Visions of Humanity: Historical Cultural Practices since 1850 9781805390855

Table of contents :
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
Introduction. Visions of Humanity: Actors, Culture, Practices
Chapter 1 The Human in Human Rights
Part I. Objects
Chapter 2 Hearts, Minds, and Skulls: The International Debate on the Nature of Humanity in the Mid-Nineteenth Century
Chapter 3 In Search of Biblical Mesopotamia: Visions of Humanity in US Archaeological Excavations in Iraq, 1880–1910
Part II. Work
Chapter 4 Tensions of “Humanity”: Jewish Philanthropy and Refugee Crises in Eastern Europe, 1881–1914
Chapter 5 “The Whole Organism of Humanity”: The Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom’s Campaign for Women’s Rights as Universal Rights, c. 1919
Chapter 6 “A New Humanity” for the Poor: Liberation Theology and Visions of Revolutionary Justice in 1960s Guatemala
Chapter 7 Engineering Empathy: Humanity, Culture, and the Battle against Apartheid in South Africa, 1948–1994
Part III. Sounds
Chapter 8 Choreographing Humanity in the 1960s: Maurice Béjart and the Symphony No. 9
Chapter 9 Musical Humanism: Yehudi Menuhin and UNESCO’s International Music Council, 1969–1975
Chapter 10 “We Are the World”: Visions of Humanity in 1980s Charity Songs
Afterword. Languages of Common Humanity
Index

Citation preview

Visions of Humanity

Explorations in Culture and International History Series General Editor: Jessica C. E. Gienow-Hecht Volume 1 Culture and International History Edited by Jessica C. E. Gienow-Hecht and Frank Schumacher Volume 2 Remaking France: Americanization, Public Diplomacy, and the Marshall Plan Brian Angus McKenzie Volume 3 Anti-Americanism in Latin America and the Caribbean Edited by Allan McPherson Volume 4 Decentering America Edited by Jessica C. E. Gienow-Hecht Volume 5 Practicing Public Diplomacy: A Cold War Odyssey Yale Richmond Volume 6 Searching for a Cultural Diplomacy Edited by Jessica C. E. Gienow-Hecht and Mark C. Donfried Volume 7 Music and International History in the Twentieth Century Edited by Jessica C. E. Gienow-Hecht Volume 8 Empire of Pictures: Global Media and the 1960s Remaking of American Foreign Policy Sönke Kunkel Volume 9 Nation Branding in Modern History Edited by Carolin Viktorin, Jessica C. E. Gienow-Hecht, Annika Estner, and Marcel K. Will Volume 10 Music and Postwar Transitions in the 19th and 20th Centuries Edited by Anaïs Fléchet, Martin Guerpin, Philippe Gumplowicz, and Barbara L. Kelly Volume 11 Visions of Humanity: Historical Cultural Practices since 1850 Edited by Sönke Kunkel, Jessica C. E. Gienow-Hecht, and Sebastian Jobs

VISIONS OF HUMANITY Historical Cultural Practices since 1850

Edited by

Sönke Kunkel, Jessica C. E. Gienow-Hecht, and Sebastian Jobs

berghahn NEW YORK • OXFORD www.berghahnbooks.com

First published in 2023 by Berghahn Books www.berghahnbooks.com © 2023 Sönke Kunkel, Jessica C. E. Gienow-Hecht, and Sebastian Jobs All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without written permission of the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Gienow-Hecht, Jessica C. E., 1964– editor. | Jobs, Sebastian, editor. | Kunkel, Sönke, editor. Title: Visions of humanity : historical cultural practices since 1850 / edited by Jessica Gienow-Hecht, Sebastian Jobs, Sönke Kunkel. Description: New York : Berghahn, 2023. | Series: Explorations in culture and international history series ; vol 11 | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2023016637 (print) | LCCN 2023016638 (ebook) | ISBN 9781805390848 (hardback) | ISBN 9781805390855 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Humanity. | Humanism. | Civilization. | Historiography. Classification: LCC BJ1533.H9 V57 2023 (print) | LCC BJ1533.H9 (ebook) | DDC 179.7—dc23/eng/20230705 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023016637 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023016638

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978-1-80539-084-8 hardback ISBN 978-1-80539-362-7 epub ISBN 978-1-80539-085-5 web pdf

https://doi.org/10.3167/9781805390848

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

vii

Introduction

Visions of Humanity: Actors, Culture, Practices Jessica C. E. Gienow-Hecht, Sönke Kunkel, and Sebastian Jobs

1

Chapter 1

The Human in Human Rights Suzy Killmister

29

Part I. Objects Chapter 2

Hearts, Minds, and Skulls: The International Debate on the Nature of Humanity in the Mid-Nineteenth Century Michael L. Krenn

51

Chapter 3

In Search of Biblical Mesopotamia: Visions of Humanity in US Archaeological Excavations in Iraq, 1880–1910 Sarah Epping

77

Part II. Work Chapter 4

Tensions of “Humanity”: Jewish Philanthropy and Refugee Crises in Eastern Europe, 1881–1914 Barbara Lambauer

107

vi

Contents

Chapter 5

“The Whole Organism of Humanity”: The Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom’s Campaign for Women’s Rights as Universal Rights, c. 1919 Andrew M. Johnston

131

Chapter 6

“A New Humanity” for the Poor: Liberation Theology and Visions of Revolutionary Justice in 1960s Guatemala Betsy Konefal

158

Chapter 7

Engineering Empathy: Humanity, Culture, and the Battle against Apartheid in South Africa, 1948–1994 Nicholas J. Cull

181

Part III. Sounds Chapter 8

Choreographing Humanity in the 1960s: Maurice Béjart and the Symphony No. 9 Stéphanie Gonçalves

209

Chapter 9

Musical Humanism: Yehudi Menuhin and UNESCO’s International Music Council, 1969–1975 Anaïs Fléchet

228

Chapter 10

“We Are the World”: Visions of Humanity in 1980s Charity Songs Tobias Hof

250

Afterword

Languages of Common Humanity Siep Stuurman

279

Index

298

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Twenty years ago, in 2003, Berghahn Books launched the series “Explorations in Culture and International History.” Its purpose was and continues to be to showcase innovative work, notably on the part younger scholars who have labored in the vineyard of culture and international history while providing cross-disciplinary insights. To date, the series includes twelve volumes, ranging from Alan McPherson’s 2005 volume Anti-Americanism in Latin America and the Caribbean, to Nadja Klopprogge’s forthcoming study, Intimate Histories: African Americans and Germany since 1930. We are proud to celebrate the 20th anniversary with the present volume dedicated to Visions of Humanity, and extend our profound gratitude to Marion Berghahn and her stellar team. Throughout the years, she has provided encouragement, patience and support along with a sense of belief in the series and the topic that went far beyond the call of duty. Herzlichen Dank dafür! The idea for this volume goes back to many conversations between the three editors—over work, lunch, team meetings, and joint travels—on the practical meanings of historical thinking in a world fractured between humanitarian commitments and processes of social polarization, marginalization, and violence. The three of us all came into this conversation from different backgrounds—the history of slavery, the history of global humanitarianism, the history of culture and international relations—but we all felt the need for a historical reflection that would make sense of what it means to be human in the modern world and, more important, what limitations and pitfalls we run up against when we claim to act “human” or in the name of “humanity.” Spirited discussions at various workshops at the Freie Universität Berlin encouraged us to further develop these ideas within the framework of a joint volume. This project was funded of the Cluster of Excellence “Contestations of the Liberal Script” (EXC 2055, Project-ID: 390715649), funded by the Deut-

viii

Acknowledgments

sche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) under Germany´s “Excellence Strategy” as well as the Freie Universität’s Center for International Cooperation, and we are grateful to both. Work on this edited volume would have been impossible without the support of many helping hands. Our heartfelt thanks go to Ethan Ruby, Florian Zeissig, Sierra Stalcup, Alon Ravid, Connor Ruby, and Yulia Maximenkova, who have all contributed their time, dedication, and care to making this book happen. Charlie Zaharoff’s keen eye for editorial detail has added nuance and deeper quality to the volume. Thanks also goes to Wayne Moquin who, once again, has compiled a detailed and constructive index. Our special gratitude goes to Verena Specht and Cyntia Kossmann, whose professionalism and support over the last years not only kept the History Department at the Kennedy Institute running at full steam, but were also key to the making of this volume. Finally, we would like to thank the three anonymous reviewers for their careful reading of our manuscript and their insightful comments and suggestions.

Introduction

VISIONS OF HUMANITY Actors, Culture, Practices Jessica C. E. Gienow-Hecht, Sönke Kunkel, and Sebastian Jobs

In September 2020, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Japa-

nese prime minister Yoshihide Suga told the United Nations General Assembly that the impending 2021 Olympics in Tokyo, postponed by a year, were now to represent a symbolic victory: “In the summer of next year,” Suga stated in a prerecorded message, “Japan is determined to host the Tokyo Olympic and Paralympic Games as proof that humanity has defeated the pandemic.”1 From that point on, social media and news headlines the world over hailed the Games as “a hope towards humanity,” “a triumph of humanity,” an event permeated by the “spirit of humanity,” and putting “humanity in centre frame.”2 Comments typically focused on the empathy shown among competing athletes or feelings of togetherness evoked during moments of grandeur such as the Games’ opening and closing ceremonies.3 “Humanity,” it seemed, is something to love,4 inherently good and worthy to strive for, even when competing to excel in physical fitness, ping-pong, or pole jumping. And not only then. Beyond sports, the term “humanity” has likewise been cited in cultural debates and forums dedicated to international display, intellectual exchange, cultural competition, and cooperation. “Allowing borders to determine your thinking is incompatible with the modern era,” says Ai Weiwei. “Art is . . . about our beliefs in humanity.”5 From UNESCO galas to biological labs, from museum halls to church domes, from intergovernmental cultural cooperation to educational design, “humanity” as a term and a referNotes for this section begin on page 22.

2

Jessica C. E. Gienow-Hecht, Sönke Kunkel, and Sebastian Jobs

ence point looms large in the vocabulary of cultural representation, invoking forgiveness among rivals, friendship between citizens of countries otherwise not on speaking terms, or the moral responsibility for help in the service of refugees and victims of natural disasters. Notably, the future and the lingo of critical expectations (“shoulding”) figure prominently in the discourse of “humanity,” typically as vistas of improvement: humanity finds itself at a critical juncture, so the story goes, and its future is dependent on the ability to cooperate—to harness culture, science, and technology in the service of a better world.6 Contemporary critics, too, have voiced their concerns, and it is not hard to see why. From recent troubles to coordinate a global vaccination campaign against COVID-19 to the closing of national borders vis-à-vis streams of transnational refugees, critics do not have to look far to discard the very viability of the idea and ideal of a common “humanity.” Two decades into the twenty-first century, we have seen an abundance of military conflicts and interventions launched (and gone out of hand) in the name of “humanity.” Critics thus point to the shallow promises of humanity that underwrote and legitimized two centuries of European imperialism, racism, and colonial violence.7 How can we account for the persistence of that idea and ideal in twenty-first-century cultural thought and representation? To what extent was it ever viable? How have cultural actors ranging from scientists to artists historically appealed to humanity, and in what historical settings? What have cultural norms of humanity promised and to whom? Who has profited from these norms and whom have they suppressed? What follows from our historical analysis if we accept the finding that humanity is normative and constructed within a web of historical cultural meanings and experiences, but not an objective category for historical analysis or political action? This book offers a critical reflection of the historical genesis, transformation, and problématique of “humanity” in the transatlantic world with a particular eye on cultural representation. We aim to show that the notion of “humanity” is not and never was a fixed core value of modern societies, but a culturally normative and often empty signifier. Its uses have been consistently embedded in networks of actors and cultural practices, and its meanings have evolved in step with historical processes such as globalization, colonial expansion, the transnationalization of activism, and the spread of racism and nationalism. What “humanity” meant and means, we argue, was and

Introduction

3

continues to be contingent upon the ability to define it and then circulate that definition.8 That ability, in turn, was and is conditioned by those in a position to do so—the “visionaries of humanity”—who by virtue of their leverage have determined whom to include and whom to exclude. As a result and in accordance with individual and group interests, understandings of humanity have changed remarkably over time, depending on political conflict, socioeconomic settings, emotional affinities, as well as shifting fields of sociocultural inclusion and exclusion.9 Exploring those changing visions of humanity through a historical and cultural lens, this book suggests that the idea of humanity has a more troubled legacy than we commonly think: in fields such as humanitarian aid or cultural diplomacy, it could open new spaces for participation and inclusion. In contrast, in the context of anthropological study, the very same appeal to a common humanity could work as a force of marginalization and exclusion. Pointing to such ambivalences, the chapters assembled here make a strong argument for a critical historical inquiry that foregrounds the tensions, changing meanings, and historical contexts of humanity as a historical cultural practice rather than an abstract concept or idea.

Trajectories of Humanity Notions of a “common humanity,” as historian Siep Stuurman has shown, go back all the way to the first millennium and were first formulated in Greek literature and philosophy as well as in the Hebrew Bible. Over the centuries, Christian and Muslim scriptures, Greek, Roman, and Chinese philosophy, as well as the writings of Muslim theorist Ibn Khaldun advanced alternative groundings for the idea of “humanity.” For all their diversity, intellectuals struggled to reconcile the inclusionary universalism of their thinking with practices of exclusion that shaped the politics of their times. Early modern thinkers, like the French essayist Michel de Montaigne, likewise struggled to understand such disturbing reverberations of the dichotomy between inclusion and exclusion. Much of the premodern intellectual thought on humanity, that is, did not entail a continuing process along clear lines but, rather, a history of thinking against the grain. Enlightenment thinking took these ambivalences further. Some of the finest writings by Enlightenment thinkers charted visions of humanity that emphasized the radical equality of “all human beings

4

Jessica C. E. Gienow-Hecht, Sönke Kunkel, and Sebastian Jobs

on the sole ground of their humanity.”10 On the other hand, Enlightenment philosophy also introduced new ideas and practices of exclusion and discrimination: scientific racism, new theories about the “natural” inferiority of women, and the notion of cultural and civilizational progress that sorted the world’s populations into a hierarchy of civilized versus backward and “primitive” cultures without a history.11 Enlightenment ideas of “humanity” reverberated across the globe through much of the eighteenth century. Yet we also know today that between about the early nineteenth century and the end of World War II, international understandings of humanity changed and, indeed, expanded dramatically. From an elitist occupation with the Western canon of civilization and religion, much defined by Eurocentric standards of racial hierarchy and gender, “humanity” morphed gradually into a more universal term demanding the inclusion of previously excluded groups, including enslaved people and, later, minorities and women.12 Transatlantic abolitionists campaigned hard between the 1780s and the 1860s to extend new visions of humanity by way of speeches, pamphlets, medals, and pictures. But cultural debates around humanity also worked the other way. Take the following example: when in August 1835 the postmaster of Clinton, Mississippi, received several copies of an antislavery publication with the name Human Rights, it created an uproar in Mississippi and the neighboring states. Alabamians unsuccessfully tried to take the authors to court for violating state laws, while papers in Mississippi called them “fanatics.” In Hinds County, forty citizens responded with an angry letter to the publication’s editor, R. G. Williams, in which they complained about the publication’s “arrogant” and “impudent dictation,” asking, “Why not send . . . your chief apostles of iniquity, and enlighten and humanize the benighted and inhuman South?”13 Southern citizens would not act in an inhuman fashion, the citizens of Hinds County claimed; Southern culture and ways of life would put them on the side of “humanity.” Cultural debates around “humanity,” that is, did not evolve seamlessly and without creating blind spots, oppression, or moments of resistance; nineteenth-century versions of humanity were refuted as early as they developed, by thinkers and activists such as Frederick Douglass in the United States, Dadabhai Naoroji in India, and José Rizal in the Philippines, to name just a few. Even thinkers like the German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831), now flagged by many critics as racist, displayed what Susan Buck-Morss

Introduction

5

deems “moments of clarity” when occasionally “the consciousness of individuals surpassed the confines of present constellations of power,” realizing the “glaring discrepancy” between ideas of universal liberty and daily practices of suppression.14 Still, in the end, physical brutality and more nuanced “bureaucratic” violence on the hands of colonists charged with humanizing colonial subjects provided little more than food for thought and revisionist narratives of need, progress, and necessity. Rarely did it stir consequential action, as Penelope Edmonds and Anna Johnston have shown in a volume of collected essays pertaining to the relationship between humanitarianism and violence in the Anglophone colonies since the late eighteenth century.15 By the twentieth century, visions of humanity went hand in hand with a change of geography: nineteenth-century European imperialism had crafted an idea of the human that aligned, exclusively, with the settler-colonial white man. Accordingly, discourses focused on Europeans’ and North Americans’ perceived responsibility to confer civilization on much of the rest of the world, notably Asia and Africa. Humanity, according to John Stuart Mill, was a quality bestowed upon the European rulers. In contrast, postwar visions of humanity—most explicitly formulated in the 1948 Declaration of Human Rights—projected a quality of humanity designed to fit everyone and everywhere.16 On the other hand, even once signed, the Declaration of Human Rights, powerful as it was as a testimony to humanity’s inclusive postulation, remained, for decades, what it was: a piece of paper, rarely cited and drowned in the reality of culture and geopolitics. Humanity as a reference point found little place in the reality of the Cold War, even if, as Jan Eckel has argued, its attendant value—rights—preceded the 1970s popularization of human rights retraced by Samuel Moyn.17 Still, the trajectory gives us pause for reflection. Both civilizational convictions as well as universal claims may project visions of humanity. But both follow different trajectories: nineteenth-century images of civilization traced the human to European origins. To be human meant to be different and to take on the self-appointed mission to humanize others—indeed, to carry humanity to distant lands.18 In contrast, postwar visions framed humanity as an inseparable part of the body’s DNA, and independent from geography, race, gender, and sociocultural distinction.19 What the history of humanity shows is that despite its claims of universality, the concept was never simple, unconditional, nor, least of all, uncontroversial.

6

Jessica C. E. Gienow-Hecht, Sönke Kunkel, and Sebastian Jobs

Historiography The chapters assembled in this volume connect to a number of current research trends, including works on human rights and humanitarianism, global intellectual history, and postcolonial history. Postcolonial scholars have long questioned the universal applicability of “humanity” as a concept—or have rather encouraged historians to analyze the concept in its ideological and regional moments of production. Dipesh Chakrabarty has argued that much of postcolonial scholarship cites universals common in Enlightenment thinking, among them rights, reason, and the dignity of the individual, while at the same time demanding that such concepts be stripped of their essentialist and only seemingly universal aura.20 “Humanity” and the “human” have been central terms in postcolonial studies, fueled, among others, by Frantz Fanon’s scathing account of the dehumanization entailed in colonial rule.21 Aware of the difficult legacy of the term, postcolonial analyses have nevertheless increasingly cited difference, otherness, and inequality, with a strong focus on the legal, political, and intellectual dimensions of both the terminology and debate. Think, for example, of Bakary Diallo’s autobiographical 1926 novel, Force-Bonté. As Cullen Goldblatt has shown, the story reflects the attempt on the part of an African colonial soldier to come to terms with the contradiction between the egalitarianism of the French Republic and the hierarchical structure of the empire. To what extent, Diallo asks in a metaphorical passage dedicated to the human exploitation of laboring horses, can communication ever triumph over solid domination?22 Attention to detail may be the foremost skill historians bring to the table in the study and reflection on humanity. In a conversation reprinted in Past and Present, Sasson accentuates how historians have been “latecomers” to the story of the history of the human, thanks to the opening of archives but also, more importantly, to the increasing pressure to prove worth, efficiency, and relevance to university deans and trustees throughout the Western world. Sasson argues that this literature, emerging around 2010, may have reflected not simply a search for the origins of human rights and humanitarianism but, more so, a profound debate, or indeed conflict, over the meaning and nature of humanity, notably the question “whether or not we ought to preserve or challenge it.”23 Since then, global historians and philosophers have produced pioneering works retracing the trajectory of both the term and practice over time. One group of scholars has dwelled on the term’s impli-

Introduction

7

cation in the writings and legacy of specific philosophers, typically European, white, and male: Cicero, Kant, Hume, Nietzsche, Ellul, and so on.24 Earlier still, since the 1990s, another group of scholars has shown how European novels, missionary texts, exploration reports, and travelogues reflected their knowledge of colonized people since at least the sixteenth century. Much of this research focuses on European white male actors—intellectuals, theologians, and philosophers—though temporally the literature ranges far, spanning the centuries from antiquity to the twentieth century. Most prominently among these stands Siep Stuurman’s The Invention of Humanity (2017), a powerful exploration of the genesis of the concept of humanity since antiquity. Stuurman focuses on two terms—equality and commonality—to show that the impetus to come together and realize shared values and beliefs has been part of humans’ DNA from the beginning of long-distance travel. Key to an understanding of the concept of humanity, he concludes, is the realization that to be human has never been defined by mere unity; it has always entailed division as well. It is that tension that has marred discourses of human rights, humanitarianism, and humanity worldwide to this day,25 and informed a wealth of literature: for example, in a gesture to Stuurman, Bruce Buchan and Linda Andersson Burnett have examined how “savagery” (as opposed to “humanity”) was invented as a field of colonial knowledge. The authors show how the colonization of territories entailed a colonization of knowledge based on previous European theological, legal, and political traditions of thought.26 A good part of the present literature on “humanity” has focused on six different areas, among those (1) knowledge transmission, (2) military conflict, (3) the language of progress, (4) European sociopolitical practices, (5) biology and nature, as well as (6) the trope of women and children. To begin, the relationship between teachers and students often forms the core of inquiry, with an eye on how the pursuit and digestion of knowledge have served to connect and develop humanity—and, at the same time, how knowledge transmission is often tied to moral issues affecting humanity at large.27 Second, regarding military conflict, subjects span from the outbreak and prevention of war, as well as the prosecution of those responsible for it, to the legality of war and the quest for outlawing military conflict altogether. James Crossland, for example, has looked at the generation of humanitarians between the Crimean War and World War I who created international norms relating to the care of soldiers as humans, the limitation of weapons, and the rules of war.28 In this context, authors have focused on what war does—

8

Jessica C. E. Gienow-Hecht, Sönke Kunkel, and Sebastian Jobs

physically, legally, and culturally—to soldiers and civilians, as well as the horrid consequences of war in terms of deprivation, suppression, and massive waves of refugees. Responsibility looms large in these debates: Tom Dannenbaum, for one, has pondered the ironic identity of modern soldiers, whose duty it is, on the national level, to follow orders, while their humanity requires them to disobey orders that are illegal.29 In addition, recent studies of humanitarianism and human rights often emphasize the progress tale of an expanding, inclusive “humanity.”30 For example, in From Empire to Humanity (2016), Amanda B. Moniz accentuates a common belief in Enlightenment visions of progress, self-help, and improvement in the late eighteenth century, as well as the benevolence that motivated that generation to develop an international community of humanitarian workers and thinkers that was eventually marred and fragmented by the violence of revolutions and the emergence of nineteenth-century imperialism. Moniz’s cast of actors—primarily Anglophone and primarily rich and well-educated—united around universal visions of philanthropy that reflected less a belief system than a network fueled by a common milieu and upbringing.31 Pertaining to the fourth point, European sociopolitical practices, Fabian Klose and Mirjam Thulin have examined the emergence of humanity as a practice in Europe since the sixteenth century. Specifically, they ask to what extent humanity served as a norm and social compass for human relationships, most importantly as a link between care and commonality but also as a trigger of both integration and hierarchy.32 As Johannes Paulmann concludes in the same volume, “humanity” as a concept in practice can be analyzed as a term operating in tension with its antonyms. At the same time, one may also distill the manifold functions of humanity in the context of temporality and as a concept that in and of itself allows for different levels of hierarchy.33 Your humanity, that is, may not be my humanity. Regarding the focus on humanity in the context of biology and nature, Ilana Feldman and Miriam Ticktin choose an integrative approach to politics, biology, and the environment in their book In the Name of Humanity (2016). The editors assemble contributions that reflect on the concept of humanity in three different contexts: humanitarianism and human rights, biological technologies, and humans and nature. They argue that configurations of humanity emerged at and from the overlap of these three fields, fueled by a broad array of governing practices. Examining actors ranging from mortality, to

Introduction

9

biology, to childhood, they show that at the heart of these intersections is an array of universalist practices and statements relating to rights, well-being, and nature that served to make humanity tangible for purposes of rule, governance, law, and order.34 Some scholars have already integrated COVID-19 into their research, identifying the virus as a historically unique challenge to all of humanity, in ways very different from the divisive mechanisms of conflict and war.35 Finally, women and children have informed a nascent trend in the literature dedicated to agency and humanity. From the vantage point of anthropology, Penelope Edmonds encourages us to pay attention to the interplay of language and affection. Looking at testimonials taken from indigenous women in Australia, Edmonds stresses that there is an innate inequity in white interpreters’ language of humanity as well as in the display of sympathy. That language, she believes, often focuses on the biological body of the suppressed and colonized, including its exposure to violence and pain instead of the inherent right to not suffer pain in the first place.36 Objects, meanwhile, can and could also morph into subjects of humanity. As Tehila Sasson reflects in her research on children, media campaigns and marketing agencies, in basing their accounts on the personal stories affected by humanitarian disaster, have yielded an idea of humanity on the daily, local, even intimate level (and, one may add, quite remote from the abstract global visions pitched by international leaders at high-end conference sites).37 In “How Children Invented Humanity,” David Bjorklund adds to this literature from a psychological developmental perspective. Picking up on the tension between civilization and universalism, the author argues that historically, children have not simply “learned” or “received” humanity but, in fact, helped shape it in the first place. Childhood and children, that is, have contributed to the genesis of humans as a particular species.38 A collection of essays edited by Esther Möller, Johannes Paulmann, and Katharina Stornig seeks to introduce gender as a category of global humanitarianism in the twentieth century. Ranging from missionaries to doctors, children to soldiers, the volume retraces the multilayered meanings of discourse and action in the context of humanitarian intervention and addresses the role of women as observers, activists, and victims, notably in the care of compassion and representation.39 In sum, historians have focused much of their attention on actors dedicated to philosophical, intellectual, and ethical consideration, legal interpretation, and political activism. And this makes sense: Leading in these debates have been legal scholars, notably since

10

Jessica C. E. Gienow-Hecht, Sönke Kunkel, and Sebastian Jobs

World War II, bolstering concepts such as “crimes against humanity” and making them enforceable. Moreover, knowledge transmission, war, refugee crises, and, more recently, global disease feature prominently in the discussion. Historians center their work either on humanitarian thinkers, writers, and discourses (Stuurman, Klose/ Thulin) or on the intellectual trajectory of the present (Feldman/ Ticktin). Missionary activity, politics, legal concerns, and human activism take center stage in these accounts, and for good reasons. White male actors seem to take a precedent in the literature, as does a Eurocentric focus. The authors in this volume share a conviction that the idea of humanity, as Klose and Thulin put it, remains “malleable,” including a broad array of connotations and a vibrant historical trajectory. Optimistic values, opaque mental pictures, and subjective imaginations overlap, going hand in hand with clear limitations as well as ambivalent definitions. These varying definitions share a common understanding of humanity as a tool of cause and conviction, one that rallies audiences to an ideological cause beyond their personal environment. In doing so, the term “humanity” also served as a legitimizing force for—typically Western—inhuman colonialism, imperialism, and universalism, along with militarism, violence, and war.40 The tension between representations of seemingly human and inhuman forms of behavior, as we shall see, did not go unnoticed by historical actors, including the very same involved in suppression and exploitation. The chapters assembled in this volume build on this current historiography, but they also seek to transcend and challenge it on two levels. What all of the contributions in our volume have in common is, first, a focus on individual actors and organizations and, second, a particular interest in individual practices of humanity. Rather than taking a grand-picture approach, we believe that this actor-based approach provides a more differentiated insight into the nuances and ambiguities of humanity, along with the processes of translation as well as modes of transculturation. In tandem, these help us understand the importance and interplay of European and non-European perspectives and voices in the global discourse of humanity.41 Specifically, the authors in this volume seek to amend this burgeoning scholarship by exploring the cultural idea of “humanity” and its role in international relations. They reflect on but also challenge previous analyses of “humanity” as practices and concepts in that they purposely examine the cultural designs of “humanity” as

Introduction

11

cultural practice: in politics, at work, and in the arts, notably music. Collectively, they contend that political action was and continues to be affected, often even framed, by cultural interpretation and representation. Having said that, a note about the geographical focus of this volume is in order. As three historians and editors working at the John F. Kennedy Institute for North American Studies at Freie Universität Berlin along with a circle of colleagues hailing, for the most part, from around the Atlantic basin, our natural professional focus is the transatlantic world—sometimes within its global entanglements, other times in its Atlantic or even domestic contexts. The thrust of this volume follows this interest. Its chapters mainly address transatlantic actors, ideas, and connections, though occasionally the chapters venture into fields and contexts that lie beyond the transatlantic world. We are aware that this inscribes a Euro-American-centered perspective into the volume, and we wish to be explicit in framing our volume’s accordingly limited contribution to an understanding of humanity as a concept globally. At the same time, we hope that readers may find this centrism reflexive: it is aware of the limitations residing within its specific positionality and seeks to avoid confusing the transatlantic part with the global whole of visions of humanity. These reflections, we hope, may invite a critical conversation with scholars working on other world regions. By way of a theoretical kick-off, the volume’s introductory section continues with a conceptual chapter by Suzy Killmister that invites us to rethink the notion of the “human” as a socially constructed category. Philosophers have long made their case for human rights by pointing to some inherent “natural” features and qualities of humans, Killmister argues. Yet accepting those carries the danger of promoting “boundary policing” and excluding specific groups and individuals “from the category of the human.” Thinking of the human as a socially constructed category, in contrast, recasts the problem of exclusion and repositions the importance and powers of social practices in shaping notions of the human. It also draws attention to the important role of human rights as one of the social mechanisms that establishes the ways, meanings, and entitlements of being human by way of human rights norms and practice. There is nothing “natural,” ahistorical, or acultural about human rights, Killmister concludes, forcing us, as historians, to attend “to the genealogy of the institutions and narratives involved in the construction of the human, with particular attention again to the question of whose visions of humanity have been centered, and whose have been silenced.”

12

Jessica C. E. Gienow-Hecht, Sönke Kunkel, and Sebastian Jobs

The following three parts have been subdivided into three themes emerging from the research undertaken for this book: objects, work, and sounds. All three reflect actors and actions of humanity, but in very different modes and avenues. While “Objects” examines engagements with humanity by way of material examination, “Work” looks at mechanisms of quotidian practice to think and act out humanity. “Sounds,” in turn, investigates fora and individuals dedicated to nonverbal intonation and representation. All three sections seek to highlight the diverse and often highly individual profiles and fora where cultural practices took and continue to take place. The authors in the section on “objects,” specifically, look at the fascination with material objects and materials in relation to the supposed origins of humanity as well as to claims of stewardship and legitimate custodianship for human heritage. These articles show how human remains as well as archaeological findings served as seemingly objective evidence for narratives that created a chronology of humanity along scientific, yet hierarchical, categories of human development. Based upon these narratives, Western actors—such as scientists and archaeologists—put themselves in charge of collecting, labeling, and preserving objects of human history in museums and universities but also in religious communities.42 At the same time, these seemingly objective classifications undercut the story of humanity as a universal community, as Western authors imagined the status of Western culture as being superior to other parts of the world such as Latin America or the Middle East. With their focus on objects (and on objectivity), the chapters show us how the science of humanity became an instrument of creating hierarchies that was complicit with the Western project of colonizing the world. They encourage us to historicize “objectivity” as a Western gaze and perspective that became a technique of exercising power.43 In his contribution to this volume, Michael L. Krenn focuses on Dr. Samuel George Morton, who is regarded as the “father” of the American School of Ethnology that developed in the mid-1800s. Morton and his associates—both in the United States and throughout Europe—applied “scientific” methods to the study of humankind and developed a new “vision of humanity” that argued that the differences marking the individual races had existed since creation and were immutable. For Morton, the physical differences he noted among the nearly one thousand human skulls in his collection were also reflections of the differences in character and intelligence. He was thus able to provide essential intellectual support for westward expansion and the annihilation of Native Americans, the continued

Introduction

13

existence of American slavery, and the rationale for keeping the races from mixing. Morton’s writings were celebrated at home and abroad, and they continue to resonate today through his massive collection of human skulls and ongoing arguments about the meaning of his work. Using the example of explorers excavating ancient Nippur (located about a hundred twenty miles southeast of Baghdad), Sarah Epping shows how US citizens involved in Ottoman Iraq at the end of the nineteenth century constructed and propagated an exclusionary vision of humanity. As Epping argues, their actions have had severe consequences for US-Iraqi relations ever since. In order to promote and finance their archaeological expeditions, explorers instigated a contradictory, Western-centric discourse that denied contemporary Iraqis any connection to the people who had lived in Iraq in the earliest times. At the same time, they closely connected (ancient) Iraq to the modern-day United States by drawing on long-fostered narratives that framed the region’s earliest inhabitants as the progenitor of US culture. Furthermore, they considered Americans as completely different from and superior to the people living there at present. This notion and the ensuing actions initiated the long-term development of US imperialistic interests in Iraq. Epping’s chapter resonates with current debates about global memory culture, museums, and claims of restitution made by countries throughout the world. As colonial explorers, scientists and academics took cultural artifacts and objects—often under the auspices of preserving them for all of “humanity”—while rendering people throughout Africa, Asia, and the Americas as “people without history,” to borrow a phrase from anthropologist Eric Wolf to describe this asymmetry of voices.44 Section two shifts the focus from “objects” to the category of “work” as a way to think of historical visions of humanity. The chapters assembled in this section address three key themes: humanitarian assistance, women’s rights, and Catholic visions of social justice. They do so by drawing attention to the actual working contexts and the lived experiences of those who acted in the name of “humanity.” Focusing on the Alliance Israélite Universelle and the web of organizations created by Maurice de Hirsch between the 1880s and the 1910s, Barbara Lambauer takes us into the practical work of humanitarian giving and allows us to follow the network’s work on behalf of Eastern European Jewish refugees and transatlantic migrants up to World War I. Jewish aid organizations invoked a language of “humanity” in their work, Lambauer shows, but they struggled over what

14

Jessica C. E. Gienow-Hecht, Sönke Kunkel, and Sebastian Jobs

a commitment to the cause of humanity should mean in practical terms: Would emigration assistance offer the way out for Jewish refugees or would it be better to promote Jewish education and emancipation in the Eastern European home countries of those refugees? Who was to receive emigration assistance? And who would take up the refugees? Lambauer’s chapter casts a light on the practical tensions and dilemmas that opened up for humanitarian workers once they sought to implement their visions of humanity on the ground. It also shows us how new movements and networks of Jewish refugees framed a new setting for humanitarian work in the late nineteenth century. Andrew M. Johnston’s chapter, on the other hand, foregrounds “work” as an intellectual practice by exploring the conceptual “boundary work” that underpinned much of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom’s (WILPF) campaign for women’s rights as universal rights. Feminist peace activists, he shows, worked out a new rationale for women’s rights by the end of World War I: within this rationale, masculine precepts and politics had plunged the world into war and violence and, in the words of Emily Greene Balch, had narrowed “men’s sympathies” and loyalties to the conflicting logics of the masculine nation-state. Practical experiences with settlement work within the immigrant city, on the other hand, had demonstrated the possibility of building a cosmopolitan community that transcended those logics. Women active in WILPF, Johnston shows, not only placed much hope on replicating this model on a global scale. They also worked out a new vision of humanity that put the needs of a “suffering humanity” front and center and touted the “universal expansion” of rights and social work as the only feasible way toward building a lasting peace—a call to action that widely resonated among women’s rights activists throughout the rest of the century. Taking us into the 1960s, Betsy Konefal homes in on the connections between practical religious work and new religious discourses of “humanity” during the Cold War. Her chapter examines social justice activism by Catholics in Guatemala in the 1960s as a means to explore competing visions of rights and revolution. It was a time when progressive Catholics worldwide focused on problems of exclusion and oppression, responding to Church calls for “Christian revolution”; by the end of the decade, this thinking and praxis would coalesce into liberation theology. But this case illustrates the complexity and diversity of liberationist ideas, with divergent positions developing about how to realize the transformations that many

Introduction

15

Catholics sought. Ideas about change—intensely debated among Church nuns and priests, students, peasants, and even armed revolutionaries—would be powerfully influenced by experiences on the ground: it was through challenges in implementing new visions of rights and justice in settings such as Guatemala, a site of extreme and racialized inequities and violence, that some of their most radical iterations took shape. Nicholas J. Cull’s chapter, in turn, considers the role of cultural outreach based on an articulation of shared humanity in the global campaign to end the apartheid system in South Africa, along with the apartheid state’s counter-campaign appealing to some of the same ideas. He argues that preexisting cultural connections between South Africa and the world gave prominence to the cause and that the use of a shared transnational vocabulary of humanity derived from the UN, the church, Marxist doctrine, and the Commonwealth succeeded in reaching audiences. The indigenous African idea of humanity, Ubuntu—at first seemingly marginal in the struggle—became central to the postapartheid discourse. As Cull writes, “the political salience of South Africa in global conscience owed much to preexisting cultural connections and a vocabulary of humanity. . . . It was only toward the end that an actual local ideology of humanity indigenous to Africa moved to the fore rather than simply an African experience expressed in global terms.” The humanization of oppressed people in South Africa thus had the unintended consequence of dehumanizing the oppressor in ways that complicated the process of negotiation and conflict resolution. Taken together, the three chapters in this section suggest that visions of humanity cannot be separated from the lived working experiences of those who shaped them—nor should they. The quotidian challenges and quarrels, the tensions and limits, the hopes and frustrations all formed the web of experience that underpinned historical visions of “humanity.”45 Acting in the name of “humanity,” the section shows, not only took intellectual, reflective work; transnational activism also represented its own way of work, with its own routines and its own forms of gratification. Section three turns from thought and the material to “sounds” and artistic visions of humanity, notably ballet, music, film, and literature. Stéphanie Gonçalves introduces us to Maurice Béjart’s visions of humanity. A leading international choreographer in the 1950s and 1960s, Béjart’s ballet interpretation of Ludwig van Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony was at once sensitive, vital, spiritual, and religious—a vision of sound, song, dance, and love that reflected the urgency of

16

Jessica C. E. Gienow-Hecht, Sönke Kunkel, and Sebastian Jobs

social questions in the 1960s. To Béjart, the world was a stage and the stage a sacred space to sing, play, dance, and celebrate humanity in a pluralist and inclusive, universalist and pacifist fashion. Based on a close reading of the actual performance, Gonçalves analyzes reviews of a performance that consciously took the risk of being seen as “popular culture” and, on that account, was severely criticized by leading US American critics. To the gatekeepers of US high culture, Béjart’s “banal” appeal to humanity equaled a descent into popular culture and, to this effect, a betrayal of the exclusive function of the international ballet scene. It is here where we see, perhaps more obviously than anywhere else in the volume, how art—music and dance in particular—could function as a tool of inclusion and simultaneously a tool of exclusion, both in the name of “humanity.” Following up on Gonçalves’s contention, Anaïs Fléchet explores Jewish American violinist Yehudi Menuhin’s reflections on music and diplomacy and retraces his action at the head of UNESCO’s International Music Council (IMC) between 1969 and 1975. Drawing on archival materials from the UNESCO Archives, the US National Archives, and the Foyle Menuhin Archive at the Royal Academy of Music, she shows how Menuhin used his international prestige to intervene in a number of diplomatic matters, including the Rostropovich case (1971–1974) and the UNESCO/Israel controversy (1974–1975). In particular, the chapter examines Menuhin’s vision of music as a common good for humanity and a peacebuilding tool in regard to three specific avenues: first, UNESCO’s strategic objectives and achievements in the field of music; second, Menuhin’s moves between the musical stage and the international stage; and third, the rise of a new “musical humanism” during the 1970s. As Fléchet writes, Menuhin’s tenure at the IMC highlights the convergence of two universals at a specific moment in the early 1970s: on the one hand, “humanity” and human rights (which then became established as a collective action program), and, on the other hand, classical music, a “vector of emotion and an aesthetic and moral education initiative.” In the face of daunting global challenges, Menuhin sought to craft a new musical diplomacy that, as he hoped, would turn “art into hope for humanity.”46 Tobias Hof zooms in further on sound with a selection of charity songs that were produced in response to the 1980s African famines. By looking at their production, lyrics, and videos, the chapter analyzes these different visions of humanity, their effects on fundraising campaigns, and whether the songs appealed to a global audience.

Introduction

17

Hof argues that they offer insight into the political and sociocultural self-image of a society and allow us to grasp the cultural representation of various visions of humanity. As Hof writes, we should understand “humanity” not as an objective but as a normative category, which despite its various forms encouraged and impelled musicians to participate in the fundraising efforts and people to donate at a time of crisis.

In tandem, the chapters in this section show the extent to which cultural actors developed their own set of visions of humanity, one ranging from the display of a utopian community of colors and people dancing on stage to address social inequality (Gonçalves); to the use of humanity as a weapon in a bipolar world (Fléchet); to an appeal for international attention, sanction, and relief for a region in crisis (Hof). Most noteworthy, all three point to a decisively different vocabulary of identity and action. Rather than assigning “humanity” to one or the other side of the struggle, their vision invoked universalism, however vague. As Charles Maier once wrote in a review essay: “The Russians who wept at a [1959 Leonard] Bernstein concert [in Moscow] did so because music provided its continuing Dionysian hope that art might dissolve boundaries, control and contention.” For whatever reasons, music allowed performers, organizers, and audiences alike to sense a vision that went beyond the space race, bipolar confrontation, and ideological competition, allowing a brief glimpse of the world above and beyond politics.47 In the epilogue to this volume, Siep Stuurman widens the lens by situating the historical visions addressed in this volume in the broader history of “languages of common humanity.” Stuurman sees one achievement of the volume in the ways it draws our attention to the centrality of “silent exclusions”: Morton’s “scientific racism,” the unilinear “genealogies of civilization” promoted by American archaeologists around the 1900s, the exclusions inherent in the classand education-based approach of Jewish philanthropy, as well as the White Atlantic mindset of radical feminists in Stuurman’s reading all stood for visions of a “super-We” that were reductionist and “loudly or silently exclude[d] large swaths of the world’s population.” Stuurman sees as a “watershed in discourses about common humanity” after World War II when the idea of a universal humanity was fixed as a “global normative value,” a theme he perceives resonating through the histories of religious activism, anti-apartheid campaigns, and musical performances addressed in this volume. In the end, Stuur-

18

Jessica C. E. Gienow-Hecht, Sönke Kunkel, and Sebastian Jobs

man concludes, human rights and visions of humanity have always been ambivalent concepts as “human artifacts,” but there is a certain anthropological robustness about them; we should not give up on them, he claims, in these times of reappearing authoritarianisms.

It is these glimpses beyond law and politics that also inform the larger epistemic value of this volume. While politically, messages invoking humanity remained partisan (against capitalism, against communism, against apartheid, against inequality), culturally the story is more complex on at least five different accounts: first, while intellectuals and political shakers certainly did much to develop and examine concepts of humanity (including their ideological malleability and often disastrous impact as a force of legitimation), the chapters in this volume show that to a large extent the genesis and the meaning of the term was crafted outside of the political spotlight and the ivory tower. Scientists like Samuel George Morton or feminists at the WILPF may have received little attention in the study of humanity. Likewise, transcendent visions of religion and the law, much studied and well known, played a significant in cultural reflections on humanity in altogether unforeseen scenarios. Echoing a growing literature pertaining to this topic, Betsy Konefal picks up on the religious angle in her discussion of Catholicism and humanity in 1960s Guatemala when she examines what came to be known as “‘A New Humanity’ for the Poor.” Suzy Killmister, in turn, demonstrates how legal processes surrounding human rights claims, seemingly researched ad nauseam, morphed into new imaginations about what it means to be human, way beyond the courtroom and political fora. Yet as these stories show, their tales also offer surprising, even disheartening perspectives on a term that constitutes, at the end of the day, one of the most exclusive figures of current political speech. Second, all of the actors examined appealed to visions of humanity to transcend precisely the sort of conflict they found themselves in: Béjart’s hope for a human community of equals resonated strongly with Menuhin’s vision of a world of music lovers united by sound. The notion of Ubuntu employed in the context of the apartheid discourse had a life and employed a vision of the world far beyond the political conflict, as did the metaphor of Bob Geldof’s children, notwithstanding all the criticism bestowed on Live Aid concerts. In each of these instances, visions of humanity served

Introduction

19

as catalysts within a specific political context, but they also preexisted—and that is the key—outside and beyond such a context in the first place and, for many, continued to do so after the fact. Notwithstanding the frustrations and struggles of actors to put visions of humanity into practice—think of the Alliance Israélite Universelle’s troubles in prioritizing its aid—the longevity of their imagination set them apart from political and intellectual proponents of academics at the time. Third, and related to this, in tune with the understanding of the arts as an affective impetus, actors put emotions at center stage and, more often than not, insisted on the apolitical and timeless nature of their intentions. One might question the validity of these claims, but the fact remains that this is what they deemed important and legitimate to their work. The nexus between emotion, temporality, and humanity endowed their respective visions with a meaning that appeared to transcend space and time to yield a legitimacy and an appeal far beyond the functional understandings of beneficial collectivity. This echoes what the philosopher Kyrill Gosseff has termed “A Transcendental Emotional Reference,” based, among others, on Husserl’s theory of consciousness.48 Sharing, to cite Desmond Tutu, was not a means to do or feel good. It was the only way to come to terms with one’s own limits as a human being. Disregarding humanity, including the humanity of others, meant to unbecome human oneself—a vista so terrifying that it could only be addressed and digested in the cultural realm. Fourth, and in direct relation to the preceding observation, the present volume accentuates critical reflections on cultural representations of inhumanity. Inhumanity was and is not just the flipside of humanity, a dark shadow lurking beneath joyous claims of progress and inclusion. Inhumanity is, indeed, part of humanity’s essence, not just in analytical but also in historical terms for many of the very actors examined in this volume. As Sarah Epping, Michael L. Krenn, and Stéphanie Gonçalves report, the delineation of specific characteristics, behavior, and physiognomy did not simply serve as venues to define and exclude the “other.” Rather, in these accounts, humanity emerged as a twisted mix of attributes—both inclusive and exclusive, benevolent and brutal, respectful and racist—which individuals experienced, recognized, and tried to make sense of simultaneously. On that note, finally, the most prominent figure emerging from the following account is one that accentuates competition and di-

20

Jessica C. E. Gienow-Hecht, Sönke Kunkel, and Sebastian Jobs

versity rather than unity, universalism, and sharedness. Excavators in Ottoman Iraq entertained different visions of humanity than, say, Church nuns and priests in 1960s Guatemala. James Laidlaw, Barbara Bodenhorn, and Martin Holbraad have recently urged the social sciences to “bring back” the subject in an anthropological fashion.49 Among the many cultural actors perused in this volume, there were and are always more than one vision of humanity—not simply by way of accident but because, from an anthropological point of view, human individuals find themselves consistently put together in different and diverse historical contexts of change, in which their influence on outcomes cannot be overestimated. What is more, these cultural actors continuously contested and competed with one another, over time and across space. Future research, one might hope, will explore these five points further, but also move beyond the themes and topics outlined in this and other publications in terms of both geography and temporality. By way of a suggestion, we would like to point out two related subjects that hitherto have remained understudied or unaddressed: climate history and the nonhuman turn. Picking up on Maeckelberghe and Schröder-Bäck’s (and German president Frank-Walter Steinmeier’s) suggestion about a “test for humanity,”50 historians of culture and international history are well qualified to explore the nexus of inclusion and exclusion in earlier instances of international cooperation in the service of natural disease control. How did humanity feature in historical debates and assessments of climate and climate change? How did historical actors perceive human agency within the same? How did climate serve as a forum to come to terms with humanity?51 Moving on to the second subject, for all the interest in animal studies, critical plant studies, and the nonhuman turn,52 there is hardly any historical research on the interplay of humanity and nonhumanity from an international perspective. Issues of universalism and diversity, as discussed in this volume, certainly figure large in the history of sonic, visual, literary, performative, religious, and scientific imaginaries of the human-nonhuman encounter. Novels and poetry, such as Kazuo Ishiguro’s 2019 Klara and the Sun, increasingly portray the osmosis between humanity and nonhumanity in a nottoo-distant future, along with the extension of human values to relations with nonhuman creatures. How have previous protagonists of AI science, machine learning, and protohumanity grappled with issues of humanity in work and self-reflection? How did contemplations of nonhumanity relativize references to an all-encompassing

Introduction

21

humanity? How does nonhumanity decenter the many histories dedicated to humanity, including this very book?

Barely had the 2021 Olympics in Tokyo concluded when the city opened its doors to part two of the event, the 2021 International Paralympics. “You are the best of humanity,” declared Andrew Parsons, president of the International Paralympics Committee, during the opening ceremony, following an impressive show of light, dance, and fireworks. Twittered notes of praise and inspiration arrived by international sports stars including Bayern Munich star Alphonso Davies and Manchester United striker Marcus Rashford (“real-life superheroes”). Yet for all the joy of competing and performing in Japan, some of the athletes and their fans found little evidence for visions of an inclusive humanity. TV viewers noted that unlike the Olympics, the Paralympics could not be watched 24/7 and were only available on selected, often costly channels.53 Worse, as blind skier John Dickinson-Lilley stated, terms such as “inspiration” and “super-human,” often cited during the games, objectified disabled people for the sole benefit of nondisabled spectators, echoing what Australian comedian Stella Young once called “inspiration porn.”54 Scoffing at such mechanisms of objectivation, Young stated in a 2014 TEDx Talk, a few months prior to her death: “I really want to live in a world where disability is not the exception but the norm.”55 Now, expand “disability” to include any sort of difference, and we might finally begin to come to terms with the conflicted historical and cultural legacy of the trajectory of humanity outlined in this volume. Which is another way of saying that difference, as much as unity, marks any vision of humanity.

Jessica C. E. Gienow-Hecht is the chair of the Department of History in the John F. Kennedy Institute for North American Studies at Freie Universität Berlin. She is the principal investigator in the excellence cluster Contestations of the Liberal Scripts (SCRIPTS) while running a DFG project on the role of music and human rights in North America since World War II. Currently, she is completing a study on the impact of gender on visions and practices of humanity around 1900 and a manuscript on the history of state-run image management. Sönke Kunkel is assistant professor of North American history at Freie Universität Berlin. He has published widely on the history of

22

Jessica C. E. Gienow-Hecht, Sönke Kunkel, and Sebastian Jobs

humanitarianism and development and is the author of Empire of Pictures: Global Media and the 1960s Remaking of American Foreign Policy (2015). He is now working on a cultural history of transnational humanitarianism in the age of empires (1870s–1920s). Sebastian Jobs is an assistant professor of North American history at the JFK Institute (FU Berlin). A former researcher at the German Historical Institute (Washington, DC) and at UNC (Chapel Hill), he focuses on African American history, cultural history, and the history of everyday life. His first monograph about military victory parades in New York City explored performance and ritual as methods for the writing of history. His other publications have focused on the postcolonial turn in history and the importance of archives for history writing. He is currently finishing a book project about rumors of slave revolts in the US South.

Notes 1. “Japan Will Host in 2021.” 2. Ho, “Spirit of Humanity”; Manav, “Refugee Olympic Team”; Mercer, “Very Genki, Slightly Kitsch”; “The 2021 Tokyo Olympics.” 3. Associated Press, “Olympic Duo”; Rossi, “Kindness and Empathy.” 4. Wallace, “Humanity as an Object of Attachment,” 1–13. 5. Weiwei and Warsh, Humanity. 6. Rees, On the Future; Rees, Cruelty or Humanity; imga, A Question for Humanity; Davis, “‘It’s the Humanity, Stupid!’” 367–72; Mikoski, “Rebuilding Our Humanity,” 101–2. 7. Fadlalla, Branding Humanity; Fasoro, “Immigration, Humanity, and Morality,” 21–33. 8. Gienow-Hecht, “A Feeling.” 9. Gienow-Hecht, “A Feeling”; Stuurman, Invention of Humanity, 478. 10. Stuurman, Invention of Humanity, 259. 11. Stuurman, Invention of Humanity, 258–345. 12. Stamatov, Origins; Barnett, Empire of Humanity; Barnett and Stein, Sacred Aid; Abruzzo, Polemical Pain. 13. Miles, “Mississippi Slave Insurrection,” 48–60, quote 57 [emphasis added]. 14. Buck-Morss, “Hegel and Haiti,” 821, 865. 15. Edmonds and Johnston, “Empire, Violence.” 16. Gienow-Hecht, “A Feeling.” 17. Moyn, The Last Utopia; Eckel, The Ambivalence of Good. 18. Neff, Justice among Nations. 19. See Johnston, “Jeanne Halbwachs.” 20. Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe. 21. Fanon, Les damnés de la terre. 22. Diallo, Force-Bonté, 198; Goldblatt, “Bakayr Diallo’s Force-Bonté.” 23. Sasson et al., “History and Humanitarianism,” e10–e11; Hoffmann, “Human Rights and History.”

Introduction

23

24. Lyssy and Yeomans, Kant on Morality; Baggini, The Great Guide, 202; Ellul and Vanderburg, On Freedom; Nederman, Bonds of Humanity; Mueller, “The ‘Breeding of Humanity’”; Bukoski, “Korsgaard’s Arguments.” 25. Stuurman, Invention of Humanity. 26. Buchan and Burnett, “Knowing Savagery,” 3–7. 27. Bartel and Castillo, The Scholar as Human; Selznick, A Humanist Science. 28. Crossland, War, Law and Humanity. 29. Dannenbaum, Crime of Aggression. He thus echoes Ai Weiwei’s appeal to “humanity” for the moral responsibility of war and its consequences: Weiwei and Warsh, Humanity. 30. McNeince, “Review Article.” 31. Moniz, From Empire to Humanity. 32. Klose and Thulin, Humanity. See also Klose, In the Cause, 19. 33. Paulmann, “Humanity.” 34. Feldman and Ticktin, In the Name of Humanity, 23. 35. Maeckelberghe and Schröder-Bäck, “Covid-19,” 853–54. 36. Edmonds, “Activism in the Antipodes.” 37. Sasson et al., “History and Humanitarianism,” e10–e11. 38. Bjorklund, “Children.” 39. Möller et al., Gendering Global Humanitarianism. 40. Klose and Thulin, Humanity, 13, 17–20. 41. For a further reflection on this approach, see Jobs and Mackenthun, “Introduction.” 42. Laukötter, “The ‘Colonial Object.’” 43. Daston and Galison, Objectivity; Foucault, The Order of Things. 44. Although Wolf and Eriksen have mainly focused on modes of production and economic inequality, the phrase also proves inspiring in our case. See Wolf and Eriksen, Europe. 45. For a perspective that illuminates the focus on work and labor as experienced and shaped by individual actors in their everyday lives, see Lüdtke, “Arbeitsbeginn.” For a transnational perspective, see Jobs and Mailänder, “Arbeit Begrenzen Entgrenzen.” 46. Yehudi Menuhin’s quote in Menuhin, L’Art. See also Buch and Fléchet, “La musique en prison.” 47. Maier, “Review.” 48. Goosseff, “Innocent Source of Humanity.” 49. Laidlaw et al., Recovering the Human Subject. 50. Maeckelberghe and Schröder-Bäck, “Covid-19.” 51. Note that climate change does not loom large in the current academic literature on “humanity.” We are indebted to Connor Ruby for this point. 52. Spengler and Tischleder, An Eclectic Bestiary; Fudge, Brutal Reasoning. 53. Swimmer2000, “Complaint.” 54. Dickinson-Lilley, “Paralympics ‘Inspiration Porn.’” 55. Young, “Inspiration Porn.”

Bibliography Abruzzo, Margaret. Polemical Pain: Slavery, Cruelty, and the Rise of Humanitarianism. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011. Associated Press. “Olympic Duo’s Extraordinary ‘Humanity’ after ‘Crazy’ Moment in 800m Semi at Tokyo.” Wide World of Sports, 1 August 2021.

24

Jessica C. E. Gienow-Hecht, Sönke Kunkel, and Sebastian Jobs

Retrieved 19 October 2021 from https://wwos.nine.com.au/olympics/ tokyo-olympics-2021-extraordinary-humanity-after-crazy-moment-inmens-800m-semifinal/41542dd7-3700-482b-99c4-a4a03671cb5c. Baggini, Julian. The Great Guide: What David Hume Can Teach Us about Being Human and Living Well. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2021. Barnett, Michael. Empire of Humanity: A History of Humanitarianism. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2011. Barnett, Michael, and Janice G. Stein. Sacred Aid: Faith and Humanitarianism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. Bartel, Anna Sims, and Debra A. Castillo, eds. The Scholar as Human: Research and Teaching for Public Impact. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2021. Bjorklund, David F. “How Children Invented Humanity.” Child Development 89, no. 5 (2018): 1462–66. Buch, Esteban, and Anaïs Fléchet, “La musique en prison. La campagne pour la libération de Miguel Angel Estrella 1977–1980.” Annales, Histoire, Sciences Sociales 3 (2017): 775–805. Buchan, Bruce, and Linda A. Burnett. “Knowing Savagery: Humanity in the Circuits of Colonial Knowledge.” History of the Human Sciences 32, no. 4 (2019): 3–7. Buck-Morss, Susan. “Hegel and Haiti.” Critical Inquiry 26 (Summer 2000): 821–65. Bukoski, Michael. “Korsgaard’s Arguments for the Value of Humanity.” The Philosophical Review 127, no. 2 (2018): 197–224. Chakrabarty, Dipesh. Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007 [2000]. Crossland, James. War, Law and Humanity: The Campaign to Control Warfare, 1853–1914. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2018. Dannenbaum, Tom. The Crime of Aggression, Humanity, and the Soldier. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018. Daston, Lorraine, and Peter Galison. Objectivity. New York: Zone Books, 2007. Davis, Anne E. “‘It’s the Humanity, Stupid!’: Values and the Definition of Public Goods.” Journal of Economic Issues 55, no. 2 (2021): 367–72. Diallo, Bakary. Force-Bonté. c1926. Les Nouvelles Éditions Africaines, 1985. Dickinson-Lilley, John. “What Is Paralympics ‘Inspiration Porn’ and Why Does It Make Some Disabled People Uneasy?” Paralympics Podcast. Retrieved 19 October 2021 from https://www.outsports.com/paralym pics/2021/8/27/22635787/paralympics-inspiration-porn-athletessports-tokyo-2020. Eckel, Jan. The Ambivalence of Good: Human Rights in International Politics since the 1940s. Translated by Rachel Ward. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019.

Introduction

25

Edmonds, Penelope. “Activism in the Antipodes: Transnational Quaker Humanitarianism and the Troubled Politics of Compassion in the Early Nineteenth Century.” In The Transnational Activist: Transformations and Comparisons from the Anglo-World since the Nineteenth Century, edited by Stefan Berger and Sean Scalmer, 31–59. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018. Edmonds, Penelope, and Anna Johnston. “Empire, Violence, and Humanitarianism in the Colonies.” Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History 17, no. 1 (Spring 2016): 1–26. Ellul, Jacques, and Willem H. Vanderburg. On Freedom, Love, and Power. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2018. Fadlalla, Amal H. Branding Humanity: Competing Narratives of Rights, Violence, and Global Citizenship. Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 2020. Fanon, Frantz. Les damnés de la terre. Francois Maspero, 1961. Fasoro, Sunday A. “Immigration, Humanity, and Morality.” Open Political Science 2, no. 1 (2019): 21–33. Feldman, Ilana, and Miriam Ticktin, eds. In the Name of Humanity: The Government of Threat and Care. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010. Foucault, Michel. The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences. London: Routledge, 2005 [1966]. Fudge, Erica. Brutal Reasoning: Animals, Rationality, and Humanity in Early Modern England. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2019. Gienow-Hecht, Jessica C. E. “Who Belongs to Humanity?: Gender, Humanity, and the War of 1898 in Cuba.” Unpublished manuscript, 2023. Goldblatt, Cullen. “Bakayr Diallo’s Force-Bonté (1926): A Complicit Critique of French Humanity.” Research in African Literatures 50, no. 4 (2020): 182–201. Goosseff, Kyrill. “Innocent Source of Humanity.” Journal of Organizational Change Management 33, no. 4 (2020): 623–38. Ho, Sally. “How the Spirit of Humanity Is Permeating Tokyo Olympics.” Christian Science Monitor, 2 August 2021. Retrieved 19 October 2021 from https://www.csmonitor.com/World/2021/0802/How-the-spirit-ofhumanity-is-permeating-Tokyo-Olympics. Hoffmann, Stefan-Ludwig. “Human Rights and History.” Past and Present 243, no. 1 (August 2016): 279–310. “Japan Will Host Olympics in 2021 ‘as Proof That Humanity Has Defeated the Pandemic,’ PM Suga Vows at UN.’” RT, 25 September 2020. Retrieved 19 October 2021 from https://www.rt.com/news/501755japan-olympics-defeat-covid/. Jobs, Sebastian, and Gesa Mackenthun. “Introduction.” In Agents of Transculturation: Border-Crossers, Mediators, Go-Betweens, edited by Sebastian Jobs and Gesa Mackenthun, 7–20. Münster: Waxmann, 2013. Jobs, Sebastian, and Elissa Mailänder. “Arbeit Begrenzen Entgrenzen.” WerkstattGeschichte 70 (2016). Retrieved 19 October 2021 from https:// werkstattgeschichte.de/editorial/nr-70-arbeit-begrenzen-entgrenzen/.

26

Jessica C. E. Gienow-Hecht, Sönke Kunkel, and Sebastian Jobs

Johnston, Andrew. “Jeanne Halbwachs, International Feminist Pacifism, and France’s Société d’Études Documentaires et Critiques sur la Guerre.” Peace and Change 41, no. 1 (January 2016): 17–31. Klose, Fabian. In the Cause of Humanity. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2019. Klose, Fabian, and Mirjam Thulin. Humanity: A History of European Concepts in Practice from the Sixteenth Century to the Present. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2016. Laidlaw, James, Barbara Bodenhorn, and Martin Holbraad, eds. Recovering the Human Subject: Freedom, Creativity, and Decision. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018. Laukötter, Anja. “The ‘Colonial Object’ as Object of Knowledge in Ethnological Museums.” In Embodiments of Cultural Encounters, edited by Sebastian Jobs and Gesa Mackenthun, 191–200. Münster: Waxmann, 2011. Lüdtke, Alf. “Arbeitsbeginn, Arbeitspausen, Arbeitsende: Skizzen zu Bedürfnisbefriedigung und Industriearbeit im 19. und frühen 20. Jahrhundert.” In Eigen-Sinn: Fabrikalltag, Arbeitererfahrungen und Politik vom Kaiserreich bis in den Faschismus, edited by Alf Lüdtke, 80–108. Münster: Westfälisches Dampfboot, 2015. Lyssy, Ansgar, and Christopher Yeomans. Kant on Morality, Humanity, and Legality: Practical Dimensions of Normativity. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2021. Maeckelberghe, E.L.M., and Peter Schröder-Bäck. “Covid-19: A Test for Our Humanity.” European Journal of Public Health 30, no. 5 (2020): 853–54. Maier, Charles. “Review of ‘Special Forum: Musical Diplomacy: Strategies, Agendas, Relationships.’” Diplomatic History 36, no. 1 (January 2012): 17–75. Manav, Ashish. “Refugee Olympic Team—A Hope towards Humanity.” Center for Regional Research and Sustainability Studies, 23 July 2021. Retrieved 19 October 2021 from https://www.thinkcrrss.com/post/ refugee-olympic-team-a-hope-towards-humanity. McNeince, Aoife O. “Review Article: Towards a History of Global Humanitarianism.” The Historical Journal, 63 no. 5 (2020): 1378–89. Menuhin, Yehudi. L’Art: espoir pour l’humanité. Paris: Buchet Chastel, 1999. Mercer, Leah. “Very Genki, Slightly Kitsch, Occasionally Compelling: The Olympic Opening Ceremony Put Humanity in Centre Frame.” The Conversation, 24 July 2021. Retrieved 19 October 2021 from https:// theconversation.com/very-genki-slightly-kitsch-occasionally-compe lling-the-olympic-opening-ceremony-put-humanity-in-centre-frame164786. Mikoski, Gordon S. “Rebuilding Our Humanity.” Theology Today 76, no. 2 (2019): 101–2. Miles, Edwin A. “The Mississippi Slave Insurrection Scare of 1835.” Journal of Negro History (January 1957): 48–60.

