We will have a break at 8:00. The Discussion will be at 9:45 before you are dismissed.
- Complete and submit Week 5 Quiz 4 covering Chapters 27 and 28 - 40 Points
- Read the following from your textbook:
-
- Chapter 29: Defining a Nation – Culture in America
- Chapter 30: Global Confrontation and Modern Life – Europe and Asia in the 1800s
- Explore the Week 5 Music Folder
- View the Week 5 Lecture videos
- Do the Week 5 Explore Activities
- Participate in the Week 5 Discussion (choose only one (1) of the discussion options) - 20 Points
*Deadline for submitting activity proposal for Week 10 paper (Assignment 3)*
REVIEW
American Transcendentalism, 2:32
American Realism, 2:09
American Civil War, 2:20
Liberalism & Nationalism (and the Hausmannization of Paris), 2:00
Pre-Built Course Content
HUM112 Music Clips for Week 5
This Week's music clips relate to Chapters 29 and 30.
Stephen Collins Foster (July 4, 1826 – January 13, 1864), known as "the father of American music", was an American songwriter primarily known for his parlor and minstrel music. Foster wrote over 200 songs; among his best-known are "Oh! Susanna", "Camptown Races", "Old Folks at Home", "My Old Kentucky Home", "Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair", "Old Black Joe", and "Beautiful Dreamer".
Many of his compositions remain popular more than 150 years after he wrote them. His compositions are thought to be autobiographical. He has been identified as "the most famous songwriter of the nineteenth century", and may be the most recognizable American composer in other countries. His compositions are sometimes referred to as "childhood songs" because they are included in the music curriculum of early education. Most of his handwritten music manuscripts are lost but copies printed by publishers of his day can be found in various collections.[3]
Sentimental Reflections The Music of Stephen Foster, 3:56
Sentimental Reflections is a quarterly video series produced by Sentimental Productions that presents America's heritage in story, scenery & song. This is a short clip featuring the music of Stephen Foster, who is considered America's first great songwriter. The full segment is in the Spring 2012 Edition of the video magazine. For more information, go to: www.sentimental.cc
https://youtu.be/DgNbU1dkXzs
Stephen Collins Foster (July 4, 1826 – January 13, 1864), known as "the father of American music", was an American songwriter primarily known for his parlor and minstrel music. Foster wrote over 200 songs; among his best-known are "Oh! Susanna", "Camptown Races", "Old Folks at Home", "My Old Kentucky Home", "Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair", "Old Black Joe", and "Beautiful Dreamer".
Many of his compositions remain popular more than 150 years after he wrote them. His compositions are thought to be autobiographical. He has been identified as "the most famous songwriter of the nineteenth century", and may be the most recognizable American composer in other countries. His compositions are sometimes referred to as "childhood songs" because they are included in the music curriculum of early education. Most of his handwritten music manuscripts are lost but copies printed by publishers of his day can be found in various collections.[3]
Sentimental Reflections The Music of Stephen Foster, 3:56
Sentimental Reflections is a quarterly video series produced by Sentimental Productions that presents America's heritage in story, scenery & song. This is a short clip featuring the music of Stephen Foster, who is considered America's first great songwriter. The full segment is in the Spring 2012 Edition of the video magazine. For more information, go to: www.sentimental.cc
https://youtu.be/DgNbU1dkXzs
- Stephen Foster, "Camptown Races" (also called "Camptown Ladies"
-
- "Gwine to Run All Night, or De Camptown Races" (popularly known as "Camptown Races") is a minstrel song by Stephen Foster (1826–1864). (
Play (help·info)[2]) It was published by F. D. Benteen of Baltimore, Maryland,
in February 1850. Benteen published another edition in 1852 with guitar
accompaniment under the title, "The Celebrated Ethiopian Song/Camptown
Races".
Richard Jackson writes,
Foster quite specifically tailored the song for use on the minstrel stage. He composed it as a piece for solo voice with group interjections and refrain ... his dialect verses have all the wild exaggeration and rough charm of folk tale as well as some of his most vivid imagery ... Together with "Oh! Susanna", "Camptown Races" is one of the gems of the minstrel era."[3]
In The Americana Song Reader, William Emmett Studwell writes that the song was introduced by the Christy Minstrels, and noting that "[Foster's] nonsense lyrics are much of the charm of this bouncy and enduring bit of Americana ... [The song] was a big hit with minstrel troupes throughout the country." Foster's music was used for derivatives that include "Sacramento", "A Capital Ship" (1875) and a pro-Lincoln parody introduced during the 1860 presidential campaign.[4]
In America's Musical Life, Richard Crawford observes that the song resembles Dan Emmett's "Old Dan Tucker", and suggests Foster used Emmett's piece as a model. Both songs feature contrast between a high instrumental register with a low vocal one, comic exaggeration, hyperbole, verse and refrain, call and response, and syncopation. However, Foster's melody is "jaunty and tuneful" while Emmett's is "driven and aggressive". Crawford points out that the differences in the two songs represent not only two different musical styles, but a shift in minstrelsy from the rough spirit and "muscular, unlyrical music" of the 1840s to a more genteel spirit and lyricism with an expanding repertoire that included sad songs, sentimental and love songs, and parodies of opera. Crawford explains that by mid-century, the "noisy, impromptu entertainments" characteristic of Dan Emmett and the Virginia Minstrels were passé and the minstrel stage was evolving into a "restrained and balanced kind of spectacle". He writes, "In that setting, a comic song like 'De Camptown Races', with a tune strong enough to hold performers to the prescribed notes, proved a means of channeling unruliness into a more controlled mode of expression."[5]
Its tune has also been adopted for use in football chants, most notably in England's Two World Wars and One World Cup chant.
- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXE_PfcXtYE (chap. 29, pp. 967-968) See lyrics at http://www.songlyrics.com/various-artists/camptown-races-lyrics/ .
- "Gwine to Run All Night, or De Camptown Races" (popularly known as "Camptown Races") is a minstrel song by Stephen Foster (1826–1864). (
Read
carefully pp. 967-8 (in chap. 29) about Stephen Foster's attempt to do a
"new kind of music that did not "trivialize the hardships of slavery"
and would "humanize the characters", black and white. Often he succeeded, but some of his lyrics retained racial tones common in the earlier minstrel music.
This minstrel song ("Camptown Races") was composed in 1850, a decade
before the Civil War. Note how Eastman Johnson's painting (p. 967, fig.
29.15) is thematically connected to many of Foster's songs. A camptown
was more like a tent city for poor blacks and whites; they were often
set up near railroad tracks so that trains could be easily hopped to go
to jobs down the line. The song has poor folks discussing bets on horse
races to try to make some money. See
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=126035325 for a discussion of Foster's contributions and work.
According to music expert, Ken Emerson:
"There's one song he wrote, for instance, ["The Glendy Burk"] which deliberately quotes two measures of Schubert and then quotes two measures of a Robert Burns Scottish ballad, so that you have sort of a Scottish [sound] and a German [sound] you know, spliced," Emerson explains. "And that kind of wit and craft is something that people didn't realize Foster possessed when we used to think of him as sort of this naive folk poet with his finger on the pulse of the American soul, in a sort of a salt-of-the-earth way. He was a much more conscious writer who didn't just compose his songs. He contrived them."
In addition, Foster's lyrics at their best they imbue African Americans with a dignity and pathos that were unprecedented. No songwriter had called a black woman a lady before "Nelly Was a Lady." Unbeknown to most of the throng that sings bowdlerized lyrics on Derby Day, "My Old Kentucky Home" does not celebrate cavaliers and crinolines in the Old South — it invokes Uncle Tom's Cabin and indicts slavery for breaking up black families.
Nelly Was a Lady
Lyrics by Stephen Foster
Down on de Mississippi floating,
Long time I trabble on de way,
All night de cottonwood a toting,
Sing for my true-lub all de day.
CHORUS
Nelly was a lady
Last night she died,
Toll de bell for lubly Nell
My dark Virginny bride.
2
Now I'm unhappy and I'm weeping,
Can't tote de cotton-wood no more;
Last night, while Nelly was a sleeping,
Death came a knockin at de door.
3
When I saw my Nelly in de morning,
Smile till she open'd up her eyes,
Seem'd like de light ob day a dawning,
Jist 'fore de sun begin to rise.
4
Close by de margin ob de water,
Whar de lone weeping willow grows,
Dar lib'd Virginny's lubly daughter;
Dar she in death may find repose.
5
Down in de meadow mong de clober,
Walk wid my Nelly by my side;
Now all dem happy days am ober,
Farewell my dark Virginny bride.
1849
NELLY WAS A LADY by Stephen Foster words lyrics best popular old American folk songs sing along, 3:38
https://youtu.be/Rbh2n95HbX4
Many of his plantation melodies frequently expressed sympathy for the plight of slaves. "Hard Times Come Again No More" has been recorded more frequently in recent years than any other Foster composition.
It was probably inspired by widespread economic distress in 1854 and by Charles Dickens' recently serialized novel Hard Times, set in an imaginary Coketown — "a town of machinery and tall chimneys, out of which interminable serpents of smoke trailed themselves forever and ever" — that may have reminded Foster of Pittsburgh.
In his declining days, which Foster eerily anticipated in the lurid "The Little Ballad Girl," he was reported to have sung "Hard Times" "with a pathos that a state of semi-inebriation often lends the voice."
Hard Times Come Again No More
Lyrics by Stephen Foster
Let us pause in life's pleasures and count its many tears
While we all sup sorrow with the poor:
There's a song that will linger forever in our ears;
Oh! Hard Times, come again no more.
CHORUS
'Tis the song the sigh of the weary;
Hard Times, Hard Times, come again no more;
Many days you have lingered around my cabin door,
Oh! Hard Times, come again no more.
2
While we seek mirth and beauty and music light and gay
There are frail forms fainting at the door:
Though their voices are silent, their pleading looks will say
Oh! Hard Times, come again no more.
3
There's a pale drooping maiden who toils her life away
With a worn heart whose better days are o'er:
Though her voice would be merry, 'tis sighing all the day
Oh! Hard Times, come again no more.
4
'Tis a sigh that is wafted across the troubled wave,
'Tis a wail that is heard upon the shore,
'Tis a dirge that is murmured around the lowly grave,
Oh! Hard Times, come again no more.
1854
Jennifer Warnes - "Hard Times (Come Again No More)" by Stephen Foster, 3:34http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=126035325 for a discussion of Foster's contributions and work.
According to music expert, Ken Emerson:
"There's one song he wrote, for instance, ["The Glendy Burk"] which deliberately quotes two measures of Schubert and then quotes two measures of a Robert Burns Scottish ballad, so that you have sort of a Scottish [sound] and a German [sound] you know, spliced," Emerson explains. "And that kind of wit and craft is something that people didn't realize Foster possessed when we used to think of him as sort of this naive folk poet with his finger on the pulse of the American soul, in a sort of a salt-of-the-earth way. He was a much more conscious writer who didn't just compose his songs. He contrived them."
In addition, Foster's lyrics at their best they imbue African Americans with a dignity and pathos that were unprecedented. No songwriter had called a black woman a lady before "Nelly Was a Lady." Unbeknown to most of the throng that sings bowdlerized lyrics on Derby Day, "My Old Kentucky Home" does not celebrate cavaliers and crinolines in the Old South — it invokes Uncle Tom's Cabin and indicts slavery for breaking up black families.
Nelly Was a Lady
Lyrics by Stephen Foster
Down on de Mississippi floating,
Long time I trabble on de way,
All night de cottonwood a toting,
Sing for my true-lub all de day.
CHORUS
Nelly was a lady
Last night she died,
Toll de bell for lubly Nell
My dark Virginny bride.
2
Now I'm unhappy and I'm weeping,
Can't tote de cotton-wood no more;
Last night, while Nelly was a sleeping,
Death came a knockin at de door.
3
When I saw my Nelly in de morning,
Smile till she open'd up her eyes,
Seem'd like de light ob day a dawning,
Jist 'fore de sun begin to rise.
4
Close by de margin ob de water,
Whar de lone weeping willow grows,
Dar lib'd Virginny's lubly daughter;
Dar she in death may find repose.
5
Down in de meadow mong de clober,
Walk wid my Nelly by my side;
Now all dem happy days am ober,
Farewell my dark Virginny bride.
1849
NELLY WAS A LADY by Stephen Foster words lyrics best popular old American folk songs sing along, 3:38
https://youtu.be/Rbh2n95HbX4
Many of his plantation melodies frequently expressed sympathy for the plight of slaves. "Hard Times Come Again No More" has been recorded more frequently in recent years than any other Foster composition.
It was probably inspired by widespread economic distress in 1854 and by Charles Dickens' recently serialized novel Hard Times, set in an imaginary Coketown — "a town of machinery and tall chimneys, out of which interminable serpents of smoke trailed themselves forever and ever" — that may have reminded Foster of Pittsburgh.
In his declining days, which Foster eerily anticipated in the lurid "The Little Ballad Girl," he was reported to have sung "Hard Times" "with a pathos that a state of semi-inebriation often lends the voice."
Hard Times Come Again No More
Lyrics by Stephen Foster
Let us pause in life's pleasures and count its many tears
While we all sup sorrow with the poor:
There's a song that will linger forever in our ears;
Oh! Hard Times, come again no more.
CHORUS
'Tis the song the sigh of the weary;
Hard Times, Hard Times, come again no more;
Many days you have lingered around my cabin door,
Oh! Hard Times, come again no more.
2
While we seek mirth and beauty and music light and gay
There are frail forms fainting at the door:
Though their voices are silent, their pleading looks will say
Oh! Hard Times, come again no more.
3
There's a pale drooping maiden who toils her life away
With a worn heart whose better days are o'er:
Though her voice would be merry, 'tis sighing all the day
Oh! Hard Times, come again no more.
4
'Tis a sigh that is wafted across the troubled wave,
'Tis a wail that is heard upon the shore,
'Tis a dirge that is murmured around the lowly grave,
Oh! Hard Times, come again no more.
1854
https://youtu.be/-kETg8zNwz4
Camptown Races, 2:20
https://youtu.be/VXE_PfcXtYE
"Camptown Races" sometimes referred to as "Camptown Ladies" is a comic song written by Stephen Foster (!826-1864) and published in 1850 in Foster's Plantation Melodies. Stephen Foster is known as the father of American music and was the pre-eminent songwriter in the United States of the 19th century.
The Camptown of Foster's own experience was in Pennsylvania, but a "camptown," or tent city was a temporary workingmen's accomodation familiar in many parts of the United States, especially along the rapidly expanding railroad network.
The rag-tag mix of horses that are racing, and the disorder of the racing conditions at the ramshackle camptown track provide fun, with the unspoken undercurrent of superiority among the entertained hearers.
(D) Camptown ladies sing a song (A7) Doo dah, doo Dah (D) Camptown racetrack five miles long (A7) Oh the doo dah (D) day Come here with my hat caved in (A7) Doo dah, doo dah (D) Come back home with a pocket full of tin (A7) Oh the doo dah (D) day Going to run all (G) night Going to run all (D) day Bet my money on the bob-tailed nag (A7) Somebody bet on the (D) bay The long tailed filly and the big black hoss (A7) Doo dah, doo dah (D) They fly the track, they both cut across (A7) Oh the doo dah (D) day The Black hoss stickin' in a big mud hole (A7) Doo dah, doo dah (D) Can't touch the bottom with a ten foot pole (A7) Oh the doo dah (D) day Going to run all (G) night Going to run all (D) day Bet my money on the bob-tailed nag (A7) Somebody bet on the (D) bay Old mulely cow come on to the track (A7) Doo dah, doo dah (D) The bob-tailed throwed her over his back (A7) Oh the doo dah (D) day They fly along like a railroad car (A7) Doo dah, doo dah (D) Running a race with a shooting star (A7) Oh the doo dah (D) day Going to run all (G) night Going to run all (D) day Bet my money on the bob-tailed nag (A7) Somebody bet on the (D) bay See them flying on a ten mile heat (A7) Doo dah, doo dah (D) Round the racetrack then repeat (A7) Oh the doo dah (D) day I win my money on the bob-tailed nag (A7) Doo dah, doo dah (D) I keep my money in an old tow bag (A7) Oh the doo dah (D) day Going to run all (G) night Going to run all (D) day Bet my money on the bob-tailed nag (A7) Somebody bet on the (D) bay
------------------------------
Giuseppe Fortunino Francesco Verdi (Italian: [dʒuˈzɛppe ˈverdi]; 9 or 10 October 1813 – 27 January 1901) was an Italian composer of operas.Verdi was born near Busseto to a provincial family of moderate means, and developed a musical education with the help of a local patron. Verdi came to dominate the Italian opera scene after the era of Bellini, Donizetti and Rossini, whose works significantly influenced him, becoming one of the pre-eminent opera composers in history.
In his early operas Verdi demonstrated a sympathy with the Risorgimento movement which sought the unification of Italy. He also participated briefly as an elected politician. The chorus "Va, pensiero" from his early opera Nabucco (1842), and similar choruses in later operas, were much in the spirit of the unification movement, and the composer himself became esteemed as a representative of these ideals. An intensely private person, Verdi however did not seek to ingratiate himself with popular movements and as he became professionally successful was able to reduce his operatic workload and sought to establish himself as a landowner in his native region. He surprised the musical world by returning, after his success with the opera Aida (1871), with three late masterpieces: his Requiem (1874), and the operas Otello (1887) and Falstaff (1893).
His operas remain extremely popular, especially the three peaks of his 'middle period': Rigoletto, Il trovatore and La traviata, and the bicentenary of his birth in 2013 was widely celebrated in broadcasts and performances.
Aida (Italian: [aˈiːda]) is an opera in four acts by Giuseppe Verdi to an Italian libretto by Antonio Ghislanzoni. Set in Egypt, it was commissioned by and first performed at Cairo's Khedivial Opera House on 24 December 1871; Giovanni Bottesini conducted after Verdi himself withdrew. Today the work holds a central place in the operatic canon, receiving performances every year around the world; at New York's Metropolitan Opera alone, Aida has been sung more than 1,100 times since 1886. Ghislanzoni's scheme follows a scenario often attributed to the French Egyptologist Auguste Mariette, but Verdi biographer Mary Jane Phillips-Matz argues that the source is actually Temistocle Solera.[1]
Notes on Opera: OPERA is not just singing by fat people. In
fact, perhaps more than any art form, OPERA combines multiple elements
of the fine arts: extraordinary singing, musical composition and
instrumentation, lyric, artistic stage sets, costume design, dance,
acting, and story-telling. And often it was presented in a magnificent
opera house with exquisite architecture and a dazzling array of
sculptures, paintings, and interior design. I tell students they owe it
to themselves ONCE to pay out the heavy expense, dress up, and take the
family to a good opera at a good venue with a decent seat. But, before
going, go online and read all you can about the opera you will see--read
up on the composer, read a summary of the story, and read translations
of the songs.
There are three clips under number 2 below from works composed by Giuseppe Verdi. The great Italian opera composer, Giuseppe Verdi, is discussed in our class text (Sayre, 2015, pp. 1000-1001, 1008, 1298). See
if you can broaden your musical horizons--even a little. Verdi was
both a realist and pragmatist, yet he was also a nationalist (don't
forget, his native Italy only became a country in 1871) and out of the
dramatic Romantic tradition of music. Verdi was also a showman who
played a key role in making opera a popular art form, not just an elite
interest.
---------------------
- Verdi, Rigoletto; Quartet from Act III:
-
- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q5NEOh-XhyA (chap. 30, pp. 999-1001) For text and translation see http://www.metoperafamily.org/PageFiles/43577/MusicalHighlightResource3.pdf.
This tragic opera was composed in 1851. Read carefully the discussion on pp. 1000-1001 (in chap. 30).
It is always helpful to read up on an opera before listening to it or
attending a performance of it. For background and story summary of Rigoletto, see http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=96714680 .
"Bella figlia dell'amore" - Rigoletto (1977), 4:36Placido Domingo(Duke)/Cornell Macneil(Rigoletto)/Ileana Cotrubas(Gilda)/Isola Jones(Maddalena)sing the quartet from Act 3 of Verdi's Rigoletto. A 1977 Met production Conductor: James Levine
https://youtu.be/grK-mzR05B8
For more from Verdi, read pp. 999-1001 and p. 1008 in chap. 30 and then try these:
2b: From Verdi's Opera, Aida: The Triumphal March:
This opera, Aida, premiered in 1871 in Cairo, Egypt. It is mentioned in our class text (Sayre, 2012, p. 1008), and Verdi is discussed on pp. 1000-1001. This is a wonderful opera set in Egypt. See this link for background about this dazzling opera: http://www.npr.org/2011/06/03/136888669/love-triangles-and-pyramids-verdis-aid.
Love Triangles And Pyramids: Verdi's 'Aida'The exotic aura of ancient Egypt has been the magic ingredient in all kinds of entertainment, and in just about every genre the choices seem to run the gamut.
At the movies, Egypt has been the setting of everything from costume dramas such as Cleopatra to the Biblical epic The Ten Commandments to the adventures of Indiana Jones to various incarnations of The Mummy.
Music inspired by ancient Egypt ranges from Debussy's ethereal ballet score Khamma to "Walk Like an Egyptian" by The Bangles. And that's not to mention a whole string of tunes by a 1980s dance and rap artist billed as The Egyptian Lover or a dreamy number called "Meditation Music of Ancient Egypt," by new age specialist Gerald Jay Markoe.
The Hit Single
Early in the third act, as she's waiting to meet with Radames, Aida (soprano Hui He) is afraid she'll never again see her homeland. She expresses those fears in the aria "O Patria Mio."
'O Patria Mio'
The B Side
During their Act Three meeting, Aida and Radames (tenor Marco Berti) imagine a peaceful place where they can be alone together, in the duet "Lá tra le foreste vergini" — "There in the virgin forests."
