Comments on: King of Pain

By: mch

mch — Mon, 21 Jul 2014 05:57:47 +0000

Thank you, Dave, for the Cronon reference. (Can’t help but notice his New Haven-Wisconsin direction — my ancestor moved from Rhode Island to Whitewater in 1838 — written up in the late 19th century as a lonely frontiersman, when in fact almost the entire extended family went, too, from Providence! Fascinating, the post-CW ideology of the lonely frontiersman — such a contrast to the earlier, Puritan ideology of the planter in his community). Usufruct a very familiar concept to me, but fee simple not. Will go to work on it.

By: Western Dave

Western Dave — Fri, 18 Jul 2014 16:58:27 +0000

Or as Bill Cronon pointed out years ago, when title is usufruct to one party and fee simple to the other, that’s a huge problem.

By: mch

mch — Thu, 17 Jul 2014 06:22:38 +0000

Zeitgeist, it must be. After reading Craig Wilder’s Ebony and Ivory last fall, I got to wondering if my New England ancestors were slave-owners. Not that I knew anything about those ancestors, not really. Just some vague WASP sense of “they arrived here” combined with (what were often mangled, as I soon learned) family memories of a few specifics. Anyway, my initial question led me to researches that have since totally absorbed me in colonial American history (to the detriment of my proper scholarly duties). And to American history, writ large. (What happens when your ancestors came to MA, PA, and VA in the 1600’s and 1700’s and you follow every line studiously. My direct line kept heading west, for which I am puritanically Thankful! A certain loosening up….)

But that’s also the problem. Always heading to new places. And who actively “holds” the patent (that thing lying there, in an active form — we need a Raymond Williams to trace the term “patent”) over those “new” places (new to whom?)? What pact between Indians and planters or among nations has opened new territory for entitlement? The very notion of title is at the heart of it. And the invention of capitalism in the Lowlands….

I queried my clerking-laywer daughter just yesterday about “ownership” and “title.” She was too deep in the weeds to get fully the point of my query, but, yes, “own” is a problematic concept. Title is a better way to think about things, and it raises the problem, who gives first title?

By: Timothy Burke

Timothy Burke — Wed, 16 Jul 2014 20:16:47 +0000

In reply to Charles Cameron. There's also the African-American guy who changed his name to Shaka Zulu and tried to claim Kenya citizenship back in the early 1990s, which I recall led to a lot of bemused commentary in the Kenyan press at the time.

By: Charles Cameron

Charles Cameron — Wed, 16 Jul 2014 19:17:19 +0000

Far more witty and interesting, in my view, is the tale of the pipe-maker Adam Fortunate Eagle, who arrived by Alitalia at Fiumicino Airport, Rome, in September 1992, and claimed Italy on behalf of the native peoples of the Americas. Fortunate Eagle asked:

“What right had Columbus to discover America when it was already inhabited for thousands of years? The same right that I have to come now to Italy and claim to have discovered your country..

and noted that whereas Columbus “came to conquer a country by force where a peaceful people were living” he himself was “on a mission of peace and goodwill.”

A mission of pointed humor, too, I think.

By: Contingent Cassandra

Contingent Cassandra — Wed, 16 Jul 2014 14:39:31 +0000

All I could see is yet another white guy deciding to claim a bit of the African continent. If he’d gone looking for terra nullius somewhere his ancestors might have conceivably lived (and/or if an American of any kind of African descent had decided to make his daughter a princess of an African land), I’d have a smidgen more sympathy for the “I did it out of love” argument (while still deploring the child-raising philosophy, as well as many of the other principles, involved). But I just can’t get over the racial/historical tone-deafness involved in Heaton’s act. It just reeks of the unconsciousness that is one of the most lethal components of white privilege, and it seems to me that that’s the real legacy he’s passing on to his daughter. Ugh.

By: Withywindle

Withywindle — Wed, 16 Jul 2014 01:52:59 +0000

The Man Who Would Be King.

But we do own the continent, after all. So it’s not as if these ideas never work out.

By: Kyle

Kyle — Tue, 15 Jul 2014 22:40:29 +0000

Or the Austrian, Maximilian I of Mexico, who reigned for a little over a year.

By: Russell Arben Fox

Russell Arben Fox — Tue, 15 Jul 2014 21:44:17 +0000

Dammit, Tim, after all these years, you’re still one of the best writers in the whole darn internet. Thanks for sharing this thoughtful and sobering piece.