Introduction

27

Möller, Esther, Johannes Paulmann, and Katharina Stornig, eds. Gendering Global Humanitarianism in the Twentieth Century: Practice, Politics and the Power of Representation. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019. Moniz, Amanda B. From Empire to Humanity: The American Revolution and the Origins of Humanitarianism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016. Moyn, Samuel. The Last Utopia: Human Rights in History. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012. Mueller, Reinhard G. “The ‘Breeding of Humanity’: Nietzsche and Shaw’s Man and Superman.” Shaw 39, no. 2 (2019): 183–203. Nederman, Cary J. The Bonds of Humanity: Cicero’s Legacies in European Social and Political Thought, ca. 1100–ca. 1550. Penn State University Press, 2021. Neff, Stephen C. Justice among Nations: A History of International Law. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014. Paulmann, Johannes. “Humanity, Humanitarian Reason, Imperial Humanitarianism: European Concepts in Practice.” In Humanity: A History of European Concepts in Practice from the Sixteenth Century to the Present, edited by Fabian Klose and Mirjam Thulin, 278–312. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2016. Rees, Martin. On the Future: Prospects for Humanity. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2018. Rees, Stuart. Cruelty or Humanity: Challenges, Opportunities and Responsibilities. Bristol: Policy Press, 2021. Rossi, Ian. “Kindness and Empathy Highlight the Humanity of the Tokyo Olympics.” Pennsylvania News Today, 8 August 2021. Retrieved 19 October 2021 from https://pennsylvanianewstoday.com/kindness-andempathy-highlight-the-humanity-of-the-tokyo-olympics-sports/203668/. Sasson, Tehila, et al. “History and Humanitarianism: A Conversation.” Past and Present 241, no. 1 (November 2018): e1–e38. Selznick, Philip. A Humanist Science: Values and Ideals in Social Inquiry. Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 2020. imga, Hülya. A Question for Humanity: Sexism, Oppression and Women’s Rights. Münster: LIT, 2019. Spengler, Birgit, and Babette B. Tischleder, eds. An Eclectic Bestiary: Encounters in a More-than-Human World. Bielefeld: Transcript Verlag, 2019. Stamatov, Peter. The Origins of Global Humanitarianism: Religion, Empires and Advocacy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015. Stuurman, Siep. The Invention of Humanity: Equality and Cultural Difference in World History. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2017. Swimmer2000. “Complaint: No Paralympics in Primetime.” Complaint.biz, 21 August 2021. Retrieved 19 October 2021 from https://complain.biz/ nbc/complaint/no-paralympics-in-primetime/. “The 2021 Tokyo Olympics Could Be a Triumph for Humanity.” Asia Newsday, 1 April 2020. Retrieved 19 October 2021 from https://www

28

Jessica C. E. Gienow-Hecht, Sönke Kunkel, and Sebastian Jobs

.asianewsday.com/the-2021-tokyo-olympics-could-be-a-triumph-forhumanity/. Wallace, Ray J. “Humanity as an Object of Attachment,” Inquiry (ahead of print): 1–13. Weiwei, Ai, and Larry Warsh. Humanity. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2018. Wolf, Eric R., and Thomas Hylland Eriksen. Europe and the People Without History. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010. Young, Stella. “Inspiration Porn and the Objectification of Disability.” TEDxSydney, 13 May 2014. Retrieved 19 October 2021 from https:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=SxrS7-I_sMQ&t=1s.

Chapter 1

THE HUMAN IN HUMAN RIGHTS Suzy Killmister

Introduction How should we think about the human as it appears in both the theory and practice of human rights? Such a question may seem deeply obtuse—surely we already know what it means to be human, and how it relates to human rights. To be human is just to be a member of the species Homo sapiens, and one of the distinctive features of human rights, as opposed to other moral and political systems, is its insistence that simply being human suffices for possessing a robust suite of entitlements. In this chapter I aim to complicate this easy answer. I suggest that the standard way of theorizing the connection between being human and having human rights has deeply problematic implications, and also tends to obscure the political struggles that continue to be waged under the surface of both human rights theory and practice. The argument for this conclusion proceeds in three stages. First, I explore the most common way human rights theorists have sought to vindicate the assumption that we have human rights because we are human—namely, by identifying a unique “essence” possessed by all and only humans—and I articulate three problems that emerge from this theoretical orientation. I then sketch an alternative way of thinking about the relationship between being human and human rights. In this alternative framework, the order of priority between being human and having human rights is inverted: rather than seeing human rights as something we possess simply in virtue of being human, I suggest that in a very important sense we are human Notes for this section begin on page 44.

30

Suzy Killmister

because we have human rights. This observation follows from the claim that we can fruitfully think of the human (at least as it appears in human rights) as a social construct, analogous to other social categories such as race and gender. Just like race and gender, we can think of the human as a status that is conferred on us within a particular sociohistorical context, and which carries with it a distinctive set of powers, obligations, privileges, and burdens. Human rights practice, from this perspective, is a key factor in the construction of the human because it articulates and institutionalizes what we are entitled to qua humans. Finally, I complete the discussion by revisiting the three problems that emerged for the standard approach and comparing how the social constructionist alternative grapples with them. This comparison draws out the normative implications of the social constructionist approach and helps illuminate the extent to which human rights theory and practice have obscured their own power dynamics, presenting as natural and immutable conceptions of humanity that ought to be recognized as deeply political and historically contingent.

From Practice to Theory One of the most widespread assumptions about human rights is that we have them because we are human. We see this assumption at play in the core human rights documents, such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights—whose first Article declares that “all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights”—as well as both the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights, both of whose preambles hold that “recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world.”1 We also see this assumption appealed to by the various international organizations that have emerged to protect and promote human rights. Amnesty International, for instance, answers the question “What are human rights?” with the explanation that “all human beings are born with equal and inalienable rights and fundamental freedoms,” while Human Rights Without Borders similarly asserts that “human rights are extended to everyone for the simple fact of being human.”2 A notable feature of these kinds of assertions is the lack of explanation as to what it is about being human that generates or grounds

The Human in Human Rights

31

these rights. Occasional reference may be made to dignity as the explanatory factor, but then the question just shifts: what, exactly, is dignity, such that its possession grants its bearer human rights? While those engaged in human rights practice typically eschew such abstract philosophical questions, committing their energies instead to the daily battle to protect individuals against gross abuses, theorists of human rights have embraced them. Inspired by the visionary statement that “we have human rights because we are human,” and drawing on a long tradition of philosophical thought, many human rights theorists have sought to identify the inherent feature, or “special something,” in virtue of which humans, and not other animals, possess this elevated moral status.3 It is hard to overstate just how challenging this search has proved to be, since it amounts to nothing short of attempting to define our humanity. We can start to see some of the difficulties in this endeavor by looking back on one of the very earliest philosophical attempts to define the human. In his dialogue The Statesman, Plato engages in a range of taxonomic classifications, including an attempt to differentiate human beings from other animals. After a number of detours and missteps, here is what the character of the Stranger ultimately proposes: “I say that we should have begun at first by dividing land animals into biped and quadruped; and since the winged herd, and that alone, comes out in the same class with man, should divide bipeds into those which have feathers and those which have not.”4 There is an apocryphal story that soon after Plato proposed this definition of the human as a featherless biped, Diogenes the Cynic came to the Academy carrying a plucked chicken, held it aloft, and declared, “behold, here is Plato’s human!” Undeterred, Plato then amended his definition to include “with broad flat nails.”5 While this amendment may have plugged the hole identified by Diogenes the Cynic, for the human rights theorist it nonetheless leaves much to be desired. While Plato’s definition of a human as a featherless biped with broad flat nails could potentially help a hapless alien identify a human being in the wild, it is ill suited to explaining why we have human rights. That is because, for the human rights theorist, the required features need to not only be possessed by all and only human beings but also be morally significant. In other words, they need to be the kind of qualities from which we can plausibly derive the full suite of human rights. Even if Plato were correct that all and only humans are featherless bipeds with broad flat nails, such a definition would not suffice to explain why humans but not cows are entitled to freedom from slavery, or why humans but not

32

Suzy Killmister

hawks are entitled to health care, and that is because the number of limbs a creature possesses, or their type of skin covering, has no intrinsic moral significance. Likewise, even though we now know, as Plato did not, that all and only human beings possess the human genome, this feature is not morally relevant in the right kind of way; just as the color of a person’s skin does not accord them a higher moral status, so too the content of a creature’s DNA does not—in and of itself—accord them a higher moral status. The search for our humanity has been a search for something that runs much deeper than biological taxonomy.6 Recognition of this fact has led human rights theorists to ground human rights not in any superficial physical difference between humans and nonhuman animals, but rather in the kinds of sophisticated cognitive capacities humans typically possess—capacities such as autonomy, moral reason, or self-consciousness. Capacities such as these make our lives qualitatively different from the lives of other animals, and—at least according to many human rights theorists—they are morally significant enough to ground our possession of human rights. A brief survey of three prominent contemporary theories of human rights should suffice to give a flavor of such approaches. Here is James Griffin, whose book On Human Rights (2008) spearheaded a revival of philosophical interest in the foundations of human rights: a human right, he says, is “a right that we have simply in virtue of being human.”7 More precisely, he claims that “human rights can . . . be seen as protections of our human standing.”8 In answer to the question of what our human standing consists in, he has this to say: Human life is different from the life of other animals. We human beings have a conception of ourselves and of our past and future. We reflect and assess. We form pictures of what a good life would be—often, it is true, only on a small scale, but occasionally also on a large scale. And we try to realize these pictures. This is what we mean by a distinctively human existence.9

Griffin thus follows the basic premise of human rights documents, and the self-understanding of human rights practice, in taking there to be something intrinsic to human beings that explains why we have human rights. He then identifies that “special something” with a particular kind of agency evinced by human beings, and human beings alone. The structure of Griffin’s view is mirrored in that of John Tasioulas. According to Tasioulas, “human rights are moral rights pos-

The Human in Human Rights

33

sessed by all human beings simply in virtue of their humanity.”10 He then fleshes out the idea of humanity as follows: What it is to be a human being, the ontological basis of human dignity, is an inexhaustible topic. But in broad outline it consists in the fact that humans belong to a species which is in turn characterized by a variety of capacities and features: a characteristic form of embodiment; a finite life-span of a certain rough duration; capacities for physical growth and reproduction; psychological capacities, such as perception, self-consciousness, and memory; and, specifically rational capacities, such as the capacities for language-use, for registering a diverse range of normative considerations (including evaluative considerations, prudential, moral, aesthetic, and others besides), and for aligning one’s judgments, emotions, and actions with those considerations.11

Tasioulas’s disagreement with Griffin is one of detail rather than methodology. Both follow the strategy of tying human rights to the possession of a specific kind of moral status and then explain that status in terms of characteristically human features. The key difference lies primarily in the pluralism of Tasioulas’s approach—while Griffin focuses exclusively on agency, Tasioulas understands the human in terms of a range of different features and capacities. Finally, we can compare the theory developed by Pablo Gilabert.12 After arguing that human rights are grounded in what he calls statusdignity, Gilabert asks, “What is a reasonable list of the valuable features of human beings for the purposes of identifying the basis of dignity?” and his tentative answer is this: “One such list would include the human capacities for sentience, knowledge, prudential and moral reasoning and choice, aesthetic appreciation, self-awareness, creative production, social cooperation, and sympathy.”13 Just as for Griffin and Tasioulas, then, Gilabert is seeking to identify the “special something” intrinsic to all and only humans, which explains why we have human rights. Like Tasioulas, but unlike Griffin, Gilabert takes this “special something” to include a cluster of diverse capacities rather than a single one. Thus far I have identified a common assumption within human rights practice and briefly surveyed philosophical theories that attempt to vindicate this assumption. To reiterate, the assumption is simply that we have human rights because we are human, which is articulated in theoretical terms as there being something intrinsic to human beings that explains why we have human rights. Now I will turn to three problems that emerge with this move from assumption to theory.

34

Suzy Killmister

The first problem we encounter, if we adopt the standard theoretical explanation of the connection between being human and having human rights, is its potential to exclude some individuals. While the documents themselves may proclaim the universality of human rights, and advocates sincerely believe in the universality of human rights, the idea that we have human rights because we possess certain special capacities leads inexorably to the exclusion of some human beings. All three of the philosophical theories outlined thus far tie human rights to cognitive capacities: we have human rights, they argue, because unlike other animals, we envisage a future for ourselves, or we have the capacity for language use, or we have the capacity for moral reasoning, and so on. The problem is that not all human beings in fact do possess such capacities. This is most apparent, and most troubling, for those with significant cognitive impairments, who would seem not to qualify for human rights if we take these philosophical justifications of human rights at face value. Human rights theorists are not unaware of these implications. They differ, though, in how they respond to them. Griffin takes the most hardline approach of the three surveyed. Holding firm to his commitment that we have human rights in virtue of our status as normative agents, Griffin concludes that those who are not normative agents—including infants and those with significant cognitive impairments—do not possess human rights.14 Griffin attempts to soften this conclusion by noting that human rights are not the only source of moral obligation, and hence lacking human rights does not mean others have license to mistreat you. Nonetheless, given the way human rights function as standard-setting mechanisms for states, it would be deeply troubling to withhold the label “violation of human rights” from certain abuses merely because they were directed at individuals with cognitive impairments—especially given the history of dehumanizing rhetoric and treatment suffered by individuals in this community.15 Unlike Griffin, both Gilabert and Tasioulas seek to avoid the troubling implication that some human beings lack human rights by driving a wedge between the idea that possession of human rights is tied to cognitive capacities and the reality that some human beings have significant cognitive impairments. Gilabert does so by appealing to the pluralism of his account of dignity: we can include all human beings, he argues, “by noticing that [people with disabilities] still have some of the valuable features in the basis of dignity (or a tendency to form them).”16 The trouble with this response is that it still leaves the door open for some individuals to be excluded. While Gilabert

The Human in Human Rights

35

does not fully commit to a specific list of valuable features, it is difficult to see how any such list could avoid excluding some. Michael Bérubé puts the point well: “any performance criterion—independence, rationality, capacity for mutual cooperation, even capacity for mutual recognition—will leave some mother’s child behind.”17 Tasioulas, meanwhile, takes a slightly different approach. Rather than claim that all human beings in fact possess some valuable feature(s), whatever they turn out to be, Tasioulas argues that it suffices to be a member of a species for which these valuable features are the norm. However, as Agnieszka Jaworska and Julie Tannenbaum have astutely pointed out, “it is unclear why a token member of a species, a token lacking any of these morally relevant capacities, should get the moral status from the type it belongs to (the species). If membership in the type does not require any of the morally relevant features, how can the membership be morally relevant?”18 Perhaps there is some philosophical wrangling that could vindicate Tasioulas’s position. Even if it could, however, there is a broader worry in the air. This brings us to the second problem. Even if one were optimistic that a truly universal feature could be identified, the claim that humanity can be defined in terms of certain privileged capacities is a politically dangerous one. The problem here is not that some people in fact fail to meet the criteria that theorists lay out, but rather that the search for the “essence” of humanity inevitably licenses a form of boundary policing. If being human means possessing some innate quality, then it opens the door to the suspicion that some purported humans may in fact lack that quality, and hence lack humanity. Anne Phillips puts the point well: “when we speak the language of the human, we engage in a politics of inclusion; yet in offering our definitions of the human, we endorse something that serves to exclude.”19 To posit an essence of humanity is to create a standard any individual needs to meet in order to count as fully human; in doing so it empowers gatekeepers who take it upon themselves to determine whether the individual in front of them passes the test. Even though the theories presented here are primarily debated within cloistered academic spaces, they nonetheless help shape the social world, and in particular how people are encouraged to think about what it means to be human. By grounding human rights in sophisticated cognitive capacities, such theories open the door to the claim that not all human beings are “really” human. Historically, this pattern is all too familiar. All too often, when humanity has been tied to the possession of reason, it has opened the door to claims that

36

Suzy Killmister

women and people of color lack reason, and hence lack the moral status held by white men. The final problem involves a different kind of exclusion. The search for an essence of humanity to underpin our human rights tends to occlude difference by presenting as universal what in fact reflects a very particular sociohistorical worldview. Is it any surprise, for instance, that theorists working within the liberal tradition so often identify capacities related to autonomy as those that define our humanity? The liberal philosophical tradition is practically defined around the valorization of the autonomous individual.20 Here, the problem is not that some individuals lack the capacity for autonomy (though they do), nor that they will be seen by others as lacking that capacity (though they will). Rather, the problem is that this specific vision of what it means to be human, which is only one of many possible visions, becomes hegemonic. Human rights are an especially powerful and far-reaching feature of the modern world, offering the promise of a better future for all people and a shared language in which to decry oppressive practices wherever they occur. When human rights are taken to be grounded in a human essence, and that human essence is understood in terms of autonomy, rationality, or moral reason, the shared language of human rights comes to carry the accent of the powerful. It encodes a particular vision of the human, drawn from a particular tradition of thought, and presents it as if it were objective and universal.21

Rethinking the Human In the previous section I sketched the most common pathway by which human rights theorists have tried to vindicate the slogan “we have human rights because we are human,” namely by identifying the “special something” that all and only human beings possess. I suggested that this strategy invites a way of thinking about what it means to be human that is potentially deeply exclusionary. It is exclusionary because of who cannot meet the criteria laid down; it is exclusionary because of the temptation it creates to police who counts as “really” human; and it is exclusionary because of the culturally specific vision of humanity it presents as universal. Given these problems, it is important to ask whether there might be a different way to conceive of the relationship between being human and having human rights, and with it a different way of thinking about what it means to be human.

The Human in Human Rights

37

In this section I offer one such alternative. Drawing on contemporary philosophical work on social metaphysics, I suggest we can fruitfully think of the human as a social construct, akin to categories such as race and gender. From this alternative perspective, being human does not ground our possession of human rights; rather, human rights are one of the mechanisms through which the human is constructed as a social kind. To make headway on this proposal, it is necessary to first get clear on what is meant by a social kind. The easiest way of doing so is by way of contrast with natural kinds.22 Natural kinds exist independently of how we think about or act toward them. Natural kinds “carve nature at the joints,” because the boundaries of the kind are determined by the nature of the objects rather than by human practices. Paradigmatic examples of natural kinds include gold, water, mice, mountains, and oxygen. Paradigmatic examples of social kinds, by contrast, include money, the King of England, the president of the United States, and national borders. These kinds do not exist in nature, because they are constructed by human practices. Moreover, and more importantly, these kinds would cease to exist if a critical mass of people stopped believing in them. One way to understand the conditional nature of social kinds is by seeing them as composites. Money (at least of the material kind you carry in your wallet) is a composite of a piece of paper or plastic and an economic status. Likewise, the King of England is a composite of a physical person and a political status. In both cases it is the status, not the physical component, that explains the power wielded by the resulting entity. This status is conferred on the object or the person through social institutions and maintained by collective recognition of that status. Through human practices, then, we can turn objects/ people into something much more than the sum of their material parts—we can make it such that they have rights and duties, entitlements and powers. However, those rights, duties, entitlements, and powers only persist so long as the relevant community continues to recognize them: if everyone stopped believing that money could be used in exchange for goods, money would cease to have that power. With that brief sketch in place, let us return to the question of how to understand the human in human rights. The standard approach assumes that the relevant sense of human refers to a natural kind. The philosophical theories surveyed here are all trying to understand why we have human rights by first trying to understand the kind of animal we are—what makes us essentially, or naturally, different from other animals. This implicit assumption that human

38

Suzy Killmister

rights must attach to a natural kind leads to all three of the resulting problems. First, to be a member of a natural kind is to possess the relevant essential property, so when the property for human beings is purported to involve sophisticated cognitive capacities, it entails that those with significant cognitive impairments are not human. Relatedly, since natural kinds are defined in terms of a shared essence, this approach opens the door to the suspicion that many more purported human beings are not really human beings, just as fool’s gold fails to be real gold because it lacks the essential chemical composition.23 Finally, this approach tends to pick out purportedly essential features that are especially valorized in liberal societies, resulting in the identification of the “universal human” with a culturally inflected way of being. Since these problems arise from the assumption that the human in human rights refers to a natural kind, they can be avoided by reconceiving the human in human rights as a social kind. From this alternative perspective, the human is understood to be a social construct with normative import. Just as for other social kinds that are also kinds of people, such as royalty, or citizen, or judge, being a member of the social kind human carries with it socially conferred privileges: to be recognized as a fellow human is to be recognized as entitled to certain forms of treatment because one is human. Another way to come at the relationship between the natural kind Homo sapiens and the social kind human is by analogy with a more familiar social kind. In at least some strands of feminist thought, gender is understood to be the social meaning of sex.24 This approach presumes a biological category—a natural kind—of sex. But then it posits a socially constructed category, gender, that has been laid over the top of it. Part of the work this strand of feminist thinking is undertaking is to show that the norms and expectations applied to men and women are not to be explained (and certainly not justified) on the basis of membership in a natural kind, but are rather products of the social kinds we have constructed. They are privileges and burdens that we have conferred on people because of their (presumed) sex. In the alternative framework I am proposing here, then, human stands to Homo sapiens as gender stands to sex. To be clear, I am not here endorsing this simplified version of the sex/gender distinction.25 Its familiarity makes it useful, however, as an entry point into thinking about the human as a social kind. With that caveat in mind, there are two further parallels that can be drawn out between sex/gender on the one hand and Homo sapiens/ human on the other.

The Human in Human Rights

39

The first parallel is this: just as for the human, it takes substantive theoretical work to see the distinction between gender as a social kind and sex as a natural kind. There is a very widespread assumption that the natural kind is all there is—that the norms and expectations associated with being a man or being a woman are either explained by natural features or debunked by them. What is particularly hard to see is how the attempt to discover the truth about the natural kinds ends up constructing the associated human kinds: the “discovery” that males are more aggressive, for instance, generates norms that are then applied to anyone presumed to be male, thus conferring burdens and privileges that partly constitute membership in the social kind man. The same is true for the human: the “discovery” that Homo sapiens have higher cognitive capacities than other animals generates norms that are applied to anyone presumed to be Homo sapiens, thus conferring the rights, privileges, and duties that constitute membership in the social kind human. This observation casts a different kind of light on the work of human rights theorists today as well as their forebears in the natural rights tradition. What is important about these theoretical contributions is not that they are in the process of discovering something inherently true of humans, but rather that they are one important strand in the construction of the very thing they are claiming to have discovered— in other words, that human beings have human rights.26 The second parallel between gender and the human involves their multiplicity. It is increasingly recognized that gender has numerous local instantiations: there is no one thing, globally, that it means to be a man or a woman. Rather, who counts as a man or woman, and what it means to be a man or woman, depends on the norms and expectations in play in the local community, and in particular on the powers and obligations conferred on those classed as men or women within that community. The same is true for the human. Different communities construct different categories of the human, both by drawing its boundaries in different places and by conferring different sets of rights, powers, obligations, and so forth upon members. This variability in the human suggests an important role for human rights. The practice of human rights, I posit, plays a central role in constructing an iteration of the human that is global rather than local. In other words, human rights help establish a particular way of being human by shaping norms of who counts as human and stipulating what we are owed in virtue of being human. This iteration of the human is truly universal, in the sense that its norm of member-

40

Suzy Killmister

ship holds all Homo sapiens to be human.27 It is also powerful, in the sense that it confers on all humans the entitlements laid out in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the various human rights treaties, covenants, and conventions that followed it. In sum: the theory and practice of human rights have brought into existence a new iteration of the social kind human, distinct from its local iterations; it has bestowed membership in that kind on all Homo sapiens; and that membership in turn confers possession of human rights. From this perspective, then, the widespread assumption that we have human rights because we are human remains true. What it also brings into view, however, is the equally important observation that we are, in a very important sense, human because we have human rights.

Normative Implications Earlier I identified three problems with the orthodox way of understanding the relationship between the human and human rights. In closing, I will revisit those problems and use them as a springboard to consider some normative implications of the social constructionist alternative I have sketched here. The first problem identified was that orthodox approaches to justifying human rights threaten to exclude certain individuals from the category of the human. In particular, individuals with significant cognitive impairments, who lack many of the capacities singled out by orthodox approaches, would seem to lack the essence that makes us human. Once we reconfigure the relationship between the human and human rights, this problem of exclusion shifts. Most importantly, no one is excluded by the theory itself, because on a social constructionist account there is no objective, independent truth about who is human and who is not: the boundaries of the human are up to us. Moreover, when considering the global iteration of the human, the boundaries of the human are shaped by human rights practice, which extends membership to all Homo sapiens. Admittedly, it is possible that this could change. Institutions are not set in stone, and this moment in history sees significant pressure being applied to human rights norms that until very recently appeared incontestable (at least by dominant liberal institutions and leaders). There is no reason to think such pressures could not ultimately lead to more exclusionary membership conditions in the human.

The Human in Human Rights

41

While this contingency is troubling, it does prompt an important insight. Unlike the orthodox approach, the alternative framework presented here does not take exclusion to be dictated by a fixed external reality, because in this approach the boundaries of the human lie wherever we say they do. When either theorists or political leaders proclaim some individuals to be outside the human, then, this alternative framework provides a useful lens for understanding what they are doing. While they may present themselves as brave truthtellers—“telling it like it really is”—from a social constructionist perspective they are not in the business of describing the world, but are rather actively working to remake it. Since such proclamations have real power to change social reality, it is not enough to simply dismiss them as misguided or false. Maintaining the boundaries of the human takes work, and that work includes actively defending norms of inclusivity. That said, a different problem of exclusion emerges if we accept the social constructionist framework. In this approach, the human is a category we have chosen to create, and human rights are entitlements we have chosen to confer on one another. From the perspective of animal rights activists, though, this will look strikingly analogous to the now reviled practices of patriarchy and white supremacy: some creatures choosing to elevate themselves above others, and taking their presumed superiority to justify oppressing and mistreating those beneath them. As Will Kymlicka astutely notes, “the HR project is centrally implicated in some of the best and the worst of our current moral practices: it underpins the inspiring struggle against human oppression; and it condones the catastrophic indifference to animal oppression.”28 One of the key challenges facing societies committed to human rights, then, is to consolidate the belief that all humans have human rights without inadvertently generating or perpetuating a belief that nonhuman animals are inferior. This is especially challenging because the construction of an ingroup so often corresponds with the construction of a despised or denigrated outgroup—as is all too commonly seen in the context of nationalism. The second problem with the orthodox approach was closely related to the first. Here, the problem was not with the fact that philosophical theories endorsed exclusion, but more broadly that the methodology they adopted functioned to license problematic forms of boundary policing. If to be human is to possess some essential feature or capacity, and that feature or capacity is not readily visible, it opens the door to suspicions that the despised minority of the day

42

Suzy Killmister

lacks that feature or capacity, and hence is human in appearance only. Adopting a social constructionist perspective sidesteps this problem. Since there is no essence to be discovered, there is nothing that another person could lack that would entail they were not “really” human. As with the first problem, however, the alternative framework cannot on its own ensure the universality of the human. Boundaries are determined by our social practices, and if sufficient people come to doubt the humanity of a particular demographic, there is a very real potential that the category of the human could shrink to exclude them. The appropriate response to this troubling implication, though, is not to retreat to the quixotic search for some universal human essence, but to fight to maintain fully inclusive norms of membership. This raises the difficult question of power. If the boundaries of the human are determined by our social practices, how are our social practices shaped? And more importantly, who has the power to shape them? The social practices that determine the boundaries of the human can be broadly categorized into formal institutions and informal social norms. On the formal side, we have organizations such as the United Nations that legally enshrine the norm that all Homo sapiens are entitled to human rights, as well as various NGOs whose agendas reinforce the idea that all human beings are deserving of human rights protections. These operate, however, alongside state practices that attempt to situate some human beings outside the scope of human rights protections, such as the Australian government’s use of longterm offshore detention for asylum seekers, or the US government’s argument that detainees at Guantanamo Bay lacked any kind of rights whatsoever.29 On the informal side, we have humanizing norms such as that distant suffering is worthy of our attention, alongside dehumanizing norms such as that Indigenous people do not mourn the loss of their children,30 both of which are effectively cultivated and dispersed through institutions such as the news media and the arts.31 Within both formal and informal contexts, who has the power to set agendas and shape discourse is heavily influenced by socioeconomic position, with both local and global inequalities getting reinscribed in the social practices through which the boundaries of the human are determined. (Consider, for instance, the extent to which human rights NGOs are headquartered in the Global North.) These social practices do not only determine the boundaries of the human; they also contribute to determining what it means to be

The Human in Human Rights

43

human, including what we are entitled to in virtue of being human. This sheds important light on the third problem with the orthodox approach, namely how the vision of the human it presents as ahistorical and acultural is in fact only one of many possible visions. I suggested that there is no one category of the human. Just as for other social kinds, like race and gender, we should expect to see a plurality of instantiations, each with slightly different membership conditions and each conferring slightly different statuses on members. Given this multiplicity, there is an ever-present possibility of tension between different instantiations of the human. In other words, one iteration of the human might confer powers or obligations on members that are incompatible with the powers or obligations conferred on members in another iteration. This is particularly salient when one of the iterations is global: it is especially important to attend to the ways in which the construction of the global human within human rights theory and practice does and does not fit with more localized constructions of the human. This is because human rights claim for themselves the authority to resist, and potentially even dismantle, practices with which they conflict. Understanding the human in human rights as a social construct is thus an invitation to be more reflective about the power dynamics at play within human rights practice. When we understand human rights to be reflecting universal truths about human beings, the temptation to silence or denigrate their critics is strong. If we understand human rights practice to instead be constructing social norms that will be imposed globally, and which potentially clash with the self-understanding of what it means to be human in particular communities, criticisms of human rights take on a different cast.

Conclusion There is a common thread running through my responses to the three problems of exclusion, which is worth drawing explicit attention to here in closing. Seeing the human in human rights as a social kind, constructed and maintained by institutions, practices, and norms, exposes political struggles that are obscured if human rights are naturalized. When we think of human rights as things we possess in virtue of some human essence, both theorists and practitioners can tell themselves that they are simply reflecting reality, that there is something external to their own practices that vindicates their positions and actions, and which places them beyond critique. If we

44

Suzy Killmister

come to see the human in human rights as a social kind, by contrast, we are forced to reckon with the role of power in its construction. This way of thinking about the human in human rights has implications for both human rights practitioners and historians. For practitioners, it suggests the pressing need to democratize the discourse of human rights. Since this discourse does nothing less than define the human, it is essential that we are cognizant of whose voices are speaking loudest within it, and find ways to include the voices of those who have not yet been fully heard. For historians, it suggests attending to the genealogy of the institutions and narratives involved in the construction of the human, with particular attention again to the question of whose visions of humanity have been centered and whose have been silenced.

Suzy Killmister is a senior lecturer in philosophy at Monash University. She has published two books: Taking the Measure of Autonomy (2017) and Contours of Dignity (2020). Her current research interests include human rights, personal autonomy, and social metaphysics, and she has previously worked on the topics of multiculturalism and minority rights.

Notes 1. United Nations, “Universal Declaration of Human Rights,” 1948; United Nations, “International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights,” 1966; United Nations, “International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights,” 1966. 2. Amnesty International, “Understanding Your Human Rights”; HRWF, “Human Rights.” 3. Within philosophical theories of human rights, there is a split between those who take what has come to be known as the “orthodox” approach and those who take a “political” approach. The orthodox approach construes human rights in a (largely) apolitical sense, as those rights we have because we are human. The political approach construes human rights instead as a political mechanism constraining the relationship between states and their citizens. (For overviews of these debates, see Barry and Southwood, “What Is Special about Human Rights?”; Campbell and Bourne, Political and Legal Approaches to Human Rights; Etinson, Human Rights.) In this chapter I am only concerned with those taking the orthodox approach to human rights. 4. Plato, The Statesman. 5. For discussion, see Pappas, “Socrates, Cynics”; Rorty, “Human Rights.” 6. An alternative pathway for this search lies within religious traditions, which seek to explain our possession of human rights in terms of our relationship

The Human in Human Rights

7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21.

22.

23. 24.

25. 26. 27.

28. 29. 30.

31.

45

to a divinity (for example, the fact that we are created in the image of God). Contemporary human rights theorists have tended to avoid such justifications, however, aiming for an account that in its secularity might have the potential to garner cross-cultural consensus. Griffin, On Human Rights, 2 [emphasis in original]. Griffin, 33. Griffin, 32. Tasioulas, “On the Foundations of Human Rights,” 45. Tasioulas, 54. Gilabert, Human Dignity and Human Rights. Gilabert, 127. See Griffin, On Human Rights, ch. 4. See especially Carlson, The Faces of Intellectual Disability; Kittay and Carlson, Cognitive Disability. Gilabert, Human Dignity and Human Rights, 151. Bérubé, “Equality, Freedom,” 355. Jaworska and Tannenbaum, “The Grounds of Moral Status.” Phillips, The Politics of the Human. See especially Kant, Foundations; Locke, Two Treatises of Government; Mill, On Liberty and Other Essays. This is not to deny that agency is, in some very broad sense, universally recognized as a quality possessed by humans. Rather, it is to suggest that cultures less directly downstream from the European Enlightenment might be less likely to identify agency as the central quality defining us as human. It needs to be stressed that the contrast I am sketching here is an oversimplification. It remains an open question within metaphysics whether there even are any natural kinds, or whether any principled boundary could be drawn between natural and social kinds. For a good recent discussion, see Brigandt, “How to Philosophically Tackle Kinds.” For an important discussion of the ways that belief in shared essences can lead to politically dangerous forms of exclusion, see Smith, On Inhumanity. This strand is often traced to Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex. There is some contention, though, over whether she in fact held such a view. For discussion, see Ásta, “The Metaphysics of Sex and Gender.” For criticism, see, for example, Butler, Gender Trouble; Butler, Undoing Gender. Butler argues that sex is also socially constructed. This raises an important question: who has the power to shape the human, and is this power fairly distributed? I consider this issue later in the Chapter. The only place this universal membership is contested, within international human rights law, is around the status of fetuses. For discussion, see Copelon et al., “Human Rights Begin at Birth”; Pichon, “Unborn Child.” Kymlicka, “Human Rights,” 764. On the latter issue, see Ahmad, “Resisting Guantanamo.” In the words of James Isdell, a local protector in Western Australia responsible for removing Aboriginal children from their parents in the early 1900s, “I would not hesitate for one moment to separate any half-caste from its aboriginal mother, no matter how frantic her momentary grief might be at the time. They soon forget their offspring.” Cited in Wilson, Bringing Them Home, ch. 7. On the role of literature in spreading acceptance of human rights, see Hunt, Inventing Human Rights.

46

Suzy Killmister

Bibliography Ahmad, Muneer I. “Resisting Guantanamo: Rights at the Brink of Dehumanization.” Northwestern University Law Review 103, no. 4 (2009): 1683– 1763. Amnesty International. “Understanding Your Human Rights.” 2019. Retrieved 15 October 2021 from https://www.amnesty.org.au/wp-con tent/uploads/2019/12/UDHRReport_19_FV.pdf. Ásta. “The Metaphysics of Sex and Gender.” In Feminist Metaphysics, edited by Charlotte Witt, 47–65. Dordrecht: Springer, 2011. Barry, Christian, and Nicholas Southwood. “What Is Special about Human Rights?” Ethics & International Affairs 25, no. 3 (2011): 369–383. Bérubé, Michael. “Equality, Freedom, and/or Justice for All: A Response to Martha Nussbaum.” Metaphilosophy 40, no. 3–4 (2009): 352–365. Brigandt, Ingo. “How to Philosophically Tackle Kinds without Talking about ‘Natural Kinds.’” Canadian Journal of Philosophy (22 July 2020): 1–24. Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge, 1990. ———. Undoing Gender. New York: Routledge, 2004. Campbell, Thomas, and Kylie Bourne. Political and Legal Approaches to Human Rights. New York: Routledge, 2017. Carlson, Licia. The Faces of Intellectual Disability: Philosophical Reflections. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009. Copelon, Rhonda, Christina Zampas, Elizabeth Brusie, and Jacqueline deVore. “Human Rights Begin at Birth: International Law and the Claim of Fetal Rights.” Reproductive Health Matters 13, no. 26 (January 2005): 120–129. de Beauvoir, Simone. The Second Sex. New York: Vintage Books, 1989. Etinson, Adam, ed. Human Rights: Moral or Political. London: Oxford University Press, 2018. Gilabert, Pablo. Human Dignity and Human Rights. New York: Oxford University Press, 2019. Griffin, James. On Human Rights. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. HRWF. “Human Rights.” Retrieved 20 July 2020 from https://hrwf.eu/ human-rights/. Hunt, Lynn A. Inventing Human Rights: A History. London: W.W. Norton & Company, 2007. Jaworska, Agnieszka, and Julie Tannenbaum. “The Grounds of Moral Status.” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2013). Kant, Immanuel. Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals. Translated by Lewis Beck. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Educational Publishing, 1976. Kittay, Eva F., and Licia Carlson. Cognitive Disability and Its Challenge to Moral Philosophy. West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010.

The Human in Human Rights

47

Kymlicka, Will. “Human Rights without Human Supremacism.” Canadian Journal of Philosophy 48, no. 6 (2018): 763–792. Locke, John. Two Treatises of Government. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988. Mill, John S. On Liberty and Other Essays. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991. Pappas, Nickolas. “Socrates, Cynics, and Flat-Nailed, Featherless Bipeds.” New York Times, 4 April 2016. Retrieved 18 October 2021 from https:// opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/04/04/of-socrates-cynics-andflat-nailed-featherless-bipeds/. Phillips, Anne. The Politics of the Human. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015. Pichon, Jakob. “Does the Unborn Child Have a Right to Life? The Insufficient Answer of the European Court of Human Rights in the Judgment Vo v. France.” German Law Journal 7, no. 4 (1 April 2006): 433–444. Plato. The Statesman. Translated by Benjamin Jowett. MIT Press, n.d. [360 BC]. Retrieved 15 October 2021 from http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/ stateman.html. Rorty, Richard. “Human Rights, Rationality, and Sentimentality.” In On Human Rights, edited by Stephen Shute and Susan Hurley, 113–134. New York: Basic Books, 1993. Smith, David L. On Inhumanity: Dehumanization and How to Resist It. New York: Oxford University Press, 2020. Tasioulas, John. “On the Foundations of Human Rights.” In Philosophical Foundations of Human Rights, edited by Rowan Cruft, S. Matthew Liao, and Massimo Renzo. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. Wilson, Ronald. Bringing Them Home: Report of the National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from Their Families. Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission. Sydney: Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, 1997.

Part I

OBJECTS

Chapter 2

HEARTS, MINDS, AND SKULLS The International Debate on the Nature of Humanity in the Mid-Nineteenth Century Michael L. Krenn

For most US Americans

1

today, the name Samuel George Morton means absolutely nothing. Even for those who come across this enigmatic figure from American history, he is typically dismissed as the failed scientist who let racism cloud his judgment, the naïve gentleman scholar who allowed dreams of fame and poor advice from some sycophantic followers to lead him astray, or as the “father of American ethnography” who spent his years arranging human beings into charts and graphs that detailed the superiority of some and the inferiority of many others. To a large degree, however, the story of his life reveals a man who was more—and sometimes much less— than the caricature-like sketches that portray him as a misunderstood man of science, a racist wolf in sheep’s clothing, or simply that “kook” who amassed crania the way youngsters used to collect baseball cards. Through his scientific studies, Morton was a key figure in terms of both redefining the nature of humanity and in utilizing those new definitions to better understand the American culture in which he worked. He provides a fascinating lens through which we can understand with greater clarity, nuance, and depth three issues that in many ways defined the first half of the nineteenth century in America: westward expansion, slavery, and the racial thinking that served as the ideological foundation for both. In so doing, Morton also served as a sort of cultural ambassador for the United States, utilizing his scientific writings and seemingly insatiable demand for

Notes for this section begin on page 71.

52

Michael L. Krenn

more and more skulls to reach out beyond his nation’s shores to provide what many of his supporters believed to be a significant, and uniquely American, view of humanity and the world in which it existed. Morton also engaged with his fellow scientists in Europe in an effort to redefine the very meaning of humanity. With Morton leading the charge, the idea of humanity became a force for permanently dividing the human race into categories based not merely on appearance but on intelligence, character, and moral qualities. Morton’s skulls became terrifying symbols of oppression, annihilation, enslavement, and theories of superiority and inferiority that would echo into the twenty-first century. His words and work, cloaked in the language of a supposedly neutral science, served to simultaneously protect the purveyors of racism from charges of inhumane discrimination while also coating their malicious and destructive bigotry with the patina of scientific objectivity. Yet Morton’s impact was felt far beyond the confines of the scientific and intellectual community. His theories provided important—and, since his ideas were based on scientific “facts,” apparently incontrovertible— support for America’s displacement and slaughter of Native Americans, its continuing enslavement of African Americans, and its legal and moral barriers against any ideas of “race mixing.” In doing so, Morton also served an important role as an unofficial spokesperson for the United States, using his standing with men of learning and scientific societies around the world to provide a significant source of propaganda defending America’s violent and incessant expansionism, its stubborn refusal to end chattel slavery, and its self-proclaimed standing as the leading voice for Anglo-Saxon racial supremacy. In this fashion, Morton did not merely refine and reshape existing notions of humanity. His ideas helped turn the concept of humanity into a weapon for much of white America’s goals and desires—a weapon as hard and unbending as the skulls he so carefully collected, examined, and measured.

Morton and the Origins of the New Humanity Morton was born in 1799, the same year that one of America’s Founding Fathers, George Washington, passed away. He studied medicine at both the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Edinburgh and became a fairly successful physician in Philadelphia. Like many Americans with the resources and education to do so, he also took an avid interest in the natural sciences, writing short

Hearts, Minds, and Skulls

53

papers and articles on geology, fossils, and marine life and becoming a member of the Academy of Natural Sciences. It was his interest in human beings, particularly their skulls, and the collection of crania he amassed that brought him national and international fame, however. Morton was fond of telling associates that he virtually stumbled upon his habit of amassing human skulls when, in preparing a lecture on anatomy in 1830, “I chose for my subject The different forms of the skull as exhibited in the five races of men. Strange to say, I could neither buy nor borrow cranium of each of these races; and I finished my discourse without showing either the Mongolian or the Malay. Forcibly impressed with this great deficiency in a most important branch of science, I at once resolved to make a collection for myself.”2 It is an entertaining story and was repeated by many of his contemporaries after his death in 1851, cited as evidence of Morton as the endlessly curious scientist who, almost by accident, came upon the study of skulls and race. However, the good doctor’s interest in the physical differences among the various specimens of mankind, particularly the shapes of heads and skulls, was not the result of a lack of classroom samples. In 1820 he left Philadelphia for one of his two trips outside of the United States, to attend medical school at the University of Edinburgh. His arrival coincided with the establishment of the Edinburgh Phrenological Society, founded by George Combe, who would go on to become one of Morton’s confidants and write an appendix on phrenology for Morton’s first major book in ethnology, Crania Americana, in 1839. Although phrenology would later be dismissed as scientific hokum by most intellectuals, Morton was fascinated by its focus on using the shape of the human skull to determine intelligence, character, and a host of other traits. At Edinburgh, Morton also had his first opportunity to truly explore the human body in his anatomy classes. In a lecture he gave in 1830, Morton praised his former instructors, declaring that a “few persevering teachers succeeded, toward the end of the last century, in rendering Edinburgh the first anatomical school in Europe,” overcoming the aversion of many Scots who “suspected it might interfere with the final resurrection of the body.”3 After completing his studies, Morton took a somewhat abbreviated “Grand Tour” of Europe in 1822, traveling through France, Switzerland, and Italy. Ever the scientist, he filled some journals with specimens of plant life he plucked along the way. However, he also found time to comment on the human samples he encountered during his journey. Most particularly, he was interested in comparisons. In Susa, Italy, he found that “the inhabitants look better in

54

Michael L. Krenn

every respect than those of the neighboring towns.” From there, he traveled to Aiguebelle in the Savoy region of France. While the people there were “decent in their appearance and industrious in their habits,” it was the “physiognomy” that attracted Morton’s attention. “Is it not singular,” he mused, “that throughout the vallies [sic] of Switzerland and Savoy the human countenance should so little harmonize with surrounding scenes as to partake of a common deformity?” These were the “Cretins of Savoy, and who that has seen them can forget their appearance.” The people were “clumsy,” “ill proportioned,” and “distorted and idiotic in their countenances”; it “would be difficult to select from the whole catalogue of human misfortunes a more forbidding picture.” Morton sounded relieved to make his way to Chambery, where the people “look better than the other Savoyards we have seen, and some of the women are even pretty.”4 A little more than a decade later, in 1834, Morton took his last trip outside the United States, a sea voyage to Barbados, St. Lucia, Martinique, Dominica, Antigua, Montserrat, St. Kitts, and the Virgin Islands. He arrived in Barbados just as slavery was being ended by an act of Parliament, and Morton took the opportunity to offer some of his only thoughts on slaves and slavery committed to paper. At times, he lamented the institution of slavery and the humiliation and degradation it imposed upon the African men and women held in chains. Yet in the pages of his travel journal, he also expressed wariness about emancipation: How the sudden acquisition of freedom will affect a vast population of uneducated minds, is an experiment that remains to be decided. Slavery in this island has been proverbially conducted, with fewer features of oppression and barbarity than in the other West India Islands, and hence the blacks can have no motive for reprisal or revenge. But they are uncultivated, and by nature indolent; and it is scarcely to be supposed that with the choice between idleness and industry they will not adopt the former and notwithstanding the restraint and coercion of the new laws, it is much to be feared that this fine island will be infested with needy vagabonds.

Morton could not refrain from also commenting on the physical appearance of the former slaves, declaring, “The [slaves, then crossed out] blacks of this island have in my eyes a very repulsive appearance. They have the genuine African face, are listless and stupid in their manner, and singularly uncouth in their deportment. The women, in particular, are thin and squalid and I suspect degenerate to the last degree.” And, always interested in heads and skulls, he noted during a visit to the Virgin Islands: “Saw the heads of four ne-

Hearts, Minds, and Skulls

55

groes fastened on the top of as many stakes near the public road on the margin of the sea. They were executed on the first of March for [indistinct] some valuable property.”5 Morton was hardly the first person to become fascinated by the mysteries of the human head. By the 1830s, when he started to develop his intense and all-consuming interest in human skulls as the means through which to discover the secrets behind the differences among humans, European scientists had been working at the question for decades. The Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus in the 1700s divided Homo sapiens into four distinct subcategories, roughly correlating to the people of Asia, Africa, Europe, and North America. Georges-Louis Leclerc Comte de Buffon from France was less certain about these distinct subgroups, but did argue that a number of factors, including environment and diet, had created noticeable differences in human beings. The German Johann Friedrich Blumenbach took a unique approach to the question by focusing in on skull shapes and sizes and concluded that Linnaeus had been essentially correct—although he divided the Asian subgroup into Mongolian and Malay and rechristened the white Europeans as “Caucasians.” He agreed with both of his European counterparts that the Caucasian race, for a number of reasons, was superior to the “degraded” races of Africa, Asia, and North America.6 The English colonists in North America also showed an interest in this great question about human differences. It was hardly a surprise that they did, pushing out into a frontier inhabited by a significant number of Native Americans and importing African slaves by the thousands. Their contributions, however, were quite limited, although Thomas Jefferson did attempt in his 1795 publication, Notes on the State of Virginia, to explain why the African slaves were so different and so deficient in their intellectual powers, with imaginations that were “dull, tasteless, and anomalous.” The reasons for these differences befuddled Jefferson, who bemoaned the fact that he lacked the skills and tools to make proper anatomical observations “even where the subject may be submitted to the Anatomical knife, to Optical glasses, to analysis by fire, or by solvents.”7 Fortunately for Jefferson’s dilemma, help was coming in the form of Samuel George Morton.

The American Humboldt Throughout the rest of the 1830s and 1840s, Morton (who was kept Philadelphia-bound by frequent illnesses) relied on a small army of

56

Michael L. Krenn

fellow scientists, US diplomatic and military personnel, and what can only be referred to as “avid collectors” from around the world to keep him supplied with a steady stream of human skulls that he would carefully sketch, measure, and proceed to fill with white mustard seed and, later, birdshot to determine “cranial capacity” (brain size). He produced two massive studies, one on the skulls of the native peoples of the North and South American continents and another on the skulls of ancient Egyptians, along with countless papers presented at the American Philosophical Society, the Academy of Natural Sciences, and other scientific venues, and articles and research notes published in the United States and abroad.8 In doing so, Morton garnered international fame (perhaps as much as he gained domestically). The Swedish professor of anatomy and supervisor at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Anders Retzius, was a frequent correspondent who congratulated Morton on his “excellent work on the Crania Americana” and offered to swap human skulls from their collections. In another letter to Morton, he declared, “You have done more for Ethnography than any living physiologist.” Alexander von Humboldt, the world-renowned German naturalist, cited “the magnificent work of Samuel George Morton, entitled Crania Americana,” in his monumental work Cosmos, and heaped more praise in an 1844 letter in which he referred to Morton as “a worthy interpreter” of his “craniological treasures” and vowed that his own work would be influenced by the American’s “excellent views upon the distribution of the races of mankind that are scattered throughout your beautiful volume.” It was a “fitting rival of whatever most beautiful has been produced either in France or in England.” The British physician and ethnologist James Cowles Prichard cited Morton’s work on Egyptian crania, and chided his fellow scholars in Europe for having done nothing substantial on the human race since the time of Blumenbach: “It is in the United States of America that a remarkable advancement of this part of physical science has been at length achieved.” The world’s preeminent scholar of geology, Charles Lyell, often exhorted his friends from Great Britain and Europe to visit Morton should their travels take them through Philadelphia, if for nothing else than to be awestruck by his mammoth collection of human skulls. And Louis Agassiz, the Swiss-born naturalist who would later permanently resettle in the United States, had a lengthy visit with Morton in 1846, and declared that his collection of skulls “had been worth the visit to America.”9 His fellow scientists and reviewers in the United States were justifiably proud to have an American included in such heady company.

Hearts, Minds, and Skulls

57

To have his works compared to the best of what was emerging from Europe was particularly gratifying to a young nation trying to prove its worth and stature in the world. Benjamin Silliman, founder of the American Journal of Science, congratulated Morton on his great work and declared, “I have no doubt that it will do you great honor in Europe—even more than at home because there are to be found in Europe many more persons than here who are capable of appreciating the subject and your great merits in discussing it so ably and successfully.” Philadelphia political figure William F. Van Amringe was even more explicit in describing Morton’s impact, arguing that while America had “alarmed” Europe by “our commercial, manufacturing, & mechanical enterprises & successes,” Morton’s books were now evidence of “a literary & scientific competition no less to be feared.” And at least one American traveling in Europe reported back to Morton that he was being referred to as the “American Humboldt.”10 While Morton was an eager and devoted participant in the international discussion on the differences in the human species, and spent much of his time conducting a voluminous correspondence with European scientists and graciously accepting nominations and news of his selection to various scientific associations in Great Britain, France, Italy, and elsewhere, it is clear that his true importance came from his ability to cast his findings in a particularly American way. For his peers in the United States, it was the way in which he was using his studies on the nature of humanity to tell some important stories about America, its society, and its place in the world.

The Science of Manifest Destiny Morton’s major works, dealing with Native Americans, ancient Egypt, and the question of whether mankind was one species or many, were not merely misguided and racist efforts at understanding humanity but instead coincided with—and lent support to—American ideas about Manifest Destiny, slavery, and the separation of the races. His first important book, Crania Americana (1839), appeared shortly before the phrase “Manifest Destiny” came into common usage to describe the American mission to spread across the North American continent (and, perhaps, beyond). In his preface, Morton suggested that the book was merely an effort “to examine, by the evidence of osteological facts, whether the American aborigines, of all epochs, have belonged to one Race, or to a plurality of Races.” But it was

58

Michael L. Krenn

always much more than that. Dispensing with the old notion that environment was responsible for the differences in human beings, he concluded that “from remote ages the inhabitants of every extended locality have been marked by certain physical and moral peculiarities.” And while most of his lengthy volume was taken up with detailed drawings of hundreds of skulls from various North and South American tribes, it was the issue of “moral peculiarities” that most interested Morton. The Caucasian race, with skulls “large and oval,” was “distinguished for the facility with which it attains the highest intellectual endowments.” As part of the “civilized communities of modern times,” white Americans carried with them a “spirit of migratory enterprise [that] is without a limit”—which was unfortunate for the “American Race” (the New World “aborigines”) since their skulls were “small.” As Morton concluded, “In their mental character the Americans are averse to cultivation, and slow in acquiring knowledge; restless, revengeful, and fond of war, and wholly destitute of maritime adventure.” Thus, while the Caucasian Family had “peopled the finest portions of the earth, and given birth to its fairest inhabitants,” it seemed inevitable that the Native Americans would have to give way. As Morton sadly concluded, “However much the benevolent mind may regret the inaptitude of the Indian for civilization” or hope that the example of white Americans might inspire them, it was clear that the two races could not “harmonise in their social relations except on the most limited scale.”11 In one fell swoop of “scientific objectivity,” Morton trumpeted white America’s march across the continent and the oceans of the world while also brushing aside the humanitarian concerns of associates such as British scientist Thomas Hodgkin. The same year that Morton’s book was published, Hodgkin sent him a pamphlet printed by the British Society for the Protection of Aborigines. The Society argued that “humanity and justice” could be served by saving native peoples “from utter ruin and extermination,” but also noted the scientific value of preserving these human specimens. It urged quick action, since “more than one half or than three fourths of the great families of mankind, if we count their races, will have vanished from before our view in no long space of time if we do not interfere to protect them from the daily encroachments of this one more powerful tribe.”12 By this time, however, Morton, more interested in the skeletal remains left by the natives than their salvation, had already used his science to suggest that “ruin and extermination” by the “more powerful tribe” of white Americans was inevitable—and necessary. As he declared during a lecture at the Philadelphia Medical College

Hearts, Minds, and Skulls

59

in 1842, the mental and moral powers of whites led to but one inescapable conclusion: “Was it not for this same mental superiority, these happy climes which we now inhabit would yet be possessed by the wild and untutored Indian, and that soil which now rejoices the hearts of millions of freemen, would be yet overrun by lawless tribes of contending Barbarians. Thus it is that the white race has been able to plant and to sustain its colonies in every region of the habitable earth.”13 That Morton was able to draw such detailed conclusions about the moral and intellectual characteristics of Native Americans, as well as their history and unfortunate future, from the measurements of some empty skulls was hardly surprising when we consider how he came into possession of these human remains. To a large degree, Morton relied on those in the vanguard of America’s territorial and trading expansion to collect his macabre research materials—and, in so doing, to provide him with living proof of his contention that the native peoples must melt away before the inevitable march of Caucasian America. When the United States government announced an expedition to the “south western limits of the U.S. bordering on Mexico” in 1834, Morton wrote his colleague Timothy A. Conrad informing him that he recommended Conrad as the “naturalist” for the mission. Secretary of war Lewis Cass wrote to Morton that he could “be assured of his desire to promote the views of the Academy”— that is, the collection of materials, including skulls, for the Academy of Natural Sciences. Certainly, Conrad could not have mistaken Morton’s aims. Just the year before, as he prepared for a trip to Alabama, Conrad got his marching orders from the Philadelphia scientist: “If you can obtain any skulls of any animals, from Homo sapiens to the lowest link, I wish you to take care of them: by making inquiry you may possibly meet with some Indian Crania.”14 While Conrad did not join the exploration to the West, Morton’s good friend and fellow naturalist John Kirk Townsend was more successful. Townsend joined an expedition looking for business and settlement opportunities in the Oregon Territory that started out in 1834. Morton was thrilled and let his friend know exactly what he hoped Townsend would find: “With respect to Skulls you know how much I desire them for my projected work. You must not fail to bring me some Flatheads—no matter about expense—I will gladly defray it all, and more. Any aboriginal skull from that remote region will be highly prized by me, or the skull of any animal whatever.” Townsend was happy to oblige, although the business of skull collecting was not without its danger:

60

Michael L. Krenn

It is rather a perilous business to procure Indians’ sculls in this country. The natives are so jealous of you that they watch you very closely while you are wandering near their mausoleums & instant & sanguinary vengeance would fall upon the luckless wight who should presume to interfere with the sacred relics. I have succeeded in hooking one however, such as it is & no doubt in the [indistinct] of this winter I shall get more—there is an epidemic raging among them which carries them off so fast that the cemeteries will soon lack watchers. I don’t rejoice in the prospect of the death of the poor creatures certainly, but then you know it will be very convenient for my purposes.15

The sharp edge of America’s expansionist thrust—the US mili= tary—also served Morton’s needs. He asked fellow Philadelphiatrained physician William S. W. Ruschenberger, who had been appointed as a naval surgeon in the US Navy, to be on the lookout for specimens as he traveled the globe: “Again—can you not procure me some skulls of Native Indians—or ancient Peruvians—or South Sea Islanders—anything in the shape of a skull will be a treat to me, for I have paid considerable attention to comparative craniology.” Ruschenberger did his best, providing Morton with human remains that “were dug up with my own hands . . . . They cost me a deal of labor, having dug up right on the graves to find them.” An Army surgeon serving in Florida took a more direct route, informing Morton that he had “collected two fine sculls which were the only two out of the 12 indians killed which could be taken the others being very offensive.” Another doctor, who served in the 1836 campaign against the Seminoles, offered Morton a “skull . . . taken from the body of an Indian who was killed in that fight. I regret that the shortness of our halt prevented me from obtaining several more specimens, as a number of other bodies were carved up (not buried) near this one.”16 Whether from the West, the South, or even abroad, American explorers and military men provided Morton with the skulls he needed to produce his work. Some expressed mild sympathy for the “creatures” who were destroyed in the march of the white man’s progress, but Morton easily drew his own conclusions. The rapid decline of these native populations, and the ease with which the superior Caucasian Americans were able to decimate them through disease and warfare, not only provided “convenient” means to accumulate human skulls, but also lent credence to Morton’s view that these “small brained” individuals were simply not capable of surviving the onslaught of white America. “Benevolent minds” might bemoan their eventual extinction, but such an outcome was not the result of the greed, hatred, or viciousness of the Caucasians—it was merely the natural result of the working out of scientific principles. Crania

Hearts, Minds, and Skulls

61

Americana thus became the scientific pillar on which Manifest Destiny rested. For Morton and his army of collectors, the native peoples had already been reduced to relics.

The Science of Slavery His next set of important works dealt with Egypt, culminating with the publication of Crania Egyptiaca (1844), which came out just one year before the appearance of Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave and Douglass’s speaking tour of Great Britain and Ireland, where he met with notable abolitionists. Appearing in the midst of America’s increasingly angry debate on slavery, Morton once again presented his research as merely the scientifically objective musings of an interested scholar. Freshly provided with hundreds of “ancient Egyptian” skulls by the charlatan “archaeologist” George Gliddon, Morton argued that the differences existing among humans was not by chance: “I am confirmed in the conclusion, that they have not resulted from physical causes acting on constitutions originally the same, but that, on the contrary, there has been a primeval difference among men; not an accidental occurrence, but a part of that all-pervading design which has adapted man, in common with animals and plants, to those diverse conditions which form a necessary part of the economy of creation.” As for the ancient Egyptians—at least the rulers—they were, in fact, white and always remained so. The races did not mix; climate did not change humans. As for the Black Egyptians, “Negroes were numerous in Egypt, but their social position in ancient times was the same that it now is, that of servants and slaves.”17 In short, races were permanent—and not simply the color but also their place in the hierarchy of humanity. So much for Douglass’s impassioned pleas and the petitions from overseas abolitionist groups, for who could argue with a man of science and his hundreds of skulls? Morton’s seemingly esoteric venture into Egyptology, like his study of Native American skulls in Crania Americana, carried with it explicit meaning for a most pressing contemporary issue—the continuing existence of slavery in the United States. For Morton, and most of the readers of Crania Egyptiaca, the true value of the work was its scientific defense of the institution of slavery and its insistence that white people owning slaves was part of a long and unchanging history of humanity. Morton himself might have had little personal contact with slavery in the United States, but his journey

62

Michael L. Krenn

to the West Indies in the early 1830s already instilled in him the belief that African slaves were an inferior branch of humanity and that emancipation could have disastrous results. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that just as he depended on the very people who were displacing Native Americans—explorers and military men—for his “data” on these peoples, he turned to Southerners to help hone his theories on Africans and slavery, who in turn became his most vocal supporters. Typical of the support given to Morton’s studies into Egypt and slavery was an 1844 letter from William B. Hodgson, a former US diplomat who now resided in Georgia. He congratulated Morton on the publication of Crania Egyptiaca and informed him that he was going to present a copy to the Smithsonian “or to Mr. Calhoun [then serving as secretary of state]. This gentleman will appreciate the powerful support which may be deduced from it, of our peculiar institutions, here.” Armed with Morton’s “conclusions as to the unvarying physical characteristics of races,” the people of the South “shall not be so much frightened hereafter by the voices of Europe or of Northern America.” Samuel Henry Dickson, a physician from Charleston, felt compelled to write a lengthy pamphlet noting Morton’s work on slavery: “Morton, of whom American science is justly proud, gives us the result of his profound, extensive, and cautious researches, in the following proposition: ‘The physical or organic characters which distinguish the several races of men, are as old as the oldest record of our species.’ As they exist not less obviously now than they did 4000 years ago, and as they have not been overcome, they form barriers in the truest sense impassable.” Gliddon, always looking for ways to make a dollar out of his “Egyptology” studies, was lecturing in the South at about the same time and informed Morton that his book would be the toast of Savannah: “Thus, the Crania will be fairly launched down South, where its results will draw plenty of customers.”18 A number of publications referring to Morton’s work on Egypt and slavery have suggested that he had no intention of providing support for the peculiar institution; that he was merely a man of science publishing what his data told him.19 However, it is clear that Morton realized from the very beginning that his findings would appeal to Southern readers and that his research gave Southern slaveholders valuable ammunition to use against their critics in the United States and abroad. He simply transferred his earlier prejudices and fears regarding the recently freed slaves in the West Indies to his study of ancient Egypt and then basked in the warm accolades

Hearts, Minds, and Skulls

63

from Southerners, who were more than happy to agree with him that racial differences were immutable and that Blacks—as they always had—would serve their white masters.