'Lá tra le foreste vergini'
But when it comes to music evoking the land of pyramids and pharaohs, there's no better place for it than the opera house — especially when you add a dose of passion to the mix. Handel wrote three operas set in Egypt, including Julius Caesar. Massenet chipped in with Thaïs, set in Alexandria. And Giuseppe Verdi did his part with one of the most popular operas of all time, the spectacular drama Aida — a score that was actually written for an Egyptian audience.
The history of Aida goes back to Ismail Pasha, who became the khedive of Egypt in 1863. Among his many dreams for the country was a new Cairo Opera House. It opened in 1869, with a performance of Verdi's Rigoletto. But Pasha thought his theater also deserved a brand new work by Verdi, who was arguably the most famous opera composer in the world.
Verdi wasn't eager to tackle a big new project in a faraway country, and he hesitated. When he eventually agreed, it was on his own terms, and he had plenty of them. Verdi demanded complete control of the production, the right to pick his own librettist and singers, and the right to oversee the project from his home in Italy by sending his personal representative to manage the production, conduct it and direct it. The composer also demanded a hefty fee, payable on delivery of the score. Opera openings were frequently delayed, but there would be no delay with Verdi's paycheck.
The premiere was postponed slightly, thanks in part to the Franco-Prussian War, and took place late in 1871, not quite a year behind schedule. Before long Aida was a hit all over the world. It premiered at La Scala in 1872. The next year, it reached Buenos Aires and New York City.
On World of Opera, host Lisa Simeone brings us a new production of Verdi's blockbuster from the Maggio Musicale in Florence, with Zubin Mehta conducting. Soprano Hui He sings the title role, with tenor Marco Berti as her lover Radames and mezzo-soprano Luciana D'Intino as Aida's bitter rival, Amneris.
The Story Of 'Aida'
The fates of Aida and Radames are sealed in their tomb, as Amneris sings a prayer from above. Courtesy Maggio Musicale, Florence
The opera's title character is an Ethiopian slave, held by Princess Amneris in ancient Egypt. Aida is also a princess herself. She's the daughter of Amonasro, the king of Ethiopia.
As ACT ONE begins, the Egyptian high priest Ramfis is conferring with Radames, an army officer. The Ethiopian army is planning to invade, and Radames hopes to command the Egyptian army. That powerful job would also have some personal advantages: Radames is in love with Aida, and if he takes command, he'll be able to free her from slavery. But Amneris is also in love with Radames, and she's suspicious of his feelings for Aida.
Radames is awarded the supreme command, just as he had hoped. But Aida sees trouble ahead and says so in a long solo sequence. She's deeply in love with Radames, but she's also faithful to her country, and to her father. Her scene is one of many in the opera that reveal Verdi's genius for mixing intimate emotions into an opera that's famous for its pomp and spectacle.
The second scene of Act One is an example of that spectacle. It takes place at the temple of Vulcan, where Ramfis blesses the sword of Radames and then leads a huge ceremony, urging the Egyptians on to victory.
Who's Who
Hui He .............................. Aida Marco Berti ................. Radames Luciana D'Intino ............. Amneris Ambrogio Maestri ........ Amonasro Giacomo Prestia ...............Ramfis Roberto Tagliavini ... King of Egypt Maggio
Musicale Orchestra and Chorus Zubin Mehta, conductor
ACT TWO begins months later, after Radames and the Egyptians have defeated Ethiopia. As Amneris waits for Radames to return, a chorus of slaves sings about the Egyptian victory. Amneris then confronts Aida. She's still not sure about Aida's true feelings for Radames. So Amneris lies to Aida, telling her that Radames has been killed. Seeing Aida's reaction, Amneris is certain that Aida and Radames are in love. Amneris then admits her trick, revealing that Radames is still alive. But she warns Aida that they are both in love with him, and Amneris has no intention of losing Radames to her own slave.
The spectacular second scene depicts the return of Radames and his army, and features the famous Triumphal March. Ethiopian prisoners are displayed to the crowd, and Aida recognizes her father, Amonasro, among them. But the Egyptians don't realize that Amonasro is actually the Ethiopian king, and he quietly urges Aida not to betray his identity.
Speaking for his fellow prisoners, Amonasro claims the king of Ethiopia was killed, and begs mercy from the Egyptians. Radames urges the king of Egypt to release the prisoners, which he does. Amonasro then rewards Radames with the hand of his daughter, Amneris.
As ACT THREE begins, Aida has made plans to meet with Radames shortly before his wedding to Amneris. But before he arrives, Aida's father urges her to trick her lover, and get him to tell her about the Egyptian plan for invading Ethiopia. At first she refuses, but after Amonasro scolds her for disloyalty, Aida finally agrees. When Radames appears, Amonasro hides to eavesdrop on their conversation.
Aida wants Radames to take her with him as he leads his army to Ethiopia. She knows they can never be together in Egypt. When he agrees, she also gets him to tell her what route his forces will use in their attack. Hearing this, Amonasro comes out from hiding, and identifies himself. Radames realizes that his enemy has heard everything.
But Amneris has also overheard. She accuses Radames of treason, and he turns himself in to soldiers from his own army.
At the start of ACT FOUR, Radames is awaiting judgment. Amneris is still in love with him, and urges him to defend himself. He refuses, believing that if he dies, Aida might be spared. This throws Amneris into a jealous tirade. Still, when the priests condemn Radames to death, Amneris curses them as he's lead away. As his punishment, Radames is to be sealed alive into an underground tomb, beneath a temple, where he'll slowly suffocate and die.
The final scene takes place in that tomb. Radames is waiting for his death when Aida unexpectedly joins him. She hid herself in the tomb before it was sealed, so they could die together, and the two sing their goodbyes. Amneris is above, in the temple, praying for peace as the opera ends.
Triumphal March from Aida, 5:48
Triumphal March from Aida by Giuseppe Verdi ; Metropolitan Opera House(1989)
"Aida: Marcia" by Plácido Domingo;Metropolitan Opera Orchestra;Samuel Ramey;Aprile Millo;James Levine;Dolora Zajick;James Morris Listen ad-free with YouTube Red
https://youtu.be/l3w4I-KElxQ
2c: From Verdi's Requiem, Dies irae
This is a musical presentation of a traditional Catholic funeral mass (=Requiem). The Latin Dies Irae means "day of Wrath"--the Day of Judgment. This musical presentation was composed by Verdi in 1874; what we have here is a small part of it.
This part captures the drama of such a last day. Note--other greats
had also composed versions of this--Mozart, Berlioz, and others.
Verdi's composition is very well known, and may sound familiar.
Verdi: Requiem, Dies irae, 2:14Visit www.claudiovandelli.com Claudio Vandelli, conductor New Russia State Symphony Orchestra Live in Moscow
https://youtu.be/ZDFFHaz9GsY
------------------------
Tannhäuser (full title Tannhäuser und der Sängerkrieg auf Wartburg / Tannhäuser and the Singers' Contest at Wartburg Castle) is an 1845 opera in three acts, music and text by Richard Wagner, based on two German legends; Tannhäuser, the legendary medieval German Minnesänger and poet, and the tale of the Wartburg Song Contest.
The story centers on the struggle between sacred and profane love, and redemption through love, a theme running through much of Wagner's mature work.
Carnegie Hall Centennial Gala, 1991
https://youtu.be/1-dnIc0bp88
Wagner's composition of Tristan und Isolde was inspired by the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer (particularly The World as Will and Representation), as well as by Wagner's affair with Mathilde Wesendonck. Widely acknowledged as one of the peaks of the operatic repertoire, Tristan was notable for Wagner's unprecedented use of chromaticism, tonality, orchestral colour and harmonic suspension.
The opera was enormously influential among Western classical composers and provided direct inspiration to composers such as Gustav Mahler, Richard Strauss, Karol Szymanowski, Alban Berg, Arnold Schoenberg and Benjamin Britten. Other composers like Claude Debussy, Maurice Ravel and Igor Stravinsky formulated their styles in contrast to Wagner's musical legacy. Many see Tristan as the beginning of the move away from common practice harmony and tonality and consider that it lays the groundwork for the direction of classical music in the 20th century.[1] Both Wagner's libretto style and music were also profoundly influential on the Symbolist poets of the late 19th century and early 20th century.[2]
Wagner: Tristan und Isolde - Prelude, 10:22
Zubin Mehta conducting Bayerische Staatsoper Bayerisches Staatsorchester (National Theatre Munich)
https://youtu.be/fktwPGCR7Yw
-------------------------
Orphée aux enfers, whose title translates from the French as Orpheus in the Underworld, is an opéra bouffe (a form of operetta), or opéra féerie in its revised version. Its score was composed by Jacques Offenbach to a French text written by Ludovic Halévy and later revised by Hector-Jonathan Crémieux.
The work, first performed in 1858, is said to be the first classical full-length operetta. Offenbach's earlier operettas were small-scale one-act works, since the law in France did not allow full-length works of certain genres. Orpheus was not only longer, but more musically adventurous than Offenbach's earlier pieces.[2]
This also marked the first time that Offenbach used Greek mythology as a background for one of his pieces. The operetta is an irreverent parody and scathing satire on Gluck and his Orfeo ed Euridice and culminates in the risqué Galop infernal ("Infernal Galop") that shocked some in the audience at the premiere. Other targets of satire, as would become typical in Offenbach's burlesques, are the stilted performances of classical drama at the Comédie-Française and the scandals in society and politics of the Second French Empire.
The "Infernal Galop" from Act 2, Scene 2, is famous outside classical circles as the music for the "can-can" (to the extent that the tune is widely, but erroneously, called "can-can"). Saint-Saëns borrowed the Galop, slowed it to a crawl, and arranged it for the strings to represent the tortoise in The Carnival of the Animals.
Throughout
the whole period of the Transatlantic Slave Trade – and despite the
horrors of the conditions – enslaved Africans continued the artistic
traditions exemplified by cave paintings in South Africa and Tanzania
(4000-1200 BC), Benin bronze carvings, Ife stone sculptures and Ashanti
brass weights that date back to around AD 1500.
Clearly, for slaves there was little opportunity for overt displays of creativity and, therefore, many African artistic traditions were destroyed in the West. However, because of the lack of skilled craftsmen in the colonies, there was, ironically, a demand for creative Africans working in the media of wood, metal, pottery and cloth. Indeed, some slave owners made money by hiring out their artisan slaves. Much of their work has disappeared with time, but recent archaeological excavations in the United
States
have revealed, for example, clay pipes engraved with traditional
African designs. Much, though, was deliberately covert and subversive.
It’s well known that many gospel songs derived from traditional African
melodies and rhythms were used to convey secret messages to escaping
slaves. Similarly, African women, used their skills to create patchwork quilts some with coded messages showing the route to freedom embroidered into their complex patterns.
The
subject of slavery proved inspirational for many Western artists both
contemporaneously and subsequently and, since there were none of today’s
high-tech cameras, many of our internal images of slavery are informed
by works produced by those artists, images that remain subliminally and
indelibly engraved on memory. Thomas Wedgwood, abolitionist and member
of the Society for the Abolition of Slavery, suggested that an emblem on
the title page of a pamphlet entitled 'An address to the People of
Great Britain on the propriety of abstaining from West India sugar and
rum' would heighten its impact. He commissioned a woodcut that became
the famous Slave Medallion. Thousands were distributed in the UK and the
USA and they became a contemporary fashion statement, worn as hair
ornaments and bracelets and used to decorate snuff boxes. Thomas
Clarkson, fellow anti-slavery campaigner wrote: 'It is evident that
through the success of the medallion, Wedgwood had achieved, at least in
part, the desire to make known the suffering of the slaves…' Although
achieving its laudable aims, it is perhaps unfortunate that the abiding
image of the African in slavery is that of a black man in chains,
kneeling, pleading to have his humanity recognised: 'Am I Not a Man and a
Brother.'
English landscape artist J.M. Turner’s darkly dramatic Slave Ship (full title Slavers Overthrowing the Dead and Dying - Typho[o]n Coming On), based on a real incident, shows slaves thrown overboard in order to claim insurance. In Turner's view, the ship itself is seen to be heading for impending – and deserved – disaster.
Equally
indelible in their impact are the English poet, painter and engraver,
William Blake’s graphic and horrifying engravings, Flagellation of a Female Samboe Slave, and A Negro
Hung Alive by the Ribs to a Gallows. Blake was totally opposed to slavery, both mental and physical, writing in 'Songs of Innocence and Experience',
In every cry of every Man,
In every Infants cry of fear,
In every voice: in every ban,
The mind-forg'd manacles I hear.
That last line contains the title of an exhibition of Blake's works touring the country to coincide with the bicentenary of the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act.
Another
common image of the African of the period is that of a servant. At the
time, it was deemed fashionable to have a black servant. In paintings
such as Flemish artist Anthony Van Dyck's Portrait of Elena Grimaldi, Marchesa Cattaneo, the French painter Edouard Manet's Olympia and the German artist Johann Zoffany's The Family of Sir William Younger the black servant serves to enhance the subject's social status.
The English satirist, William Hogarth, used the figure of the black servant in two of his series of works, The
Harlot’s Progress and Marriage à la Mode to pass comment on both the moral status of his protagonists and slavery itself.
A fascinating example, though, of how fashion and attitudes change is the portrait of the Glassford family painted by Archibald McLauchland around 1767. It seems that the painting once contained the figure of a young black page, later painted over, possibly because of anti-slavery feelings. Glasgow Museum's conservators have undertaken a project to put the figure back into the picture.
Less
commonplace were the images of African men and women portrayed as more
than dehumanised, soul-less objects. Many of those that do exist arise
from interesting stories. The painting of Dido Elizabeth Belle,
attributed to Zoffany, is evidence of the unusual tale of the
illegitimate great-niece of the Lord Chief Justice, the Earl of
Mansfield. The painting depicts Dido, who was brought up by Lord
Mansfield and worked at Kenwood helping the Earl with his
correspondence, together with her cousin, Lady Elizabeth Murray. (Portrait of Dido Elizabeth Belle and Lady Elizabeth Murray later Finch-Hatton,
attributed to Zoffany. From the Collection of The Earl of Mansfield at
Scone Palace, Perth, Scotland.) There is currently an exhibition, Slavery and Justice: the legacies of Lord Mansfield and Dido Belle at Kenwood House.
There are
several versions of the English painter Joshua Reynolds' portrait of A Young Black.
It is thought to be Francis Barber, servant to Dr Johnson. Clearly,
Barber would have had to be reasonably well regarded by Johnson to be
allowed to sit for such a portrait.
The Irish painter Daniel Maclise's painting, The Death of Nelson shows a black sailor and a black cook. Since contemporary documents show that there were two people on board HMS Victory who were born in Africa, it is likely that the portrayal is an accurate one.
In
contrast to the Wedgwood medallion and Blake images, the portrait of
Joseph Cinque, leader of the revolt on board the Amistad slave ship,
painted by the American abolitionist artist Nathaniel Jocelyn shows the
subject standing proud, unbowed and defiant, dressed in a Roman toga and
with an almost regal bearing.
There are numerous images of the revolutionary, Toussaint Louverture, ranging from caricature to stately portrait, presumably depending on the political viewpoint of the artist.
Today, descendants of Africans – both enslaved and free – are continuing the artistic tradition and reclaiming and reinterpreting the legacies of the slave trade. For the Victoria & Albert Museum's touring exhibition, Uncomfortable Truths: the shadow of slave trading on contemporary art and design eleven international artists present new and specially-commissioned works to explore a number of thought-provoking issues arising from the legacy of slavery. The artists include Ghana's El Anatsui, America's Michael Paul Britto and Fred Wilson and Yinka Shonibare, Lubaina Himid, and Keith Piper from the UK.
It is perhaps appropriate – and coming almost full circle – that the Beninese artist, Romuald Hazoumé has created the installation La Bouche du Roi for the British Museum. The work is made up of 304 'masks' made from black plastic petrol cans, a CD of sounds and voices, a film depicting the lives of motorcycling petrol traffickers, and the scents of tobacco and petrol. The shape of the installation is based on a famous print of the British slave ship, the Brooks, a model of which Wilberforce used in the campaign for abolition. The title signifies the name of a place in Benin from which slaves were traded, but the installation brings us up to date with Hazoumé’s depiction of modern-day slavery. As Hazoume describes his work:
Contrary to what might appear, La Bouche du Roi ('The King’s Mouth'), does not speak of past slavery, but rather of that which exists today, for it is the mouths of our present-day ‘kings’ that kill us. In times gone by, the slaves who set sail to Ouidah or Porto-Novo knew from whence they came, but knew nothing of where they were heading. Today, they still do not know where they are heading, but they have forgotten, and no longer know where they came from. I denounce an Africa and a world ruled over by corrupt kinglets who steal, pillage, hijack, appropriate, and enrich themselves at their peoples’ expense. I am not afraid of denouncing them. Today, many families are still forced to sell their children in order to survive. This is unacceptable.
Vastiana Belfon
Research Associate
The Runnymede Trust
Western Art
Mind-forg’d Manacles: William Blake and Slavery can be seen at The Burrell Collection, Glasgow from 3 November 2007 to 6 January 2008 and at the Whitworth Art Gallery in Manchester from 26 January to 6 April 2008.
TV Ad: United States owes China, 1:02
This Ad was created by Citizens Against Governement Waste (CAGW). For more information, please go to www.cagw.org
https://youtu.be/JlkLhVo3PbY
The Opium War and Foreign Encroachment
Two things happened in the eighteenth century that made it difficult for England to balance its trade with the East. First, the British became a nation of tea drinkers and the demand for Chinese tea rose astronomically. It is estimated that the average London worker spent five percent of his or her total household budget on tea.
Second, northern Chinese merchants began to ship Chinese cotton from the interior to the south to compete with the Indian cotton that Britain had used to help pay for its tea consumption habits. To prevent a trade imbalance, the British tried to sell more of their own products to China, but there was not much demand for heavy woolen fabrics in a country accustomed to either cotton padding or silk.
The only solution was to increase the amount of Indian goods to pay for these Chinese luxuries, and increasingly in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the item provided to China was Bengal opium. With greater opium supplies had naturally come an increase in demand and usage throughout the country, in spite of repeated prohibitions by the Chinese government and officials. The British did all they could to increase the trade: They bribed officials, helped the Chinese work out elaborate smuggling schemes to get the opium into China's interior, and distributed free samples of the drug to innocent victims.
The cost to China was enormous. The drug weakened a large percentage of the population (some estimate that 10 percent of the population regularly used opium by the late nineteenth century), and silver began to flow out of the country to pay for the opium. Many of the economic problems China faced later were either directly or indirectly traced to the opium trade.
The government debated about whether to legalize the drug through a government monopoly like that on salt, hoping to barter Chinese goods in return for opium. But since the Chinese were fully aware of the harms of addiction, in 1838 the emperor decided to send one of his most able officials, Lin Tse-hsu (Lin Zexu, 1785-1850), to Canton (Guangzhou) to do whatever necessary to end the traffic forever.
Lin was able to put his first two proposals into effect easily. Addicts were rounded up, forcibly treated, and taken off the habit, and domestic drug dealers were harshly punished. His third objective — to confiscate foreign stores and force foreign merchants to sign pledges of good conduct, agreeing never to trade in opium and to be punished by Chinese law if ever found in violation — eventually brought war. Opinion in England was divided: Some British did indeed feel morally uneasy about the trade, but they were overruled by those who wanted to increase England's China trade and teach the arrogant Chinese a good lesson.
Western military weapons, including percussion lock muskets, heavy artillery, and paddlewheel gunboats, were far superior to China's. Britain's troops had recently been toughened in the Napoleonic wars, and Britain could muster garrisons, warships, and provisions from its nearby colonies in Southeast Asia and India.
The result was a disaster for the Chinese. By the summer of 1842 British ships were victorious and were even preparing to shell the old capital, Nanking (Nanjing), in central China. The emperor therefore had no choice but to accept the British demands and sign a peace agreement. This agreement, the first of the "unequal treaties," opened China to the West and marked the beginning of Western exploitation of the nation.
Other humiliating defeats followed in what one historian has called China's "treaty century" (major aspects of the so-called "unequal treaties" were not formally voided until 1943). In 1843, France and the United States, and Russia in 1858, negotiated treaties similar to England's Nanking (Nanjing) Treaty, including a provision for extraterritoriality, whereby foreign nationals in China were immune from Chinese law.
To compel a reluctant China to shift from its traditional tribute based foreign relations to treaty relations, Europeans fought a second war with China from 1858-1860, and the concluding Treaty of Tientsin (Tianjin) and Convention of Peking (Beijing) increased China's semi-colonial status. More ports were open to foreign residence and trade, and foreigners, especially missionaries, were allowed free movement and business anywhere in the country.
Conflicts for the rest of the century wrung more humiliating concessions from China: with Russia over claims in China's far west and northeast in 1850 and 1860, with England over access to the upper reaches of the Yangtze River in 1876, with France over northern Vietnam in 1884, with Japan over its claims to Korea and northeast China in 1895, and with many foreign powers after 1897 which demanded "spheres of influence," especially for constructing railroads and mines.
In 1900, an international army suppressed the anti-foreign Boxer Rebellion in northern China, destroying much of Beijing in the process. Each of these defeats brought more foreign demands, greater indemnities that China had to repay, more foreign presence along the coast, and more foreign participation in China's political and economic life. Little wonder that many in China were worried by the century's end that China was being sliced up "like a melon."
[1831_WaterWitch_PW7719_nmm.jpg]
Modern History Sourcebook:
Qian Long:
Letter to George III, 1793
Qian Long [Ch'ien Lung], (r. 1735-1795) ruled China for much of the 18th century, the last period in which China was strong enough to resist, or better, disdain external influence. Here is letter he sent in response to a request from George III of Britain (r. 1760-1820) for trade privileges. In 1793, while Britain was in the midst of the French Revolutionary situation in Europe, China retained its fredom to act as it wished. But within 50 years, all was to change. By the 1840s the British were able to sail into China's rivers and destroy its fleets.
