereign. Adams was spectacularly missing the point in asking what the relationship of the huntsman to the forest was, for the huntsman himself had no sovereignty over the forest in the slightest. The emphasis of such a question should have been on the relation of the collective to the land.[35] Tribal nations, whether Adams cared to admit it or not, carried with them a measure of inherent sovereignty.[36]

Adams’s failure to grasp, understand, and implement tribal sovereignty to any significant degree is far from unique. Within Supreme Court rulings there is a long history of a failure to recognise it, and it dates back to 1831’s Cherokee Nation v. Georgia case.[37] It was in his opinion of this case that Chief Justice Marshall made an unwise (and racist) comparison to sovereignty among different European nations: “[t]hey have in Europe sovereign and demi-sovereign states and states of doubtful sovereignty. But this state, if it be a state, is still a grade below them all.”[38] For a man who had already come to the fair conclusion that their relationship to the United States was that of a ‘ward to a guardian’, Marshall implies that their tribal sovereignty, and the tribes claim to this land which was now considered to be a part of the state of Georgia, is simply not equal to the sovereignty of European nations. Wilkins is quite clear that tribal sovereignty is different from European notions of sovereignty, but Marshall makes it worthless in the face of the latter, stating it is ‘a grade below them all’.

This lack of recognition for the value of tribal sovereignty and complete misunderstanding of the concept, along with its comprehensive difference from European sovereignty, was rife throughout America in the 1830’s. As one historian, Marques James, has noted, “on a frontier the violation of an Indian treaty was regarded as a prerogative of the superior race.”[39] Indian sovereignty could not be expected to fair any better. The Supreme Court’s inability to defend what it could only misinterpret made it, at best, ineffective, and at worst, ignorantly racist. What James also touched upon here, is the notion of dominance that the Federal Government carried out of such treaty-making negotiations, and such ascendancy was infused in Justice Baldwin’s opinion of the Cherokee Nation case (Baldwin’s opinion concurred with Marshall’s opinion). “To correctly understand the constitution,” wrote Baldwin, “we must read it with reference to this well known existing state of our relations with the Indians; the United States asserting the right of soil, sovereignty, and jurisdiction, in full dominion; the Indians oecupant [sic], of allotted hunting grounds.”[40]

But not everybody was so enthralled by the state of current events. One Mr. Adams,[41] in a memorial for a large number of citizens from New York to Congress, described a changed American attitude towards white - Indian relations to the legislature at the same time that Chief Justice Marshall decided Worcester v. Georgia case in 1832. The Carolina Observer happily published the text of what was said, with statements pertaining to Georgia’s “equal disregard for the Union, and the rights of the Indians.”[42] Both Indian rights, including their sovereignty, and the state of the Union were, in the eyes of Mr. Adams and the other memorialists, equally tarnished. Whilst it is too big a leap to presume that these men considered regard for the Union and regard for Indian rights and Indian sovereignty as being due equal consideration, it is clear they understood that there was a relationship between the two: a crushing of Indian rights would be a severe blow to Federal Government, as Indian rights were (supposedly) protected in countless treaties between the two, and independent from State Governments. In 1832 the American Revolution and the war against ‘big’ Government were still within living memory, but some men, such as these memorialists, realised that a Union between the separate states still had to have some power drawing them together as one.

The relationship between the Cherokees and the whites is undoubtedly a complex one. Chief Justice Marshall’s willingness to consider and acknowledge the effect of the ‘civilising’ force of western methods of farming gave him a broader view than Jackson afforded himself. Justice Johnson’s alignment with humanitarian Jeremiah Evarts gave himself (and the wider Supreme Court bench) a position confounding the federal policy being churned out by the executive and the legislature; and Justice Thompson went as far as giving an opinion with the beginnings of questioning white supremacy. To speak of savagery as a previous state of existence credited the Cherokee nation with the ability to evolve in ways which the European Americans thought to be progressive. The Supreme Court Justices acknowledged and recognised it, but could do nothing to enforce it.

Ultimately, the Justices lack of clarity with regard to sovereignty in the face of Jackson’s hostility let the Cherokees down. Whilst it is true the Justices did not share the same opinion of some Jacksonite newspapers that the annihilation of the southern tribes was a forgone conclusion, they did not define tribal sovereignty explicitly enough to take a meaningful stance against such an outcome. The Bench’s willingness to consider the text of treaties (especially the Treaty of Hopewell) carefully was more than Jackson was willing to do, but their failure to draw meaningful conclusions in favour of Indian sovereignty as existing on behalf of the Cherokee nation made their efforts yet another step on the road towards the Trail of Tears. As Rogin put it, “white policy makers imagined Indian destruction as an abstracted and generalized process removed from human control and human reality.”[43] The branch of the Federal Government which is supposed to keep the executive and legislature in check failed to make them think again and recognise both the strength of tribal sovereignty and the strides in ‘civilisation’ the Cherokees had taken to remain on their land. Their failure with regard to the former stemmed from their inability to comprehend it.