Dividing Humanity In his final works, Morton decided to slam the door shut on any notions that what he now clearly defined as the different species of mankind could live together in any meaningful or equal way. If the various races were, in fact, separate species, then Morton had to confront the issue of hybridity—the notion that since the races of mankind were able to come together to reproduce, they were not, in fact, different species. In April 1851, just a month before he died, Morton gave a presentation to the Academy of Natural Sciences in which he “offered some remarks on the infrequency of mixed offspring between the European and Australian races.” In this talk, based on a paper he published in 1847, Morton presented an Australian census table that listed the number of mixed-race children in various districts. Morton’s lecture concluded that the reported lack of mixed-race offspring in Australia was due to the “disparity of primordial organization.” His argument was that Europeans and Indigenous Australians were, like different species, so anatomically different that they could not effectively interbreed. Morton wrote, “Perhaps no two human races are more remote from each other than the European and Australian; and where such extremes are blended, reason and analogy lead us to expect only a limited fertility.”20 In short, the races should not mix; if they did, the resulting “hybrid” would die out soon enough. The “species” remained separate. Having provided a scientific rationale for continental expansion, the inevitably of slavery, and the “primordial” differences that created separate species of humankind, a month later Morton passed away. As was the case with his studies of Native Americans and ancient Egyptians, Morton did not come to his conclusions about hybridity in a vacuum. To a very large degree, his conclusions about the innate and absolutely necessary separation of the races were pushed along by one of the most virulently racist thinkers of the time, Dr. Josiah Nott. Like Morton, Nott was a physician by trade, but his fame was due to his writings and talks, which amounted to little more than racist screeds against African Americans, other minorities, and Jews. He delighted in shocking people, particularly members of the clergy, with his views on humanity and the natural inferiority of Afri-

64

Michael L. Krenn

can slaves. As he explained in an 1847 letter to Morton, “My Niggerology so far from harming me at home, has made me a greater man than I ever expected to be. I am now the big gun of the profession here, & have no time to do any thing in the way of Ethnology to my liking.”21 With Morton, he found a man with the time—and the reputation—to bring his racist views to a wider audience and coat it with the respectability of the science of ethnology. All of this coming from a slave-owning son of South Carolina and resident of Alabama was not terribly surprising. That Morton would consider him such a credible source for his studies on hybridity, however, speaks volumes about any notions of Morton’s scientific objectivity when it came to issues of race. Nott constantly prodded Morton to address the sticky issue of hybridity, asking his friend in Philadelphia to talk to his other scientific colleagues and “call his attention to the question of Hybrids,” and pointedly asking whether there was “any good book on Hybrids?” Nott’s own position was crystal clear on the central issue concerning the human race and the “plurality of the species & their distinct origins.” But the issue of hybrids nagged at him and he, in turn, badgered Morton to “supply me with any facts, or other statistics connected with the questions of Hybrids.”22 Morton was happy to oblige because he realized that all of his previous arguments and studies about the “primordial” differences among the human races depended on addressing the issue of hybridity. And he made sure to give Nott due credit for his assistance, pointing his readers to “Dr. Nott’s admirable papers,” and citing him as one of the “most distinguished ethnologists [who] have regarded mankind as composed of various distinct species.” He also secured Nott’s selection as a corresponding member of the Academy of Natural Sciences.23 Nott returned the favor by dedicating his monumentally racist study (written with Gliddon) Types of Mankind to his late friend in 1854.24

Race for Power: The New Humanity Triumphant The fact that Morton’s work met with such a positive reception around the world—particularly in the important scientific centers in Europe—certainly cheered his American supporters. Yet aside from the fact that his research on “cranial capacity” provided important (and supposedly incontrovertibly scientifically objective) evidence in support of American ideas about territorial expansion and the displacement of native peoples, the historical inevitably of

Hearts, Minds, and Skulls

65

chattel slavery, the natural and unchanging superiority of the Caucasian race, and the horrors of race mixing, many of Morton’s peers were equally determined to use his work as evidence that American science was now a leading force in the world. Morton’s work, they contended, was not merely a continuation of earlier studies undertaken by European scientists but was, in fact, a completely distinct and original contribution to the world of science. And much of that was due to the unique qualities of an American society that helped produce American scientists. As one twentieth-century American scientist noted in his unfinished biography of Morton, the years in which Morton was most active was “a period of scientific development truly American.” Morton’s contemporaries agreed, arguing that the domination of the Europeans was over. The American naturalist Charles Pickering argued that even the great Blumenbach “had been more generally limited” in his study of skulls than Morton. Crania Americana “far exceeds in its comprehensiveness and in the number and beauty of its engravings any European work that has yet appeared on national varieties of the skull.” Another of Morton’s contemporaries agreed. Blumenbach was certainly great, “But, if the celebrated German has received meet praises for his work, shall we not also claim for an American physician and naturalist a share of applause for labors more assiduous, and results far more considerable and valuable?” Upon the publication of Crania Egyptiaca, a Boston newspaper crowed that Morton had now “taken precedence of the savans of Europe in this department of physical science.”25 Yet it was the decidedly American way in which he accomplished this superiority over his European peers that also brought him accolades. As one of the memorials published after his death noted with pride, “All of these things were done by a man whose family was large, and chargeable upon his funds, derivable in chief from his exertions as a physician. Is it too much to say that a man who could do this, and acquire, in the mean time, the reputation of being one of the most considerable physio-philosophers of the Western Continent, was both a wise and learned man?” In case the meaning was not clear, the writer continued, “Dr. Morton began alone, and with nothing; without the patronage of government, or the assistance of imperial or royal treasuries.” Another former colleague put it in decidedly American terms: Morton was “a pioneer himself, he had to resort to the raw material, and obtain his data at the hand of nature.” In another memorial piece, the writer snootily remarked, “Notwithstanding all the riches of European Museums and the facility of in-

66

Michael L. Krenn

tercourse with Egypt, it was after all left for a citizen of more distant America to elucidate what had always been considered a most intricate subject and to change the prevalent opinion upon it.”26 And at least one of Morton’s contemporaries recognized the importance of the Philadelphia naturalist’s work in terms of international prestige and influence. William Van Amringe hoped to simply see Morton’s immense collection of skulls, but he also understood their deeper meaning: This, as well as your great work on them, is, in an important sense, national property; for exclusive of the benefit conferred on our people at home, nothing gives to a nation more dignity, or more respect abroad, than a deservedly eminent intellectual character. Europe has begun to estimate the value of our literary & scientific, as well as our political productions; & you have the honor of having contributed largely to this fact, which none but a well bred American travelling to Europe can fully appreciate; but which is felt in our diplomatic relations, & in every thing which constitutes the nation’s glory & prosperity.27

For his American supporters, then, it seemed a clear case of American science being used to explain and defend US actions and practices and finding a receptive audience abroad. In some ways, that was what occurred. But a closer look reveals that Morton’s foreign colleagues were not merely absorbing a particularly “American” message. Instead, these men were working on a common project that went beyond mere scientific curiosity and served as a foundational theory for the white supremacy that they were embracing and hoped to spread. In many ways, their contributions to “science” paled in comparison to their ultimate goal: to have their ideas on race and humanity gain traction with the larger—and influential— reading public. Retzius, for example, was not a passive student of Morton’s work. It is clear that he was interested in Morton’s skulls—offering to loan or “trade” crania. Indeed, Retzius has also been called “the founder of craniometry.” Whether Morton or Retzius can claim that “honor,” they both came to the same basic findings. The Swede argued that skull shape and size were telling points for any particular race and drew conclusions remarkably similar to those found in Morton’s Crania Americana about how peoples with different skulls were superior by constructing “a hegemonic anthropological narrative of blond, long-skulled Aryan metal-users displacing or conquering Europe’s broad-headed Stone-Age ‘aborigines.’”28 Marie Jean Pierre Flourens, a French scientist also working on brains and their structure, was eager to cooperate with Morton

Hearts, Minds, and Skulls

67

rather than simply following the American. Like Retzius, Flourens wanted skulls, but as one of his associates informed Morton, “As Dr. Flourens & yourself are pursuing the same object with the same eagerness, it appears to me that it would be a great advantage to Science, & to the learned institutions of both countries, if you could be made more particularly known to each other.” And, indeed, the two men were working along parallel lines in arguing that the different races were “primeval” and did not change. In fact, Flourens would become one of the most vociferous critics of Darwin’s theory of evolution.29 Perhaps the most notable of all of these scientists working across borders to create the foundations for white supremacy was Louis Agassiz. Agassiz moved to the United States just a few years before Morton’s death in 1851, but he had already visited the United States in 1846 and spent a great deal of time in Morton’s company. Writing to his mother, Agassiz declared, “Imagine a series of six hundred skulls, mostly Indian, of all the tribes who now inhabit or formerly inhabited America. Nothing like it exists elsewhere. . . . Dr. Morton has had the kindness to give me a copy of his great illustrated work representing all the types of his collection.” In another letter from America, he continued to fawn over Morton, already well known for his “great work upon the indigenous races of America. He is a man of science in the best sense; admirable both as regards his knowledge and his activity.”30 Just three years after Morton’s death, Agassiz contributed an essay to the racist screed Types of Mankind, written as a sort of “memorial” to the fallen scientist by Nott and Gliddon, in which he declared: “I am prepared to show that the differences existing between the races of men are of the same kind as the differences observed between the different families, genera, and species of monkeys or animals, and that these different species of animals differ in the same degree one from the other as the races of men—nay, the differences between distinct races are often greater than those distinguishing species of animals one from the other.”31 Agassiz was obsessed with spreading such views beyond the confines of small scientific circles in America and abroad into the realm of public knowledge. He was not the only scientist studying race who felt that way. Morton’s “receipt book” is filled with details about the sales of his books, as well as badgering letters to publishers, reviewers, and colleagues to help push his studies out to the wider reading public. Agassiz was eager to help ensure that the scientific works on humanity found a wider and more appreciative audience. As James Costa cogently argues, “Measured by the stan-

68

Michael L. Krenn

dards of his time, his racial views were extreme mostly because he talked about them so frequently, so vehemently, and so publicly. As a whole, they reflect . . . his fervent desire for science, his science, to be taken seriously and to be considered socially and politically relevant.”32 Shortly after Morton’s death, a biographer already recognized his immense contribution to the cause of white supremacy and cautioned those who might be hesitant to embrace the inevitable destruction of other races: “Out of all this seeming wrong cometh good. If the Teuton rob a feebler race of its possessions, we find that with him go all the arts of civilization,—the power of steam, the blessings of education, the privileges of freedom, and an open Bible. The forests fall, and the ring of the artisan’s hammer is heard in cities; and peace smiles upon broad fields of wheat, white for the harvest. Here, in the broad foundation and the full elaboration of such a theory, we find Morton’s true glory.”33 It was not, however, Morton’s legacy alone. He constructed that “broad foundation” with the help and support of an international group of learned men intent on squelching ideas about racial equality and sympathy for those “feebler races” who were robbed by the superior white race.

The Long Life of Morton’s Skulls In the years following Morton’s death in 1851, his reputation and the “American school of ethnography” he helped to found slowly began to fade. As one scholar notes, “The decline of the American school had a double cause. The most important was the publication of Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species in 1859. Polygenesis derived its strength and its purpose from the idea that the races were fixed, but that was no longer sustainable within an evolutionary perspective.” Darwin had come across some of Morton’s writings on hybridity years before, but his assessment was decidedly negative: “my opinion, of it, as you ask for it, is that it is in main part, a merely tabulated compilation from Griffith’s Cuvier, with a few other facts interpolated. He is, I think, too credulous; but it is a pretty good compilation: his worse fault is that he has not gone to his original source . . . there is a want of exactness in the manner Morton gives the facts. . . . In conclusion, therefore, I do not think Dr. Morton a safe man to quote from.”34 By the twentieth century, Morton’s reputation sank even further. The noted British American anthropologist Ashley Montagu was asked about Morton’s work. His reply left little

Hearts, Minds, and Skulls

69

to the imagination: “Physical anthropology as practiced in Morton’s day was a pretty idiotic activity restricted, for the most part, to gentlemen of private means. It consisted in measuring and in describing skulls under the benign impression that this extraordinary activity would somehow lead to the ultimate solution of the relationships of man to one another. . . . Morton had thousands of skulls but apparently no brains at all, and . . . had the complete courage of his confusion.” Finally, in 1981, Stephen J. Gould’s The Mismeasure of Man appeared to seal Morton’s fate by portraying him as a racist who deliberately falsified his findings to support his theories on racial superiority and inferiority.35 Yet Morton and his skulls refused to leave the stage. Upon his death his massive collection of skulls was first purchased by the Museum of the Academy of Natural Sciences and then found its way to the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. Although a number of the crania were misplaced over the years and some have been returned under the auspices of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, many remain locked in steel cabinets. And that is where an undergraduate student found them in the mid-1980s and proceeded to remeasure the skulls. His conclusion was that Morton’s work was, in fact, essentially accurate and that Gould was mistaken. Two employees of the museum agreed, arguing that “Morton’s measurements of cranial capacities were actually accurate within the practices of his day. There is no evidence to suggest that Morton’s personal beliefs had led him to racially bias his data. He studied the crania he had at hand objectively and scientifically and reported his findings as such.” These conclusions were quickly picked up by J. Philippe Rushton, a psychologist allied with the notoriously eugenics-minded Pioneer Fund, who argued that Morton’s studies simply proved what he had always thought—that blacks have smaller brains and are therefore less intelligent.36 Both his critics and supporters have missed the crucial point about Morton’s work. The most important issue is not whether Morton was technically competent in measuring the “cranial capacity” of his hundreds of skulls or whether he intentionally fudged such measurements. It is not a matter of a naïve scientist merely “following the data,” publishing his findings, and then having his research hijacked by unscrupulous racists and ideologues. Some have argued that Morton was merely a man of his time, a time marked by questionable scientific methods and enveloped in the racial mindset of early nineteenth-century America. Morton and his European col-

70

Michael L. Krenn

leagues were, in fact, men who helped shape their time and notions of humanity in very definite and, ultimately, destructive ways. The manner in which they combined science and race was not accidental or merely an example of a person’s work reflecting the age in which they lived. Years before he published his important studies, Morton had already been musing on the links between the shapes of human skulls and intelligence and innate characteristics. He was already reflecting upon the connections between the physical features of black slaves and ex-slaves and their intellectual and moral weaknesses. When he began his skull collecting, he did so not through his own fieldwork but by relying on those in the vanguard of American expansionism for Native American crania. When he turned his attention to Egypt and the issue of slavery, his most fervent supporters were Southerners who directly and clearly informed Morton that his work was playing a significant role in defending the peculiar institution. And, finally, when he confronted the ticklish issue of hybridity, his main source of intellectual support for his conclusions that the races were, in fact, separate species, came from one of the South’s most virulent racists. To argue that Morton’s work was appropriated by expansionists and racists is simply wrong. Instead, Morton appropriated the thinking of these powerful forces in America and proceeded to provide significant ideological support through his redefinition of the very nature of humanity. In the past, religion, economics, and politics had all been used by American policymakers and elites to justify the slaughter of the Native American population and the enslavement and dehumanization of African slaves. Yet religion could be interpreted in so many different ways. Economic and political thinking ebbed and flowed. Science, however, promised final, concrete, unchanging, and unchallengeable evidence. Morton’s work clearly argued that the displacement and eventual destruction of the Native Americans was scientifically inevitable; that the enslavement of smaller-brained black peoples had been practiced since the beginnings of human civilization; and that separation between the races was simply a law of nature that provided protection for the superior Caucasian race. And while he was merely one of many scientists around the world investigating these matters, Morton’s work was an important message to the world that helped illustrate and support America’s pretensions to greatness, importance, and cultural significance. By setting new and important parameters for the international debate on the human race, Morton and his skulls also helped

Hearts, Minds, and Skulls

71

shape international perceptions of America by putting a decidedly and distinctive American stamp on science and humanity.

Michael L. Krenn is a professor of history at Appalachian State University. He received his PhD in 1985 from Rutgers University, where he studied with Lloyd Gardner. His books include The Color of Empire: Race and American Foreign Relations (2006); Fall-Out Shelters for the Human Spirit: American Art and the Cold War (2005); and The History of U.S. Cultural Diplomacy: From 1770 to the Present Day (2017). His book Black Diplomacy: African Americans and the State Department, 1945–1969 (1999) is the inspiration for the 2002 documentary The Diplomat.

Notes 1. “American” and “America” will be used in the following to refer to “US Americans” and “the United States.” 2. Patterson, “Memoir,” xxix; emphasis in original. 3. Morton, “Introductory Lecture,” 6. Morton cautioned his students of the “inexpressible importance to guard against the premature examination of persons supposed to be dead.” He might have also warned his students about acquiring such human specimens. Just two years before his lecture, William Burke and William Hare had been arrested in Edinburgh and charged with murdering nearly twenty people in order to provide corpses for the anatomy classes at the University. 4. Samuel G. Morton, “Journal of Morton, 1822, Chap. First. Turin to Lyons,” Box 1, Folder 12, James Creese Papers, Princeton University Archives and Special Collections, Princeton, NJ; “Cretin” underlined in original. The cretinism Morton remarks upon had long been associated with the Savoy region and was likely due to a severe iodine deficiency. 5. Samuel G. Morton, “Diary of Trip to the West Indies, and Notebook,” Series II, Journal, 1833–ca. 1837, Papers of Samuel George Morton, American Philosophical Society Library (APSL), Philadelphia, PA. 6. For Linnaeus, consult Blunt, Linnaeus, and Koerner, Linnaeus; on Buffon, see Roger, Buffon; and for Blumenbach, go to Rupke and Lauer, Johann Friedrich Blumenbach. 7. Jefferson, Notes on Virginia. 8. No complete biography of Morton has yet appeared, but discussions (some more or less accurate) can be found in Fabian, The Skull Collectors; Dain, A Hideous Monster; Otter, Melville’s Anatomies; Menand, The Metaphysical Club; Horsman, Josiah Nott of Mobile; Semonin, American Monster; Irmscher, Louis Agassiz; Trafton, Egypt Land; Strom, “‘If Success Depends Upon Enterprise’”; Gould, The Mismeasure of Man; Stanton, The Leopard’s Spots; Desmond and Moore, Darwin’s Sacred Cause; and Poskett, Materials of the Mind.

72

Michael L. Krenn

9. Anders Retzius to Morton, 12 July 1845, Series I: Correspondence, Box 1, Samuel George Morton Papers, Library Company of Philadelphia (LCP), Philadelphia, PA; Retzius to Morton, 3 April 1847, in Patterson, “Memoir,” xxxiii; von Humboldt, Cosmos, cxiii, note 431; Humboldt to Morton, 27 January 1844, in Meigs, Memoir, 48; Semonin, American Monster, 388–389; Irmscher, Louis Agassiz, 223–224. 10. Benjamin Silliman to Morton, 27 March 1840, Morton Papers, Series I: Correspondence, Box 5, APSL; William F. Van Amringe to Morton, 15 April 1848, Morton Papers, Series I, Box 3, LCP; Meigs, Memoir, 20. For more on Humboldt and his relations with American scientists, see Wulf, The Invention of Nature. 11. Morton, Crania Americana, iii, 1, 5–7, 82. 12. Pamphlet enclosed in Thomas Hodgkin to Morton, 11 December 1839, Morton Papers, Series I, Box 5, APSL. 13. Morton, Brief Remarks, 21. 14. Morton to T.A. Conrad, 19 April 1833; “Note to T. A. Conrad on His Leaving Philadelphia for Alabama, Dec. 17, 1832,” in “Letter Book: Philadelphia, PA, 1832–1837,” Rare Books and Special Collections, Manuscript Division, Princeton University Library (PUL); underline in original. 15. Morton to Townsend, 3 March 1836, Series I, Correspondence, Scientists Collection; Townsend to Morton, 20 September 1835, Box 3, Morton Papers, APSL; underline in original. 16. Morton to Dr. W.S.W. Ruschenberger, USN, 28 February 1832, “Letter Book,” PUL; Ruschenberger to Morton, 3 March 1833, Box 2, Morton Papers, APSL; Eugene Hilarian Abadie to Morton, 3 February 1838, Box 5, Morton Papers, APSL; F.M. Robertson to Morton, 13 December 1842, Item 129, Series IV: Microfilm, 1838–1844, Morton Papers, APSL. 17. Morton, Brief Remarks, 5–6; Morton, “Observations on Egyptian Ethnography,” 158. 18. W.B. Hodgson to Morton, 29 March 1844, Series I: Correspondence, Box 1, Morton Papers, LCP; Dickson, Remarks on Certain Topics, 26; George Gliddon to Morton, 6 April 1844, Series I: Correspondence, Box 1, Morton Papers, LCP. 19. Stanton, in The Leopard’s Spots, called Crania Egyptiaca “the product of mature research” (51). 20. Morton, “Some Remarks on the Infrequency,” 173–175. 21. For more background on Nott, see Horsman, Josiah Nott; Nott to Morton, 27 June 1847, Morton Papers, Series I: Correspondence, Box 2, LCP. 22. Nott to Morton, 7 February 1844, Morton Papers, Series IV: Microfilm, 1838– 1844, Item 212, APSL; Nott to Morton, 15 October 1844; Nott to Morton, 20 February 1845, Morton Papers, Series I: Correspondence, Box 1, LCP [underline in original]. 23. “Second Letter. Notes on Hybridity, Designed as a Further Supplement to a Memoir on that Subject in a Former Number of this Journal. By Samuel George Morton, M.D. Being a Second Letter to the Editors of the Charleston Med. Journ. and Review,” 31 January 1851; Nott to Morton, 23 February 1846, Morton Papers, Box 2, LCP [emphasis in original]. 24. Nott and Gliddon, Types of Mankind. 25. “Notes by Moore,” c. 1946–1947, J. Percy Moore Papers, Series 5: Correspondence Subseries: Biography on: Samuel George Morton and William Maclure, Box 18, Folder 1814, Archives of The Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University (AANS), Philadelphia, PA; Pickering, The Races of Man, 573, 583; Meigs, Memoir, 22; “Great Discovery of Professor Lepsius,” Daily Evening Transcript, 10 April 1844, Vol. IV, 2.

Hearts, Minds, and Skulls

73

26. Meigs, Memoir, 20; Patterson, “Memoir,” xxxiii; Grant, “Sketch of the Life,” 11; emphasis in original. 27. Van Amringe to Morton, 15 April 1848, Morton Papers, Box 3, LCP. 28. Anders Retzius to Morton, 12 July 1845, Morton Papers, Box 1, LCP; Larsell, “Anders Adolf Retzius,” 19; McMahon, “Anthropological Race Psychology.” Also see Werner, “Curman’s Skull,” for an interesting look at the contributions made to scientific racism by Anders Retzius and his son Gustav. 29. Peter S. DuPonceau to Morton, 28 October 1833, Morton Papers, Series I: Correspondence, Box 2, APSL. For Flourens’s views on Darwin and evolution, see Henry, “Anti-Darwinism in France,” and Clark, Social Darwinism in France, 15. 30. Both letters are found in Agassiz, Louis Agassiz, 415, 437–438. 31. Irmscher, Louis Agassiz, 240–241. 32. “Receipt Book for Crania Americana, 1837–1842,” Rare Books and Special Collections, Manuscript Division, Princeton University Library; Costa, Darwin’s Backyard, 268–269. 33. Hunt, “Samuel George Morton.” 34. Bernasconi, “Racial Science”; Charles Darwin to Charles Lyell, 2 June 1847, in Burkhardt, The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, 45–46. 35. Letter from M.F. Ashley Montagu, Assoc. Prof. of Anatomy at the Hahnemann Medical Center and Hospital of Philadelphia, to Mr. J. Percy Moore, Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, 30 January 1945, Moore Papers, Box 18, Folder 4, AANS; Gould, The Mismeasure of Man. 36. Michael, “A New Look”; Renschler and Monge, “The Samuel George Morton Cranial Collection”; Monge, “The Morton Collection”; Rushton, “The Mismeasures of Gould.” For a summary of Rushton’s career and thinking, see the report of the Southern Poverty Law Center at https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/ extremist-files/individual/jean-philippe-rushton.

Bibliography Agassiz, Elizabeth C., ed. Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence, Vol. II. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1887. Bernasconi, Robert. “Racial Science.” In A Companion to the History of American Science, edited by Georgina M. Montgomery and Mark A. Largent, 508. Oxford: Wiley Blackwell, 2016. Blunt, Wilfrid. Linnaeus: The Compleat Naturalist. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002. Burkhardt, Frederick, ed. The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, 1847– 1850, Vol. 4. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988. Clark, Linda L. Social Darwinism in France. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1984. Costa, James T. Darwin’s Backyard: How Small Experiments Led to a Big Theory. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2017. Dain, Bruce. A Hideous Monster of the Mind: American Race Theory in the Early Republic. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002. Desmond, Adrian, and James Moore. Darwin’s Sacred Cause: How a Hatred of Slavery Shaped Darwin’s Views on Human Evolution. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2009.

74

Michael L. Krenn

Dickson, Samuel H. Remarks on Certain Topics, Connected with the General Subject of Slavery. Charleston: Observer Office Press, 1845. Fabian, Ann. The Skull Collectors: Race, Science, and America’s Unburied Dead. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010. Gould, Stephen J. The Mismeasure of Man. New York: W. W. Norton, 1981. Grant, William R. “Sketch of the Life and Character of Samuel George Morton, M.D.: Lecture, Introductory to a Course on Anatomy and Physiology in the Medical Department of Pennsylvania College.” Philadelphia: John Royer, Printer, 1852. Henry, Freeman G. “Anti-Darwinism in France: Science and the Myth of Nation.” Nineteenth-Century French Studies 27, no. 3/4 (1999): 290– 304. Horsman, Reginald. Josiah Nott of Mobile: Southerner, Physician, and Racial Theorist. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1987. Hunt, Sanford B. “Samuel George Morton. 1799–1851.” In Lives of Eminent American Physicians and Surgeons of the Nineteenth Century, edited by Samuel D. Gross, 603. Philadelphia: Lindsay & Blakiston, 1861. Irmscher, Christoph. Louis Agassiz: Creator of American Science. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013. Jefferson, Thomas. Notes on Virginia, Excerpts from Query XIV, 1785. In Thomas Jefferson: Revolutionary Philosopher: A Selection of Writings, edited by John S. Pancake and N. Sharon Summers, 309–316. Woodbury: Barron’s Educational Series, Inc., 1976. Koerner, Lisbet. Linnaeus: Nature and Nation. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999. Larsell, O. “Anders Adolf Retzius (1796–1860).” Annals of Medical History 6, no. 1 (Spring 1924). McMahon, Richard. “Anthropological Race Psychology, 1820–1945: A Common European System of Ethnic Identity Narratives.” Nations and Nationalism (21 September 2009). Meigs, Charles D. Memoir of Samuel George Morton, M.D., Late President of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia. Philadelphia: T. K. and P. G. Collins, Printers, 1851. Menand, Louis. The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in America. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2001. Michael, John S. “A New Look at Morton’s Craniological Research.” Current Anthropology 29, no. 2 (April 1988): 349–354. Monge, Janet. “The Morton Collection and NAGPRA.” Expedition 50, no. 3 (2008): 37. Morton, Samuel G. “Introductory Lecture to a Course on Demonstrative Anatomy; Delivered December 11, 1830.” Philadelphia: Mifflin & Parry, 1831. ———. “Observations on Egyptian Ethnography, Derived from Anatomy, History, and the Monuments.” Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 9, no. 1 (1846).

Hearts, Minds, and Skulls

75

———. “Some Remarks on the Infrequency of Mixed Off-spring between the European and Australian Races.” Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia 5 (22 April 1851). ———. Brief Remarks on the Diversities of the Human Species, and on Some Kindred Subjects. Being an Introductory Lecture Delivered before the Class of Pennsylvania Medical College, in Philadelphia, November 1, 1842. Philadelphia: Merrihew & Thompson, Printers, 1842. ———. Crania Americana; or, a Comparative View of the Skulls of Various Aboriginal Nations of North and South America: To Which is Prefixed an Essay on the Varieties of the Human Species. Philadelphia: John Penington; London: James Madden & Co., 1839. Nott, Josiah C., and George R. Gliddon, Types of Mankind; or, Ethnological Researches Based upon the Ancient Monuments, Paintings, Sculptures, and Crania of Races, and upon Their Natural Geographical, Philological, and Biblical History: Illustrated by Selections from the Unedited Papers of Samuel George Morton, M.D., and by Additional Contributions from Prof. L. Agassiz, LL.D.; W. Usher, M.D.; and Prof. H.S. Patterson, M.D. Philadelphia: Lippincott, Grambo & Co., 1854. Otter, Samuel. Melville’s Anatomies. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999. Patterson, Henry S. “Memoir on the Life and Scientific Labors of Samuel George Morton, M.D.” Philadelphia: Lippincott, Grambo & Co., 1854. Pickering, Charles. The Races of Man and Their Geographical Distribution. London: H.G. Bohn, 1851. Poskett, James. Materials of the Mind: Phrenology, Race, and the Global History of Science, 1815–1920. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2019. Renschler, Emily S., and Janet Monge. “The Samuel George Morton Cranial Collection: Historical Significance and New Research.” Expedition 50, no. 3 (2008): 38. Roger, Jacques. Buffon: A Life in Natural History. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1997. Rupke, Nicolaas, and Gerhard Lauer, eds. Johann Friedrich Blumenbach: Race and Natural History, 1750–1850. London: Routledge, 2020. Rushton, J. Philippe. “The Mismeasures of Gould.” National Review 49, no. 17 (15 September 1997): 30–34. Semonin, Paul. American Monster: How the Nation’s First Prehistoric Creature Became a Symbol of National Identity. New York: New York University Press, 2000. Stanton, William. The Leopard’s Spots: Scientific Attitudes toward Race in America, 1815–1859. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960. Strom, Sharon H. “‘If Success Depends Upon Enterprise’: Central America, U.S. Foreign Policy, and Race in the Travel Narratives of E.G. Squier.” Diplomatic History 35, no. 3 (June 2011): 403–443. Trafton, Scott. Egypt Land: Race and Nineteenth-Century American Egyptomania. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004.

76

Michael L. Krenn

von Humboldt, Alexander. Cosmos: Sketch of a Physical Description of the Universe, 3rd ed., Vol. 1. London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1847–1858. Werner, Jeff. “Curman’s Skull: Scientific Racism and Art.” Journal of Art History 87, no. 3 (2018): 154–172. Wulf, Andrea. The Invention of Nature: Alexander Humboldt’s New World. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2015.

Chapter 3

IN SEARCH OF BIBLICAL MESOPOTAMIA Visions of Humanity in US Archaeological Excavations in Iraq, 1880–1910 Sarah Epping

Introduction In autumn 2007, the US Department of Defense (DoD) distributed forty thousand decks of playing cards to their troops in Iraq.1 These so-called Heritage Resource Preservation Playing Cards feature pictures of Iraqi archaeological sites in addition to an educational message, a piece of advice, or a slogan. The playing cards were part of the DoD’s attempt to increase awareness among soldiers of the harm they could cause to historical remains and artifacts and the damage done by looting. This step had become necessary after US-led forces destroyed historic sites and cultural monuments and simply stood by as looters ransacked Iraqi museums. These incidents had been widely featured in the press and had caused an outcry among international scholars.2 The cards were one method to remind service members to handle the ancient remains with care and not to take any as souvenirs.3 Taking a closer look at the playing cards reveals that the DoD used them, and hence the ancient Iraqi sites, as a tool to communicate three political messages to troops. First, they reminded soldiers that they needed the support of the local population if they wanted a successful occupation. As the cards demonstrate, the DoD believed that one way of guaranteeing Iraqis’ cooperation and collaboration with the coalition forces was by treating cultural buildings and arNotes for this section begin on page 95.

78

Sarah Epping

chaeological sites with respect. The Queen of Hearts is the most explicit in its messaging: “Archaeological sites matter to the local community. Showing respect wins hearts and minds.” The accompanying image displays a faceless man in traditional Arab clothing showing ancient bricks to a female soldier in full gear except for a helmet. The combination of this image with the text situates the US aim of meeting Iraqi approval within the archaeological context. Second, the cards indicated that the coalition forces were fighting a “just” war. They offered one way to playfully implement the idea of a positive US engagement in Iraq—defending and protecting ancient sites and culture—while implying that Iraqis were not able to accomplish this on their own.4 The theme of guardianship completely concealed the political motivations that led to US military presence in Iraq and which threatened the sites and artifacts in the first place. The third political message conveyed by the deck of cards adds to the former message but stresses the point that the ancient sites guarded by service members were part of their own history. The imagery and text on several cards encouraged soldiers to remember or form a sense of identification with the ancient Iraqi past, such as the Six of Clubs, which states: “Respect ruins wherever possible. They are part of our collective cultural history.” Similarly, the Five of Spades firmly positions US soldiers within Iraqi history by claiming: “A looted archaeological site means that details of our common past are lost forever.” In some cases, cards even invoke the Bible to highlight the US soldiers’ supposed bond to Iraq: “Ancient Iraqi heritage is part of your heritage. It is believed that Jonah of the Bible is buried here,”5 and “the Bible’s Tower of Babel referred to a Mesopotamian ziggurat (temple tower).”6 According to these statements, US service members to a certain extent ideologically and culturally belonged to the country they physically occupied, as Iraq’s past was of importance to their own heritage and belief system. Therefore, all antiquities could be considered the responsibility of the United States, and at least its shared (if not sole) property. All in all, this appropriation of the Iraqi past was one core method applied by the DoD to substantiate their assertion of having done the right thing in occupying Iraq.7 In this study, I explore the roots of the distorted belief that Iraqis could not protect their own artifacts and that Americans had a claim to them.8 At the turn of the twentieth century, US citizens involved in Ottoman Iraq constructed and propagated a vision of humanity that has had severe consequences for US-Iraqi relations ever since.9 Travelers, archaeologists, missionaries, merchants, and diplomats drew

In Search of Biblical Mesopotamia

79

on long-fostered narratives to frame Iraq as a biblical land and its ancient inhabitants, namely Assyrians, Sumerians, and Babylonians, as the progenitor of their own culture.10 At the same time, these American actors denied contemporary Iraqis any connection to the people who had lived in Iraq in those earliest times. They instigated a contradictory, Western-centric discourse on humanity that closely connected (ancient) Iraq to the modern-day US but considered Americans as completely different from and superior to the people living there at present. Americans with an interest in Iraq spread, and hence perpetuated, this narrative to promote, finance, and justify their activities on the ground while additionally encouraging US involvement in the region. Their concept of humanity and the ensuing actions initiated the long-term development of US imperialistic interests, as demonstrated by the example of the playing cards. Indeed, when describing their connections to Iraqis both past and present, Americans of that era did not use the term “humanity”— which had only just started to develop as a universal concept—but rather “civilization,” “mankind,” and “human family.”11 In particular, the term “civilization” dominates their accounts. It is important to include an analysis of these actors’ understanding of “civilization” in a volume on “humanity” because while the phraseology has changed, the early twentieth-century connotation of “civilization” is still present in the contemporary sense of “humanity.” Until the early twentieth century, Americans (and Europeans) believed that there existed only one single civilization that encompassed all human beings.12 This perception was reflected in their understanding of history as one linear process of evolution with its natural and ideal outcome in the modern United States.13 Despite such a teleological development, not all people were considered equal within this singular civilization. Rather, they applied the notion of progress and values associated with the Enlightenment to divide the world into civilized, less civilized, and even uncivilized people.14 As much as “civilization” was used as a way to identify and order the people of the world, “humanity,” while seeming to do the opposite, follows this lead. “Humanity” is often defined as a collective encompassing all people. As, for example, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of the United Nation proclaims in Article 1: “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.” This understanding of “humanity” tried to overcome the divide inherent in “civilization.” However, over time and in dif-

80

Sarah Epping

ferent parts of the world, humanity has been perceived as divided or segmented. This has supported the emergence of new hierarchies, resulting in discrimination against enslaved people, women, or ethnicities.15 Furthermore, people still divide the population of the world along the lines of progress. Indeed, they now use different phrases to make their point, mainly describing others as “less developed” instead of “less civilized.”16 Another (failed) attempt to overcome these pejorative terms is to refer to countries as belonging to the Global North or the Global South. These terms do not place countries according to their location on the globe but divide the world by arbitrary categories predefined by scholars, most of whom come from the Global North.17 These contradictory aspects show that the term “civilization” as understood at the turn of the twentieth century does not differ much from today’s understanding of “humanity.” By focusing within early US-Iraqi relations on the image Americans drew of Iraq and the manner in which they positioned themselves relative to Iraqis, we are able to explore how our understanding of humanity as a term describing the entire global population is not based on noble aims or on set values and ideas. Rather, its origin should be sought in events such as early US engagement in Iraq because humanity is built upon a construct fabricated by historical actors to be applied as they saw fit for their own needs and purposes. In the case of Americans in Iraq, these included the wish to receive the necessary financial support for their respective projects, to increase US involvement in the region, and most notably to compete with European powers in terms of scientific achievements and possession of artifacts. Indeed, in total, only a small number of US citizens went to Iraq before the 1920s.18 Nevertheless, their various undertakings had a significant outreach and attracted people from all over the United States. This holds particularly true for the explorers, missionaries, and students of the University of Michigan, whose projects depended upon private donations.19 The individual actors published numerous, well-advertised, and widely read publications; held lectures; and organized exhibitions, both on ancient as well as contemporary Iraq. Consequently, these Americans contributed to the dissemination, perpetuation, and consolidation of a particular image of Iraq and of the relationship between Americans, ancient Iraqis, and contemporary Iraqis. In their accounts, they depicted Americans as closely connected to ancient Iraq while at the same time

In Search of Biblical Mesopotamia

81

denying contemporary Iraqis any link to the past of the region they inhabited, all in an attempt to further their interests. In this chapter, I will demonstrate this point by focusing on explorers excavating ancient Nippur as they formed one of the earliest US sources of knowledge about contemporary Iraq. Iraq’s connection to the Bible and the search for the roots of Western culture had sparked US interest in conducting archaeological excavations there. In the second half of the nineteenth century, there was a rapidly growing curiosity in the language and archaeology of ancient Iraq because the decipherment of cuneiforms had challenged and proven certain biblical statements. This culminated in a preliminary survey expedition in 1883/1884, sent out by the American Oriental Society to determine a suitable space for future archaeological excavations. The so-called Wolfe Expedition was followed by four archaeological excavations in the ancient Sumerian city of Nippur between 1888 and 1900 under the auspices of the University of Pennsylvania. The various members of these expeditions were not trained archaeologists but rather Assyriologists, architects, and photographers.20 With the help of hundreds of local workers, thousands of antiquities were unearthed, mostly cuneiform tablets. The findings were then shipped to the United States.21 Using the literary remains of various individuals linked to these excavations, I analyze how they described the region—its culture, history, and people—and how they each defined their relation to it.22 Drawing upon Edward W. Said’s theories, developed in his pioneering 1978 work Orientalism, I show in the first part of this chapter that explorers contributed to the spread of the inconsistent concept of humanity as a single human family in which not all members are perceived as equal.23 It is important to note that the people leading this discourse in the United States were all white, Protestant males, who contrived this unity based on their understanding of US culture as predominantly white and Protestant. Their idea discriminated against non-Christians and people of color, excluding many of their fellow citizens as well as Iraqis from their idea of humanity. In the second part, I will show how the explorers applied this vision to guide their behavior toward Iraq and deduce a contradictory mandate of action from it:24 first by using the inclusionary aspect of their vision of humanity to claim Iraqi antiquities and ship them to the United States, and second by applying the exclusionary aspect of their vision of humanity to argue for stronger US involvement in Iraq.25

82

Sarah Epping

An Exclusionary Vision of Humanity Constructing a Vision of Common Humanity through Religion and Cultural Heritage Americans of at the end of the nineteenth century closely identified themselves and their culture with ancient Iraq, believing that humankind had originated in this region. Explorers excavating Nippur greatly contributed to this notion. Indeed, the word “humanity” is scarce in sources related to the US excavations in Iraq. John P. Peters, who had emigrated from Germany to the United States to become professor of Hebrew at the University of Pennsylvania and who was the director of the first two expeditions to Nippur, used it to describe the behavior of locals. He recounted an anecdote about Iraqis beating a dog with a stick, concluding that “their humanity did not allow them to kill the beast outright.”26 Peters attributed certain qualities, such as generous behavior and compassion, to the animal abusers simply because they were human. While this exemplifies one definition of the word “humanity,” the second meaning of the word—which it still holds today—is also reflected in the sources, namely its use to describe the totality of human beings. In his report for the Archaeological Institute of America, William H. Ward, leader of the Wolfe Expedition, described the area south of Baghdad as the territory where “humanity had its origin.”27 Ward alluded to the idea of humankind as one entity with a single starting point, which he located in Iraq. While he was the only one within the expedition to explicitly use the term “humanity” to remind readers of the region’s significance as their ancestral home, the other explorers also highlighted this aspect of US-Iraqi relations. Indeed, there are several descriptions of Iraq as the “cradle of the human family,”28 “the cradle of mankind,”29 “the cradle of the human race,”30 and “the cradle of the race.”31 While not explicitly referring to “humanity,” all these different phrases— that is, “human family,” “mankind,” and “human race”—resonate with the term in their meaning and carry with them the same connotation. Yet the word “civilization” dominates in explorers’ reports. Peters even has a chapter on the history of Nippur with a subchapter called “Birthplace of Civilization” in his report on the second expedition.32 In it, he described the same area that Ward had depicted as the place of origin of humanity “as the original home of civilization.”33 Peters, as well as the other explorers, continuously referred to Iraq in one way or another as the “primeval sites of civilization,” “the land of the earliest civilization,” or “the original home

In Search of Biblical Mesopotamia

83

of civilization.”34 By using these terms to describe Iraq, they degradingly presented this mythical time as the most defining feature of the region, with a nearly complete neglect for everything that had happened since. More importantly, the notion of Iraq being the Cradle of Civilization illustrates the explorers’ belief that there existed only one universal civilization from which US culture and society had descended. By the second half of the nineteenth century, the myth that civilization had emerged in ancient Iraq and then developed linearly toward its natural and ideal outcome in the modern United States had become well established in the Western humanist tradition. Americans believed that ancient Iraq constituted the first stage of civilization, which later transferred to Greece, to the Roman Empire, to the Christian Middle Ages, and so forth, ultimately culminating in the US industrial era as the highest form of civilization. This teleological historical narrative and the trope of Iraq as the Cradle of Civilization was not scientifically based. Rather, it was an understanding of history constructed by European and American scholars who had located in ancient Iraq the origin of some of their most treasured cultural, social, and political-economic developments, such as literacy, urbanism, and statehood.35 The explorers went beyond mere catchphrases to demonstrate this idea; they redefined and renamed the whole region to firmly place Iraq within a Western, Judeo-Christian tradition of learning. One method that led to a relocation of Iraq within the timeless and mythological annals of ancient European history was the referencing of classical Greek and Roman literature. Explorers, and in particular US travelers, used these works as guides to Iraq. Tourists most often only visited Iraq as part of a larger tour through the Middle East or around the world, in search of those ancient sites of civilization that they had read about in classical literature or knew from the Bible. Consequently, most used their travelogues to describe in great detail the ancient sites they visited. They paid little attention to contemporary Iraq, as can be observed in its absence from their accounts, with the exception of Baghdad, popularized through the fairy tale Arabian Nights’ Entertainments.36 As a result, they oriented their narratives to the histories of the Greek and Roman empires, with which they and their readers were well acquainted. For that reason, their travelogue descriptions often included pages upon pages of a given location’s ancient history. Sometimes they even included direct quotations.37 In the United States these travelogues replaced vague ideas about the ancient people and the region with more concrete images, while

84

Sarah Epping

at the same time primarily placing it within the Western tradition of learning and defining Iraq as a biblical land. The second method explorers applied to construct a connection between the most remote Iraqi past and modern US culture was to firmly situate contemporary Iraq within the biblical world. As part of the lengthy depictions of ancient sites, explorers often referenced passages from the Bible to match the respective location, sometimes quoting the section directly.38 They indicated the various characters, such as Noah, Jonah, and Daniel, who according to the text had lived there. Such practice evoked strong biblical imagery and presented Iraq as a land where Old Testament sites could easily be explored and where visitors could wander where the prophets had once lived. These detailed accounts allowed readers to form their own, allegedly fact-based images of these locations rather than depending on vague, fragmentary descriptions from the Bible.39 This was facilitated by illustrations accompanying the narratives, such as drawings from Nineveh and Babylon, two of the most visited locations. The numerous references to biblical sites by the explorers gave their readers a sense of familiarity with places they had known and identified with since childhood. What detached these sites even further from their contemporary Iraqi context was the tendency among explorers to use their (presumed) ancient, often biblical, name rather than their modern (local) designation.40 The same went for the region as a whole, which explorers did not refer to as Iraq, al-Jazı¯rah, or Ira¯q al-Arabı¯. Rather, they borrowed from classical authors such as Xenophon, Ctesias, Diodorus, and Pliny and called it Mesopotamia, Chaldea, Assyria, and Babylonia. These names all underlined the affiliation of the region to Western historical narratives and denied Iraqis possession of or even belonging to the land they inhabited.41 More than through their published reports about the expeditions, it was through their research, lectures, and exhibitions that explorers contributed to the embedding of the image of Iraq as the Cradle of Civilization and land of the Bible into US society. Explorers’ research was shaped from the start by their preconceived notions about the ancient Iraqi past and its role in human history. Corresponding to their belief that civilization had moved in a linear fashion from ancient Iraq to ancient Greece, the Islamic past, and consequently artifacts from this time, had no value to them. Therefore, explorers were dissatisfied when their findings were not older than two thousand years and had no qualms about destroying the younger archaeological layers in order to reach antiquities, which

In Search of Biblical Mesopotamia

85

rendered any future research on these more recent times impossible.42 Furthermore, explorers analyzed the antiquities they found according to a predetermined outcome: as biblical proof or as the starting point of a singular, universal civilization that had found its endpoint in US society and culture. This left no room for divergent interpretations and is a practice that, as Zainab Bahrani argues, still restrains archaeological research in Iraq today.43 In the same manner that explorers restricted their research, they controlled how the artifacts were understood by Americans. The explorers shipped thousands of antiquities from Iraq to the United States, where they were studied and put on display in the Free Museum of Science and Art in Philadelphia. This museum, today called the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, was founded in 1889 to host the findings of the excavations in Nippur, but also included artifacts from other archaeological and anthropological expeditions around the world.44 In 1898, the museum moved into a newly erected building, which included one room full of findings from Iraq, set apart to illustrate “the life and customs of the various peoples of the Old Testament.”45 The museum staff, foremost Hermann V. Hilprecht as the curator of the Semitic Section and director of two expeditions, showcased antiquities from Iraq within a biblical frame, displaying them as visual and concrete exhibits of how biblical people had lived. To remain consistent in their reasoning, the ancient people of Iraq were referred to as “old Testament people.”46 As a result, visitors did not have the opportunity to engage with the artifacts on their own terms, as representatives of an ancient people and culture. Also, returning explorers gave lecture series in the museum with titles such as “The Old Testament in the Light of the Cuneiform Inscriptions,” with respective talks about “Life in Babylonia at the Time of Abraham” and “The Tower of Babel and Genesis XIV.”47 This, in addition to placing the artifacts in the so-called Biblical Room, did not allow for any interpretations of the objects but as tangible witnesses of events and people that Americans knew since their childhood through the Bible and thus closely related to. Explorers used the belief that there existed one singular civilization in ancient times to appropriate Iraqi history. With their writings, research, exhibitions, and lectures, they made this concept accessible to a greater US audience. What becomes apparent here is that they, and not Iraqis, had the power to define the rules for the production of historical knowledge about Iraq’s past and dominated the means of its consumption. Consequently, they were able to insti-

86

Sarah Epping

gate a discourse in which Americans were the true heirs to ancient Iraq rather than contemporary Iraqis.48 Excluding Contemporary Iraqis from This Constructed Common Humanity While Americans saw themselves as descendants of ancient Iraqis, closely linked through cultural and scientific achievements as well as a religious history, they simultaneously denied contemporary Iraqis any association with themselves or with the people who had lived in the region previously. This exclusion of Iraqis from the US vision of humanity was based upon two discrepancies, each fueled by the other: first, Americans experiencing contemporary Iraqi society found that their observations contradicted the glorious image they had envisioned when thinking of (ancient) Iraq. Indeed, using both Greco-Roman texts and the Bible as sources of knowledge meant that the region was only seen through the eyes of its historical antagonists, who communicated mostly negative images. Nevertheless, these texts also preserved a certain admiration for its past political, architectural, agriculture, and military achievements.49 Hilprecht clearly outlined this dichotomy in the introduction to his book Exploration in Bible Lands (1903) by stating: “Nineveh and Babylon! What illustrious names and prominent types of human strength, intellectual power, and lofty aspiration; but also what terrible examples of atrocious deeds, of lack of restraint, of moral corruption, and ultimate downfall!”50 His admiration for the accomplishments of ancient Iraqis is clear, and his enthusiasm and excitement about being in the very place where they had lived is evident throughout his book. All in all, references to the perceived former greatness of Iraq abound in explorers’ descriptions. This glorification of the past filled the authors with nostalgia, which stood in stark contrast to how they experienced contemporary Iraq. The explorers’ letters and books are full of degrading descriptions of their interactions with the local population. Pejorative, Eurocentric depictions of non-white people were common at that time.51 In the case of Iraqis, however, they differ in one important aspect: observers juxtaposed the perceived backwardness of contemporary Iraq and its people and culture with the grandeur they associated with its past. Hilprecht somberly notes: “Where apparently a dense population and a high grade of civilization had formerly existed, there prevails at present nothing but utter ruin, lawlessness, and poverty.”52 Hilprecht compared past and present Iraq and found the latter flawed. He imagined ancient Iraq as a densely populated re-

In Search of Biblical Mesopotamia

87

gion whose inhabitants were advanced, but encountered on his journey only devastation and destitution. This example highlights the tendency among Americans writing about Iraq to rarely assess the region and its people on their own terms. Americans’ descriptions were informed by their notions of its past civilization and were influenced by their perceptions of biblical and classical literature. This rendered the present reality a disappointment for the explorers, who saw the only explanation for this contradiction in dissociating contemporary Iraqis from Iraq’s past. The second discrepancy Americans encountered was that the local inhabitants and culture in its presumably regressed condition did not fit their understanding of the history of human civilization as a single evolutionary process. They perceived Iraq as the place where humans had made the great step from savagery to civilization. However, instead of making continuous progress as Americans anticipated, contemporary Iraqis were seen as “simple-minded children of the desert”53 who were “very miserable, and very low in the scale of civilization.”54 This ranking of people in an arbitrary hierarchy according to their presumed status of civilization demonstrates the double meaning and usage of the term “civilization.” On the one hand, it was understood as a universal, unifying concept linking even the most ancient people of Iraq to contemporary Americans. On the other hand, it was used to classify and divide contemporaneous peoples. It was a means to distinguish Americans from contemporary Iraqis by placing Iraqis far below Americans on this scale of human progress. Because explorers regarded living in settlements and tilling the soil as the basis for being “civilized,” the many Bedouins they encountered during their time in Iraq were deemed uncivilized.55 Alluding to a hierarchy of civilization, Peters notes of the first leg of his journey to Iraq: “It is curious to observe the gradual way in which you pass from civilization to semi-barbarism, and from Occident to Orient, between Vienna and Constantinople.”56 Leaving Constantinople behind, he writes: “Now civilization ceased altogether. There were no more villages, and such evidence of habitation as we saw were in the shape of black camel’s-hair tents.”57 The closer Peters came to Iraq, the less civilized the inhabitants became in his eyes. Peters classified the inhabitants of the metropolis Constantinople as “semi-barbarians”; Iraqis featured even lower on this imagined scale. Even for those living in the cities, Peters had seldom a kind word, which stands in stark contrast to his admiration for ancient Iraqis.

88

Sarah Epping

US explorers writing about Iraq used three contradicting lines of reasoning to explain the alleged divide between past and contemporary Iraqis. The first argument they brought forward was to narrate the history of Iraq as a story of decline. Peters, for example, gives a detailed description of the history of Iraq since ancient times in his narration of the second expedition. The whole section reads as a story of success and progress despite different people conquering, and consequently ruling, the region. However, once the Parthians enter the stage of history, Peters derogatively speaks of “wild hordes” and explains: “Now we are on the downward road in the history of the civilization and culture of the region. The Parthians seemed to go backward rather than forward, and the period of their rule was a period of deterioration and destruction.”58 Over the next pages, Peters continues his disparaging and violent historical contextualization with a detailed description of the apparent demise of the region: “until now it has become so impoverished and depopulated that the greater part of what was once the most fertile region in the world is a desert overrun by Arab hordes.”59 Again juxtaposing the great past with the allegedly ruinous state of contemporary Iraq, Peters was convinced that the region at the end of the nineteenth century was less developed than it had been five thousand years prior. Historical contextualizations like the one given by Peters insinuated to Americans that contemporary Iraqis were not merely backward in their progress, as might be suggested by a linear understanding of human advancement. Rather, they had lost the civilizational lead, and this distinguished them from other peoples perceived as “primitive.” With statements that asserted the existence of a civilizational regression, the explorers tried to sever all ties between ancient and contemporary Iraqis. Another explanation the explorers gave for the alleged decline was to point out that contemporary Iraqis had no connection to the people living in Iraq in ancient times. They argued that the ancestors of the present inhabitants arrived later on the scene, replacing the more “civilized” ancient people. This is a point that Peters alludes to in the historical contextualization outlined here, but which he highlights more strongly in his first volume. In it he too includes a detailed history of Iraq from ancient times to the present. He explains how different nations, such as the Romans and Greeks, fought over the land “while savage Arabs from the surrounding desert watched [for] their opportunity to rob, murder, and plunder the weak and weary contestants, and themselves take possession.”60 Peters indicates that the Arabs, who he degradingly depicts as “savage” mur-

In Search of Biblical Mesopotamia

89

derers and thieves, came from the outside and occupied the region, thus implying that they had no relation to the land and its history. This narrative expropriated contemporary Iraqis from the past of the land they lived on and cut off all links between its ancient and its Islamic pasts. The third way Americans explained the perceived discrepancy between imagined appearance and observed reality in Iraq was to describe contemporary Iraqi society as stuck at an earlier, more primitive stage of its evolution. Americans writing about Iraq argued that unlike Americans, Iraqis were suspended in a state of timelessness, having not undergone historical changes or developments. They often reported walking into a land where people passed their days outside the stream of time. Their beliefs were affirmed by the witnessing of practices that they assumed had gone unchanged since ancient times. Take, for example, Hilprecht’s commentary on the reed huts he saw during his journey: “They are the regular dwelling places of the poor Maʿdân tribes which occupy the marshy districts of the interior to-day, and they doubtless represent the earliest kind of habitation in the ‘country of canals and reeds’ at the dawn of civilization.”61 Evidently, for Hilprecht, Iraqis and their way of life had not evolved for centuries. They continued to live in the same way that countless generations of Iraqis had lived before them, without any transformation. Indeed, the notion that non-Westerners were static entities without a history was common at that time.62 However, this concept had severe influence particularly on the US image of Iraq because it meant that the Bible was not all in the past. In present-day Iraq, biblical times could still be experienced, as local people lived and performed the tasks similarly. The explorers used the same term “civilization” to make two completely different points: on the one hand, they constructed a historical narrative around an imagined universal civilization. Supporting their claim by emphasizing the classical and biblical heritage of Iraq, they framed the region’s past as part of their own legacy. Yet as much as “civilization” was seen as an inclusionary term describing a universal whole, explorers simultaneously used it as a tool of division. They employed the same terminology to exclude contemporary Iraqis from this universalistic claim, denigrating them, presenting them as inferior, and most notably denying them any link to the past of the land they currently inhabited. Explorers built upon, perpetuated, and consequently contributed to the dissemination of these two contradicting understandings of “civilization” in order to further their causes in Iraq.

90

Sarah Epping

Consequences for US-Iraqi Relations US explorers excavating the ancient site of Nippur drew upon the exclusionary vision of humanity outlined here, which they themselves helped to construct, to advance their interests in Iraq. Primarily, this entailed the often-illegal shipment of artifacts to the United States. Depicting Iraq as the early past of a Western rather than Eastern civilization enabled them to perceive Iraqi antiquities as part of their own cultural heritage. Following this reasoning, it was only natural to conduct archaeological research there and to bring the findings to the United States, where American scholars could study them. This way, as the explorers saw it, they could gain further knowledge about their past. Peters, for example, states in his second book about the excavations that the cuneiform tablets they expected to find, “when recovered and deciphered, will throw so much light upon the history, religion, manners, and customs of the forbears of our civilization.”63 Whether he understood the artifacts to be remains of a mythical pre-American past or—in a more inclusive manner—as belonging to a Western civilization does not matter. In both cases he could claim these antiquities for the United States. Simultaneously, like the other explorers, he denied local Iraqis any link to or interest in the antiquities. Ward was the bluntest in his assessment; he writes, “I trust that the exploration of these cities [ancient Nippur and Anbar], to which no other country has as yet any prior right, may fall to America.”64 Alluding to the rivalry with European powers for the permissions and the best spots to excavate, Ward did not even consider the Iraqis as having a claim to the sites. He expressed the common view that it was the inalienable right of Americans and Europeans to go there and divide possible excavation sites between them without showing any consideration for local sentiments or prerogatives. Locals were tasked to serve only as submissive workers, conducting the actual digging while the explorers took care of the findings. Indeed, the inhabitants of Iraq did not think to claim antiquities as theirs until the 1920s. As opposed to the Western tradition, these ancient epochs did not feature in Arab literature and did not form the basis for their literary canon.65 The Quran mentions occurrences in ancient Iraq, for example, two angels speaking to people in Babylon.66 Nonetheless, Muslim scholars did not show an interest in ancient Iraq, as it represented the pagan age before Islam came into being. Iraqi politicians only started to use these artifacts as a means of nation-building after World War I, and a national museum in Bagh-

In Search of Biblical Mesopotamia

91

dad was opened in 1926. Until then, most Iraqis only saw the historical remains as a means of income by removing bricks for building purposes or by selling them to foreigners.67 According to the explorers, Iraqis and Ottoman officials alike caused much damage to the site. The Americans frequently reported on allegedly destructive local methods of digging to frame Iraqis as disinterested.68 This narrative also implied that the artifacts needed to be protected and saved by the explorers, as locals did not see their cultural value and thus handled them carelessly.69 This provided further explanation for their removal. Ironically, the explorers destroyed many objects and sites in their quest for artifacts by digging through younger strata and disposing of earth filled with artifacts as waste.70 Yet in their eyes, this did not disqualify them from being worthy of the antiquities. Moreover, they continued to encourage excavations by locals, buying numerous antiquities on the local antiquities market that they then shipped to the United States to be studied and displayed.71 The feverish need to acquire as many antiquities as possible for the United States was not simply aimed at increasing knowledge about ancient Iraq and, as the explorers believed, about their heritage. Rather, Americans saw in the collection of Iraqi antiquities an opportunity to compete with European countries in three ways. First, the artifacts enabled them to rival European research institutions. As explorers and their sponsors anticipated from the start, the University of Pennsylvania became, through possession of these artifacts, the leading research facility for Assyriology in the United States. This would not only boost the university’s prestige but also enable US academics to compete with German, British, and French scholars, who were leading in this discipline.72 Second, due to the expeditions to Nippur, the Free Museum of Science and Art in Philadelphia held the most sizable collection of ancient Iraqi antiquities in the United States and could rival prestigious European museums, notably the British Museum and the Louvre. Unsurprisingly, this increase in status was an important incentive for rich, philanthropically minded Philadelphians to sponsor the Nippur expeditions and the building of the new museum, as it promised to bring further prestige to Philadelphia.73 However, the Free Museum performed another important function: it was a visible sign of the superiority of US culture and power. As one unknown author stated in a letter to Charles C. Harrison, formerly provost of the University of Pennsylvania and at the time vice president of the Board of Managers of the University Museum: “So at the present day,

92

Sarah Epping

in every City even of moderate size, one or more carefully organized Museums are a recognized necessity for human progress and civilization.”74 Alluding to a scale of civilization, this unnamed author saw museums as a symbol for progress, indicating that to be considered leading on this scale a museum was a necessity. Having felt inferior to European culture for a long time, Americans at the end of the nineteenth century thought that their country had begun to catch up and even surpass Europe.75 Museums such as the Free Museum of Science and Art in Philadelphia played a crucial role in showcasing this newfound sense of cultural superiority. Third, these archaeological expeditions were considered a means to limit European power in Iraq and make US interests in the region known. In American eyes, it was time for the United States to stop waiting and challenge British, German, and French dominance in the region. As both Hilprecht and Peters reported, this was the guiding theme of the American Oriental Society meeting at which it was decided to send out a preliminary survey expedition: “England and France have done a noble work of exploration in Assyria and Babylonia. It is time for America to do her part. Let us send out an American expedition.”76 While recognizing Europe’s work, this statement at the same time tried to encourage support for an American expedition by alluding to the fact that this would constrain European influence. As this was a successful leading argument by the initiators of US archaeological work in Iraq in their quest to gain (financial) support, we can infer that such sentiments resonated with US society at that time. Excavations were considered a means of competing with European nations who had gained a head start with their earlier explorations. All in all, these expeditions and the artifacts acquired through them were a means to compete with European powers and to halt their dominance both in science and in Iraq.77 The same rhetoric used to legitimize American claims to Iraqi artifacts was applied by explorers in arguing for greater US engagement in the region. Indeed, the imagined hierarchical view Americans had regarding the evolution of human progress and race formed an important discourse justifying the US intervention in foreign territories in general.78 However, in the case of Iraq, Americans saw their claims reinforced by their assumed connection to the land and its ancient inhabitants. Their distorted image of Iraq based on the constant juxtaposition of past and present enabled the explorers to frame possible US interference as benevolent and not driven by self-interest. As, for example, Peters explains: “The first parent of our civilization is in his decrepit second childhood. . . . Some day . . .

In Search of Biblical Mesopotamia

93

he will rise to a new life, strong and vigorous as when in days of yore he begat nations and knowledge together.”79 This quote undergirds Americans’ opinion of Iraq being the home of their ancestors, and contributes to the narrative that contemporary Iraq had declined since ancient times. In addition, it exemplifies the often-applied line of argumentation by which a glorified past is used as proof of the region’s potential. More importantly, however, Peters understood that future prosperity would function as a revival rather than a new development. In this narrative he built the frame through which future US interference could be portrayed as establishing long-lost glories—practices, virtues, and methods—rather than simply grasping for imperial power. Americans would only “recivilize” the region and “resurrect” its allegedly lost greatness.80 Undeniably, Peters did not directly mention American involvement, neither in the quote mentioned here nor in his other writings. Yet in line with the other explorers, he was convinced that for Iraq to prosper, a foreign power needed to take charge. While seldom stating so directly, the explorers alluded to the fault of the Ottoman government for not implementing improvements, if not for Iraq’s “backwardness” altogether. Therefore, they argued for a change of government, or at minimum for someone to step in and guide the locals toward prosperity.81 Few went as far as Ward, who called upon Americans to colonize Iraq. He writes in his diary, which was published as an appendix in Peters’s book about the first expedition: “The country to-day has all been uncultivated and barren, and yet this is the site of the Garden of Eden, and is of unsurpassed fertility, and would be teeming with population if there were a good government. What a region for colonization!”82 Ward applied the common method of describing contemporary Iraq by contrasting its empty, unproductive plains with the Garden of Eden, which symbolized for many Americans paradise and abundance. “Good government,” he states, would be the solution to make Iraq prosper once again. Although he did not name a specific government for the task, he insinuated that he did not see an Arab or the Ottoman government as the solution. Rather, his exclamation at the end can be understood as an invitation for Americans to get more involved in Iraq. Explorers offered an additional incentive for US engagement by portraying themselves as pioneers. Writing about his experiences during the fourth expedition to Nippur (1899–1900) for the bulletin of the Free Museum, Hilprecht reports: “Where formerly poverty and distrust of travelers and explorers ruled, a change had gradually taken place among the natives.”83 Because the explorers paid

94

Sarah Epping

wages to the workers and protection money to their tribe’s leader and bought all their foodstuff from locals, “the Arabs had learned to regard our work as extremely advantageous to their own interests. Also the hundreds of sick people, suffering principally from pulmonary diseases, typhoid and malarial fevers, who had received help and comfort from us in the past years, had been our best agents among their relatives and friends in the different tribes.”84 While Hilprecht incorporated this segment chiefly to boast how well the explorers got along with the local population, it also conveyed another message: Iraqis liked the American people very much. According to Hilprecht, the prosperity brought by American involvement in the region, and in particular the medical care that explorers provided, won locals over far and wide. The fact that they did this through the very questionable practice of working as doctors without medical training did not seem to bother Hilprecht, or any other explorer for that matter.85 They all examined people and made up strange remedies, tricking the locals into believing they knew what they were doing to win them over.

Conclusion At the turn of the nineteenth century, Americans with an interest in Iraq drew upon a very specific, contradictory image of the country and its people that they themselves helped construct, propagate, and consequently perpetuate, and which lives on to the present day. As exemplified in this chapter by US explorers excavating ancient Nippur, Americans defined their relationship to Iraqis in both an inclusionary and exclusionary manner, making use of “civilization” as their guiding concept. They invoked the image of one universal civilization encompassing all human beings to construct across the millennia a fictional connection between themselves and the people of ancient Iraq, which enabled them to interpret Iraq’s past as their own. Distinguishing between an imagined glorious past and an allegedly decayed present, Americans simultaneously excluded contemporary Iraqis from this vision and denied them any connection to the past of the land they inhabited. Americans inverted the positions of locals and ranked them very low on a scale of civilization, using measures of human progress according to an imperial logic. This contentious notion influenced Americans’ actions in the region and their understanding of their role in Iraq, as it depicted Iraq as the rightful domain of the United States, both in historical as well as geographical terms.

In Search of Biblical Mesopotamia

95

Explorers used this exclusionary vision—which at the same time created a common notion of identity—to advance their aspirations in Iraq and infer that US interference in Iraq was desired, justified, and necessary. This idea enabled Americans to rationalize conducting excavations in Nippur and to lay claim to the findings, as these objects were thought to reveal information about US heritage. They argued that Iraqi antiquities needed to be shipped to Philadelphia to protect them from harm done by locals. Furthermore, explorers thought that their work in Iraq was a means to win locals’ hearts and minds. These lines of argumentation bring us full circle, as they are echoed within the political messages of the DoD’s playing cards outlined in the introduction. This illustrates that Americans with an interest in Iraq today still apply a similar line of argumentation to justify and encourage their involvement in the region. Revealing this pattern is of utmost importance if we are to initiate a shift in the US attitude toward Iraq and put bilateral relations on a more balanced footing. Moreover, this chapter exemplifies how within American foreign policy, the vision of a unified humanity only holds true as long as it serves US objectives. Accordingly, “humanity” ought to be understood as a construct fabricated by historical actors to rationalize certain behavior with a complete disregard for the sentiments of others.

Sarah Epping is a PhD candidate at the John F. Kennedy Institute for North American Studies at Freie Universität Berlin. Her research interests include transnational history and US relations to the Middle East. In her research she explores the United States’ involvement in Ottoman Iraq up to 1921, on which she has recently published “Between Humanitarianism and Imperialism—’Michigan in Arabia,’ Basra, and U.S. Engagement in Iraq, 1910–1917,” Endowment Studies 4, nos. 1–2 (2020): 11–39. She holds a master’s degree in history and Middle Eastern Studies from Universität zu Köln.

Notes 1. I thank Dr. Laurie Rush of the DoD, who created these cards, for her generous gift of the actual card deck for me to use in class. For more information on the card deck, its history of origin, and a defense of its function, see Zeidler and Rush, “In-Theatre Soldier Training.” 2. A number of books deal with the destruction of cultural property in Iraq during the war in 2003, including Stone and Fisk, Destruction of Cultural Heritage; Rothfield, Antiquities under Siege.

96

Sarah Epping

3. In addition, archaeologists trained troops in how to handle historical artifacts at Ford Drum, New York, before their deployment to Iraq. Schlesinger, “From the Trenches,” 9. 4. Newspapers prominently spread this message among the wider American public, a tactic used by the media during both Gulf Wars. Pollock and Lutz, “Archaeology Deployed”; Pollock, “Archaeology Goes to War.” 5. Two of Clubs; emphasis in original. 6. Nine of Hearts. 7. For a detailed discussion of the message of the playing cards, see also Malley, “Layard Enterprise.” 8. Realizing and acknowledging the problems that come along with this generalization, I will for the sake of convenience be using “Americans” in the course of this chapter to refer to citizens of the United States. 9. Until 1921, the era of the present Iraqi state consisted of three provinces of the Ottoman Empire, and there is an ongoing debate about whether or not these three so-called vilayets formed a unit before the foundation of the kingdom of Iraq. Following Reidar Visser and Sara Pursley, I will be using “Iraq.” Visser, “Proto-Political Conceptions”; Pursley, “Lines Drawn.” For the other position, see most recently Marr, “One Iraq or Many.” 10. To facilitate reading, I will refer to these ancient peoples collectively as “ancient Iraqis,” acknowledging that they never comprised a unit in ancient times. 11. Klose and Thulin, “Introduction.” 12. The idea that there are multiple civilizations only started to emerge after World War I. For the different meanings of the term “civilization” since that time, see Duara, “The Discourse of Civilization,” 1–5. 13. Prior to the Enlightenment, historians mostly presented history as cyclical, arguing that events and stages of society and history repeated themselves. While ancient Greek philosophers such as Aristotle had already viewed history as evolutionary, this theory took root at the beginning of the nineteenth century, with Auguste Comte (1798–1857), Herbert Spencer (1820–1903), and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831) among its main proponents. Bowler, Evolution. 14. Duara, “The Discourse of Civilization,” 2. 15. Bethencourt, “Humankind.” 16. Research has shown that presumably neutral humanitarian actors disregard the notion of equality. They interfere without expertise and attention to the cultural and political context of the recipient people. Measured along Western ideas of human progress, these are depicted as living in “less developed” regions of the world. Barnett and Weiss, Humanitarianism in Question; Paulmann, Dilemmas of Humanitarian Aid. 17. For a discussion of these terms, see Eriksen, “What’s Wrong.” 18. There exists very little scholarly work on US involvement in Iraq before the 1950s; most notable are Hahn, Missions; Samuel, “The Open Door.” 19. For US missionaries in Iraq, see Zdanowski, Saving Sinners. For the University of Michigan students’ project in Basra, see Epping, “Between Humanitarianism and Imperialism.” 20. Consequently, I will refer to them collectively as “explorers.” 21. For more information on these excavations, see Meade, Road to Babylon; Kuklick, Puritans in Babylon. 22. For the British image of Iraq between 1900 and 1921 and how it changed during this time, see Atia, “Relic”; Atia, “Wartime Tourist Trail.” 23. Said, Orientalism. Said effectively argued that Orientalism was a particular discourse, a system of Western knowledge that had little to do with what the region

In Search of Biblical Mesopotamia

24.

25.

26. 27. 28. 29. 30.

31. 32. 33. 34. 35.

36.

37. 38. 39.

40. 41.

42. 43.

