Thank You, Gerald Horne

 I have just finished The Counter-Revolution Of 1776, New York University Press, 2014. It is a fire hose of facts. Horne, as most of us, could use an editor. There is occasional awkwardness and redundancy. But the facts. Nearly a quarter of the book is notes.

I have seen some criticism to the effect that there was an abolitionist in Massachusetts or some such. There are dismissals of slave owners reports as hysteria, which Horne acknowledges by the way.  Just put your head in this fire hose of facts.

In the US of Usn’s we are taught history starting from our “revolution”. Nothing comes from nowhere. In England they at least know there was the Seven Years War.  The Seven Years war was nine years. The English don’t want to acknowledge that it was the colonial tail wagging the empire dog.

I had attributed English opposition to slavery to their experience with Barbary pirates. Horne mentions this on page 39 as part of a larger argument and it doesn’t merit an index entry.

Some of my favorite themes are the unsaid obvious and common knowledge lost to posterity. Why do police keep records? Because it is usually the criminals who commit the crimes. Slavery was not an aberration. It was the point. The colonies would have failed without slavery. Slave owners and colonizers are scum. They are scum in every direction.

I did not know the English bought slaves to staff their army. I wasn’t aware that Britain conquered Cuba. I had thought of the Seven Year war as mostly a German and naval adventure. Horne shows how slavery and the Caribbean colonies were central to the conflict, and how the English experience with slave uprising changed their policy.  Fredrich was just an English patsy.

Just as Washington establishing Fort Necessity after his murder of Jumonville demonstrated his obsession with land, the resolution of the Seven Years War showed the various national ambitions. England stopped the fleeing of slaves to Florida. England wanted Spain, Portugal, and Holland as major colonial powers to hold off the French. The French sacrificed the fur trade for sugar.

Napoleon can be understood as following imperial ambitions. World War I can easily be accommodated to this larger history.

It is difficult for us to appreciate how few people there were. Their motivations were different. The French were truly horrified by the murder of Jumonville. You don’t kill gentlemen. Washington had to sign a confession. The European concern with territory had more to do with honor.  In America the conflicts justified the slaughter of indigenous people; in Europe the peasants.

We need more research on indentured servants. Horne discusses the Irish and Scots. There is reason they deserve mention in the third stanza. Towards the end of your indenture, you become dangerous. You will be free. Someone may take you seriously. Reputation is essential to business. Perhaps this charming young person should help with the thresher or roof repair. A lot of indentured servants died.

Horne exults that the slaves repeatedly revolted. This gives me reassurance as well. We need to study why slave revolts failed. Somehow the hype worked.