Lin Zixu Lin Tse-Hs� (1839 CE)
Letter of Advice to Queen Victoria
From Ssuyu Teng and John Fairbank, China's Response to the West,
(Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1954), repr. in Mark A. Kishlansky, ed., Sources
of World History, Volume II, (New York: HarperCollins CollegePublishers, 1995),
pp. 266-69
Questions
1. Why did Lin Tse-Hsu write this letter to Queen Victoria?
2. Why is he worried about the sale of opium in China?
3. What connnection does he think Queen Victoria has to the opium trade? Do you think he is right?
4. What does this document tell us about the relations between China and the West in the nineteenth century?
Below are musical examples from this operatic triumvirate. Have your own favorite arias by Verdi, Wagner and Puccini?
- Wagner, from Tannhauser, Act II, Scene 1: "Dich, teure Halle" (=Thou, Beloved Hall) (chap. 30, pp. 1001-1002)
-
- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-dnIc0bp88 (singing by Jessye Norman); for the staged opera of this, see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zwKQV8HhTPE For German lyrics and English translation, see http://www.rwagner.net/libretti/tannhauser/e-tannh-a2s1.html.
Wagner composed this opera in 1861; our selection above is an aria from this production. Read pp. 1001-1002 (in chap. 30) carefully about the background and story of Tannhauser and also about Wagner's extraordinary contributions, but also his prejudices and adversities.
Jessye Norman "Dich teure Halle" Tannhauser, 5:08Carnegie Hall Centennial Gala, 1991
https://youtu.be/1-dnIc0bp88
----------------------------
Tristan und Isolde (Tristan and Isolde, or Tristan and Isolda, or Tristran and Ysolt) is an opera, or music drama, in three acts by Richard Wagner to a German libretto by the composer, based largely on the romance by Gottfried von Strassburg. It was composed between 1857 and 1859 and premiered at the Königliches Hof- und Nationaltheater in Munich on 10 June 1865 with Hans von Bülow conducting. Wagner referred to the work not as an opera, but called it "eine Handlung" (literally a drama, a plot or an action), which was the equivalent of the term used by the Spanish playwright Calderón for his dramas.Wagner's composition of Tristan und Isolde was inspired by the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer (particularly The World as Will and Representation), as well as by Wagner's affair with Mathilde Wesendonck. Widely acknowledged as one of the peaks of the operatic repertoire, Tristan was notable for Wagner's unprecedented use of chromaticism, tonality, orchestral colour and harmonic suspension.
The opera was enormously influential among Western classical composers and provided direct inspiration to composers such as Gustav Mahler, Richard Strauss, Karol Szymanowski, Alban Berg, Arnold Schoenberg and Benjamin Britten. Other composers like Claude Debussy, Maurice Ravel and Igor Stravinsky formulated their styles in contrast to Wagner's musical legacy. Many see Tristan as the beginning of the move away from common practice harmony and tonality and consider that it lays the groundwork for the direction of classical music in the 20th century.[1] Both Wagner's libretto style and music were also profoundly influential on the Symbolist poets of the late 19th century and early 20th century.[2]
- Wagner, from Tristan und Isolde, Prelude. (chap. 30, pp. 1002-1003)
Wagner composed Tristan und Isolde in 1865; he called it "music drama'; preferring that term to "opera". Read carefully pp. 1002-1003 (in chap. 30) about the story presented in this work, but also about the concept of the leitmotif or "leading motive"--a brief recurring musical idea . After reading this three paragraph description, see if you can pick up the leitmotif in this Prelude.
Wagner: Tristan und Isolde - Prelude, 10:22
Zubin Mehta conducting Bayerische Staatsoper Bayerisches Staatsorchester (National Theatre Munich)
https://youtu.be/fktwPGCR7Yw
-------------------------
The work, first performed in 1858, is said to be the first classical full-length operetta. Offenbach's earlier operettas were small-scale one-act works, since the law in France did not allow full-length works of certain genres. Orpheus was not only longer, but more musically adventurous than Offenbach's earlier pieces.[2]
This also marked the first time that Offenbach used Greek mythology as a background for one of his pieces. The operetta is an irreverent parody and scathing satire on Gluck and his Orfeo ed Euridice and culminates in the risqué Galop infernal ("Infernal Galop") that shocked some in the audience at the premiere. Other targets of satire, as would become typical in Offenbach's burlesques, are the stilted performances of classical drama at the Comédie-Française and the scandals in society and politics of the Second French Empire.
The "Infernal Galop" from Act 2, Scene 2, is famous outside classical circles as the music for the "can-can" (to the extent that the tune is widely, but erroneously, called "can-can"). Saint-Saëns borrowed the Galop, slowed it to a crawl, and arranged it for the strings to represent the tortoise in The Carnival of the Animals.
- Offenbach, Orpheus in the Underworld, the Can Can (from Act 2, Scene 2) (chap. 30, p. 1004)
Jacques Offenbach called this form "operetta"; it is also known as "comic opera". Read carefully p. 1004 (in chap. 30) and then listen to and watch the YouTube. You will see why.
Can Can from Orpheus in the Underworld, Conducted by Albert E Moehring. 2:59
Albert Moehring-Conductor and the Charlotte Philharmonic Orchestra perform the "Can Can" from "Orpheus in the Underworld" by Jacques Offenbach, with the Charlotte City Ballet. Segment is taken from the PBS television special "Tenors in the Spotlight."
https://youtu.be/6YceUokaMIk
US Constitution is Anti-Slavery.mp4, 4:46
Dave Barton from wallbuilders.com demonstrates how the US constitution is actually an anti-slavery document.
This is a clip from the American Heritage series. Every citizen needs to see these videos in order to get a true hope for positive change in America. Every Christian needs to see these videos because they demonstrate the true and proper manner in which Biblical Christianity can be a blessing to every society on earth.
https://youtu.be/ySEZqTUgGvI
American Dilemma--Slavery – The Art & Literature of Protest
Intrusions in Asia
Opera and Society
Eyre Crowe’s In The Richmond Slave Market was published in the Illustrated London News in 1856.
Artist Eyre Crowe changed the characters substantially when he made the oil painting, Slaves Waiting for Sale in Virginia, which was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1861.
Thomas Satterwhite Noble’s The Price of Blood (1868), portrays the crisis of mixed-blood slaves.
What does one do when confronting the biggest social evil of one's time?
In the case of a few artists in the decades prior to the Civil War, they lifted their pens and paintbrushes. They sketched black slaves being bonded, branded, whipped and auctioned.
Rhonda Goodman, a Stanford doctoral student in art and art history and a Geballe Dissertation Prize Fellow at the Humanities Center, has studied the little-known artwork for messages that reveal the social and political attitudes of the time. She focused her research on the way artists portrayed slave auctions, in particular.
The "sentimental culture" in the decades prior to the Civil War was a time when artists and writers "used their works to elicit a certain type of feeling and engender sympathy," said Goodman, a former Philadelphia Inquirer reporter. Significantly, the most popular book of the 19th century, after the Bible, was Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin.
Here's a case in point: On the morning of March 3, 1853, the little-known English painter Eyre Crowe, who traveled America with author William Makepeace Thackeray, saw an advertisement in Richmond, Va., for a slave auction: "Fifteen likely negroes to be disposed of between half-past nine and twelve—five men, six women, two boys, and two girls."
Although engrossed in his sketching, he attracted attention. No one would bid. The auctioneer finally confronted the artist and asked him how he would like it if someone interrupted his business. As Crowe recalled in his memoir, With Thackeray in America: "This was unanswerable; I got up with the intention of leaving quietly, but, feeling this would savour of flight, I turned round to the now evidently angry crowd of dealers, and said ëYou may turn me away, but I can recollect all I have seen.'"
Crowe left the "stifling atmosphere of human traffic," but he remembered what he saw somewhat differently than what he portrayed in the sketch he made on the spot, which was eventually published in the Illustrated London News in 1856. Crowe "Europeanized" the slaves' physiognomy to reduce the sense of otherness for white viewers, as these artists typically did, Goodman said.
In the finished painting, exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1861, the group of people are no longer docile and waiting. The women are tense and anxious. In the sketch, it's not clear if the man to the right is part of a family group. But in the painting, the association is unmistakable. He is anguished and unresigned—"angry, because he cannot defend his family," Goodman said.
The painting "reminds us that this is a perverse situation; they may be sold apart," Goodman added.
Crowe's strategy worked: His painting got the right kind of attention. Slaves Waiting for Sale, Richmond, Virginia, was discussed in The Times, the Athenaeum, Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine and Art Journal; the last called it "one of the most important pictures in the exhibition" and wrote, "The appalling guilt of that accursed system was never more successfully depicted"—important and timely, since Britain was arming the South and barely able to keep an official neutrality because of its dependence on cotton.
Was Crowe fulfilling the threat of his exit line, recollecting what he didn't dare sketch in front of the angry dealers? Or was he altering his sketch to make a political statement, a visual equivalent to Uncle Tom's Cabin?
We'll never know for sure. In any case, he wasn't alone. In Thomas Satterwhite Noble's Price of Blood (its title taken from Uncle Tom's Cabin, in which a character describes money earned from the sale of children by their master and father as "the price of their blood"), a plantation owner sells his barefoot mulatto son, who looks away from him; their faces differ only by age and the color of their skin.
Noble was a Southerner who fought for his states' rights, though he loathed slavery. He made a series of paintings depicting its horrors after the war, as the nation faced a new set of race issues. No one knows who painted the unsigned Slave Auction (circa 1850), now owned by the Carnegie Museum of Art. Did the artist wish to avoid controversy through anonymity? In the painting, a woman so pale "she may be an octoroon" is dressed like a bride and being led into a group of men who are appraising her, Goodman said. Perhaps she is being sold into concubinage. In the foreground, a man is raising a weapon, threatening violence, and a nearly naked baby lies beneath him in the foreground. The scene recalls the Massacre of the Innocents, but the mother doesn't seem to notice; she is clinging to an older child who is being examined by a dealer.
Who bought these paintings? "Nobody did," Goodman said. In some cases, they didn't even try: Goodman said the more gruesome art of the period prior to 1820—of slaves being branded or whipped, for example—was not made for sale or exhibition at all.
But these artists hoped for a market. After the execution of radical abolitionist John Brown on Dec. 2, 1859, sculptor John Rogers failed to find a buyer for his Slave Auction (1859), a group of figures in plaster. "I find the times have quite headed me off," he wrote in a Christmas Eve letter, "for The Slave Auction tells such a strong story that none of the stores will receive it to sell for fear of offending their Southern customers."
Instead, Goodman said, he commissioned a black man to find a buyer by trying to sell the painting door-to-door on the streets of New York. It sold.
"Part of what is so important about Rhonda's work is its interdisciplinary scope—the way she brings together cultural history, the history of race, visual arts and material culture," said Bryan Wolf, the Jeanette and William Hayden Jones Professor in American Art and Culture and Goodman's dissertation adviser. "She's showing how the issues surrounding slavery permeated virtually every aspect of antebellum life, and she's also showing, through the example of a painter like Crowe, how ways of thinking—like sentimentalism, which was so important to middle-class culture at the time—were mobilized in the service of the antislavery cause."
Can Can from Orpheus in the Underworld, Conducted by Albert E Moehring. 2:59
Albert Moehring-Conductor and the Charlotte Philharmonic Orchestra perform the "Can Can" from "Orpheus in the Underworld" by Jacques Offenbach, with the Charlotte City Ballet. Segment is taken from the PBS television special "Tenors in the Spotlight."
https://youtu.be/6YceUokaMIk
Week 5 Explore
US Constitution is Anti-Slavery.mp4, 4:46
Dave Barton from wallbuilders.com demonstrates how the US constitution is actually an anti-slavery document.
This is a clip from the American Heritage series. Every citizen needs to see these videos in order to get a true hope for positive change in America. Every Christian needs to see these videos because they demonstrate the true and proper manner in which Biblical Christianity can be a blessing to every society on earth.
https://youtu.be/ySEZqTUgGvI
American Dilemma--Slavery – The Art & Literature of Protest
- Chapter 29 (pp. 962-976); slavery, literature, and art
- Haven's article on Goodman's scholarship on art protesting slavery before the Civil War at http://news.stanford.edu/news/2009/february18/artists-slavery-protests-021809.html
- Art and Slavery article at http://www.realhistories.org.uk/articles/archive/the-art-of-slavery.html
Intrusions in Asia
- The Opium Wars and Foreign Encroachment: http://afe.easia.columbia.edu/special/china_1750_opium.htm
- Opium Wars with visuals at http://ocw.mit.edu/ans7870/21f/21f.027/opium_wars_01/ow1_essay01.html
- Key documents from China at http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1793qianlong.asp and http://acc6.its.brooklyn.cuny.edu/~phalsall/texts/com-lin.html
Opera and Society
- Chapter 30 (pp. 999-1004), Wagner and Verdi; (pp. 1133-1134), Puccini; review the Week 5 “Music Folder”
- Huizenga article and audio selections at http://www.npr.org/blogs/deceptivecadence/2012/04/11/150420827/talk-like-an-opera-geek-how-verdi-wagner-and-puccini-got-their-grooves
- Wagner video of a stage production (Tristan und Isolde) at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OAEkTK6aKUM
- Verdi video clip of stage production (Rigoletto) at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q5NEOh-XhyA
- Puccini video clip of stage production (Tosca) at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5sSoKbv46zc
How antebellum artists used their work to protest slavery
From With Thackeray in America (1893)
Eyre Crowe’s In The Richmond Slave Market was published in the Illustrated London News in 1856.
Private collection
Artist Eyre Crowe changed the characters substantially when he made the oil painting, Slaves Waiting for Sale in Virginia, which was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1861.
Morris Museum of Art, Augusta, Georgia
Thomas Satterwhite Noble’s The Price of Blood (1868), portrays the crisis of mixed-blood slaves.
Collection of the New York Historical Society
The Slave Auction by John Rogers had a difficult reception in the aftermath of abolitionist John Brown’s execution in 1859.
The Slave Auction by John Rogers had a difficult reception in the aftermath of abolitionist John Brown’s execution in 1859.
In the case of a few artists in the decades prior to the Civil War, they lifted their pens and paintbrushes. They sketched black slaves being bonded, branded, whipped and auctioned.
Rhonda Goodman, a Stanford doctoral student in art and art history and a Geballe Dissertation Prize Fellow at the Humanities Center, has studied the little-known artwork for messages that reveal the social and political attitudes of the time. She focused her research on the way artists portrayed slave auctions, in particular.
The "sentimental culture" in the decades prior to the Civil War was a time when artists and writers "used their works to elicit a certain type of feeling and engender sympathy," said Goodman, a former Philadelphia Inquirer reporter. Significantly, the most popular book of the 19th century, after the Bible, was Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin.
Here's a case in point: On the morning of March 3, 1853, the little-known English painter Eyre Crowe, who traveled America with author William Makepeace Thackeray, saw an advertisement in Richmond, Va., for a slave auction: "Fifteen likely negroes to be disposed of between half-past nine and twelve—five men, six women, two boys, and two girls."
Although engrossed in his sketching, he attracted attention. No one would bid. The auctioneer finally confronted the artist and asked him how he would like it if someone interrupted his business. As Crowe recalled in his memoir, With Thackeray in America: "This was unanswerable; I got up with the intention of leaving quietly, but, feeling this would savour of flight, I turned round to the now evidently angry crowd of dealers, and said ëYou may turn me away, but I can recollect all I have seen.'"
Crowe left the "stifling atmosphere of human traffic," but he remembered what he saw somewhat differently than what he portrayed in the sketch he made on the spot, which was eventually published in the Illustrated London News in 1856. Crowe "Europeanized" the slaves' physiognomy to reduce the sense of otherness for white viewers, as these artists typically did, Goodman said.
In the finished painting, exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1861, the group of people are no longer docile and waiting. The women are tense and anxious. In the sketch, it's not clear if the man to the right is part of a family group. But in the painting, the association is unmistakable. He is anguished and unresigned—"angry, because he cannot defend his family," Goodman said.
The painting "reminds us that this is a perverse situation; they may be sold apart," Goodman added.
Crowe's strategy worked: His painting got the right kind of attention. Slaves Waiting for Sale, Richmond, Virginia, was discussed in The Times, the Athenaeum, Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine and Art Journal; the last called it "one of the most important pictures in the exhibition" and wrote, "The appalling guilt of that accursed system was never more successfully depicted"—important and timely, since Britain was arming the South and barely able to keep an official neutrality because of its dependence on cotton.
Was Crowe fulfilling the threat of his exit line, recollecting what he didn't dare sketch in front of the angry dealers? Or was he altering his sketch to make a political statement, a visual equivalent to Uncle Tom's Cabin?
We'll never know for sure. In any case, he wasn't alone. In Thomas Satterwhite Noble's Price of Blood (its title taken from Uncle Tom's Cabin, in which a character describes money earned from the sale of children by their master and father as "the price of their blood"), a plantation owner sells his barefoot mulatto son, who looks away from him; their faces differ only by age and the color of their skin.
Noble was a Southerner who fought for his states' rights, though he loathed slavery. He made a series of paintings depicting its horrors after the war, as the nation faced a new set of race issues. No one knows who painted the unsigned Slave Auction (circa 1850), now owned by the Carnegie Museum of Art. Did the artist wish to avoid controversy through anonymity? In the painting, a woman so pale "she may be an octoroon" is dressed like a bride and being led into a group of men who are appraising her, Goodman said. Perhaps she is being sold into concubinage. In the foreground, a man is raising a weapon, threatening violence, and a nearly naked baby lies beneath him in the foreground. The scene recalls the Massacre of the Innocents, but the mother doesn't seem to notice; she is clinging to an older child who is being examined by a dealer.
Who bought these paintings? "Nobody did," Goodman said. In some cases, they didn't even try: Goodman said the more gruesome art of the period prior to 1820—of slaves being branded or whipped, for example—was not made for sale or exhibition at all.
But these artists hoped for a market. After the execution of radical abolitionist John Brown on Dec. 2, 1859, sculptor John Rogers failed to find a buyer for his Slave Auction (1859), a group of figures in plaster. "I find the times have quite headed me off," he wrote in a Christmas Eve letter, "for The Slave Auction tells such a strong story that none of the stores will receive it to sell for fear of offending their Southern customers."
Instead, Goodman said, he commissioned a black man to find a buyer by trying to sell the painting door-to-door on the streets of New York. It sold.
"Part of what is so important about Rhonda's work is its interdisciplinary scope—the way she brings together cultural history, the history of race, visual arts and material culture," said Bryan Wolf, the Jeanette and William Hayden Jones Professor in American Art and Culture and Goodman's dissertation adviser. "She's showing how the issues surrounding slavery permeated virtually every aspect of antebellum life, and she's also showing, through the example of a painter like Crowe, how ways of thinking—like sentimentalism, which was so important to middle-class culture at the time—were mobilized in the service of the antislavery cause."
Featured Topic - The Art of Slavery
Throughout
the whole period of the Transatlantic Slave Trade – and despite the
horrors of the conditions – enslaved Africans continued the artistic
traditions exemplified by cave paintings in South Africa and Tanzania
(4000-1200 BC), Benin bronze carvings, Ife stone sculptures and Ashanti
brass weights that date back to around AD 1500.Clearly, for slaves there was little opportunity for overt displays of creativity and, therefore, many African artistic traditions were destroyed in the West. However, because of the lack of skilled craftsmen in the colonies, there was, ironically, a demand for creative Africans working in the media of wood, metal, pottery and cloth. Indeed, some slave owners made money by hiring out their artisan slaves. Much of their work has disappeared with time, but recent archaeological excavations in the United
States
have revealed, for example, clay pipes engraved with traditional
African designs. Much, though, was deliberately covert and subversive.
It’s well known that many gospel songs derived from traditional African
melodies and rhythms were used to convey secret messages to escaping
slaves. Similarly, African women, used their skills to create patchwork quilts some with coded messages showing the route to freedom embroidered into their complex patterns.The
subject of slavery proved inspirational for many Western artists both
contemporaneously and subsequently and, since there were none of today’s
high-tech cameras, many of our internal images of slavery are informed
by works produced by those artists, images that remain subliminally and
indelibly engraved on memory. Thomas Wedgwood, abolitionist and member
of the Society for the Abolition of Slavery, suggested that an emblem on
the title page of a pamphlet entitled 'An address to the People of
Great Britain on the propriety of abstaining from West India sugar and
rum' would heighten its impact. He commissioned a woodcut that became
the famous Slave Medallion. Thousands were distributed in the UK and the
USA and they became a contemporary fashion statement, worn as hair
ornaments and bracelets and used to decorate snuff boxes. Thomas
Clarkson, fellow anti-slavery campaigner wrote: 'It is evident that
through the success of the medallion, Wedgwood had achieved, at least in
part, the desire to make known the suffering of the slaves…' Although
achieving its laudable aims, it is perhaps unfortunate that the abiding
image of the African in slavery is that of a black man in chains,
kneeling, pleading to have his humanity recognised: 'Am I Not a Man and a
Brother.'English landscape artist J.M. Turner’s darkly dramatic Slave Ship (full title Slavers Overthrowing the Dead and Dying - Typho[o]n Coming On), based on a real incident, shows slaves thrown overboard in order to claim insurance. In Turner's view, the ship itself is seen to be heading for impending – and deserved – disaster.
Equally
indelible in their impact are the English poet, painter and engraver,
William Blake’s graphic and horrifying engravings, Flagellation of a Female Samboe Slave, and A Negro Hung Alive by the Ribs to a Gallows. Blake was totally opposed to slavery, both mental and physical, writing in 'Songs of Innocence and Experience',In every cry of every Man,
In every Infants cry of fear,
In every voice: in every ban,
The mind-forg'd manacles I hear.
That last line contains the title of an exhibition of Blake's works touring the country to coincide with the bicentenary of the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act.