97

truly looked like and more to do with the Western assumption that “East” and “West” were radically different. This discourse was shaped by Europeans’ will to dominate the Orient. Said’s work has been challenged by other scholars, and he revised his arguments over the years. Said, Culture and Imperialism. For a comprehensive summary of the various responses and critiques, see Lockman, Contending Visions, 182–214; Varisco, Reading Orientalism. There have been some studies on the influence Orientalism had on international relations and foreign policies in the United States, notably McAlister, Epic Encounters; Little, American Orientalism; Jacobs, Imagining the Middle East. Research on the connection of archaeology and imperialism is extensive: Effros and Lai, Unmasking Ideology; Malley, From Archaeology to Spectacle; García, World History. Peters, Nippur (Vol. 1), 265. Ward, Papers of the Archaeological Institute, 27. Locher, Star and Crescent, 6. Locher, Star and Crescent, 92, 99. Hilprecht, Explorations in Bible Lands, 139 (quoting Lotfus, “Travel and Research in Chaldeao and Susina with an Account of Excavations Unknown.”) Hilprecht’s book was published in at least eight editions between 1903 and 1907, which speaks to the remarkable popularity of the topic. Interestingly, the same content was published in 1904 under a different title, which omitted stark references to the Bible: Hilprecht, Excavations in Assyria. Hilprecht, Exploration in Bible Lands, 353. Peters, Nippur (Vol. 2), 245. Peters, Nippur (Vol. 2), 246. Peters, Nippur (Vol. 2), 245, 246, 293; Hilprecht, Explorations in Bible Lands, 69, similar 57. Above all, European archaeologists with their research and excavations in Iraq were responsible for the inclusion of ancient Iraq into this understanding of history. US explorers contributed to the perpetuation of this tradition. Mickel, “Orientalism and Origins.” For more on how this book came to be considered a “literary masterpiece” and a trustworthy guide to Middle Eastern cultures in Europe and the United States, against which Westerners measured the physical reality of the Middle East, see Reynolds, “A Thousand and One Nights.” Myers, Remains of Lost Empires, 103; M’Collester, Babylon and Nineveh, 70, 73, 92, 101, 255, 257. Peters, Nippur (Vol. 1), 99, 119, 140. In particular, illustrated parlor Bibles contributed significantly to the branding of Iraq as a biblical land. By the 1870s, Bible dictionaries, Sunday School literature, devotional works, Bible histories, and biblical antiquity handbooks also began to include information about ancient Iraq. Cohen and Kangas, “Our Nineveh Enterprise”; Holloway, “Nineveh Sails.” Ward, Papers of the Archaeological Institute, 25; Peters, Nippur (Vol. 1), 91, 96, 105, 127; Hilprecht, Explorations in Bible Lands, 294, 411–412. For more on the problematic nature of this term, and how Mesopotamia as it is understood today is a mere construct of Western imperialism, see Bahrani, “Conjuring Mesopotamia”; Helle, “The Return of Mess O’potamia”; Rattenborg, “Configuring Mesopotamia.” Hilprecht, Explorations in Bible Lands, 312, 332, 337; Peters, Nippur (Vol. 2), 43. Bahrani, “Conjuring Mesopotamia,” 159–174. Also see Liverani, “Ancient Near Eastern History.”

98

Sarah Epping

44. For the history of the museum and the circumstances of its founding, see Madeira, Men in Search of Man. 45. “Collections and Publications,” 32. 46. “Collections and Publications,” 33. 47. Activities 1906–1909, Box 1 (1890–1895 to 1910–1913), Museum Administration, Public Relations/Activities, Chronological Files, University of Pennsylvania Museum Archives. 48. Postcolonial scholars have argued that this process of intellectual appropriation has repercussions in the present day. Regarding Iraq, see Starzmann, “Cultural Imperialism.” 49. For an analysis on the extent to which the Bible and classical literature influenced how literature, visual art, and material culture depicted Iraq in the modern era and consequently shaped the image US Americans and Europeans had about (ancient) Iraq, see in particular Bohrer, Orientalism and Visual Culture; Holloway, “Introduction”; Scheil, Babylon under Western Eyes. 50. Hilprecht, Explorations in Bible Lands, 3–4. 51. Jacobson, Barbarian Virtues; Schueller, U.S. Orientalisms. 52. Hilprecht, Explorations in Bible Lands, 56. 53. Hilprecht, Explorations in Bible Lands, 315. 54. Peters, Nippur (Vol. 1), 102–103. 55. Peters, Nippur (Vol. 1), 231; Peters, Nippur (Vol. 2), 290. 56. Peters, Nippur (Vol. 1), 20. 57. Peters, Nippur (Vol. 1), 87. 58. Peters, Nippur (Vol. 2), 263. Hilprecht comes to the same conclusion: Hilprecht, Explorations in Bible Lands, 555. 59. Peters, Nippur (Vol. 2), 265. 60. Peters, Nippur (Vol. 1), 89. 61. Hilprecht, Explorations in Bible Lands, 252. 62. Wolf, Europe and the People without History. 63. Peters, Nippur (Vol. 2), 271–272. 64. Ward, Papers of the Archaeological Institute, 29. 65. The only native archaeologist, Hormuzd Rassam (1826–1910), worked for the British and his findings were sent to the British Museum. Reade, “Hormuzd Rassam.” 66. Quran 2:102. 67. Baram, Culture, History and Ideology; Bernhardsson, Reclaiming a Plundered Past. 68. Haynes to Pepper, 13 April 1895, Nippur, Mesopotamia (Iraq) 1889–1900, Correspondence, Box 4, Folder 10, University of Pennsylvania Museum Archives (UPMA). 69. For the theme of heritage protection as a “civilizing mission” in colonial and postcolonial contexts, see Falser, Cultural Heritage. 70. Report of the Board of Managers, 12; Haynes to Clark, n.d. [probably June/July 1895], Nippur, Mesopotamia (Iraq) 1889–1900, Correspondence, Box 4, Folder 10, UPMA. 71. According to Ottoman antiquity law, all findings of the excavations were to be sent to the Imperial Museum in Constantinople, where the curator would decide how many (if any) would be sent to the United States. Fearing that they would receive none, the explorers from the start were ordered by their sponsors to buy as many antiquities as possible from local dealers, despite illegality. For more information on Ottoman antiquity law and the shift in the Ottoman attitude toward artifacts found within their vast empire, see Shaw, Possessors and Possessed; Bahrani et al., Scramble for the Past.

In Search of Biblical Mesopotamia

99

72. Charles C. Harrison to Hilprecht, 16 January 1892, Office of the Provost Records, Charles C. Harrison Files, Box 2, Folder 26 “1891–1894,” University of Pennsylvania Archives (UPA); Hilprecht to Harrison from Constantinople, 20 July 1894, Office of the Provost Records, Charles C. Harrison Files, Box 2, Folder 27 “July 1894–Dec 1894,” UPA; Hilprecht to Harrison from Nippur, 3 April 1900, Office of the Provost Records, Charles C. Harrison Files, Box 2, Folder 31 “1900–1901,” UPA; Report of the Board of Managers. 73. Fundraising subscription, n.d., Museum Administration, Public Relations, Activities Chronological Files 1890–1895 to 1910–1912, Box 1 “1890–1895 to 1910–1913,” Folder “Museum activities 1896–99,” UPMA; Robert H. Lamborn to Sara Y. Stevenson, 29 January 1893, Administrative Records, Board of Managers (1887–1910), Box 1, Folder “Correspondence 1890–1891,” UPMA; “Address by the Provost at the Opening of the Free Museum of Science and Art of the University of Pennsylvania,” 20 December 1899, Office of the Provost Records, Charles C. Harrison Files, Box 5, Folder “Speeches 1895–1900,” UPA; Harrison to Charles L. McKeehan, 2 May 1912, Office of the Provost Records, Charles C. Harrison Files, Box 4, Folder “University Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology,” Museum, Letterpress book, May 1912 to November 1919, UPA. 74. Unknown to Harrison, 27 July 1911, Office of the Provost Records, Charles C. Harrison Files, Box 3, Folder 9 “Museum 1911–1916,” UPA. 75. Dimaggio, “Cultural Entrepreneurship”; Rennella, The Boston Cosmopolitans. 76. Peters, Nippur (Vol. 1), 1; Hilprecht, Explorations in Bible Lands, 290. 77. Havrelock argues that already before World War I the competition among archaeological teams from different nations in the Ottoman Empire was closely connected to the competition for drilling rights for oil. The entanglement of the oil industry and archaeology intensified in the 1920s in the United States. In 1919, Standard Oil cofounder John D. Rockefeller Jr. had founded the Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago, and in 1920, he sponsored archaeologist James Henry Breasted’s trip to Iraq. Havrelock, “The Ancient Past.” 78. The European empires applied the exact same discourse. For the United States, see, for example, Ninkovich, The United States and Imperialism; Adas, Dominance by Design; Kramer, The Blood of Government; Tyrrell, Reforming the World. 79. Peters, Nippur (Vol. 2), 306. 80. Babylon Reports from Nippur 1900 by Geere, Office of the Provost Records, Charles C. Harrison Files, Box 2, Folder 31 “1900–1901,” UPA; Adler, Report, 103. 81. Hilprecht, Explorations in Bible Lands, 434. 82. Peters, Nippur (Vol. 1), 350–351. 83. Hilprecht, “Recent Excavations,” 87, 87–91. 84. Hilprecht, “Recent Excavations,” 87–88. 85. Peters, Nippur (Vol. 1), 243–265, 350 (Ward’s diary); Peters, Nippur (Vol. 2), 80.

Bibliography Adas, Frank A. Dominance by Design: Technological Imperatives and America’s Civilizing Mission. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2006. Adler, Cyrus. Report on the Section of Oriental Antiquities in the U.S. National Museum, 1888: From the Report of the Smithsonian Institution, 1887–’88, Part II. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1890.

100

Sarah Epping

Atia, Nadia. “A Relic of Its Own Past: Mesopotamia in the British Imagination 1900–14.” Memory Studies 3, no. 3 (2010). ———. “A Wartime Tourist Trail: Mesopotamia in the British Imagination, 1914–1918.” Studies in Travel Writing 16, no. 4 (2012): 403–414. Bahrani, Zainab. “Conjuring Mesopotamia: Imaginative Geographic and a World Past.” In Archaeology under Fire: Nationalism, Politics and Heritage in the Eastern Mediterranean and Middle East, edited by Lynn Meskell, 159–174. London: Routledge, 1998. Bahrani, Zainab, Zeynep Çelik, and Edhem Eldem, eds. Scramble for the Past: A Story of Archaeology in the Ottoman Empire, 1753–1914. Istanbul: SALT, 2011. Baram, Amatzia. Culture, History and Ideology in the Formation of Ba’thist Iraq, 1968–89. London: Palgrave Macmillan Limited, 1991. Barnett, Michael N., and Thomas G. Weiss, eds. Humanitarianism in Question: Politics, Power, Ethics. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2008. Bernhardsson, Magnus T. Reclaiming a Plundered Past: Archaeology and Nation Building in Modern Iraq. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2005. Bethencourt, Francisco. “Humankind: From Division to Recomposition.” In Humanity, edited by Fabian Klose and Mirjam Thulin, 29–50. Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2016. Bohrer, Frederick N. Orientalism and Visual Culture: Imagining Mesopotamia in Nineteenth-Century Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Bowler, Peter. Evolution: The History of an Idea. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009. Cohen, Ada, and Steven E. Kangas. “‘Our Nineveh Enterprise.’” In Assyrian Reliefs from the Palace of Ashurnasirpal II: A Cultural Biography, edited by Ada Cohen and Steven E. Kangas, 1–47. Lebanon, NH: New England University Press, 2010. “Collections and Publications. Asia. Babylonia.” Bulletin of the Free Museum of Science and Art 1, no. 1 (May 1897). Dimaggio, Paul. “Cultural Entrepreneurship in Nineteenth-Century Boston: The Creation of an Organizational Base for High Culture in America.” Media, Culture and Society 4, no. 1 (1982): 33–50. Duara, Prasenjit. “The Discourse of Civilization and Decolonization.” Journal of World History 15, no. 1 (March 2004): 1–5. Effros, Bonnie, and Guolong Lai, eds. Unmasking Ideology in Imperial and Colonial Archaeology: Vocabulary, Symbols, and Legacy. Los Angeles: Cotsen Institute of Archaeology Press (UCLA), 2018. Epping, Sarah. “Between Humanitarianism and Imperialism: ‘Michigan in Arabia,’ Basra, and U.S. Engagement in Iraq, 1910–1917.” Endowment Studies 4, no. 1–2 (2020): 11–39. Eriksen, Thomas H. “What’s Wrong with the Global North and the Global South?” Voices from around the World 1 (2015): 3–4.

In Search of Biblical Mesopotamia

101

Falser, Michael, ed. Cultural Heritage as Civilizing Mission: From Decay to Recovery. New York: Springer, 2015. García, Margarita D. A World History of Nineteenth-Century Archaeology: Nationalism, Colonialism, and the Past. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. Hahn, Peter L. Missions Accomplished? The United States and Iraq since World War I. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. Havrelock, Rachel. “The Ancient Past That Oil Built.” The Bible & the Critical Theory 11, no. 2 (2015): 51–60. Helle, Sophus. “The Return of Mess O’potamia: Time, Space, and Politics in Modern Uses of Ancient Mesopotamia.” Postcolonial Studies 19, no. 3 (2016): 305–324. Hilprecht, Hermann V. Explorations in Bible Lands during the 19th Century. Philadelphia: A.J. Holman and Company, 1903. ———. The Excavations in Assyria and Babylonia. Philadelphia: A.J. Holman and Company, 1904. ———. “The Recent Excavations of the University at Nippur.” Free Museum of Science and Art Bulletin 2, no. 2 (June 1899): 87–91. Holloway, Steven W. “Nineveh Sails for the New World: Assyrian Envisioned by Nineteenth-Century America.” Iraq 66 (2004): 243–256. ———. “Introduction: Orientalism, Assyriology and the Bible.” In Orientalism, Assyriology and the Bible, edited by Steven W. Holloway, 1–41. Sheffield: Phoenix Press, 2007. Jacobs, Matthew F. Imagining the Middle East: The Building of an American Foreign Policy, 1918–1967. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011. Jacobson, Matthew F. Barbarian Virtues: The United States Encounters Foreign Peoples at Home and Abroad, 1876–1917, 1st ed. New York: Hill and Wang, 2000. Klose, Fabian, and Mirjam Thulin, “Introduction: European Concepts and Practices of Humanity in Historical Perspective.” In Humanity, edited by Klose and Thulin, 9–28. Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2016. Kramer, Paul A. The Blood of Government: Race, Empire, the United States, and the Philippines. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006. Kuklick, Bruce. Puritans in Babylon: The Ancient Near East and American Intellectual Life, 1880–1930. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996. Little, Douglas. American Orientalism: The United States and the Middle East since 1945. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010. Liverani, Marion. “Ancient Near Eastern History. From Eurocentrism to an ‘Open’ World.” Isimu: Revista sobre Oriente Próximo y Egipto en la entigüedad 2 (1999): 3–9. Locher, A. With Star and Crescent: A Full and Authentic Account of a Recent Journey with a Caravan from Bombay to Constantinople, Comprising a

102

Sarah Epping

Description of the Country, the People, and Interesting Adventures with the Natives. Twickenham: Athena Publishing Company, 1891. Lockman, Zachary. Contending Visions of the Middle East: The History and Politics of Orientalism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. M’Collester, Sullivan H. Babylon and Nineveh through American Eyes. Boston: Universalist Publishing House, 1892. Madeira, Jr., Percy C. Men in Search of Man: The First Seventy-Five Years of the University Museum of the University of Pennsylvania. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1964. Malley, Shawn. “Layard Enterprise: Victorian Archaeology and Informal Imperialism in Mesopotamia.” International Journal of Middle East Studies 40, no. 4 (November 2008): 623–646. ———. From Archaeology to Spectacle in Victorian Britain: The Case of Assyria, 1845–1854, 1st ed. Oxfordshire: Taylor and Francis, 2016. Marr, Phebe. “One Iraq or Many: What Has Happened to Iraqi Identity?” In Iraq Between Occupations: Perspectives from 1920 to the Present, edited by Amatzia Baram, Achim Rohde, and Ronen Zeidel, 15–41. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. McAlister, Melani. Epic Encounters: Culture, Media, and U.S. Interests in the Middle East since 1945. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001. Meade, C. Wade. Road to Babylon: Development of U.S. Assyriology. Leiden: Brill, 1974. Mickel, Allison. “Orientalism and Origins: The Search for Firsts in the Cradle of Civilization.” In Interrogating Human Origins: Decolonisation and the Deep Human Past, edited by Martin Porr and Jacqueline M. Matthews, 139–159. London: Routledge, 2020. Myers, Philip V. N. Remains of Lost Empires: Sketches of the Ruins of Palmyra, Nineveh, Babylon, and Persepolis, with Some Notes on India and the Cashmerian Himalayas. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1875. Ninkovich, Frank A. The United States and Imperialism. Hoboken: Blackwell Publishers, 2001. Paulmann, Johannes, ed. Dilemmas of Humanitarian Aid in the Twentieth Century. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016. Peters, John P. Nippur or Explorations and Adventures on the Euphrates (Vol. 1): The Narrative of the University of Pennsylvania Expedition to Babylonia in the Years 1888–1890. New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1897. ———. Nippur or Exploration and Adventures on the Euphrates (Vol. 2): The Narrative of the University of Pennsylvania Expedition to Babylonia in the Years 1888–1890. New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1897. Pollock, Susan. “Archaeology Goes to War at the Newsstand.” In Archaeologies of the Middle East: Critical Perspectives, edited by Susan Pollock and Reinhard Bernbeck, 78–96. Hoboken: Blackwell Publishing, 2005. Pollock, Susan, and Catherine Lutz. “Archaeology Deployed for the Gulf War.” Critique of Anthropology 14, no. 3 (1994): 263–284.

In Search of Biblical Mesopotamia

103

Pursley, Sara. “‘Lines Drawn on an Empty Map’: Iraq’s Borders and the Legend of the Artificial State.” Jadaliyya (June 2015). Retrieved 11 November 2021 from https://www.jadaliyya.com/Details/32153. Rattenborg, Rune. “Configuring Mesopotamia: Regional Signifiers and the Many Locations of the ‘Land Between the Rivers.’” In Mapping Ancient Identities: Methodisch-kritische Reflexionen zu Kartierungspraktiken, edited by Susanna Grunwald et al., 149–168. Berlin: Edition Topoi, 2018. Reade, Julian. “Hormuzd Rassam and His Discoveries.” Iraq 55 (1993): 39–62. Rennella, Mark. The Boston Cosmopolitans: International Travel and American Arts and Letters, 1865–1915, 1st ed. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008. Report of the Board of Managers of the Department of Archaeology and Palaeontology of the University of Pennsylvania 1893. Philadelphia: University of Philadelphia Department of Archaeology and Palaeontology, 1894. Reynolds, Dwight F. “A Thousand and One Nights: A History of the Text and Its Reception.” In Arabic Literature in the Post-Classical Period, edited by R. Allen and D. Richards, 270–291. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Rothfield, Lawrence, ed. Antiquities under Siege: Cultural Heritage Protection after the Iraq War. Lanham, MD: AltaMira Press, 2008. Said, Edward. Orientalism. New York: Pantheon Books, 1978. ———. Culture and Imperialism. New York: Knopf, 1994. Samuel, Annie T. “The Open Door and U.S. Policy in Iraq Between the World Wars.” Diplomatic History 38, no. 5 (2014): 926–952. Scheil, Andrew P. Babylon under Western Eyes: A Study of Allusion and Myth. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2016. Schlesinger, Victoria. “From the Trenches: Desert Solitaire.” Archaeology 60, no. 4 (July/August 2007). Schueller, Malini J. U.S. Orientalisms: Race, Nation, and Gender in Literature, 1790–1890. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2001. Shaw, Wendy M. K. Possessors and Possessed: Museums, Archaeology, and the Visualization of History in the Late Ottoman Empire. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003. Starzmann, Maria T. “Cultural Imperialism and Heritage Politics in the Event of Armed Conflicts: Prospects for an ‘Activist Archaeology.’” Archaeologies: Journal of the World of Archaeological Congress 4, no. 3 (2008): 368–389. Stone, Peter G., and Robert Fisk, eds. The Destruction of Cultural Heritage in Iraq. Suffolk: Boydell, 2008. Tyrrell, Ian. Reforming the World: The Creation of America’s Moral Empire. Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2010.

104

Sarah Epping

Varisco, Daniel M. Reading Orientalism: Said and the Unsaid. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2007. Visser, Reider. “Proto-Political Conceptions of ‘Iraq’ in Late Ottoman Times.” International Journal of Contemporary Iraqi Studies 3, no. 2 (2009): 143–154. Ward, William H. Papers of the Archaeological Institute of America: Report on the Wolfe Expedition to Babylonia 1884–85. Boston: Cupples, Upham, and Company, 1886. Wolf, Eric R. Europe and the People without History. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982. Zdanowski, Jerzy. Saving Sinners, Even Moslems: The Arabian Mission (1889–1973) and Its Intellectual Roots. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2018. Zeidler, James and Laurie Rush. “In-Theatre Soldier Training Through Cultural Heritage Playing Cards: A US Department of Defense Example.” In Archaeology, Cultural Property, and the Military, edited by Laurie Rush, 73–85. Suffolk: Boydell, 2010.

Part II

WORK

Chapter 4

TENSIONS OF “HUMANITY” Jewish Philanthropy and Refugee Crises in Eastern Europe, 1881–1914 Barbara Lambauer

This chapter explores how Jewish aid organizations responded to

humanitarian crises in the border regions of Central and Eastern Europe’s empires during the last quarter of the nineteenth century—a time of conflicting nation- and state-building processes that questioned and unsettled West European Jewish self-understandings. Focusing on the links between refugee crises, transnational humanitarian mobilization, and mass migration, my central argument is that a historical inquiry into Jewish humanitarian aid efforts draws attention to the tensions inherent in the norms and understandings of “humanity” that stood behind such efforts. Relief actions, the chapter will show, drew widely from a universal language of humanity, but molded such language into the vision of a particular transcendent cultural “we.” Meanwhile, efforts of bringing Western aid to Eastern lifeworlds created lines of difference between those giving and receiving aid, while the quotidian reality on the ground set limits to what humanitarian assistance could do. By focusing on these tensions, the chapter hopes to contribute a critical historical reflection on the ambivalences of notions of humanity at the turn of the century. Thinking about visions of humanity through the lens of Jewish humanitarian giving, it claims, shows how historical actors co-opted the language of humanity for goals that reflected their cultural Western backgrounds; sheds light on the struggles and practical challenges realizing such goals involved; and therewith also

Notes for this section begin on page 125.

108

Barbara Lambauer

helps caution against a simplifying progress narrative of an everexpanding inclusive, transcendent, and universally shared vision of humanity. The language of humanity, I show, provided a powerful template to frame institutional missions, but what it meant was open and allowed for particularistic framings of a cultural “we.” In what follows, the first section will show how, beginning with the Alliance Israélite Universelle (AIU) in 1860, a new transnational Jewish philanthropic network formed in Western Europe. The second section then examines the activities of the network during the refugee crises occurring in Russia in 1881 and 1882. The last section explores the development of integrative projects by the philanthropic network up- and downstream of migration flows and demonstrates how former migrants increasingly emancipated themselves from humanitarian donors, leading to a progressive inversion of assistance roles when the Old World collapsed at the outbreak of World War I.

A New Force for the “Progress of Humanity”: The Beginnings of the AIU in the 1860s and 1870s Up until the late nineteenth century, transnational Jewish philanthropy typically drew from ideas of Enlightenment—including human rights, liberalism, and the ideal of democratic governing—as well as from the concept of promoting self-help for the lower classes, based on moral values and an emphasis on skilled craftwork. After the Jewish emancipation in France in 1793 and the Vienna Congress of 1815— which had established national rights, religious toleration, and civil equality as standard principles in international diplomacy—Jewish elites in Western Europe held a deep faith in the linear “progress” of humankind toward a responsible and free humanity and liberty for oppressed minorities, including Jews in countries where they still lacked equal rights.1 Jewish aid during the late nineteenth century did not deviate from these principles, but saw a transformation of its contexts as the spread of print media began to enhance stronger contact and solidarity between more or less distant communities in different countries, subjected to different political regimes. As Narcisse Leven, cofounder of the AIU, put it: “The Jews living in the free countries who had obtained all their civil and political rights were the natural defenders of those to whom it was impossible to achieve anything by themselves.”2 By 1840, this new pervasive sense of solidarity within the Jewish community showed in the context of sev-

Tensions of “Humanity”

109

eral affairs, the most stunning occurring in Damas, where charges of ritual murder were brought against Jewish notables and led to the imprisonment, torture, and death of some of them.3 The crisis attracted wide coverage in the international press and stirred up feelings of solidarity among and with Jews, which also gave way to the first international Jewish subscription fundraising.4 The same year, a small delegation (Adolphe Crémieux for the Central Consistory in Paris and Moses Montefiore for the Board of Deputies in London), supported by several European political personalities, also traveled to the Ottoman Empire in order to intervene on behalf of the accused community.5 The Damas affair had two important, long-lasting effects. For one, the delegation was shocked by the misery and social isolation of the Jewish populations in the Ottoman Empire and subsequently moved to found two Jewish schools in Egypt to “elevate” and “raise” younger generations to (Western) civilization by way of education. More important, the affair also established a new pattern for Jewish aid efforts. From then on, Jewish communities throughout the world would appeal to the English Board or to the French Consistory in cases of hostile legislation, violence, and other crises. Thus, eighteen years later, the so-called Mortara affair in Italy again mobilized the Jewish community throughout Europe, when a Jewish child, Edgardo Mortara, secretly baptized by a servant, was kidnapped and brought to the papal institutions in Rome, which refused henceforth to return the child to his parents. Again, the affair had a strong mobilizing impact, but it also made clear that no religious authorities, neither the consistory nor the board, were ready to deal systematically with such “foreign affairs.”6 It was precisely against this background of ongoing discrimination that the AIU was founded in Paris in May 1860 by a group of seventeen young men, without support or even approval from the consistory, which, on the contrary, deplored this apparent lack of prudence.7 As the AIU’s first newsletter declared, “the era of pure and simple deliberation is over, the time for action has come, and men of good will, feeling what has to be done, have only to agree on the mode of execution, to found the new work hand in hand.”8 The appeal called for the unity of all Jewish communities: “the simple fact that we feel we are in a real community of opinion with others, that others feel the same way we do about insults and favors, is enough to inspire more perseverance in the struggle, more hope in success, more determination to brave injustice.”9 Translated into several languages in order to reach the widest possible audience, it claimed to

110

Barbara Lambauer

be on a mission in the name of humanity: “if you believe that it would be an honor for your religion, a lesson for the peoples, a step forward for humanity, a triumph for universal truth and reason to see all the living forces of Judaism concentrated, small in number, great in love and the will to do good, come to us, we are founding the Alliance Israélite Universelle!”10 The appeal stressed the necessity for common action regardless of one’s nation, as “our cause is linked to the cause of progress in the whole world.” And further: “all important faiths are represented by nations” and “embodied by governments advocating special interests and official missions,” whereas “ours is the only without this important advantage.”11 The new organization would fight for Jewish emancipation and moral progress wherever needed, effectively support those suffering for being Jewish, and, last but not least, encourage “every publication” allowing for these goals to be reached: “the use of the press already serves as an invaluable lever for moving mountains of hostile prejudices . . . ; at every moment, there are facts to be revealed, accusations to be refuted, truths to be promulgated.”12 The association, “destined to become a home [foyer] for moral progress, religious solidarity, and protection,” would thus act through collecting knowledge on the sufferings of coreligionists: “in this way, no act of religious intolerance . . . will be perpetrated in the world without being echoed here.” In the following years, the number of AIU members rose from 850 in 1861 to 3,900 in 1865 and 30,300 in 1885, with about 400 local committees in different countries.13 Its publication, the Bulletin de l’Alliance Israélite Universelle, assembling news and opinions from members, committees, and communities, joined the many Jewish newspapers then circulating in different parts of Europe, offering new channels of information exchange and transnational connection. The AIU financed its activities through mass subscription and fundraising campaigns that targeted members of the new middle classes, as well as through bigger donations from wealthier individuals. The latter included the Bavarian-Belgian financier Maurice de Hirsch, a member of the AIU Central Committee from 1876 on, who saved it from a debt crisis six years later and henceforth dedicated substantial funds to its projects.14 The main emphasis of the AIU’s activities was soon put on what could be regarded as long-term projects of “Westernization”: an effort to enact a socioeconomic change of Jewish communities through an “educational revolution”15 that inevitably unsettled traditional hierarchies by reducing the influence of religious authorities. In 1862, the AIU therefore began to set up a school network in the Mediterra-

Tensions of “Humanity”

111

nean region, beginning with a first school in Tétouan (Morocco). By 1871, fourteen such schools had followed with 2,365 students, and by 1913 the numbers were up to 183 schools and 43,700 students.16 In 1867, the AIU also established its own teaching seminar, the Ecole normale israélite orientale, with students recruited among graduates of its local schools.17 The first years of the AIU’s work in philanthropy were characterized by rosy optimism and deep belief in the universal moral, scientific, and political “progress” of humankind, achieved through active engagement in human rights interventionism and the push for a renewal of Jewish life in the spirit of “modernization,” while the extension of equal rights to Jewish citizens in Italy, Austria-Hungary, and Germany seemed to build further grounds for optimism. Yet the French defeat against Germany in 1871 also opened the gates to a gradual “nationalization” of Jewish humanitarianism that began to undermine the AIU’s claims to universalism. Reflecting those tensions, the Central Committee of the AIU was extended to include a large number of non-French—often German—members.18 New partner organizations, though remaining closely connected to the AIU, now began to take over some of its responsibilities, demonstrating the limits of its intended universalism in the age of nationalism.19 In Austria, the Israelitische Allianz zu Wien (IAW, 1873) reflected growing claims for patriotism and loyalty toward “the nation.” In England, meanwhile, the Anglo-Jewish Association (AJA, 1871) stressed its own “flourishing condition,” with rising numbers of “fresh adherents” joining its ranks and subscriptions, and later opened branches in Sydney and Ballarat, Jamaica, Sierra Leone, Cape Town, and Montreal.20 In 1901, the Hilfsverein der Deutschen Juden joined the cluster. Over time, transnational philanthropic networks, steered by wealthy Jewish elites from Western Europe, flowered, giving a new push to Jewish aid and rights activism.

Humanitarian Visions and Their Practical Challenges: The Refugee Crisis in Brody at the Beginning of the 1880s The optimistic views of the first years were soon dampened, however. A new kind of anti-Judaism in liberal democratic societies attracted a larger and larger audience and put pressure on these new organizations.21 Meanwhile, in Russia, where the world’s largest Jewish community lived and where emancipation had seemed close under Czar Alexander II, the government was about to toughen its

112

Barbara Lambauer

discriminatory and exclusionary legislation concerning the Jewish population. Most of the Russian Jews were compelled to live in the Pale of Settlement, a small strip of land that extended from the northwestern to the southwestern regions of European Russia, from the Baltic to the Black Sea. Here, Jewish life was concentrated in urban spaces and to a lesser extent in villages; laborers were mainly unskilled or semiskilled, living primarily from small trade. Yet shrinking employment opportunities after the emancipation of the Russian peasantry in 1861 and the construction of railroads across the empire further aggravated their living conditions, pushing peddling and petty trade more and more to the margins.22 By the late 1860s, a severe hunger crisis in the northern provinces of Kowno/Kaunas and Suwałki increasingly directed the AIU’s attention to conditions and problems in the Pale. Responding to the crisis, the German committees of the AIU in Königsberg and Memel launched quick relief efforts for refugees crossing the German border, organized the adoption of orphans by families in Western countries, and conducted vocational training for a number of young men, who were placed in apprenticeships with employers, traders, or in schools in Königsberg, Memel, and Berlin. A small number of young and skilled men also received assistance that enabled them to emigrate to the United States.23 In October 1869, the situation of the Russian Jews was the subject of a special meeting organized in Berlin by the AIU under the chairmanship of its president, Adolphe Crémieux. A small delegation was subsequently sent to Russia in order to develop long-term solutions that might remedy the overpopulation in the Pale. Not surprisingly, the delegation found it most necessary to have the settlement restrictions lifted by the Russian government, though they knew that this seemed unattainable; in addition, they promoted collective emigration to the United States as a feasible alternative.24 Meanwhile, the AIU also presented a migration plan to partners and members in New York, Philadelphia, and Washington, asking them to assist refugees from the Pale by helping them to search for accommodation and employment. The latter showed little enthusiasm toward adopting the plan, however, pointing out that immigrants insufficiently skilled for the US labor market would become a burden for local communities.25 As a consequence, only very limited groups, in total hardly more than two hundred eighty individuals chosen out of around a thousand families—estimated at six thousand persons—left for North America and, to a lesser extent, England. 26 Nonetheless, the program was continued during the following years.

Tensions of “Humanity”

113

Until 1878, a total of eight hundred sixty-five Russian Jewish emigrants were sent overseas by German committees. In addition, a rising number of migrants tried to leave on their own. Between 1871 and 1880, estimations vary from fifteen thousand to thirty thousand Jewish immigrants arriving in the United States.27 Over time, the idea of leaving thus started to reverberate in the Jewish and non-Jewish press in the Russian empire, setting off the beginning of Russian Jewish emigration to the United States and Canada. Plans for assisted migration would soon have their moment again, however. In mid-April 1881, a few weeks after the assassination of Tsar Alexander II by a Russian nihilistic group, successive waves of anti-Jewish rioting began to shake the southern parts of the Russian empire, leading to a humanitarian crisis of a new scale. Precedents had existed since 1821, chiefly in Odessa, but with the expansion of the Russian press since the 1860s, these outbreaks of popular violence now became national events.28 Shortly after the assassination, during Easter, first incidences of rioting occurred in Elisavetgrad and spread quickly in the following weeks, seizing Kiev, Odessa, and Kishinev and setting thousands of refugees on the road.29 Austrian authorities in the neighboring territories of Galicia responded immediately and mobilized an infantry regiment to keep calm and order in the region close to the borders and thus prevent violence from spreading to the Habsburg empire.30 Over time, more and more refugees and intimidated neighbors from Jewish communities headed to the Austrian border as illegal crossing, normally linked to the possession of a passport, was obviously not being prevented by either Russian or Austrian authorities.31 More important, there was also an increasing flow of people toward Brody, a Galician border town of seventeen thousand habitants, set off by rumors that funds and help for a departure to the United States would be distributed in this town.32 Responding to the refugee crisis, Jewish communities, committees, and organizations in Central and Western Europe launched several collection campaigns in order to finance care and shelter for homeless people and to reconstruct destroyed houses and synagogues. Moreover, philanthropic organizations in Vienna, London, and Paris reactivated former plans and discussed the issue of bringing displaced persons collectively to America. By September 1881, when numerous families and individuals had arrived in Brody in the hope of departure, the AIU set up and sent off a committee of three men to Brody—Dr. Schafier, a Parisian physician, himself a former emigrant from Russia; Charles Netter, cofounder of the AIU; and

114

Barbara Lambauer

Moritz Friedländer, secretary of the Vienna Allianz—to implement a local program for refugee and migration aid. The work of the committee opens an important window on the practical dilemmas and ambivalences of visions of humanity in the late nineteenth century. Faced with a growing number of refugees but with only limited funds at their disposal, Schafier, Netter, and Friedländer could not accept everyone and therefore started to screen candidates for emigration in order to designate those who were fit to find a new living overseas. The decisive criteria were being young, of good health, and, above all, of a learned profession. Until November 1881, when the New York Board called for the interruption of the campaign, around sixteen hundred persons out of a total of approximately twenty-four thousand refugees demanding emigration in Brody had been sent to the United States by the committee.33 This number comprised those whose travel costs were entirely covered by the AIU. But undoubtedly many others left on their own, either with the small amount distributed to them for a return to Russia or without any help at all, using the same routes to reach the overseas ports in northwestern Europe. According to an AIU report from March 1882, referring to the period after the dissolution of the Netter-Schafier-Friedländer committee, “whole convoys of emigrants were passing through Germany,” provided with food by the Jewish committees of Breslau, Leipzig, Liegnitz, and Berlin on the way to Hamburg, where the local committee got “important contributions” from the AIU in order to “meet the considerable expense imposed on it by their presence.”34 During winter and spring 1881 to 1882, new reports of attacks on Jewish populations came from several regions in Russia and the Polish Kingdom, with pillaging (in Warsaw, Smolensk, Wilna), arson (Kowno), expulsions (Kiev, Moscow, Odessa), and pogroms, especially in Balta.35 In May 1882, new laws promoted by the Tsarist government further reduced areas for settlement even inside the Pale of Settlement. In Western Europe, the question was largely picked up in the press; The Times in London dedicated a whole series of articles to the subject.36 Well-known Jewish and non-Jewish personalities, including the Lord Mayor of London and, in Paris, the author Victor Hugo, publicly expressed their indignation, urging humanitarian action in order to resolve the crisis.37 Protest meetings were organized in London, Paris, and New York; new committees were established, among them the Mansion House Committee, whose chairman was Sir Julian Goldsmid, vice president of the Anglo-Jewish Association;38 calls for subscriptions were launched and statements in Parliament

Tensions of “Humanity”

115

pronounced.39 At the end of March, the AIU asked its local branches in different countries to set up special committees intended for Russian Jewish transmigrants.40 Once again, the situation called for collective action in order to coordinate relief as well as criteria on who among the displaced should have access to which resources. In April 1882, delegates of the main Jewish philanthropic organizations met in Berlin, where a special “Central Committee” (Zentralkomitee) for Jewish refugees from Russia had been founded. The “Russian Jewish work” was then divided: the Central Committee in Berlin and the Vienna Allianz were charged with the selection and dispatch of refugees arriving on German and Austrian soil; the Mansion House Committee took over the transport issues between Europe and the United States and Canada; and the Hebrew Emigrant Aid Society (HEAS) was founded by the Board of Delegates in New York to ensure the settlement of immigrants by forwarding them to different towns and states.41 All members agreed that, fundamentally, lasting relief would only come through emigration, but support for departure would not be available for all: a selection of the “fittest” among the refugees was thus again necessary. Furthermore, the delegates of the old continent were unanimous that emigration aid, consisting of the material and logistic assistance and protection of migrants, should only be granted for North America, not for Western Europe.42 In this sense, the transnational implication of West and Central European Jewish elites amounted implicitly to a kind of control over what (geographical) directions migration would take. A report from the AIU justified the decisions against critiques that the relief work might set off mass migration: “We in no way want to provoke a movement that by itself is already so powerful that nothing can stop it. . . . They [the Russian Jews] are leaving, and we must help them: since we cannot hold them back, our efforts must be directed towards regulating emigration, moderating it, and, above all, turning away the too many people who want to go to America without having the necessary skills to succeed.”43 In the same vein, Joseph Wertheimer, cofounder and president of the Vienna Allianz, reflecting on “the emancipation of our [Eastern] coreligionists” and on emigration, gave another version of this position in an “Excursus” published in the annual report of his organization: rejecting the principle of any “mass exodus” (but excluding from his reflections those who emigrated by their own means), he claimed that only those fit for emigration (Auswanderungstüchtige) should benefit from departure assistance, whereas “the others must,

116

Barbara Lambauer

sad as it may sound, persevere [in Russia] in misery and be content to bring their children to a better fate through appropriate education.”44 Besides, he explained, the relief aimed to help emigrants establish and “honestly” earn a livelihood. The latter, in his eyes, was precisely not possible in Palestine “in the present state of the country and its people.” After the Berlin meeting, things thus seemed to be sufficiently settled for the organizations as well as the local committees. Yet the number of Russian Jews wishing to leave but needing help was steadily rising. Austrian authorities were hardly disquieted: they could handle the ongoing influx of people with generosity and continue to suspend the passport obligation for border crossing, as significant private funds were visibly available from the philanthropic cluster, sufficient for covering the expenses for migrants.45 It is worth mentioning that in contrast, seven years earlier, nearly two hundred fifty thousand Christian refugees from Bosnia had to be cared for in the southeastern parts of the monarchy at the expense of the Habsburg authorities.46 Now, the Austrian border police committed to gathering the Russian Jewish refugees in Brody, which became a hotspot for the assisted East–West transfer, with its population doubling at the height of the crisis.47 However, as soon as in May 1882, authorities in Vienna noticed that in view of the “mass rush of refugees” into Galicia, the Mansion House Committee, with its delegates in Brody and in Lemberg (today L’viv), “notwithstanding all efforts,” seemed no longer able “to meet its purposes quickly and satisfactorily.”48 The Imperial Army started providing several military tents to give shelter as well as a staff of fifty men to assist with the registration of the refugees.49 Ostensibly, the number of persons wishing to leave the region far exceeded what was expected by the philanthropic network itself. As a consequence, at the end of June, while more than fifteen thousand displaced persons still waited in Brody, the Mansion House Committee, which in parallel to the common transnational relief action transported additional emigrants via its committee in Lemberg, proclaimed through public announcements in the city that assistance for emigration was going to be limited to refugees who were proven to be victims of persecution and had already been working as craftsmen in Russia. All other refugees had to return.50 The announcement came in response to the appeals of their overstrained American partners, HEAS, demanding the immediate suspension of transports to America, as the number of arrivals surpassed existing capacities to find accommodation and employment.

Tensions of “Humanity”

117

In Brody, meanwhile, citizens protested vehemently through Austrian newspapers, claiming that no refugee would voluntarily return and that too many would then have to remain in the region and depend on the charity of the local population. Referring to the collected funds for the refugees, they proclaimed that the philanthropic network had to evacuate all of them without further delay. Pressure also came now from the Austrian authorities, which insisted on the rapid evacuation of the Russian Jews remaining in Brody.51 What could be done for the migrants in Brody? On the ground, Emmanuel Veneziani, sent to Brody by Maurice de Hirsch, bought a disused manufactory to accommodate some three thousand refugees, earning him much praise from local newspapers, who described him as “a true apostle of humanity.”52 Veneziani also called for a more active contribution by European communities, proposing that these should take in limited numbers of Jewish families—in total about eight thousand persons—while the AIU should cover the expenses involved.53 Veneziani’s plan was debated a few weeks later in Vienna during a meeting that assembled the delegates of all organizations involved. It clearly showed the limits of the ongoing humanitarian action. Eduard Lauterbach from HEAS, who had traveled from New York in order to defend the American point of view, then described the “sad situation of the Russian refugees in America, where they [were] attacked [angefochten] from all sides,” urging for a definite stop of transatlantic emigration, and to extend aid to those in America “who do not suffer less hardship.”54 At the end of the three-day conference, participants agreed to considerably slow down emigration aid and to distribute a small number of families to West European countries—in particular to France, England, and Holland (at a number that remained far from what Veneziani had in mind)—but above all to “disperse” or repatriate the vast majority of the refugees, except the recruits and the deserters of the Russian army. The minutes of the meeting remained quite silent about what “dispersal” could mean. The fact remained, however, that the humanitarian aid was subsequently geared down. According to the annual report of the Vienna Allianz, of the twenty thousand Jewish emigrants leaving Eastern Europe, around twelve thousand had been finally transported by the trans-European network.55 It is very likely, however, that the exact number lay much higher, especially if one counts “dispersed persons” who tried to reach overseas ports on their own. There were also those refugees who received “only” information on the logistics of trans-European travel plus a supply of food on their way to the ports, granted by

118

Barbara Lambauer

the different committees established in connection with the relief action. In addition, the “Russian Jewish work” also provided care for children, many of whom were orphans, while several hundred refugees who had left on their own to Palestine were evacuated back to Russia, having failed to make a living there.56 Still, the two “Brody crises” revealed the strong difficulties lying in the effort to deal collectively with an amplifying humanitarian crisis that had obviously gone out of control. Constant coordination and agreement were necessary between more or less equal partners, subject to different national, transnational, and international imperatives. Moreover, the crises raised the question to what extent emigration could and should be considered as a way out for countries where religious or ethnic minorities were still denied equality of rights. The very idea was disruptive to the dominant perception of the philanthropic circle—with its members belonging to an emancipated West European Jewry that considered itself entirely integrated. Those elites counted on the advancement of general emancipation and secularization for humanity, instead of “ethnic” purifications that introduced the idea of Jewishness as a national and not mere religious identity.

Maurice de Hirsch and Jewish Mass Migration across the Atlantic, 1900s–1920s In the following years, no comparable crisis recurred, but the flow of migration of Eastern European Jews did not cease. The transatlantic bridge had been built by numerous individuals and families; Russian Jews continued to leave their region. They were soon joined by Romanian Jews, progressively subject to similar measures of exclusion in their country. Railway stations in Central and Western Europe were crowded with migrants passing. Concerted action between committees and members in different countries continued to be of importance, all the more as the objective was to limit the number of migrants stranded as beggars on the way, which was thought to further nourish populist antisemitism. In the United States, the number of transatlantic (as well as transpacific) migrants had set off protests by labor movements against the arrival of those who embodied “cheap labor.” As a consequence, barriers to immigration were set up as early as 1882.57 Rejected migrants henceforth had to be returned at the expense of the ship companies to the ports where they had embarked. In the following time,

Tensions of “Humanity”

119

Hapag and Norddeutscher Lloyd, the German companies of Hamburg and Bremen, sharing by far the largest part of the transatlantic ship business, began to select passengers before embarkment in order to reduce as much as possible the risk of having to return migrants.58 As a further consequence, the Prussian government sought to prevent the undesired settlement of individuals denied embarkation. From 1885 onward, the crossing of Prussia’s eastern borders became limited to migrants producing evidence of good health, valid tickets for passage across the Atlantic, and at least four hundred marks (a hundred marks a child)—an amount ensuring that the migrant could get directly to the port and, in case of rejection in North America, pay for the return to Europe.59 The German committees negotiated an exemption from this regulation for the assisted migrants of the cluster, crossing the country in accompanied convoys. In this way, new migratory routes emerged for the poorest of the migrants who were not supported by the network, linking Vienna and Basel to the ports of Antwerp or Rotterdam. Advice and assistance from local relief committees thus became even more important. Still, the migratory flow from Eastern countries and regions continued to grow during the 1880s. In 1891, the number of Jewish immigrants entering the United States reached a record level with 111,284 persons, a number that was surpassed the following year with 136,742. The rate decreased in the following years; however, between 1881 and 1900 one million Jews from Eastern Europe settled in the United States.60 Migrants of other religions soon joined the movement. Permanent patterns and structures emerged in the main departure regions: emigration agencies and agents were “recruiting” in towns but also in the countryside, and sales points of the shipping companies opened in numerous towns and at the main border crossings, where smugglers waited for (especially Jewish) migrants to take their small savings by promising help from aid committees beyond the border.61 Migrants became part of everyday settings at European railway stations that were located on the way to the ports. In short: a new “emigration business” focusing on migrants from the lower classes began to flourish. Competition between low-cost companies became harsh; market shares had to be conquered or defended. Not surprisingly, the exhausting travel across Europe in narrow spaces on the railway or on the tween deck facilitated the outbreak of diseases. In 1890, severe epidemic waves hit New York and Hamburg, bringing about the closure of both ports for weeks and months.62 Mainly attributed to migrants, those crises entailed the construction

120

Barbara Lambauer

of disinfecting stations at the eastern borders of Prussia, where migrants now had to take disinfecting showers and have their clothes treated, at their own expense, before continuing to travel. In order to separate transatlantic migrants from other travelers and to prevent them from staying in Germany, a separate “emigrants’ railway station” (Auswandererbahnhof ) was constructed in Ruhleben on the outskirts of Berlin, where migrants were put under quarantine.63 In the United States, a new immigration center was opened on Ellis Island. Moreover, new categories of migrants became excluded from entrance to the United States, among them people suffering from illness, but above all assisted persons, called “paupers.”64 The restrictions on transatlantic emigration for people without means contributed inevitably to rising immigration into West European countries. In Antwerp, one of the main ports for transatlantic emigration, the small Jewish community entirely changed its character through the arrival and settlement of families from Eastern Europe.65 Until then, the AIU continued to assume the central coordination on the Continent between local committees (often its own local branches) or national partner organizations covering different regions and countries. To a certain extent, the AIU also provided the necessary funds—as well as control of their use—and decided on the ports and ship companies for assisted migrants. However, the task was obviously getting too burdensome and, in any case, alienating the AIU considerably from its initial objective, which was not the evacuation of oppressed populations but promoting better education and emancipation in the home countries. In addition, tensions with the partner committee in New York intensified in view of the rising number of unskilled immigrants, arriving overwhelmingly without any mastery of English, be it with or without the assistance of the cluster. In Europe, too, conflicts between different committees and communities were growing as more and more migrants were sent back and forth, setting off tensions between committees in Liverpool and Antwerp, or between the Rotterdam committee and the Vienna Allianz.66 In view of rising xenophobia and antisemitism, Jewish communities in Western countries were undoubtedly solidary and eager to assist, but not to take in migrants from the East. New destinations where migrants could settle and, even more, a new framework for the network to assist and care for migrants seemed indispensable. Once again, Maurice de Hirsch intervened. As a member of the AIU Central Committee in Paris since the 1870s, he was closely associated with the policies and decisions made by the AIU. As a successful businessman and financier, first in Brussels, then in Paris,

Tensions of “Humanity”

121

he had come upon a large fortune through investments in the construction of railways through southeastern Europe, connecting the Austrian-Hungarian Empire with the Ottoman Empire.67 Since the 1870s, he had been one of the most generous financial supporters of the AIU.68 In response to the lasting discontent and complaints of the American committees, Hirsch created the Baron de Hirsch Fund in New York in 1891 and charged it with setting up efficient structures to facilitate the integration of Jewish newcomers on American soil. It was intended to provide housing and work as well as professional and linguistic training.69 Three years later, the fund opened its own Trade School in New York and an agricultural training school in Woodbine. From 1900 on, another offspring of the fund, the Jewish Agricultural and Industrial Aid Society (JAIS; JAS after 1921), focused on the further development of agricultural settlements and industrial enterprises through small loans as well as logistic and technical support. In parallel, the JAIS started a program to remove unemployed immigrants from Manhattan’s crowded Lower East Side by proposing settlement in other parts of the United States, in cities such as Detroit or Cincinnati, where local B’nai Brith officials promoted better integration. New farming colonies were set up in New Jersey, New England, and Pennsylvania. Until 1913, the JAIS’s “Removal Committee” moved nearly seventy-two thousand immigrants out of the big cities into about 1,555 smaller towns and villages.70 From 1907 on, a monthly magazine published in Yiddish and English, The Jewish Farmer, provided a forum for its affiliates working in the agricultural sector. The paper was published until 1957.71 In 1891, Hirsch created a second foundation carrying his name, the Baron de Hirsch Stiftung in Vienna, with the task of fighting illiteracy in Galicia, where severe poverty led many Jews to leave the region or wind up as itinerant beggars (Wanderbettler)—a phenomenon that was exploding at that time.72 The Stiftung took over a confessional school network initiated by the Vienna Allianz ten years earlier and pursued its extension. In 1899/1900, fifty primary schools with nearly ten thousand students—among them the writer Joseph Roth—were part of the network.73 The third among the organizations founded by Hirsch was created in the same year and conceived as central coordinating office for all of Hirsch’s offspring. Genuinely transnational, the Jewish Colonization Association (JCA) had its articles of association filed in London, whereas its head office was established in Paris in the immediate neighborhood of the AIU. Branches were opened in the following years in Saint Petersburg and in Vienna, in Buenos Aires

122

Barbara Lambauer

and New York. The members of its executive staff were of multiple origins, and most of them at least fluent in French, German, and one Eastern language. Apparently, it sought to take over the tasks that the AIU was less and less able to legitimately handle. The JCA henceforth coordinated the European assistance network and worked on unsolved problems and questions requiring transnational solutions: locating new countries and regions outside Europe where Jewish populations could settle down permanently—though deliberately dispersed in order to avoid nourishing the (further) rise of antisemitism in receiving countries. Even before the organization was officially founded, Hirsch had announced the purchase of land for the establishment of agricultural colonies. The JCA therefore had to localize opportunities, especially in South America. First colonies were founded after a short time in Argentina and in Canada, albeit with quite mixed success.74 Although the JCA also opened offices in Saint Petersburg and Vienna (concerned with Galicia) and had its representatives travel through the respective regions and meet local committees as well as beneficiaries of aid, it maintained practices of tutelage over the latter. It had an increasingly strict selection of those who could get full support for emigration overseas, regularly provoking the ire of migrants whose meager assets had been seized by border smugglers.75 The new organization remained closely linked to the Jewish elites in France, England, and Germany, whose delegates controlled its council of administration. In charge of material and logistic help and operating on a global scale, the JCA thus built the missing bridge between philanthropic action in the Old and in the New World, intervening in both departure countries and destinations of Jewish migration. At the turn of the century, the JCA had become the main funding agency for (Jewish) emigration assistance worldwide. In parallel, it initiated primary and vocational schools and loan kassas76 in Galicia and in the Russian empire. Between 1899 and 1910, sixty-six confessional primary schools with around twelve thousand students were created in Russia, as well as six hundred eighty cooperative loan kassas granting small loans, which assembled four hundred fifty thousand members.77 Both strands of humanitarian action—emigration aid and educational measures—represented the starting point for a close transcontinental and transatlantic cooperation. The outbreak of World War I in summer 1914, dividing the European countries into allies and enemies, interrupted the emigration movement and lead to the

Tensions of “Humanity”

123

breakdown of the transnational network. Yet existing structures of assistance continued to function in Central Europe, where thousands of refugees and evacuees fled the eastern war zones, especially in Galicia. Their presence in the hinterlands and in the interior of the Habsburg empire raised problems the belligerents were not prepared to address. The care for Jewish war refugees, one of the most numerous groups among them, thus again became the agenda of private organizations. Not surprisingly, the coordination of this care fell back to the Vienna Allianz. In the Polish territory soon occupied by the German army, the Hilfsverein in Berlin took over similar tasks. During the war, former relationships were inverted: observing with apprehension the rising number of war refugees, of family members and former neighbors forced to leave their homes during summer 1914, American Jewish immigrant associations—the Landsmannschaften—of New York and numerous other parts of the United States initiated fundraising campaigns among former migrants.78 In order to centralize and coordinate the campaign, but also the secure transfer of funds to Europe and particularly the control of their use, new “platforms” were created in November 1914, including the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC). Together with the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS), which had been founded by former migrants a few years earlier in New York to defend the interests of newcomers in America (the organization had set up an office at Ellis Island’s control station), JDC also sent delegates to Europe. At the end of the war, former empires were broken down and so-called nation-states were founded in Central and Eastern Europe, where civil and international wars continued to be fought. As a consequence, millions of Jewish and non-Jewish people now found themselves displaced in several European countries they were not citizens of. Jewish minorities were most often regarded as a disturbance, and no government felt responsible for them, including the United States, which started closing its border in 1921. In this general context, the JCA resumed its “advocacy” on migratory issues in 1919, insisting on a merger, under its leadership, of all committees and organizations assisting Jewish refugees and migrants in Europe. Yet the distribution of influence and decision-making had changed: new organizations founded by young Jewish leaders from Central and Eastern Europe with excellent connections to American organizations were no longer ready to accept its tutelage. In the end, JDC

124

Barbara Lambauer

and the HIAS became the main partners of the JCA, functioning at the same time as its controlling counterweight. It took several years until the founding of a common organization, uniting the JCA with the HIAS and Emigdirect under the name HICEM.79 The progressive inversion of the “balance of (philanthropic) power” became particularly evident after the Nazi Party came to power in Germany, when former co-organizers of humanitarian aid themselves became dependent on assistance for departure from their country (and from Europe), where a few decades prior they had felt safe. The assistance was then mainly financed by JDC, meaning by Jewish communities in the United States that had considerably developed during the period discussed in this chapter. However, one point remained completely unchanged during the whole period, and would remain so until the end of World War II: humanitarian aid for Jewish refugees and migrants remained essentially the “private affair” of Jewish elites and middle classes.

Conclusion The period under discussion demonstrates how a specifically Jewish “refugeedom”80 came into existence at the end of the nineteenth century, combining flight, expulsion, and voluntary emigration with peculiar philanthropic charities and educational projects. To a large extent, its financial backing was built on public fundraising campaigns. This implied commitment to a certain transparency and information on respective public opinions, as well as accounts on the use of distributed aid that had to be rendered to its members and subscribers via publicly available annual reports. Hence, the use of funds had to include long-term solutions against misery, resulting ultimately in an intrusion of Western models of secular norms and values, considered indispensable by benefactors for overcoming tensions between Jewish minorities and non-Jewish majority populations. While struggling against humanitarian crises, interference thus brought along sociocultural transformation and the spreading of Western ideas of emancipation (and acculturation) into traditional Jewish communities of Central and Eastern Europe. By including assistance for transatlantic emigration from the very beginning, though granted only to a proportionally small selection of individuals, these humanitarian interventions lastingly transformed the lifestyle patterns and expectations of local communities.

Tensions of “Humanity”

125

Barbara Lambauer works as an independent historian in Paris. She is a partner of the research center Sirice (Sorbonne, identités, relations internationales et civilisations de l’Europe) and a research fellow at the Institut Convergences Migrations. After several works dedicated to the politics of collaboration, repression, and persecution in France and in Europe during the period of Nazism in Germany, her current research is dedicated to European and North American philanthropic organizations intervening in the migration of Jewish minorities from Central and Eastern Europe during the period from 1880 to 1930.

Notes 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.

9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20.

21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27.

See Fink, Defending the Rights, 7–8; Leven, Cinquante ans d’histoire, 53. Leven, Cinquante ans d’histoire, 64; translated from French by the author. Frankel, Damascus Affair. Green, “The ‘West’ and the Rest,” 163. Frankel, Damascus Affair, 109–119; Kirchhoff, “Diasporische versus zionistische Diplomatie.” Frankel, Damascus Affair, 434. S¸eni, Les Inventeurs, 149. First Bulletin de l’Alliance Israélite Universelle, Paris 1860, 6, retrieved 3 November 2021 from https://www.nli.org.il/en/newspapers/bul; translated from French by the author. First Bulletin, 8. First Bulletin, 20. First Bulletin, 10–11 and 16–17. First Bulletin, 9. Weill, “Les structures,” 96. Adler-Rudel, “Moritz Baron Hirsch,” 39. On this concept, see S¸eni, Les Inventeurs, 148. Rodrigue, De l’instruction, 21. Rodrigue, “La mission éducative,” 233. Rodrigue, “La mission éducative,” 141. Green, “The ‘West’ and the Rest,” 157–161; Szajkowski, “Conflicts in the Alliance.” See also Leff, Sacred Bonds. Annual Report of the Anglo-Jewish Association (henceforth: ARAJA), in connection with the Alliance Israélite Universelle, for the year 1872–1873, London 1873, 8–9, retrieved 3 November 2021 from https://viewer.soton.ac.uk/. See König and Schulz, Antisemitismus. See Klier, Russians, 3–6, quote 6. Schwarzfuchs, “L’aide,” 110. Leven, Cinquant ans d’histoire, 273–274; Bulletin de l’Alliance Israélite Universelle (henceforth: BAIU), 2nd semester 1869, 16–21. BAIU, 1st semester 1870, 9–10. Schwarzfuchs, “L’aide,” 102–115. Schwarzfuchs, “L’aide,” 113; Wischnitzer, To Dwell in Safety, 289.

126 28. 29. 30. 31. 32.

33. 34. 35. 36.

37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45.

46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63.

Barbara Lambauer

Klier, “The Pogrom Paradigm.” Klier, Russians; Kuzmany, “Jüdische Pogromflüchtlinge.” Neue Freie Presse, 12 May 1881, 6. Kuzmany, “Jüdische Pogromflüchtlinge,” 97–98. Neunter Jahresbericht der Israelitischen Allianz zu Wien, 1882, 3 (annual report of IAW concerning 1881), accessed at the Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People, Jerusalem. See also Szajkowski, “How the Mass Migration.” See the list published in BAIU, 1882, 11–12. “Report on the Relief Action,” 24 March 1882, 3, YIVO Archives, Centre of Jewish History, New York, RG 406; translated from French by the author. BAIU, 1882, 11–12; Klier and Lambroza, Pogroms, 40–41; Mishkinsky, “Black Repartition,” 62–97. The Times, 11 and 13 January 1882; see Eleventh Annual Report of the Anglo-Jewish Association, in connection with Alliance Israélite Universelle, 1881–1882, London 1882, 19. AR AJA, 1882, 19; BAIU 1882, 13; Leven, Cinquante ans d’histoire, 429; Friedemann, “Victor Hugo.” AR AJA, 1882, 23. See AR AJA 1882, 21 and 52–58. BAIU, 1882, 13. AR AJA, 1882, 25. BAIU, 1882, 13–15. “Report on the Relief Action,” 6; translated from French by the author. Wertheimer, “Zur Emancipation unserer Glaubensgenossen. Excurs,” in Neunter Jahresbericht, 93–112, quotes 97, 99; translated from German by the author. See the letters addressed by Minister-President Taaffe to the Austrian-Hungarian ambassador in Saint Petersburg, Wolkenstein, June 1882, in Austrian State Archives (henceforth: ASA), HHStA, PA X 141–142. Manasek, “Protection, Repatriation and Categorization.” See Kuzmany, “Jüdische Pogromflüchtlinge,” 103; BAIU, 1882, 12 (estimating the number of refugees in Brody and Lemberg at 20,000). Letter from Taaffe to Wolkenstein, 23 Mai 1882, in ASA, HHStA, PA X 141–142. Neue Freie Presse, 30 Mai 1882, 3; translated from German by the author. Neue Freie Presse, 28 June 1882, 3; on the additional emigration aid granted by the Mansion House Committee, see BAIU, 1882, 15. Neue Freie Presse, 28 June 1882, 3. Neue Freie Presse, 28 June 1882, 3; translated from German by the author; Kuzmany, “Jüdische Pogromflüchtlinge,” 110. BAIU, 1882, 16. Minutes of the International Conference in Vienna, 2–4 August 1882, in Zehnter Jahresbericht, 90; translated by the author. Zehnter Jahresbericht, VI. BAIU, 1883, 16; Zehnter Jahresbericht, VI–VIII; see also Lambauer, “Migration de masse.” See Daniels, Guarding the Golden Door, 27–30. Feys, Battle. Caestecker and Feys, “East European Jewish Migrants,” 265. Wischnitzer, To Dwell in Safety, 289. See Zahra, The Great Departure. Howard, Quarantine; Evans, Death in Hamburg. Hengsbach, “Station der ‘Europamüden,’” 420–429.

Tensions of “Humanity”

127

64. Szajkowski, “Jewish Emigration Policy,” 48–49; Feys, Battle, 228; Brinkmann, “Why Paul Nathan.” 65. Schreiber, “Anvers”; Lambauer, “Migration de masse,” 37. 66. For example, AIU Archives in Paris, Archives Historiques, Belgique/Anvers 151, C, correspondence between Antwerp and Paris, 1891. 67. Frischer, Le Moïse. 68. Adler-Rudel, “Moritz Baron Hirsch,” 41. 69. Norman, An Outstretched Arm, 109–110. 70. Jewish Colonization Association, “Rapport de l’administration centrale pour l’année 1913” (Paris: R. Veneziani, 1915): 144–146, 154–155, 165–167 (henceforth: JCA Annual Report, 1913). See also Norman, An Outstretched Arm, 110. 71. Norman, An Outstretched Arm, 111. 72. Althammer, “Controlling Vagrancy.” 73. Siegel, Österreichisches Judentum, 147–159; Grunwald, “Note.” 74. Norman, An Outstretched Arm, 8–9, 22–26. 75. Lambauer, “Organisateurs du Départ.” 76. A local cooperative bank providing micro-credit to small family businesses, with capital supplied by the JCA and the town’s wealthier inhabitants. 77. JCA Annual Report, 1913, 155. 78. Soyer, Jewish Immigrant Associations, 163; Annual Reports of the Israelitische Allianz zu Wien between 1914 and 1925 (numbers 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, and 46). 79. [First Report] “Rapport sur l’activité de la HIAS-JCA-Emigdirect [HICEM] 1927– 1928,” YIVO Archives, RG 245. 80. On the concept of “refugeedom,” see Gatrell, The Making of the Modern Refugee, 1–13.

Bibliography Adler-Rudel, Salomon. “Moritz Baron Hirsch: Profile of a Great Philanthropist.” The Leo Baeck Institute Year Book 8, no. 1 (January 1963): 29–69. Althammer, Beate. “Controlling Vagrancy: Germany, England and France, 1880–1914.” In Rescuing the Vulnerable: Poverty, Welfare and Social Ties in Modern Europe, edited by B. Althammer, Lutz Raphael, and Tamara Stazic-Wendt, 187–211. New York: Berghahn Books, 2016. Brinkmann, Tobias. “Why Paul Nathan Attacked Albert Ballin: The Transatlantic Mass Migration and the Privatization of Prussia’s Eastern Border Inspection, 1886–1914.” Central European History 43, no. 1 (2010): 47–83. Caestecker, Frank, and Torsten Feys. “East European Jewish Migrants and Settlers in Belgium, 1880–1914. A Transatlantic Perspective.” East European Jewish Affairs 40, no. 3 (2010): 261–284. Daniels, Roger. Guarding the Golden Door: American Immigration Policy and Immigrants since 1882. 1st ed. New York: Hill and Wang, 2004. Evans, Richard J. Death in Hamburg: Society and Politics in the Cholera Years, 1830–1910. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987.

