- Feb 2022
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edblogs.columbia.edu edblogs.columbia.edu
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Before the Furies lighted their torches in St. Domingue
I.e., the Haitian Revolution —Why the euphemism?
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1700
This would be before Sloane published his Voyage in 1707—1707 was also the year of the Act of the Union, which united England and Scotland into a single imperial entity; hence in the next paragraph, Moseley begins accounting for England and Scotland together. Empire is indeed very much at the fore of Moseley's preoccupations in the following paragraphs...
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- Jan 2022
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edblogs.columbia.edu edblogs.columbia.edu
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Cassada
Cassada (Manihot esculenta). Cassava. Also known as manioc and yuca. It was domesticated in South America thousands of years ago and then brought to the Caribbean islands by Amerindians. It was one of the most important food sources for Amerindians during the precolonial era; it was subsequently adopted by Africans and Europeans in the Caribbean as well. Cultivated varieties of cassava are classed into two groups: bitter and sweet. Bitter cassava is highly poisonous: its roots, which are the parts of the plant that are prepared for consumption, contain cyanide. Cassava has advantages that offset its toxic nature, however: it can grow in poor soils and conditions, one planting produces several harvests, and the roots can be stored in the ground for a long time without spoiling. The root’s poison also can be neutralized by proper processing: Amerindians and other early Caribbean consumers usually processed cassava root by grating it and then pressing the poisonous juice out of it to make a flour, which could be eaten as a porridge or turned into various cakes or breads. Sweet cassava is not poisonous and can be eaten without the processing that bitter cassava requires. Although it is more dangerous to eat, bitter cassava historically has been cultivated more than sweet cassava, perhaps because it has a higher yield and because it makes a better flour (from Barry W. Higman, Jamaican Food: History, Biology, Culture, 61-69).
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THE first Discovery of the West-Indies
[EXAMPLE ANNOTATION] Why does Sloane feel the need to recount the story of Columbus' voyage?
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The Accounts of these strange Things, which I met with in Collections, and, was inform’d, were common in the West-Indies, were not so satisfactory as I desired. I was Young, and could not be so easy, if I had not the pleasure to see what I had heard so much of,
[EXAMPLE ANNOTATION] Sloane begins by presenting one of his primary motivations for going to Jamaica as a matter of sheer intellectual curiosity—he grew up fascinated by "Accounts of ... strange Things" from the Americas, as well as by things displayed in cabinets of curiosities (which were, in a way, an early kind of a museum), and that spurred him to eventually go off to the West Indies. Sloane neatly elides, thus, crucial considerations of the social capital and actual capital he would derive from taking on a New World expedition and bringing back specimens that he would have known Europeans were eager for, and rather purifies his project
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- Nov 2021
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digital-grainger.github.io digital-grainger.github.io
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in order to make it a good fence
Grainger is quite keen on fences and how plants can be grown into fences, throughout the text
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desist
I'm always struck by how Grainger portrays the enslaved as so eager to work, after all those passages that go through the ways in which they actively don't work. The planter lets them labor, and must make them "desist" from "their toil" and not let them return "to the hoe" until "the broom her every petal lock"... Also striking is the way Grainger frames the scene with beauty, through flowers, both within the verse and with the footnotes on flower blooms.
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The negroes differ: muse that difference sing
Regarding the role of the muse: I think it interesting here that the muse is now not only the one "pit[ying] [Africk's] distressful state" (IV.14), but also the one that enables the poet to parse the "difference" among African peoples.
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the leach
Earlier in lines 275-76, Grainger wrote of "let[ting] the learned leach / Give, in due dose, live-silver from the mine" to treat Africans infected with the yaw. Would that "leach" be the same as the "leach" here—i.e., an "Obia-man"?
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See them dragg’d in chains, By proud insulting tyrants,
There's something almost Shakespearean-sounding about the phrase "proud insulting tyrants" (cp. for example, the line that goes "Insulting tyranny begins to jut / Upon the innocent..." in Richard III, 2.4.55-56)—the stresses are so emphatic that I was surprised to realize that the line keeps within an iambic pentameter. Thomas Mercer in the second part of a poem called "The Sentimental Sailor" hews very closely to Grainger's descriptions here about laborers who are dragged down to the mines, when describing Peruvian and Mexican miners, and quotes this part from Grainger almost verbatim: https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Sentimental_Sailor/7_FbAAAAQAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=%22proud+insulting+tyrants%22&pg=PA19&printsec=frontcover
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Of an American garden.
What does it mean to be "American," in this poem? The "American" garden turns out to be "Indian gardens" (line 488): gardens that merge the native vegetation with European plants that "Might be instructed to unlearn their clime, / And by due discipline adopt the sun" (lines 494-95).
