|
nunia (
女 ,
114 ) |
地区:
美国, 新泽西 |
|
|
时间:
2007-07-06 11:31:21, 来源:未名交友 |
标题:
News on American Revolution and current affair |
Simon Schama 'Rough Crossings' turns on a single huge question: if you
were black in America at the start of the Revolutionary War, who would
you want to win?
|
|
|
Tens of
thousands gave their answer, voting with their feet for Britain and
King George. In response to a declaration by the last governor of
Virginia that any rebel-owned slave who escaped and served the King
would be emancipated, tens of thousands of slaves-Americans who clung
to the sentimental notion of British freedom - escaped from farms,
plantations, and cities to try to reach the British camp. This mass
movement lasted as long as the war did... It
should be said about this great exodus that we know that before the
revolutionary war, 80 per cent of runaways were men. In this particular
case, what's very startling is it's almost half and half; women go in
groups, as you've heard, often if the men are away or if they've gone
first, this great exodus of women going in their own right.
What are
they believing in? Why are they doing this? Why are they taking these
chances? They were caught, they were hunted down, many of them were
hanged, terrible things happened to those who took the chance of doing
this. They believed in this myth (it wasn't entirely mythical) but they
believed in something called British freedom, and they'd known about it
astonishingly early on. We know from runaway notices in the newspapers,
particularly in the Virginia Gazette...by which I mean rewards posted
for the return of runaway slaves...that the negroes of the
south actually knew about the ruling in 1772 by Lord Mansfield in the
famous case of someone who had been an ex-slave called James Somerset,
in London, who'd been kidnapped by his former owner with the intention
of reselling him into slavery in the Caribbean. There were slave hunters all over London doing these kinds of things, sort of hired abductors in the 1750s, 1760s onwards.
But
Somerset had a kind of hero and the first hero of the book, Granville
Sharp, the deacon of Northumberland who teaches himself the law in
order to organise and press their suits, because Sharp believed that
the English common law and slavery were irreconcilable with each other.
He cherished the phrase handed down from earlier lawsuits, that the air
of England is too pure for a slave to breathe. In other words,
inconsistent. So Mansfield ruled in the case of Somerset, that Somerset
could not be coerced back to the boats, back to the West Indies, back
to slavery against his will. Now, Mansfield was an incredibly
irritated conservative about the law and was very concerned that this
ruling not be taken to be construed to mean that slavery was illegal in
Britain, but it was taken to mean exactly that by the black community
in London and elsewhere in Britain. More particularly, it
went all the way over the Atlantic because some of these runaway
notices...say, Pompy, or Scipio, or Phoebe, or Sally...run away to the
British ships in the deluded belief that Lord Mansfield's judgement
will set them free.
So the
slave owners had been hearing some of the talk in the plantations that
at least the slaves thought there was something called British freedom,
that the King was somehow their protector. Then came the war and the
royal governors of the south were incredibly damn short of troops; Lord
Dunmore, the last governor of Virginia has just 300 regular troops. So
entirely out of expedient military motives, Dunmore issues a
proclamation from his ship in November 1775 promising freedom, and
indeed it becomes elaborated later by Sir Henry Clinton; freedom and
land. Rewards for those who managed to get out of the plantations and
join the British. Now, this was, as I say, not done from the milk of
humanitarian kindness. If you were the slave of a loyalist; tough luck.
It was if you were a slave of a rebel...so we can see the aim was less
high-minded abolitionism than actually a military strike with the aim
of arming African Americans to come to the King's side.
It
backfired in some ways because what it did in the first place,
particularly in the Carolinas, was for whites in the Carolinas who'd
been slightly tentative about which side they were on to decide they
had to join the American side, they had to arm themselves into white
militia. The alternative was a British-sponsored slave uprising. One of
them, who was a friend of George Washington's, said, `Hell hath not
vomited forth a more diabolical scheme than the British emancipation of
the slaves.' So in a sense, they're right, that the British are doing
this out of cynicism, but sometimes from cynicism inadvertently,
indirectly, actual good can come and certainly actual hope can flow. It
clearly did so in the case of countless numbers of these people.
Shocking news
to me about American Revolution of 1776... 'the declaration of
emancipation backfired, now the southern property owners who once were
skeptical to join PATRIOT militia mobilized, in defend of their
property in the name of liberty against King George's loyalist
Blacks....
And as I
listened to the whole argument made by Rev. Granville Sharp before
British Crown's court on the liberty of person/subject the moment he
reaches British soil and breath so pure of its air was equally entitled
protection by its Common laws , I can't help but realized the change of
Common Laws with the passing of time. Property owners are no longer
individuals but Nation and State. Immigration Laws uphold the ground of
servitude and slavery a man inherit by his birth. Is it not? Then
came...
The Second Plague
Back in
Europe society adjusted to the absense of famine in the wake of the
migration. Industrialization changed the workplace forever, no longer
was work something you learned in a few months. The average amount of
training required to get a job grew and grew and grew. Women suffrage
gave power to women and increased the productvity of society by
demanding these new citizens to work. Cost of living grew so that women
couldn't stay home even if they wanted to. Having children suddenly
became a risk, endangering the wellbeing of the parents. "Next year"
became the normal way of thinkinng of procreation. Then came the
pension fund. It was the cure for the suffering of the old and sick,
but it had a terrible side-effect. In the past you secured your old age
by breeding children that took care of you in your old days, the
pension system crushed this millenia-old system. The last economical
reason to sire children was removed. This was a great advance for
society at first. The nativity level went down steadily to levels where
the risk of famine decreased to nothingness. The suffering of the old
decreased radically and the old felt free in a way once reserved for
the young or extremely wealthy. But the cost was a socety where death
outraced birth.
In large
parts of the West immigration is the only thing that so far to have
stopped the slow death, or at least held it off for a while. A short
term solution to the problem would be to let more immigrants into our
countries, but this "solution" has another effect on the rest of the
world: the removal of the highly educated. This effect is so severe in
fact that for exampel China have had to stop their free university
education programs that they have had for thousands of years.They
simply cannot afford it when the fruit of their investments is drained
away by the West. This shows a cler trend: the pool from which we draw
skilled labor is slowly drying out..
Where is the way out? |
※ 来源:Unknown Friends - 未名交友 http://us.jiaoyou8.com ※
|
|