Steve Goddard's History Wire

Guest Review: Prospero's America

Editor's Note: Today, we welcome back the Rev. Gordon Bates, who has reviewed numerous books for History Wire on the subjects of religion and theology.

 

Prospero’s America: John Winthrop, Jr., Alchemy and The Creation of New England Culture, 1606-1676, by Walter W. Woodward, University of North Carolina Press, '10, 308 pages, ISBN #978-0-8078-3301-8. Index, footnotes, b&w illustrations and copies of documents sprinkled through text.

 

The prevailing scholarship for the past century is challenged and “re-conceptualized” by this thoroughly researched study of John Winthrop, Jr. by Walter Woodward, Connecticut’s State Historian and Assistant Professor of History at the University of Connecticut.  Winthrop, the son of the first Governor of Massachusetts, has largely been ignored or at best granted only a brief comment or two, usually to mention that he somehow arranged for a Royal Charter for Connecticut in 1662.  

Using Winthrop’s own correspondence plus other documents, Woodward carefully summarizes the hidden network of alchemists and other allies Winthrop had to use to obtain the Charter from Charles II of England.  The very difficult task and the resulting unexpectedly liberal arrangement laid the foundation for the subsequent autonomy of the Colony of Connecticut.  A leading source of the King’s information about New England, Winthrop was active in mining, agriculture, medical care, husbandry, theology, mineralogy and natural philosophy along with politics. 

 

Woodward demonstrates with extensive documentation that Winthrop was an incredibly productive scientist and intellectual; a naturalist and a medical resource; a religiously faithful Puritan. and an economically savvy entrepreneur.  During his time as Governor of Connecticut (1659-76), he risked his reputation to stop the hysterical accusations and convictions of witches in Connecticut, using his hard-earned authority in medicine and the occult to elevate the rule of law. 

He was the first colonial member of the Royal Society of Science but he was also in many ways a traditional Puritan.  Working closely with a much neglected array of Puritans who were active with him in science, medicine and politics, Winthrop sought to further the Puritan religious goal of creating a godly society in the new world that would be a model for the old world. 

 

The key to this new prominence for John Winthrop, Jr., is research that has been in process for the past twenty years around the importance of 17^th century alchemy and what is called the “pansophist vision” rooted in the ideas of Francis Bacon and other English intellectuals.   Long dismissed by scholars, alchemy has consistently been viewed simply as a misguided pseudo-science, a foolish attempt to turn lead into gold. 

Woodward’s aim is to shed a more positive light on the quest for transmutation and other alchemical goals as well as John Winthrop’s role in that endeavor. This reader expects that Woodward’s thesis will stand up to peer review, and certainly the initial impression is one of a truly impressive effort to give a balanced assessment of an almost forgotten New England leader and of a score of other topics long ignored in the region’s history.

Gordon Bates is a retired clergyman in the United Church of Christ with a special interest incolonial times and the history of American criminal justice.   He is currently writing the story of the Connecticut Prison Association, formed in 1875.

  

The Founding Fathers, Unzipped

Newsweek.com:

"He may have written the Declaration of Independence, but were he around today Thomas Jefferson wouldn’t have a prayer of winning the Republican nomination, much less the presidency. It wouldn’t be his liaison with the teenage daughter of one of his slaves nor the love children she bore him that would be the stumbling block. Nor would it be Jefferson’s suspicious possession of an English translation of the Quran that might doom him to fail the Newt Gingrich loyalty test.

"No, it would be the Jesus problem that would do him in. For Thomas Jefferson denied that Jesus was the son of God. Worse, he refused to believe that Jesus ever made any claim that he was. While he was at it, Jefferson also rejected as self-evidently absurd the Trinity, the Virgin Birth, and the Resurrection.

"Jefferson was not, as his enemies in the election of 1800 claimed, an atheist. He believed in the Creator whom he invoked in the Declaration of Independence and whom he thought had brought the natural universe into being. By his own lights he thought himself a true Christian, an admirer of the moral teachings of the Nazarene. It had been, he argued, generations of the clergy who had perverted the simple humanity of Jesus the reformer, turned him into a messiah, and invented the myth that he had died to redeem mankind’s sins."

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FOCUS: American Government -- A Reforming People / Joel Barlow

A Reforming People -- Puritanism and the Transformation of Public Life in New England by David D. Hall, Knopf '11, $29.95, 255 pages, ISBN #0679441174. Index, notes, no bibliography or illustrations.

We learn in American grade schools that New England colonists brought with them from Britain "a deep fear of arbitrary, unlimited authority grounded in either church or state" and determined to effect reforms to reverse that circumstance. In his latest book, historian David D. Hall probes the ways colonists "set up churches, civil governments, and methods for distributing land' and compares them with reforms attempted in England during the period of the English Revolution. Using a case study of a single town, Hall challenges the conventional wisdom that Puritans were temperamentally authoritarian and their leadership despotic. In fact, he writes, the colonists "hoped to exemplify a social ethics of equity, peace, and the common good." David D. Hall is Bartlett Research Professor of New England Church History at Harvard Divinity School.