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- Jun 2018
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ktakahata.github.io ktakahata.github.iopage 1443
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Guinea
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Obia
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Obia-men
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ktakahata.github.io ktakahata.github.iopage 1436
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negroe-conjurers, or Obia-men
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They likewise feel imaginary woes; Woes no less deadly
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Lusitania’s chiefs
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Columbus
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Eurus
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By thee white Albion, once a barbarous clime, Grew fam’d for arms, for wisdom, and for laws
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ktakahata.github.io ktakahata.github.iopage 1424
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Ceres
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Sylvanus
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Belgian fens
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Enna
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ktakahata.github.io ktakahata.github.iopage 1416
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Strabo
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vast Asia’s King
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the sons of Attic’s sterile land
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polish’d Tyrians
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The mineral product of the Cornish mine
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worm-grass
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ktakahata.github.io ktakahata.github.iopage 1407
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cow—itch
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“melt with minings of the hectic fire.”
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dropsy
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Ague
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Mania
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Libya’s sons
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Worms
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ktakahata.github.io ktakahata.github.iopage 1394
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ingraft (Thus, the small-pox are happily convey’d;/) This ailment early to thy Negroe-train?
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sons of Guinea
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successive crops Of defedations oft will spot the skin: These thou, with turpentine and guaiac pods, Reduc’d by coction to a wholesome draught, Total remove, and give the blood its balm
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Then let the learned leach [275] Give, in due dose, live-silver from the mine; Till copious spitting the whole taint exhaust.
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ktakahata.github.io ktakahata.github.iopage 1387
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niccars/] The botanical name of this medicinal shrub is Guilandina.
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The South-Americans call them Miguas.
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Chigoes or Chigres
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WIth heartning food, with turtle, and which conchs; The flowers of sulphur, and hard niccars burnt
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yaw
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the Aethiop-kind
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Fell, winged insects, which the visual ray Scarcely discerns, their sable feet and hands Oft penetrate; and, in the flesh nest, Myriads of young produce; which soon destroy [260] The parts they breed in; if assiduous care, With art, extract not the prolific foe.
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ktakahata.github.io ktakahata.github.iopage 1372
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Yet, if due skill, And proper circumspection are employed, [250] It may be won its volumes to wind round A leaden cylinder: But, O, beware, No rashness practise; else ‘twill surely snap, And suddenly, retreating, dire produce An annual lameness to the tortured Moor.
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worm
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ktakahata.github.io ktakahata.github.iopage 1361
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Indus
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ktakahata.github.io ktakahata.github.iopage 1351
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Study their humours
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ktakahata.github.io ktakahata.github.iopage 1343
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Drave
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those poor slaves, Who, whilom, under native, gracious chiefs, Incas and emperors, long time enjoy’d [185] Mild government, with every sweet of life, In blissful climates? See them dragg’d in chains, By proud insulting tyrants, to the mines Which once they call’d their own, and then despised!
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With what intense severity of pain Hath the afflicted muse, in Scotia, seen THe miners rack’d, who toil for fatal lead? What cramps, what palsies shake their feeble limbs, [180] Who, on the margin of the rocky Drave, Trace silver’s fluent ore? Yet white men these!
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ktakahata.github.io ktakahata.github.iopage 1333
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In dark tartarean caves, sunk far beneath
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this unwholesome food
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dropsy
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ktakahata.github.io ktakahata.github.iopage 1324
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The loathsome leporsy
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turtle
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Lybians
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No rheums, no dysenteric ails torment: The thirsty hydrops flies
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ktakahata.github.io ktakahata.github.iopage 1319
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Its Indian name is Acajou
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draw From each some blood, as age and sex require; And well with vervain, well with sempre-vive; Unload their bowels.
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cherries
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acajou
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the white eagle; deadly foe to worms
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sempre-vive
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vervain
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Machaon
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Ethiop
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ktakahata.github.io ktakahata.github.iopage 1306
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prone to bloat
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the Quanza
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Who from Mundingo sail
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WORMS
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The Moco-nation
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slaves from Minnah
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ktakahata.github.io ktakahata.github.iopage 1293
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rice, or yams, or lofty maize
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tobacco
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a Cormantee
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ktakahata.github.io ktakahata.github.iopage 1283
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the numerous tribes, that skirt the shore, From rapid Volta to the distant Rey
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the Pawpaws
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children of the Golden Coast
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ktakahata.github.io ktakahata.github.iopage 1273
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Zaire
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those from Congo’s wide—extended plains
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funny Libyan
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ktakahata.github.io ktakahata.github.iopage 1262
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Melvil
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Libya’s wilds
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ktakahata.github.io ktakahata.github.iopage 1255
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Sanaga
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Rio Grande
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palm
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Niger
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pawpaw
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ktakahata.github.io ktakahata.github.iopage 1212
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“For naught is useless made:”
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“Stage above stage, in various verdure drest,”
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ktakahata.github.io ktakahata.github.iopage 1205
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Colonel Christopher Codrington
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How have thy banks been died with brother-blood? Unnatural warfare!
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Rhine
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Scotia
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wild Cambira’s hills
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