Another
common image of the African of the period is that of a servant. At the
time, it was deemed fashionable to have a black servant. In paintings
such as Flemish artist Anthony Van Dyck's Portrait of Elena Grimaldi, Marchesa Cattaneo, the French painter Edouard Manet's Olympia and the German artist Johann Zoffany's The Family of Sir William Younger the black servant serves to enhance the subject's social status.The English satirist, William Hogarth, used the figure of the black servant in two of his series of works, The
Harlot’s Progress and Marriage à la Mode to pass comment on both the moral status of his protagonists and slavery itself.A fascinating example, though, of how fashion and attitudes change is the portrait of the Glassford family painted by Archibald McLauchland around 1767. It seems that the painting once contained the figure of a young black page, later painted over, possibly because of anti-slavery feelings. Glasgow Museum's conservators have undertaken a project to put the figure back into the picture.
Less
commonplace were the images of African men and women portrayed as more
than dehumanised, soul-less objects. Many of those that do exist arise
from interesting stories. The painting of Dido Elizabeth Belle,
attributed to Zoffany, is evidence of the unusual tale of the
illegitimate great-niece of the Lord Chief Justice, the Earl of
Mansfield. The painting depicts Dido, who was brought up by Lord
Mansfield and worked at Kenwood helping the Earl with his
correspondence, together with her cousin, Lady Elizabeth Murray. (Portrait of Dido Elizabeth Belle and Lady Elizabeth Murray later Finch-Hatton,
attributed to Zoffany. From the Collection of The Earl of Mansfield at
Scone Palace, Perth, Scotland.) There is currently an exhibition, Slavery and Justice: the legacies of Lord Mansfield and Dido Belle at Kenwood House.There are several versions of the English painter Joshua Reynolds' portrait of A Young Black.
It is thought to be Francis Barber, servant to Dr Johnson. Clearly,
Barber would have had to be reasonably well regarded by Johnson to be
allowed to sit for such a portrait.The Irish painter Daniel Maclise's painting, The Death of Nelson shows a black sailor and a black cook. Since contemporary documents show that there were two people on board HMS Victory who were born in Africa, it is likely that the portrayal is an accurate one.
In
contrast to the Wedgwood medallion and Blake images, the portrait of
Joseph Cinque, leader of the revolt on board the Amistad slave ship,
painted by the American abolitionist artist Nathaniel Jocelyn shows the
subject standing proud, unbowed and defiant, dressed in a Roman toga and
with an almost regal bearing.There are numerous images of the revolutionary, Toussaint Louverture, ranging from caricature to stately portrait, presumably depending on the political viewpoint of the artist.Today, descendants of Africans – both enslaved and free – are continuing the artistic tradition and reclaiming and reinterpreting the legacies of the slave trade. For the Victoria & Albert Museum's touring exhibition, Uncomfortable Truths: the shadow of slave trading on contemporary art and design eleven international artists present new and specially-commissioned works to explore a number of thought-provoking issues arising from the legacy of slavery. The artists include Ghana's El Anatsui, America's Michael Paul Britto and Fred Wilson and Yinka Shonibare, Lubaina Himid, and Keith Piper from the UK.
It is perhaps appropriate – and coming almost full circle – that the Beninese artist, Romuald Hazoumé has created the installation La Bouche du Roi for the British Museum. The work is made up of 304 'masks' made from black plastic petrol cans, a CD of sounds and voices, a film depicting the lives of motorcycling petrol traffickers, and the scents of tobacco and petrol. The shape of the installation is based on a famous print of the British slave ship, the Brooks, a model of which Wilberforce used in the campaign for abolition. The title signifies the name of a place in Benin from which slaves were traded, but the installation brings us up to date with Hazoumé’s depiction of modern-day slavery. As Hazoume describes his work:
Contrary to what might appear, La Bouche du Roi ('The King’s Mouth'), does not speak of past slavery, but rather of that which exists today, for it is the mouths of our present-day ‘kings’ that kill us. In times gone by, the slaves who set sail to Ouidah or Porto-Novo knew from whence they came, but knew nothing of where they were heading. Today, they still do not know where they are heading, but they have forgotten, and no longer know where they came from. I denounce an Africa and a world ruled over by corrupt kinglets who steal, pillage, hijack, appropriate, and enrich themselves at their peoples’ expense. I am not afraid of denouncing them. Today, many families are still forced to sell their children in order to survive. This is unacceptable.
Vastiana Belfon
Research Associate
The Runnymede Trust
How the Real Histories Directory can help you with The Art of Slavery
Western ArtMind-forg’d Manacles: William Blake and Slavery can be seen at The Burrell Collection, Glasgow from 3 November 2007 to 6 January 2008 and at the Whitworth Art Gallery in Manchester from 26 January to 6 April 2008.
The Image of Black
website highlights the various representations of black people in
European art, thus helping to reshape black heritage, culture and
identity. The site also has a special section on the Black Presence in
the National Gallery that examines the black presence in three paintings
by Edgar Degas, William Hogarth and Johann Liss.
The National Gallery in London has an exhibition, Scratch the Surface running from 20 July to 4 November 2007 that looks at the role that the trade in slaves played in the lives of two people seen in portraits belonging to the gallery: Zoffany's portrait of Mrs Oswald and Sir Joshua Reynold’s Colonel Tarleton. As part of the exhibition, the artist Yinka Shonibare has created a new installation in response to the two portraits.
The online Abolition trail
features an audio guide that illustrates a walk around Westminster and
takes in visits to the National Gallery and the National Portrait
Gallery.
The English Heritage exhibition, Slavery and Justice: the legacies of Lord Mansfield and Dido Belle
runs at Kenwood House in London until 2 September 2007. (Portrait of
Dido Elizabeth Belle and Lady Elizabeth Murray later Finch-Hatton,
attributed to Zoffany. From the Collection of The Earl of Mansfield at
Scone Palace, Perth, Scotland.)
The Glassford Family Portrait – A hidden legacy runs from 17 August 2007 to 2 March 2008 at the People's Palace and Winter Gardens in Glasgow. Through the portrait, the exhibition explores the legacy of tobacco and slavery on Glasgow and you'll be able to watch the conservators working on the painting in the Looking at Art gallery in Kelvingrove until August.
In
a small exhibition at Norwich Castle, Thomas Fowell Buxton and the Anti-Slavery Movement,
from May to 18 November, rare decorative art items from the Castle
demonstrate how slavery had become a part of life in the 18th and 19th
centuries.
The Bodleian Library of Commonwealth and African Studies at Rhodes House has an online exhibition bringing together pamphlets from both sides of the anti-slavery argument as well as a number of related artefacts.
Contemporary artists
The V&A’s Uncomfortable Truths
exhibition travels to Salford Museum and Art Gallery (30 June-2
September) and then to Ferens Art Gallery, Hull (15 September-6
January).
Romuald Hazoume’s Bouche du Roi can be seen at: Ferens Art Gallery, Hull (2 June-15 July 2007); International Slavery Museum, Liverpool (4 August–2 September 2007; Bristol’s City Museum (15 September–28 October 2007); Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle (10 November–3 February 2008); Horniman Museum, London (5 December 2008–1 March 2009). You can also listen to an interview with the artist on the BBC Word Service website.
Online, The Brunei Gallery has details of their Transitions exhibition
held in 2005. It features the works of 61 artists who live and work in
Botswana, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Namibia and Mozambique. There are also
worksheets for primary and secondary schools. The Triangle Arts Trust
was set up as an artists' workshop bringing together local and
international artists and now incorporates regular workshops in over 20
countries. On the website
you can view workshops in Mozambique, Nigeria, South Africa, Zimbabwe,
Kenya, Zambia, Uganda, Tanzania, Senegal, Botswana and Namibia.
The October Gallery commissioned three leading visual artists from West Africa to create works to mark the bicentenary of the UK's parliamentary abolition of the Transatlantic slave trade. The artists, in three very different ways, map personal and universal relationships between past and future. Although the exhibition is over, the artworks can be viewed online. The Gallery's new project, entitled Bitter Aftertaste: Sugar, the Slave Trade and the Arts of the Atlantic World also includes a range of schools' workshops and a web resource exploring the material culture and legacies of the Atlantic trade in art and society today.
African traditions
The British Museum has an online tour, Views from Africa
that features objects made by artists from south of the Sahara between
the sixteenth and twentieth centuries. The Horniman Museum has the first
permanent exhibition in Britain dedicated to African art and culture, African Worlds,
bringing together a rich mixture of sculpture and decorative arts from
across Africa, from Egypt to Zimbabwe and from African-related cultures
including Brazil and Trinidad. Highlights include masterpieces of the
bronze casters art from Benin as well as Dogon and Bwa masks from Mali
and Burkina Faso. Online, you can find a learning pack giving support
and inspiration for teachers of students from nursery age to early teens
as well as parents, carers and community group leaders.
Greater Manchester's museum collections hold the physical evidence of the impact of the slave trade across the region. In its ethnographic, industrial, social history and fine arts collections, the story of the slave trade is woven. You can see examples of some of the objects on the Revealing Histories, Remembering Slavery website.
The
Victoria and Albert Museum has an exhibition of Asante gold weights
from Ghana running until the end of the year and on 14 October, there is
Celebrating Africa Day with The Big Draw, a family day of African-inspired drawing techniques, live music, dance, African art, discussions and African portraiture.
On 26 July, Liverpool's International Slavery Museum hosts an afternoon of African-themed arts and crafts and on 27 August, there is a special handling session that lets visitors see objects from the Customs and Excise Museum's collections up close. It focuses on smuggled goods from Africa and takes place at the Customs and Excise National Museum.
In the classroom
There is a teachers' guide to African art online and many teachers might also be interested in the Fairmead SEN School's art project to help students to investigate the issues of slavery and to think more deeply about Africa and, thus, break down stereotypical views. Details of the project can be found on the Global Dimension website.
Click here to download this Topic as a pdf (180kb)
Please do let us know if you have other resources or ideas that help with teaching or learning about The Art of Slavery. You can email us your thoughts or comments to realhistories@runnymedetrust.org.
The National Gallery in London has an exhibition, Scratch the Surface running from 20 July to 4 November 2007 that looks at the role that the trade in slaves played in the lives of two people seen in portraits belonging to the gallery: Zoffany's portrait of Mrs Oswald and Sir Joshua Reynold’s Colonel Tarleton. As part of the exhibition, the artist Yinka Shonibare has created a new installation in response to the two portraits.
The online Abolition trail
features an audio guide that illustrates a walk around Westminster and
takes in visits to the National Gallery and the National Portrait
Gallery.The English Heritage exhibition, Slavery and Justice: the legacies of Lord Mansfield and Dido Belle
runs at Kenwood House in London until 2 September 2007. (Portrait of
Dido Elizabeth Belle and Lady Elizabeth Murray later Finch-Hatton,
attributed to Zoffany. From the Collection of The Earl of Mansfield at
Scone Palace, Perth, Scotland.)The Glassford Family Portrait – A hidden legacy runs from 17 August 2007 to 2 March 2008 at the People's Palace and Winter Gardens in Glasgow. Through the portrait, the exhibition explores the legacy of tobacco and slavery on Glasgow and you'll be able to watch the conservators working on the painting in the Looking at Art gallery in Kelvingrove until August.
In
a small exhibition at Norwich Castle, Thomas Fowell Buxton and the Anti-Slavery Movement,
from May to 18 November, rare decorative art items from the Castle
demonstrate how slavery had become a part of life in the 18th and 19th
centuries.The Bodleian Library of Commonwealth and African Studies at Rhodes House has an online exhibition bringing together pamphlets from both sides of the anti-slavery argument as well as a number of related artefacts.
Contemporary artists
The V&A’s Uncomfortable Truths
exhibition travels to Salford Museum and Art Gallery (30 June-2
September) and then to Ferens Art Gallery, Hull (15 September-6
January).Romuald Hazoume’s Bouche du Roi can be seen at: Ferens Art Gallery, Hull (2 June-15 July 2007); International Slavery Museum, Liverpool (4 August–2 September 2007; Bristol’s City Museum (15 September–28 October 2007); Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle (10 November–3 February 2008); Horniman Museum, London (5 December 2008–1 March 2009). You can also listen to an interview with the artist on the BBC Word Service website.
Online, The Brunei Gallery has details of their Transitions exhibition
held in 2005. It features the works of 61 artists who live and work in
Botswana, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Namibia and Mozambique. There are also
worksheets for primary and secondary schools. The Triangle Arts Trust
was set up as an artists' workshop bringing together local and
international artists and now incorporates regular workshops in over 20
countries. On the website
you can view workshops in Mozambique, Nigeria, South Africa, Zimbabwe,
Kenya, Zambia, Uganda, Tanzania, Senegal, Botswana and Namibia.The October Gallery commissioned three leading visual artists from West Africa to create works to mark the bicentenary of the UK's parliamentary abolition of the Transatlantic slave trade. The artists, in three very different ways, map personal and universal relationships between past and future. Although the exhibition is over, the artworks can be viewed online. The Gallery's new project, entitled Bitter Aftertaste: Sugar, the Slave Trade and the Arts of the Atlantic World also includes a range of schools' workshops and a web resource exploring the material culture and legacies of the Atlantic trade in art and society today.
African traditions
The British Museum has an online tour, Views from Africa
that features objects made by artists from south of the Sahara between
the sixteenth and twentieth centuries. The Horniman Museum has the first
permanent exhibition in Britain dedicated to African art and culture, African Worlds,
bringing together a rich mixture of sculpture and decorative arts from
across Africa, from Egypt to Zimbabwe and from African-related cultures
including Brazil and Trinidad. Highlights include masterpieces of the
bronze casters art from Benin as well as Dogon and Bwa masks from Mali
and Burkina Faso. Online, you can find a learning pack giving support
and inspiration for teachers of students from nursery age to early teens
as well as parents, carers and community group leaders.Greater Manchester's museum collections hold the physical evidence of the impact of the slave trade across the region. In its ethnographic, industrial, social history and fine arts collections, the story of the slave trade is woven. You can see examples of some of the objects on the Revealing Histories, Remembering Slavery website.
The
Victoria and Albert Museum has an exhibition of Asante gold weights
from Ghana running until the end of the year and on 14 October, there is
Celebrating Africa Day with The Big Draw, a family day of African-inspired drawing techniques, live music, dance, African art, discussions and African portraiture.On 26 July, Liverpool's International Slavery Museum hosts an afternoon of African-themed arts and crafts and on 27 August, there is a special handling session that lets visitors see objects from the Customs and Excise Museum's collections up close. It focuses on smuggled goods from Africa and takes place at the Customs and Excise National Museum.
In the classroom
There is a teachers' guide to African art online and many teachers might also be interested in the Fairmead SEN School's art project to help students to investigate the issues of slavery and to think more deeply about Africa and, thus, break down stereotypical views. Details of the project can be found on the Global Dimension website.
Click here to download this Topic as a pdf (180kb)
Please do let us know if you have other resources or ideas that help with teaching or learning about The Art of Slavery. You can email us your thoughts or comments to realhistories@runnymedetrust.org.
TV Ad: United States owes China, 1:02
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https://youtu.be/JlkLhVo3PbY
The Opium War and Foreign Encroachment
Two things happened in the eighteenth century that made it difficult for England to balance its trade with the East. First, the British became a nation of tea drinkers and the demand for Chinese tea rose astronomically. It is estimated that the average London worker spent five percent of his or her total household budget on tea.
Second, northern Chinese merchants began to ship Chinese cotton from the interior to the south to compete with the Indian cotton that Britain had used to help pay for its tea consumption habits. To prevent a trade imbalance, the British tried to sell more of their own products to China, but there was not much demand for heavy woolen fabrics in a country accustomed to either cotton padding or silk.
The only solution was to increase the amount of Indian goods to pay for these Chinese luxuries, and increasingly in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the item provided to China was Bengal opium. With greater opium supplies had naturally come an increase in demand and usage throughout the country, in spite of repeated prohibitions by the Chinese government and officials. The British did all they could to increase the trade: They bribed officials, helped the Chinese work out elaborate smuggling schemes to get the opium into China's interior, and distributed free samples of the drug to innocent victims.
The cost to China was enormous. The drug weakened a large percentage of the population (some estimate that 10 percent of the population regularly used opium by the late nineteenth century), and silver began to flow out of the country to pay for the opium. Many of the economic problems China faced later were either directly or indirectly traced to the opium trade.
The government debated about whether to legalize the drug through a government monopoly like that on salt, hoping to barter Chinese goods in return for opium. But since the Chinese were fully aware of the harms of addiction, in 1838 the emperor decided to send one of his most able officials, Lin Tse-hsu (Lin Zexu, 1785-1850), to Canton (Guangzhou) to do whatever necessary to end the traffic forever.
Lin was able to put his first two proposals into effect easily. Addicts were rounded up, forcibly treated, and taken off the habit, and domestic drug dealers were harshly punished. His third objective — to confiscate foreign stores and force foreign merchants to sign pledges of good conduct, agreeing never to trade in opium and to be punished by Chinese law if ever found in violation — eventually brought war. Opinion in England was divided: Some British did indeed feel morally uneasy about the trade, but they were overruled by those who wanted to increase England's China trade and teach the arrogant Chinese a good lesson.
Western military weapons, including percussion lock muskets, heavy artillery, and paddlewheel gunboats, were far superior to China's. Britain's troops had recently been toughened in the Napoleonic wars, and Britain could muster garrisons, warships, and provisions from its nearby colonies in Southeast Asia and India.
The result was a disaster for the Chinese. By the summer of 1842 British ships were victorious and were even preparing to shell the old capital, Nanking (Nanjing), in central China. The emperor therefore had no choice but to accept the British demands and sign a peace agreement. This agreement, the first of the "unequal treaties," opened China to the West and marked the beginning of Western exploitation of the nation.
Other humiliating defeats followed in what one historian has called China's "treaty century" (major aspects of the so-called "unequal treaties" were not formally voided until 1943). In 1843, France and the United States, and Russia in 1858, negotiated treaties similar to England's Nanking (Nanjing) Treaty, including a provision for extraterritoriality, whereby foreign nationals in China were immune from Chinese law.
To compel a reluctant China to shift from its traditional tribute based foreign relations to treaty relations, Europeans fought a second war with China from 1858-1860, and the concluding Treaty of Tientsin (Tianjin) and Convention of Peking (Beijing) increased China's semi-colonial status. More ports were open to foreign residence and trade, and foreigners, especially missionaries, were allowed free movement and business anywhere in the country.
Conflicts for the rest of the century wrung more humiliating concessions from China: with Russia over claims in China's far west and northeast in 1850 and 1860, with England over access to the upper reaches of the Yangtze River in 1876, with France over northern Vietnam in 1884, with Japan over its claims to Korea and northeast China in 1895, and with many foreign powers after 1897 which demanded "spheres of influence," especially for constructing railroads and mines.
In 1900, an international army suppressed the anti-foreign Boxer Rebellion in northern China, destroying much of Beijing in the process. Each of these defeats brought more foreign demands, greater indemnities that China had to repay, more foreign presence along the coast, and more foreign participation in China's political and economic life. Little wonder that many in China were worried by the century's end that China was being sliced up "like a melon."
Acknowledgment: The consultant for this unit was Dr. Sue Gronewold,
a specialist in Chinese history.
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Modern History Sourcebook:
Qian Long:
Letter to George III, 1793
Qian Long [Ch'ien Lung], (r. 1735-1795) ruled China for much of the 18th century, the last period in which China was strong enough to resist, or better, disdain external influence. Here is letter he sent in response to a request from George III of Britain (r. 1760-1820) for trade privileges. In 1793, while Britain was in the midst of the French Revolutionary situation in Europe, China retained its fredom to act as it wished. But within 50 years, all was to change. By the 1840s the British were able to sail into China's rivers and destroy its fleets.
You, O King, live beyond the confines of many seas, nevertheless,
impelled by your humble desire to partake of the benefits of our
civilisation, you have dispatched a mission respectfully bearing
your memorial. Your Envoy has crossed the seas and paid his respects
at my Court on the anniversary of my birthday. To show your devotion,
you have also sent offerings of your country's produce.
I have perused your memorial: the earnest terms in which it is
couched reveal a respectful humility on your part, which is highly
praiseworthy. In consideration of the fact that your Ambassador
and his deputy have come a long way with your memorial and tribute,
I have shown them high favour and have allowed them to be introduced
into my presence. To manifest my indulgence, I have entertained
them at a banquet and made them numerous gifts. I have also caused
presents to be forwarded to the Naval Commander and six hundred
of his officers and men, although they did not come to Peking,
so that they too may share in my allembracing kindness.
As to your entreaty to send one of your nationals to be accredited
to my Celestial Court and to be in control of your country's trade
with China, this request is contrary to all usage of my dynasty
and cannot possibly be entertained. It is true that Europeans,
in the service of the dynasty, have been permitted to live at
Peking, but they are compelled to adopt Chinese dress, they are
strictly confined to their own precincts and are never permitted
to return home. You are presumably familiar with our dynastic
regulations. Your proposed Envoy to my Court could not be placed
in a position similar to that of European officials in Peking
who are forbidden to leave China, nor could he, on the other hand,
be allowed liberty of movement and the privilege of corresponding
with his own country; so that you would gain nothing by his residence
in our midst.
Moreover, our Celestial dynasty possesses vast territories, and
tribute missions from the dependencies are provided for by the
Department for Tributary States, which ministers to their wants
and exercises strict control over their movements. It would be
quite impossible to leave them to their own devices. Supposing
that your Envoy should come to our Court, his language and national
dress differ from that of our people, and there would be no place
in which to bestow him. It may be suggested that he might imitate
the Europeans permanently resident in Peking and adopt the dress
and customs of China, but, it has never been our dynasty's wish
to force people to do things unseemly and inconvenient. Besides,
supposing I sent an Ambassador to reside in your country, how
could you possibly make for him the requisite arrangements? Europe
consists of many other nations besides your own: if each and all
demanded to be represented at our Court, how could we possibly
consent? The thing is utterly impracticable. How can our dynasty
alter its whole procedure and system of etiquette, established
for more than a century, in order to meet your individual views?