128

Barbara Lambauer

Feys, Torsten. The Battle for the Migrants: The Introduction of Steamshipping on the North Atlantic and Its Impact on the European Exodus. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2018. Fink, Carole. Defending the Rights of Others: The Great Powers, the Jews, and International Minority Protection, 1878–1938. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Frankel, Jonathan. The Damascus Affair: “Ritual Murder,” Politics, and the Jews in 1840. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Friedemann, Joë-Y. “Victor Hugo et les pogroms de Russie des années quatre-vingt.” Revue belge de philologie et d’histoire 57, no. 3 (1979): 628–636. Frischer, Dominique. Le Moïse des Amériques. Vies et œuvres du munificent baron de Hirsch. Paris: Grasset, 2002. Gatrell, Peter. The Making of the Modern Refugee. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. Green, Abigail. “The ‘West’ and the Rest: Jewish Philanthropy and Globalization to c. 1880.” In Purchasing Power, edited by Rebecca Kobrin and Adam Teller, 155–170. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016. Grunwald, Kurt. “A Note on the Baron Hirsch Stiftung Vienna 1888– 1914.” The Leo Baeck Institute Year Book 17, no. 1 (January 1972): 227–236. Hengsbach, Arne. “Station der ‘Europamüden’: Die Geschichte des Auswandererbahnhofs Ruhleben.” Mitteilungen des Vereins für die Geschichte Berlins 70, no. 14 (April 1974): 420–429. Howard, Markel. Quarantine! East European Jewish Immigrants and the New York City Epidemics of 1892. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997. Kirchhoff, Markus. “Diasporische versus zionistische Diplomatie, 1878– 1917.” Aschkenas 17, no. 1 (2007): 123–128. Klier, John. “The Pogrom Paradigm in Russian History.” In Pogroms: Anti-Jewish Violence in Modern Russian History, edited by John Klier and Shlomo Lambroza, 13–38. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991. ———. Russians, Jews, and the Pogroms of 1881–1882. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011. Klier, John, and Shlomo Lambroza, eds. Pogroms: Anti-Jewish Violence in Modern Russian History. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991. König, Mareike, and Oliver Schulz, eds. Antisemitismus im 19. Jahrhundert aus internationaler Perspektive. Göttingen: V&R Unipress, 2019. Kuzmany, Börries. “Jüdische Pogromflüchtlinge in Österreich 1881/82 und die Professionalisierung der internationalen Hilfe.” In Aufnahmeland Österreich. Über den Umgang mit Massenflucht seit dem 18. Jahrhundert, edited by Börries Kuzmany and Rita Garstenauer, 94–125. Wien: Mandelbaum, 2017.

Tensions of “Humanity”

129

Lambauer, Barbara. 2018. “Migration de masse et pauvreté en partance: l’œuvre philanthropique face à l’émigration des Juifs ‘de l’est,’ 1880– 1914.” Revue d’histoire de la protection sociale 11, no. 1 (2018): 24–44. ———. 2019. “Organisateurs du Départ: Elias Schwarzfeld, Sigmund Sonnenfeld, Émile Meyerson et les Migrations Juives d’avant 1914.” Archives Juives 52 (1): 74–96. Leff, Lisa M. Sacred Bonds of Solidarity: The Rise of Jewish Internationalism in Nineteenth-Century France. Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 2006. Leven, Narcisse. Cinquante ans d’histoire: L’Alliance Israélite Universelle (1860–1910). Paris: F. Alcan, 1911. Manasek, Jared. “Protection, Repatriation and Categorization: Refugees and Empire at the End of the Nineteenth Century.” Journal of Refugee Studies 30, no. 2 (2017): 301–317. Mishkinsky, Moshe. “‘Black Repartition’ and the Pogroms of 1881–1882.” In Pogroms: Anti-Jewish Violence in Modern Russian History, edited by John Klier and Shlomo Lambroza, 62–97. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991. Norman, Theodore. An Outstretched Arm: A History of the Jewish Colonization Association. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1985. Rodrigue, Aron. De l’instruction à l’émancipation. Les enseignants de l’Alliance Israélite Universelle et les Juifs d’Orient, 1860–1939. Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1989. ———. “La mission éducative (1860–1939).” In Histoire de l’Alliance israélite universelle de 1860 à nos jours, edited by André Kaspi, 227–262. Paris: Armand Colin, 2010. Schreiber, Jean-Philippe. “Anvers, plaque tournante de l’émigration vers le Nouveau-Monde à la veille de la première guerre mondiale.” Migrance 4, no. 5 (1994): 91–96. Schwarzfuchs, Simon. “L’aide aux Juifs de Russie.” In Histoire de l’Alliance israélite universelle de 1860 à nos jours, edited by André Kaspi, 102– 115. Paris: Armand Colin, 2010. S¸eni, Nora. Les Inventeurs De La Philanthropie Juive. Paris: La Martinière, 2010. Siegel, Björn. Österreichisches Judentum Zwischen Ost und West: Die Israelitische Allianz zu Wien 1873–1938. Frankfurt: Campus, 2010. Soyer, Daniel. Jewish Immigrant Associations and American Identity in New York, 1880–1939. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997. Szajkowski, Zosa. “How the Mass Migration to America Began.” Jewish Social Studies 4, no. 4 (October 1942): 291–310. ———. “Jewish Emigration Policy in the Period of the Rumanian ‘Exodus’ 1899–1903.” Jewish Social Studies 13, no. 1 (January 1951): 48–49. ———. “Conflicts in the Alliance Israélite Universelle and the Founding of the Anglo-Jewish Association, the Vienna Allianz and the Hilfsverein.” Jewish Social Studies 19, no. 1–2 (1957): 29–50.

130

Barbara Lambauer

Weill, Georges. “Les structures et les hommes.” In Histoire de l’Alliance israélite universelle de 1860 à nos jours, edited by André Kaspi, 53–100. Paris: Armand Colin, 2010. Wischnitzer, Mark. To Dwell in Safety. The Story of Jewish Migrants since 1800. Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society, 1948. Zahra, Tara. The Great Departure. Mass Migration from Eastern Europe and the Making of the Free World. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2016.

Chapter 5

“THE WHOLE ORGANISM OF HUMANITY” The Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom’s Campaign for Women’s Rights as Universal Rights, c. 1919 Andrew M. Johnston

When nations at war declare that they have God on their side, the deity in question thus becoming the national god of paganism, whereas the God they imagine they are evoking is a God common to all mankind, the mere vision of Whom, could all men but attain it, would mean the immediate abolition of war. —Henri Bergson, Two Sources of Morality and Religion (1935) War will pass when intellectual culture and activity have made possible to the female an equal share in the control and governance of national life; it will probably not pass away much sooner. —Olive Schreiner, Women and Labour (1911)

The founding of the Women’s International League for Peace and

Freedom (WILPF)1 at an International Congress of Women in The Hague in April 1915 bound two hitherto loosely connected concepts: social justice feminism and pacifism. The members of the new organization were drawn mostly from the radical wing of the International Women’s Suffrage Alliance (IWSA), which had earlier concluded that women could ill afford to dissent from war patriotism if they wished to protect their claim to suffrage.2 The IWSA’s scheduled congress in Berlin for that year was canceled, and in frustration a restless minority hastily assembled in neutral Netherlands. There were no

Notes for this section begin on page 148.

132

Andrew M. Johnston

plans to make a permanent organization, but for the women who met, politically voiceless and frustrated by the inaction of maleled peace organizations, building a transnational community in a single-sex peace organization became the start of an entirely new mode of internationalism.3 World War I had, in their view, discredited masculine politics and exposed its inability to defend its own ideals of “civilization.” Closing ranks with such politics, bound as it was by narrow patriotism, would achieve nothing for women around the world, or for humanity. WILPF wanted a new international order that reconciled the preservation of cultural difference through democratic self-determination, without eroding the feeling of universal common being. Precisely because women were excluded from the life-and-death decisions of war, they came to see themselves as a universal category of silenced people. The war showed how the constructions of nation and ideology, prized by men as justifications for their domestic authority and therefore tests of their masculinity, stood in the way of any genuine concept of a unified humanity. The women who built WILPF came to this epiphany first through their work for the protection of labor, women, children, and immigrants under the conditions of a new industrial global economy. But it became the basis of their unexpected claim for women’s rights as universal rights, because the war had shown how masculine politics stood on a view of humanity that was truncated by nationality. The dominant sociological view of humanity at the time was that the expansion of our moral frontiers started with the family, moved to the nation, and would someday include the human cosmos. WILPF’s critique of war, however, concluded that the order had to be reversed: international peace could only function when nation-states took humanity as the full object of ethical loyalty. This position was not obvious at the beginning. WILPF was first formed to lobby simply for the peaceful mediation of the war. It audaciously sent two delegations across war-torn Europe after its Hague Congress, in the summer of 1915, to meet with heads of state in fourteen capitals. These missions were privately treated with respect by state leaders, but publicly ridiculed almost everywhere. Despite police harassment and repeated efforts to withhold passports and mail for international communication, WILPF itself survived, but just barely. At the end of the war, at its dissenting Zurich Congress in May 1919, it lobbied the Paris Peace Conference for the reform of the League of Nations along radically internationalist lines. Its program separated itself from dozens of other internationalist groups in also claiming that lasting peace and security depended, among

“The Whole Organism of Humanity”

133

other things, on the expansion of women’s rights as both the means and the index of global social progress. The claim here was more than parochial; it asserted that women’s marginalization in war gave them a privileged vision of universal humanity that depended on a radical reorientation of international norms. It was a call not just for women’s juridical rights but also for the imagination of a borderless humanity as the only meaningful pathway to peace. As Susan BuckMorss has written, “Universal humanity is visible at its edges.”4

Settlement Sociology and the Interdependence of Humanity To understand this vision, we need to start with the interrelationship between the struggle for women’s rights and the political economy of industrial society. The story of the uneven growth of women’s rights from the eighteenth to the early twentieth century is well known.5 Partial voting rights had been won in a few countries, but only Australia, New Zealand, and Finland granted men and women political equality before 1914. While the war saw other nations expand suffrage, there was no clear connection between women’s support for the war and the granting of rights.6 What happened in 1919 was that progress toward suffrage as a civil right was finally proposed by WILPF as a universal human right, which was tied directly to peace. This position stemmed from the confluence of two things that the war brought into focus. First, the transnational community of women reformers—whose professional lives, often connected to the urban settlement house movement, were committed to combating the social costs of industrial capitalism—helped create an ideology that stressed the mutability of human identity through social interaction.7 This “settlement sociology” was personified in WILPF’s first president, Jane Addams. After founding Hull-House in Chicago in the late 1880s, Addams saw the crowded American city as a crucible of human progress itself, because it was there that highly differentiated people were forced to build a cooperative community, stripped of “non-essential differences” and focused instead on their “common human nature.” Through this diversity, Addams insisted in Newer Ideals of Peace (1907), society experiences “a gravitation toward the universal.” According to Addams, It is possible that we shall be saved from warfare by the “fighting rabble” itself, by the “quarrelsome mob” turned into kindly citizens of the world through the pressures of the cosmopolitan neighborhood. It is not that they are shouting for peace—on the contrary, if they shout at

134

Andrew M. Johnston

all, they will continue to shout for war—but that they are really attaining cosmopolitan relations through daily experience. They will probably believe for a long time that war is noble and necessary both to engender and cherish patriotism; and yet all of the time, below their shouting, they are living in the kingdom of human kindness. They are laying the simple and inevitable foundations for an international order as the foundations of tribal and national morality have already been laid. They are developing the only sort of patriotism consistent with the intermingling of the nations.8

Whether this was practicable was not the point: it was simply that the idea was “living,” as the Pragmatists with whom Addams associated would put it.9 And the network of professional women committed to it used modern modes of communication and travel to solidify a cross-border consciousness that heightened their shared sense of marginalization.10 This was how gender connected the argument for women’s rights to the need to encourage “the gravitation toward the universal.” Again, Addams provided the language. In politics, she argued, men of “public life” prefer the tariff or the size of the navy to the issue of tenement hygiene; they prefer struggles that have “enemies and outsiders” to ones that engage the social morality of cooperation, or what she famously called “civic housekeeping.” Men created norms for themselves that rewarded flexing their moral (and physical) muscle against external foes because it strengthened their control over the border between sexual spheres. This, then, was an argument about rights: the vote was endowed to those who could fight to defend the community from outside threats, which made it irrelevant to women.11 But the Industrial Revolution had created the “overcrowded and cosmopolitan city,” where the needs of society’s health and security demanded the participation of those whose daily lives were most affected by these dramatic changes, namely women. The “military order” of men had been replaced by an “industrial order of society” that, per force, required the franchise for women.12 World War I was itself the second factor that brought this reasoning into contact with pacifism. The very nature of modern war, demanding the absolute mobilization of citizens and resources in the name of a fictive nation, confronted disenfranchised women with an existential choice. To support war meant to demonstrate their convergence with male concepts of political rationality in order to “earn” citizenship.13 Their rights would be tied to their belief in the inside and outside nature of national society. To dissent because they lacked representation in a decision that menaced the security of women and children everywhere—while men claimed to be defending them—meant arguing that women’s only claim to political

“The Whole Organism of Humanity”

135

equality had to be based on their different position in society. The idea of “difference” often relied on maternalism—women as mothers of humanity—but in the case of WILPF, it tended instead to test the moral boundaries of the nation-state itself. From there it was a small step to claim that women’s rights could only be guaranteed by the international community. Only there could their redemptive capacities as social workers of the world address what Clara Ragaz, the president of WILPF’s Swiss section, called “the wildly raging passions of war.”14 The war thus showed the need for a universal expansion of social work to address famine, statelessness, and the vulnerability of children, and to challenge the “absolute sovereignty” of the state that produced “anarchy” between nations. In WILPF’s evolving thought, women’s rights were not abstract or axiomatic, but were a function of the pressing needs of a civilizational order destroyed by men. Some of this thinking came from currents of the new social sciences, notably sociology’s study of what made modern societies cohere.15 As feudal and religious norms declined, liberal industrial nations had to confront their disaggregating tendencies, with many of them appealing to nationalism and imperialism as sources of functional unity (conservative states with residual feudal institutions, such as imperial Germany, Russia, and Austro-Hungary, had to construct an unstable blend of modern nationalism and atavistic emperor worship). The French notion of solidarité, and, frankly, Émile Durkheim’s entire oeuvre, focused precisely on finding sources of moral regulation that did not court the irrationalism of the church or the aristocracy or the class struggle of socialism.16 For their part, American sociologists from Albion Small to Franklin Giddings and E. A. Ross, facing growing class and race conflict, pioneered a “progressive” liberal concept of “social control,” by which individuals and groups could internalize their loyalty to the community above their more “selfish” instincts.17 What these works had in common was their dissection of the nation-state at the exact historical juncture of the widely observed internationalization of the world. For some, like Chicago’s George Herbert Mead, the “consciousness of a group” that defined nationalism was but the beginning of the “same consciousness in the larger society” of the world.18 The leaders of WILPF were steeped in this sociological literature and often participated in it actively. Addams worked closely with Mead, who favorably reviewed Newer Ideals of Peace and would later write a series of essays on the sociology of nationalism and internationalism.19 Emily Greene Balch (WILPF’s first

136

Andrew M. Johnston

secretary-treasurer in Geneva) was mentored as an undergraduate by Franklin Giddings, later studied sociology in Chicago with Small, and then in Berlin with Georg Simmel. While a professor at Wellesley College, she produced Our Slavic Fellow Citizens (1910), the first major study of an American immigrant community. In five hundred pages of quantitative and qualitive analysis, Balch concluded, contra Mead, that while nationalism was undeniably connected to democracy, it could also act as a tool of oppression in the twin acts of assimilation or exclusion: “it has divided peoples who before were hardly conscious of difference and has narrowed men’s sympathies to their own little group.”20 Likewise, two leaders of WILPF’s French section, Gabrielle Duchêne and Jeanne Halbwachs, after rejecting the patriotism of France’s two main suffrage groups, worked closely with the pacifist minoritaire wing of the French Socialist Party and with solidarité economist Charles Gide, respectively.21 But for all of these women, the antinomy between growing nationalism and internationalism underscored a difference in gender experience. To them, the nation-state cultivated its cohesion against the tendencies of internationalization by relying on the coercive force of national cultural and moral norms, latent in even the most benevolent liberal state. What made WILPF’s feminists different from other internationalists was the centrality of women’s emancipation to their conception of peace: disarmament went hand in hand with women’s suffrage, reform to marriage laws, prohibitions on sex trafficking, and access to birth control as pathways to international harmony. There was, in short, attention—without the word itself—to gender as a dialectic relationship between men and women. Although WILPF members used maternalist language from time to time, in most respects theirs was an argument about the acquired social functions of masculinity and force. This exposed nationalism itself because the voicelessness of women was highlighted by the war’s unprecedented claims on citizens’ bodies. WILPF’s plan for a new international order had to loosen the grip of nationalism, with the endless excuses as to why women’s equality was incompatible with national security. Feminist internationalists recognized that, as Jürgen Habermas has put it, the “medium of state power is constituted in the form of law.” The authority of laws is, in turn, derived not merely from external force, nor from the will of the ruling class (or sex), but from moral recognition: social norms that are assumed to be timeless and universal. Among those norms were ones that pertained to sexual inequality. In this sense, human rights are “Janus-

“The Whole Organism of Humanity”

137

faced,” because morality speaks to “every creature that ‘bears a human face,’” but the law protects “individual persons only insofar as the latter belong to a particular community.”22 The history of such modern liberal communities is the history of invoking egalitarian claims precisely to justify the unequal treatment of certain groups. In creating laws based on “natural rights” of humans that deliberately excluded some members of the community, all early liberal constitutions truncated the very concept of humanity precisely as they affirmed it. For the emerging intellectuals of international feminism, this meant that the concept of political rights demanded a new understanding of universal norms. The supposedly universal principles that legitimized national laws were, in fact, the location of actual political change. And the Great War thus provided a paradoxical opportunity: international space opened to women because of their very exclusion. Norms that bound men to fight for their countries made it harder for them to dissent. Men in political life, Harriot Stanton Blatch stated at the opening of the US Women’s Peace Party in January 1915, “are hampered by their political affiliations. You are free; rise to your opportunity.” The same thought came to Emily Greene Balch on her way to The Hague a few months later. Women, “being outsiders[,] have a peculiar locus standi which is proving to have considerable strategic value.” Addams’s address at The Hague also pivoted on this paradox. She had received a letter from a soldier that read: “It is clear why the men are holding back, but why do not women make a statement so many of us are longing for?” For Addams, this was also generational. Victorian men may have possessed a moral romanticism that dreamed of a peaceful world led by wise leaders of wise nations. But modern men, internationalized by experience and hardened by imperial rivalry, were acquiring the grim skepticism that possessed Chicago’s immigrants. “They continue to salute the flag,” Addams wrote, “but recognize it as a symbol and realize that it has the danger of all abstractions, that a wrong content may be substituted for the right one, and that men in a nation, an army, a crowd may do things horrible as heroic that they could never do alone.”23 This is one reason why WILPF placed its hopes in a League of Nations. Although it was disappointed with the Paris Conference version—some calling it “a League of Conquerors against Conquered”24—WILPF came to believe that it could be used as a space from which women might internationalize their “civic housekeeping.” It also believed that breaking men’s monopoly on the state re-

138

Andrew M. Johnston

quired defending the rights of women as a universal good: rights could not be leveraged by claiming something inherent to their species-being, but instead as a function of the needs of a suffering humanity that had been abandoned by a masculine order and had little to no room for humanity in practice. The articulation of a concept of an undivided species shows us how social praxis, embedded in specific historical conditions rather than a mysterious cascading logic, created an argument for universal rights some thirty years before the UN Declaration.25

Open and Closed Societies: Henri Bergson’s Vision of Humanity Women were, in one sense, everywhere at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919: visual representations of peace almost always portrayed it in the form of a woman—a winged angel carrying an olive branch, or a protective nurse, or a mother—ministering to injured humanity.26 But how they were supposed to act on this was a mystery, since actual women stood outside the peace process itself. The reason given was that the only issues that apparently concerned their sex—the welfare of children and women—could be attended to outside the high stakes of territorial, military, and economic bargaining. International security had little to do with the peculiar sympathies of women or their narrow political interest in suffrage, which was a matter, they were told, of domestic—not international—concern.27 Because the peace conference itself was hosted by France, WILPF replied with some symbolism of its own, moving its postwar congress to neutral Zurich in May 1919 so that women from all sides of the war could attend and cast judgment on the failures of the peacemakers. The Zurich Congress responded to the dismissal of women by rejecting the core element of the extant international order: the nation-state’s “absolute sovereignty.” To WILPF, the welfare of humanity required a dramatic expansion of the sphere of moral obligation, for which women were, either by experience or nature, uniquely positioned. Their claim to political rights thus flowed back into the nation-state from this universal imperative rather than the other way around. To make this claim—before looking closely at the Zurich Resolutions themselves—I want to detour to an unexpected place: French philosopher Henri Bergson. He was perhaps the most famous philosopher in the world at the time, known for his work on time, memory, and will. After a stint as a propagandist for the French foreign

“The Whole Organism of Humanity”

139

ministry during World War I and then as co-president of the League’s International Committee on Intellectual Cooperation, in early 1932 Bergson wrote his final substantial work, The Two Sources of Morality and Religion. It was a study of the evolutionary impulses behind human obligations and thus, in the end, his most political book. It has recently been the subject of new interest by philosophers of war and human rights, and it speaks to WILPF’s position on rights.28 Bergson’s idea was a response to the tendency of sociologists (like Durkheim) to describe two different national characters in modern states: one materialistic, autocratic, and addicted to using conflict with other nations to build artificial internal solidarity; the other liberal, humanistic, and generous, ultimately expanding its moral universe to include humanity.29 For Anglo-French thinkers, imperial Germany was the paradigmatic example of the first. Bergson’s own propaganda during the war used this dichotomy, and to some extent his final book may have been an effort to come to terms with the ease with which even his own republican patriotism depended on war.30 Like Hannah Arendt around the same time, Bergson had become disabused of the idea that human rights could be based on an abstract universal concept like dignity alone. For him, morality (or what he called ‘mutual obligation’) was rooted in our evolutionary need for security in groups. “Obligation does not come down, as might be imagined, from above . . . from a principle from which maxims have been rationally deduced,” Bergson wrote. “It has come up from below . . . from that substratum of pressure, capable of being extended into aspiration, which is the basis of society.”31 Kant universalized this idea in philosophy, and Durkheim, like Mead, claimed that the family, the nation, and humanity were three spheres of obligation radiating outward successively. Bergson would have none of this: by its nature, he wrote, obligation binds a community by announcing that the commitments we have to each other are by this positive act denied to those outside. And it is during war, when we praise murder and pillage precisely because they defend our moral frontiers, that this is clearest. The conclusion is shocking: war is not an exception to social solidarity; it is the very expression of it.32 While it is probably true, as liberal sociologists argued, that liberal states are more universal in their outlook than conservative states, both forms “draw imaginary strength from a closed source.” As Mark Sinclair puts it: “That a society at war can suspend so easily its universal duties to mankind suggests that its morality never stretched beyond itself.”33 War is evidence that humanity is divided, in Bergson’s words, between conceptions of society as either “closed” or

140

Andrew M. Johnston

“open.” The key was recognizing what the concept of rights used by liberals owed to acts of exclusion: the inalienable right to freedom and equality was granted by birth, but because European thought, as Achille Mbembe argues, “has tended to conceive of identity less in terms of mutual belonging (cobelonging) to a common world than in terms of a relation between similar beings,” human rights had always been imbricated with classificatory systems.34 Bergson would have agreed: when human rights belong to a community, or are exalted as “universal” as a way of invoking power against something, they are always self-defeating. This is what prompted Carl Schmitt to complain in the 1920s that those (Anglo-Americans after the war) who invoke humanity “always and simply are trying to cheat for the sake of narrow interests.”35 For Bergson, the leap toward norms that embrace “the whole of humanity” cannot be undertaken by a piecemeal expansion of the frontier of ethics (a line between inside and outside persists), but only by speaking of the “open” or “limitless society” from the outset.36 Human rights ought to be used to describe, in Alexander Lefebvre’s words, whatever protects us against “our natural tendency toward closure, hatred, and war” and pushes us toward a concept of universal love.37 Human rights only work as a leap, as emotion not logic, as a revelation of affections beyond all closed societies. Without putting it in philosophical terms, the internationalists of WILPF came to think this way too. “Our protest reflects our emotions as well as our convictions,” Addams wrote after The Hague Congress, “but still more is the result of deep-grounded human experience.”38 It is in this sense that WILPF’s approach to international reconstruction in 1919 established foundations for conceiving of women’s rights as a pathway toward what Addams would famously call “cosmic patriotism.” There were other international movements that worked against the grain of national boundaries, just as there were men who worked for social reform. And WILPF could not always address the tension between its planetary patriotism and national self-determination. It had its racial blind spots (the Zurich Congress passed a tepid resolution on “Race Equality”),39 its internal fights along ethno-national lines (notably over Ireland), and its Eurocentric tendency to speak of “backward” nations.40 But cosmic patriotism was its mandate. In 1922, Balch, writing from its Geneva headquarters, declared that while WILPF members were “lovers of our own lands, we are citizens of the world, conscious partakers in the sacrament of all human life.”41

“The Whole Organism of Humanity”

141

“The Welfare of Mankind”: The Zurich Resolutions, c. 1919 No one could imagine that The Hague Congress—let alone the subsequent diplomatic missions led by Addams, Aletta Jacobs, Chrystal Macmillan, Rosika Schwimmer, Cor Ramondt-Hirschmann, and Emily Greene Balch across Europe to try to stop the war in the summer of 1915—might produce a peace plan that even Woodrow Wilson admired.42 Nor that WILPF would survive political harassment to meet again in Zurich in 1919, launch the first public criticisms of the Paris Peace and the League of Nations Covenant, and send a delegation of women to Paris to present a “Women’s Charter” that wanted women’s rights embedded in the new international order. These ideas came out of the laboratory of social work, its critique of domination, capitalism, ethno-racial assimilation, and militarism. World War I forced this into the open. Women who had already been internationalized by the suffrage movement now confronted the mechanized violence of nationalism as a gender problem. In a few short years, based in their Maison Internationale in Geneva, WILPF built a global network that, though still largely North Atlantic, by 1924 had affiliates in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Ceylon, China, Haiti, Egypt, India, Mexico, and Turkey.43 It organized summer schools and international conferences on economics and labor, worked with the British-based Fight the Famine Council for Economic Reconstruction, forged working ties with the League of Nations’ International Labour Office, as well as a host of other like-minded nongovernmental organizations that circled around Geneva in the early 1920s. It sent fact-finding missions to Ireland, Eastern Europe, and Haiti, recruited feminists from war-ravaged Belgium to raise money for starving Viennese children, and opened German-funded houses of reconciliation in northeastern France.44 These concrete activities, whether effective or not,45 originated in the formative transatlantic discussions between 1915 and 1919 that culminated in the Zurich Congress. Because it was there that WILPF constructed the basic framework of its feminist program for internationalism, I want to highlight the principal elements of its peace plan to explain not just why women’s rights had to be universal, but how women were better able to conceive of the League’s proper role as serving the undifferentiated needs of humanity. WILPF’s aim was to erode the nationalist parochialism of an intergovernmental body and replace it with an institution that functioned as a representative of all people.

142

Andrew M. Johnston

One can begin with WILPF’s own constitution. Its International Bureau and Executive Committee had no formal national requirement: there were national sections, but they only submitted two representatives to a non-voting “consultative committee,” while the day-to-day business, philosophy, and policies of WILPF were self-consciously supranational. It was open to all nations and dominions, but also, significantly, to “any minority in a country, which claims the status of a separate nationality.”46 The protection of minority voices was the first denial of the “absolute sovereignty” of the nation-state—a provision on behalf of “peoples rather than of governments”—that the Zurich Congress recommended be included in the League of Nations Covenant. Marilyn Lake has suggested that international feminists had come to believe that the “self-determination” of women (meant as the need for political power to enact protective legislation for women) was cognitively linked to the broader self-determination of minorities, colonies, and displaced people.47 When WILPF’s Zurich Resolutions endorsed the rights of what it called “national groups” as well as “the abolition of the subjection of any population to another,” part of this was a general claim for greater democratization of the world, which was the logical adjunct to any argument for women’s political rights. It was also part of the stock of “internationalist” arguments during the war under the heading of the “Democratic Control of Foreign Policy.”48 Again, though, WILPF’s language needs to be understood as coming from women’s experience rather than as an argument for ethno-nationalism per se. Their resolution thus specified that WILPF knew it was “impossible to create everywhere nationally homogenous communities and to avoid wholly the inclusion of alien groups within certain States, [so] it urges that the League of Nations shall maintain the right of minority groups and individuals to religious and cultural liberty, making it possible for differences that have hitherto been grounds of dissension to become enrichments of the life of the state.”49 This passage, seeing diversity as an enrichment of community, has Balch’s settlement sociology all over it. Her book Our Fellow Slavic Citizens aligned itself with Jane Addams’s work in Chicago, not the main currents of professional sociology in the United States. Balch rejected her mentor Franklin Giddings’s claim that nations are a function of people identifying with their “own kind,” describing this as a malignant “brute inheritance” that modernity had rendered increasingly meaningless. She, and others, read American anti-immigrant sentiment into the violent tribalism of World War I.50

“The Whole Organism of Humanity”

143

The second feature of the 1919 Zurich program that reveals WILPF’s break with liberal internationalism was its criticism of the League of Nations Covenant. WILPF’s insistence on the right of self-determination was tempered by its criticism of “the absolute sovereign rights of states.” Although it was divided on whether the League could be saved from the “great powers,” in the end it felt that, with the right influences, it could serve as a living constitution for an international community. As long as sovereignty did not, in the end, trump equality, the League could uphold the conditions of human progress across borders.51 For WILPF, sovereignty was the shield behind which the masculine state concealed precisely that women, qua women, shared their international subjugation. If women’s political rights were to be guaranteed, the entrance had to come from outside the walls of the political community. This was the reasoning of the Women’s Charter that WILPF lobbied unsuccessfully to have inserted into the League of Nations Covenant—in much the same way that the League had been given a Labour Charter.52 Here again the starting point was women’s political right to influence the state. When The Hague Resolutions called for “democratic control,” they added “that the only system that can be called democratic is one that includes the equal representation of men and women.” From the outset, then, WILPF made the franchise its main political tool for wider international reform. “Since the combined influence of the women of all countries is one of the strongest forces for the prevention of war,” its 1915 resolution read, “and since women can only have full responsibility and effective influence when they have equal political rights with men, this International Congress of Women demands their political enfranchisement.” This was a contentious claim for two reasons. First, one delegate argued that, had they the vote, women would have voted overwhelming in favor of the war, an answer that generated a lot of hissing in the audience but was probably not far off the mark. Second, as the Berlin-based cofounder of the German League for Human Rights Elisabeth Rotten argued, suffrage was an “internal matter” and risked being viewed as “interference” at the very time when women’s rights were slowly gaining acceptance. But Chrystal Macmillan answered by citing historical precedent: the Congress of Vienna had passed a declaration condemning the slave trade as “repugnant to the principles of humanity and universal morality.”53 Women’s rights should become a new international norm in much the same way. The motion passed despite Rotten’s concerns, and when it was taken up again six years later in Zurich, there was no dissent. A full-

144

Andrew M. Johnston

blown Women’s Charter argued that women’s political rights stemmed from the fact that the “natural relation between men and women was that of interdependence and cooperation” (wording taken from the IWSA’s declaration of principles in 1904). These were key sociological terms of the era that placed men and women as coworkers rather than autonomous citizens. “It is injurious to the community to restrict women to a position of dependence, to discourage their education or development, or to limit their opportunities.” The charter asked that the peacemakers in Paris “hold that the recognition of women’s service to the world, not only as wage earners, but as mothers and homemakers, is an essential factor in the building up of the world’s peace.” To balance this against cultural diversity, the charter recognized “that differences in social development and tradition make strict uniformity with respect to the status of women difficult of immediate attainment. But, holding as they do that social progress is dependent upon the status of women in the community, they think that there are certain principles which communities should endeavour to apply.”54 The final principle that tied peace to women’s rights was what WILPF called the problem of “coercion.” Here again its perspective was broader and more gendered that simply opposing militarism. Helena Swanwick presented a resolution that stated “that the test of the civilization of a State is the extent to which it relies upon moral appeal and consent rather than coercion.” Therefore, it should be “the aim of all Governments to replace coercion by consent and cooperation, and with this object in view to educate and strengthen the free will of the people by democratic institutions, the safe-guarding of the rights of minorities, and the strict limitation of the power of the State.” Swanwick knew that while some men shared this view, “women have a duty in this matter more especially laid upon them.” Balch seconded the resolution and took the argument one social interactive step further. Governments suppress and coerce, she said, “without ever thinking of making an adequate study of the actual, historically proved and logically predictable, effects of such policies. . . . We have made but the merest beginnings in the highest of human acts, that of living and working together on the plane of consent and cooperation without coercion.”55 For women, whose daily lives were subjected to the constraints of actual or latent male violence, coercion was the litmus test of communicative freedom and, therefore, the justice needed to resolve conflicts and give voice to all humanity. When Addams’s friend John Dewey publicly argued in 1916 that because force lay behind all political change, there must be goods

“The Whole Organism of Humanity”

145

worth fighting for, Balch answered him: coercion invokes “the heats and confusions of fighting animal instinct.” This clash of wills causes each side to forget “rational aims” and fight for victory per se, “if not for mere fighting’s sake. It is an appetite, lust, as real as any other.”56 Berlin-based feminist and social worker Alice Salomon, once called “the Jane Addams of Germany,” learned through her own international work with other women that the same things that satisfied one nation were often found offensive by another.57 She was horrified by the festival-like atmosphere of the war in 1914. It forced her to reconcile her love of Germany and her hatred of war, showing exactly why nationalism cannot be the springboard to a world order based on morality learned at home. “Above all war fosters attitudes which are the source of social injustice and distress: It annihilates respect for property, it drills men to requisition, loot and steal. It instils hatred in the population. It paves the way for cruelty, for domination, for a belief in the superiority of one nation over another. . . . Patriotism is not enough . . . for the welfare of mankind.”58 The Zurich Congress was painfully aware of how little influence this perspective had over the statesmen of the world. Addams valiantly led a delegation from Zurich to Paris that was received politely but told, again, that these were not international issues. WILPF was attempting to bring an entirely new ontology to international politics, one that understood that peace could come only from the foundations of a common humanity. And this could, in turn, only be realized by granting the self-determination of women as global coworkers. It is no surprise, of course, that WILPF also committed itself to a range of postwar humanitarian projects that defied borders. Addams later lamented that had the League of Nations found its “overarching motive” in ministering to humanity in the aftermath of the wartime blockade, in the Russian famine, and all places where people longed for basic assistance that its governments could not provide, it would have stood a better chance of building a broad political constituency.59 It is clear WILPF’s project of reconciliation through citizen-to-citizen work did not bring the transformation it wanted. It joined with other women’s groups to have the League of Nations include a provision that made its jobs open equally to men and women, a breakthrough that helped turn the League into a model of a new, more multilateral, international relations.60 In that sense, there is more significance to WILPF’s critique of sovereignty and rights than can be measured by its failure in 1919. The Hague and Zurich Congresses contended with a number of tensions that lie between the

146

Andrew M. Johnston

nation-state’s proprietary control over rights on the one hand and the countermanding ideals of the universal on the other. WILPF tried to resolve this in two principal ways. First, it had no choice but to argue for “self-determination”: this was the vocabulary of democracy, the juridical location of their own rights as women, and the only political system that in theory at least endorses and sustains communicative space. Yet, as Jacques Rancière has argued, while democracy is a great leveler, to avoid just anyone claiming a right to rule, societies have relied on (supposedly universal) norms (race, class, and gender) to distinguish who is best suited to rule.61 World War I accelerated a torrent of longstanding claims to political recognition—from the working class, from ethnic minorities, from colonial subjects, and, of course, from women. Those women who had acquired education and professional access saw the concept of self-determination as an echo of their own struggles. But as long as reigning norms were used to limit citizenship, WILPF tempered its faith in democracy in ways that simultaneously tried to erode the absolutist claims of sovereignty. This is why they insisted that women’s political rights might even be considered a criterion for future membership in the League of Nations. Second, WILPF embraced cultural pluralism. This is where American women perhaps had their greatest impact. Almost all of them had worked in or around the social settlement movement, dealing with immigration and resistance to it. Most of the US members of WILPF were either philosophical pluralists or well versed in the debate over “Americanism” that the war brought into violent focus. Their “cosmic patriotism” was not a call for world government; it was a paradoxical argument in favor of the limitless fragmentation of people into smaller and smaller local groups, minorities within minorities if you will, until the intolerant logic of the nation no longer held a monopoly of power and people were free to live their lives as coinhabitants of humanity.62 There remained another question: would women with equal rights actually usher in a more peaceful world? On the surface, this implied that their identity as mothers of humanity might also limit their claim to real equality. Yet Addams’s belief was that the wider human need for cooperation and mutual care could only be addressed properly if men and women worked together. The question of difference was simply no longer relevant. At least two WILPF members also explored the idea that women’s identities were not biological but were acquired through their relationship with men. Balch, at times, thought that women had been acculturated in a form

“The Whole Organism of Humanity”

147

of master-slave dialectic, a twinning that produced an ideal type of man socialized toward dominance and violence but whose moral reform (through women’s emancipation) might contain the seeds of world peace. The full equality of male and female would change the social consciousness of both, removing the adamant of violence upon which men depend for their social authority.63 Halbwachs also wrote a series of articles in 1917 showing how women’s marginalization allowed them to see reality more clearly. “Men,” she said, “have always used the weakness of women to hide their own injustice.” Women were in a better position even to speak for soldiers, who were oppressed by the male culture of honor that enveloped them. She mocked the noble indignation at the deaths of innocent women and children while soldiers died heroically in the millions. “We have to choose,” she wrote. “Either human life is worth nothing and war is legitimate, such that all means are good and there cannot be, by definition, atrocities. Or human life is the first and only good, and therefore war itself is an atrocity.”64 This is the exact point Bergson made fifteen years later.

The Whole Organism of Humanity WILPF threw itself onto the world stage in the middle of a world war and demanded not just peace but women’s rights based on a profound claim that placed human life above all else. The struggle against the condescension of men, the anxious dismissal by patriotic women, and the sheer futility of raising their voice on behalf of peace led them to imagine humanity without an “antithetical other.” After the war, WILPF lobbied the League to undertake famine relief. Addams worried that without an “overmastering motive” to address human suffering above the boundaries of states, the League lost its chance to make itself relevant.65 Its gaze upon the world was too male, and too preoccupied with sovereignty, to be able to place humanity first and nations second. WILPF was under no illusions that the time had come for the abandonment of national affections, or that great power politics would simply melt away. But it articulated the idea at least. Julia Grace Wales, a young Canadian literature teacher at the University of Wisconsin, felt the same thing. Over her Christmas break in 1914, she wrote a peace plan for ending the war that used what she called “continuous mediation without armistice” to avoid belligerents continuing to fight in anticipation of a truce. She shared

148

Andrew M. Johnston

it with her colleagues and it soon became the de facto peace plan for most US peace societies. It got her invited to The Hague in the spring, and then to join one of delegations that went across Europe that summer. On her way to Scandinavia in a pack boat in the rough waters of the North Sea, she was transformed by an epiphany on seeing the Danish coastline. She thought that in contrast to the violence of the war, the natural world spoke to the inward unity of all things. But what brought her there, a young woman bobbing in the middle of a terrible war? “It was an idea, just the sheer pushing force of an Idea: nothing else. And so it was with each of those women. . . . An idea brought them. An idea, nothing more tangible has sent Jane Addams to London and will take her to Berlin, Paris, Rome and Vienna. In the end it is an idea that must conquer, not force of arms. The Ideal is the real thing.” As the boat passed the castle of Kronborg, she remembered her Hamlet, and the imaginings of history and of the possibility of a new heaven as well as a new earth. “The International Ideal shall surely come to pass. It may take a long time, but it is coming, and in a sense it now is, striving in the hearts of men.” The one thing was that the “whole organism of humanity that is trying to evolve into something, is coming conscious as a whole, that consciousness is trying to break through, that it must now create for itself some kind of organ of thought and expression.”66 Andrew M. Johnston is an associate professor of history at Carleton University in Ottawa, where he teaches US and international history. He is the author of Hegemony and Culture in the Origins of NATO Nuclear First-Use, 1945–1955 (2005) and is currently writing a book on the feminist internationalism of the WILPF. His research examines the crisis of the North Atlantic world’s industrial-imperial societies at the beginning of the twentieth century, and how the dynamics of social conflict induced by this crisis generated specific ideas about internationalism, humanity, and global ethics.

Notes 1. It was named the International Committee of Women for Permanent Peace (ICWPP) from 1915 to 1919. It renamed itself at its second Zurich Congress in 1919. 2. At the start of the war, the IWSA appealed for peace and, like WILPF, connected it to women’s disenfranchisement. “We women of twenty-six countries, gathered in the International Alliance for Women’s Suffrage, with the aim of obtaining the right to share political power with men who decide the fate of nations, we

“The Whole Organism of Humanity”

3. 4. 5. 6.

7. 8.

9. 10. 11. 12. 13.

14.

15.

16.

17.

18. 19.

149

call upon you, for you to try all possible means of arbitration and conciliation, before half the civilized world is bathed in blood.” Quoted in Regine Deutsch, “Vingt-cinq ans de l’Alliance Internationale pour le Suffrage et l’Action civique et politique pour des Femmes 1904–1929,” Alliance International Pour Le Suffrage, DOS 396 ALL, Bibliothèque Marguerite Durand, Paris. Bussey and Tims, Pioneers for Peace; Degen, History of the Women’s Peace Party, chapter 3; and Patterson, The Search. Buck-Morss, Hegel, 151. For example: Fraser, “Becoming Human”; Anderson, Joyous Greetings; Stansell, The Feminist Promise. With the exception of the United States and Canada, women’s full suffrage came soonest in neutral and revolutionary countries and slowest in Catholic republics. Hause and Kenney, Women’s Suffrage, 202–203; Hannam, “International Dimensions.” Oakley, Women, chapter 3; the term was first used by Lengermann and Niebrugge, “Thrice Told.” Addams, Newer Ideals, 9–10; emphasis added. Charlene Haddock Seigfried’s introduction to Addams, Democracy and Social Ethics, xv; and Siegfried, Pragmatism and Feminism; Sklar, “Some of Us”; Klosterman and Stratton, “Speaking Truth to Power.” William James speaks of “living” and “dead” ideas in “The Will to Believe,” 329. Rupp, “Constructing Internationalism,” and Worlds of Women. Hagemann and Rendell, “Introduction,” 17. Addams, Newer Ideals, 111, 126–127. Ramirez et al., “Changing Logic,” 735, citing Pateman, “Three Questions,” Walby, “Is Citizenship Gendered,” and Orloff, “Gender and the Social Rights of Citizenship.” Welcome address of Clara Ragaz, Report of the International Congress of Women, Zurich, May 12–17, 1919 (Geneva, 1919), Reports of the International Congresses, 1915–1998, WILPF Papers, Swarthmore College Peace Collection (SCPC), 15–16. As Émile Durkheim wrote, “the object of sociology as a whole is to determine the conditions for the conservation of societies.” Quoted in Lukes, Émile Durkheim, 139; Simon, Histoire de la sociologie, 360–368. Solidarité was theorized first by internationalist Léon Bourgeois, who also connected it to a model for a new international order that he called the Société des Nations in 1910. It was also adopted by French economist Charles Gide and British liberals such as Leonard T. Hobhouse. Here there were connections to WILPF. Gide worked closely with Jeanne Halbwachs-Alexandre, a WILPF member (and brother of Durkheimian sociologist Maurice Halbwachs); and Hobhouse’s sister Emily was a prominent British member of WILPF. See Johnston, “Despite Wars”; Kloppenberg, Uncertain Victory, 301–305; Bourgeois, Solidarité; Bouglé, Le solidarisme; Jeannesson, “Léon Bourgeois.” Ross, Social Control; Ross, “Social Control,” unpublished summary, n.d., E.A. Ross Papers, box 32, folder 4, State Historical Society of Wisconsin, Madison, WI; Ross, The Origins, 230–235. Quoted in Deegan, Self, War, and Society, 100. When the war broke out in 1914, Mead’s sociological research into the formation of the “self” was fascinated by the ease with which “social emotion” had overwhelmed intelligence. “I never dreamed,” he wrote his son, “that I would have the chance to observe the phenomena of social psychology on so titanic a scale, and the actual paying down of the awful price for our helplessness in consciously controlling the formation of national selfhood.” Mead to Henry C.A.

150

20. 21.

22.

23.

24. 25.

26.

27.

28. 29. 30. 31. 32.

Andrew M. Johnston

Mead, 3 October 1914, George Herbert Mead Papers, Box 1, Folder 7, Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library. Balch, Our Slavic Fellow Citizens, 396–397. In 1916, Gide and Halbwachs were members of a working group of the Ligue des Droits de l’Homme known as the Société d’études documentaires et critiques sur la guerre (SEDCG) that became increasingly critical of France’s official explanation for the war. Halbwachs also pleaded with Addams shortly after The Hague Congress in 1915 to find ways of telling French women about the German and Austrian women who also opposed the war. In Jeanne Halbwachs to Addams, 1 June 1915, Records of the Women’s Peace Party (WPP), Series B, 1, Reel 8, SCPC. On Halbwachs and the SEDCG, see Johnston, “Jeanne Halbwachs.” Habermas, “Remarks on Legitimation through Human Rights,” in The Postnational Constellation; Habermas, The Inclusion of the Other, 189–190, 254–264; DeGrooyer et al., The Right to Have Rights. Blatch quoted in Degen, History of the Women’s Peace Party; Emily Balch to Francis Balch, 16 May 1915, Balch Papers, SCPC; Addams et al., Women at The Hague, 30–31. Balch admitted the irony that the only women at The Hague who had the vote (Danish and Norwegian delegates) “showed an additional timidity—the timidity of those who are in a critical and delicate position.” Quoted in Rupp, “Constructing Internationalism,” 1585; Addams et al., Women at The Hague, 10. Report of Political Committees, Report of the International Congress, Zurich, 54–72. The idea of a “norms cascade” draws from Hunt, Inventing Human Rights; Schmitz and Sikkink, “International Human Rights”; Steans, “Debating Women’s Human Rights.” Kuhlman, Reconstructing Patriarchy, 105; Balch’s Approaches to the Great Settlement reprinted a cartoon from the New York Evening Post of a winged woman offering the pope’s peace proposal of 1917 to the desperate, outstretched hand of “humanity” (120). A David Low cartoon from the 1920s showed “humanity” as a woman pointing an accusing finger at the US Senate for murdering the Paris Peace Treaties, also represented as a female corpse at the Senate’s feet. Women’s organizations petitioned the Council of Ten for recognition at the Conference in February 1919. Marguerite de Witt Schlumberger to Woodrow Wilson, 18 January 1919, Papers of Woodrow Wilson (PWW), vol. 54, 1919, 133; Hankey’s Notes of a Meeting of the Council of Ten, 13 February 1919, PWW, vol. 55, 146; Millicent Fawcett to Woodrow Wilson, 24 February 1919; Marguerite de Witt Schlumberger to Wilson, 27 January 1919 and 3 February 1919; Union Française pour le Suffrage des Femmes, letter to Clemenceau, 11 February 1919 and 19 February 1919; Message et lettres circulaire adressé à messieurs le Plénipotentaires, Conference des Femmes Suffragistes de Pays alliées et des Etats Unis [1919], in Conférence des femmes suffragistes des pays alliés tenue du 11 février au 28 juin 1919 à Paris (1AF 164–172), and 1AF 166 Déroulement de la conference, Union Francaise Pour le Suffrage des Femmes (UFSF), Fonds Cécile Brunschvicg, Le Centre des Archives du Feminisme, Universite d’Angers, Angers, France. Lefebvre and White, Bergson, Politics and Religion. Durkheim, Moral Education; Johnston, “Despite Wars,” 106–109. Bergson, “Discours prononcé,” 1102; Sinclair, “Bergson’s Philosophy of Will,” 468–469. Bergson, Les Deux Sources, 92–93 (in the English version, The Two Sources of Morality and Religion, 74); Guerlac, “Bergson,” 48. Lefebvre, “Bergson and Human Rights,” in Bergson, Politics and Religion, 198–200.

“The Whole Organism of Humanity”

151

33. Sinclair, Bergson, 237; Lefebvre, Human Rights, 13. 34. Mbembe, Critique of Black Reason, 1. 35. Moyn, Human Rights, xvii. On Schmitt, see his Concept of the Political, 49; Rasch, “Human Rights”; Mouffe, “Carl Schmitt and ‘World Unity,’” in The Challenge of Carl Schmitt,” 59. 36. Bergson, Two Sources, 22. 37. Lefebvre, “Bergson and Human Rights,” 196. 38. Addams, “What War Is Destroying,” in Fischer and Whipps, Addams’s Essays, 75–78. 39. Resolution A. VII, Race Equality, moved by Mary Church Terrell, Report of the International Congress, Zurich, 109. 40. For example, its Report of the Political Committee C, which spoke of the duty of “mandatory” nations to develop in the “backward races” the capacity for “self-government”: Report of the International Congress, Zurich, 75. See Blackwell, No Peace. 41. Balch, “Our Call,” Bulletin of WILPF, February 1922, SCPC. 42. Woodrow Wilson to Edith Bolling Galt, 18 August 1915; Balch to Addams, 19 August 1915; Robert Lansing to Wilson, 1 September 1915, and Wilson to Lansing, 1 September 1915, PWW, vol. 34 (1915), 243, 250–252, 397–399; Edward House to Wilson, 17 July 1915, and House to Wilson, 19 July 1915, PWW, 33 (1915), 516, 532–533; Addams, Peace and Bread, 17. 43. Report of the Fourth Congress of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, Washington, DC, May 1–7, 1924 (Washington, DC, 1924), Reports of the International Congresses, 1915–1998, WILPF Papers, SCPC. 44. Mary Sheepshanks to Jeanne Mélin, 17 September 1920, correspondence, box 40, dossier 1920; Balch to Mélin, 13 August 1920, 15 August 1920, and 18 October 1920, correspondence, box 40, dossier 1920, Fonds Jeanne Mélin, Archives Marie-Louise Bouglé, Bibliothèque Historique de la Ville de Paris (BVHP), Paris; Report of the Third International Congress of Women, Vienna, July 10–17, 1921 (Geneva, 1921), Reports of the International Congresses, 1915–1998, WILPF Papers, SCPC. 45. Balch reflected in late 1922 that WILPF was “infinitely more significant in its essence, in its purpose, than in its accomplishments.” Balch, “Women’s Work for Peace,” The World Tomorrow (November 1922), 334, in “Miscellaneous Writings, 1920–1922,” Balch Papers, SCPC. 46. WILPF Constitution, WILPF Papers, SCPC; Political Committee Resolution in the League of Nations, Report of the International Congress, Zurich, 58. 47. Lake, “Self-Determination.” 48. WILPF had personal connections to the British Union of Democratic Control (UDC), which had been set up to criticize the process by which Britain had declared war without parliamentary consent. Helena Swanwick, who wrote a UDC pamphlet titled Woman and War (London) in 1915, was also chair of the British section of the IWCPP after The Hague Congress. See Ashworth, “Feminism”; Oakley, Women, 159–161. 49. Report of Political Committee (1)A, Report of the International Congress, Zurich, 59; emphasis added. 50. Balch, “Racial Contact.” In 1906, Balch still had a more conventional liberal view of international relations: “all people [Volk] nurture their own peculiarities, and yet at the same time have to learn to understand the peculiarities of others and to appreciate them. We all gradually strive together towards an international organization. The answer is not Pax Romana, whose answer is freedom with the help of the all-controlling Rome, but rather, Pax Grotiana, . . . a freedom through

152

51.

52.

53.

54. 55.

56.

57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63.

Andrew M. Johnston

reciprocal understanding between strong and independent peoples. We are approaching a complete unity in science, we are building up a world literature and world art, within which individual pieces of particularly high quality must be deemed as such. We are proud of our cosmopolitan sympathies, which have, however, a firm basis in the patriotic rights of one’s own land.” Balch, “Oesterreichische Fragen in amerikanischer Beleuchtung,” Der Weg: Wochenschrift für Politik und Kultur (1906), 6–7, Miscellaneous Writings, Balch Papers, SCPC. On the debate in Zurich on the League Covenant, see Report of Committee A on Political Relations, Report of the International Congress, Zurich, 54–56; Report of Political Committee B: Resolution on the League of Nations (Florence Kelley), 69–73, and other related resolutions, 243–248, 250–254. Chrystal Macmillan in Report of the International Congress, Zurich, 97. The leading French feminist organizations angrily rejected the invitation to The Hague and sent a dissenting manifesto, which was printed in International Congress of Women, The Hague, 28 April–May 1, 1915, Report (Amsterdam, 1915), Reports of the International Congresses, 1915–1998, WILPF Papers, SCPC, 311–315; Cécile Brunschwicg (UFSF) to Rosika Schwimmer, 28 March 1915, box 57, Schwimmer Papers, Schwimmer-Lloyd Collection, New York Public Library, Manuscripts and Archives Division, New York, NY. See Fell, “French Women,” 53–66. Led by Gabrielle Duchêne, however, a number of pacifist feminists formed the French section of the ICWPP, called the Comité de la rue Fondary. See “Appeal for members—French section, ICWPP,” 1915, WILPS records, SCPC; Halbwachs letter to the Women’s Peace Party, 1 June 1915, Records of the WPP, SCPC. Resolution III, Principles of a Permanent Peace, sections 8 and 9, International Congress of Women, The Hague, 113–128. On the limits of the Vienna Declaration, which was nonbinding and had no time limit for abolition, see Martinez, The Slave Trade, 23–26. Section B, Resolution II, The Women’s Charter, Report of the International Congress, Zurich, 95–96; emphasis added. Swanwick and Balch quoted in the minutes of Thursday, 15 May 1919, Report of the International Congress, Zurich, 108–110; see also Balch, “The War in Its Relation to Democracy,” 28–29. Dewey, “Force, Violence and Law” (1916) and “Force and Coercion” (1916) in Boydston, John Dewey, 211–215, 244–251; Balch, “The Great Solution,” The Friend (16 July 1917) in Randall, Beyond Nationalism, 220–221. Dewey later wrote a sympathetic introduction to a new edition of Addams’s Peace and Bread in Time of War. See Dewey, “Democratic Versus Coercive International Organization: The Realism of Jane Addams,” in Boydston, Collected Works. “Die deutsche Jane Addams” appears in Schüller, Frauenbewegung, 187–285. Salomon’s Character Is Destiny: The Autobiography of Alice Salomon (Ann Arbor, 2004), 120, quoted in Oakley, Women, 180. Addams, Peace and Bread, 119–123. Herren, “Gender and International Relations,” 182–183; Sluga, “Women.” Rancière, Hatred of Democracy, 46–47. Balch, “What It Means to Be an American,” address delivered at Wellesley College, 22 February 1916, in Randall, Beyond Nationalism, 33–39. Balch, “The Habit of Peace,” McCall’s Magazine (February 1919) and “Women’s Work for Peace,” The World Tomorrow (November 1922) in “Miscellaneous Writings, 1920–1922,” Balch Papers, SCPC. Balch was working on a book (that she never wrote) on the “differences and resemblances between groups or individuals.” It was, in effect, a study of the social psychology of identity from an epistemologically radical position that saw identity as the product of continuous

“The Whole Organism of Humanity”

153

differentiation and imitation. Here, she was influenced by French sociologist Gabriel Tarde’s theory of imitation, which was more influential in the United States than in Europe. See essay notes, “Connections” (1923), and notes for unpublished book on “a study of the differences and resemblances between groups or individuals” (1923, 1924), Balch Papers, SCPC. 64. Jeanne Halbwachs, “Jaurès Dieu,” Le Populaire du Centre (n.d.); “Guerre de religion” and “À Strasbourg! Soldats!” Le Populaire du Centre (n.d.), Articles de Jeanne Halbwachs-Alexandre parus principalement dans le Populaire du Centre (1914–1918), Dossier France SFIO 1914– 1918, Fonds Michel et Jeanne (Halbwachs) Alexandre, Société d’études documentaires et critiques sur la guerre, BDIC, Nanterre. 65. Addams, Peace and Bread, 115–120. 66. Julia Grace Wales to Committee (Wisconsin branch of the WPP), 4–5 June 1915, Peace Movement (General) folder, Julia Grace Wales Fonds, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa; emphasis added.

Bibliography Addams, Jane. Newer Ideals of Peace: The Moral Substitutes of War. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2007 [1907]. ———. Peace and Bread in Time of War. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2002 [1922]. ———. Democracy and Social Ethics. Introduction by Charlene Haddock Seigfried. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2002 [1902]. Addams, Jane, Emily G. Balch, and Alice Hamilton. Women at The Hague. University of Illinois Press: Urbana/Chicago, 2003 [1915]. Anderson, Bonnie S. Joyous Greetings: The First International Women’s Movement, 1830–1860. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. Ashworth, Lucian M. “Feminism, War and the Prospects of International Government: Helena Swanwick and the Lost Feminists of Interwar International Relations.” Limerick Papers in Politics and Public Administration 2 (2008). Balch, Emily G. Our Slavic Fellow Citizens. New York: Charities Publication Committee, 1910. ———. “Racial Contact and Cohesions as Factors in the Unconstrained Fabric of a World at Peace.” The Survey, 6 March 1915. ———. Approaches to the Great Settlement. New York: B.W. Huebsch, 1918. ———. “The War in Its Relation to Democracy and World Order.” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 72, no. 1 (July 1917): 28–31. Bergson, Henri. The Two Sources of Morality and Religion. Translated by R. Ashley Audra and Cloudesley Brereton. London: Macmillan, 1935. ———. “Discours prononcé à l’Académie des sciences morales et politiques, 8 Aout 1914.” In Mélanges, edited by André Robinet. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1972. ———. Les Deux Sources de la Morale et de la Religion. Paris: PUF, 2013.

154

Andrew M. Johnston

Blackwell, Joyce. No Peace Without Freedom: Race and the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2004. Bouglé, Célestin. Le solidarisme. Paris: V. Giard & E. Brière, 1907. Bourgeois, Léon. Solidarité. Paris: La Société des Gens de Lettres, 1896. Buck-Morss, Susan. Hegel, Haiti, and Universal History. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2009. Bussey, Gertrude, and Margaret Tims. Pioneers for Peace: Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, 1915–1965. London: Allen & Unwin, 1965. Boydston, Jo Ann, ed. The Collected Works of John Dewey: Later Works, Volume 15, 1925–1953. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1984. ———. John Dewey: The Middle Works, Volume 10, 1899–1924. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1985. Deegan, Mary J. Self, War, and Society: George Herbert Mead’s Macrosociology. New Brunswick: Transaction, 2008. Degen, Marie L. The History of the Women’s Peace Party. New York: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1972 [1939]. DeGrooyer, Stephanie, Alastair Hunt, Lida Maxwell, and Samuel Moyn. The Right to Have Rights. London: Verso Books, 2018. Durkheim, Émile. Moral Education: A Study in the Theory and Application of the Sociology of Education. Translated by Everett K. Wilson and Herman Schnurer. New York: The Free Press of Glencoe, 1961. Fell, Alison S. “‘French Women Do Not Wish to Talk about the Peace’: Julie Siegfried and the Response of the Conseil National des Femmes Françaises to the First World War.” In The Women’s Movement in Wartime: International Perspectives, 1914–1919, edited by Alison S. Fell and Ingrid Sharp, 53–66. New York: Springer, 2007. Fischer, Marilyn, and Judy Whipps, eds. Addams’s Essays and Speeches on Peace (1899–1935). Bristol: Bristol University Press, 2003. Fraser, Arvonne S. “Becoming Human: The Origins and Development of Women’s Human Rights.” Human Rights Quarterly 21, no. 4 (November 1999): 853–906. Guerlac, Suzanne. “Bergson, Void, and Politics of Life.” In Bergson, Politics and Religion, edited by Alexandre Lefebvre and Melanie White, 40–60. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2012. Habermas, Jürgen. The Inclusion of the Other: Studies in Political Theory. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1998. ———. The Postnational Constellation: Political Essays. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001. Hagemann, Karen, and Jane Rendell. “Introduction.” In Gender, War and Politics: Transatlantic Perspectives, 1775–1830, edited by Karen Hagemann, Gisela Mattele, and Jane Rendell, 1–37. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010.

“The Whole Organism of Humanity”

155

Hannam, June. “International Dimensions of Women’s Suffrage: ‘At the Crossroads of Several Interlocking Identities.’” Women’s History Review 14, no. 3/4 (2005): 543–560. Hause, Steven C., and Anne R. Kenney. Women’s Suffrage and Social Politics in the French Third Republic. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984. Herren, Madeleine. “Gender and International Relations through the Lens of the League of Nations (1919–1945).” In Women, Diplomacy and International Politics since 1500, edited by Glenda Sluga and Carolyn James, 182–203. London: Routledge, 2016. Hunt, Lynn. Inventing Human Rights. New York: W. W. Norton, 2007. James, William. “The Will to Believe.” The New World (June 1896). Jeannesson, Stanislas. “Léon Bourgeois aux conférences de La Haye de 1899 et 1907: solidarisme et démocratisation des relations internationals.” Histoire, Économie et Société 33, no. 2 (June 2014): 107–120. Johnston, Andrew M. “Jeanne Halbwachs, International Feminist Pacifism, and France’s Société d’Études Documentaires et Critiques sur la Guerre.” Peace and Change 41, no. 1 (January 2016): 17–31. ———. “‘Despite Wars, Scholars Remain the Great Workers of the International’: American Sociologists and French Sociology during the First World War.” In The Academic World in the Era of the Great War, edited by Marie-Eve Chagnon and Tomas Irish, 97–118. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017. Kloppenberg, James. Uncertain Victory: Social Democracy and Progressivism in European and American Thought, 1870–1920. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986. Klosterman, Eleanor M., and Dorothy C. Stratton. “Speaking Truth to Power: Jane Addams’s Values Base for Peacemaking.” Affilia 21, no. 2 (2006): 158–168. Kuhlman, Erika. Reconstructing Patriarchy after the Great War: Women, Gender, and Postwar Reconciliation between Nations. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008. Lake, Marilyn. “From Self-Determination via Protection to Equality via Non-Discrimination: Defining Women’s Rights at the League of Nations and the United Nations.” In Women’s Rights and Human Rights: International Historical Perspectives, edited by P. Grimshaw, K. Holmes, and M. Lake, 254–271. London: Palgrave, 2001. Lefebvre, Alexandre. Human Rights as a Way of Life: On Bergson’s Political Philosophy. Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 2013. Lefebvre, Alexandre, and Melanie White, eds. Bergson, Politics and Religion. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2012. Lengermann, Patricia, and Gillian Niebrugge. “Thrice Told: Narratives of Sociology’s Relation to Social Work.” In Sociology in America: A History, edited by Craig Calhoun, 63–114. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007.

156

Andrew M. Johnston

Lukes, Steven. Émile Durkheim. Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 1973. Martinez, Jenny S. The Slave Trade and the Origins of International Human Rights Law. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. Mbembe, Achille. Critique of Black Reason. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2017. Moyn, Samuel. Human Rights and the Uses of History. London: Verso Books, 2014. Mouffe, Chantal. The Challenge of Carl Schmitt. London: Sage Publications, 1999. Oakley, Ann. Women, Peace and Welfare: A Suppressed History of Social Reform, 1880–1920. Bristol: Policy Press, 2019. Orloff, Ann S. “Gender and the Social Rights of Citizenship: The Comparative Analysis of Gender Relations and Welfare States.” American Sociological Review 58 (1993): 303–328. Pateman, Carol. “Three Questions about Womanhood Suffrage.” In Suffrage and Beyond: International Feminist Perspectives, edited by C. Daley and M. Nolan, 331–348. New York: NYU Press, 1994. Patterson, David S. The Search for a Negotiated Peace: Women’s Activism and Citizen Diplomacy in World War 1. New York: Routledge, 2008. Ramirez, Francisco O., Yasemin Soysal, and Suzanne Shanahan. “The Changing Logic of Political Citizenship: Cross-National Acquisition of Women’s Suffrage Rights, 1890 to 1990.” American Sociological Review 62 (October 1997): 735–745. Rancière, Jacques. Hatred of Democracy. London: Verso Books, 2014 [2005]. Randall, Mercedes M., ed. Beyond Nationalism: The Social Thought of Emily Greene Balch. New York: Twayne, 1972. Rasch, William. “Human Rights as Geopolitics: Carl Schmitt and the Legal Form of American Supremacy.” Cultural Critique 54 (2003): 120–147. Ross, Edward A. Social Control: A Survey of the Foundations of Order. New York: Macmillan, 1901. Ross, Dorothy. The Origins of American Social Science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991. Rupp, Leila J. “Constructing Internationalism: The Case of Transnational Women’s Organizations, 1888–1945.” American Historical Review 99 (1994): 1571–1600. ———. Worlds of Women: The Making of an International Women’s Movement. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997. Schmitt, Carl. The Concept of the Political. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996 [1927]. Schmitz, Hans P., and Kathryn Sikkink. “International Human Rights.” In Handbook of International Relations, edited by Walter Carlsnaes, Thomas Risse, and Beth A. Simmons, 827–851. London: Sage Publications, 2001. Schreiner, Olive. Woman and Labour. London: Fisher Unwin, 1911.

“The Whole Organism of Humanity”

157

Schüller, Anja. Frauenbewegung und soziale Reform: Jane Addams und Alice Salomon im transatlantischen Dialog, 1889–1933. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2004. Seigfried, Charlene H. Pragmatism and Feminism: Reweaving the Social Fabric. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996. Simon, Pierre-Jean. Histoire de la sociologie. Paris: Sciences Po University Press, 1991. Sinclair, Mark. “Bergson’s Philosophy of Will and the War of 1914–1918.” Journal of the History of Ideas 77, no. 3 (July 2016): 468–469. ———. Bergson. London: Routledge, 2020. Sklar, Kathryn K. “‘Some of Us Who Deal with the Social Fabric’: Jane Addams Blends Peace and Social Justice, 1907–1919.” Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 2 (January 2003): 80–96. Sluga, Glenda. “Women, Feminisms and Twentieth-Century Internationalism.” In Internationalisms: A Twentieth-Century History, edited by Glenda Sluga and P. Clavin, 61–84. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017. Stansell, Christine. The Feminist Promise, 1792 to the Present. New York: Modern Library, 2010. Steans, Jill. “Debating Women’s Human Rights as a Universal Feminist Project: Defending Women’s Human Rights as a Political Tool.” Review of International Studies (2007): 11–27. Walby, Sylvia. “Is Citizenship Gendered.” Sociology 28 (May 1994): 379–395.