Notes
1 Gagnon writes: “[p]rior to his [1828] election as President, Jackson had already decided to treat the numerous Indian tribes, and their citizens, within the borders of the United States as citizens of the United States rather than as sovereign and independent nations.” Joshua A. Gagnon, “The “Great American Desert”: The Congressional Debate on the Indian Removal Act of 1830,” thesis, University of Maine at Farmington, 2006.
2 David Wilkins, American Indian Sovereignty and the U.S. Supreme Court: The Masking of Justice, (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1997): 21. Although Wilkins makes this point specifically in relation to the case of Cherokee Nation v. Georgia, it applies, I feel, to a number of major cases involving Indians, certainly all the cases he presided over mentioned here in this paper.
3 Joseph Weeks, Farewell, My Nation: The American Indian and the United States in the Nineteenth Century, (2nd edn.: Wheeling, IL: Harlan Davidson, 2001): 42.
4 Cherokee Nation v. Georgia, 30 U.S. 1, 5 Pet. 1, 8 L.Ed. 25 (1831) 17.
5 Donald N. Satz, American Indian Policy in the Jacksonian Era, (2nd edn.: Norman, OK: Red River Books, 2002): 247.
6 Ibid., 247.
7 Cherokee Nation v. Georgia, 23.
8 For a thorough account of Indians and the introduction of Western farming methods, see Janet A. McDonnell, The Dispossession of the American Indian: 1887 - 1934, (Indianapolis, IN: Indian U.P., 1991), esp. Ch 2, “Putting the Land to Work: Indian Farming and Stockraising.”
9 Francis P. Prucha, The Great Father volume 1: The United States Government and the American Indians, (London: The University of Nebraska Press, 1984): 203.
10 Francis P. Prucha, “Protest by Petition: Jeremiah Evarts and the Cherokee Indians”, in Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society 97, (1985): 46.
11 Cherokee Nation v. Georgia, 60.
12 “The Cherokees,” Daily National Journal (Washington, DC). Nov. 9, 1830.
13 Kenneth Penn Davis notes, with regard to the election of 1832, that “[i]t was suggested by many that Jackson would be defeated by Henry Clay,” illustrating that Jackson’s popularity was far from universal throughout his entire time in office. Kenneth Penn Davis. “Chaos in the Indian Country: The Cherokee Nation, 1828-35.” The Cherokee Indian Nation: A Troubled History. Ed. Duane H. King. Knoxville, TN: University of Tennessee Press, 1979: 138.
14 Cherokee Nation v. Georgia, 55.
15 Worcester v. Georgia, 31 U.S. 515, 6 Pet. 515, 8 L.Ed. 483 (1832) 590.
16 David Wilkins, American Indian Sovereignty and the U.S. Supreme Court, 20.
17 Cherokee Nation v. Georgia, 16.
18 Joseph C. Burke, “The Cherokee Cases: A Study in Law, Politics, and Morality”, in Stanford Law Review 21, 3 (Feb. 1969): 501.
19 Francis P. Prucha, The Great Father volume 1, 192.
20 Ibid., 192.
21 Worcester v. Georgia, 546-7.
22 ibid., 552.
23 Satz, 45.
24 Burke, “The Cherokee Cases,” 516.
25 Cherokee Nation v. Georgia, 22.
26 Worcester v. Georgia, 561.
27 “The Constitution of the United States,” Article 1, Section 8, Clause 3.
28 Cherokee Nation v. Georgia, 22.
29 John E. Kleber, The Encyclopaedia of Louisville, (Louisville, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 2001): 655.
30 “Indian Sovereignty,” Louisville Public Advertiser. Feb. 26, 1830.
31 “notoriously, adv.” OED Online, Sept. 2009, Oxford University Press, Jan. 17, 2009,
32 The Norwich Courier article is reprinted under the heading “Indian Question,” Cherokee Phoenix. Apr. 30, 1831. “[T]his decision affects not in the slightest degree the moral question as to the treatment of the Indians,” wrote the editor of the Courier.
33 Cherokee Nation v. Georgia, 15.
34 Reprinted under the title “Indian Title to Sovereignty,” Louisville Public Advertiser. July 13, 1830.
35 Asking such a question as this would have drawn Adams closer to the answer that the tribe was sovereign over the forest, not the individual huntsman. Such an answer of course, would have been most undesirable towards the policy of his administration in 1802.
36 David Wilkins, American Indian Sovereignty and the U.S. Supreme Court, 19-20.
37 Ibid., 126.
38 Cherokee Nation v. Georgia, 26-7.
39 Marquis James, The Life of Andrew Jackson, (New York, NY: Garden City Publishing Co., 1940): 549.
40 Cherokee Nation v. Georgia, 40.
41 This Mr. Adams is not John Quincy Adams, for he was deceased six years before this. This Mr. Adams remains unnamed.
42 “Congress: House of Representatives,” Carolina Observer. Mar. 13, 1832.
43 Michael P. Rogin, Fathers and Children: Andrew Jackson and the Subjugation of the American Indian, (New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1975): 247-8.