If it be said that your object is to exercise control over your
country's trade, your nationals have had full liberty to trade
at Canton for many a year, and have received the greatest consideration
at our hands. Missions have been sent by Portugal and Italy, preferring
similar requests. The Throne appreciated their sincerity and loaded
them with favours, besides authorising measures to facilitate
their trade with China. You are no doubt aware that, when my Canton
merchant, Wu Chaoping, was in debt to the foreign ships,
I made the Viceroy advance the monies due, out of the provincial
treasury, and ordered him to punish the culprit severely. Why
then should foreign nations advance this utterly unreasonable
request to be represented at my Court? Peking is nearly two thousand
miles from Canton, and at such a distance what possible control
could any British representative exercise?
If you assert that your reverence for Our Celestial dynasty fills
you with a desire to acquire our civilisation, our ceremonies
and code of laws differ so completely from your own that, even
if your Envoy were able to acquire the rudiments of our civilisation,
you could not possibly transplant our manners and customs to your
alien soil. Therefore, however adept the Envoy might become, nothing
would be gained thereby.
Swaying the wide world, I have but one aim in view, namely, to
maintain a perfect governance and to fulfil the duties of the
State: strange and costly objects do not interest me. If I have
commanded that the tribute offerings sent by you, O King, are
to be accepted, this was solely in consideration for the spirit
which prompted you to dispatch them from afar. Our dynasty's majestic
virtue has penetrated unto every country under Heaven, and Kings
of all nations have offered their costly tribute by land and sea.
As your Ambassador can see for himself, we possess all things.
I set no value on objects strange or ingenious, and have no use
for your country's manufactures. This then is my answer to your
request to appoint a representative at my Court, a request contrary
to our dynastic usage, which would only result in inconvenience
to yourself. I have expounded my wishes in detail and have commanded
your tribute Envoys to leave in peace on their homeward journey.
It behoves you, O King, to respect my sentiments and to display
even greater devotion and loyalty in future, so that, by perpetual
submission to our Throne, you may secure peace and prosperity
for your country hereafter. Besides making gifts (of which I enclose
an inventory) to each member of your Mission, I confer upon you,
O King, valuable presents in excess of the number usually bestowed
on such occasions, including silks and curios-a list of which
is likewise enclosed. Do you reverently receive them and take
note of my tender goodwill towards you! A special mandate.
In the same letter, a further mandate to King George III dealt
in detail with the British ambassador's proposals and the Emperor's
reasons for declining them.
You, O King, from afar have yearned after the blessings of our
civilisation, and in your eagerness to come into touch with our
converting influence have sent an Embassy across the sea bearing
a memorial. I have already taken note of your respectful spirit
of submission, have treated your mission with extreme favour and
loaded it with gifts, besides issuing a mandate to you, O King,
and honouring you with the bestowal of valuable presents. Thus
has my indulgence been manifested.
Yesterday your Ambassador petitioned my Ministers to memorialise
me regarding your trade with China, but his proposal is not consistent
with our dynastic usage and cannot be entertained. Hitherto, all
European nations, including your own country's barbarian merchants,
have carried on their trade with our Celestial Empire at Canton.
Such has been the procedure for many years, although our Celestial
Empire possesses all things in prolific abundance and lacks no
product within its own borders. There was therefore no need to
import the manufactures of outside barbarians in exchange for
our own produce. But as the tea, silk and porcelain which the
Celestial Empire produces, are absolute necessities to European
nations and to yourselves, we have permitted, as a signal mark
of favour, that foreign hongs [merchant firms] should be
established at Canton, so that your wants might be supplied and
your country thus participate in our beneficence. But your Ambassador
has now put forward new requests which completely fail to recognise
the Throne's principle to "treat strangers from afar with
indulgence," and to exercise a pacifying control over barbarian
tribes, the world over. Moreover, our dynasty, swaying the myriad
races of the globe, extends the same benevolence towards all.
Your England is not the only nation trading at Canton. If other
nations, following your bad example, wrongfully importune my ear
with further impossible requests, how will it be possible for
me to treat them with easy indulgence? Nevertheless, I do not
forget the lonely remoteness of your island, cut off from the
world by intervening wastes of sea, nor do I overlook your excusable
ignorance of the usages of our Celestial Empire. I have consequently
commanded my Ministers to enlighten your Ambassador on the subject,
and have ordered the departure of the mission. But I have doubts
that, after your Envoy's return he may fail to acquaint you with
my view in detail or that he may be lacking in lucidity, so that
I shall now proceed . . . to issue my mandate on each question
separately. In this way you will, I trust, comprehend my meaning....
(3) Your request for a small island near Chusan, where your merchants
may reside and goods be warehoused, arises from your desire to
develop trade. As there are neither foreign hongs nor interpreters
in or near Chusan, where none of your ships have ever called,
such an island would be utterly useless for your purposes. Every
inch of the territory of our Empire is marked on the map and the
strictest vigilance is exercised over it all: even tiny islets
and farlying sandbanks are clearly defined as part
of the provinces to which they belong. Consider, moreover, that
England is not the only barbarian land which wishes to establish
. . . trade with our Empire: supposing that other nations were
all to imitate your evil example and beseech me to present them
each and all with a site for trading purposes, how could I possibly
comply? This also is a flagrant infringement of the usage of my
Empire and cannot possibly be entertained.
(4) The next request, for a small site in the vicinity of Canton
city, where your barbarian merchants may lodge or, alternatively,
that there be no longer any restrictions over their movements
at Aomen, has arisen from the following causes. Hitherto, the
barbarian merchants of Europe have had a definite locality assigned
to them at Aomen for residence and trade, and have been forbidden
to encroach an inch beyond the limits assigned to that locality....
If these restrictions were withdrawn, friction would inevitably
occur between the Chinese and your barbarian subjects, and the
results would militate against the benevolent regard that I feel
towards you. From every point of view, therefore, it is best that
the regulations now in force should continue unchanged....
(7) Regarding your nation's worship of the Lord of Heaven, it
is the same religion as that of other European nations. Ever since
the beginning of history, sage Emperors and wise rulers have bestowed
on China a moral system and inculcated a code, which from time
immemorial has been religiously observed by the myriads of my
subjects. There has been no hankering after heterodox doctrines.
Even the European (missionary) officials in my capital are forbidden
to hold intercourse with Chinese subjects; they are restricted
within the limits of their appointed residences, and may not go
about propagating their religion. The distinction between Chinese
and barbarian is most strict, and your Ambassador's request that
barbarians shall be given full liberty to disseminate their religion
is utterly unreasonable.
It may be, O King, that the above proposals have been wantonly
made by your Ambassador on his own responsibility, or peradventure
you yourself are ignorant of our dynastic regulations and had
no intention of transgressing them when you expressed these wild
ideas and hopes.... If, after the receipt of this explicit decree,
you lightly give ear to the representations of your subordinates
and allow your barbarian merchants to proceed to Chêkiang
and Tientsin, with the object of landing and trading there, the
ordinances of my Celestial Empire are strict in the extreme, and
the local officials, both civil and military, are bound reverently
to obey the law of the land. Should your vessels touch the shore,
your merchants will assuredly never be permitted to land or to
reside there, but will be subject to instant expulsion. In that
event your barbarian merchants will have had a long journey for
nothing. Do not say that
From E. Backhouse and J. O. P. Bland, Annals and Memoirs of
the Court of Peking (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1914), pp.
322331
This text is part of the Internet Modern History Sourcebook.
The Sourcebook is a collection of public domain and copy-permitted
texts for introductory level classes in modern European and World
history.
Lin Zixu Lin Tse-Hs� (1839 CE)
Letter of Advice to Queen Victoria
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[Kishlansky Introduction] Lin Tse-Hsu (1785-1850) was the Chinese Commissioner in Canton whose actions precipitated the Opium Wars (1839- 1842). Although opium was used in China for centuries, it was not until the opening of the tea trade to Dutch and British merchants that China was able to import large quantities of the drug. By the early nineteenth century opium was the principal product that the English East India Company traded in China and opium addiction was becoming a widespread social problem. When the emperor's own son died of an overdose, he decided to put an end to the trade. Lin Tse-Hs� was sent.to Canton, the chief trading port of the East India Company, with instructions to negoiate an end to the importation of opium into China. The English merchants were uncooperative, so he seized their stores of opium. This led to immediate military action. The Chinese were decisively defeated and had to cede to a humiliating treaty that legalized the opium trade. As a result commissioner Lin was dismissed from office and sent into exile.
Lin Tse-Hsu's "Letter of Advice to Queen Victoria" was written before the outbreak of the Opium Wars. It was a remarkably frank document, especially given the usual highly stylized language of Chinese diplomacy. There remains some question whether Queen Victoria ever read the letter.
A communication: magnificently our great Emperor soothes and pacifies China and the foreign countries, regarding all with the same kindness. If there is profit, then he shares it with the peoples of the world; if there is harm, then he removes it on behalf of the world. This is because he takes the mind of heaven and earth as his mind.
The kings of your honorable country by a tradition handed down from generation to generation have always been noted for their politeness and submissiveness. We have read your successive tributary memorials saying, "In general our countrymen who go to trade in China have always received His Majesty the Emperor's gracious treatment and equal justice." and so on. Privately we are delighted with the way in which the honorable rulers of your countip deeply understand the grand principles and are grateful for the Celestial grace. For this reason the Celestial Court in soothing those from afar has redoubled its polite and kind treatment. The profit from trade has been enjoyed by them continuously for two hundred years. This is the source from which your country has become known for its wealth.
But after a long period of commercial intercourse, there appear among the crowh of barbarians both good persons and bad, unevenly. Consequently there are those who smuggle opium to seduce the Chinese people and so cause the spread of the poison to all provinces. Such persons who only care to profit themselves, and disregard their harm to others, are not tolerated by the laws of heaven and are unanimoly hated by human beings. His Majesty the Emperor, upon hearing of this, is in a towering rage. He has especially sent me, his commissioner, to come to Kwangtung, and together with the governor-general and governor jointly to investigate and settle this matter.
All those people in China who sell opium or smoke opium should receive the death penalty. We trace the crime of those barbarians who through the years have been selling opium, then the deep harm they have wrought and the great profit they have usurped should fundamentally justify their execution according to law. We take into to consideration, however, the fact that the various barbarians have still known how to repent their crimes and return to their allegiance to us by taking the 20,183 chests of opium from their storeships and petitioning us, through their consular officer [superintendent of trade], Elliot, to receive it. It has been entirely destroyed and this has been faithfully reported to the Throne in several memorials by this comissioner and his colleagues.
Fortunately we have received a specially extended favor Born His Majesty the Emperor, who considers that for those who voluntarily surrender there are still some circumstances to paliate their crime, and so for the time being he has magnanimously excused them from punishment. But as for those who again violate the opium prohibition, it is difficult for the law to pardon them repeatedly. Having established new regulations, we presume that the ruler of your honorable country, who takes delight in our culture and whose disposition is inclined towards us, must be able to instruct the various barbarians to observe the law with care. It is only neccessary to explain to them the advantages and advantages and then they will know that the legal code of the Celestial Court must be absolutely obeyed with awe.
We find your country is sixty or seventy thousand li [three li make one mile, ordinarily] from China Yet there are barbanan ships that strive to come here for trade for the purpose of making a great profit The wealth of China is used to profit the barbarians. That is to say, the great profit made by barbarians is all taken from the rightful share of China. By what right do they then in return use the poisonous drug to injure the Chinese people? Even though the barbarians may not necessarily intend to do us harm, yet in coveting profit to an extreme, they have no regard for injuring others. Let us ask, where is your conscience? I have heard that the smoking of opium is very strictly forbidden by your country; that is because the harm caused by opium is clearly understood. Since it is not permitted to do harm to your own country, then even less should you let it be passed on to the harm of other countries -- how much less to China! Of all that China exports to foreign countries, there is not a single thing which is not beneficial to peo ple: they are of benefit when eaten, or of benefit when used, or of benefit when resold: all are beneficial. Is there a single article from China which has done any harm to foreign countries? Take tea and rhubarb, for example; the foreign countries cannot get along for a single day without them. If China cuts off these benefits with no sympathy for those who are to suffer, then what can the barbarians rely upon to keep themselves alive? Moreover the woolens, camlets, and longells [i.e., textiles] of foreign countries cannot be woven unless they obtain Chinese silk. If China, again, cuts off this beneficial export, what profit can the barbarians expect to make? As for other foodstuffs, beginning with candy, ginger, cinnamon, and so forth, and articles for use, beginning with silk, satin, chinaware, and so on, all the things that must be had by foreign countries are innumerable. On the other hand, articles coming from the outside to China can only be used as toys. We can take them or get along without them. Since they are not needed by China, what difficulty would there be if we closed our the frontier and stopped the trade? Nevertheless, our Celestial Court lets tea, silk, and other goods be shipped without limit and circulated everywhere without begrudging it in the slightest. This is for no other reason but to share the benefit with the people of the whole world. The goods from China carried away by your country not only supply your own consumption and use, but also can be divided up and sold to other countries, producing a triple profit. Even if you do not sell opium, you still have this threefold profit. How can you bear to go further, selling products injurious to others in order to fulfill your insatiable desire?
Suppose there were people from another country who carried opium for sale to England
and seduced your people into buying and smoking it; certainly your honorable ruler would deeply hate it and be bitterly aroused. We have heard heretofore that your honorable ruler is kind and benevolent. Naturally you would not wish to give unto others what you yourself do not want. We have also heard that the ships coming to Canton have all had regulations promulgated and given to them in which it is stated that it is not permitted to carry contraband goods. This indicates that the administrative orders of your honorable rule have been originally strict and clear. Only because the trading ships are numerous, heretofore perhaps they have not been examined with care. Now after this communication has been dispatched and you have clearly understood the strictness of the prohibitory laws of the Celestial Gourt, certainly you will not let your subjects dare again to violate the law.
We have further learned that in London, the capital of your honorable rule, and in Scotland,
Ireland, and other places, originally no opium has been produced. Only in several places of India under your control such as Bengal, Madras, Bombay, Patna, Benares, and Malwa has opium been planted from hill to hill, and ponds h ave been opened for its manufacture. For months and years wark is continued in order to accumulate the poison. The obnoxious odor ascends, irritating heaven and frightening the spirits. Indeed you, O King, can eradicate the opium plant in these places, hoe over the fields entirely, and sow in its stead the five grains [millet, barley, wheat, etc.]. Anyone who dares again attempt to plant and manufacture opium should be severely punished. This will really be a great, benevolent government policy that will increase the common weal and get rid of evil. For this, Heaven must support you and the spirits must bring you good fortune, prolonging your old age and extending your descendants. All will depend on this act.
As for the barbarian merchants who come to China, their food and drink and habitation,
all received by the gracious favor of our Celestial Court. Their accumulated wealth is all benefit given with pleasure by our Celestial Court. They spend rather few days in their own country but more time in Canton. To digest clearly the le gal penalties as an aid to instruction has been a valid principle in all ages. Suppose a man of another country comes to England to trade, he still has to obey the English laws; how much more should he obey in China the laws of the Celestial Dynasty?
Now we have set up regulations governing the Chinese people. He who sells opium shall receive the death penalty and he who smokes it also the death penalty. Now consider this: if the barbarians do not bring opium, then how can the Chinese people resell it, and how can they smoke it? The fact is that the wicked barbariians beguile the Ghinese people into a death trap. How then can we grant life only to these barbarians? He who takes the life of even one person still has to atone for it with his own life; yet is the harm done by opium limited to the taking of one life only? Therefore in the new regulations, in regard to those barbarians who bring opium to China, the penalty is fixed at decapitation or strangulation. This is what is called getting rid a harmful thing on behalf of mankind.
Moreover we have found that in the middle of the second month of this year [April 9] Consul [Superintendent] Elliot of your nation, because the opium prohibition law was very stern and severe, petitioned for an extension of the time limit. He requested an estension of five months for India and its adjacent harbours and related territories, and ten months for England proper, after which they would act in conformity wi th the new regulations. Now we, the commissioner and.others, have memorialized and have received the extraordinary Celestial grace of His Majesty the Emperor, who has redoubled his consideration and compassion. All those who from the period of the coming one year (from England) or six months (from India) bring opium to China by mistake, but who voluntarily confess and completely surrender their opium, shall be exempt from their punishment. After this limit of time, if there are still those who bring opium to China then they will plainly have committed a wilful violation and shall at once be executed according to law, with absolutely no clemency or pardon. This may be called the height of kindness and the perfection of justice.
Our Celestial Dynasty rules over and supervises the myriad states, and surely possesses
unfathomable spiritual dignity. Yet the Emperor cannot cear to execute people without having first tried to reform them by instruction. Therefore he especialiy prornulgates these fixed regulations. The barbarian merchants of your country, if they wish to do business for a prolonged period, are required to obey our statues respectfully and to cut off permanently the source of opium. They must by no means try to test the effectiveness of the law with their lives. May you, O King, check your wicked and sift your wicked people before they come to China, in order to guarantee the peace of your nation, to show further the sincerity of your politeness and subrnissiveness, and to let the two countries enjoy together the blessings of peace How fortunate, how fortunate indeed! After receiving this dispatch will you immediately give us a prompt reply regarding the details and circumstances of your cutting off the opium traffic. be sure not to put this off. The above is what has to be communicated.
Questions
2. Why is he worried about the sale of opium in China?
3. What connnection does he think Queen Victoria has to the opium trade? Do you think he is right?
4. What does this document tell us about the relations between China and the West in the nineteenth century?
Talk Like An Opera Geek: How Verdi, Wagner and Puccini Got Their Grooves
Talk Like An Opera Geek attempts to decode the intriguing and intimidating lexicon of the opera house.
In a production of Verdi's opera Rigoletto at the Sydney Opera House, the title character (baritone Jonathan Summers) reels at the discovery of his dead daughter.
Patrick Riviere/Getty Images
After the death in 1848 of Gaetano Donizetti (a virtual composing machine who cranked out over 60 operas in 27 years), one man alone, Giuseppe Verdi, changed the face of Italian opera in the 19th century.
Verdi broke new ground at almost every turn in his career. In such early successes as Ernani, he introduced a vibrant potency to music for lower male voices. In middle period works like Rigoletto and La Traviata, he deepened the richness of individual characters while broadening dramatic complexity. And in Verdi's late operas, he combined a new mastery of vocal expression with swift, taut pacing, turning Otello into a riveting thriller and Falstaff into a virtuosic, sparkling comedy.
Wagner The Game-Changer
Meanwhile, in Germany, Richard Wagner was turning opera on its head. Described by one observer as a "one man artistic movement," Wagner thought of himself (something he did a lot) as much more than a composer. He became an omnipotent creator who ruled over every aspect his expansive "music dramas," which he thought of as total works of art (Gesamtkunstwerke).
Wagner was unique in that he wrote all of his own librettos and obsessed over minute details of staging. He was the first to darken the house lights during performances, and the first to design a radically new opera house solely for his works. Wagner exploded the length, breadth and height of music theater, changing it forever. His gargantuan operas have inspired composers, authors, directors and even dictators.
The music itself, which can sound both ravishing and unsettling, was the subject of much controversy in its time. Even today, entire books have been written on the single, enigmatic chord that opens his opera Tristan und Isolde. And the intricate lexicon of repeating musical motives matched to the characters and plot devices in the epic 18-hour Ring cycle is another spectacular innovation still studied in depth.
Wagner remains a polarizing figure for his rabid anti-Semitism, freewheeling megalomania and his descendants' ties to Adolph Hitler.
Puccini The Hit-Maker
Born 45 years after both Verdi and Wagner, Giacomo Puccini would become another pillar of the world's opera houses. With sweepingly romantic melodies, his operas were stocked not with royalty and Nordic gods but with common people. He once said that the key to his success was placing "great sorrows in little souls."
Part of that success rests on the shoulders of Pietro Mascagni, who had a massive hit in 1890 with Cavalleria Rusticana, a tunefully melodramatic love story streaked with violence. It ushered in verismo, a style of operatic realism Puccini adopted and refined.
Puccini's most beloved opera, La bohème, deftly balances comedy and tragedy in a detailed score rich with effects, such as a passage at the top of Act 3 for flutes and harp that depicts falling snow. Puccini's orchestrations became more sophisticated with each new opera, culminating in the unfinished 1926 Turandot, with its Chinese melodies (both real and imagined) and modern harmonies.
Although Puccini's operas were occasionally accused of containing shallow music and characters, no Italian since has matched his irresistible tunes, orchestral palette and staying power.
In a production of Verdi's opera Rigoletto at the Sydney Opera House, the title character (baritone Jonathan Summers) reels at the discovery of his dead daughter.
Verdi broke new ground at almost every turn in his career. In such early successes as Ernani, he introduced a vibrant potency to music for lower male voices. In middle period works like Rigoletto and La Traviata, he deepened the richness of individual characters while broadening dramatic complexity. And in Verdi's late operas, he combined a new mastery of vocal expression with swift, taut pacing, turning Otello into a riveting thriller and Falstaff into a virtuosic, sparkling comedy.
Wagner The Game-Changer
Meanwhile, in Germany, Richard Wagner was turning opera on its head. Described by one observer as a "one man artistic movement," Wagner thought of himself (something he did a lot) as much more than a composer. He became an omnipotent creator who ruled over every aspect his expansive "music dramas," which he thought of as total works of art (Gesamtkunstwerke).
Wagner was unique in that he wrote all of his own librettos and obsessed over minute details of staging. He was the first to darken the house lights during performances, and the first to design a radically new opera house solely for his works. Wagner exploded the length, breadth and height of music theater, changing it forever. His gargantuan operas have inspired composers, authors, directors and even dictators.
The music itself, which can sound both ravishing and unsettling, was the subject of much controversy in its time. Even today, entire books have been written on the single, enigmatic chord that opens his opera Tristan und Isolde. And the intricate lexicon of repeating musical motives matched to the characters and plot devices in the epic 18-hour Ring cycle is another spectacular innovation still studied in depth.
Wagner remains a polarizing figure for his rabid anti-Semitism, freewheeling megalomania and his descendants' ties to Adolph Hitler.