Chapter 6

“A NEW HUMANITY” FOR THE POOR Liberation Theology and Visions of Revolutionary Justice in 1960s Guatemala Betsy Konefal

When I had eliminated all doubts about the only way in which I feel a state of justice can be reached, I either had to take that road or else reject my conscience, blind myself and become a hypocrite hiding behind the easy facade of a woman dedicated to God. . . . I have become a woman dedicated to humanity, and in loving men, even to the degree of being willing to die for men, I am loving God more truly, more directly than ever. —Former Maryknoll sister Marjorie Bradford Melville, 20 January 19681

Marjorie Bradford Melville wrote these words explaining her de-

cision to join an incipient revolutionary movement in Guatemala and become “a woman dedicated to humanity” from exile in Mexico. In 1954, she had begun her first assignment for the Maryknoll order, the US-based Catholic foreign mission, as a young teacher at Maryknoll’s prestigious girls’ school in Guatemala City, Colegio Monte María. Thirteen years later, she and several other sisters and priests were ousted from Guatemala by their religious order at the urging of the Guatemalan military for ties to a guerrilla insurgency. She subsequently married a priest with whom she’d been working, Thomas Melville, and both were excommunicated as a result. But the abrupt exit from Maryknoll and the Catholic Church did not mean that she or the others left behind a dedication to Christian social justice. It was from outside the Church structure, she asserted,

Notes for this section begin on page 176.

“A New Humanity” for the Poor

159

and in the pursuit of revolution—armed if necessary—that she was truly connecting to others, “loving men . . . [and] God . . . more directly than ever.” This chapter traces the evolution in thinking by the former nun—who was known by her adopted religious name, Sister Marian Peter—and like-minded Catholics in Guatemala as a means to explore competing ideas about rights and social justice in the 1960s. It was a time when progressive religiosos in Guatemala and around the world devoted themselves to addressing daunting problems of social exclusion and oppression in the communities where they worked, responding to Church calls for “Christian revolution.” Like Sister Marian, they were influenced by Vatican social teachings and embraced an evolving humanist doctrine in support of dignity and justice in this life and not merely in the afterlife. By the end of the decade, this thinking and praxis, especially well developed in Latin America, would become known as liberation theology. But this case helps illustrate the complexity and diversity of liberationist ideas, with divergent positions developing on how to bring about the transformations that many Catholics sought. The Church’s reorientation and praxis would become the subject of intense debates at many levels—within the Catholic hierarchy and orders like the Maryknolls, and also more locally, among sisters, parish priests, students, peasant leaders, and even armed revolutionaries. Sister Marian’s particular path shows how ideas and struggles would be powerfully influenced by experiences on the ground and challenges in actually implementing visions of change. It was in settings such as Guatemala, a site of extreme and racialized inequities, where some of the new doctrine’s most radical iterations took shape. The questions that drive this research on progressive Catholicism and struggles for change have relevance beyond a specific country or region: how were evolving ideas about rights and justice shared among Catholics, and how did they provide a framework for social action, a way to promote changes in social structures, “revolution”? How did the Catholic Church’s reorientation in the 1960s translate into action, and how did that differ by context? How did theology shape practice, and how did practice shape theology? What did women have to do with the development and spread of ideas about social justice? How and where did liberationist-inspired movements spill over or grow outside the bounds of the Church? In particular, what can we learn about ideas of “just violence” and their place within visions of revolutionary transformation?2

160

Betsy Konefal

We’ll begin with an analysis of the institutional context in which a new Catholic social doctrine took shape, before turning to its application, evolution, and dramatic repercussions in Guatemala.

A Liberating Doctrine, from Above and Below The Catholic Church as an institution began to articulate an expanded interest in social concerns several decades before Sister Marian Peter took her vows. As Philip Berryman explains, in the years leading up to World War II, the Church sought new ways to shape the rapid social and technological changes unfolding around the globe.3 Christian Smith describes similar developments at that time within Latin America specifically, as the Church sought to counter its waning power and prestige. What was termed a “new Christendom” was an institutional attempt to make the Catholic Church a player in modernizing society, “placing it on the side of— rather than against—‘progress,’ ‘science,’ ‘modernity,’ and ‘development.’” It was a strategy guided by the “integral humanism” of thinkers such as French philosopher Jacques Maritain, and it called for a broadened role for the institution in everyday affairs, including “religiously informed participation in the spheres of education, politics, the economy, culture, and the family.”4 This “new Christendom” translated into a more active Church, but it was relatively conservative in nature, envisioned as a “nonclass-struggle” movement. That would gradually change. In the post–World War II period, Catholic teachings evolved to engage more deeply with problems of inequality and injustice in society, and explicitly to incorporate questions of class into analysis of social problems and their solutions. The impetus for this came mostly from outside the Catholic hierarchy, stirred up by what John Gerassi has described as “postwar agitation by the underdeveloped world’s exploited peoples.” New levels of social action and protest, in turn, had significant ripple effects in the lower levels of the Church, “irrigat[ing] fundamental soul-searching in the lower clergy—the priests and missionaries living in the actual scenes of misery,” writes Gerassi.5 In this context, parish priests, sisters, and laypeople in the 1950s and 1960s took on a broad range of projects including literacy training, organizing, and concientización (the purposeful awakening of consciousness through discussion and analysis of a participant’s own circumstances) to help address the inequities they were witnessing. Many religiosos took actions a step further by publicly

“A New Humanity” for the Poor

161

denouncing injustices they saw around them and supporting labor strikes and land occupations. Actions by priests and laypersons at the parish level set off their own chain of events. In the mid-1950s, Church superiors in some areas collectively took up these social questions, with bishops in Latin America, for example, creating the Latin American Episcopal Conference (CELAM) in 1955 as a forum to discuss them. Soon the Church at its highest levels followed their lead. Plans were made for Vatican-led discussions and analysis of the Catholic Church as a whole and its “role in the modern world” in a series of meetings collectively convened as the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965), or, as it is often termed, Vatican II. Vatican II The Second Vatican Council was called into session in 1962 by Pope John XXIII to consider “the spiritual well-being of the people of God and the search for unity.”6 (These councils were momentous and rare events, with the previous one having been convened ninety-three years earlier.) From the outset, the pope linked spiritual well-being directly and explicitly to material well-being. In the year prior to the council’s opening, John issued the encyclical Mater et Magistra (“Mother and Teacher”), setting out a clear position on the relationship between Christianity and social progress. (Papal encyclicals, circulated worldwide, have functioned as the Church’s most important means of communicating its social teachings, and since John XXIII they have been addressed not just to Catholics but to humanity as a whole, “All Men and Women of Goodwill.”) Signaling an explicit commitment to addressing the needs of people in the present, Mater et Magistra stated that “though the Church’s first care must be for souls, . . . she [as Mother and Teacher] concerns herself too with the exigencies of man’s daily life, with his livelihood and education, and his general, temporal welfare and prosperity.”7 Work and economic growth drew particular attention in the document, which pledged a commitment to fairness, decent wages, and general prosperity. Economic progress was construed not as an end unto itself but as a vital means of reducing inequality.8 The document expressed a clear critique of the excesses of capitalism, liberalism, and individualism and called for action on the part of the Church to ameliorate them. Mater et Magistra set the tone for the Second Vatican Council when meetings and discussions formally began on 1 October 1962. The importance of these gatherings in developing and deepening an

162

Betsy Konefal

orientation toward social concerns cannot be overstated. The detailed statements drafted during this process were distributed widely and carefully analyzed at all levels of the Church and beyond. In the final encyclical authored by John before his death in 1963, Pacem in Terris (“Peace on Earth”), the pope reiterated the importance of attention to life in this world, explicitly and expansively, with a primary focus on “man’s personal dignity” and rights: the realization of human rights, the document argued, was the crucial prerequisite for all persons to exercise their humanity. With a nod to the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Pacem in Terris articulated the fundamental right to life and to “the means necessary” for dignity in that life: food, clothing, housing, medical care, social services. Civil authorities, John wrote, had only one reason to exist: to work for the common good by assuring such rights. Moreover, governments had a special responsibility to the most disadvantaged in society, with justice and equity necessitating that “those in power pay more attention to the weaker members of society.”9 For an institution that had for centuries been at the center of political and economic power structures, these statements represented a monumental change. The Second Vatican Council summed up its work and reiterated these positions on 8 December 1965 with a statement, The Church in the Modern World, promulgated by newly elected Pope Paul VI. Following John’s lead, Pope Paul explicitly committed the Church as an institution to “the whole human family” and to economic development as a means to achieve justice on Earth: “This Second Vatican Council,” the statement declared, “addresses itself . . . to the whole of humanity . . . [and] the sum of those realities in . . . which it lives.”10 The document again pointed to the socioeconomic injustices of unfettered capitalism, linking the capitalist system to poverty and marginalization and urging all people to act to alleviate such problems. “Never has the human race enjoyed such an abundance of wealth, resources and economic power,” the document noted, “and yet a huge proportion of the world’s citizens are still tormented by hunger and poverty, . . . illiteracy. . . . The council wishes to speak to all men . . . and to cooperate in finding the solution to the outstanding problems of our time.”11 The Church in the Modern World reflected the political intensity of an era when the Cold War confrontation between capitalism and communism had grown hot and when the East-West struggle for domination and influence was intensifying in what was termed the “Third World.” The power of communist regimes in the Soviet Union and China in particular preoccupied the Vatican; Fidel Castro had re-

“A New Humanity” for the Poor

163

cently succeeded in toppling Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista, and the Cuban Revolution moved decidedly toward Marxism in its early years, which made much of Latin America—home to one-third of the world’s Catholics—appear vulnerable to communist influences. The US-sponsored Alliance for Progress, through a combination of economic investments and political cajoling, sought to counter that influence by tethering Latin American governments firmly to the side of the United States and its brand of capitalism. In this difficult, polarized context, the Catholic Church attempted to stake out a middle ground: Pope Paul, even more directly than his predecessor, warned against the dangers of communism and condemned the excesses of individualistic capitalism (though his critique of communism was decidedly more biting). “Extravagance and wretchedness exist side by side,” pronounced The Church in the Modern World. “While a few enjoy very great power of choice, the majority . . . often subsist in living and working conditions unworthy of the human person.”12 The solution set forth focused on wealth redistribution and greater equality through developmentalism, or a “humanized” capitalism; the encyclical included an explicit critique of unequal land distribution and called for land reform and the creation of cooperatives.13 The document’s stand against communism was particularly pointed, especially regarding atheism: “the Church . . . cannot cease repudiating . . . those poisonous doctrines and actions which contradict reason and the common experience of humanity.”14 In essence, the Second Vatican Council envisioned Christianity and Christian social initiatives as leading to a “third way” between capitalist and communist systems. The Church called for an emphasis on development and the common good, declaring that “every social group must take account of the needs and legitimate aspirations of other groups, and . . . of the general welfare.” According to this document, the institution could and must play a vital role in this, going “forward together with humanity.”15 This 1965 statement is also notable because it included an official Vatican position that would become important in Guatemala and many other places experiencing growing repression in the years to follow: “Where citizens are oppressed by a public authority,” the document stated, “it is legitimate for them to defend their own rights and the rights of their fellow citizens against the abuse of this authority.”16 This brief statement about the “legitimate” defense of rights spoke more loudly, perhaps, than its authors intended, especially within Latin America: as one military dictatorship after another unleashed violence in the name of hemispheric security and the fight

164

Betsy Konefal

against communism (with the financial and political support of the United States and its National Security Doctrine), this statement would have the effect of positioning the Church—or at least progressive Catholics, whose work was frequently targeted by military repression—explicitly with people struggling against abusive regimes. These official proclamations came to life not merely or even predominantly because they were read far and wide. As Enrique Dussel notes, the Vatican II period and the ideas it generated were especially invigorating because of the person-to-person, regional, and crossregional exchanges they facilitated and the conversations and collaborations they engendered.17 And Vatican II was only the beginning. “Progress of Peoples” For Catholics who experienced the Church’s 1960s social reorientation, the Vatican encyclical that stood out even more prominently than those emanating from the Second Vatican Council was Populorum Progressio (“Progress of Peoples”).18 Published in March 1967, it built in important ways on The Church in the Modern World, but the statement was even more unequivocal about the Church’s role in actively bringing about change and supporting “man’s complete development” through projects addressing economic structures and inequalities.19 “Complete” development, Pope Paul argued in Populorum Progressio, was inherently different from narrowly defined economic development, and the encyclical stressed that economic growth could not be an aim unto itself. The document, for example, quoted French Dominican and development ethicist Louis-Joseph Lebret in centering humanity and human needs as the true aim of development and a fundamental concern of the Church: “We cannot allow economics to be separated from human realities, nor development from the civilization in which it takes place,” the statement argued.20 The document asserted the rights of all people to material well-being, and a sharp criticism of neocolonial capitalist extraction from the Global South was an obvious subtext. “Now if the earth truly was created to provide man with the necessities of life and the tools for his own progress,” Paul wrote, “it follows that every man has the right to glean what he needs from the earth. . . . All other rights, whatever they may be, including the rights of property and free trade, are to be subordinated to this principle.”21 Calls for land reform—arguably the most pressing problem in many agriculturally based societies— echoed previous statements, but were more pronounced and spe-

“A New Humanity” for the Poor

165

cific: “If certain landed estates impede the general prosperity because they are extensive . . . or . . . they bring hardship to peoples or are detrimental to the interests of the country, the common good sometimes demands their expropriation.”22 “Development,” which the encyclical labeled as “the New Name for Peace,” was to be wholistic and enjoyed widely.23 Again, capitalist individualism, the pope insisted, had to be tempered by concern for the social needs and dignity of the collectivity. Another section of the encyclical—like the nod to the “legitimate” defense of rights in the face of abusive authority in The Church in the Modern World—proved to be especially significant in the many places experiencing social unrest and revolutionary insurgency in the late 1960s. In Populorum Progressio, Paul denounced injustices that “cry out for God’s attention,” where “lacking the bare necessities of life, whole nations are under the thumb of others. . . . They cannot act on their own initiative; . . . they cannot work toward a . . . greater participation in social and public life.” In these conditions, the pope warned in 1967, a nation’s people “are sorely tempted to redress these insults to their human nature by violent means.” Once again, the document condemned communism and warned against armed revolution. But this time, the pope’s warning against such steps contained an escape clause. As the pope stated, Everyone knows that revolutionary uprisings—except where there is manifest, longstanding tyranny which would do great damage to fundamental personal rights and dangerous harm to the common good of the country—engender new injustices, introduce new inequities and bring new disasters. The evil situation that exists, and it surely is evil, may not be dealt with in such a way that an even worse situation results.24

For Catholics such as Sister Marian Peter, this was the single most analyzed and quoted passage of a profoundly important document. And in the document’s closing, the pope expressed another directive that was taken to heart. He urged people outside of the hierarchy and priesthood to take initiative in order to bring about needed change: “Lay people must consider it their task to improve the temporal order. While the hierarchy has the role of teaching and authoritatively interpreting the moral laws . . . the laity have the duty of using their own initiative and taking action in this area—without waiting passively for directives and precepts from others.”25 Sister Marian, not a person who could be described as passive, did not need to be asked twice.

166

Betsy Konefal

Visions from the Global South As official statements from a succession of popes and the Second Vatican Council circulated worldwide, critiques arose, most notably from Latin America, Asia, and Africa, challenging the Church’s emphasis on developmentalism as insufficiently ambitious and calling on Christians to do even more to mitigate the excesses of capitalism. Approaches to social questions by progressive Catholics in these areas would evolve in ways that went beyond directives from the Vatican, and laypeople and lower-level priests frequently led the way. The Second Vatican Council, as influential as its teachings were at the time, was perhaps most consequential in helping to set in motion ambitious processes of social theorizing and organizing. With social problems especially glaring and intractable in these regions and inequities deeply embedded in social and political structures, ideas about what constituted “needed change” tended to be more sweeping and radical than the Vatican might have contemplated. As Philip Berryman has put it, the wider “angle of vision” of Catholics outside of Europe “revealed a world of vast poverty and oppression that seemed to call for revolution.”26 What would Christian revolution look like in profoundly unequal societies? Social Justice and Revolution in Guatemala The Cold War context, again, was a crucial backdrop to these debates. Sister Marian Peter arrived in Guatemala shortly after a CIAsponsored coup overthrew reformist president Jacobo Arbenz in 1954, ending a ten-year experiment with democracy and ushering in increasingly aggressive and interventionist US policy in Guatemala and the region as a whole, justified in the name of anti-communism. When she first started working in Guatemala, the young nun shared the perspectives of the US government and the Guatemalan Catholic hierarchy, both of which exercised their considerable influence vehemently and effectively against President Arbenz. She and most Catholics also warmly embraced the anti-communist dictator who replaced him, Colonel Carlos Castillo Armas. The Cuban Revolution unfolded less than five years after the ouster of Arbenz and heightened anti-communist concerns on the part of Catholics, as it was feared to be atheistic and a threat to the Cuban church and Latin American Catholicism more broadly. In June 1960, Fidel Castro declared that “whoever is anticommunist is antirevolutionary,” and Church officials in Cuba openly opposed

“A New Humanity” for the Poor

167

the new regime. Later that year, the Castro government expelled significant numbers of priests, sisters, and other laypersons from the country, and in 1961 declared Cuban clergy to be “the fifth column of the counterrevolution.”27 The trepidation that these developments provoked informed the writings and projects of many Catholics, including an important Jesuit thinker and organizer in Venezuela, Father Manuel Aguirre Elorriaga.28 In mid-1962, just before the Second Vatican Council got underway, Aguirre traveled to Guatemala to advocate for expanded activity on the part of Catholics to promote social justice and Christian revolution. Aguirre used such trips to introduce audiences to a workshop model he had developed for this purpose, Cursillos de Capacitación Social (Social Leadership Workshops). Sister Marian attended his 1962 lectures in Guatemala City and was deeply affected. Her knowledge about conditions in the country had expanded since her arrival eight years before, as she studied and involved her Monte María students in analysis of Guatemala’s social problems. But as she wrote in her memoir about her encounter with Aguirre, “problems were obviously worse than I had realized.”29 Sister Marian enthusiastically embraced Aguirre’s teachings and cursillo model—which involved a rigorous eight-day curriculum—as a way to dedicate herself and her students to these questions; she collaborated with a young Jesuit in this initiative, along with his students at the boys’ school next door. Aguirre’s model “made Christian social doctrine relevant,” the sister later wrote, “and infused the students with the enthusiasm to dedicate themselves wholeheartedly to it as others did to Communism.”30 Father Aguirre and his cursillos advanced a critique of capitalism similar to what Pope John had set out in the 1961 Mater et Magistra, a position that would be developed more fully in subsequent encyclicals. As Sister Marian recalled, drawing on Aguirre’s approach, “we studied laissez-faire liberalism, capitalism, and neo-capitalism, and saw how these doctrines provided the rationale for the corrupt and exploitative labor practices of the early nineteenth century and how even to our day they had continued to legitimize and exacerbate the division between rich and poor.” She and the cursillo students similarly analyzed Mater et Magistra, she recalled, “finding in it a program of justice, equal opportunity, and charity to right the world’s evils. . . . We raised the question whether capitalism wasn’t, after all, as atheistic as Communism.”31 Sister Marian and her students, along with other sisters and priests in Guatemala, would continue to study and draw on the in-

168

Betsy Konefal

sights and positions emerging from the Second Vatican Council as well. They did this through frequent group discussions and cursillos. They also made a concerted effort to turn these ideas into action, with hands-on volunteering in the capital’s most impoverished areas. In 1966, Sister Marian and the students created a group called “Crater,” a name that captured the power and potential of the volcanoes surrounding them and inherent in their organizing. Crater members continued to volunteer in shantytowns in Guatemala City, leading service projects and “Days of Action.” Even more significantly, Sister Marian arranged for the students to volunteer in the distant and mostly Maya department of Huehuetenango in the country’s western highlands, where the Maryknoll order, since its arrival in the 1940s, had established most of its far-flung parishes in indigenous communities. The Huehuetenango parishes represented a world unknown to the urban students, who mostly came from relatively wealthy families that sheltered them from the harsh economic and social realities beyond the capital. It was a world apart, too, in terms of ethnicity. While the Crater students were Spanish-speaking “ladinos” (a term used in Guatemala for non-Mayas), they worked in communities where Mayas predominated, with nine different Maya language groups represented in the area. The Maryknoll mission had chosen Huehuetenango, in fact, because of its marginalization and challenging socioeconomic circumstances, establishing schools, health clinics, and cooperatives at the parish level where few or none had existed. Parish priests and sisters accepted Crater students as volunteers in these projects, initially for weekends and then for longer periods. By volunteering in Huehuetenango, Crater students came faceto-face with the country’s most extreme socioeconomic disparities. They lent a hand in social service projects that the religiosos had underway in the parishes: literacy and vaccination initiatives, leadership training, and expansion of the Church-sponsored cooperative movement. Crater held cursillos and Days of Action to introduce highland-area students and organizers to Father Aguirre’s approach to Christian social justice and revolution. “The Necessity of the Times” But Sister Marian and some of the Crater members—like other progressive Catholics at the time—would adopt Aguirre’s analysis and methods while coming to somewhat different conclusions about feasible means to achieve change. They read broadly, and an espe-

“A New Humanity” for the Poor

169

cially important influence was Dom Hélder Câmara, the Brazilian archbishop of Olinda and Recife and founder of the Latin American Episcopal Conference. As many would do, Dom Hélder Câmara drew heavily on Populorum Progressio as a foundational social teaching, but he would argue that the Church’s call for a more humane capitalism—a development model that aimed to spread prosperity more evenly but did not sufficiently challenge the economic system itself—failed to recognize the violence inherent in capitalism. Linking bishops from Brazil and Colombia to counterparts around the globe, Câmara helped articulate a collective statement calling for Christians to support “the movements . . . stirring up the peasant and worker masses of the Third World today” and to join “an irresistible surge [sweeping] . . . impoverished peoples toward betterment, toward liberation from the forces of oppression.”32 In “A Message to the Peoples of the Third World,” first published in July 1967, Câmara and his fellow bishops described “the peoples of the Third World” as leading the way forward, the “proletariat of today’s humanity, exploited and threatened in their very existence” by the wealthy and powerful and by the systems that sustained their domination over workers.33 In a clear directive that resonated with Sister Marian and the young people in Crater, these bishops explicitly defended “revolutions that advance the rights of men.” As they stated, revolutions were an expected and necessary part of history, with the Church’s own teachings demanding “the first, radical revolution: a conversion, a total transformation from sin to grace, from selfishness to love.”34 They also insisted that the Catholic Church should neither be wedded to nor defend capitalism. Despite its historical ties to capitalism, they argued, it “is never bound to any [particular] economic, political or social system,” and they justified a “break with a prior system that no longer [provides] . . . for the common good.”35 As the statement continued, “the moment a system fails to provide for the common good and shows favoritism to a particular few, the Church has the duty not only to denounce the injustice, but also to cut free from that unjust system, seeking to collaborate with some other system more just and likely to meet the necessity of the times.”36 That other system was socialism, the bishops suggested, in its true, Christian form. Christian socialism, Câmara and the group wrote in 1967, was “less alien to . . . morality” and foregrounded the values of “solidarity and fraternity.” Christians had a duty, they insisted, drawing on a 1965 statement from the Second Vatican Council, “to show that ‘the true socialism is Christianity integrally lived’”;

170

Betsy Konefal

they had the duty to feed the hungry and to distribute wealth fairly. People needed to be politically free, but also economically free. “Rather than shun this,” they wrote, “let us welcome it with joy.”37 Câmara and the other bishops in the group were clear in locating themselves within the East-West conflict but as distinct from both sides, with the “Third World . . . trying to get out from under the domination of the great powers.”38 Neither unfettered capitalism nor “totalitarian collectivism” had proven sufficient, they argued; both functioned as “forces of oppression.” As Paul had done, the Third World bishops warned against revolutions “that bring new oppression of the people . . . more evil than good,” with “atheism and collectivism . . . [as] serious dangers for humanity,” likely a reference to communist regimes in the USSR and China.39 But true socialist revolution would not bring new forms of control, the bishops argued, but rather liberation from oppression and “a new humanity” honoring workers and the poor.40 Can Violence Be “Just”? Câmara’s writings fueled impassioned discussions in the Crater group and among many other sisters and priests in Guatemala. As Crater’s engagement in social organizing deepened, they also became preoccupied with questions of violence. Their experiences by 1967 strongly suggested that the changes envisioned by the Second Vatican Council and by thinkers such as Câmara—true revolution in socioeconomic structures—would not come about through peaceful means in a context like Guatemala’s. Landowners fiercely resisted the reforms in land tenure advocated by the Vatican, for example, and campesino organizing for land was met by horrific violence. The army and death squads snuffed out challenges to the status quo in urban and rural Guatemala alike, sometimes targeting the very community leaders with whom Crater worked. Given these experiences, some members of the group were drawn to an even more radical interpretation of the needs of the moment that was developing in Colombia, a line of thinking that a Church official in 1965 would label “irreconcilable” with Catholic Church doctrine.41 Camilo Torres Restrepo was a Dominican priest trained as a sociologist, and he came to believe by the mid-1960s that a fundamental transformation of existing structures was both imperative and could necessitate the use of force. Torres predicted in 1964 that social conflicts in Colombian society were likely to become violent, and he advocated the creation of a united popular front to prepare for that reality. At a conference in June 1965, he

“A New Humanity” for the Poor

171

labeled that pending confrontation a “war,” with the upper classes as the ones responsible for waging it; under these circumstances, popular violence, Camilo Torres argued, could be a Christian and ethical response: The economic, military, ecclesiastical, and political powers will wage war with the people in the face of the revolution which is approaching, a revolution which consists of a change of structures. . . . Violence is not excluded from the Christian ethic, because if Christianity is concerned with eliminating the serious evils which we suffer and with saving us from the continuous violence in which we live, . . . the ethic is to be violent once and for all in order to destroy the violence which the economic minorities exercise against the people.42

At Torres’s own request (it undoubtedly would have happened anyway), the Dominican was released from the priesthood that same month. As he told journalists at the time, “I took off my cassock to be more truly a priest.”43 As Gerassi writes, “to Colombian Catholics, his message was direct: ‘The Catholic who is not a revolutionary is living in mortal sin.’”44 Torres soon took the step of joining the guerrilla Ejército de Liberación Nacional (ELN) in October 1965. The following January, in his “Proclamation to the Colombian People,” he wrote about the events that had led him to that point: repeated attempts to bring change through peaceful means, stymied by state violence at every turn. “When the people sought peace, the oligarchy sowed violence,” he wrote. “When the people asked for democracy, . . . the National Front imposed a dictatorship. . . . The people know that the only way left to them is that of armed insurrection.”45 As Enrique Dussel explains, for Torres this was a last resort. “For Camilo [Torres] the best of all . . . options without doubt was the ideal of a ‘peaceful revolution’ with a maximum of desire, foresight, and social pressure. He considered subversive violence an evil, but the time came when he viewed it as a lesser, necessary evil.”46 Camilo Torres was killed in a battle with Colombian military forces a month later, on 15 February 1966. As one priest commented presciently at the time of his death, “Father Torres has opened up a high road on which many idealists who seek justice will walk.”47 Another priest, Argentine Juan García Elorrio, described Torres’s death as propelling his own action: “I had to fight with the . . . people, as they fought, not as an elitist teacher, . . . with them not for them, in their misery, their failings, their violence. . . . Either I fought or I was a phony.”48 (This is very similar to the sentiment expressed by the former Sister Marian in this chapter’s epigraph, just five months

172

Betsy Konefal

later.) In the journal that García Elorrio founded, Cristianismo y Revolución, he editorialized: “only revolution can feed the hungry, house the homeless, . . . bring dignity to the dispossessed. . . . This revolution, though at times necessarily violent, because some hearts are so callous, is not one of despair: it is the only way that humanity may once again hope and love. And so we begin.”49 By 1967, Sister Marian and a few of her students, along with other sisters and priests, mostly from the Maryknoll order, had begun delicate (and highly secretive) discussions about the possibilities of revolutionary change through armed rebellion in Guatemala. Several of them established contacts with members of an armed revolutionary movement active in the eastern part of the country and in the capital, the Fuerzas Armadas Rebeldes (FAR). Some of them came to believe, members of the group recount, that they had the duty to create a “Christian revolutionary movement” to fundamentally alter the country’s political and economic structures, through force of arms if necessary. In late 1967, their incipient plan to join in revolutionary insurgency was thwarted when one of the priests who had joined in their discussions reported these developments to authorities. Sister Marian and several other Maryknolls were expelled. A dozen students on a “hit list” were forced to flee the country. A Guatemalan death squad publicly denounced the nun, urging Guatemalans to “Know Those Who Sell Out the Country”: revolutionaries including Lenin, Mao, Castro, and “Guerrillera” (guerrilla fighter) Sister Marian Peter. With a full-page profile in a booklet of “villains,” the nun was singled out for duping “Guatemalan Catholicism.” “¡Oh, Bendito Señor!” (Oh, Blessed Lord!) the headline read.50 As the exiled former sister wrote in 1968, by that time she had “eliminated all doubts about the only way in which . . . a state of justice can be reached.” Her choice, as she expressed it, would put her on the side of humanity.51 She and her new husband dedicated their memoir about these events to several figures who had led the group to that conclusion: three Guatemalan guerrilla comandantes—Luis Turcios, César Montes, and Marco Antonio Yon Sosa—in addition to Monseñor Hélder Câmara and the late Camilo Torres. The combination of influences here is striking: Sister Marian, the Maryknoll nuns and priests working with her, and her students embraced Catholic social teachings in the 1960s that demanded both justice and action, and the thinking of Câmara and Torres further shaped their perspectives. But their personal experiences were also

“A New Humanity” for the Poor

173

deeply significant. While working in the highlands, Crater members confronted staggering injustices and an intransigent Guatemalan state refusing to tolerate even the most marginal social reforms. This had led some in the group—Sister Marian in particular—to engage in deep discussion with armed guerrilleros (including FAR leaders Turcios and Montes) about Christian social justice and the role it might play in revolution. In 1967, this group of Maryknolls and students did not fully link arms with the FAR; the religiosos in particular were determined to create a separate Christian revolutionary movement because “we wanted to maintain our Christian principles clearly,” remembers Marjorie Bradford Melville.52 But they did agree on the need for revolutionary change and came to share the view of Camilo Torres and FAR revolutionaries that some violence was “just,” that in circumstances like those encountered in Guatemala, violence might be a necessary weapon to counter violence and achieve liberation. Argentine scholar Enrique Dussel captures the complicated dynamics at work, describing liberation theology as emerging from the intense struggles for justice in Latin America in the 1960s, “the product of the lives and the suffering of our oppressed people.”53 Christopher Rowland, paraphrasing Jesuit scholar Jon Sobrino, who worked for many years in El Salvador, argues that the actions that flowed from that reality were instrumental in informing theology: “for liberation theologians faith runs parallel to real life and is in dialectical relationship with it. . . . The meaning of faith and doctrine is illuminated at the same time as the world’s wretched condition is confronted and alleviated.”54 The same held true for religiosos and students in Crater; it was the process of engaging with injustices and a repressive state that shaped their understandings of liberation and put them on the path toward armed revolution. In 1968, with Camilo Torres and the recent Maryknoll expulsions undoubtedly front of mind, difficult questions about the means to achieve Christian social justice and revolution—and whether and where violence fit—infused debates at the Latin American Episcopal Conference in Medellín, Colombia, where bishops gathered for region-specific discussions of the teachings that had flowed from Vatican II and their implementation in Latin America. Acceptance (if reluctant) of the need for “just violence” had more support than might have been expected. Leading up to the meeting, arguments by the late Torres and others were echoed by no fewer than nine hundred twenty Latin American priests, who signed a striking manifesto that was submitted to the conference for discussion:

174

Betsy Konefal

We cannot condemn an oppressed people when it finds itself obligated to use force to liberate itself. . . . [We] ask . . . that our clergymen united in this assembly: (1) should not . . . under any circumstances . . . compare or confuse the unjust violence of the oppressors, who maintain this odious system, with the just violence of the oppressed, who find themselves forced to use it to gain their liberation. . . . We lament and are anguished by the fact that force must be used to establish justice. Nevertheless, we are moved by the necessity to accept the grave responsibility which the hour demands of us.55

There is an explicit plea in this statement that the region’s priesthood not condemn violence by those seeking liberation. But should they condone it? Participate? The text refers to others (the oppressed themselves) “who find themselves forced to use” violence for just ends; the next passage, too, employs a passive construction: “the fact [is] that force must be used.” But what, exactly, is the “grave responsibility which the hour demands” of the signatories to this letter? Given the sensitive issues at stake, it is not surprising that it is left unclear; the carefully worded statement does not commit to or proscribe active participation in fighting an “odious system.” It does signal unequivocal empathy with the struggles of the oppressed and insists that some violence is “just” and “must be used to establish justice.” Again, this was a position at one end of a spectrum, but it is notable that in 1968 it won the support of so many Latin American clergy. After discussion and negotiation, the final statements from Medellín did not, in fact, endorse this language or position and instead emphasized the “productiveness of peace.”56 But the bishops who came together at Medellín also noted that “as the Christian believes in the productiveness of peace in order to achieve justice, he also believes that justice is a prerequisite for peace.” As one of the Medellín final statements concluded, “[the Christian] recognizes that in many instances Latin America finds itself faced with a situation of injustice that can be called institutionalized violence. . . . This situation demands all-embracing, courageous, urgent and profoundly renovating transformations. We should not be surprised therefore, that the ‘temptation to violence’ is surfacing in Latin America.”57 While calling on “the awakened and organized community” to resist that temptation and pursue justice by nonviolent means, the Medellín statement noted that “explosive revolutions of despair” did feel imminent, quoting Pope Paul. Given that fact, the bishops at Medellín collectively issued a warning to repressive regimes in the region and beyond: don’t “abuse the patience of a people” that has too long suffered an unacceptable situation.58 They also echoed

“A New Humanity” for the Poor

175

Populorum Progressio by reiterating that “revolutionary insurrection can be legitimate in the case of evident and prolonged tyranny that seriously works against the fundamental rights of man, and which damages the common good of the country!”59 In Guatemala, as these debates continued into the 1970s and 1980s, new forms of revolutionary mobilization with roots in progressive Catholicism unfolded in some of the very places where the Maryknolls and Crater students had begun their organizing and training in the 1960s. Notably, it was several former Crater students from their exile in Mexico who helped launch what would become in the 1970s the largest of the country’s armed revolutionary organizations, the Ejército Guerrillero de los Pobres (EGP).60 This is a difficult history to revisit because of what came next: genocide by the Guatemalan armed forces in the very Maya communities where strong, Catholic Church-based organizing had taken root. The relationship between organizing and state violence is complex, but arguably we can judge the strength and potential of oppositional organizing by the ferocity of the government’s response to it.61 These individuals and their ideas of rights and justice would be tested in unimaginable ways in the coming years; resistance and rebellion would come to appear futile and even catastrophic as state terror annihilated mobilized communities, urban and rural. Institutionally, the Vatican tried to put a lid on many forms of Catholic engagement inspired by Vatican II and condemned revolutionary mobilization specifically. Even Latin American clergy who had been sympathetic in the late 1960s had their doubts a decade later; the approach articulated at the Medellín conference would be challenged by more conservative forces at the subsequent Latin American bishops meeting in Puebla, Mexico, in 1979. Despite that effort, however, Medellín’s fundamental positions about institutionalized violence and injustices were basically reaffirmed. In the final analysis, what does this case show us about the role that 1960s-era Catholic dedication to humanity played in this broader history? The period was foundational in Guatemala and in many places because it opened up a process, marking the beginning of an evolution in thinking both for the progressive Catholic collective and individuals in it. It was a complicated era that produced a widely shared commitment to human dignity and the belief in the possibility of fundamental change. It involved debates and actions that were based in readings and theology but fine-tuned through organizing and radicalized by violent repression. Above all else, it appears that work in Maya communities in Huehuetenango—and

176

Betsy Konefal

state reactions to it—most profoundly shaped participants’ ideas of liberation. For Sister Marian, the Crater students, and like-minded priests and nuns, these experiences gave shape to a more extreme approach to change than that of most of their fellow Catholics. The case reminds us that we need to study such processes with an eye for their specificity, that transnationally shared visions, again, develop meaning and nuance at the local level, and that they are a product of a given place and a particular moment. Even though it existed only briefly, Crater itself would have significant ripple effects, nationally and internationally. In Guatemala specifically, former Crater members, deeply affected by their experiences in the 1960s, would become central in the coming decades not just to the guerrilla EGP but to a whole range of efforts for justice and reconciliation before and after the 1996 peace accords formally ended over three decades of armed conflict.62 Their particular vision of humanity and their determination to realize it—just one piece of a larger history—would shape new visions for years to come.

Betsy Konefal is an associate professor of history at William & Mary and author of For Every Indio Who Falls: A History of Maya Activism in Guatemala (2010), which chronicles highland mobilization as it unfolded in a context of revolutionary insurgency and genocidal counterinsurgency in the 1970s and 1980s. She is currently the Central American Visiting Scholar at the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies at Harvard University, where she is writing a book on progressive Catholicism in Guatemala in the 1960s, investigating the ideas, projects, and trajectories of nuns and priests, their students, and people they worked with in the highlands of Huehuetenango.

Notes 1. Letter from Marjorie Bradford Melville, no addressee, 20 January 1968, in personal archive of author. Excerpts of the letter were published at the time in “Nun to Rebel.” 2. I am exploring these questions in the Guatemalan case for a book tentatively titled The Nun and the Volcano, based on interviews with dozens of former sisters and priests assigned there, their students, and people in the communities they worked with. My research also draws from fourteen archives and libraries, materials compiled by former religiosos and students, and the press. For a short introduction to this history, see Konefal, “Liberation.” See also Fitzpatrick-Behrens, “Symbols.”

“A New Humanity” for the Poor

3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.

9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20.

21.

22. 23. 24.

25.

177

Berryman, Liberation Theology, 20. Smith, Emergence, 14. Gerassi, Revolutionary Priest, 6. Pope John, quoted in Dussel, History of the Church, 139. John XXIII, Mater et Magistra, On Christianity and Social Progress, 15 May 1961, para. 3. John XXIII, Mater et Magistra, paras. 71 and 73. It is interesting to note that a previous pope had defended inequality. John Gerassi describes Pope Leo XIII (1878–1903) insisting “that the church must not only admit and respect human inequality but proclaim it, lest the sacredness of private property, which is ‘inviolable by natural law,’ be challenged.” Gerassi, Revolutionary Priest, 4, citing the encyclical Libertas, 1888; emphasis added. John XXIII, Pacem in Terris, On Establishing Universal Peace in Truth, Justice, Charity and Liberty, 11 April 1963, paras. 11, 54, and 56. Pope Paul VI, Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, Gaudium et Spes, 7 December 1965, section 2. Pope Paul VI, Church in the Modern World, sections 4 and 10. Pope Paul VI, Church in the Modern World, section 63. Pope Paul VI, Church in the Modern World, section 71. Pope Paul VI, Church in the Modern World, sections 20 and 21. Pope Paul VI, Church in the Modern World, section 26 and 27. Pope Paul VI, Church in the Modern World, section 74; emphasis added. Dussel, History of the Church, 140. Pope Paul VI, Populorum Progressio [“Progress of Peoples,” or sometimes translated as “The Development of Peoples”], 26 March 1967. Pope Paul VI, Populorum Progressio, section 5. Louis-Joseph Lebret, Dynamique concrète du développement (Paris: Economie et Humanisme, Les editions ouvrierès, 1961), 28, quoted in Pope Paul VI, Populorum Progressio, section 14. Pope Paul VI, Populorum Progressio, section 22. This coincided with anticolonialist movements across the Global South and was embraced by people in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. But as Dennis Sadowski wrote in the National Catholic Reporter, “In the global north, . . . the encyclical was panned. Vermont Royster, editor of The Wall Street Journal . . . , called it ‘warmed-over Marxism’ because it challenged capitalism’s inherent rush to achieve profit at the expense of human life. Others were critical of . . . Paul VI’s assessment that economic trade must benefit both the developed countries and those emerging from the colonialism that had dominated the world for centuries, feeling it was too judgmental of existing corporate practices.” See “At 50, ‘Populorum Progressio’ Takes on New Life.” Pope Paul VI, Populorum Progressio, section 24. Pope Paul VI, Populorum Progressio, section 76. Pope Paul VI, Populorum Progressio, sections 30 and 31; emphasis added. As former Maryknoll Father Thomas Melville would write, “If this situation [of longstanding tyranny] does not exist today in Guatemala, Nicaragua, Bolivia, Brazil, Panama, and probably in all the Latin American countries, then the possibility that it exists anywhere is purely theoretical.” Víspera 5 (1968): 55, quoted in Dussel, History of the Church, 175. John Gerassi writes that Paul later tried repeatedly to walk back some of the positions set out in Populorum Progressio, but that he was “unable to close the [Pandora’s] box that they represented.” Gerassi, Revolutionary Priest, 38. Pope Paul VI, Populorum Progressio, section 81.

178

Betsy Konefal

26. Berryman, Liberation Theology, 20. 27. Other signals from the Castro regime were more ambiguous, and relations between the Catholic Church and the Cuban government were in flux during the 1960s. At the same time that he labeled clergy “counterrevolutionary,” Castro granted Cuban bishops permission to attend Vatican II sessions and the subsequent meetings of Latin American bishops in Medellín in 1968, and pondered aloud: “How is it that we see sectors of the clergy becoming revolutionary forces?” Observers were still wondering in 1970 “whether the Castro brand of Marxism is wedded to atheism as one of its essential principles,” with the Church in Cuba at that time described as “marginal” but not “under attack.” See Fernández, “The Church in Cuba,” 22; Dussel, History of the Church, 161–164. 28. Father Aguirre helped establish the important Jesuit Center for Investigation and Social Action in Venezuela, the Centro Gumilla. 29. Melville and Melville, Whose Heaven, 129. 30. Melville and Melville, Whose Heaven, 129–130. 31. Melville and Melville, Whose Heaven, 132. 32. “Message to the Peoples of the Third World,” sections 1 and 2. This statement first appeared in the French Témoignage Chrétien, 31 August 1967, and was also published (in a different English translation) in New Blackfriars 49, no. 571 (December 1967): 140–148. The declaration was signed by Câmara, five bishops, and a second archbishop from Brazil, and bishops from Colombia, Algeria, Egypt, Yugoslavia, Lebanon, China, Laos, and Oceania. 33. “Message to the Peoples of the Third World,” section 2. 34. “Message to the Peoples of the Third World,” section 4. 35. “Message to the Peoples of the Third World,” section 3. 36. “Message to the Peoples of the Third World,” section 8. 37. “Message to the Peoples of the Third World,” section 14. In this they quoted a Second Vatican Council statement of 28 September 1965. 38. “Message to the Peoples of the Third World,” section 2. 39. “Message to the Peoples of the Third World,” sections 3 and 14. The document did not address the Cuban Revolution and its authors seem to have had far more misgivings about the Soviets and China. 40. “Message to the Peoples of the Third World,” section 15. 41. Luis Cardinal Concha Córdoba, quoted in Gerassi, Revolutionary Priest, 27. 42. Camilo Torres, quoted in Gerassi, Revolutionary Priest, 27. 43. Camilo Torres, quoted in Gerassi, Revolutionary Priest, 29. 44. Camilo Torres, quoted in Gerassi, Revolutionary Priest, 29. 45. Camilo Torres in El Vespertino (Bogotá, Colombia), 7 January 1966, quoted in Dussel, History of the Church, 167. 46. Dussel, History of the Church, 167–168. 47. Father Carlos Perez Herrera, quoted in Gerassi, Revolutionary Priest, 33. 48. Juan García Elorrio, August 1967, quoted in Gerassi, Revolutionary Priest, 33–34; emphasis in original. 49. Juan García Elorrio, Cristianismo y Revolución, September 1966, quoted in Gerassi, Revolutionary Priest, 34. 50. The pamphlet, produced by a death squad in January 1968, featured Sister Marian Peter among fellow “maleantes, desgraciados, and infelices,” terms that can be translated as “crooks, thugs, and lowlifes.” Thank you to my cohort at Harvard’s DRCLAS for helping me capture the essence of these labels! 51. Letter from Marjorie Bradford Melville, no addressee, 20 January 1968. Less certainty about the role of violence in bringing about revolutionary change comes through in later interviews. See, for example, Marjorie Bradford Melville

“A New Humanity” for the Poor

52. 53. 54. 55. 56.

57. 58. 59. 60. 61.

62.

179

interview by Penny Lernoux, April 1988, Penny Lernoux Book Collection, Box 4, Folder 1, Maryknoll Mission Archive, Maryknoll, NY, 3–4. Personal communication with author, 4 February 2021. Dussel, History of the Church, viii. Rowland, The Cambridge Companion, 3. “Latin America: Lands of Violence,” 20 June 1968, reproduced in Gerassi, Revolutionary Peace, 442–446; emphasis in original. CELAM, Medellín Statement, “Peace,” 6 September 1968, section 15. For more on Medellín and broader developments in Latin American theology and praxis, see Berryman, Liberation Theology; Dussel, History of the Church; Gutiérrez, A Theology of Liberation; Rowland, The Cambridge Companion; and Smith, Emergence. CELAM, Medellín Statement, “Peace,” section 16. CELAM, Medellín Statement, “Peace,” sections 16–18. CELAM, Medellín Conclusions, 79–80, quoted in Dussel, History of the Church, 175. This prehistory of the EGP is explored in my upcoming book, The Nun and the Volcano. The UN-sponsored Commission for Historical Clarification (CEH) determined that some two hundred thousand people lost their lives in Guatemala’s thirtysix-year armed conflict (1960–1996); the CEH found state forces to be responsible for 93 percent of those deaths, guerrilla forces for 3 percent. An estimated 83 percent of the war’s dead and disappeared were of Maya descent, most killed in army “scorched earth” massacres, some of which constituted “acts of genocide.” See CEH, Guatemala, “Conclusiones y recomendaciones.” People familiar with Guatemala’s recent armed conflict will likely recognize the names of many former Crater members: Gustavo Meoño would help found and lead not just the EGP but also the Rigoberta Menchú Tum Foundation and the Historical Archive of the National Police (AHPN). Other Crater affiliates included Arturo Taracena, Gustavo Porras, Guillermo (Willy) Cruz, and Yolanda Colom. Future anthropologist Myrna Mack was also a student at Monte María at the time. Mack was murdered by state forces on 11 September 1990 for her work documenting experiences in internal refugee communities, known as Populations of Community in Resistance or CPRs.

Bibliography “At 50, ‘Populorum Progressio’ Takes on New Life through Pope Francis.” National Catholic Reporter, 24 March 2017. Retrieved 4 November 2021 from https://www.ncronline.org/news/justice/50-populorumprogressio-takes-new-life-through-pope-francis. Berryman, Philip. Liberation Theology: The Essential Facts about the Revolutionary Movement in Latin America and Beyond. New York: Pantheon Books, 1987. CEH (Comisión para el Esclaracimiento Histórico). Guatemala: Memoria del silencio. 12 vols. Guatemala: UNOPS, 1999. Dussel, Enrique. A History of the Church in Latin America: Colonialism to Liberation (1492–1979). Translated and revised by Alan Neely. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1982.

180

Betsy Konefal

Fernández, Manuel. “The Church in Cuba, Eleven Years Later.” LADOC: A Documentation Service of the Latin American Bureau-USCC 1, no. 1 (June 1970). Fitzpatrick-Behrens, Susan. “From Symbols of the Sacred to Symbols of Subversion to Simply Obscure: Maryknoll Women Religious in Guatemala, 1953 to 1967.” The Americas 61, no. 2 (2004): 189–216. Gerassi, John, ed. Revolutionary Priest: The Complete Writings & Messages of Camilo Torres. New York: Random House, 1971. Gutiérrez, Gustavo. A Theology of Liberation. Revised edition, translated and edited by Sister Caridad Inda and John Eagleson. Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1988 [1971]. Konefal, Betsy. “Liberation in a Land of Eternal Tyranny: Catholic Activism and the Guatemalan Revolution(s).” In Liberation Theology and the Other(s): Contextualizing Catholic Activism in 20th-Century Latin America, edited by Christian Büschges, Andrea Müller, and Noah Oehri, 227–245. Lanham: Lexington Books, 2021. Melville, Thomas, and Marjorie Melville. Whose Heaven, Whose Earth? New York: Knopf, 1971. “Message to the Peoples of the Third World.” LADOC: A Documentation Service of the Latin American Bureau-USCC 1, no. 3 (July 1970). “Nun to Rebel: An Apologia: Nun Explains Aid to Guatemala Reds.” Washington Post, 18 February 1968. Rowland, Christopher, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Liberation Theology, 2nd ed. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Smith, Christian. The Emergence of Liberation Theology: Radical Religion and Social Movement Theory. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991.

Chapter 7

ENGINEERING EMPATHY Humanity, Culture, and the Battle against Apartheid in South Africa, 1948–1994 Nicholas J. Cull

On 10 May 1994, Nelson Mandela of the African National Congress

(ANC) took the oath of office as the first president of a free South Africa. His election ushered in a new era for a country where for two generations the state-sanctioned abuse of human rights had become one of the world’s defining moral issues. By the mid-1970s, apartheid—the term that the country’s ruling Afrikaner minority gave to their postwar system of segregation—transcended its original time and place to become a new category of crime against humanity that could occur at any time and any place.1 The struggle to defeat apartheid in South Africa saw a wide range of political devices brought into play—including nonviolent protest, voluntary economic boycott, and international sanctions—and culminated in guerrilla warfare. Combatants in the struggle also sought to use culture not merely as an artistic form to raise consciousness but as a distinct area of political practice: diplomacy by cultural means and a mechanism to display humanity, using human creativity to secure a human rights goal. The pioneer of public relations Edward Bernays described his art as “engineering consent.” The achievement of the anti-apartheid movement went beyond this to engage a universal idea of humanity and engineer empathy around the world. The movement did not rely only on positive communication techniques. It also worked to the same ends through exclusion: the sporting and cultural boycotts

Notes for this section begin on page 201.

182

Nicholas J. Cull

forced the whites of South Africa to realize that their government’s behavior contravened international norms and set their country apart from the activities of the rest of humanity, as seen in global events like the Olympic Games or the normal commercial exchange of cultural products like plays and music tours. The rhetoric of the movement linked the notions of humanity, rights, and culture and demonstrated the problems of the culture of one group being parasitic on the other. In the final stages of the struggle, Mandela articulated the argument in his address to the joint session of the US Congress: To deny people their human rights is to challenge their very humanity. To impose on them a wretched life of hunger and deprivation is to dehumanise them. But such has been the terrible fate of all black persons in our country under the system of apartheid. The extent of the deprivation of millions of people has to be seen to be believed. The injury is made that more intolerable by the opulence of our white compatriots and the deliberate distortion of the economy to feed that opulence.2

The arguments were not made without rebuttal. The South African state learned to use cultural tools to defend apartheid and made their own appeals to world opinion couched in terms of human rights and cultural distinctiveness. These arguments need to be remembered to build a complete picture of the role of the concept of humanity in the story of the rise and fall of apartheid.

Culture and the Foundations of Apartheid That realms of culture and human rights converged in the fight against apartheid is not surprising given the role of culture in the construction of the system in the first place. apartheid grew from the desire of the Afrikaner minority to protect its distinctiveness, and that in turn was a product of cultural collisions experienced over the previous century. The nineteenth century saw two European settler communities seeking to reshape the southern tip of the African continent. The Dutch-origin Boers prioritized their Afrikaner language and community, focused on the Dutch Reform Church above all else. The British brought missionaries (some of whom spoke of native rights) and administrators (who accepted freedom of the press and allowed some non-Europeans to vote).3 The divergence of these two European communities led to the initial migration of one away from the other and the showdowns of the two Anglo-Boer Wars as Britain looked to secure access to mineral resources. Britain won the sec-

Engineering Empathy

183

ond Anglo-Boer War of 1899–1902, but thereafter Afrikaners looked to win the peace, developing a politics that stressed a cultural distinctiveness. Their political culture was sharpened by a memory of the human rights abuses imposed by British counterinsurgency strategies, including the deaths of tens of thousands of Afrikaner civilians in concentration camps. The victorious British hoped to meld their own colonies and the conquered Boer republics into a single dominion and looked to cultural forums to assist in cross-community relations. Sports like rugby and cricket provided mechanisms for each community to encounter the other and represent themselves successfully to the outside world.4 But the cultural profile of the country was changing. The rapid economic development of South Africa drew non-white residents of the country into the urban South African life. Black South Africans moved from rural areas to work in the mines and factories and Indians, brought in by the British in the later nineteenth century, remained a presence, especially on the East Coast. The British government cobbled together a patchwork of unequal laws to regulate black labor, including a requirement for men to carry detailed permits known as passbooks. Afrikaner nationalists proposed an even more comprehensive legal framework to protect their community though the promotion of separateness (apartheid in Afrikaans). When the Afrikaner National Party unexpectedly won the general election of 1948, it swiftly moved to make apartheid the law of the land. But the new government soon found that South Africa was more closely connected to the outside world than they imagined.5

Culture and Visions of Humanity in the Beginning The initial alarm bell over the passage of apartheid laws sounded overseas because of three kinds of essentially cultural connections— ethnic, literary, and religious—each with their own concept of humanity and connection to a source of human rights thinking. First, at the United Nations the government of India raised concerns specifically about the mistreatment of people of Indian origin in South Africa; there were similar stirrings in the United States in African American intellectual and activist circles. The Indian delegation to the UN introduced resolutions against discrimination in South Africa annually from 1946 onward (before they even had their own independence), appealing to the UN’s founding principles and, in due course, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights from 1948.

184

Nicholas J. Cull

Over the years, the resolutions broadened to incorporate all South African racial groups. Following the Sharpeville massacre of March 1960, the UN passed significant censures against the South African state. India’s interest in South Africa showed that ethnic and cultural similarity sharpened responses rhetorically couched in the language of humanity and human rights. An analogous ethnic and cultural dimension linked South Africa to the British Commonwealth. Family connections as well as the habits of trade, travel, sport, migration, and education helped keep South Africa on British minds long after the country angrily cut its political ties in 1961, and similarly ensured that Dutch people paid attention to South African politics too. Much of the story of the antiapartheid movement in the United Kingdom is the story of the English-speaking exile community and its efforts to awaken Britons to a situation in which their country was implicated, framing their anti-racist appeal as an extension of Britain’s anti-Nazi narrative in World War II.6 Economic ties provided a path to make British protest felt in Pretoria. The absence of such economic ties was initially one of the limits on the US anti-apartheid movement. For example, the American anti-apartheid leader George Houser bemoaned that he could not put much pressure on South Africa by persuading his countrymen not to buy the principal export to the US from the country: frozen lobster tails.7 The second cultural connection—literature—was seen in the remarkable success of a novel by a white reform school principal, Alan Paton: Cry, the Beloved Country (1948). The novel was recognized and published in the US rather than South Africa as a result of a chance meeting between the author and American anti-racism campaigners who happened to be friends of Hemmingway’s editor. The novel lyrically described South African life on the eve of apartheid through the eyes of a kindly old Zulu clergyman who comes to Johannesburg to find his son and instead encounters a tragedy wrought by the intersection of poverty and racism. Paton’s argument is one of shared humanity and a recognition of interdependence. It stands in relation to the global anti-apartheid movement much as Harriet Beecher-Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852) stands in relation to the US Civil War. Its accomplishment was to use the form of the novel to transcend the difference between the world of the reader and world of the characters, and to open the floodgates to empathy. As the situation in South Africa unfolded, further writing from the country served to inform and alert external opinion and dramatize the corrosive effects of racism on people’s inner lives. Of special significance

Engineering Empathy

185

in later years were Nadine Gordimer and J. M. Coetzee (both of whom were recognized in due course with the Nobel Prize in Literature), Andre Brink, and the playwright Athol Fugard, who used South African experiences to illuminate universal issues of humanity. Like the dissidents from Eastern Europe, they gained international fame to the chagrin of the government of their home country.8 The third major point of connection, and the gateway for formal activism in Western Europe, was the religious network founded in the theological notion of humanity and human rights. In the UK and Sweden, the first voices raised against apartheid were those of missionaries serving in South Africa, who saw apartheid as a violation of the Christian principle of the brotherhood of humanity under the paternity of God. Key voices from inside South Africa speaking to coreligionists and the general public at home included those of Rev. Michael Scott, Father Trevor Huddleston, and (in Sweden) Rev. Gunnar Helander. Social activists with religious motivations who came into the campaign as supporters included George Houser in the US and Cannon John Collins in the UK. Huddleston wrote a passionate book about his experiences as a priest in the slums on the edge of Johannesburg called Naught for Your Comfort (1956), even as those locations were scheduled for demolition by the apartheid state as places of racial mixing. Huddleston’s book gave flesh and blood to the newspaper reports of odd new laws in South Africa and was a publishing sensation. The author himself became a cultural phenomenon: forced by his skittish religious order to quit South Africa in 1954, he was the face of the anti-apartheid moment for its first decade and returned as a figurehead in the 1980s and early 1990s, long after his ideas of a religiously driven ethical stand had passed from political fashion in the UK.9 Resistance to apartheid within South Africa was typically organized along community lines, with separate structures for black, Indian origin, the mixed-race community locally known as “Colored,” and white. The core exception was the Communist Party of South Africa, whose interracial nature was part of its appeal. Despite segregated structures, the agendas of South Africa’s opposition successfully converged around a shared vision of a common humanity and an integrated future. This vision was articulated in the famous Freedom Charter of 25 June 1955, signed at Kliptown. “All,” the declaration pledged, “shall enjoy equal human rights!” Interestingly, some writers were already articulating an ethical notion of the human originating in indigenous culture. In Drum magazine, Joshua K. Ngubane wrote about the traditional concept of Ubuntu, which encompassed

186

Nicholas J. Cull

both a notion of common humanity and an ethical responsibility based on that kinship. The idea attracted little traction at the time and did not jump across into such white liberal publications as Contact magazine, but its moment would come later.10 Unfortunately for the movement, the idea of a nonracial South Africa increasingly chafed on some black leaders who favored a black nationalist solution and in due course established the Pan Africanist Congress as a separate initiative. All reform positions were anathema to Pretoria, and the South African government duly moved to push back any idea of political change both at home and abroad.