Bibliography
Brady, Cyrus T. The True Andrew Jackson. London: J.B. Lippincott Co., 1906.

Burke, Joseph C. “The Cherokee Cases: A Study in Law, Politics, and Morality.” Stanford Law Review. 21. 3 (Feb. 1969): 500 - 531.

Cave, Alfred A. Jacksonian Democracy and the Historians. Gainesville, FL: University of Florida Press, 1964.

Cherokee Nation v. Georgia, 30 U.S. 1, 5 Pet. 1, 8 L.Ed. 25 (1831).

“Congress: House of Representatives.” Carolina Observer. Mar. 13, 1832: np.

Davis, Kenneth Penn. “Chaos in the Indian Country: The Cherokee Nation, 1828-35.” The Cherokee Indian Nation: A Troubled History. Ed. Duane H. King. Knoxville, TN: University of Tennessee Press, 1979. 129 - 147.

Gagnon, Joshua A. “The “Great American Desert”: The Congressional Debate on the Indian Removal Act of 1830.” thesis. University of Maine at Farmington. 2006.

Gammon, Samuel R. The Presidential Campaign of 1832. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins Press, 1922.

“Indian Question.” Cherokee Phoenix. Apr. 30, 1831: np.

“Indian Sovereignty.” Louisville Public Advertiser. Feb. 26, 1830: np.

“Indian Title to Sovereignty.” Louisville Public Advertiser. July 13, 1830: np.

James, Marquis. The Life of Andrew Jackson. New York, NY: Garden City Publishing Co., 1940.

Kleber, John E. The Encyclopaedia of Louisville. Louisville, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 2001.

McDonnell, Janet A. The Dispossession of the American Indian: 1887 - 1934. Indianapolis, IN: Indian U.P., 1991.

“notoriously, adv.” OED Online. Sept. 2009. Oxford University Press. Jan. 17, 2009. http://dictionary.oed.com/cgi/entry/00327592?single=1&query_type=word&queryword=notoriously&first=1&max_to_show=10>

Prucha, Francis P. Indian Policy in the United States: Historical Essays. London: The University of Nebraska Press, 1981.

---. The Great Father volume 1: The United States Government and the American Indians. London: The University of Nebraska Press, 1984.

---. “Protest by Petition: Jeremiah Evarts and the Cherokee Indians.” Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society. 97 (1985): 42 - 58.

Rogin, Michael P. Fathers and Children: Andrew Jackson and the Subjugation of the American Indian. New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1975.

Satz, Donald N. American Indian Policy in the Jacksonian Era. 2nd edn.: Norman, OK: Red River Books, 2002.

“The Cherokees.” Daily National Journal (Washington, DC). Nov. 9, 1830: np.

Weeks, Joseph. Farewell, My Nation: The American Indian and the United States in the Nineteenth Century. 2nd edn.: Wheeling, IL: Harlan Davidson, 2001.

Wilkins, David. American Indian Sovereignty and the U.S. Supreme Court: The Masking of Justice. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1997.

Williams, Robert A. The American Indian in Western Legal Thought: The Discourses of Conquest. Oxford: Oxford U.P., 1990.

Worcester v. Georgia, 31 U.S. 515, 6 Pet. 515, 8 L.Ed. 483 (1832).

Hollywood and Historical Fact

Gone With The Wind remains one of the most watched and celebrated films of all time, and its popularity today is encapsulated by a 70th anniversary edition DVD release. The film endures for the same reasons it was an instant success at the box office in 1939 (the romantic love triangle in the face of adversity, nostalgia for a bygone, apparently simpler, era, etc.), and the very fact that it continues to enjoy such popularity is perhaps telling of the United States true inability to fully recover from the civil war. Furthermore, for a film which premiered in Atlanta, GA, and thus barred Hattie McDaniel and the other black actors and actresses from attending its first screening, Gone With The Wind embodies the perpetuating covert racism which will seemingly forever endure in the United States.


As Edward Campbell has noted, the 1960’s and the on-set of the Civil Rights Movement allowed Hollywood to reconsider the plantation film in a more honest light. Yet the fact that a more historically accurate (and honest) portrayal of plantation life for African Americans has not even reached half the heights of Gone With The Wind underscores that, when faced with a choice between the comforting myth and the harsh reality, Americans will almost always sacrifice historical fact.