Puccini The Hit-Maker
Born 45 years after both Verdi and Wagner, Giacomo Puccini would become another pillar of the world's opera houses. With sweepingly romantic melodies, his operas were stocked not with royalty and Nordic gods but with common people. He once said that the key to his success was placing "great sorrows in little souls."
Part of that success rests on the shoulders of Pietro Mascagni, who had a massive hit in 1890 with Cavalleria Rusticana, a tunefully melodramatic love story streaked with violence. It ushered in verismo, a style of operatic realism Puccini adopted and refined.
Puccini's most beloved opera, La bohème, deftly balances comedy and tragedy in a detailed score rich with effects, such as a passage at the top of Act 3 for flutes and harp that depicts falling snow. Puccini's orchestrations became more sophisticated with each new opera, culminating in the unfinished 1926 Turandot, with its Chinese melodies (both real and imagined) and modern harmonies.
Although Puccini's operas were occasionally accused of containing shallow music and characters, no Italian since has matched his irresistible tunes, orchestral palette and staying power.
Hear The Music
Giuseppe Verdi: "Rigoletto" (1851)
- Rigoletto, opera [Act II, No. 15c, "Piangi, fanciulla)]
- from Verdi: Rigoletto
- by James Levine
Puccini: "Tosca" (1899)
- Tosca, opera [Recondita armonia]
- from 3 Legendary Tenors: Caruso; Gigli; McCormack
- by Enrico Caruso
Wagner: "Tristan Und Isolde" (1859, premiere 1865)
- Tristan und Isolde, opera, WWV 90 [Act 3. Scene 3. Mild und leise wie er lächelt]
- from Wagner: Tristan und Isolde
- by Plácido Domingo
Tristan und Isolde - End of Act 3 - Liebestod, 15:00
Enthralling and emotionally devastating conclusion to Wagner's Tristan und Isolde. The acclaimed 1995 Bayreuth production by Heiner Müller, conducted by Daniel Barenboim with fire and sensitivity. Siegfried Jerusalem and Waltraud Meier were the Tristan and Isolde of choice throughout the decade, and were at the height of their interpretive powers. Müller and stage designer Erich Wonder have compressed the monumental story into a clear and fascinating geometry of love, creating highly evocative spaces through projections of colors and forms. DVD: http://www.amazon.com/Tristan-Isolde-...
https://youtu.be/OAEkTK6aKUM
Puccini's Tosca | LA Opera 2012/13 Season, 3:14
A fiery prima donna is forced to play a role she never imagined when she becomes trapped between her allegiance to her rebel lover and the scheming of a treacherous police chief who will stop at nothing in his lust for her. The explosive triangle comes to a hair-raising conclusion in one of opera's bloodiest, most intense dramas. One of the most popular of all operas, Tosca is a passionate tale set to some of Puccini's most openly beautiful and passionate music.
https://youtu.be/5sSoKbv46zc
29 Defining a Nation
AMERICAN NATIONAL IDENTITY AND THE CHALLENGE OF CIVIL WAR 953
Was the Civil War About Slavery? 5:50
What caused the Civil War? Did the North care about abolishing slavery? Did the South secede because of slavery? Or was it about something else entirely...perhaps states' rights? Colonel Ty Seidule, Professor of History at the United States Military Academy at West Point, settles the debate. Donate today to PragerU: http://l.prageru.com/2eB2p0h For more information on the Civil War, check out The West Point History of the Civil War, an interactive e-book that brings the Civil War to life in a way that's never been done. https://shop.westpointhistoryofwarfar....
https://youtu.be/pcy7qV-BGF4
American Landscape: The Cultivated and the Sublime 955
Museum Exhibition /// Compass for Surveyors: 19th Century American Landscapes, 2:59
Associate Curator José Luis Blondet discusses the reinstallation of the American Art galleries.
https://youtu.be/pT-NpB2RXMg
Washington Irving’s Satiric Vision 955
0:02 / 2:50
Washington Irving: Biography, Works and Style, 2:50
Visit http://www.education-portal.com for thousands more videos like this one. You'll get full access to our interactive quizzes and transcripts and can find out how to use our videos to earn real college credit.
YouTube hosts only the first few lessons in each course. The rest are at Education-Portal.com. Take the next step in your educational future and graduate with less debt and in less time.
https://youtu.be/pa_g9KZI1QE
A view from Irving Cliff in Honesdale, PA, :40
https://youtu.be/WHJvmLM-jYk
The Hudson River Painters 957
The Establishment of an American Landscape and the Hudson River School, 4:07
Presented by Beyond the Notes (http://beyondthenotes.org), a multimedia guide to music and art.
Art historian Linda S. Ferber describes the importance of landscape, and the fate of the wilderness, to Hudson River School painter Thomas Cole. This video features a string quartet composed by Nell Shaw Cohen inspired by the paintings.
https://youtu.be/MWE0NSpcttk
Transcendentalism and the American Romantics 958
The Philosophy of Romantic Idealism: Emerson and Thoreau 958
Emerson and Thoreau: American Transcendentalism, 1:27
In the 19th century, a small group of New England radicals seeking a break with spiritual conventions, an immediate encounter with the natural world, and a revitalization of daily life—what Emerson called "an original relation to the universe"—became known as transcendentalists. What kind of individual life, and what sorts of social communities, did the transcendentalists imagine? How did they understand notions like "self-reliance" and "experience"? Is Thoreau's famous move to Walden Pond best interpreted as a proto-libertarian withdrawal from the community, or the first step towards a new community, differently oriented and committed? In this course we will read Emerson's Nature and his major essays, and Thoreau's Walden and selections from his journals. We will be attentive to how transcendentalist thought was influenced by German idealists, English romantics, the Bhavagad-Gita, and other sources, and how it in turn influenced abolitionist actions and communal utopian experiments. (Thoreau, on a visit to Brook Farm: "As for these communities, I think I had rather keep a bachelor's room in Hell than go to board in Heaven.") Critical reading will include Stanley Cavell, Barbara Packer, and Leo Marx.
https://youtu.be/7vI9QBkyQ_s
Herman Melville and the Uncertain World of Moby Dick 960
Book Summary of "Moby Dick" by Herman Melville, 4:49
Are you a leader or a follower? The herder, or the herded? Unfortunately for Ishmael and crew, they let themselves be Ahab’s flock in this story. And learned why that wasn’t such a good choice a little too late.
https://youtu.be/rcav9FuAfvA
The Abolitionist Movement 962
Frederick Douglass 962
Voices of the Civil War Episode 19: "Douglass and Lincoln", 5:22
By August 1863, African American soldiers within the Union Army had proven themselves in battles such as Port Hudson, Milliken's Bend and Fort Wagner. On August 9, 1863, abolitionist and orator, Frederick Douglass met with President Abraham Lincoln to discuss his concerns in regards to the fair treatment and equal pay of African American soldiers within the Union Army. Douglass discussed three concerns with President Lincoln and Secretary of War, Edwin M. Stanton, without resolve. On the same day as Frederick Douglass' visit to the White House, President Lincoln wrote to Union General Ulysses S. Grant to express his favor in using black troops in the war.
https://youtu.be/IPgn7j7RMZs
Other Slave Narratives 963
Harriet Beecher Stowe and Uncle Tom’s Cabin 963
Who is Harriet Beecher Stowe? 2:50
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https://youtu.be/ijFy4RjYGbQ
Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom's Cabin, 2:51
text
Uncle Tom's Cabin by Shmoop, 2:53
Could one of our country's most famous anti-slavery books... be a little bit racist? It seems unlikely. After all, several of this book's best friends are black.
http://www.shmoop.com/uncle-toms-cabin/
https://youtu.be/3QP6rrkBvbU
Agassiz versus Darwin 965
Protestantism, especially in America, broke out in "acrid polemics" and argument about evolution from 1860 to the 1870s—with the turning point possibly marked by the death of Louis Agassiz in 1873—and by 1880 a form of "Christian evolution" was becoming the consensus.[9]
Agassiz, like other polygenists, believed the Book of Genesis recounted the origin of the white race only and that the animals and plants in the Bible refer only to those species proximate and familiar to Adam and Eve.
Polygenism is a theory of human origins positing that the human races are of different origins (polygenesis). This is opposite to the idea of monogenism, which posits a single origin of humanity.
Modern scientific views no longer favor this model, with the monogenic "Out of Africa" theory being the most widely accepted model for human origins.
Agassiz, Josiah Clark Nott, and other polygenists such as George Gliddon, believed that the original Hebrew form of the name Adam came from a Biblical Hebrew consonantal root referring to redness, so that the name can be interpreted to mean "to show red in the face" or "blusher"; since only light-skinned people can blush, then the biblical Adam must be the Caucasian race.[29] Agassiz believed that the writers of the Bible only knew of local events, for example Noah's flood was a local event only known to the regions that were populated by ancient Hebrews. Agassiz also believed that the writers of the Bible did not know about any events other than what was going on in their own region and their intermediate neighbors.[29]
Charles Darwin - The Theory Of Natural Selection, 3:02
Learn a bit about Charles Darwin's Theory of Natural Selection with this neato cartoon. There are Giraffes and stuff!
-----------
VOICES-
Narrator - Rebecca Duenow
Darwin - Chris "Mo" Mochinski
Chalk - Chris "Mo" Mochinski
DIRECTED BY - Rebecca Duenow
ANIMATION - Chris "Mo" Mochinski
Created with Anime Studio Pro 9.5, Pixelmator, Logic Pro X and iMovie. All artwork is original except the chalkboard background, c/o Shutterstock.com.
https://youtu.be/vnktXHBvE8s
Romanticizing Slavery in Antebellum American Art and Music 966
The Civil War 968
Representing the War 969
Lucretia Giese - Representing Civil War, 9:37
This lecture by Lucretia Giese illuminates how the American Civil War (1861-65) was represented by artists including Albert Bierstadt, Sanford Gifford, Jarvis McEntee, Frederic Church, and Emanuel Leutze.
https://youtu.be/rsN5865BEtE
Reconstruction 972
READINGS
29.1 from James Fenimore Cooper, The Pioneers (1823) 954
29.2 from Washington Irving, “Rip Van Winkle” (1820) 955
29.3 from Washington Irving, “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” (1820) 956
29.4 from Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature, Chapter 1 (1836) 958
29.5 from Henry David Thoreau, Walden, or Life in the Woods, Chapter 2 (1854) 959
29.6 from Henry David Thoreau, “Life without Principle” (1854) 959
29.7 from Henry David Thoreau, “Civil Disobedience” (1849) 960
29.8a from Herman Melville, Moby Dick, Chapter 3, “The Spouter Inn” (1851) 960
How did Herman Melville's view of nature differ from that of other Romantics?
It was a challenge, not an inspiration
|
29.8b from Herman Melville, Moby Dick, Chapter 35, “The Mast-Head” (1851) 961
29.9 from Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave, Chapter 1 (1845) 979
29.9a from Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave (1845) 962
29.10 from Sojourner Truth, “Ain’t I a Woman?” (1851) 963
29.11 Letter from Harriet Beecher Stowe, Andover, to Mrs. E[liza] L[ee] Follen, 16 December 1852 964
29.12 from Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852) 965
29.13 from Charles Darwin, Voyage of the Beagle (1839) 966
29.14 from Abraham Lincoln, Address Delivered at the Dedication of the Cemetery at Gettysburg (1863) 981
29.15a from Mark Twain, Huckleberry Finn (1885) 973
29.15b from Mark Twain, Huckleberry Finn (1885) 976
FEATURES
CLOSER LOOK Homer’s A Visit from the Old Mistress 974
CONTINUITY & CHANGE Painting Modern Life 977
30 Global Confrontation and Modern Life
THE QUEST FOR CULTURAL IDENTITY 983
The Revolutions of 1848 984
Marxism 984
The Streets of Paris 985
The June Days in Paris: Worker Defeat and the Rise of Louis-Napoleon 985
The Haussmannization of Paris 986
Revolution across Europe: The Rise of Nationalism 989
Paris in the 1850s and 1860s 990
George Sand: Politics and the Female Voice 990
Charles Baudelaire and the Poetry of Modern Life 993
Édouard Manet: The Painter of Modern Life 994
Émile Zola and the Naturalist Novel 998
Nationalism and the Politics of Opera 999
Empire and the Colonial Aspirations of the West 1004
The British in China and India 1005
China and the Opium War 1005
Indentured Labor and Mass Migration 1007
The Brief Rise and Quick Fall of Egypt 1007
The Opening of Japan 1008
READINGS
30.1 from Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Communist Manifesto, Part 1, “Bourgeois and Proletarians” (1848; English edition 1888; trans. Samuel Morse) 1016
30.2 from Alphonse de Lamartine, History of the Revolution of 1848 (1849) 985
30.3 from George Sand, Histoire de ma vie (1854–55) 991
30.4 from George Sand, Lélia (1832) 991
30.5 from Charles Baudelaire, Salon of 1846, “To the Bourgeoisie” (1846) 992
30.6 Charles Baudelaire, “Carrion,” from Les Fleurs du mal (1857) (trans. by Richard Howard) 993
30.7 Charles Baudelaire, “The Head of Hair,” from Les Fleurs du mal (1857) (trans. by Richard Howard) 994
30.8 from Charles Baudelaire, “The Painter of Modern Life” (1863) 994
30.9 from Émile Zola, Édouard Manet (1867) 998
30.10 from Émile Zola, “The Moment in Art” (1867) 998
30.11 from Émile Zola, Preface to Thérèse Raquin, 2nd edition (1868) 999
30.12 from Émile Zola, Germinal (1885) 999
FEATURES
CLOSER LOOK Manet’s Olympia 996
CONTINUITY & CHANGE Impressionist Paris 1014
EXPLORE ACTIVITY
American Dilemma--Slavery – The Art & Literature of Protest
Chapter 29 (pp. 962-976); slavery, literature, and art
Haven's article on Goodman's scholarship on art protesting slavery before the Civil War at http://news.stanford.edu/news/2009/february18/artists-slavery-protests-021809.html
Art and Slavery article at http://www.realhistories.org.uk/articles/archive/the-art-of-slavery.html Intrusions in Asia
The Opium Wars and Foreign Encroachment: http://afe.easia.columbia.edu/special/china_1750_opium.htm
Opium Wars with visuals at http://ocw.mit.edu/ans7870/21f/21f.027/opium_wars_01/ow1_essay01.html
Key documents from China at http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1793qianlong.asp and http://acc6.its.brooklyn.cuny.edu/~phalsall/texts/com-lin.html
Opera and Society
Chapter 30 (pp. 999-1004), Wagner and Verdi; (pp. 1133-1134), Puccini; review the Week 5 “Music Folder”
Huizenga article and audio selections at http://www.npr.org/blogs/deceptivecadence/2012/04/11/150420827/talk-like-an-opera-geek-how-verdi-wagner-and-puccini-got-their-grooves
Wagner video of a stage production (Tristan und Isolde) at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OAEkTK6aKUM
Verdi video clip of stage production (Rigoletto) at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q5NEOh-XhyA
Puccini video clip of stage production (Tosca) at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5sSoKbv46zc
DISCUSSION
"Intrusions in Asia; Opera and Society and a Dilemma" Please respond to one (1) of the following, using sources under the Explore heading as the basis of your response:
Describe two (2) examples of how either black slaves or white abolitionists used literature or the visual arts as a form of protest against slavery. Compare this to a modern example of art used for social protest.
Describe the key motives involved in the increased presence of Westerners in India, China, and Japan in the 1700s and 1800s. Identify the key factors that led to Britain's successful imposition of its presence and trade policies on China, despite communications like those from Emperor Ch'ien-lung (i.e., Qianlong) and Commissioner Lin Zexu (i.e., Lin Tse-hsu). Argue for or against the British policies regarding China in the 1800s, using analogies from our own modern times.
Read, listen to, and watch the sources for the opera composers at the Websites below and in this week's Music Folder. Describe the major influences that Verdi, Wagner, or Puccini exerted upon opera in terms of making it more innovative, realistic, and even controversial. Next, consider Wagner and this dilemma: Wagner's brilliance is clear because his works remain some of the most popular and admired productions in our own time. Yet, he was a blatantly antisemitic and held notions of racial purity, traits that have stained his artistic legacy. (This was compounded by the later celebration of Wagner's music by Hitler and the Nazis). New York Times writer Anthony Tommasini wrote of Wagner in 2005: "How did such sublime music come from such a warped man? Maybe art really does have the power to ferret out the best in us." So, consider the issue of whether we should or can separate the artist from the art, whether we can appreciate the art but reject the artist. Or whether we should reject both the person and his or her art. Identify one (1) modern musician or artist where this dilemma arises.
Industrialization
The Industrial Age in America: Robber Barons and Captains of Industry
The Industrial Age in America: Sweatshops, Steel Mills, and Factories
19th Century
Imperialism
Mass Society and Democracy 1870-1914
Cultural Revolution
In-class assignment: working with a partner, summarize the ideas of the thinker below.
1. Karl Marx
http://vozme.com/index.php?lang=en
Complete a chart like this one about Britain during the 1800s and early 1900s: consider (pp. 983-986) the revolutions of 1848, Marxism, the Streets of Paris, and the June Days of Paris.
Reading Skill: Identify Main Ideas As you read this section, complete an outline of the contents.
Reading Skill: Identify Main Ideas As you read this section, complete an outline of the contents.
Industrialization of Europe by 1914
European Population Growth and Relocation, 1820-1900
In-class assignment: in two groups, look over the word list and then we will fill in the crossword.
Crossword Puzzle
The Growth of Industrial Prosperity
Media Library
The Second Industrial Revolution introduced important new products, such as steel and chemicals, and new sources of power, such as electricity and the internal-combustion engine. These changes led to cheaper transportation and made amenities such as electric lights widely available. Higher wages and lower transportation costs made consumer products more affordable, and industrial production rose sharply. These changes occurred primarily in Northern and Western Europe. Other parts of Europe remained largely agricultural. Industrial workers seeking to improve their working and living conditions formed socialist political parties and trade unions. Socialism was based on the ideas of Karl Marx, a nineteenth-century thinker who blamed capitalism for the horrible conditions of industrial workers. He predicted that capitalism would be overthrown in a violent revolution. However, many Marxists sought change by non-revolutionary means.
Main Ideas
New sources of energy and consumer products transformed the standard of living for all social classes in many European countries.
Working-class leaders used Marx's ideas to form socialist parties and unions.
Key Terms
bourgeoisie
proletariat
dictatorship
revisionist
The Second Industrial Revolution
New Products
New Patterns
Toward a World Economy
Reading Check
Explaining
Why did Europe dominate the world economy by the beginning of the twentieth century?
Organizing the Working Classes
Marx's Theory
Marx developed the theories upon which modern communism is based and is considered the founding father of economic history and sociology.
Marx set down his ideas in The Communist Manifesto(1848) and Das Kapital (3 vol., 1861, 1885, 1894) arguing that economic relations determined all other features of a society, including its ideas.
He also outlined the goal of Marxism - the creation of social and economic utopia by the revolution of the proletariat which would "centralise all instruments of production in the hands of the state."
All class boundaries would be destroyed and each individual would find personal fulfillment, having no need for the bourgeois institutions of religion or family. Marx himself was an atheist, coining the phrase, "Religion is the opium of the people"
Marx continued to express views about class struggle and bourgeois oppression throughout his life, despite being exiled from his homeland and coping with both his own illness and the death of his children.
Most modern socialist theories are drawn from his work but Karl Marx has had a wider influence touching on many areas of human thought and life such as politics, economics, philosophy, and literature.
Karl Marx Explains Class Struggles
In the 1840s, Karl Marx, a German philosopher, condemned the ideas of the Utopians as unrealistic idealism. He formulated a new theory, “scientific socialism,” which he claimed was based on a scientific study of history. He teamed up with another German socialist, Friedrich Engels, whose father owned a textile factory in England.
Vocabulary Builder
formulated—(fawr myoo layt id) vt. devised or developed, as in a theory or plan
Marx and Engels wrote a pamphlet, The Communist Manifesto, which they published in 1848. “A spectre [ghost] is haunting Europe,” it began, “the spectre of communism.” Communism is a form of socialism advocated by Marx, in which an inevitable struggle between social classes would lead to the creation of a classless society where all means of production would be owned by the community.
In The Communist Manifesto, Marx theorized that economics was the driving force in history. He argued that there was “the history of class struggles” between the “haves” and the “have-nots.” The “haves” had always owned the means of production and thus controlled society and all its wealth. In industrialized Europe, Marx said, the “haves” were the bourgeoisie. The “have-nots” were the proletariat, or working class.
According to Marx, the modern class struggle pitted the bourgeoisie against the proletariat. In the end, he predicted, the proletariat would be triumphant. Workers would then take control of the means of production and set up a classless, communist society. Such a society would mark the end of the struggles people had endured throughout history, because wealth and power would be equally shared. Marx despised capitalism. He believed it created prosperity for only a few and poverty for many. He called for an international struggle to bring about its downfall. “Workers of all countries,” he urged, “unite!”
Checkpoint
What did Marx predict was the future of the proletariat?
Marxism in the Future
At first, Marxism gained popularity with many people around the world. Leaders of a number of reform movements adopted the idea that power should be held by workers rather than by business owners. Marx’s ideas, however, would never be practiced exactly as he imagined.
Workers of the World
An 1895 leaflet urges that “Workers of the World Unite,” the slogan of the socialist movement of Marx (above) and Engels’.
Marxism Briefly Flourishes
In the 1860s, Germany adapted Marx’s beliefs to form a social democracy, a political ideology in which there is a gradual transition from capitalism to socialism instead of a sudden violent overthrow of the system. In the late 1800s, Russian socialists embraced Marxism, and the Russian Revolution of 1917 set up a communist-inspired government. For much of the 1900s, revolutionaries around the world would adapt Marxist ideas to their own situations and needs. Independence leaders in Asia, Latin America, and Africa would turn to Marxism.
Marxism Loses Appeal
As time passed, however, the failures of Marxist governments would illustrate the flaws in Marx’s arguments. He predicted that workers would unite across national borders to wage class warfare. Instead, nationalism won out over working-class loyalty. In general, people felt stronger ties to their own countries than to the international communist movement. By the end of the twentieth century, few nations remained with communist governments, while nearly every economy included elements of free-market capitalism.