Joel Barlow -- American Citizen in a Revolutionary World by Richard Buel, Jr., Johns Hopkins University Press '11, 433 pages, ISBN #0801897696. Index, essay on sources, notes, b&w images sprinkled sparsely through text.

Over the generations, historians have written to death about such American founding fathers as Jefferson, Washington, Adams, Madison and Ben Franklin. But recently, they are bringing to the fore -- good for them! -- the lives of lesser known figures who may have, in fact, accomplished as much as their more famous brothers. Next week, History Wire will review a biography of Noah Webster, described as the "forgotten founding father" yet who did so much more than invent the modern dictionary. Today, we spotlight Joel Barlow, whose biographer contends was "more intimately connected to the Age of Revolution than perhaps any other American," from "writing his epic poem, The Vision of Columbus, to plotting a republican revolution in Britain to negotiating the release of American sailors taken captive by Barbary pirates...." Richard Buel, Jr. is emeritus professor of history at Wesleyan University.

The Outsiders: Rebuilding a Part of Town People Thought Would Never Change

The New Yorker:

The Church of Saints Peter and Paul in South Boston has had its share of both bedevilment and blessings. A grand gray building, a pile of granite chunks pierced by Gothic arches and topped with a copper-clad bell tower, was erected in 1844 and dedicated with extravagant ceremony; four years later, it burned to the ground.

"After it was rebuilt, it was so popular that another parish had to be established nearby to handle the overflow. But in time South Boston started to empty—slowly at first, and then like a bathtub with an open drain—and Saints Peter and Paul emptied, too. On New Year’s Day, 1996, the Boston Archdiocese desanctified the most eminent Catholic church in the area and shut it down.

"But last spring Saints Peter and Paul was reborn once more. Cleaned up and cleared out, with additional windows cut through its three-foot-thick walls and the new, secular name of 45 West Broadway, it went on the market as thirty-six luxury condominiums suspended in the building’s soaring open space."

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Bachmann's John Wayne Gaffe Overshadows Campaign Launch

Slate.com:

"Michele Bachmann spent plenty of time Monday letting everyone know that she was born in Waterloo, Iowa, a small industrial town she credits with instilling within her many of her conservative ideals.

"But in one interview surrounding her formal campaign rollout, the Tea Party favorite seems to have gotten a little confused about some of the finer points of the Hawkeye State’s history.

"Speaking to Fox News, Bachmann said that she had the same spirit as Waterloo’s own John Wayne. One can only assume that she was referring to the movie star, who was born in Winterset, Iowa, roughly a three-hour drive from Waterloo. The problem, however, is that Waterloo appears to have much closer ties to serial killer John Wayne Gacy, the 'killer clown' who had his first criminal conviction there."

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What Would Nixon Do?

The New York Times:

 

                                                      BY GIDEON ROSE

"PRESIDENT OBAMA has made good on his pledge to begin drawing down American forces in Afghanistan, but his stated strategy is unlikely to lead to a successful withdrawal.

"Mr. Obama announced last week that 10,000 troops would come home by December and another 23,000 by next summer. By 2014, he confidently proclaimed, 'the Afghan people will be responsible for their own security.'

"Administration hawks, largely in the military, are uneasy; they had wanted to go slower, so as to safeguard recent gains made against the Taliban. Administration doves, largely in the White House, are disappointed; they had wanted to pull back faster, seeing the killing of Osama bin Laden as an ideal opportunity to get out."

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FOCUS: On the Open Sea -- Sweatshops at Sea / The Exceptionalist State and the State of Exception

Sweatshops at Sea -- Merchant Seamen in the World's First Globalized Industry, from 1812 to the Present by Leon Fink, UNo. Carolina Press '11, $34.95, 288 pages, ISBN #0807834505. Index, works cited, notes, b&w images sprinkled through text.

Given the fact that merchant shipping was the world's first globalized industry, it follows that the evolution of laws and labor relations governing ordinary seamen would be a key element of its history. Historian Leon Fink explores both "how political and economic ends are reflected in maritime labor regulations and how agents of reform -- including governments, trade unions, and global standard-setting authorities -- grappled with the problems of land-based, national principles and regulations of labor discipline and management to the sea-going labor force." Leon Fink teaches history at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

The Exceptionalist and the State of Exception -- Herman Melville's Billy Budd, Sailor by William V. Spanos, Johns Hopkins UPress '11, $65, 210 pages, ISBN #0801898498. Index, source notes, no bibliography or illustrations.

In his latest book, Herman Melville authority Prof. William V. Spanos challenges the conventional wisdom that Melville's Billy Budd, Sailor, was "the work of a man who had become politically conservative in his last years." He argues that this novella was "not only a politically radical critique of American exceptionalism but also an eerie preview of the state of exception employed, most recently, by the George W. Bush administration in the post-9/11 War on Terror." William V. Spanos is Distinguished Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the State University of New York at Binghamton, and has written two other  books about Melville's iconic novel Moby Dick.