The State of the Game: April 2010

The county cricket season has opened once more, this time at the earliest ever point in the calendar year, and it is worthwhile considering the current state of cricket in England and Wales. We need to ask some difficult questions: what is good about the current domestic setup? What systemic problems are there? And how can we improve the domestic game to help England improve as a cricketing nation?


It is useful to begin by looking at two foreign setups, and the function they fulfil: baseball in the United States, and cricket in Australia.

In the United States, the whole system is constructed with one thing in mind: making the best players better for each individual ball club. How many times have you heard announcers (that’s American for commentators, for all you who are not accustomed with American sports terminology) say that such and such a player has “come through the minors,” or they “got sent back to triple A, but since coming back to Wrigley Field they’ve been much improved”? The entire minor league setup is built around garnering the best talent for the major league ball clubs. The top minor league is triple-A; below that is double-AA; and below that is class A which is broken down again into three more tiers. Minor league ball clubs are affiliated with one team and one team only in the majors. Most major league ball clubs have associates at every level. This “farm system” is ruthless. This farm system works. The best players learn their trade in the minors; they polish their skills and are made as ready as possible for the big leagues.

If a similar setup was implemented in English domestic cricket, the most talented cricketers would be procured for Test level at a higher level than they are at the moment. The purpose of the English County Championship has to be to produce the best cricketers to represent England in Test matches. In effect, the County Championship has to become, to a greater extent, what minor leagues are to major league baseball. It has to be the top minor league. Every single player in the County Championship has to have his sights set on representing England at Test Match level.

One of the easiest ways to improve the domestic game in England is to make it as close a mirror of Test match cricket as is possible. Some alterations are easy to spot: we’re talking five day matches; ninety overs in a day; a new ball after eighty overs. Five day matches are a good idea because more matches will be won and lost, i.e. not drawn. Cricketers would get a better sense of how to win a Test Match. That might sound silly. But think back to England’s tour of the West Indies in the winter season of 2008 / 09, and twice England failed to win from two very dominant positions.

Of course, five day matches would mean fewer games could be played. That’s no bad thing. The best alteration made to the County game in the 1990’s was the two division system. There are eighteen counties, so why not go one step further: three divisions of six. Think of the top tier as triple-A, the middle tier as double-A, and the bottom tier as class-A. Each County would play ten County Championship matches through one season. That means a maximum of fifty days cricket a season with five day matches. Therefore, there should not be the nonsense of “resting” players as player fatigue should simply not be an issue. Fifty days of Championship cricket leaves space for the shorter competitions built in around the Championship, but the Championship has to take precedent over twenty20 cricket and other limited overs forms of cricket.

The current bonus points system in the County Championship is nothing short of a joke. It is pathetic. There has to be a bonus points system, but it does not have to be so complicated. Teams still have to be encouraged to try and win a game of cricket. Therefore, let us have twenty points for a win. But it rains a lot in England; sometimes a result is not always possible. Therefore, six points for a lead on first innings and six points for a drawn match. Under such a system, there is still the incentive to win the match.

One of the big debates in recent years has been the issue of overseas players. I am of the opinion that overseas players are, to a certain extent, good for the development of English cricketers. In my opinion, a maximum of two overseas players should be able to take to the field for a single county. The COLPAC regulation has blurred the meaning of “overseas”. As long as nine of any one County Championship side are eligible to represent England in Test Match cricket, I do not care whether they are called overseas, COLPAC or foreign.

There are issues left unresolved here. What about England players with central contracts? How do they fit into the system? We surely cannot abolish central contracts; they have proven to be one of the best innovations of the Duncan Fletcher era. They have to stay. And to be honest, I am not sure there is a conflict of interests between the system I have proposed and central contracts, but I am sure there are issues which I have not covered here.

Much of the success of Australia in world cricket over the past two decades (though as an Englishman it feels like much longer) has been attributed to the strength of their first class game, the Sheffield Shield. This competition is contested by six state sides (the same number of teams, you’ll notice, who would make up the top division of my plan, above), and competition is fierce to get into those sides. Australia is a big country with a large pool of cricketing talent; in the Sheffield Shield, the best play the best. Regularly. That is what we need in England. Television coverage is central to highlighting the top division of three Championship tiers in England. At present, I think only two County Championship matches are broadcast on Sky Sports through the whole of the summer. That is not enough. Increased television coverage of a competition which is contested by the top six counties would throw emphasis upon that competition and make it of greater importance: players would get used to playing in front of television cameras and get used to the in-depth scrutiny that only Sky Sports can provide.