Checkpoint
How accurate did Marx’s predictions about social classes prove to be?
Economic Systems
What types of economic systems have societies used to produce and distribute goods and services?
When Adam Smith wrote The Wealth of Nations in 1776, traditional agriculture formed the heart of nearly all world economies. In the 1800s, industry began to dominate, especially in Europe and the United States. Industrialists wanted to control their own businesses. Using Smith’s laissez-faire ideas, they pushed for free markets and an end to government interference. The resulting market economy is one of the basic economic systems in the modern world. Other systems followed. These systems can be differentiated by those who make the following key economic decisions: (1) What will be produced? (2) How will it be produced? (3) To whom will the product be distributed?
Adam Smith vs. Karl Marx - The Industrial Revolution Philosophers, 12:34
https://youtu.be/E4YlOyugato
What is Marxism?
What did Marx believe?
What were the two main classes?
What is the working-class?
What is the bourgeois class?
What will the proletariat do?
What will occur?
How is socialism defined here?
How is communism different?
Is Marxism a (n) economic philosophy?
How does change occur?
http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0
This is a project from a History Day: a documentary. The project made it to the regionals competition for a student, 9:59.
http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0
Marx/Engels: communism
Events From 1750–1850
For: Interactive time line
Web Code: nap-1901
Concept Connector
Cumulative Review
Record the answers to the questions below on your Concept Connector worksheets. In addition, record information from this chapter about the following concepts:
Economic Systems: market economy
Economic Systems: centrally planned economy
Economic Systems: mixed economy
Economic Systems
What is socialism? Compare socialism to mercantilism, another economic system. Research to learn how they are similar and different. Think about these factors:
who supported each system
main theories
existence today
Socialist Parties
Trade Unions
Reading Check
Summarizing
How would you summarize Marx's theory as expressed in The Communist Manifesto?
The Emergence of Mass Society
By the end of the nineteenth century, a mass society emerged in which the concerns of the majority of the population—the lower classes—were central. Many people moved to the cities which grew faster because of improvements in public health and sanitation. Despite crowded urban conditions, most people after 1871 enjoyed an improved standard of living. Europe's elite now included both aristocrats and a wealthy upper middle class. The middle class expanded to include a wide range of professions. The middle class served as a model of family life and proper social etiquette. Many women now found jobs as low-paid white-collar workers. Feminists began to demand equal rights and full citizenship, including the right to vote. Most Western governments began to set up primary schools to train children for jobs in industry. Society became more literate and enjoyed new mass leisure activities.
The National State and Democracy
By the late nineteenth century, progress had been made toward establishing constitutions, parliaments, and individual liberties in the major European states. In practice, however, the degree of democracy varied. Political democracy expanded in Great Britain and France, while regional conflicts in Italy produced weak and corrupt governments, and an anti-democratic old order remained entrenched in central and eastern Europe. In Russia, working-class unrest led to “Bloody Sunday” and a mass strike of workers in 1905. After the American Civil War, slavery was abolished and African Americans were granted citizenship. American cities grew, and unions campaigned for workers' rights. The United States also gained several offshore possessions. In foreign policy, European powers drifted into two opposing camps. Crises in the Balkans only heightened tensions between the two camps.
Main Ideas
Key Terms
People to Identify
Western Europe and Political Democracy
The Victorian Web
France
The news sent shock waves through Paris. Napoleon III had surrendered to the Prussians and Prussian forces were now about to advance on Paris. Could the city survive? Georges Clemenceau (kleh mahn soh), a young French politician, rallied the people of Paris to defend their homeland:
“Citizens, must France destroy herself and disappear, or shall she resume her old place in the vanguard of nations? . . . Each of us knows his duty. We are children of the Revolution. Let us seek inspiration in the example of our forefathers in 1792, and like them we shall conquer. Vive la France! (Long Live France!)”
Focus Question
What democratic reforms were made in France during the Third Republic? p. 985-986
The United States
In a small group, read p. 981 and answer the "Reading Critically" question.
A living museum can be viewed at Old Sturbridge Village. At the village visitors can ride the stagecoach, interact with the farm animals, talk with costumed historians, and watch the blacksmith, cooper, potter, and farmers at work. In the village visitors can experience life in the 1830s--with 40 antique homes, buildings, and water-powered mills. The village is well worth exploring in some detail.
The flag is central to village life.
Our relationship to God is of paramount importance.
Defense is always a concern for a nation.
If you have questions about 19th Century life you can always "Ask Jack."
Jack Larkin is the Chief Historian and Museum Scholar at the Village, where he has worked since 1971. He is also Affiliate Professor of History at Clark University in Worcester, MA, and consults for many museums and historical organizations.
His latest book, Where We Lived: Exploring the Places We Once Called Home. The American Home from 1790 to 1840, was published in 2006.
To feel more at home in the village you will need to know the tools of the trade. A number of fun and educational links are available for the OSV.His latest book, Where We Lived: Exploring the Places We Once Called Home. The American Home from 1790 to 1840, was published in 2006.
Old Sturbridge Village Feature Shown on Al Jazeera Television winter 2008
Laura Linney and Ken Burns on the importance of Old Sturbridge Village
4th of July at OSV.
Redcoats to Rebels at OSV.
Mystic sign.
Mystic Seaport -- The Museum of America and the Sea is the nation's leading maritime museum. In it, you can explore American maritime history first-hand as you climb aboard historic tall ships, stroll through a re-created 19th-century coastal village, or watch a working preservation shipyard in action.
Traditional American Music performed live at Mystic Seaport, CT: Part 1
Traditional American Music performed live at Mystic Seaport, CT: Part 2
Traditional American Music performed live at Mystic Seaport, CT: Part 3
The Charles W. Morgan embarks on a voyage of restoration at the Henry B. DuPont Preservation Shipyard at Mystic Seaport. Shipyard Director, Quentin Snediker explains what is done to prepare the ship for the historic journey.
The Charles W. Morgan is the last surviving wooden whaling ship from the great days of sail. Built in 1841 in New Bedford, MA, the Morgan had a successful 80-year whaling career. She made 37 voyages before retiring in 1921, and was preserved as an exhibit through the efforts of a number of dedicated citizens. After being on display in South Dartmouth, MA, until 1941, she came to Mystic Seaport, where each year thousands of visitors walk her decks and hear the fascinating story of her career as a whaling vessel, historic exhibit, film and media star, and a porthole into America's rich history.
Over the last three decades, the Charles W. Morgan has undergone two regimes of partial restoration along with annual maintenance. Despite these efforts, the inevitable effects of time on the wooden fabric of the vessel's structure demand additional extensive restoration. If left unchecked, these deficiencies will threaten the structural integrity of the Morgan and her use as a primary artifact in Mystic Seaport's interpretive programs.
Mystic Seaport, 1960 (No, this is not Dean Smith as a boy), from family home movies.
Whaling in popular culture: Mountain, "Nantucket Sleighride"
The cold hard steel of the harpoon's point
Struck deep into its side.
We played out line and backed the oars
And took the cruel sleighride.
The term "Nantucket Sleighride" was coined by the whalers to explain what happened after they harpooned a whale. (Nantucket Island was considered the whaling capital of the world during the 19th century.) The first strike of the harpoon was not intended to kill the whale but only to attach it to the whale boat. The whale would take off pulling the whale boat along at speeds of up to 23 mph (37 kmh). The whale would eventually tire itself out, the leading officer in the boat would then use a penetrating lance to kill the whale.
Nantucket Sleighride is Dedicated to Owen Coffin who was cabin boy aboard the whaler Essex, which was destroyed by a sperm whale in 1819. Owen ended up in the lifeboat with Captain Pollard, his uncle. Two other lifeboats also put out. During the next 3 - 4 months, the lifeboats separated. One was never seen again, but some of those on the remaining two boats were eventually rescued.
During those long months at sea (and on desert islands), many of the men died. The remainder eventually had to resort to cannibalism to survive. After the dead of natural causes were consumed, the men determined to draw lots to see who would sacrifice his life for the others. Owen Coffin ``won'' the lottery. The Captain tried to take Owen's place, but the youth insisted on his ``right''. The executioner was also drawn by lot. That ``winner'', another young man named Charles Ramsdell, also tried vainly to swap places with Owen. Again he refused. Owen's body kept the others alive for ten days (Captain Pollard refused to eat his nephew). Another man died, and his body kept Pollard and Ramsdell alive a few more days until they were rescued.
Lyrics
Goodbye, little Robin-Marie
Don't try following me
Don't cry, little Robin-Marie
'Cause you know I'm coming home soon
My ships' leaving on a three-year tour
The next tide will take us from shore
Windlaced, gather in sail and spray
On a search for the mighty sperm whale
Fly your willow branches
Wrap your body round my soul
Lay down your reeds and drums on my soft sheets
There are years behind us reaching
To the place where hearts are beating
And I know you're the last true love I'll ever meet
Starbuck's sharpening his harpoon
The black man's playing his tune
An old salt's sleeping his watch away
He'll be drunk again before noon
Three years sailing on bended knee
We found no whales in the sea
Don't cry, little Robin-Marie
'Cause we'll be in sight of land soon
Agriculture
Farming and everyday life during the past 250 years
Children who lived in the English countryside
The Agricultural Revolution
Transportation, Industrial Revolution
Stephenson's Rocket Animation
The Spinning Mill Animation
Britain at the time of the Great Exhibition
Who Wants to Be a Cotton Millionaire?
Iron Bridge Virtual Tour
New machines that brought changes in America
Review changes of the 18th and 19th centuries
The Industrial Revolution
The everyday life of children in Victorian Britain (including the cities)
Online game about life in an industrial Victorian city
Take a tour of a workhouse
Children were often exploited during the Industrial Age; one of the most well-known stories from the period is the story of Oliver.
The 2005 trailer for Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens, in the film adaptation:
Aftermath of the Civil War
Economic differences, as well as the slavery issue, drove the Northern and Southern regions of the United States apart. The division reached a crisis in 1860 when Abraham Lincoln was elected president. Lincoln opposed extending slavery into new territories. Southerners feared that he would eventually abolish slavery altogether and that the federal government would infringe on their states’ rights.
North Versus South
Soon after Lincoln’s election, most southern states seceded, or withdrew, from the Union and formed the Confederate States of America. This action sparked the Civil War, which lasted from 1861 to 1865.
The South had fewer resources, fewer people, and less industry than the North. Still, Southerners fought fiercely to defend their cause. The Confederacy finally surrendered in 1865. The struggle cost more than 600,000 lives—the largest casualty figures of any American war.
Challenges for African Americans
In a small group, read pp. 979-980 and answer the "Reading Critically" question on p. 980.
During the war, Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, by which enslaved African Americans in the South were declared free. After the war, three amendments to the Constitution banned slavery throughout the country and granted political rights to African Americans. Under the Fifteenth Amendment, African American men won the right to vote.
Still, African Americans faced many restrictions. In the South, state laws imposed segregation, or legal separation of the races, in hospitals, schools, and other public places. Other state laws imposed conditions for voter eligibility that, despite the Fifteenth Amendment, prevented African Americans from voting.
Economy
By 1900, the United States had become the world's richest nation.
After the Civil War, the United States grew to lead the world in industrial and agricultural production. A special combination of factors made this possible including political stability, private property rights, a free enterprise system and an inexpensive supply of land and labor—supplied mostly by immigrants. Finally, a growing network of transportation and communications technologies aided businesses in transporting resources and finished products.
Business and Labor
By 1900, giant monopolies controlled whole industries. Scottish-born Andrew Carnegie built the nation’s largest steel company, while John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Company dominated the world’s petroleum industry. Big business enjoyed tremendous profits.
Vocabulary Builder
dominate—(dahm un nayt) vt. to rule or control by superior power or influence
But the growing prosperity was not shared by all. In factories, wages were low and conditions were often brutal. To defend their interests, American workers organized labor unions such as the American Federation of Labor. Unions sought better wages, hours, and working conditions. Struggles with management sometimes erupted into violent confrontations. Slowly, however, workers made gains.
Populists and Progressives
In the economic hard times of the late 1800s, farmers also organized themselves to defend their interests. In the 1890s, they joined city workers to support the new Populist party. The Populists never became a major party, but their platform of reforms, such as an eight-hour workday, eventually became law.
By 1900, reformers known as Progressives also pressed for change. They sought laws to ban child labor, limit working hours, regulate monopolies, and give voters more power. Another major goal of the Progressives was obtaining voting rights for women. After a long struggle, American suffragists finally won the vote in 1920, when the Nineteenth Amendment went into effect.
For many Irish families fleeing hunger, Russian Jews escaping pogroms, or poor Italian farmers seeking economic opportunity, the answer was the same—America! A poem inscribed on the base of the Statue of Liberty expressed the welcome and promise of freedom that millions of immigrants dreamed of:
“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me.
I lift my lamp beside the golden door.”
—Emma Lazarus, “The New Colossus”
Learn
Focus Question
How did the United States develop during the 1800s?
In the 1800s, the United States was a beacon of hope for many people. The American economy was growing rapidly, offering jobs to newcomers. The Constitution and Bill of Rights held out the hope of political and religious freedom. Not everyone shared in the prosperity or the ideals of democracy. Still, by the turn of the nineteenth century, important reforms were being made.
Expansion Abroad
U.S. Expansion, 1783–1898
From the earliest years of its history, the United States followed a policy of expansionism, or extending the nation’s boundaries. At first, the United States stretched only from the Atlantic coast to the Mississippi River. In 1803, President Thomas Jefferson bought the Louisiana territory from France. In one stroke, the Louisiana Purchase virtually doubled the size of the nation.
By 1846, the United States had expanded to include Florida, Oregon, and the Republic of Texas. The Mexican War (1846–1848) added California and the Southwest. With growing pride and confidence, Americans claimed that their nation was destined to spread across the entire continent, from sea to sea. This idea became known as Manifest Destiny. Some expansionists even hoped to absorb Canada and Mexico. In fact, the United States did go far afield. In 1867, it bought Alaska from Russia and in 1898 annexed the Hawaiian Islands.
Industrialization
The Industrial Age in America: Robber Barons and Captains of Industry
The Industrial Age in America: Sweatshops, Steel Mills, and Factories
19th Century
Imperialism
Mass Society and Democracy 1870-1914
Cultural Revolution
In-class assignment: working with a partner, and in four columns, summarize the ideas of the four thinkers below.
1. Adam Smith
2. Jeremy Bentham
3. John Stuart Mill
4. Karl Marx
http://vozme.com/index.php?lang=en
In-class assignment, with a partner, consider the following chart.
Note Taking
Reading Skill: Categorize
Complete a chart like this one listing the reforms in Britain during the 1800s and early 1900s.
Note Taking
Reading Skill: Identify Main Ideas As you read this section, complete an outline of the contents.
Note Taking
Reading Skill: Categorize
Complete a chart like this one listing the reforms in Britain during the 1800s and early 1900s.
Reading Skill: Identify Main Ideas As you read this section, complete an outline of the contents.
Industrialization of Europe by 1914
European Population Growth and Relocation, 1820-1900
In-class assignment: in two groups, look over the word list and then we will fill in the crossword.
Crossword Puzzle
Section 1 The Growth of Industrial Prosperity
Media Library
The Second Industrial Revolution introduced important new products, such as steel and chemicals, and new sources of power, such as electricity and the internal-combustion engine. These changes led to cheaper transportation and made amenities such as electric lights widely available. Higher wages and lower transportation costs made consumer products more affordable, and industrial production rose sharply. These changes occurred primarily in Northern and Western Europe. Other parts of Europe remained largely agricultural. Industrial workers seeking to improve their working and living conditions formed socialist political parties and trade unions. Socialism was based on the ideas of Karl Marx, a nineteenth-century thinker who blamed capitalism for the horrible conditions of industrial workers. He predicted that capitalism would be overthrown in a violent revolution. However, many Marxists sought change by non-revolutionary means.
Main Ideas
New sources of energy and consumer products transformed the standard of living for all social classes in many European countries.
Working-class leaders used Marx's ideas to form socialist parties and unions.
Key Terms
bourgeoisie
proletariat
dictatorship
revisionist
The Second Industrial Revolution
New Products
New Patterns
Toward a World Economy
Reading Check
Explaining
Why did Europe dominate the world economy by the beginning of the twentieth century?
Organizing the Working Classes
Marx's Theory
In-class assignment: individually, consider one of the quotes from Marx and explain it in your own words.
A thought provoking collection of Creative Quotations from Karl Marx (1818-1883); born on May 5. German socialist leader, philosopher; He originated the idea of modern communism (Marxism); wrote "Communist Manifesto," 1848, 1:23.
Marx developed the theories upon which modern communism is based and is considered the founding father of economic history and sociology.
Marx set down his ideas in The Communist Manifesto(1848) and Das Kapital (3 vol., 1861, 1885, 1894) arguing that economic relations determined all other features of a society, including its ideas.
He also outlined the goal of Marxism - the creation of social and economic utopia by the revolution of the proletariat which would "centralise all instruments of production in the hands of the state."
All class boundaries would be destroyed and each individual would find personal fulfillment, having no need for the bourgeois institutions of religion or family. Marx himself was an atheist, coining the phrase, "Religion is the opium of the people"
Marx continued to express views about class struggle and bourgeois oppression throughout his life, despite being exiled from his homeland and coping with both his own illness and the death of his children.
Most modern socialist theories are drawn from his work but Karl Marx has had a wider influence touching on many areas of human thought and life such as politics, economics, philosophy, and literature.
This is a video made for a 12th grade World History class to define Marxism.
In-class assignment: working with a partner, answer the following questions.
What is Marxism?
What did Marx believe?
What were the two main classes?
What is the working-class?
What is the bourgeois class?
What will the proletariat do?
What will occur?
How is socialism defined here?
How is communism different?
Is Marxism a (n) economic philosophy?
How does change occur?
This is a project from a History Day: a documentary. The project made it to the regionals competition for a student, 9:59.
Socialist PartiesA thought provoking collection of Creative Quotations from Karl Marx (1818-1883); born on May 5. German socialist leader, philosopher; He originated the idea of modern communism (Marxism); wrote "Communist Manifesto," 1848, 1:23.
Marx developed the theories upon which modern communism is based and is considered the founding father of economic history and sociology.
Marx set down his ideas in The Communist Manifesto(1848) and Das Kapital (3 vol., 1861, 1885, 1894) arguing that economic relations determined all other features of a society, including its ideas.
He also outlined the goal of Marxism - the creation of social and economic utopia by the revolution of the proletariat which would "centralise all instruments of production in the hands of the state."
All class boundaries would be destroyed and each individual would find personal fulfillment, having no need for the bourgeois institutions of religion or family. Marx himself was an atheist, coining the phrase, "Religion is the opium of the people"
Marx continued to express views about class struggle and bourgeois oppression throughout his life, despite being exiled from his homeland and coping with both his own illness and the death of his children.
Most modern socialist theories are drawn from his work but Karl Marx has had a wider influence touching on many areas of human thought and life such as politics, economics, philosophy, and literature.
This is a video made for a 12th grade World History class to define Marxism.
In-class assignment: working with a partner, answer the following questions.
What is Marxism?
What did Marx believe?
What were the two main classes?
What is the working-class?
What is the bourgeois class?
What will the proletariat do?
What will occur?
How is socialism defined here?
How is communism different?
Is Marxism a (n) economic philosophy?
How does change occur?
This is a project from a History Day: a documentary. The project made it to the regionals competition for a student, 9:59.
Trade Unions
Reading Check
Summarizing
How would you summarize Marx's theory as expressed in The Communist Manifesto?
Section 2 The Emergence of Mass Society
Media Library
By the end of the nineteenth century, a mass society emerged in which the concerns of the majority of the population—the lower classes—were central. Many people moved to the cities which grew faster because of improvements in public health and sanitation. Despite crowded urban conditions, most people after 1871 enjoyed an improved standard of living. Europe's elite now included both aristocrats and a wealthy upper middle class. The middle class expanded to include a wide range of professions. The middle class served as a model of family life and proper social etiquette. Many women now found jobs as low-paid white-collar workers. Feminists began to demand equal rights and full citizenship, including the right to vote. Most Western governments began to set up primary schools to train children for jobs in industry. Society became more literate and enjoyed new mass leisure activities.
Main Ideas
A varied middle class in Victorian Britain believed in the principles of hard work and good conduct.
New opportunities for women and the working class improved their lives.
Key Terms
feminism
literacy
The New Urban Environment
Reading Check
Explaining
Why did cities grow so quickly in the nineteenth century?
Social Structure of Mass Society
The New Elite
The Middle Classes
The Working Classes
Reading Check
Identifying
Name the major groups in the social structure of the nineteenth century.
The Experiences of Women
New Job Opportunities
Marriage and the Family
The Movement for Women's Rights
In Britain, as elsewhere, women struggled against strong opposition for the right to vote. Women themselves were divided on the issue. Some women opposed suffrage altogether. Queen Victoria, for example, called the suffrage struggle “mad, wicked folly.” Even women in favor of suffrage disagreed about how best to achieve it.
Suffragists Revolt
By the early 1900s, Emmeline Pankhurst, a leading suffragist, had become convinced that only aggressive tactics would bring victory. Pankhurst and other radical suffragists interrupted speakers in Parliament, shouting, “Votes for women!” until they were carried away. They collected petitions and organized huge public demonstrations. When mass meetings and other peaceful efforts brought no results, some women turned to more drastic, violent protest. They smashed windows or even burned buildings. Pankhurst justified such tactics as necessary to achieve victory. “There is something that governments care far more for than human life,” she declared, “and that is the security of property, so it is through property that we shall strike the enemy.” As you have read, some suffragists went on hunger strikes, risking their lives to achieve their goals.
Vocabulary Builder
drastic—(dras tik) adj. severe, harsh, extreme
Victory at Last
Even middle-class women who disapproved of such radical and violent actions increasingly demanded votes for women. Still, Parliament refused to grant women’s suffrage. Not until 1918 did Parliament finally grant suffrage to women over age 30. Younger women did not win the right to vote for another decade.