Apartheid’s Cultural Defense The attempt to mobilize world opinion faced one challenge above all others: the context of the Cold War. The introduction of apartheid coincided with the early years of the Cold War, and the South African government, which already conflated what they termed the “black peril” with the “red peril,” learned to defend apartheid in Cold War terms. The South African government saw all its opponents as communists and portrayed their repression as a public service to Western allies. The logic of the Cold War meant that the leading Western powers saw both political and economic benefit in supplying armaments to the apartheid state and turned a blind eye to some aspects of its domestic politics. When the South African government decided to upgrade its own self-presentation overseas, they found that British and West German cultural diplomats were happy to help.11 South Africa’s cultural campaign began with visiting speakers and education exchanges, broadened to include books, magazines, and documentary films (many of which were simply focused on nature), and culminated with a network of officially unofficial front organizations whose tactics included bringing prominent citizens from around the world to South Africa to “see for themselves.” The best known was the South Africa Foundation, created in 1959 by a coalition of businessmen. Its core concept was not so much one of humanity as the expression of nationality through person-to-person contact. The approach was gendered. The foundation’s logo was a double M for the idea of “man-to-man” contact and explanation.12 Influential foreigners cultivated by the South Africa Foundation tended to be leaders of politics and business rather than culture. Still, South African film producers realized that there was political value in bringing productions into the Republic. They even found that with

Engineering Empathy

187

the right tax breaks a film that was planned as a cowboy versus Sioux Western could be rewritten as a white hunter versus Zulu.13

Culture and the Boycott Once the initial alarm bell over apartheid had been rung, opponents looked for tools to leverage change. Of the British church activists, Rev. Scott set his sights on UN-initiated sanctions, but in 1954 Father Huddleston proposed a more individually focused campaign: a cultural boycott. His initial idea was that cultural professionals should take the lead and “give White South Africans an opportunity of tasting the medicine they so freely give to their Black fellow-citizens— the medicine of deprivation and frustration.”14 Individual performers like the British jazz musician Johnny Dankworth and sports personalities like England cricketer David Sheppard began to refuse contact with South Africa. A petition pledging a boycott followed with signatories as varied as novelist Graham Greene, historian A.J.P. Taylor, and actors Peter Ustinov and Peggy Ashcroft. The innovation was to problematize participation and make a point by depriving a transgressing society of aspects of art or culture. In postwar British society, anti-apartheid activism was a way to demonstrate social conscience and a major theme in Labour Party, Trade Union, and Liberal Party activism at both a national and local government level. Cultural figures like Johnny Dankworth or fellow jazz man George Melly followed suit and moved from simply refusing to perform in South Africa to actively campaigning and fundraising. Throughout the 1960s, stars of stage and screen came together to perform in concerts and variety shows to raise money for the legal fees of political prisoners in South Africa and to support their families. Headliners included folk singer Ewan MacColl, comedian Frankie Howerd, and actress Vanessa Redgrave (who released her own anti-apartheid ballad). Veteran philosopher Bertrand Russell was a regular speaker at rallies. British writers like Harold Pinter refused permission for their plays to be staged in South Africa, although the South African government dodged the problem by amending local copyright law to permit what amounted to the piracy of scripts. Prominent academics including Isaiah Berlin and Alfred Ayre pledged never to accept an appointment at a South African university.15 In the United States, performers including Sidney Poitier and Henry Fonda organized a parallel boycott.16 The United Nations added its own endorsement in 1968 under a General Assembly resolution.17

188

Nicholas J. Cull

Film and Anti-Apartheid Cultural Production One of the challenges for organizers of anti-apartheid activism was finding visual material to communicate the situation in South Africa. Censorship rules in the country meant that images of apartheid had to be filmed in secret and smuggled out or restaged in a look-alike location. Michael Scott led the way with a secretly filmed documentary called Civilization on Trial in South Africa (1952), which he showed as evidence to select groups at the United Nations. A more ambitious project came later in the decade from US filmmaker Lionel Rogosin: Come Back, Africa (1959), a feature film created in secret along Italian neorealist lines, with black and white South Africans acting out the story of a young man’s transition through his arrival in Johannesburg to despair. Distinctive features included a lively soundtrack recorded on location. The film featured a cameo by the rising South African star Miriam Makeba and became her ticket out of the country to perform before Western audiences. The Danish documentarian Henning Carlsen also secretly produced a remarkable feature film called Dilemma (1962), from Nadine Gordimer’s novella A World of Strangers (1958), with a local cast and music. Carlsen only got into South Africa because he convinced the apartheid government that he wanted to make a trade film about South African housewives and their kitchen appliances; his footage got out because the Danish embassy agreed to hide reels in their diplomatic bag.18 The most widely seen British film, John Krish’s short Let My People Go! (commissioned by the Boycott Committee in 1960) got around the problem of access by simply restaging scenes from Huddleston’s book with actors. Rather than using a culturally specific/South African soundtrack, Krish obtained permission from the British classical composer Michael Tippett to use music from his anti-racist oratorio A Child of Our Time: the setting of the African American spiritual “Go Down Moses.” The choice emphasized a Judeo-Christian reference point and a transatlantic context, reflecting connection to the historic anti-slavery and US civil rights movements rather than a unique South African situation. The cross-appropriation was not thought odd at the time.19

Art and Apartheid The leaders of Britain’s anti-apartheid campaign also drew the graphic art world into their battle. Cannon Collins was especially quick to see

Engineering Empathy

189

the value of working with artists and arranging charity auctions of donated work. His most famous single was a painting called The Black Christ (1962) by South African artist Ronald Harrison. Until 1962 Harrison was an unknown painter from Western Cape’s “Colored” community. That changed with The Black Christ: a depiction of the crucifixion of Jesus in which then ANC leader Chief Luthuli is represented as Christ, Prime Minister Verwoerd and Minister of Justice Vorster as Romans, and Indian and “Colored” South Africans as Mary and St. John. Harrison exhibited the picture in Cape Town and then his allies smuggled it out of the country to Cannon Collins in London, who placed it on display at St. Paul’s Cathedral before sending it on a national tour in the UK. For Harrison, sudden fame had terrible consequences. He was arrested and tortured by the South African police, but survived.20 In 1965 anti-apartheid activists staged a spectacular art exhibition to raise money to support political prisoners in South Africa. Artist and architect Sir Hugh Casson, the chief anti-apartheid voice within the British art world, issued the appeal, and ANC London representative Mazisi Raymond Kunene mounted the show of two hundred eighty works provided by galleries for display or sale. The collection included works by Giacometti, Chagall, Henry Moore, and Graham Sutherland. The response was so impressive that he needed two commercial galleries in London. The art was not necessarily themed around apartheid or human rights, but all the artists signed a declaration “against racial injustice” and for “the immediate release of all political prisoners in South Africa.” Signatories in solidarity included Jean-Paul Sartre.21 Kunene—himself a poet of stature—went on to teach at UCLA and work at UNESCO. While his Africanist inclinations set him at odds with the ANC in the 1970s, his contributions included a conference “Art Contra Apartheid” in Amsterdam in 1976.22

South Africa’s Appeal to Humanity As the furor over apartheid gathered momentum, the South African government’s countercampaign developed its own arguments based on human rights. The core principle was one of the right of people to self-determination and the inability of foreigners to truly understand the nature of South African society. The point was regularly made by Eric Louw, the voluble minister of foreign affairs in the early 1960s.23 The state’s position developed into a more complex picture

190

Nicholas J. Cull

as Pretoria resolved to create pseudo-independent homelands for black people where they would have rights and be sovereign, in a move to erase the South African state’s obligation to give rights to non-whites. From the early 1960s onward, much of the energy of the state communication went into the attempt to convince the world that the homelands (or Bantustans) were genuine entities and that indigenous African culture would flourish and be stronger there. Culture was part of the strategy: a widely exported documentary film from 1963 called The Anatomy of Apartheid not only made the argument in its commentary and through its interviews with black African enthusiasts for the Bantustan system; it also used indigenous music from the state’s “Radio Bantu” station on its soundtrack. Its visual arguments included a montage of Africans taking on Western influences including skin-lightening treatment, which it contrasted with the preservation of culture in the protected zone of the Bantustans. The result was to construct the Bantustans as equivalent to the game reserves for African wildlife: protected environments to preserve the wonders of their nature but conveniently accessible as needed for white South African enjoyment in the case of the game reserves or industrial exploitation in the case of the Bantustans.24 South African tourist publicity followed this same path, showing black people as happy only when in native dress and visually segregated into their own inset photograph within the graphic design of a montage.25 The regime understood that to be influential their communication needed to be relevant. They seized on one story in particular as of immense international relevance, beyond even the protestations that the Republic held the line against communism: in December 1967, the South African surgeon Christiaan Barnard completed the world’s first human heart transplant operation. The achievement addressed a universal human need and concern and, in the moment, was hailed as a breakthrough to be spoken of in the same breath as the first steps on the moon. In the UK, Anti-Apartheid News struggled to damp down the news, but for a season it seemed that the South African government’s approach had worked and they had successfully created the image of a country akin to that of Australia.26 The South African government also worked to disrupt the distribution of the anti-apartheid culture, creating their own boycott. Pressure from South African–linked advertisers, for example, blocked the screening of Let My People Go! (1961) on British TV.27 A decade later, commercial filmmakers made a big-budget feature film

Engineering Empathy

191

around resistance to apartheid called The Wilby Conspiracy (1975), starring Sidney Poitier as a Mandela-type leader on the run and Michael Caine as an unwilling British everyman caught up in his story. The South African government applied pressure on the distributing studio—Universal Films—and successfully deterred a high-profile distribution.28 The South African government hoped that allowing suitably apolitical South African performers to perform outside the country would contribute to a positive image or at least contest the identification of culture with opposition. One of their first attempts at permitting the export of culture was allowing a London season for an “all black” musical called King Kong by a collective of performers organized under the banners of the Union of South African Artists and the African Music and Drama Association. The show was not overtly political. It dealt with the life of a boxer and not a political figure, with music by Todd Matshikiza and book by Harry Bloom. The New York Herald Tribune hailed its appearance as a “hole in the apartheid curtain,” and praised the South African government for issuing the necessary papers.29 The production misfired from Pretoria’s point of view, as the composer and a number of performers, including the trombonist Jonas Gwangwa, took the opportunity to move into exile and began criticizing conditions at home.30 A decade later there was a series of “happy native” cultural reviews seen overseas such as Ipi Tombi, a show written by a white author but starring black performers. Ipi Tombi played in the UK, France, Germany, and on Broadway, to the chagrin of anti-apartheid activists, who picketed theaters.31 The London run ended unhappily, with cast members also protesting low pay and predicting victimization on their return to South Africa.32 By the 1980s, the South African government saw no mileage in pretending that indigenous culture was somehow supportive of apartheid. The preferred strategy was simply to use the lure of money to persuade performers to ignore the cultural boycott and perform at South African venues. In the cultural sphere, this meant performing at the Sun City resort in the Bantustan of Bophuthatswana; in sporting terms, this meant athletes competing at rogue sporting events like the South African Open International Games of 1973, which were racially integrated. To muddy the waters overseas, the South African government set up a front organization, the Committee for Fairness in Sport, specifically to publish newspaper advertisements trumpeting token examples of sporting desegregation.33

192

Nicholas J. Cull

Culture, Humanity, and the Radical Turn Many international disputes feature a rigid dividing line between political and cultural practitioners and a similar line between arguments couched in legalistic language and passionate expressions of humanity and human rights. This was not the case with the struggle against apartheid. Many anti-apartheid activists wrote poems on the side, and some prominent activists had full literary backgrounds. The leading writer-activists were Denis Brutus, the poet who spearheaded activism against apartheid in sports, and the novelist and short story writer Alex La Guma. Both men were forced into exile, Brutus after time in prison and La Guma after a trial and house arrest. While the South African government was too quick to assume that all anti-apartheid activists were communists, La Guma made no secret of his affiliation. He published an admiring travelogue of his visit to the USSR and served as the ANC’s representative in Cuba.34 Key journals of the movement including African Communist, Anti-Apartheid News, and Sechaba (the journal of the ANC, which launched in 1967) all contained poetry by activists and in so doing followed a concept of revolutionary cultural expression emerging from the Eastern Bloc and postcolonial African republics. The ANC was happy to send writer-activists as delegates to gatherings like the First Pan African Cultural Festival, held in Algiers in 1969, or the Fifth Afro-Asian Writers Conference in Kazakhstan in 1973.35 Analysis of Sechaba reveals consistent references to humanity and human rights throughout its quarter-century run. Of 250 issues, 241 included references to “human,” of which 154 were to “human rights.”36 The liberation movement also saw immense value in music and sought to integrate the repertoire of freedom songs that rallied support on the ground into their international campaign. In the mid1960s a group of ANC refugees in Tanzania recorded a selection of freedom songs for release as the B side on a charity record created by Cannon Collins in the UK. The A side was an edited version of Nelson Mandela’s Rivonia Trial speech performed by the white Australian actor Peter Finch.37 By the end of the decade, the ANC had a choir of activists in London who would sing and even dance to add an indigenous African flavor to what would otherwise have been culturally European events. Events so augmented included a concert organized by Canon Collins at the Royal Albert Hall to mark the UN Human Rights Year in 1969. Performers from the ANC included Thabo Mbeki, then a student leader and ANC royalty as the son of leading political prisoner Govan Mbeki. Young Thabo’s contribution

Engineering Empathy

193

included participating in the famous gumboot dance. He went on to serve as the second president of South Africa.38 The ANC included musical programming on its radio broadcasts back to South Africa from Lusaka, known as “Radio Freedom.” Although only managing around forty-five minutes of total airtime a day, music was seen as a sufficient priority to take up some of that. A music show transmitted every Saturday carried a variety of content revealing of the ANC’s cultural self-positioning. An ANC report from 1973 mentions broadcasts of freedom songs composed inside South Africa, a program of civil rights–oriented American music that included Billie Holiday, and—to show the universality of the struggle against fascism—the Leningrad Symphony of Dimitri Shostakovich. All three reflected the ANC’s worldview.39 In 1975 a small group of activists in London convened in what they termed a “workshop for culture and propaganda activities” to present a mix of poetry and music to audiences around the UK and Western Europe. They called themselves the Mayibuye Poets (referencing the slogan much used in the 1950s: Mayibuye Afrika, “Comeback Africa”). Their founder, Barry Feinberg, set out the group’s objectives in a piece for Anti-Apartheid News: Believing that “Art must serve the People,” the unit aims to develop a revolutionary approach to culture, and to project its ideas to audiences in Britain and elsewhere, as well as to the oppressed people of South Africa. Freedom songs, music, art and literature, have played an important role in nourishing the spirit of struggle in South Africa. This ANC unit seeks to interrelate these various cultural elements, both traditional and modern, and give them a collective dynamic expression.40

The group operated for five years and with sufficient success to inspire ANC headquarters in Lusaka to establish a larger troupe, built out of the wave of refugees leaving South Africa after the Soweto Rising of 1976. This second group—called Amandla for the Zulu and Xhosa word for “power”—appeared globally and with even more impressive forces, marking culture as a third pillar of ANC activity for exiles, to set aside its military and educational work. The driving force behind cultural initiatives from Lusaka was Thabo Mbeki, who had graduated from activist-performer to the ANC’s leading figure in matters of propaganda. Amandla, led by trombonist Jonas Gwangwa, represented the ANC around the world throughout the later 1970s and 1980s; it sought to definitively link the cultural production of the country with that organization and its political destiny.41 Even with these antecedents, it took some time for the ANC to place culture in the vanguard of its approach to the world. Key mo-

194

Nicholas J. Cull

ments included a high-level visit to Vietnam in 1978 to discover the secrets of the North Vietnamese campaign against the United States and its client regime in Saigon. The North Vietnamese assured the ANC delegation that their strongest argument would always come from within, and they were better off looking at indigenous experiences and ideas than attempting to adapt approaches that had worked elsewhere.42

The Cultural Boycott at Full Flood The 1980s saw the ultimate confrontation between the apartheid state and the forces of change. The struggle within the country was fought out in waves of civic unrest and brutal repression. Internationally, the boycott in sports and culture was rendered truly effective by the simple expedient of the UN’s Unit on Apartheid maintaining a register of sporting figures and performers who chose to break the boycott. Maintaining the register was the simplest form of bureaucratic power—assertion simply by taking down a name, with the implied disgrace of being numbered among the true racists who were happy to stand with the South African regime. Performers who fell foul of the register after performing in South Africa included Frank Sinatra and the British rock band Queen. All that was necessary to have one’s name removed from the list was to promise not to go to apartheid South Africa again.43 There were many potential weaknesses in the use of culture in the struggle for or against apartheid, all of which surfaced at some point or other. Artists are by their nature unpredictable and resistant to constraint. The most serious challenge to the boycott came in 1986 when Paul Simon traveled to South Africa to record his album Graceland. While Simon considered himself opposed to apartheid and even believed he had permission from an ANC representative to travel, his album was not in line with official policy at the time. Its release caused confusion as to what cultural contacts were permitted, and the UN had to spend several thousand dollars on an expensive summit to reestablish clarity around the issue.44 For the ANC the affair had a more complicated meaning. They saw indigenous South African culture as a unique asset of the movement and felt it was a tremendous help that their cultural troupe Amandla was close to a monopoly supplier of the harmonies, musical textures, and rhythms of the country. For an American performer to take something so meaningful and valuable for his own ends was a serious matter. It

Engineering Empathy

195

seemed as if he had taken a crutch from one refugee and a weapon from another and used the wood to frame a self-portrait. In time, Simon came to understand their point of view. His road back included a concert in Zimbabwe in 1987 featuring exiled South African musicians, to which many South Africans traveled.45

Culture, Humanity, and the End Game During the first forty years of apartheid, activists had used a variety of approaches to dramatize their struggle. They had spoken of the subjugation of the many, mass incarceration, and the violence against children implicit in the education system and explicit in police methods. Yet the one element that caught the international imagination was not the plight of the many but the expression of that plight in the fate of one man: Nelson Mandela. The phenomenon would not be a surprise to psychologists, who have long since noted the “identifiable victim effect,” whereby an issue can be understood when identified with a single person. Mandela’s salience in the final years of apartheid was not a coincidence but a strategic choice. It began in 1978 when the head of the UN’s communication unit dedicated to apartheid—E. S. Reddy—noticed that Mandela’s sixtieth birthday was approaching and proposed a campaign linked to the anniversary. The campaign began with a birthday party for British politicians at the House of Commons and included other events such as a concert. The campaign bubbled along until 1983 when Mandela’s sixty-fifth birthday inspired an even more successful musical performance. The British musician Jerry Dammers, who attended the concert, was moved to write his own song “Free Nelson Mandela,” which became an anthem of mainstream activism. By the later 1980s, apartheid had become a generational cause célèbre. Major musicians recording songs with anti-apartheid themes included Peter Gabriel (“Biko,” 1980), Stevie Wonder (“It’s Wrong [Apartheid],” 1985), and the Artists United Against Apartheid (“Sun City,” 1985), which was an artist collective defending the cultural boycott. The climax of this musical activism was the daylong concert staged in 1988 to mark Mandela’s seventieth birthday. The concert was a global cultural phenomenon, seen in sixty-seven countries by an estimated audience of six hundred million people. While the home network, the BBC, allowed free rein to political comment, some partners in the broadcast did their best to sanitize the political purpose. In the US, in their five-hour edit of the ten-hour show, the Fox net-

196

Nicholas J. Cull

work branded the event as “Freedomfest,” avoided images of Mandela, and cut performers they judged as either too political or too African. Neither Miriam Makeba nor Jonas Gwangwa nor even Jerry Dammers and his song “Free Nelson Mandela” were heard in the Fox version.46 Not all the performers were 100 percent aligned with the cause. Whitney Houston insisted that Mandela’s image be blacked out during her set. Others understood the special needs of a political event. As the son of a communist activist from Cyprus, George Michael assured the organizers that he understood their priorities and his responsibilities. Some of the ANC leadership questioned the authenticity of the concert, noting that some and perhaps most people would attend or watch because they wanted a good time and not necessarily because they supported the cause. Pallo Jordan assured them that the event would work in their favor because Pretoria would see the scale of the event and be intimidated. In sum, the concert constituted one more signal of the scale of global opposition to minority rule in South Africa.47 Music originating within South Africa that found a global audience also included that of ethnically white musician Johnny Clegg. His elegy to Mandela, “Asimbonanga,” performed in both English and Zulu, reached number one in France in 1987. Clegg was not invited to perform at the Mandela concert in order to uphold the cultural boycott, but his collaborations with African musicians helped open a vision of a better future for South Africa. Thus criticism of apartheid became mainstream. Other examples included feature films explicitly attacking the system and its judicial brutalities: Cry Freedom (1987) and A Dry White Season (1989) in film, and Death Is Part of the Process (1986) and Mandela (1987) on television. While the South African government could mount no equivalent defense, one of the veterans of its propaganda film production—Jamie Uys—succeeded in winning international acclaim for a film that affirmed a number of the apartheid government’s cultural assumptions, even as it articulated a kind of bargain-basement humanism: The Gods Must Be Crazy (1980). The film told the story of a bushman (drawn in the idealized noble savage mold) and his interaction with an outside world from which he would, the film implies, have been better off insulated. Slanders included a defamatory picture of Zimbabwe and of an incompetent African liberation movement. The film purported to originate in Botswana rather than South Africa and did well worldwide despite anti-apartheid protests.48 Protest on the ground within South Africa developed its own characteristics distinct from the preferred language of the ANC in

Engineering Empathy

197

exile. The most interesting shift in the vocabulary of humanity was Bishop Desmond Tutu’s use of the N’guni term Ubuntu (translated into variations on the theme of interdependence and the idea that “I am because you are”) as an indigenous concept of humanity. Tutu made the term his own and built it into an argument about the benevolence of African culture and the reassuring prospect for an integrated future for all within South Africa. The ANC had its own ways of discussing such concepts based on global revolutionary ideas and the orthodoxy of Marxism, and it is telling that the only use of the term Ubuntu in the entire run of its journal Sechaba was in a review of Tutu’s book from 1982.49 Ubuntu would become much more central to the ANC’s discourse after its return from exile. By then its priority was less to show the universal value of South Africa’s struggle to the world as to underline the unique local legitimacy of the ANC leadership, and to inspire the domestic population with a locally relevant vision of good governance and citizenship. By the later 1980s, the scale of the world’s response underlined that the time for negotiation between South Africa and the liberations movements had arrived. Negotiations included a meeting in Dakar between reform-minded leaders of white society and the ANC in 1987, followed by a remarkable five-day summit on culture at Victoria Falls in July 1989 between forty-five major Afrikaner writers (including some classified as “Colored” in the South African system) and representatives of the ANC. The delegation included Andre Brink and Breyten Breytenbach. The result was a pledge by the Afrikaner literary community to work together with the ANC to build a non-racist South African literary culture for the future, to participate in the rescue of African oral culture before it would be forgotten, and to join the majority-black Congress of Southern African Writers. Marius Schoon—exiled since 1976, whose wife and daughter had been murdered by a Bureau of State Security parcel bomb in 1984—called this advance a “mind-boggling experience” and felt as if he was living in the “the world of my dreams.”50 The event showed that the ANC’s conception of culture had shifted from seeing it as a lever for a pressure group to a dimension of life for a government in waiting. When in February 1990 Nelson Mandela walked free, the government unbanned the ANC and South African Communist Party. In April of that year, a second concert at Wembley Stadium—with Mandela in attendance—celebrated his release. Thereafter, South African politics decamped from the global stage to the local in the run-up to the first free elections of 1994. As a result, cultural elements in the boycott relaxed and South Africa was even welcomed

198

Nicholas J. Cull

to the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona. The organizers of the Barcelona Games had their own reasons for seeking to make their Olympics as inclusive as possible, as South Africa was not the only country in transition looking to reintroduce itself to the world audience after time as a political pariah.51 Finally, in February 1993 the UN formally ended its register for the cultural and sporting boycott.52 This was an important way of signaling the reentry of South Africa into the mainstream of international society.

Culture in the New South Africa The coda to the use of culture externally in the struggles against apartheid was its use as one of the mechanisms for bringing the country together and making a mutual recognition of humanity apparent. In the effort to speed the creation of a new identity, Mandela understood how to bring forward singers and performers who summed up the national mood. His inauguration included songs from Johnny Clegg, a reading from Afrikaner Andre Brink, and dancers uniting Zulu and Indian traditions.53 Mandela’s embracing of the Springbok rugby squad with their one non-white player and his delight at their victory in the 1995 Rugby World Cup also sent an important message. His own memoir, Long Walk to Freedom, could be seen as the final piece of cultural propaganda for freedom in South Africa. The final version benefited from the advice of a number of leading cultural figures (including Nadine Gordimer) to create a book worthy of its place as the volume closing the story begun with the publication of Alan Paton’s Cry, the Beloved Country half a century before.54 The new South Africa constitution, adopted in 1996, spoke in terms of the human. Its preamble defined its purpose as to “Heal the divisions of the past and establish a society based on democratic values, social justice and fundamental human rights.” Its bill of rights affirmed a right to “human dignity.” Meanwhile, the country embarked on the often painful process of investigating past crimes against humanity through the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The indigenous concept of Ubuntu flourished as an organizing philosophy for the country’s new approach.55 There were limits, of course. Sponsorship of culture remained one of the mechanisms that the ANC turned to animate its ideology. Mandela’s successor— the architect of much cultural outreach by the ANC in its years of struggle—Thabo Mbeki, went so far as to promise an African Renais-

Engineering Empathy

199

sance. The reality fell short and his critics saw only a crass mechanism for rewarding cronies.56

Conclusion Looking over the whole sweep of the role of communication in the anti-apartheid story, it is striking how central the linked concepts of humanity and culture were to the campaign to capture global audiences: dramatizing the life of the country and making its tragedies real. Cultural channels opened a window to the experience of a little-known section of humanity in need of human rights. It is also clear that the political salience of South Africa in global conscience owed much to preexisting cultural connections and a vocabulary of humanity stemming from those connections—be it the shared secular humanity of the UN, the religious humanity of the Christian church, the universality of Marxist doctrine, or the shared ideas of citizenship within the Commonwealth. Finally, it is interesting to note the indigenous notion of Ubuntu, which was such a feature of post-apartheid public life yet figured so marginally in most of the anti-apartheid cultural and political discourse. For most of the period, anti-apartheid voices presented the case against apartheid in terms of universal discourses of international life and their perversion in South Africa. It was only toward the end that an actual local ideology of humanity indigenous to Africa moved to the fore rather than simply an African experience expressed in global terms. South African government officials complained about the special attention devoted to South Africa when human rights were abused in many other places, including some of the states supporting the anti-apartheid cause. This was an undoubted exercise in what is now termed “whataboutism”—the derailing of criticism by raising an unrelated flaw in the critic’s society, such as when China raises the question “what about American racism” to deflect criticism of its treatment of Uyghurs in Xinjiang. But it opens a genuine historical question as to how and why the issue of South Africa acquired such prominence in postwar international politics beyond other causes célèbres such as Pinochet’s Chile or the Shah’s Iran. Part of the answer is that so many different countries and groups had something to gain from raising the issue. Opposition to apartheid was, for example, a point of commonality for the newly independent nations of Africa as they asserted their presence on the UN stage, and a mechanism by which the Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc countries could

200

Nicholas J. Cull

perform good deeds to the shame of the West and enjoy being on what seemed to be the right side of history on one issue at least. But beyond this political convergence, some of the credit for the issue’s prominence must also go to the successful cultural articulation of an inclusive vision of humanity whereby what happened in Soweto was accepted as relevant by people in Seattle, Sydney, and Southwark (the London borough proclaimed itself an “anti-apartheid zone” in the mid-1980s). The cultural outreach of the anti-apartheid movement with its implicit focus on shared humanity became an engine of empathy, winning friends around the world. Ironically, even as the movement expanded the vision of humanity to include individuals and peoples from across South Africa’s many ethnic groups, it also slipped into a demonization of the white South African and more especially the Afrikaner. An awareness that the world was deaf to atrocities like the bombing of the Johannesburg Park railway station in 1964 by an anti-apartheid extremist from the white community fed the defensiveness of the so-called “laager” mentality and made compromise all the harder. External media slipped easily into the demonization. Anti-Apartheid News regularly ran cartoons depicting Afrikaners as bloated stereotypes; British TV’s satirical puppet show Spitting Image recorded a song in 1986 called “I’ve Never Met a Nice South African.” In Hollywood, white South Africans became thinly veiled reincarnations of B-movie Nazi bad guys that the world could “love to hate,” transcending movies actually about the continent to serve as villains of choice in a crop of late 1980s films such as Lethal Weapon 2 (1989).57 The concept of humanity had been successfully articulated by the liberation movement across its forty-year struggle to highlight the inhumanity of the apartheid regime. It had matured beyond a concept grounded in international diplomatic, religious, or ideological reference points to embrace the local values of Ubuntu. It ultimately faced the challenge of closing the gap opened by the operation of its rhetoric and somehow bringing the demonized white minority back into humanity and a shared, democratic future. Culture and a reframing of the issue in terms of an inclusive, shared humanity underwritten by Ubuntu played their part. The architects of democratic South Africa understood that such mutual recognition was essential for the success of the post-apartheid state. Insightful observers understood that there was a lesson here for the entire world to learn, best formulated by Desmond Tutu—the great voice for a shared humanity and a former pupil of Trevor Huddleston—

Engineering Empathy

201

when he wrote: “When we see others as the enemy, we risk becoming what we hate. When we oppress others, we end up oppressing ourselves. All of our humanity is dependent upon recognizing the humanity in others.”58

Nicholas J. Cull is a professor of public diplomacy at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication. Originally from the UK, he is a historian specializing in the use of media in international relations. His many published works include The Cold War and the United States Information Agency: American Propaganda and Public Diplomacy, 1945–1989 (2008). He is presently writing a comprehensive media history of the struggle against apartheid. His ongoing interests in human rights include disability rights, as the proud father to a son with Down syndrome.

Notes 1. In November 1973, the UN General Assembly initiated the International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid. By 1976, the convention had sufficient signatures to become binding. The convention defines “apartheid” as “inhuman acts committed for the purpose of establishing and maintaining domination by one racial group of persons over any other racial group of persons and systematically oppressing them.” In 1982, the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court recognized apartheid as a crime against humanity. 2. “Address by Nelson Mandela.” 3. For background, see Ross, John Philip; Lester, Imperial Networks; and on the press: Botha, John Fairbairn in South Africa. 4. This process is well drawn in Nauright, Long Run to Freedom, especially chapters 1 and 2. 5. On election, see Meredith, In the Name of Apartheid. 6. For a survey of exile politics, see Israel, South African Political Exile. 7. Culverson, Contesting Apartheid. 8. An excellent starting point on South African writing is Cornwell et al., The Columbia Guide. 9. Yates and Chester, The Troublemaker; Denniston, Trevor Huddleston; Herbstein, White Lies. 10. On the historical evolution of Ubuntu, see Gade, “Historical Development”; Contact is searchable on JSTOR. For Ngubane’s ideas, see also Ngubane, An African Explains Apartheid. 11. Meiring, Inside Information, 135–136. 12. On the foundation, see Meiring, Inside Information, 139–141; for surveys of this story, see Nixon, Selling Apartheid, 17–18; Laurence, The Seeds of Disaster, 147– 149; Burgess et al., The Great White Hoax. 13. For an example of this, see The Naked Prey as presented in Chapman and Cull, Projecting Empire, chapter 7.

202

Nicholas J. Cull

14. Huddleston, “The Church Sleeps On”; italics in original. 15. For background, see Anti-Apartheid News (archived online at JSTOR), especially “Harold Pinter on the Cultural Boycott,” May 1965, 6; “Why the Academic Boycott Is Needed,” February 1966, 2; “Anatomy of Apartheid Raises £200,” April 1966, 2; “Defense and Aid Concert: Marlon Brando in All-Star Cast,” June 1968, 5; “Film Stars on Freedom Day,” July/August 1967, 2; and Christabel Gurney, “Weiss Telegram Brings Down Curtain on Segregated Play,” October 1969, 6. 16. Houser, No One Can Stop the Rain, 276. 17. UN General Assembly Resolution 2396 (XXIII) of 2 December 1968 requested “all States and organizations to suspend cultural, educational, sports and other exchanges with the racist regime and with organizations and institutions in South Africa which practice apartheid.” 18. The story of production is told in the blog “A Year or Two of Living Dangerously,” retrieved 28 October 2021 from https://www.tusker.com/ Geografica/a-year-or-two-of-living-dangerously/. 19. See John Krish’s oral history interview with Rodney Geisler for the British Entertainment History Project, retrieved 28 October 2021 from https://historyproject. org.uk/sites/default/files/John percent20Krish.pdf. For a review, see Quigley, “Films of the Week.” The film is little remembered today. Ironically, the two best scenes are misremembered as part of Come Back Africa in Ronald Bergin’s obituary for Lionel Rogosin published in the Guardian, 15 December 2000. 20. Herbstein, White Lies, 76–77; Collins, Partners in Protest, 294–295; Harrison, The Black Christ. The painting may now be seen at the National Gallery of South Africa. Vinson, Albert Luthuli. 21. “Art Sale to Help Victims”; “Renowned Artists Condemn Racism.” 22. The event is mentioned in Lombardozzi, “Journeying beyond Embo,” 83–84. 23. For a compendium of Louw’s arguments, see Biermann, The Case for South Africa. 24. Anatomy of Apartheid, Antony Thomas (dir.), Alden Films, 1964, as anthologized in South African Propaganda Films of the Apartheid Era, Vol. 5, Villon Films, 2012. 25. For an accessible sample, see figure 4 in Peffer, Art and the End of Apartheid, 13. 26. See Anti-Apartheid News, March 1968, 3. The paper pictured Barnard in a vicious cartoon as a vulture picking a heart from a human chest and raised ethical questions, including the future possibility of the state harvesting organs from its supply of executed prisoners. Barnard had foolishly hinted at this in an interview with Paris Match. 27. Brownlow, “John Krish Obituary”; the counter-advertising story is told in the catalogue notes of the University of Cape Town film archive, retrieved 3 November 2021 from https://www.yumpu.com/en/document/read/14055832/afric an-film-collection-uct-libraries-university-of-cape-town. 28. This story is told in Davis, In Darkest Hollywood, 73–81. 29. “Musical Hole in Apartheid Curtain.” 30. The composer’s experience is well drawn in his memoir, Matshikiza, Chocolates for My Wife. 31. Barnes, “Furor.” 32. “South African Actors Stop a London Show.” 33. For a sample ad, see Committee for Fairness in Sport, “Fleet Street Blinkers.” For context, see Raphael, “How Vorster Uses the Club of Ten.” 34. Cornwell et al., The Columbia Guide, 64–65, 120–121. 35. Fort Hare, Oliver Tambo papers, box 38, file 343, item 1, Department of Arts and Culture, Report on the 1st Pan African Cultural Festival, July 21–August 1, 1969

Engineering Empathy

36.

37.

38. 39.

40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58.

203

(Johnny Makatini); Fort Hare, ANC Lusaka, box 13, file 40, La Guma (London) to Nzo (Morogoro), 5 March 1973. Digital search by author of Sechaba using the JSTOR database. There were 177 issues that used the term “humanity,” of which 88 were to “crimes against humanity.” This compares to 249 using the term “black,” 236 of the term “women,” 229 of “revolution,” 224 of the name “Mandela,” and 215 of “race.” Nelson Mandela, Why I Am Ready to Die, Ember Records. CEL 905. As a white Australian, Peter Finch was an odd choice to voice Mandela, but his role led star quality. Given his role in the 1973 film Bequest to the Nation as Lord Nelson, he has the unique distinction of having played both history’s famous Nelsons. Herbstein, White Lies, 195. The report is archived at Fort Hare, ANC archive, ANC London papers, (Mayibuye) Internal Propaganda, box 10, file 3, Report of the Radio Unit to the Propaganda Committee, 6 June 1973. Feinberg, Time to Tell, 83–84, 91–93; “Poets to the People”; also Devereaux, “John Matshikiza.” On Amandla, see Gilbert, “Singing against Apartheid.” Author interview: Pallo Jordan, ANC. Author interview: E.S. Reddy, UN. For documentation on the introduction of the register, see UN, The United Nations and Apartheid, 1948–1994, 357. For an account of this meeting, see Willemse, “Culture against Apartheid.” Author interviews: Pallo Jordan and Wally Serote. Morse, “Mandela Birthday Concert Sanitized.” Author interviews with organizers: Pallo Jordan; Dali Tambo; Taren Brokenshire. For a review of the concert, see Watrous, “Pop Music’s Homage to Mandela.” Davis, In Darkest Hollywood, 81–94. Review of Desmond Tutu, The Voice of One Crying in the Wilderness, London: A.R. Mobray, 1982, in Sechaba, March 1982, 29–30. Sparks, “S. African Writers vs. Apartheid.” Nauright, Long Run to Freedom, 154. The United Nations and Apartheid, 114. Radhakrishnan, “Dancing the Rainbow Nation.” On the Long Walk to Freedom, see Cornwell et al., The Columbia Guide, 33. For discussion of Ubuntu, see Battle, Reconciliation; Eze, “I Am Because You Are”; Gade, Discourse. On Mbeki’s African Renaissance, see Mangcu, Biko, 304–305. The cartoons are anthologized in Anti-Apartheid Movement, Drawing the Line. Tutu, God Has a Dream, 59.

Bibliography “Address by Nelson Mandela to the Joint Session of the House of Congress, Washington DC.” Mandela.gov.za, 26 June 1990. Retrieved 28 October 2021 from http://www.mandela.gov.za/mandela_speeches/1990/ 900626_usa.htm. Anti-Apartheid Movement. Drawing the Line: Cartoonists against Apartheid. London: Anti-Apartheid Movement, 1985. “Art Sale to Help Victims of Racialism.” The Guardian, 30 September 1965.

204

Nicholas J. Cull

Barnes, Clive. “Furor Surrounds Tedious ‘Ipi-Tombi.’” New York Times, 13 January 1977. Battle, Michael. Reconciliation: The Ubuntu Theology of Desmond Tutu. Cleveland: Pilgrim Press, 2007. Biermann, H. H., ed. The Case for South Africa, as Put Forth in the Public Statements of Eric H. Louw, Foreign Minister of South Africa. New York: Macfadden, 1963. Botha, H. C. John Fairbairn in South Africa. Cape Town: Historical Publication Society, 1984. Brownlow, Kevin. “John Krish Obituary.” The Guardian, 23 May 2016. Retrieved 16 November 2021 from https://www.theguardian.com/ film/2016/may/23/john-krish-obituary. Burgess, Julian, et al. The Great White Hoax: South Africa’s International Propaganda Machine. London: Africa Bureau, 1977. Chapman, James, and Nicholas J. Cull. Projecting Empire: Imperialism and Popular Cinema. London: I.B. Tauris, 2009. Collins, Diana. Partners in Protest: Life with Cannon Collins. London: Gollancz, 1993. Committee for Fairness in Sport. “Fleet Street Blinkers,” The Times (London), 16 April 1973: 5. Cornwell, Gareth, Dirk Klopper, and Craig MacKenzie. The Columbia Guide to South African Literature in English since 1945. New York: Columbia, 2010. Culverson, Donald R. Contesting Apartheid: US Activism 1960–1987. London: Taylor and Francis, 2019. Davis, Peter. In Darkest Hollywood: Exploring the Jungles of Cinema’s South Africa. Athens: Ohio University Press, 1996. Devereaux, Pat. “John Matshikiza.” Guardian, 16 September 2008. Retrieved 16 November 2021 from https://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/ sep/17/southafrica.pressandpublishing. Denniston, Robin. Trevor Huddleston: A Life. London: Macmillan, 1999. Eze, Michael O. “I Am Because You Are: Cosmopolitanism in the Age of Xenophobia.” Philosophical Papers 46, no. 1 (2017): 85–109. Feinberg, Barry. Time to Tell: An Activist’s Story. Johannesburg: STE Publishers, 2009. Gade, Christian B. N. “The Historical Development of the Written Discourses on Ubuntu.” South African Journal of Philosophy 30, no. 3 (2011): 303–329. ———. A Discourse on African Philosophy: A New Perspective on Ubuntu and Transitional Justice in South Africa. New York: Lexington Books, 2017. Gilbert, Shirli. “Singing against Apartheid: ANC Cultural Groups and the International Anti-Apartheid Struggle.” Journal of Southern African Studies 33, no. 2 (2007): 421–441. Harrison, Ronald. The Black Christ: A Journey to Freedom. Cape Town: David Philip, 2006.

Engineering Empathy

205

Herbstein, Denis. White Lies: Cannon Collins and the Secret War against Apartheid. Oxford: James Currey, 2004. Houser, George. No One Can Stop the Rain: Glimpses of South Africa’s Liberation Struggle. New York: Pilgrim Press, 1989. Huddleston, Trevor. “The Church Sleeps On.” Observer, 10 October 1954. Israel, Mark. South African Political Exile in the United Kingdom. London: Macmillan, 1999. Laurence, John. The Seeds of Disaster. London: Gollancz, 1968. Lester, Alan. Imperial Networks: Creating Identities in Nineteenth-Century South Africa and Britain. Abingdon: Routledge, 2001. Lombardozzi, Marian. “Journeying beyond Embo: The Construction of Exile, Place and Identity in the Writings of Lewis Nkosi.” PhD thesis, University of Kwazulu-Natal, Durban, 2007. Mangcu, Xolela. Biko: A Biography. Cape Town: Tafelberg, 2012. Matshikiza, Todd. Chocolates for My Wife. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1961. Meiring, Piet. Inside Information. Cape Town: Howard Timmins, 1973. Meredith, Martin. In the Name of Apartheid: South Africa in the Postwar Period. New York: Harper & Row, 1988. Morse, Steve. “Mandela Birthday Concert Sanitized for TV.” Boston Globe, 13 June 1988. “Musical Hole in Apartheid Curtain.” New York Herald Tribune, 19 February 1961. Nauright, John. Long Run to Freedom: Sport, Cultures and Identities in South Africa. Morgantown: FIT, 2010. Ngubane, Jordan K. An African Explains Apartheid. London: Pall Mall Press, 1963. Nixon, Ron. Selling Apartheid: South Africa’s Global Propaganda War. London: Pluto Press, 2016. Peffer, John. Art and the End of Apartheid. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2009. “Poets to the People—ANC Unit Formed.” Anti-Apartheid News, February 1975. Quigley, Isabel. “Films of the Week.” Guardian, 1 July 1961. Radhakrishnan, Smitha. “Dancing the Rainbow Nation as It Bleeds: The Surialanga Dance Company in Post-Apartheid South Africa.” South Asian Diaspora 11, no. 2 (2019): 127–144. Raphael, Adam. “How Vorster Uses the Club of Ten.” Guardian, 17 June 1974. “Renowned Artists Condemn Racism in Successful London Show.” AntiApartheid News, November 1965. Ross, Andrew C. John Philip (1775–1851): Missions, Race and Politics in South Africa and Britain. Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press, 1986. “South African Actors Stop a London Show.” New York Times, 30 November 1976.

206

Nicholas J. Cull

Sparks, Allister. “S. African Writers vs. Apartheid: In Zimbabwe, 45 Agree to Work with ANC.” Washington Post, 13 July 1989. Tutu, Desmond. God Has a Dream: A Vision of Hope for Our Time. New York: Doubleday, 2004. United Nations. The United Nations and Apartheid, 1948–1994. New York: UN Department of Public Information, 1994. Vinson, Robert T. Albert Luthuli. Columbus: Ohio University Press, 2018. Watrous, Peter. “Pop Music’s Homage to Mandela.” New York Times, 13 June 1988. Willemse, Hein. “Culture against Apartheid.” Spark [via South Africa History Online]. Retrieved 3 November 2021 from https://www.sahistory.org .za/archive/culture-against-apartheid-unsponsored-symposium-heldathens-greece-hein-willemse. Yates, Anne, and Lewis Chester. The Troublemaker: Michael Scott and His Lonely Struggle against Injustice. Aurum: London, 2006.

Part III

SOUNDS

Chapter 8

CHOREOGRAPHING HUMANITY IN THE 1960S Maurice Béjart and the Symphony No. 9 Stéphanie Gonçalves

On Tuesday, 27 October 1964, after two years of preparation and

two months of rehearsals, Maurice Béjart and his company, the Ballet du XXème siècle (Ballet of the Twentieth Century), presented his version of Ludwig van Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 on the round stage of the Cirque Royal in Brussels. With more than three hundred artists of twenty-three nationalities1 on stage, the piece was performed in front of a Belgian and international public, including Belgian Queen Fabiola and King Baudouin, deputy premier of the Soviet Union Konstantin Rudnev and a Soviet delegation visiting Brussels at the time, as well as the elite society of Brussels.2 Ninety dancers, a hundred twenty singers, and as many musicians were performing, offering to the world a version of the symphony for the twentieth century. Sixteen minutes of applause and many bravos welcomed the premiere.3 Due to the widespread public success, the show was scheduled longer than expected.4 The fourth and last movement, the Ode to Joy, a poem written by Friedrich Schiller, was the apogee of the performance: in the final act, all the dancers—Asians, Africans, Europeans—danced in unison in a huge round to celebrate “the joy that can come from friendship between people,” carried by the vibrating choir behind them.5 Days before the performance, the Belgian Royal Theater La Monnaie publicized it under the motto “All men are brothers.”6 Béjart presented his ballet as “a hymn to humanNotes for this section begin on page 222.

210

Stéphanie Gonçalves

ity and a call against racism.”7 Situated in the middle of the 1960s, the event epitomized a political message regarding humanity clad in a modern artistic vision for the ballet world. This essay seeks to examine Maurice Béjart’s specific projection of “humanity” along with the reactions on the part of the media in the 1960s. Béjart, born Berger, was a French dancer and choreographer who was born in Marseille in 1927 and died in 2007 in Lausanne, Switzerland. He had his first experiences as a dancer in Paris, London, and Stockholm, touring broadly throughout Europe at the beginning of his career.8 In the 1950s, he was one of the first to use electronic music—then named “concrete music”—of the French musicians Schaeffer and Henry for a ballet titled Symphonie pour un homme seul (1955). This piece turned him into a well-known artist among the French artistic avant-garde.9 But Béjart wanted to develop his vision of a “popular” ballet, based on the idea to “take the dance out of its elitist circles by bringing it to a large public.”10 He then spent almost twenty-eight years of his career in Brussels, from the end of 1959 until 1987. With his new company, the Ballet du XXème siècle, and his dance school, Mudra, created later in 1970, he crafted a work based on classical dance with a twist of modernity, infused by spirituality and universalism. In the 1960s, many saw him as a revolutionary personality in the ballet field, as he presented male dancers at the center of the stage. He also created ballets with an erotic dimension that occasionally shocked the rather conservative audience.11 Seen by dance critics as an “iconoclast,”12 he was titled “one of the most influential and controversial European choreographers of the second half of the twentieth century.”13 How did norms of humanity—implying among other concepts altruism, dignity, and compassion—factor into Béjart’s art? How did his attempt to choreograph the Ninth Symphony build a discourse on an all-inclusive humanity? The notion of humanity is indeed “a malleable concept,”14 one that has multiple definitions and a dynamic history. It includes both positive values as well as ambiguities and limits, as Klose and Thulin observe.15 Humanity has been used historically as a “useful ideological instrument” that permitted the legitimation of violence and colonial expansion.16 It is a category simultaneously universal and yet highly exclusive, and in any case for the most part squarely centered in Western culture. Beyond the philosophical dimensions of humanity with which Béjart agreed, there were social and political dimensions that he wanted to foster. His understanding of humanity tended to tease out the emotional and sensitive dimensions of the word, and he considered the collec-

Choreographing Humanity in the 1960s

211

tive moment of performance as a time to express human unity and love—ideas that clearly echoed with the hippie movement at the time. The vision of humanity in Béjart’s Symphony No. 9 is linked to his deep desire to democratize ballet after World War II. He fascinated and polarized many observers at the time. Son of Gaston Berger, a French philosopher, Béjart himself was an intellectual with a complex creative personality.17 He published several books18 and was himself the subject of numerous publications, written by journalists, dance critics,19 and witnesses20 rather than academics.21 Recently, at least three new francophone books on this topic have been published.22 This recent coverage of his work is to a great extent linked to the tenth anniversary of his death in 2017; at the same time, few of these publications take a critical eye to the “social phenomenon” he was. We know that Béjart was very popular at that time in the francophone world, considered as a mirror of his generation. He managed to bring a wider public to the ballet, developing performances in public spaces, arenas, and stadiums. The 1960s were a booming period for dance, and many debates emerged on how to modernize ballet and open it to the masses. The work of Béjart on Symphony No. 9 thus raises questions of both artistry and politics, and this is what this chapter will address: after a brief contextualization of the 1960s, it reviews the genesis of Symphony No. 9 and its choreography. A focus lies on the performance at the 1968 Cultural Olympiad in Mexico, which became an arena for the social tensions of the time. This chapter is based on writings and interviews of Maurice Béjart but also archival records from the Olympic Games and the Cultural Olympiad of Mexico, press coverage, and secondary literature. From this analysis, Béjart appears as a strong supporter of anti-racism and universalism, with a vision of humanity based on spirituality and a plural heritage that was not exclusively centered in the West. While his impact in the intellectual discussions pertaining to issues of inequality at the time remained limited, his work did incur criticism regarding his presumed “populism.”

Solidarity and Cosmopolitism To grasp Béjart’s intention to enter into a dialogue with society at large and his commitment to being a humanist artist, it is essential to understand the global context in which he developed his work. First,

212

Stéphanie Gonçalves

Béjart was an adolescent during World War II, which affected him at an intimate level. He was twelve at the beginning and eighteen at the end, crucial years of identity construction. In this formative period of his life, he discovered dance and took his first ballet classes at the Marseille Opera.23 In his memoirs, he recalled the tough daily reality of the war: the fear for his family—his father was in the resistance— and himself, the bombings, the cold, and, more than anything else, the hunger and the perpetual search for food, which lasted for months after the end of the war.24 This individual and physical experience made him realize the difficulty of losing privilege and enabled him to develop a deep empathy for those who had less. The 1960s are usually seen by historians as a decade of diverse and deep social and political transformations.25 The Cold War, decolonization, and the Vietnam War constituted part of the global context in which Béjart constructed his career. In 1964, when Béjart created the Ninth Symphony, people the world over harbored lingering anxieties following the Cuban missile crisis. The political upheaval created by the new international social movements—anti-war, civil rights, Black Panther, anti-Apartheid, for instance—also impacted Béjart’s vision of the society and the performing arts. In France, these topics were very present because of the French Indochina War (1946–1954), which claimed more than five hundred thousand victims,26 as well as the independence war in and decolonization of Algeria (1954–1962), both of which severely polarized French society.27 The Cold War particularly influenced Béjart’s work because many restrictions for touring in the USSR hampered artistic cooperation and Soviet dancers were not free to work abroad.28 Béjart was determined to transcend the Cold War divides because he felt that the bipolar conflict slowed down or prevented the full expression of artistic talent internationally. To this end, he cultivated a personal relationship with the USSR (without being pro-communist29), always willing to communicate with the country to bring his ballet dancers there. He was a “broker” between borders, considering ballet as a powerful transnational tool without confining it to ideological considerations. Concretely, he developed successful links with the USSR through the Russian ballet school. First, he was educated by exiled Russian ballet masters in Paris, including Lubov Nikolayevna Yegorova in the Studio Wacker.30 Second, many of his ballet masters were Soviet trained, like Asaf Messerer,31 Azary Plissetsky,32 and Menia Martinez. The latter was a Cuban dancer trained at the Bolshoi who spent almost all of her career in Belgium.33

Choreographing Humanity in the 1960s

213

Béjart was also influenced by the Soviet political approach to ballet as a way to choreograph masses and to choreograph for the masses. For the Ninth Symphony, he specifically asked the Soviet poet Yevgeny Yevtouchenko to write a text for him, a request that was clearly very political at the time. The plan did not pan out: after months of indecision, texts of Friedrich Nietzsche were performed. Still, in this desire to reconnect the two blocks, Béjart tried to engage Cuban dancers for the performance but could not for “unclear political reasons.”34 He finally gave one of the major roles to the Cuban dancer Jorge Lefèvre, who had fled from Cuba to work with the choreographer Katherine Dunham in Chicago. Béjart felt concerned by wider social aspects like solidarity. He also witnessed social and financial inequalities touring in the Middle East, North and South America, and Asia. In his company, he strove for a nonhierarchical relationship between the dancers, much in contrast to other ballet companies where there were strict ranks for individuals. The cosmopolitism of the company was real and quite unique: thirteen nationalities were working together, something that was never a “problem,” even in terms of linguistic communication. According to Tania Bari, a former dancer of the company, there was a “singular solidarity” among the members.35 The artistic and political message of the Ninth Symphony as a ballet clearly echoes with the context. With the question of the representation of bodies on stage and aesthetics of solidarity, Béjart was seen as a choreographer inspired by his time. It is difficult to say whether Béjart was a politically engaged choreographer, as he never described himself as an activist. With a lot of speeches promoting solidarity, he appeared to be a left-wing political choreographer, yet without being linked to a political party. The French MRAP (Mouvement anti-raciste et pour l’Amitié entre les Peuples), an antiracist association created by resistance fighters and former deportees from World War II, called the Ninth Symphony a “Ballet of Fraternity” in February 1965. In this article, Béjart explained that the performance was a “social demonstration and a work on struggle” that he wanted to export to the world.36 Less than five months after the premiere—before touring in huge venues such as the Sport Palace in Lausanne with ten thousand spectators—more than sixtythree thousand spectators had already seen the Ninth Symphony.37 One year later, in June 1966, Béjart was officially honored with the Prize of Fraternity by the MRAP, the first time for a ballet director.38 The reception was also judged very positively by social Christians, as stated by Témoignage Chrétien in June 1966.39

214

Stéphanie Gonçalves

The Ninth Symphony and the Concept of Humanity How did the ballet Ninth Symphony concretely deal with the concept of humanity? According to the official narrative of the Béjart ballet company, the idea of the Ninth Symphony as a ballet was born in the beginning of the 1960s in La Havana, Cuba, where Béjart was spending time.40 Observing young black dancers dancing and inspired by the creative urge and the festive ambiance of Cuba, he wanted to craft a new ballet about “solidarity and universal love.”41 Back in Brussels, one of his friends proposed, “jokingly,”42 using the Ninth Symphony as a musical score for his new idea. Béjart, when interviewed before the premiere of the piece in a Belgian newspaper, did not follow this narrative.43 Later on, in his autobiography, he gave a more pragmatic explanation: it was a “commission,”44 probably from Maurice Huisman, director of the Royal Theatre in Brussels, which had ordered ballets from him in the past. Béjart was by no means a newcomer to the art of choreography, let alone the choreography of masterpieces of European music history. He had already choreographed Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring in 1959 and Ravel’s Boléro in 1961, leading to significant success. He was pursuing the zeitgeist of the music of the nineteenth-century Romantics. His desire to create ballet in the context of famous music was rooted in his urge to make ballet popular: it was a good opportunity to use a well-known piece of music that could appeal to a wider public. This intention was in line with Huisman’s goal, who was part of the popular educational movement in Belgium.45 By using a widely known musical piece—instead of the avant-garde music he had used before—he made sure that the conservative public came to the opera. At the same time, Béjart wanted to attract more people to his shows, the partition being part of the advertising campaign. For the publicity of the Ninth, he recounted that he posed in front of his turntable for the French popular magazine Paris Match with a portrayal of Beethoven on his T-shirt.46 In his 1979 memoir, Un instant dans la vie d’autrui, Béjart explains in great detail how he worked as a craftsman, drawing many drafts of the construction of the score, constantly reviewing the original partition, and finally proposing gestures to the dancers. The Ninth was not a “personal” ballet at all. I had given up showing my little universe, my anxieties, my dreams, or my delusions. I had the impression of taking part in a relay race: I suddenly found myself holding the torch that Beethoven was carrying. I listened to this music as I looked at the Aztec pyramids: in these cases, the “self” disappears! The

Choreographing Humanity in the 1960s

215

Ninth would be a rite, which I did not want to be pagan or secular, that I hoped to be religious: but religion is difficult to shake up nowadays. I hoped at least to arouse the least possible emotion. I took the hand of Beethoven and let myself be dragged. I read the words of the Ode to Joy and I took them for cash: “be united, human race . . . holy joy.” . . . Beethoven gave me everything. This is fantastic when you work on a score: the composer offers you his own work on a set!47

With the Ninth, as Ariane Dollfus put it,48 he appeared as a kind of demiurge, making a creative ballet from the inspiration of others and giving bodies, literally, to the music. Here, Béjart defined himself as a creator, in the religious sense of the term, giving birth to a new form of art and human. Burnet described him as a “sculptor modeling clay.”49 His idea was to develop a “total performance” beyond a simple ballet: Béjart wanted to mix dance, words, a chorus, and musicians, making the Ninth a “danced concert.”50 The scenery was quite simple and pared down, with a spiritual touch: on the floor of the round stage, geometrical figures were drawn with full and dotted white lines, an interlacing of squares and circles evoking a solar system.51 Situated at the back of the stage, the podiums for the choirs and the musicians projected a curtain of hundreds of bodies wearing fabrics of saffron gowns. The performance began with a prologue of vivid percussion by Fernand Schirren, a Belgian musician,52 and Mathilda Beauvoir, a Haitian dancer.53 Texts were taken from Birth of Tragedy (1872) by Nietzsche, recited by Guy Lesire.54 The dancing part took off after this introduction, and here Béjart exactly replicated his choreography on the four movements of the Ninth Symphony: first movement, allegro ma non troppo, second molto vivace, third adagio molto e cantabile, and last finale, the joyful movement finishing with a prestissimo. Béjart attributed a color to each movement, symbolizing emotions and natural elements. The first was brown and expressed the anguish and the earth; the second shone a vivid red expressing the awakening and awareness of life and fire; the third was white for love; and the last one was yellow for the solar joy of the finale. Simple if not simplistic in itself, this scheme had the merit of being understandable to a wide audience, a kind of crescendo from darkness toward the light. The costumes were also unpretentious: tights and shirtless for boys; tights, leotards with thin straps, and hairbands for girls, a kind of uniform in the classical ballet in spandex that permitted wide movements and the enhancement of the dancers’ bodies. The male dancers’ bare torsos—where running sweat could be seen—were quite modern at the time and reflected the desire of Béjart to refresh ballet.

216

Stéphanie Gonçalves

A brief movement analysis may highlight the specificities of the choreography.55 The choreography began on the floor, with the dancers lying in a fetal position on their sides. They then woke up with one arm and an open hand emerging—a recurring Béjartian gesture. Like a gentle, slow awakening, the dancers stretched back and forth in a sort of arabesques. The four parts succeeded in a rotation of group dances, duets, and solos that showcased dancers with various techniques. Choreographing for so many dancers was a challenge, but the geometric lines drawn on the ground facilitated the movement of such a big group. Béjart used traditional folkloric patterns as the farandole. The final round where all the dancers are moving in two concentric, contrarotating circles was inspired by folklore. In terms of technique, Béjart said he used the style of Martha Graham (1894– 1991), an American dancer and choreographer who was known for her expressionist technique based on the pelvis.56 He integrated Graham’s style into the first movement, where the dancers are on the floor.57 Despite this inspiration, the choreography remains, for a lot of dance critics, quite simple, a mix of classical movements (arabesques, portés, pirouettes) with a Béjartian touch: open hands, wiggling hips, and gymnastics movements, some very basic because not all the performers were professional dancers.58 Such technique, it should be added, permitted newcomers to easily learn the choreography. The piece remained largely classical, but the dancers were nearly all barefoot, and there were only a few moments featuring ballerinas on pointe. It is clear that Béjart wanted to go beyond entertainment; instead, he chose to make the moment a religious, spiritual experience of sharing: It is not a ballet in the usual sense of the word, as opposed to a score which is one of the pinnacles of music, but a profound human participation in a work belonging to the whole of humanity, which is found here. Not only played and sung, but danced, just as the Greek tragedies or primitive religious manifestations were. It is, in the deepest sense of the word, a “Manifestation.”59

He described the religious and spiritual dynamic he wanted to perform, tracing a long, abstract red line between Greek and Aztec performances and the twentieth century—between all of humanity through history. The final round was an example of this inspiration. With an emphasis on the “profound human participation,” the choreographer insisted on the unity and fraternity on stage that he wanted to create.

Choreographing Humanity in the 1960s

217

With this choreography, Béjart turned himself into a prophet of a philosophical universalism, perceiving all women and men on the same level. Gestures of solidarity were seen on stage, particularly in the second movement, where dancers struggled with their arms in force and raised their fists. This gesture was a kinesthetic representation of the antifascist left in the 1920s, created by the Roter Frontkämpferbund, the German League of Red Front Fighters. It was later popularized by the Popular Front in France in the 1930s.60 Here, Béjart used a famous pattern that was instantly perceived by the public as that of the left-wing struggle. It evoked an aesthetic of resistance, and Béjart explained later in his appearance on television that, for him, “Beethoven was very savage.”61 The final round, where all the dancers were reunited hand in hand to symbolize unity and fraternity, was also, for Béjart, a clear expression of solidarity. The question of the diversity of the bodies on stage and the representations of multiculturalism was extremely important to Béjart. One of his desires was to hire people of as many nationalities and, in his own words, “races”62 as possible for his Ninth—a term that resonated strongly with audiences in the 1960s.63 Béjart had one black great-grandmother on his father’s side and was intimately concerned with the representations of every man and woman on stage.64 He himself often referenced his “black blood”65 in explaining a precious link with Africa, and Senegal in particular, where he would develop his school, Mudra Afrique, in 1977.66 It is certain that the multiracial nature of my show is obvious from the outset. On the stage, there are dancers of twenty-three different nationalities: Japanese, Argentinians, Jamaicans, Russians, Americans, Spanish, Congolese, Haitians, Brazilians, to quote some randomly. . . . For a long time, I have been concerned about the problem of racism . . . . One day, listening to the Ninth Symphony, I had the impression that Beethoven’s themes responded to what I felt. But you can’t present a ballet by saying “all men are brothers” and only stage white people.67

To have a more inclusive, multicultural representation on stage, he then employed twenty-six black dancers, some of whom were students at the Université libre de Bruxelles while others came from elsewhere in Europe.68 Still, no testimonies could be found from these dancers to learn about their experience of being employed by Béjart. Of course, one may criticize it as an essentialism of colored bodies, where black and Asian dancers were “used” for a political purpose. But the question of employing African or Asian artists on stage was in fact not anecdotal, as very little diversity was present on stage in Europe in the 1960s, especially in the ballet world.69 The

218

Stéphanie Gonçalves

recruitment was arduous because in the ballet schools, too, there was very little diversity. In the United States, the modern dance companies of Katherine Dunham or Alvin Ailey were known for staging African American dancers, but in Europe this was rare.70 The presence of men and women hailing from four continents in the four movements that symbolized the natural elements and emotions was also explained by Béjart as the representation of “ethnic symbolism.” Today, such wording reflects a stereotypical way of thinking about humanity; contemporary interpretations avoid categorizing dancers by the color of their skin.71 In the 1960s, however, no traces of critical discourse on any of these aspects were found in the press.

The Limits of Choreography After Brussels and various European cities, Béjart presented his vision of an all-inclusive humanity in Mexico in October 1968. There, Béjart’s Ninth Symphony was part of the cultural Olympiad organized by the committee of the nineteenth Olympic Games. Mexico 1968 crystalized different episodes that resonated with social tensions at a global scale. First, South Africa was not permitted to participate in the Games because of the regime’s Apartheid policy. Second, a few days before the opening of the Olympics, hundreds of students in Mexico were murdered in what is now called the Tlatelolco massacre.72 This tragic episode seriously darkened the Olympics, an international meeting of sportsmen and women gathered around values of friendship and respect. In the newspaper Le Monde, Mexican author Carlos Fuentes even asked Béjart not to travel to the region.73 Mexico 1968 was also the stage of the manifestation of Black Power through the famous image of Tommie Smith and John Carlos with their black-gloved fists raised, protesting against segregation in the United States.74 Even though the official organization opened the Olympics with the motto “Todo es possible en la paz” (Everything is possible in peace), protests in the name of brotherhood and solidarity served as a powerful reminder of real inequality in many of the attending nation-states. On 8 October, Symphony No. 9, advertised as “a ballet for Peace,” inaugurated the new Sport Palace constructed especially for the Olympics, attended, among others, by Mexican president Diaz Ordaz.75 Thousands of spectators were present in the stadium.

Choreographing Humanity in the 1960s

219

Thanks to this, Béjart gained a large international aura. The official booklet described the performance as a “collective work,” pointing out that, “truly intended for the masses, the show of Béjart is a plea for universal communication and solidarity, for dialogue between its dancers and the public.”76 The message of the ballet about solidarity and fraternity gained even more momentum in the dramatic context described above. At the same time, the Ninth Symphony appeared as a symbol of peace and joy that was disconnected from the harsh reality. In more than one way, Béjart’s idealist approach was confronted by the sociopolitical events of 1968. Nonetheless, the performance still received a huge popular welcome thanks to the hope it developed. The cultural diplomatic dimension cannot be overlooked in the framework of the Olympics, as Béjart’s ballet served as a showcase for Belgium at such a major event.77 The Ninth was also a means to create publicity for other performances of the company, which stayed in town several weeks. It permitted the artist to internationally present the country as one of tolerance and diversity. People in major cities such as Venice, Montreal, Cuba, New York, Tokyo, and London later saw the Ninth on stage. In October 1971, a booklet published by the Belgian Ministry of Foreign Affairs described Béjart as “a man of his time,”78 embodying “the most eternal of personal sentiments and the present-day yearning for universal understanding.”79 Such comments reflected the Ninth’s huge international popular success. Still, a number of influential critics judged the performance unfavorably, and it is worthwhile to examine their comments closely in the context of Béjart’s vision of humanity: for Claude Baignères, from the French conservative Le Figaro, the Ninth was “an experience best forgotten.”80 Pierre Moulaert wrote in La Dernière Heure that he found it impossible to base a dance on Beethoven, and found the musical performance “unconvincing.”81 On the other side of the Atlantic, Clive Barnes, dance critic for the New York Times, was also harsh toward Béjart’s work and said the Ninth was “populist.”82 Barnes had already composed several negative articles on Béjart’s work, perceiving him more as a “show man”83 than an authentic artist. Barnes considered Béjart too close to the “people.” In the New York context, it is true that Béjart was probably closer to Broadway culture than to the intellectual and contemporary dance arena. For Barnes, “Béjart sees [choreography] as a pop medium for the transmission of pop ideas, moral homilies about peace, forbearance and

220

Stéphanie Gonçalves

revolution.” Even more, Barnes described the performances as “ludicrous, and their obvious messages, while sincere, are propagandistically well-worn.”84 These criticisms can be explained by the elitist conception of Barnes’s ballet vision, but also perhaps by Béjart’s nationality. Barnes preferred the style and work of Balanchine, who, although Georgian, shaped American ballet. To respond to Barnes’s critics, Béjart wrote an answer in the New York Times, explaining his inspirations and justifying his vision of dance. He underlined that his “teachers have consistently been humanity,” “the vast folklore of humanity,” and that he found his inspiration from such various spaces as Africa, Russia, Spain, and India. At the same time, he also particularly emphasized dance as an “act of love.”85 Still, Béjart himself was not always gentle toward his own work. Eleven years later, he recalled the frustrating experience in Mexico as a blurred and deep solitude, unable to find meaning in the outside world: The altitude bothers me. We are getting older; Mexico, Nada. We work. Yes, we do. The rest of the time, my room with [the books of] Ghandi, Ramakrishna, and the Maharishi. . . . What poor guy could have ever thought of choreographing Beethoven’s Ninth, what a poor choreography. . . . Alas . . . what a lot of blah blah blah blah blah . . . . Great works should be silent.86

Here, the choreographer revealed a confused personality, almost depressive, and a very critical attitude toward his own work: a deep bitterness that was also part of him. In Mexico, Béjart clearly recognized his limits as a citizen, an artist feeling helpless to resolve the problems of humanity at the time. He realized that he had no impact on the world situation, especially in the context of Mexico 1968, where the focus was, after all, on social inequalities. He described his anti-racist perspective as a “naive” approach, referring to his desire to stage as many artists of color as possible.87 In terms of choreography, he also took a quite severe approach, but with a touch of irony: “As soon as you exceed a certain number of performers on stage, you are no longer a director, you become a traffic agent!”88 These self-critical notes ultimately led him to omit the piece from the repertory of his company.89 The Ninth Symphony was not danced again until 2014, when his successor at the Béjart Ballet Lausanne, Gil Roman, decided to stage it again in cooperation with the Tokyo Ballet. The message of fraternity and solidarity remained, and still remain, at the heart of the ballet.

Choreographing Humanity in the 1960s

221

Conclusion Béjart reshaped Symphony No. 9 to express, enact, and embody political ideals and feelings of international solidarity in the 1960s. Anna Kisselgoff, dance critic of the New York Times, described it as part of Béjart’s “counterculture phase.”90 Similar to his Firebird and Romeo and Juliet, both strong anti-Vietnam War manifestoes created around the slogan “Make love not war,” Symphony No. 9 shows how he was swept up in the idealism of the 1960s.91 Béjart’s vision of humanity was at once sensitive, vital, spiritual, and religious, a vision of dancing, singing, and loving that resonated with the social questions of the 1960s and the response of hippie culture at the time.92 The round stage was, for him, a sacred space to dance and celebrate humanity in a plural, embracing way. It was also a universalist and pacifist humanity that could find unity and solidarity in performances, hand in hand. But at the same time, Symphony No. 9 was not subversive and stuck to the codes of ballet, except for the multicultural representation of bodies on stage. The performance took the risk of being populist and was severely criticized by several US American dance critics: Béjart was later dubbed “the master of banality” by the Wall Street Journal’s dance critic.93 Today, observers may perhaps consider the piece old-fashioned and simplistic.94 As we have seen, Béjart himself was very critical of his past works.95 Critiques can also be raised regarding the Western imperialist, paternalist, and colonial approach, highlighting the fact that the concept of humanity also has exclusionary goals. In 1964 and later, the Ninth Symphony was mostly received as a modern and universalist performance, as evidenced by critics and the public, especially in Europe. The day after the premiere in Brussels, it was presented to the representatives of the European Community for a gala evening to underscore the European/Western dimension of the Ninth Symphony.96

Stéphanie Gonçalves is a cultural historian. She works at the House of European History, Brussels. In 2015, she defended her PhD on the cultural diplomacy of ballet during the Cold War, “Danser pendant la guerre froide, 1945–1968” (Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2018). She did postdoctoral work at the Academia Belgica (Rome), University Rennes 2, and the Belgian National Fund for Scientific Research, Université libre de Bruxelles. She is a specialist on the link between

222

Stéphanie Gonçalves

dance and politics in the twentieth century, particularly the transnational circulation of (especially Soviet) dancers.

Notes 1. The number of nationalities varied in the sources from thirteen to twenty-three. See Goffaux, “Fin octobre, Béjart jettera sur le tapis sa plus grosse mise ‘L’Ode à la joie,’” La Tribune de Genève, 16 October 1964; Parent, “300 danseurs de 13 nations pour Béjart,” France-Soir, 24 October 1964, in BNF, Neuvième symphonie, Maurice Béjart, press coverage, 1964–1969, 4SW2471 (hereinafter “BNF 4SW2471”). 2. The day after, the second show was for the Gala de la Maison de l’Europe et des Communautés européennes; see “Le Roi et la Reine.” 3. Claude Baignères, “Béjart trahit . . . et triomphe,” Le Figaro, 28 October 1964, in BNF 4SW2471. 4. Le Soir, 4 November 1964, 5. 5. “Le Roi et la Reine.” On the history of the Ninth and its recent international initiatives, see Berger, La “Neuvième” de Beethoven. 6. Publicity of the Theatre Royal de La Monnaie: “Tous les hommes sont frères.” This motto echoes the title of Mahatma Gandhi’s book published in 1958. 7. De la Faye, “Danse avec les stars.” 8. Christout, Béjart, 21–25. 9. Corvin, Festivals, 96. 10. Robert, Maurice Béjart, 62; author’s translation. 11. Livio, Béjart, 101. 12. Kisselgoff, “Maurice Béjart.” 13. Cruickshank, “Obituaries Maurice Béjart.” 14. Klose and Thulin, “Introduction,” 13. 15. Klose and Thulin, “Introduction,” 17. 16. Klose and Thulin, “Introduction,” 19–20. 17. Christout, Béjart, 11. He wrote his first article on dance in a philosophy review his father was publishing in 1946; see Béjart, “La Danse,” 205–210. 18. Notably: Béjart, L’autre chant de la danse; Béjart and Berger, La mort subite; Béjart, Le ballet des mots; Béjart, La vie de qui. 19. Livio, Béjart. 20. Stengele, Béjart et la Danse; Mathis, Une visite chez Béjart; Baert, “Une culture populaire,” 27–31; and many others. 21. Semsary and Wekstein, “Le Boléro de Ravel,” 31–48; Bourdié, “Moderniser”; Palazzolo, “Rintracciando.” Note that most recently, at least three new francophone books have been published: Dollfus, Béjart; Pastori, Maurice Béjart; and Genevois, Mudra. 22. Dollfus, Béjart; Pastori, Maurice Béjart; Genevois, Mudra. 23. Livio, Béjart, 25–26. 24. Béjart, La vie de qui, 205–206. 25. Rémond, Introduction, 205. 26. Tucker, Vietnam, 78. For a French history of the Indochina War, see Cadeau, La guerre. 27. See, for example, Branche, “Dossier.” 28. The highly publicized defection of Rudolf Nureyev took place in Paris in 1961. See Caute, The Dancer Defects.