 

Tensions Rise Over a Buried Chinatown

The Los Angeles Times:

"A fenced lot overgrown with weeds near the heart of downtown Riverside is believed to contain the largest undisturbed early settlement of Chinese farmworkers in Southern California. But now a local developer wants to put up a medical building there.

"The proposal has touched off a legal battle with activists who want the lot and its buried artifacts to become a memorial park. They say it should honor early Chinese pioneers and stand testament to the prejudice that led to the birth and demise of this Inland Empire Chinatown.

"Though it was smaller than the urban Chinatowns of San Francisco and Los Angeles, activists say the Riverside Chinatown played an integral — and largely forgotten — role in creating Southern California's flourishing citrus belt.

"Riverside developer Doug Jacobs wants to buy the property to build a medical facility. Activists sued to block the sale temporarily, and Jacobs' side has appealed. In response to activists' concerns, Jacobs said he would set aside room for a Chinese garden and a display area to showcase artifacts.

"'This site has been nothing but a weed and trash dumping ground,' Jacobs said. 'I am building a medical facility because it's needed.'"

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FOCUS: A Potpourri -- Manstein / Katana: The Samurai Sword / Conflicts of Interest and the Future of Medicine

Manstein -- Hitler's Greatest General by Major General Mungo Melvin, Dunne/St. Martin's Press '11, $37.50, 647 pages, ISBN #0312563124. Index, select bibliography, notes, chronology, grouping of glossy b&w images, grouping of color glossy maps.

British Major General Mungo Melvin writes in his new book that Nazi Field Marshal Erich von Manstein "was a much-respected master of maneuver. He was the mastermind who created the plan for the 1940 blitzkreig that overran France in just six weeks. He played a key role in the invasion of Russia and conquered the Crimea. He inflicted a massive defeat on the Red Army at Kharkov, a battle that he been studied in military academies ever since. Sentenced to eighteen years' imprisonment for war crimes, he was released after just three years and then advised the West German government in raising its new army in the 1950s." Major General Mungo Melvin is senior directing staff (Army), Royal College of Defence Studies, London.

Katana: The Samurai Sword by Stephen Turnbull, Osprey '10 paperback in oversized format on glossy color stock. $17.95, 80 pages, ISBN #1849081514. Index, select bibliography, glossary, dozens of partial-page or full-page glossy b&w or color images.

"The Katana," writes Stephen Turnbull, "is the ultimate evolution of the Japanese sword, whose traditions date back to ancient Japan. Arguably the finest edged weapon ever made, combining a lethal cutting edge with a flexible and resilient core, a fine katana is as much a work of art as a deadly weapon. For centuries it was also the defining icon of the samurai, as it was above all the possession of a katana that identified those belonging to Japan's warrior class." Turnbull goes on to explore "the astonishing craftsmanship that gave the katana its particular qualities, as well as the swordsmanship of famous samurai and great masters, and recounts dramatic tales of the katana's use -- from private duels and revenge killings to its role in full-scale samurai warfare." Stephen Turnbull currently divides his time between lecturing in Japanese Religion and History at Leeds University and freelance writing.

Conflicts of interest and the Future of Medicine: The United States, France, and Japan. Oxford '11, 374 pages, ISBN #0199755485. Index, bibliography, notes, glossary, acronyms, b&w images sprinkled through text. 

Scholar Mark A. Rodwin delves into the history of America, France, and Japan to explore the development of conflicts of interest resulting from "physicians practicing medicine as entrepreneurs, from physicians' ties to pharma, and from investor-owned firms and insurers' influence over physicians' medical choices." Such conflicts, of course, "raise questions about physicians' loyalty to their patients and their professional and economic independence." Helpfully, Rodwin then analyzes the effectiveness of strategies that each of the three nations uses to cope with them. Mark A. Rodwin is the author of Medicine, Money and Morals: Physicians' Conflicts of Interest and has written many articles on health law, ethics, politics, and policy.

The President and the Lunatic

AmericanHeritage.org:

                                                 BY BRUCE WATSON

"One warm summer night in 1881, a scrawny, nervous man sat in his boarding house a few blocks from the White House. Outside his window, gaslights flickered and horses clopped over cobblestones, but Charles Guiteau barely noticed. For six weeks now, a divine inspiration had festered in his fevered brain. The president, God told Guiteau, had to be 'removed.'

"Since early June, the lunatic had stalked the president with gun in hand. Enraged at James Garfield for fracturing the Republican Party, convinced that the split would precipitate a second civil war, Guiteau pursued his prey with single-minded calculation. One Sunday he aimed at Garfield through a church window; the following Saturday he crouched in a train depot as the president walked past, but spared him out of pity for the ailing wife clinging to her husband’s arm. A few mornings later, the little man waited along the Potomac, where the president often rode. No horse passed. Now Guiteau could wait no longer, and he began a letter to be delivered the next day:"

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