Reading Check
Identifying
What was the basic aim of the suffragists?
Universal Education
Reading Check
Why did states make a commitment to provide public education?
New Forms of Leisure
Reading Check
Explaining
How did innovations in transportation change leisure activities during the Second Industrial Revolution?
Section 3 The National State and Democracy
Media Library
By the late nineteenth century, progress had been made toward establishing constitutions, parliaments, and individual liberties in the major European states. In practice, however, the degree of democracy varied. Political democracy expanded in Great Britain and France, while regional conflicts in Italy produced weak and corrupt governments, and an anti-democratic old order remained entrenched in central and eastern Europe. In Russia, working-class unrest led to “Bloody Sunday” and a mass strike of workers in 1905. After the American Civil War, slavery was abolished and African Americans were granted citizenship. American cities grew, and unions campaigned for workers' rights. The United States also gained several offshore possessions. In foreign policy, European powers drifted into two opposing camps. Crises in the Balkans only heightened tensions between the two camps.
Main Ideas
Key Terms
People to Identify
Western Europe and Political Democracy
Great Britain
Audio
A series of political reforms during the 1800s and early 1900s transformed Great Britain from a monarchy and aristocracy into a democracy. While some British politicians opposed the reforms, most sided in favor of reforming Parliament to make it more representative of the nation’s growing industrial population.
“No doubt, at that very early period, the House of Commons did represent the people of England but . . . the House of Commons, as it presently subsists, does not represent the people of England. . . . The people called loudly for reform, saying that whatever good existed in the constitution of this House—whatever confidence was placed in it by the people, was completely gone.”
—Lord John Russell, March 1, 1831
Audio
One day a wealthy Englishman named Charles Egremont boasted to strangers that Victoria, the queen of England, “reigns over the greatest nation that ever existed.”
“Which nation?” asks one of the strangers, “for she reigns over two. . . . Two nations; between whom there is no [communication] and no sympathy; who are as ignorant of each other’s habits, thoughts, and feelings, as if they were . . . inhabitants of different planets.”
What are these “two nations,” Egremont asks. “The Rich and the Poor ,” the stranger replies.
—Benjamin Disraeli, Sybil
In the 1800s, Benjamin Disraeli and other political leaders slowly worked to bridge Britain’s “two nations” and extend democratic rights. Unlike some of its neighbors in Europe, Britain generally achieved change through reform rather than revolution.
Audio
In 1815, Britain was a constitutional monarchy with a parliament and two political parties. Still, it was far from democratic. Although members of the House of Commons were elected, less than five percent of the people had the right to vote. Wealthy nobles and squires, or country landowners, dominated politics and heavily influenced voters. In addition, the House of Lords—made up of hereditary nobles and high-ranking clergy—could veto any bill passed by the House of Commons.
Reformers Press for Change
Long-standing laws kept many people from voting. Catholics and non-Anglican Protestants, for example, could not vote or serve in Parliament. In the 1820s, reformers pushed to end religious restrictions. After fierce debate, Parliament finally granted Catholics and non-Anglican Protestants equal political rights.
An even greater battle soon erupted over making Parliament more representative. During the Industrial Revolution, centers of population shifted. Some rural towns lost so many people that they had few or no voters. Yet local landowners in these rotten boroughs still sent members to Parliament. At the same time, populous new industrial cities like Manchester and Birmingham had no seats allocated in Parliament because they had not existed as population centers in earlier times.
Vocabulary Builder
allocate—(al oh kayt) vt. to distribute according to a plan
Reform Act of 1832
By 1830, Whigs and Tories were battling over a bill to reform Parliament. The Whig Party largely represented middle-class and business interests. The Tory Party spoke for nobles, land-owners, and others whose interests and income were rooted in agriculture. In the streets, supporters of reform chanted, “The Bill, the whole Bill, and nothing but the Bill!” Their shouts seemed to echo the cries of revolutionaries on the continent.
Parliament finally passed the Great Reform Act in 1832. It redistributed seats in the House of Commons, giving representation to large towns and cities and eliminating rotten boroughs. It also enlarged the electorate, the body of people allowed to vote, by granting suffrage to more men. The Act did, however, keep a property requirement for voting.
The Reform Act of 1832 did not bring full democracy, but it did give a greater political voice to middle-class men. Landowning nobles, however, remained a powerful force in the government and in the economy.
The Chartist Movement
The reform bill did not help rural or urban workers. Some of them demanded more radical change. In the 1830s, protesters known as Chartists drew up the People’s Charter. This petition demanded universal male suffrage, annual parliamentary elections, and salaries for members of Parliament. Another key demand was for a secret ballot, which would allow people to cast their votes without announcing them publicly.
Twice the Chartists presented petitions with over a million signatures to Parliament. Both petitions were ignored. In 1848, as revolutions swept Europe, the Chartists prepared a third petition and organized a march on Parliament. Fearing violence, the government moved to suppress the march. Soon after, the unsuccessful Chartist movement declined. In time, however, Parliament would pass most of the major reforms proposed by the Chartists.
From 1837 to 1901, the great symbol in British life was Queen Victoria. Her reign was the longest in British history. Although she exercised little real political power, she set the tone for what is now called the Victorian age.
The Victorian Web
Symbol of a Nation’s Values
As queen, Victoria came to embody the values of her age. These Victorian ideals included duty, thrift, honesty, hard work, and above all respectability. Victoria herself embraced a strict code of morals and manners. As a young woman, she married a German prince, Albert, and they raised a large family.
A Confident Age
Under Victoria, the British middle class—and growing numbers of the working class—felt great confidence in the future. That confidence grew as Britain expanded its already huge empire. Victoria, the empress of India and ruler of some 300 million subjects around the world, became a revered symbol of British might.
Infographic
From Monarchy to Democracy in Britain
During her reign, Victoria witnessed growing agitation for social reform. The queen herself commented that the lower classes “earn their bread and riches so deservedly that they cannot and ought not to be kept back.” As the Victorian era went on, reformers continued the push toward greater social and economic justice.
In the 1860s, a new era dawned in British politics. The old political parties regrouped under new leadership. Benjamin Disraeli forged the Tories into the modern Conservative Party. The Whigs, led by William Gladstone, evolved into the Liberal Party. Between 1868 and 1880, as the majority in Parliament swung between the two parties, Gladstone and Disraeli alternated as prime minister. Both fought for important reforms.
Expanding Suffrage
Disraeli and the Conservative Party pushed through the Reform Bill of 1867. By giving the vote to many working-class men, the new law almost doubled the size of the electorate.
In the 1880s, it was the turn of Gladstone and the Liberal Party to extend suffrage. Their reforms gave the vote to farmworkers and most other men. By century’s end, almost-universal male suffrage, the secret ballot, and other Chartist ambitions had been achieved. Britain had truly transformed itself from a constitutional monarchy to a parliamentary democracy, a form of government in which the executive leaders (usually a prime minister and cabinet) are chosen by and responsible to the legislature (parliament), and are also members of it.
Limiting the Lords
In the early 1900s, many bills passed by the House of Commons met defeat in the House of Lords. In 1911, a Liberal government passed measures to restrict the power of the Lords, including their power to veto tax bills. The Lords resisted. Finally, the government threatened to create enough new lords to approve the law, and the Lords backed down. People hailed the change as a victory for democracy. In time, the House of Lords would become a largely ceremonial body with little power. The elected House of Commons would reign supreme.
France
Audio
The news sent shock waves through Paris. Napoleon III had surrendered to the Prussians and Prussian forces were now about to advance on Paris. Could the city survive? Georges Clemenceau (kleh mahn soh), a young French politician, rallied the people of Paris to defend their homeland:
“Citizens, must France destroy herself and disappear, or shall she resume her old place in the vanguard of nations? . . . Each of us knows his duty. We are children of the Revolution. Let us seek inspiration in the example of our forefathers in 1792, and like them we shall conquer. Vive la France! (Long Live France!)”
Learn
Focus Question
What democratic reforms were made in France during the Third Republic?
For four months, Paris resisted the German onslaught. But finally, in January 1871, the French government at Versailles was forced to accept Prussian surrender terms.
The Franco-Prussian War ended a long period of French domination of Europe that had begun under Louis XIV. Yet a Third Republic rose from the ashes of the Second Empire of Napoleon III. Economic growth, democratic reforms, and the fierce nationalism expressed by Clemenceau all played a part in shaping modern France.
Italy
Reading Check
Summarizing
What is the principle of ministerial responsiblity?
Central and Eastern Europe: The Old Order
Germany
Austria-Hungary
Russia
Reading Check
Identifying
What was the role of the Duma in the Russian government?
The United States and Canada (Is Canada a part of the United States?)
Aftermath of the Civil War
Economic differences, as well as the slavery issue, drove the Northern and Southern regions of the United States apart. The division reached a crisis in 1860 when Abraham Lincoln was elected president. Lincoln opposed extending slavery into new territories. Southerners feared that he would eventually abolish slavery altogether and that the federal government would infringe on their states’ rights.
North Versus South
Soon after Lincoln’s election, most southern states seceded, or withdrew, from the Union and formed the Confederate States of America. This action sparked the Civil War, which lasted from 1861 to 1865.
The South had fewer resources, fewer people, and less industry than the North. Still, Southerners fought fiercely to defend their cause. The Confederacy finally surrendered in 1865. The struggle cost more than 600,000 lives—the largest casualty figures of any American war.
Challenges for African Americans
During the war, Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, by which enslaved African Americans in the South were declared free. After the war, three amendments to the Constitution banned slavery throughout the country and granted political rights to African Americans. Under the Fifteenth Amendment, African American men won the right to vote.
Still, African Americans faced many restrictions. In the South, state laws imposed segregation, or legal separation of the races, in hospitals, schools, and other public places. Other state laws imposed conditions for voter eligibility that, despite the Fifteenth Amendment, prevented African Americans from voting.
Economy
By 1900, the United States had become the world's richest nation.
Audio
After the Civil War, the United States grew to lead the world in industrial and agricultural production. A special combination of factors made this possible including political stability, private property rights, a free enterprise system and an inexpensive supply of land and labor—supplied mostly by immigrants. Finally, a growing network of transportation and communications technologies aided businesses in transporting resources and finished products.
Business and Labor
By 1900, giant monopolies controlled whole industries. Scottish-born Andrew Carnegie built the nation’s largest steel company, while John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Company dominated the world’s petroleum industry. Big business enjoyed tremendous profits.
Vocabulary Builder
dominate—(dahm un nayt) vt. to rule or control by superior power or influence
But the growing prosperity was not shared by all. In factories, wages were low and conditions were often brutal. To defend their interests, American workers organized labor unions such as the American Federation of Labor. Unions sought better wages, hours, and working conditions. Struggles with management sometimes erupted into violent confrontations. Slowly, however, workers made gains.
Populists and Progressives
In the economic hard times of the late 1800s, farmers also organized themselves to defend their interests. In the 1890s, they joined city workers to support the new Populist party. The Populists never became a major party, but their platform of reforms, such as an eight-hour workday, eventually became law.
By 1900, reformers known as Progressives also pressed for change. They sought laws to ban child labor, limit working hours, regulate monopolies, and give voters more power. Another major goal of the Progressives was obtaining voting rights for women. After a long struggle, American suffragists finally won the vote in 1920, when the Nineteenth Amendment went into effect.
Audio
For many Irish families fleeing hunger, Russian Jews escaping pogroms, or poor Italian farmers seeking economic opportunity, the answer was the same—America! A poem inscribed on the base of the Statue of Liberty expressed the welcome and promise of freedom that millions of immigrants dreamed of:
“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me.
I lift my lamp beside the golden door.”
—Emma Lazarus, “The New Colossus”
Learn
Focus Question
How did the United States develop during the 1800s?
In the 1800s, the United States was a beacon of hope for many people. The American economy was growing rapidly, offering jobs to newcomers. The Constitution and Bill of Rights held out the hope of political and religious freedom. Not everyone shared in the prosperity or the ideals of democracy. Still, by the turn of the nineteenth century, important reforms were being made.
Expansion Abroad
U.S. Expansion, 1783–1898
From the earliest years of its history, the United States followed a policy of expansionism, or extending the nation’s boundaries. At first, the United States stretched only from the Atlantic coast to the Mississippi River. In 1803, President Thomas Jefferson bought the Louisiana territory from France. In one stroke, the Louisiana Purchase virtually doubled the size of the nation.
By 1846, the United States had expanded to include Florida, Oregon, and the Republic of Texas. The Mexican War (1846–1848) added California and the Southwest. With growing pride and confidence, Americans claimed that their nation was destined to spread across the entire continent, from sea to sea. This idea became known as Manifest Destiny. Some expansionists even hoped to absorb Canada and Mexico. In fact, the United States did go far afield. In 1867, it bought Alaska from Russia and in 1898 annexed the Hawaiian Islands.
REFERENCE
REFERENCE
MUSIC FOLDER
This Week's music clips relate to Chapters 29 and 30.
- Stephen Foster, "Camptown Races" (also called "Camptown Ladies")
-
- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXE_PfcXtYE (chap. 29, pp. 967-968) See lyrics at http://www.songlyrics.com/various-artists/camptown-races-lyrics/ .
Read carefully pp. 967-8 (in chap. 29) about Stephen Foster's attempt to do a "new kind of music that did not "trivialize the hardships of slavery" and would "humanize the characters", black and white. Often he succeeded, but some of his lyrics retained racial tones common in the earlier minstrel music. This minstrel song ("Camptown Races") was composed in 1850, a decade before the Civil War. Note how Eastman Johnson's painting (p. 967, fig. 29.15) is thematically connected to many of Foster's songs. A camptown was more like a tent city for poor blacks and whites; they were often set up near railroad tracks so that trains could be easily hopped to go to jobs down the line. The song has poor folks discussing bets on horse races to try to make some money. Seehttp://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=126035325 for a discussion of Foster's contributions and work.
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Notes on Opera: OPERA is not just singing by fat people. In fact, perhaps more than any art form, OPERA combines multiple elements of the fine arts: extraordinary singing, musical composition and instrumentation, lyric, artistic stage sets, costume design, dance, acting, and story-telling. And often it was presented in a magnificent opera house with exquisite architecture and a dazzling array of sculptures, paintings, and interior design. I tell students they owe it to themselves ONCE to pay out the heavy expense, dress up, and take the family to a good opera at a good venue with a decent seat. But, before going, go online and read all you can about the opera you will see--read up on the composer, read a summary of the story, and read translations of the songs.
There are three clips under number 2 below from works composed by Giuseppe Verdi. The great Italian opera composer, Giuseppe Verdi, is discussed in our class text (Sayre, 2015, pp. 1000-1001, 1008, 1298). See if you can broaden your musical horizons--even a little. Verdi was both a realist and pragmatist, yet he was also a nationalist (don't forget, his native Italy only became a country in 1871) and out of the dramatic Romantic tradition of music. Verdi was also a showman who played a key role in making opera a popular art form, not just an elite interest.
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- Verdi, Rigoletto; Quartet from Act III:
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- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q5NEOh-XhyA (chap. 30, pp. 999-1001) For text and translation see http://www.metoperafamily.org/PageFiles/43577/MusicalHighlightResource3.pdf.
This tragic opera was composed in 1851. Read carefully the discussion on pp. 1000-1001 (in chap. 30). It is always helpful to read up on an opera before listening to it or attending a performance of it. For background and story summary of Rigoletto, see http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=96714680 .
For more from Verdi, read pp. 999-1001 and p. 1008 in chap. 30 and then try these:
2b: From Verdi's Opera, Aida: The Triumphal March:
This opera, Aida, premiered in 1871 in Cairo, Egypt. It is mentioned in our class text (Sayre, 2012, p. 1008), and Verdi is discussed on pp. 1000-1001. This is a wonderful opera set in Egypt. See this link for background about this dazzling opera: http://www.npr.org/2011/06/03/136888669/love-triangles-and-pyramids-verdis-aid.
2c: From Verdi's Requiem, Dies irae
This is a musical presentation of a traditional Catholic funeral mass (=Requiem). The Latin Dies Irae means "day of Wrath"--the Day of Judgment. This musical presentation was composed by Verdi in 1874; what we have here is a small part of it. This part captures the drama of such a last day. Note--other greats had also composed versions of this--Mozart, Berlioz, and others. Verdi's composition is very well known, and may sound familiar.
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- Wagner, from Tannhauser, Act II, Scene 1: "Dich, teure Halle" (=Thou, Beloved Hall) (chap. 30, pp. 1001-1002)
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- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-dnIc0bp88 (singing by Jessye Norman); for the staged opera of this, see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zwKQV8HhTPE For German lyrics and English translation, see http://www.rwagner.net/libretti/tannhauser/e-tannh-a2s1.html.
Wagner composed this opera in 1861; our selection above is an aria from this production. Read pp. 1001-1002 (in chap. 30) carefully about the background and story of Tannhauser and also about Wagner's extraordinary contributions, but also his prejudices and adversities.
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- Wagner, from Tristan und Isolde, Prelude. (chap. 30, pp. 1002-1003)
Wagner composed Tristan und Isolde in 1865; he called it "music drama'; preferring that term to "opera". Read carefully pp. 1002-1003 (in chap. 30) about the story presented in this work, but also about the concept of the leitmotif or "leading motive"--a brief recurring musical idea . After reading this three paragraph description, see if you can pick up the leitmotif in this Prelude.
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- Offenbach, Orpheus in the Underworld, the Can Can (from Act 2, Scene 2) (chap. 30, p. 1004)
Jacques Offenbach called this form "operetta"; it is also known as "comic opera". Read carefully p. 1004 (in chap. 30) and then listen to and watch the YouTube. You will see why.
REFERENCES: Beyond the Sound Bites
British Islamist Advocates Death Under Sharia for Geller
Geller: No Government Protection After Islamist Attack
Megyn Kelly vs. Richard Fowler
DISCUSSION
"Intrusions in Asia; Opera and Society and a Dilemma" Please respond to one (1) of the following, using sources under the Explore heading as the basis of your response:
American Dilemma--Slavery – The Art & Literature of Protest
Opera and Society
- Describe two (2) examples of how either black slaves or white abolitionists used literature or the visual arts as a form of protest against slavery. Compare this to a modern example of art used for social protest.
- Describe the key motives involved in the increased presence of Westerners in India, China, and Japan in the 1700s and 1800s. Identify the key factors that led to Britain's successful imposition of its presence and trade policies on China, despite communications like those from Emperor Ch'ien-lung (i.e., Qianlong) and Commissioner Lin Zexu (i.e., Lin Tse-hsu). Argue for or against the British policies regarding China in the 1800s, using analogies from our own modern times.
- Read, listen to, and watch the sources for the opera composers at the Websites below and in this week's Music Folder. Describe the major influences that Verdi, Wagner, or Puccini exerted upon opera in terms of making it more innovative, realistic, and even controversial. Next, consider Wagner and this dilemma: Wagner's brilliance is clear because his works remain some of the most popular and admired productions in our own time. Yet, he was a blatantly antisemitic and held notions of racial purity, traits that have stained his artistic legacy. (This was compounded by the later celebration of Wagner's music by Hitler and the Nazis). New York Times writer Anthony Tommasini wrote of Wagner in 2005: "How did such sublime music come from such a warped man? Maybe art really does have the power to ferret out the best in us." So, consider the issue of whether we should or can separate the artist from the art, whether we can appreciate the art but reject the artist. Or whether we should reject both the person and his or her art. Identify one (1) modern musician or artist where this dilemma arises.
American Dilemma--Slavery – The Art & Literature of Protest
- Chapter 29 (pp. 962-976); slavery, literature, and art
- Haven's article on Goodman's scholarship on art protesting slavery before the Civil War at http://news.stanford.edu/news/2009/february18/artists-slavery-protests-021809.html
- Art and Slavery article at http://www.realhistories.org.uk/articles/archive/the-art-of-slavery.html
- The Opium Wars and Foreign Encroachment: http://afe.easia.columbia.edu/special/china_1750_opium.htm
- Opium Wars with visuals at http://ocw.mit.edu/ans7870/21f/21f.027/opium_wars_01/ow1_essay01.html
- Key documents from China at http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1793qianlong.asp and http://acc6.its.brooklyn.cuny.edu/~phalsall/texts/com-lin.html
Opera and Society
- Chapter 30 (pp. 999-1004), Wagner and Verdi; (pp. 1133-1134), Puccini; review the Week 5 “Music Folder”
- Huizenga article and audio selections at http://www.npr.org/blogs/deceptivecadence/2012/04/11/150420827/talk-like-an-opera-geek-how-verdi-wagner-and-puccini-got-their-grooves
- Wagner video of a stage production (Tristan und Isolde) at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OAEkTK6aKUM
- Verdi video clip of stage production (Rigoletto) at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q5NEOh-XhyA
- Puccini video clip of stage production (Tosca) at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5sSoKbv46zc
How did the coming of the railroads transform inner-city London?
Warehouses displaced the poor |
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Why did the Romantics revere Prometheus?
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According to Ralph Waldo Emerson, transcendentalism’s fundamental principle was
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What other movement did Sojourner Truth and others view as part of the abolitionist
movement?women’s rights
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One of the effects of Stephen Foster’s plantation melodies was tohumanize African Americans.
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Why, in 1877, did Southern African Americans lose many of the freedoms they had gained from the Civil War?Union troops withdrew from the South.
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Henry David Thoreau began his Walden Pond experiment tolive simply.
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Naturalism differs from literary realism in that it is moresubjective.
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In 1882, the United States outlawed Chinese immigration with the Chinese Exclusion Act for fear of Chinese immigrantstaking jobs from Americans.
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How did Richard Wagner accomplished his new “music drama” withleitmotifs.
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Which nineteenth-century artist was most enthusiastic about Japanese prints?Vincent van Gogh
When viewers saw Édouard Manet’s Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe at the Salon des Refusés, they reacted with
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