Choreographing Humanity in the 1960s

223

29. His father was part of the Fulbright Commission for Franco-American relations; see Dollfus, Béjart, 19, 261. 30. Pastori, Maurice Béjart, 13. 31. “Un chorégraphe du Bolchoï.” 32. Brother of Maya Plissetskaya, Azary Plissetsky was a ballet master in the company for more than twenty-five years. Interview with the author, Lausanne, Switzerland, 12 November 2018. 33. See the online videos “Interview with Menia Martinez” and “Rencontre avec Menia Martinez.” See also Schwall, “A Spectacular Embrace.” 34. Goffaux, “Fin octobre.” 35. Denoël, Tania Bari, 178. 36. Kagan, “Maurice Béjart,” 1, 11. 37. Kagan, “Maurice Béjart,” 1, 11. 38. “Le Prix de la Fraternité à Maurice Béjart,” La Croix, 27 May 1966, in BNF 4SW2471. 39. “Que tous les hommes soient frères,” Témoignage Chrétien, 2 June 1966, in BNF 4SW2471. 40. Grecuccio, “La IXème Symphonie.” 41. Grecuccio, “La IXème Symphonie.” 42. Grecuccio, “La IXème Symphonie.” 43. “When? Where? I don’t know. You think about it, you think about it and then, one day, you decide. The opportunity presents itself, you realize.” Albert Burnet, “Un grand événement artistique au Cirque royal?” Le Soir, 20 September 1964, in BNF 4SW2471. 44. “Orders help in every way. If the result is bad, you can always say: ‘it was an order.’ An order can also galvanise. The Rite of Spring was a commission. So was the Ninth Symphony, but I wouldn’t have done it if I hadn’t gone to Cuba, if I hadn’t seen the Cuban dancers.” Béjart, La vie de qui. 45. Burnet, “Maurice Huisman,” 246–247. His first theater company was “Les Comédiens routiers,” which toured in Belgium from 1934 on. 46. Béjart, Un instant dans, 204. 47. Béjart, Un instant dans, 204 [author’s translation]. 48. Dollfus, Béjart, Le Démiurge. 49. Burnet, “Un grand événement.” 50. Nicole Zand, “La IXème Symphonie de Beethoven est un concert dansé,” Le Monde, 24 October 1964, in BNF 4SW2471. 51. The rosace of Lausanne Cathedral is quite similar to the drawing. See Aguirre, Dancing Beethoven. 52. Later a professor at the Mudra School, he was a creative pedagogue. See Schirren, Le rythme primordial. 53. As a Haitian dancer and “voodoo priestess,” her practices have to be considered in terms of politics, social and cultural representations, “authenticity,” and entertainment; see Béchacq, “Histoire(s) et Actualité.” 54. Marcel Lobet, “La Neuvième Symphonie dansée,” Le Soir, 29 October 1964, in BNF 4SW2471. 55. Many extracts of performances exist on the internet: see “La 9ème symphonie de Beethoven et Béjart à Bercy” or “La IXème Symphonie de Maurice Béjart.” 56. Bannerman, “Martha Graham’s House,” 30–45. 57. “New Dance Make Brussels Debut: King Sees Bejart Company in ‘Hymn to Joy’ Ballet,” New York Times, 28 October 1964, 50. 58. For instance, see Olivier Merlin, “La IXème Symphonie de Beethoven sur une chorégraphie de Maurice Béjart,” Le Monde, 29 October 1964, in BNF 4SW2471.

224

Stéphanie Gonçalves

59. “Manifestation” means an expression of a sacred, religious event [author’s translation]. 60. Vergnon, “Le ‘poing levé.’” 61. De la Faye, “Danse avec les stars.” 62. Burnet, “Un grand évènement.” 63. The Béjart Ballet Lausanne company does not use it anymore; the word “ethnies” is used. See Grecuccio, “La IXème Symphonie.” 64. Dollfus, Maurice Béjart, 17. 65. Dollfus, Maurice Béjart, 17–18. 66. To see the ambiguous dynamic of Mudra Afrique, notably in terms of colonial/ postcolonial dimensions, as well as tensions with the local dancers, see Foster, “Muscle/Memories,” 125–126 and Bourdié, “Moderniser.” 67. Zand, “La IXème Symphonie” [author’s translation]. 68. Béjart, Un instant dans, 205. 69. Fisher, “Ballet and Whiteness,” chapter 25. The question is still relevant today. 70. DeFrantz, “Bodies of Dance.” 71. Zand, “La IXème Symphonie.” 72. See the personal narrative of a British journalist of The Guardian: Rodda, “Prensa, Prensa,” 11–22. 73. Fuentes, “Un tank est un tank.” 74. Roemer, “Gant noir,” 116–120; Blackman, “African Americans,” 1–25. 75. Olympic Studies Center, Lausanne, “Mexico 68,” Comité Organisateur des Jeux de la XIX Olympiade, 1969, 295. 76. Olympic Studies Center, “Mexico 68,” 295. 77. “La Belgique à Mexico,” Le Soir, 29 September 1968, 7. 78. Baran de Wespin, “Twentieth Century Ballet Company,” 8. 79. Baran de Wespin, “Twentieth Century Ballet Company,” 5. 80. Claude Baignères, “Béjart trahit . . . et triomphe,” Le Figaro, 28 October 1964, in BNF 4SW2471. 81. Pierre Moulaert, “La Neuvième Symphonie,” La Dernière Heure, 29 October 1964, in BNF 4SW2471. 82. Barnes, “Dance View.” 83. Barnes, “Dance.” 84. Barnes, “Dance.” 85. Béjart, “Dance Mailbag.” 86. Béjart, Un instant dans, 124; author’s translation. 87. Béjart, Un instant dans, 205. 88. Béjart, La vie de qui, 199. 89. “Interview with Maurice Béjart.” 90. Kisselgoff, “Maurice Béjart.” 91. Kisselgoff, “Maurice Béjart.” 92. Béjart was attracted by many religions. He was a Buddhist and later converted to Sufism. 93. Tuttle, “Maurice Béjart.” 94. Bertrand, “La IX Symphonie.” 95. Béjart, Un instant dans, 205. 96. The last part, the Ode to Joy, became the official anthem of the European Union in 1985—another looming source of contention once one considers the history of the Ninth Symphony and its diverse political uses.

Choreographing Humanity in the 1960s

225

Bibliography Aguirre, Arantxe. Dancing Beethoven. Documentary film, Latido Films, 2016, 79 min. Bannerman, Henrietta. “Martha Graham’s House of the Pelvic Truth: The Figuration of Sexual Identities and Female Empowerment.” Dance Research Journal 42, no. 1 (2010): 30–45. Baert, Xavier. “Une culture populaire: les images de Béjart.” Repères, cahier de danse 2, no. 2 (2008): 27–31. Baran de Wespin, Alain. “The Twentieth Century Ballet Company: Creation and Achievement.” Memo from Belgium, Belgian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, External Trade and Cooperation in Development 141 (October 1971). Barnes, Clive. “Dance.” New York Times, 5 December 1971: 5. ———. “Dance View.” New York Times, 4 January 1976: 6. Béchacq, Dimitri. “Histoire(s) et Actualité Du Vodou à Paris. Hiérarchies Sociales et Relations de Pouvoir Dans Un Culte Haïtien Transnational.” Studies in Religion/Sciences Religieuses 41, no. 2 (June 2012): 257–279. Béjart, Maurice. “La Danse et sa technique.” Les Etudes philosophiques 3−4 (July–December 1946): 205–210. ———. “Dance Mailbag.” New York Times, 21 February 1971: 29. ———. L’autre chant de la danse, ce que la nuit me dit. Paris: Flammarion, 1974. ———. Un instant dans la vie d’autrui. Paris: Flammarion, 1979. ———. Le ballet des mots. Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1994. ———. La vie de qui? Mémoires 2. Paris: Flammarion, 1996. Béjart, Maurice, and Gaston Berger. La mort subite. Paris: Séguier, 1991. Berger, Christian. La “Neuvième” de Beethoven, une symphonie universelle. Documentary film, Arte TV, 2019, 91 min. Bertrand, Amélie. “La IX Symphonie de Maurice Béjart—Béjart Ballet Lausanne et Tokyo Ballet.” Danses avec la plume, 16 January 2017. Retrieved 9 November 2021 from https://www.dansesaveclaplume .com/en-scene/389976-la-ix-symphonie-de-mauric-bejart-bejart-balletlausanne-et-tokyo-ballet/. Blackman, Dexter. “African Americans, Pan-Africanism, and the AntiApartheid Campaign to Expel South Africa from the 1968 Olympics.” Journal of Pan African Studies 5, no. 3 (2012): 1–25. Bourdié, Annie. “‘Moderniser’ la danse en Afrique. Les enjeux politiques du centre Mudra à Dakar.” Recherches en danse 4 (2015). Branche, Raphaëlle. “Dossier: La guerre d‘Algérie.” Vingtième Siècle. Revue d’histoire 83, no. 3 (2004). Buch, Esteban. Beethoven’s Ninth: A Political History. Chicago: University of Chicago, 2003. Burnet, Albert. “Maurice Huisman.” Nouvelle biographie nationale de Belgique 6 (2001): 246–247.

226

Stéphanie Gonçalves

Cadeau, Ivan. La guerre d’Indochine. De l’Indochine française aux adieux à Saigon, 1940–1956. Paris: Tallandier, 2015. Caute, David. The Dancer Defects: The Struggle for Cultural Supremacy during the Cold War. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. Christout, Marie-Françoise. Béjart. Paris: La Recherche en danse, 1987. Corvin, Michel. Festivals de l’art d’avant-garde, 1956–1960. Paris: Somogy, 2004. Cruickshank, Judith. “Obituaries Maurice Béjart.” The Independent, 24 November 2007. DeFrantz, Thomas F. “Bodies of Dance: The Repertory of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater.” Theatre Journal 57, no. 4 (December 2005): 659–678. De la Faye, Agnès. “Danse avec les stars du ballet de Maurice Béjart.” Ina Sport, 6 February 1969. Retrieved 9 November 2021 from https://www .youtube.com/watch?v=78YeHndd1mU. Denoël, Thierry. Tania Bari, Etoiles du ballet du XXème siècle. Brussels: Le Cri, 1998. Dollfus, Ariane. Béjart, Le Démiurge. Paris: Arthaud, 2017. Fisher, Jennifer. “Ballet and Whiteness. Will Ballet Forever Be the Kingdom of Pale?” In The Oxford Handbook of Dance and Ethnicity, edited by Anthony Shay and Barbara Sellers-Young, chapter 25. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016. Foster, Susan L. “Muscle/Memories: How Germaine Acogny and Diane McIntyre Put Their Feet Down.” In Rhythms of the Afro-Atlantic World, Rituals and Remembrances, edited by Mamadou Diouf and Ifeoma Kiddoe Nwankwo, 121–135. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2010. Fuentes, Carlos. “Un tank est un tank à Chicago à Prague ou à Mexico déclare le romancier Carlos Fuentes.” Le Monde, 10 Octobre 1968. Genevois, Dominique. Mudra, 103 rue Bara, L’école de Maurice Béjart, 1970–1988. Brussels: Contredanse, 2016. Grecuccio, Sophie. “La IXème Symphonie, un peu d’histoire.” Béjart Ballet Lausanne, 29 January 2020. Retrieved 9 November 2021 from https:// www.bejart.ch/la-ixe-symphonie-un-peu-dhistoire/. “Interview with M. Béjart.” Les Saisons de la Danse 123 (10 April 1980): 36. “Interview with Menia Martinez.” Les Amis de Cuba asbl, May 2013. Retrieved 8 November 2021 from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v =J6ry-3ONHgU&list=LL1JC1Q5Y1S0eZI574DvLl3Q&index=906. Kagan, Marguerite. “Maurice Béjart nous parle de son concert dansé.” Droit et liberté contre le racisme et l’antisémitisme, pour la paix (15 January–15 February 1965). Kisselgoff, Anna. “Maurice Béjart, 80, Ballet Iconoclast, Dies.” New York Times, 23 November 2007. Klose, Fabian, and Mirjam Thulin, eds. Humanity: A History of European Concepts in Practice from the Sixteenth Century to the Present. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2016.

Choreographing Humanity in the 1960s

227

“La 9ème symphonie de Beethoven et Béjart à Bercy.” French TV journal A2, 22 June 1999. Retrieved 9 November 2021 from https://fresques.ina.fr/ en-scenes/fiche-media/Scenes00707/la-9e-symphonie-de-beethoven-etbejart-a-bercy.html. “La IXème Symphonie de Maurice Béjart.” C’est du Belge, 20 December 2016. Retrieved 9 November 2021 from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t0s9k0U7ur4https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=t0s9k0U7ur4. “Le Roi et la Reine assistent au Gala des Jeunesses musicales.” Le Soir, 28 October 1964: 3. Livio, Antoine. Béjart. Lausanne: L’âge d’Homme, 1970. Mathis, Thierry. Une visite chez Béjart. Nanterre: Palmer, 1972. Palazzolo, Claudia. “Rintracciando il jerk di Maurice Béjart. Una figura della danza popolare, una figura della generazione 1968.” Recherches en danse 5 (2016). Pastori, Jean Pierre. Maurice Béjart, L’univers d’un chorégraphe. Lausanne: Presses polytechniques et universitaires romandes, 2017. Rémond, René. Introduction à l’histoire de notre temps, volume 3 le XXèm siècle, de 1914 à nos jours. Paris: Le Seuil, 1989. “Rencontre avec Menia Martinez.” BX1, February 2014. Retrieved 8 November 2021 from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQRZz0UwOAQ. Robert, Michel. Maurice Béjart, une vie. Brussels: Luc Pire, 2008. Rodda, John. “Prensa, Prensa, a Journalist’s Reflections on Mexico 68.” Bulletin of Latin America Research 19 (March 2010): 11−22. Roemer, Charel. “Gant noir.” In Mai 68 raconté par les objets, edited by Amandine Lauro, Valérie Piette, Caroline Sägesser, and Cécile Vanderpelen-Diagre, 116–120. Mons: Couleur livres, 2018. Schirren, Fernand. Le rythme primordial et souverain. Brussels: Contredanse, 2012. Schwall, Elizabeth. “A Spectacular Embrace: Dance Dialogues between Cuba and the Soviet Union, 1959–1973.” Dance Chronicle 41, no. 3 (2018). Semsary, Jessica and Nils Wekstein. “Le Boléro de Ravel. Adaptations, réinterprétations et transformations, 1928–2008.” Bulletin de l’Institut Pierre Renouvin 2, no. 40 (2014): 31–48. Stengele, Roger. Béjart et la Danse. Brussels: J. Verbeeck, 1967. “Tous les hommes sont frères.” Le Soir, 23 October 1964: 5. Tucker, Spencer C. Vietnam. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1999. Tuttle, Alexandra. “Maurice Béjart, The Master of Banality.” Wall Street Journal, 15 March 1991. “Un chorégraphe du Bolchoï, professeur de danse au TRM.” Le Soir, 10 September 1960: 2. Vergnon, Gilles. “Le ‘poing levé,’ du rite soldatique au rite de masse. Jalons pour l’histoire d’un rite politique.” Le Mouvement Social 3, no. 212 (2005): 77–91.

Chapter 9

MUSICAL HUMANISM Yehudi Menuhin and UNESCO’s International Music Council, 1969–1975 Anaïs Fléchet

You and I are blessed to be consumed by music. It compels us to act, to give back to all humanity the sources of this common, creative, inspiring power that is possessed of eternal justice. Faith and discipline bind us musicians together. We must spread this harmony throughout the world. Humanity needs our faith, our inspiration, our devotion, and our loyalty, not toward countries but to humankind and all its myriad cultures.1 —Yehudi Menuhin at the IMC General Assembly, Lausanne (September 1973)

With his faith in a musical humanism that transcended borders, his diplomatic action at UNESCO, his fascination for India, and the success of the West Meets East album he recorded with the sitarist Ravi Shankar, world-class violinist Yehudi Menuhin may be considered the perfect example of a liberal utopian who saw music as a vehicle for universal harmony.2 Yet while there was clearly an element of idealism in his discourse, his commitment to music and peace was founded on a confrontation with the harshness of the world, experienced by many during World War II, and an awareness of the strategic stakes of the Cold War as well as the connection between a sense of duty and personal ambition. At the end of the 1950s, it was these convictions that first led Menuhin to the International Music Council (IMC), a nongovernmental organization affiliated with UNESCO.3 He became president of the IMC in 1969, and at the end of his last term in 1975, at a time Notes for this section begin on page 245.

Musical Humanism

229

of heightened tension between both Israel and the Arab states and Israel and UNESCO, he gave a speech at the General Assembly in Toronto in which he maintained: We have a particular responsibility as a non-governmental organization associated with UNESCO; for our purpose is to resist the divisive effects of competing nationalisms and to encourage the harvest of mutually enriching and respecting cultures. . . . Never forget we are here not as national delegates representing political states but as musicians representing humanity’s cultures.4

This chapter seeks to examine the key role of humanity, as a construct inherited from the Enlightenment and Romanticism, in Menuhin’s thought and action during the Cold War—beyond his performances as an artist. An examination of Menuhin’s private archives, which are conserved at the Royal Academy of Music in London in the IMC5 and UNESCO collections, as well as the US State Department archives and the Russian State Archives of Literature and Arts (RGALI)6 reveals the full extent of the musician’s activities within UNESCO. It also highlights both his international networks and his numerous reflections on the diplomatic uses of music, which are scattered throughout his lecture notes, correspondence, and media comments. At the helm of the IMC, Menuhin planned to invent a new form of musical, nongovernmental, artist-led diplomacy to serve an international cause and a humanist ideal—a cause now taken up by the conductor Daniel Barenboim and the cellist Yo-Yo Ma.7 In particular, this chapter asks questions about the shared conceptions of music and music practices to examine the vision of humanity that formed the basis of Menuhin’s commitment. Menuhin was neither a philosopher nor a theorist. His vision of humanity was closely linked to his musical practice and to a romantic conception of art. The ability to create and to be moved was, in his eyes, the common ground of humankind. But the constant references to “humanity” in Menuhin’s public speeches and private documents (which he never defines in a precise manner) also had a defensive function. His appeal to humanity was a way to fight fascism during World War II and communism during the Cold War, or to campaign for peace in the Middle East. But it was also a way to respond to the challenges of decolonization and cultural globalization. For if art was the common language of humankind, cultural diversity was essential to the preservation of humanity according to Menuhin, who took up an essentialist conception of culture. Humanity was at the same time a sum of different cultures (Western and non-Western seen as closed entities) and the link between them (the search for

230

Anaïs Fléchet

dialogue, shared aesthetic emotion). At a political and diplomatic level, implications were multiple. Humanity could be a promise of dialogue, a discursive tool for peace—but it was also a way of responding to the demands of the Third World while preserving Western norms. Two episodes stand out in terms of helping to answer these questions: first, Menuhin’s support for Soviet dissidents at the IMC Congress in Moscow in 1971; and second, the crisis ignited by UNESCO’s condemnation of Israel in 1974. To understand how music and diplomacy came to be bound together for Menuhin, we must take a look back at his career as a virtuoso and the matrix that was World War II.

Music on a Mission Long considered one of the greatest classical violinists of his time, Menuhin was born in 1916 in New York to Jewish parents of Russian origin. He spent the first years of his life in San Francisco, where he began learning the violin with Louis Persinger. A child prodigy, he continued his music studies in Europe, first in Paris with the Romanian composer and virtuoso Georges Enesco and then in Basel with Adolf Busch.8 In February 1927, he had his first success before a Parisian audience performing Lalo’s Symphonie espagnole with the Concerts Lamoureux Orchestra at the Salle Gaveau. In November of that year, he played Beethoven’s Violin Concerto at Carnegie Hall, conducted by Fritz Busch. The following year he recorded his first album and then in 1929 made his debut in Berlin under the baton of Bruno Walter. Audiences everywhere rushed to see him, and the critics were in rhapsodies over his talent. His reputation became firmly established in the 1930s when he and his family moved to Ville-d’Avray near Paris, and he toured and recorded in Europe and the United States as well as in Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa. At the age of twenty, Menuhin was already a star, commanding higher fees than Gary Cooper, the highest-paid actor in Hollywood at the time.9 His private life was constantly exposed in the media—from the games he played as a child to his marriage to Australian Nola Nicholas.10 When World War II broke out, Menuhin toured South America and lived in Australia for a while before moving back to the United States. Like other musicians with family responsibilities, he was not drafted, but he nevertheless played an active role in the war effort.

Musical Humanism

231

In 1941, he began touring with the United Service Organizations, performing tirelessly for the soldiers, whether they were stationed at the rear or fighting on the front line. His motivations were complex, ranging from patriotic zeal and civic responsibility to a sense of guilt for not having been called up despite his youth and excellent health.11 In his autobiography, Unfinished Journey, Menuhin recalls his war experience: Between 1942 and 1945, I gave hundreds of recitals for Allied troops and relief organizations, first in the Americas, later in the Pacific theatre, ultimately in Europe. . . . I had never played in cafés, cabarets or brothels, nor had I been obliged to woo my listeners to listen. Now I had to please men who had never attended a concert, who were not bred to its conventions, whose patience could not be relied upon, far less their informed appreciation. . . . Thus my war cracked open many inhibitions and helped me to communicate with others, and thus my exclusive microcosm of music, violins and performance discovered its social dimension.12

The diversity of these new stages and audiences came as a shock to him. The war had disrupted the ceremonial element of the concert. At the same time, it enabled him to meet young Americans of his own age, which he had never been able to do as a child prodigy, and led him to reevaluate his musical practice, which he now associated with a “social dimension.” By 1944, Menuhin continued to give concerts in liberated Europe. He recorded Béla Bartók’s Violin Concerto in the BBC studios in London, played for the Allied troops in Antwerp and Paris, and performed in Germany for the survivors of the Bergen-Belsen camp along with the British composer Benjamin Britten. In November of that year, he performed in Moscow, where he met his alter ego, the violinist David Oistrakh, marking the beginning of a long musical friendship. In 1946, he returned to Berlin at the invitation of the United States Office of Military Government. Advocating reconciliation13 and driven by the desire to play under the man he considered to be the greatest conductor of his time, he defended Wilhelm Furtwängler during his denazification trial. When Furtwängler was exonerated, the two men gave a series of concerts in the summer of 1947 in Lucerne, Salzburg, and Berlin, provoking intense opposition from local Jewish communities and strong reactions from the international community. In January 1949, two of Menuhin’s concerts were boycotted in Rome. Nevertheless, despite numerous death threats, he embarked on his first tour of Israel in April 1950.14

232

Anaïs Fléchet

The postwar period also saw some major changes in the musician’s personal life. Menuhin divorced his first wife to marry English dancer Diana Gould, who opened the doors to British high society and became his lifelong agent. The couple lived between England and Switzerland, where Menuhin founded the Gstaad Festival in 1957 and gained Swiss citizenship in 1970. During these years, he was introduced to conducting, gave master classes at the Conservatoire Américain de Fontainebleau at the invitation of Nadia Boulanger, was appointed head of the Bath Festival, and founded a music school in a small town in Surrey, south of London. As a sought-after soloist and the director of prestigious musical institutions, Menuhin was at the peak of his career in the early 1960s. He was also a celebrity aware of the diplomatic issues of his day and maintained regular contact with the US State Department, where he had some close friends, including Robert D. Murphy, undersecretary of state for political affairs to President Eisenhower. Menuhin put his art at the service of the cultural propaganda machine in the United States, where musical diplomacy was undergoing rapid development in the context of the Cold War. Although he was not one of the thousands of musicians sent on tour as part of the official Cultural Presentations Program, introduced in 1954 to increase the country’s prestige abroad,15 his private concerts often served Washington’s interests. From 1956 to 1958, he performed in Budapest, Leipzig, Dresden, Warsaw, and Bucharest with the unofficial support of the US State Department. As Murphy wrote to him in August 1956 on the subject of a tour of the GDR: I believe that such a trip has considerable merit. I think that, should you accept the Leipzig and Dresden invitations, it should be made very clear that your trip does not have official sponsorship—which would, of course, be tantamount to some degree of recognition of the jurisdiction of a government, which we do not recognize. . . . Our policy is one of friendship toward the people of East Germany (as distinguished from our attitude toward the puppet regime imposed on them by the Soviet Union). Toward this end we desire to assist and stimulate the East Germans [to] maintain their spirit of resistance against this alien Communist regime by fostering their sense of identification with the West.16

This vision was shared at the time by several “Cultural Cold Warriors,” including Shepard Stone, head of the Ford Foundation’s International Affairs program.17 In return, Menuhin used the US State Department to further his career. On several occasions, he asked Murphy to put him on

Musical Humanism

233

the program with the leading American orchestras dispatched to Europe.18 Menuhin also requested the services of certain personnel, which caused some irritation among Washington officials, as revealed by the following extract from an internal memorandum of 1956: “It looks as if Yehudi intends to use the Department not only as a publicity agency but also as a translation service.”19 These actions did not, however, affect his good relations with those in charge of American diplomacy, whose only real concern was that he was often seen as “a European Jew” rather than as a citizen of the United States. They urged him to appear “as an American as much as a musician.”20 At the same time, Menuhin collaborated with UNESCO as part of its East-West Major Project, which was launched in 1957 at the request of Asian Member States to foster a mutual appreciation of Eastern and Western cultural values.21 The violinist had been a great admirer of Indian classical music since his first tour of the peninsula in 1952 and was also a devotee of yoga, which he had learned from yoga master B.K.S. Iyengar—a linchpin of his instrumental practice from 1953 onward.22 On his return to London, he became head of the Asian Music Circle (AMC), an association created at the end of the war to promote Asian music and dance in Great Britain. It was his connection with India that led to his first collaboration with UNESCO. In response to the East-West Major Project’s directives, UNESCO established a partnership with the AMC in April 1957.23 Menuhin contributed to a number of discussions on the subject at UNESCO, where he participated in defining music as a universal langage of and for humanity—a notion then widely shared in the organization’s inner circles. I feel that music offers almost the best means and road to the understanding of other people, precisely because one is not side-tracked by frequently misleading words or symbols which have already acquired so many meanings. I have seen, for instance, the American audiences go mad with the rhythm of Indian drummers—and that has done more to establish contact among those people who experience the performance than all the words that might be said or the books distributed which people might or might not read.24

Menuhin was invited to perform these ideas on stage at the concert organized for United Nations Day at the Salle Pleyel on 24 October 1958.25 At the gala evening, which was broadcast simultaneously from New York, Paris, and Geneva, a performance by Ravi Shankar was followed by Menuhin and David Oistrakh playing Johann Sebas-

234

Anaïs Fléchet

tian Bach’s Concerto for Two Violins in D minor in a double symbol of rapprochement between the two blocs and openness toward Asia. The performance perfectly illustrated the reorientation of The International Music Council’s activities at the end of the 1950s. Founded in 1949 to implement UNESCO’s music program, the IMC’s mission was to promote an ideal of peace and universal harmony, regardless of cultural boundaries and political rivalries between nations, and to work toward the international structuring of the music sector. However, this facade of apoliticism masked a clear ideological alignment with the United States during the early Cold War. The IMC’s financial records, choice of permanent staff, voluminous correspondence with the US State Department, and close links with the Congress for Cultural Freedom—a private organization that was funded on the quiet by the CIA to combat “Marxist infiltration” in European cultural circles—all indicate that the organization was anything but apolitical.26 The United States’ influence diminished at the end of the 1950s with the USSR’s entry first into UNESCO (1954) and then into the IMC (1960) and the integration of Asian and African republics following decolonization. These changes also led to the affirmation of a new multicultural paradigm within the IMC. By the end of the 1960s, it had grown from just a small Western club with only five member countries (Netherlands, Australia, Denmark, the US, and Italy) into a truly international organization represented in more than fifty countries, including Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Ghana, Ethiopia, Tunisia, Egypt, Israel, Lebanon, Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, Japan, South Korea, Brazil, and Venezuela. Its activities diversified, combining conferences, concerts, radio broadcasts, and commissions for works and publications, and it opened up to non-Western music with the release of two UNESCO record collections entitled A Musical Anthology of the Orient (1961) and An Anthology of African Music (1966) under the Bärenreiter Musicaphon label. It was in this context of expansion that Menuhin joined the “IMC family.”27 Elected as an individual member at the 9th General Assembly in 1962, he regularly participated in the organization’s activities. In 1966, he took part in a roundtable discussion on musical relations between East and West with Shankar and the composer Pierre Schaeffer on the occasion of UNESCO’s twentieth anniversary. In addition, as part of the East-West Major Project, in 1966, he made a documentary film called A Bridge in Music, produced by UNESCO in collaboration with the musicians of the AMC, featuring himself

Musical Humanism

235

as the main protagonist.28 Adopting a pedagogical tone and armed with his violin, he began by talking about the differences between “Eastern” and “Western” music and explained the quarter tones, the modal system, and the importance of ornamentation in Indian music. He then discussed the influence of Eastern music in Europe in the Middle Ages and warned of the dangers that the cultural industries posed to traditional unwritten music. These considerations were at the core of the “Music Education in the Countries of the Orient” conference, which was jointly organized in Tehran in September 1967 by the IMC and the AMC with support from UNESCO and Iran—a strategic supporter of the Western bloc in the region at the time. Delegates from twenty-nine countries took part, and Menuhin’s presence “greatly enhanced the meeting’s prestige,” according to UNESCO officials.29 Indeed, Menuhin’s international fame had reached new heights since his duo concert with Ravi Shankar at the 1966 Bath Festival and the release of their album West Meets East in June 1967. As the sitar began to permeate pop and rock music in the wake of George Harrison—who met Shankar in London in 1966—and the Beatles, Menuhin’s association with the Indian musician opened up new audiences. West Meets East remained at the top of the US classical music charts for eighteen weeks and made an impressive entry onto the Billboard 200, the US sales chart covering all genres. It also won the Grammy Award for Best Chamber Music Performance.30 On 10 December 1967, Menuhin and Shankar played together again for Human Rights Day at the United Nations.31 By putting Menuhin’s name forward for the presidency in May 1968, the IMC Executive Board intended on “giving the IMC greater prestige and thus reinforcing it in its dealings with governments and UNESCO.”32 After being approached by Jack Bornoff, the IMC’s executive secretary since 1952 and a true pillar of the organization, Menuhin accepted the post. He was elected at the 12th General Assembly, held in New York in September 1968, and took up office in January 1969 for a two-year term before being reelected twice, in 1971 and 1973. René Maheu, UNESCO’s director-general, congratulated him on his election: “UNESCO finds in you an eminent representative of two causes that are equally dear to it: the diffusion of culture and international cooperation.”33 However, international tensions remained high at the turn of the 1970s, and in this respect, Menuhin’s personality and commitments worked in both directions, generating appeasement and dialogue on the one hand and a sharpening of conflicts on the other.

236

Anaïs Fléchet

Supporting Soviet Dissidents The first crisis arose in the spring of 1970 between Menuhin, the IMC, and the Soviet Union. The USSR had been represented at the IMC since 1960 through the Union of Soviet Composers (USC), headed by Tikhon Khrennikov. The Soviet authorities were fully involved in the organization with a view “to exerting a stronger creative and organizational influence on the development of contemporary musical life.”34 In 1962, the composer and conductor Otar Taktakishvili, who authored the national anthem for the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic, was elected to the IMC Executive Committee. The following year, the USC proposed that the IMC General Assembly be held in Moscow.35 After receiving the approval of the party and the USSR’s Ministry of Culture, the USC sent an official invitation to the IMC in 1967 to organize a congress on the shores of the Black Sea, together with a General Assembly and an East-West festival.36 Initially planned for 1970, the Congress was subsequently postponed to 1971 and relocated to Moscow. It thus fell to Menuhin, as the newly elected president, to oversee all the preparations and open this gathering. Menuhin made no secret of his support for Soviet dissident artists, not just because of the humanist values he fervently defended but also because of his special relationship with “the land of his ancestors”37 and the friendships he had forged behind the Iron Curtain. When he tried to invite David Oistrakh to the Gstaad Festival in 1970, he was turned down outright by the Goskoncert, the Soviet state concert agency.38 A power struggle then ensued between the musician and the Soviet authorities. Soviet officials perceived the IMC Congress as a real demonstration of prestige. The conference was to be held in the monumental Pillar Hall in the House of the Unions, where the bodies of Lenin and Stalin had lain in state. The program also included musical film screenings, an exhibition on “The Music Culture of the Soviet Republics” at the Glinka Museum, and a series of concerts (chamber, symphonic and lyrical music, folk groups) performed at the Bolshoi Theatre, Moscow Conservatory, and Tchaikovsky Concert Hall.39 The USSR funded the attendance of all IMC Executive Committee members, IMC Secretariat members, the session chairs, and the main conference speakers, amounting to a total of twenty foreign guests accompanied by their partners, as well as simultaneous interpreting services in English, French, and Russian.40 In addition, the state agency Intourist scheduled excursions to Leningrad and the Eastern Republics.41

Musical Humanism

237

The USC and the Ministry of Culture, who were in charge of the event, had thus made significant investments. It was nevertheless Menuhin, as president of the IMC, who was responsible for opening the conference, and he intended to use the occasion as a platform to lift the ban on David Oistrakh’s visit to Gstaad. Hence, on 16 May 1970, Menuhin sent a cable to the Soviet minister of culture, Ekaterina Furtseva, presenting her with an ultimatum: “I will oppose [the] International Music Council Congress Russia [in] October 1971 unless you allow my distinguished colleague David Oistrakh and Madame Oistrakh to be my guests and to participate [in the] Yehudi Menuhin Festival Gstaad Switzerland this coming August 1970.”42 The head of the USC, Khrennikov, responded with a cable dated 24 June addressed to the IMC and the UNESCO Secretariat: “The Soviet National Committee considers it completely unacceptable that the convening of the Congress in Moscow is dependent on Mr. Menuhin’s concert activity.”43 Two days later, Oistrakh stated in a press release sent to Reuters news agency that it was a scheduling problem that had prevented him from responding affirmatively to Menuhin’s invitation.44 The controversy continued in the press with the publication of a loaded article in the leading daily newspaper Izvestia entitled “Who Benefits by It? A Propos the Demarches Taken by Yehudi Menuhin,”45 which denounced a vast “anti-Soviet propaganda” operation. The showdown continued in the corridors of UNESCO as Jack Bornoff, the IMC’s executive secretary, tried to find a way out of the crisis. In a long, confidential note sent to René Maheu, he condemned the smear campaign led by the Soviet authorities and pointed out that Menuhin had played in Israel and London to raise money for Arab refugees after the Six-Day War. He also expressed his concerns over the IMC’s future: “In view of the very serious repercussions that this incident could have on our relations with the USSR, may I call on your good offices with the Soviet government to persuade it to reverse its decision not to allow Mr. Oistrakh to perform at Menuhin’s festival?”46 In the weeks that followed, the sociologist Richard Hoggart, then assistant-director-general for social sciences, humanities, and culture, intervened in this regard with Vadim Sobakine, the USSR’s permanent delegate to UNESCO, who transmitted his request to Moscow. The results of these negotiations are not known. However, the information gathered at the peripheries of an official trip by the Finnish Kaj Kauhanen, who worked in UNESCO’s culture department, confirmed Bornoff’s fears.47

238

Anaïs Fléchet

After several months of deadlock, a compromise solution finally emerged in the autumn of 1970. In October, Bornoff went to Moscow to finalize preparations for the Congress with the USC management team and took advantage of the opportunity to put the significance of Menuhin’s remarks into perspective. He explained to Khrennikov: “He is an idealist with an overriding desire to see justice done to the individual artists and to see them have a right to freedom.”48 When the two men met again in Bremen a few days later during an official visit by Soviet composers, Khrennikov affirmed his desire to welcome Menuhin with all the honors due to his person and his position: “all matters will then be cleared up.” In March 1971, Khrennikov announced to Menuhin that the Goskoncert was ready to negotiate the participation of Soviet musicians in the Gstaad and Windsor festivals, where the violinist had been artistic director since 1969.49 In return, Menuhin agreed to travel to Moscow to open the IMC Congress and decided to use the event as a platform to denounce the fate of dissident musicians. A thick file of archival material preserved at the Royal Academy of Music reflects his intention very clearly. Even before his participation in the Congress became certain, he had obviously been working on his future opening speech, which eulogized artistic freedom in the face of dogmatic indoctrination. As the file shows, Menuhin collected articles cut out from the Times on the situation for intellectuals and artists in the USSR as well as quotations he had collected from an article written by psychiatrist Anthony Storr on the meaning of music. In a letter to his friend the British musicologist Denis Stevens, he wrote: Have you read the full text of Khrennikov’s report on the situation of music in the Soviet Union? It is really both alarming and pathetic at the same time. If I go to Moscow, and this is not yet settled, . . . I would like to refer to the long history of fears of music’s immoral influence. . . . I would be most grateful if you would give me the background of the medieval ban on the use of the triton, the augmented fourth.50

At the same time, Menuhin sent Bornoff press clippings about Solzhenitsyn’s persecution after he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, excluded from the Soviet Writers’ Union, and given shelter by Rostropovich in his dacha.51 Further evidence of his investment in his speech was the fact that he had had it translated into French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, and Hebrew for distribution at the Congress. What is more, he decided to deliver the speech in Russian, the language he had learned as a child from his mother but that he no longer spoke fluently. He had managed to keep his

Musical Humanism

239

plan top secret by avoiding the tutelage of the Soviet interpreters and rehearsing his speech with a journalist from the BBC’s Russian service.52 When he addressed the representatives from the Ministry of Culture, the Moscow Soviet of People’s Deputies and the USC, all gathered on the rostrum of the House of the Unions on 6 October 1971, there was complete surprise: “It is with deep feeling that I address you tonight not only as a musician, but as a Russian Jew, as one whose parents were born in this land.”53 What was supposed to be a straightforward welcome address turned into a sharp criticism of the regime. Menuhin compared the Soviet bureaucrats to Nazi Gauleiters and vigorously supported the dissidents—“a Solzhenitsyn, a Yevtushenko, and many others.” He concluded by lamenting the absence of the cellist Mstislav Rostropovitch, who had recently fallen into disgrace and was prevented from attending the Congress because of his support for Solzhenitsyn. According to the Canadian delegate John Roberts, who was listening to the speech through a simultaneous interpreter, it was like a bomb had gone off: “The interpreter sounded tense, as though she could hardly believe her ears. Obviously such open and direct criticism of Soviet attitudes, beliefs and policies was like a bombshell. . . . Everyone was wondering if the Soviets would come forward with some kind of response to Yehudi’s comments.”54 Soviet officials, who had supported Menuhin’s reelection to the IMC presidency immediately before the Congress at the General Assembly, were caught off guard and decided to cover up the whole affair. The speech, scheduled to appear in Pravda, was censored, and all the reports—whether internal to the USC or published internationally— trumpeted the event’s success.55 Still, Menuhin’s speech was circulated by samizdat in Moscow the next day and then widely reported in the Western press.56 Although it is difficult to measure its impact, Menuhin’s show of support for Solzhenitsyn three years before the 1973 publication of The Gulag Archipelago demonstrated the musician’s early solidarity with dissident artists. During his second term of office, tensions between Menuhin and the Soviet authorities remained high. Taking up the strategy developed with Oistrakh, he invited Rostropovitch to perform in UNESCOsponsored events and relentlessly denounced Moscow’s veto. The crisis came to a peak with preparations for the IMC’s twenty-fifth anniversary, which was to be celebrated in Paris in January 1974. Once the Soviet minister of culture had given his agreement, the USC confirmed in November 1973 that the cellist would take part in the cele-

240

Anaïs Fléchet

brations,57 but then did a U-turn on the pretext that he had suffered a heart attack. This rumor, which had been leaked too soon by Moscow, was immediately quashed by Menuhin, who sent two cables to Furtseva and one to Brezhnev threatening to make the affair public. The USSR protested to the UNESCO Secretariat, but Rostropovich was ultimately granted a visa on 29 December. His arrival in Paris on 5 January 1974 and his concerts with Menuhin and the German pianist Wilhelm Kempff were widely covered by the media.58 His move to the West a few months later put an end to the controversy, but the incident showed the full extent of the tensions that existed between the two blocs within UNESCO.

UNESCO and Israel In addition to the tensions linked to the Cold War, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was weighing heavily on UNESCO’s future.59 The first controversy broke out in the aftermath of the Six-Day War when Israel banned the use of textbooks distributed by UNESCO in Palestinian refugee schools in the Gaza Strip because of content deemed anti-Israeli. UNESCO protested and appointed an independent commission but then backed down and had most of the books in question withdrawn. However, the matter continued to fuel tensions between the Secretariat and Israel. The real crisis began in 1974 when the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) was admitted as an Observer to the UN and UNESCO with the support of the Arab countries and the communist bloc. On 13 November, Yasser Arafat addressed the UN General Assembly. A few days later, the UNESCO General Conference adopted three resolutions.60 The first two condemned Israel both for its educational and cultural policies in the occupied territories and for the archaeological excavations carried out in East Jerusalem. The third rejected Israel’s request to join the European Regional Group. In response, Israel and the United States launched a major campaign against the “politicization of UNESCO.” The United States suspended payment of its contribution to UNESCO (25 percent of the organization’s total budget) while France and Switzerland reduced their contributions. Many intellectuals called for UNESCO to be boycotted. In France, Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Raymond Aron, and Pierre Vidal-Naquet launched a manifesto.61 The appeal was relayed in the New York Times by a committee of scientists, artists, and writers—including several Nobel Prize winners, such as Arthur Schlesinger, Philip Roth, and Arthur

Musical Humanism

241

Miller.62 The music world was strongly mobilized: “We refuse to participate in and hereby disassociate ourselves from the activities of UNESCO. Our withdrawal will continue until UNESCO rescinds its politicizing resolutions, directed against Israel.”63 A brief but explicit letter signed by Leonard Bernstein, Vladimir Horowitz, Arthur Rubinstein, and eighty American composers, performers, and conductors, most of them Jewish, arrived at the office of UNESCO’s new director-general, Amadou-Mahtar M’Bow. In general, Menuhin was torn between defending Israel and his attachment to UNESCO. While his first instinct was to step down, he eventually decided to continue working from the inside to better defend Israel against sanctions he considered unfounded. When his friend Bernstein publicly urged him to cut his ties with UNESCO, he explained his position in a number of letters and cables as well as in articles published in the Times, the New York Times, and Le Monde between December 1974 and March 1975.64 His arguments were based on the conviction that dialogue was essential to peace as well as the support of UNESCO’s director-general, Amadour-Mahtar M’Bow. In addition, Menuhin exhibited a deep-rooted belief in his own mediation skills: “I feel that at present a boycott on my part would be less effective than this influence, however modest, from within. UNESCO, whatever its weaknesses, remains the only world forum where nations can meet for cultural and constructive purposes.”65 Menuhin did not succeed in convincing people, however. Reactions of indignation from famous musicians and anonymous individuals alike rained down on him. Rubinstein, who disliked him, took the opportunity to settle some scores. He told him that he resented his attitude, his “too rapid reconciliation with the Germans” after the war, and his “Hindu-messianic declarations,”66 and accused him of unscrupulous careerism. The famous violinist also received criticism from those close to him, including his cousin, the liberal philosopher Isaiah Berlin, with whom he maintained an intense correspondence. “As always,” wrote Berlin, “I understand the purity of your motives, but I really think you have, for once, been misled. The Israelis, so far as I can see, have not been even technically at fault—the charge is genuinely trumped up, and no one in UNESCO or anywhere else genuinely doubts this.”67 Was this excessive idealism or just naivete? The idea that Menuhin had been “set up” was shared by the violinist Isaac Stern, who had also signed Bernstein’s appeal: “There is no doubting Menuhin’s devotion to the State of Israel. But it seems to me he has fallen into a trap set by Israel’s opponents.”68

242

Anaïs Fléchet

In defiance of his critics, Menuhin continued his lobbying work at UNESCO, where the director-general cultivated their friendship. M’Bow invited Menuhin for lunch, attended one of his concerts at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, and even shared his feelings with him: “Listening to you perform this magnificent symphony by Beethoven, I had the feeling you were expressing all of humanity’s anxieties and hopes at once.”69 M’Bow was referring here to the international context: to him, “anxieties” referred to threats of a new world conflict. He also showed a strong belief in classical music’s power of emotion and transcendence, conceived as apolitical and universal “hopes.” Yet M’Bow also had an underlying motive. He understood that the support of a world-renowned artist of Jewish faith was a major asset for him. In April 1975, he invited Menuhin to take part in the Reflection Group on Major World Problems, which had been set up to respond to accusations of “politicization” at UNESCO.70 Menuhin enthusiastically accepted the invitation, but the experience quickly proved disappointing because no concrete action was taken. With M’Bow’s agreement, Menuhin also mobilized his personal networks. On 6 March, he sent a private message to the principal Israeli authorities, including Teddy Kollek, mayor of Jerusalem, Yigal Allon, minister of foreign affairs, and Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, asking: “May I communicate Mr. Amadou M’Bow’s earnest desire to meet you or other top members of the Israeli Government as soon as possible? If you deem it advisable he is prepared for such a meeting to be held in complete secrecy and privacy.”71 As was to be expected, the reply was curt: Allon reminded him that the director-general would have to go through the official channels to speak to him,72 and Kollek refused to discuss “immoral resolutions.”73 The exchange nevertheless established a dialogue, which was closely followed by the UNESCO Secretariat74 and continued until the summer of 1975. While it is difficult to measure the impact of his actions, Menuhin nevertheless found himself fully engaged in international diplomacy and automatically dragged the IMC along in his wake. His position was not without its contradictions. In his correspondence with M’Bow, he said he believed that the archaeological excavations were just a pretext invented to stir things up by “Israel’s enemies.”75 Yet he asked his Israeli interlocutors for a conciliatory gesture (stop the excavations and agree to a delegation of international experts in Jerusalem) in order to encourage UNESCO to lift its sanctions. He also publicly reiterated his support for UNESCO while pointing out that the IMC was an independent nongovernmental organization and that Israel remained a full member.

Musical Humanism

243

In July 1975, the situation seemed to have come to a standstill again. The musician wrote a long letter to M’Bow announcing he would stand down in the event of future attacks on Israel within the United Nations. M’Bow persuaded him to delay circulating the letter so as not to jeopardize the ongoing discussions with Israel, which Menuhin seemed to have been unaware of.76 By that point, the musician was no longer at the center of negotiations. The rest of the crisis played out without him.77 At the IMC, tensions remained high. As the General Assembly was about to take place in Toronto, Menuhin was asked to take an official position on “the UNESCO-Israel affair.”78 The Israeli Music Committee called for a strict condemnation of “discriminatory and punitive resolutions.”79 An appeal was made by the International Association of Music Libraries, Archives and Documentation Centres, also a member of the IMC, which had officially condemned UNESCO’s attitude toward Israel.80 Additional pressure came from outside, notably from the American Musicological Society, which threatened to campaign for the United States’ withdrawal from the IMC if there was not a strong condemnation of UNESCO.81 Conversely, the Iraqi Committee denounced Menuhin’s pro-Israeli position,82 and Tunisia supported a request from a Palestinian music committee to join the IMC.83 Nonetheless, Menuhin managed to sweep the controversies aside by mobilizing the universal and humanistic values of music. On the eve of the General Assembly, he met with the Israeli delegates to dissuade them from tabling a motion. The central motif of the speech he delivered the next day to the IMC delegates was the universality of art against political division and of culture and shared emotion against the demands of states and war: “We are free agents, we are musicians. At least for this lunch, we can compose a Middle-East Federation of cultures and peoples which politically belongs, I pray, not to a too distant future, but which humanly and musically may already be within our reach.”84 He then invited the Arab and Israeli delegates to a private lunch in his suite at the Sheraton Hotel, where (with the exception of the Iraqi representative, who had declined his invitation) he managed to persuade them not to break up the IMC. Numerous public statements on the part of Menuhin as well as his private correspondence with Said Hammami, the PLO’s representative in London who campaigned for the two-state solution, testify to the musician’s long-standing commitment to peace in the Middle East. In December 1974, Menuhin was one of the first key Western figures to accept the principle of a meeting with a member of the PLO.85 At the time, Hammami had just established secret con-

244

Anaïs Fléchet

tact with the Israeli writer and peace activist Uri Avnery, the first Israeli to meet Arafat publicly during the war in Lebanon in 1982.86 Although the meeting with Menuhin, which was scheduled for early January 1975, ultimately did not take place due to tensions caused by the musician’s request for confidentiality, it did show a real openness on Menuhin’s part and a willingness to combat extremism on both sides—“yours and mine.”87 Above all, Menuhin continually sought to use the stage to emblematize the message of peace. In 1967, after the Six-Day War, he gave concerts in aid of the Palestinian refugees, and after the Yom Kippur War, he sent a request to the US State Department to play in Cairo. His request had come too soon, however, according to the US ambassador to Egypt, Hermann Eilts, in January 1974: “I would of course be delighted to hear Menuhin, as would many Egyptian music lovers, but time is not yet right for such visit.”88 A quarter of a century later, the pianist and conductor Daniel Barenboim and the intellectual Edward Said, who was in correspondence with Menuhin toward the end of his life,89 reimplemented the program with the creation of the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra in 1999. The Divan was and still is made up of young Israeli and Palestinian musicians representing musical diplomacy at the intersection of artistic practice and international action.

Conclusion Beyond the prestige Menuhin conferred on the IMC, his involvement clearly shows UNESCO’s importance as an international platform during the Cold War. It also provides an understanding of the convergence between two universals at that specific moment in the early 1970s, namely human rights (which then became established as a collective action program) and classical music as a vector of emotion and an aesthetic and moral education initiative.90 On a personal level, the meaning Menuhin accorded to his actions is less easy to determine. As he wrote to Bornoff in 1971: “I have also given you a lot of trouble, wiz. Russia, and despite it all I have shamefully enjoyed the tenure, largely thanks to your guidance, efficiency, and discretion. It has been a most interesting experience, and one of which I shall always remember . . . my first (and perhaps last) post of so international standing.”91 His only regret as he left the IMC was that he had not succeeded in establishing as his successor the person he thought best suited to continue his work, Pierre Boulez, whose agreement he had ob-

Musical Humanism

245

tained.92 Menuhin firmly believed that only a musician, performer, or composer could preside over this “assembly of music lovers” and hope to influence the course of the world.93 Faced with the world’s cruelty and the ever-present risk of the return of war and barbarism, Menuhin attempted to embody a new musical diplomacy that turned “art into hope for humanity.”94

Anaïs Fléchet is assistant professor in international history at the University Paris-Saclay, and member of the research team Centre d’histoire of the Centre d’histoire culturelle des sociétés contemporaines. Her research focuses on music and international history, cultural globalization, and Latin American music. She has published several books and articles on these subjects, including Music and Postwar Transitions in the 19th and 20th Centuries (2023); Cultural History in France: Local Debates, Global Perspectives (2019); Histoire culturelle du Brésil (2019); and Littératures et musiques dans la mondialisation (2015). She is currently completing a new book on UNESCO and music during the Cold War.

Notes 1. Translated from French by the author. 2. A first version of this article was published in abridged form in French. See Fléchet, “Yehudi Menuhin à l’Unesco.” 3. Fléchet, “Le Conseil International.” 4. Foyle Menuhin Archive, Royal Academy of Music (FM), IMC 2, Canada 1975, Speech delivered by Y. Menuhin at the opening of the 16th session of the IMC General Assembly, Toronto, 27–29 September 1975. 5. I would like to warmly thank Silja Fischer, secretary general of the IMC, and Davide Grosso for giving me access to these archives and for all their support throughout this research. 6. Thanks to Alexander Golovlev for his invaluable help in transcribing and translating the original documents from Russian into French. 7. Spritzer, “Daniel Barenboim”; Ramel and Jung, “The Barenboim Case.” 8. For a general approach to Menuhin’s biography, see Burton, Menuhin. On his training and career as a child prodigy, see Brown, “Yehudi Menuhin.” Generally speaking, little research has been conducted on the performer. 9. According to Henry Cossira, the figures published by the US Congress showed that Menuhin’s earnings of 15 million francs in 1937 (approximately $526,000) were far higher than those of Gary Cooper (which were equivalent to 11 million francs in 1937). Cossira, “Ce que valent,” 12. 10. In relation to the French press, see, among others, “Yehudi Menuhin (15 ans) dans sa villa de Ville d’Avray avec ses deux sœurs,” a series of ten press photographs (Agence Mondial Photo-Presse, 1932). 11. Fauser, Sounds of War, 43. 12. Menuhin, Unfinished Journey, 154.

246

Anaïs Fléchet

13. An examination of his public statements and private archives does not shed any further light on Menuhin’s intentions here, since he seemed to espouse the lines of British policy more than those of the US administration. 14. Thacker, Music after Hitler, 103–104; Frühauf, “Five Days.” 15. See Fosler-Lussier, Music. 16. National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), RG59, Menuhin 1958– 1961, Letter from Murphy to Menuhin, 23 July 1956; emphasis in the original. 17. Berghahn, America. 18. In 1956, for example, he offered unsuccessfully to play with the Boston Symphony Orchestra in the Soviet Union. See NARA, RG59, Menuhin 1958–1961, Memorandum from Richard B. Finn, 8 August 1957. 19. NARA, RG59, Menuhin 1958–1961, Memorandum from Richard B. Finn, 1 August 1956. Menuhin had sent press clippings of his concerts in Budapest and asked the US State Department to translate them—his request was granted after Murphy intervened. 20. NARA, RG306, P27, “USIS Music Program—A Review,” 4 June 1962. 21. Wong, “Relocating East and West”; Maurel, Histoire de l’UNESCO. 22. “Yehudi’s Yoga.” 23. Conseil international de la musique (CIM), DOC47, Projet de programme du Conseil international de la musique concernant l’appréciation des valeurs mutuelles des valeurs culturelles de l’Orient et de l’Occident, 2 April 1957. 24. “The Music of the Orient.” 25. CIM, 3.15, Programme des Semaines Musicales Internationales de Paris, 1958. 26. Scott-Smith, The Politics of Apolitical Culture. 27. An expression frequently used in the organization’s documents. 28. This twenty-six-minute documentary can be viewed in its entirety online in the UNESCO digital archives (F00025). 29. CIM, DOC-419. 30. Lavezzoli, Dawn of Indian Music, 63. 31. United Nations Audiovisual Library/Human Rights Day Concert at the General Assembly Hall in New York, 10 December 1967. 32. CIM, DOC-414. 33. FM, 3/3/1, UNESCO, Letter from Maheu to Menuhin, Paris, 28 September 1971. 34. RGALI, 2077/1/1822/4–5, Letter to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, March 1960. 35. CIM, DOC-265. 36. CIM, DOC-391. 37. Menuhin, Unfinished Journey, 279. 38. CIM, DOC-513. 39. RGALI, 2077/1/3303, Direction de l’Union des compositeurs de l’URSS, Matériaux concernant la préparation et la tenue de la 14e assemblée générale et du 7e congrès du CIM. 40. CIM, DOC-525, 526. 41. CIM, DOC-545. 42. FM, IMC-MIDEM, Cable from Menuhin to the Soviet minister of culture, Ekaterina Fursteva, Paris, 16 June 1970. 43. CIM, Menuhin-USSR, Cable from Khrennikov to the UNESCO Secretariat, 24 June 1970. 44. CIM, Menuhin-USSR, Memorandum from Bornoff, 29 June 1970. 45. CIM, Menuhin-USSR, “Who Benefits by It? A Propos the Demarches Taken by Yehudi Menuhin,” English transcription of an article published in Izvestia on 25 July 1970.

Musical Humanism

247

46. CIM, Menuhin-USSR, Letter from Bornoff to Maheu, “confidential,” Paris, 21 May 1970. 47. CIM, LC-515, Letter from Bornoff to the members of the Executive Committee, Paris, 16 July 1970. 48. CIM, DOC-524. 49. CIM, Menuhin-USSR, Letter from Khrennikov to Menuhin, 18 March 1971. 50. FM, IMC-File2, Speech for IMC Congress Moscow/Letter from Menuhin to Stevens, London, 16 January 1971. 51. CIM, URSS, Clippings re. Rostropovitch. 52. See Burton, Menuhin, 426. 53. FM, Writings, Speeches and addresses 1970–1985, Opening Speech by Yehudi Menuhin at the 7th Congress of the IMC, 6–9 October 1971, Moscow. 54. Cited in Burton, Menuhin, 428. 55. See “IMC Congress in Moscow.” 56. CIM, Menuhin-USSR, Clippings re. Menuhin Speech, Moscow (see for example: “Botschafter der Musik und der Menschenrechte,” Salzburger Nachrichten, 8 October 1971; “Menuhin schockiert Kreml,” Neue Zeit, 8 October 1971). 57. FM, 3/2/358, Cable from Rostropovitch to Menuhin, 11 November 1973. 58. Extensive excerpts from these concerts were broadcast by the French radio and television agency ORTF. Institut National de l’Audiovisuel, “Concert exceptionnel pour le 25ème anniversaire,” channel 1, 5 January 1975. UNESCO also produced a twenty-six-minute documentary based on recordings of stage performances and interviews with musicians, In the Name of Music (available online in UNESCO digital archives: F00061). 59. Maurel, Histoire de l’UNESCO, 167–168. 60. Wells, The UN, 2–5, 19–20. 61. Le Figaro, 15 November 1974. 62. “We Protest,” New York Times, 24 November 1974. 63. FM, 4/6/3, “80 Musicians Will Boycott UNESCO over Israel Vote,” The Times, December 1974. 64. See in particular: The Times, 11 December 1974; New York Times, 19 January 1975 and 23 February 1975. 65. FM, 4/6/3, Letter from Menuhin to New York Times, 2 January 1975. 66. FM, UNESCO I, Letter from Rubinstein to Menuhin, New York, 10 February 1975. Published in New York Times, 16 February 1975. 67. FM, UNESCO I, Letter from Berlin to Menuhin, Oxford, 18 February 1975. 68. “La position de Yehudi Menuhin,” Le Monde, 26 March 1975. 69. FM, UNESCO I, Letter from M’Bow to Menuhin, Paris, 21 February 1975. 70. FM, UNESCO II, Consultant contract between the UNESCO and Mr. Menuhin. A fee of $105 per day of meetings was provided for. 71. FM, UNESCO I, Letter from Menuhin to Rabin, Allon et Kollek, London, 6 March 1975. 72. FM, UNESCO II, Letter from Allon to Menuhin, Jerusalem, 23 March 1975. 73. FM, UNESCO I, Letter from Kollek to Menuhin, London, 11 March 1975. 74. FM, UNESCO III, Letter from Hector Wynter, president of the Executive Board of the UNESCO, to Menuhin, Paris, 18 April 1975. 75. FM, UNESCO I, Letter from Menuhin to M’Bow, London, 6 March 1975. 76. FM, UNESCO II, Letter from M’Bow to Menuhin, Paris, 26 August 1975; Letter from Menuhin to M’Bow, 9 August 1975. 77. The crises reached its climax with the UN Resolution 3379 statement that Zionism was “a form of racism” (1975) and then subsided following Israel’s inclusion in the European Regional Group at the UNESCO General Conference in 1976.

248

Anaïs Fléchet

78. FM, UNESCO II, Letter from Bornoff to Menuhin, Paris, 8 September 1975. 79. FM, IMC File 2, Report on musical activities on Israel during 1973–1975, 2. 80. FM, UNESCO II, “The UNESCO-Israel Affair,” IAML press release, Montreal, 17 August 1975. 81. FM, UNESCO II, Letter from Elaine Bordy to Menuhin, New York, 19 September 1975. 82. FM, UNESCO II, Letter from the Iraqi music committee to Menuhin, 30 August 1975. 83. CIM, DOC-828, Assemblée générale, Toronto, 27–29 May 1975, 9. 84. FM, IMC 2, Canada 1975, Speech delivered by Y. Menuhin at the opening of the 16th session of the General Assembly of the IMC, Toronto, 27–29 September 1975; emphasis in original. 85. FM, UNESCO I, Letter from Menuhin to Hammami, London, 13 December 1974. He responded to the Palestinian invitation: letter from Hamami to Menuhin, London, 9 December 1974. 86. On Hammami’s role, see Rogan, Histoire des Arabes, 553–559. 87. Letter from Menuhin to Hammami, London, n.d. [ December 1974]. 88. NARA, Electronic Telegrams 1974, RG59, 1974CAIRO00484, Offer of Yehudi Menuhin to give concert in Cairo, 30 January 1974. 89. FM, 3/1/262. 90. See Buch and Fléchet, “La musique en prison,” 775–805, here 804. 91. FM, IMC-UNESCO, Letter to Jack Bornoff, London, 6 July 1971. 92. CIM, DOC-778. 93. UNESCO, Audiovisual Archives, A09604, Yehudi Menuhin interviewed as president of the International Music Council, 22 October 1969. 94. Menuhin, L’Art.

Bibliography Berghahn, Volker R. America and the Intellectual Cold Wars in Europe: Shepard Stone between Philanthropy, Academy, and Diplomacy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001. Brown, Frederick. “Yehudi Menuhin: The Childhood of a Prodigy.” The Hudson Review 69, no. 2 (2016): 287–296. Buch, Esteban, and Anaïs Fléchet. “La musique en prison. La campagne pour la libération de Miguel Angel Estrella 1977–1980.” Annales, Histoire, Sciences sociales 3 (2017): 775–805. Burton, Humphrey. Menuhin. London: Faber & Faber, 2000. Cossira, Henry. “Ce que valent les vedettes américaines.” Le Monde illustré, Miroir du monde, 12 March 1938. Fauser, Annegret. Sounds of War: Music in the United States During World War II. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. Fléchet, Anaïs. “Le Conseil International de la Musique et la politique musicale de l’Unesco.” Relations Internationales 156 (2013): 53–71. ———. “Yehudi Menuhin à l’Unesco, la musique pour ambassade.” Gradhiva 31 (2020): 74–91.

Musical Humanism

249

Fosler-Lussier, Danielle. Music in America’s Cold War Diplomacy. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2015. Frühauf, Tina. “Five Days in Berlin: The ‘Menuhin Affair’ of 1947 and the Politics of Jewish Post-Holocaust Identity.” The Musical Quarterly 96, no. 1 (2013): 14–49. “IMC Congress in Moscow.” World of Music 13, no. 4 (1971): 48–54. Lavezzoli, Peter. The Dawn of Indian Music in the West. New York: Continuum, 2007. Maurel, Chloé. Histoire de l’UNESCO. Les trente premières années. 1945– 1974. Paris: L’Harmattan, 2010. Menuhin, Yehudi. Unfinished Journey. New York: Knopf, 1977. ———. L’Art: espoir pour l’humanité. Paris: Buchet, 1999. Ramel, Frédéric, and Michael Jung. “The Barenboim Case: How to Link Music and Diplomacy Studies.” Arts and International Affairs 3, no. 2 (2018). Retrieved 11 November 2021 from https://theartsjournal .net/2018/10/21/ramel-and-jung/. Rogan, Eugine. Histoire des Arabes. Perrin, 2016. Scott-Smith, Giles. The Politics of Apolitical Culture: The Congress for Cultural Freedom, the CIA and Post-War American Hegemony. London: Routledge, 2002. Spritzer, Evan. “Daniel Barenboim, un musicien dans les relations internationales.” In Littératures et musiques dans la mondialisation, edited by Anaïs Fléchet and Marie-Françoise Levy, 67–76. Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 2015. Thacker, Toby. Music after Hitler, 1945–1955. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007. “The Music of the Orient and Western Musicians.” The World of Music 1 (June 1957): 2. Wells, Clare. The UN, UNESCO and the Politics of Knowledge. New York: Macmillan, 1987. Wong, Laura E. “Relocating East and West: UNESCO’s Major Project on the Mutual Appreciation of Eastern and Western Cultural Values.” Journal of World History 19, no. 3 (2008): 349–374. “Yehudi’s Yoga. He Tries Twists to Help Him as a Violinist.” Life, 9 February 1953: 93–96.

Chapter 10

“WE ARE THE WORLD” Visions of Humanity in 1980s Charity Songs Tobias Hof

A Seminal Moment in Music History On 13 July 1985, over one and a half billion people worldwide witnessed one of the most spectacular live musical acts of the century: Queen’s twenty-minute performance at the Live Aid concert in London. Another seminal moment in music history followed with the broadcasting of the music video for “Dancing in the Street” by David Bowie and Mick Jagger, specially made for the concert. After these memorable moments, the cut to the BBC studio seemed anticlimactic: moderator David Hepworth and Live Aid organizer Bob Geldof began another of several fundraising appeals. Yet the latter made sure that this interview became legendary. Banging his hand on the table, an upset Geldof urged the TV audience: “You gotta get on your phone and take the money out of your pockets. Don’t go to the pub tonight, please stay in and give us the money, there are people dying, now! So, give me the money!”1 In the end, Live Aid raised over $150 million for famine relief in Africa; today, it is considered a milestone in the history of humanitarianism.2 Many scholars have rejected Live Aid’s format of celebrity humanitarianism, calling it a symbol of economic and cultural imperialism, a pitiful example of self-promotion, and a “philanthropical disease.”3 They have accused celebrities of promoting Western intervention in the “Third World,” reproducing a neoliberal capitalist system that enforces global poverty, and furthering a misunderNotes for this section begin on page 272.

“We Are the World”

251

standing of the Global South. The celebrities’ participation in the event also stands accused of reducing natives of the “Third World” to voiceless victims without agency. Their idea of apolitical humanitarianism was rooted in an exclusionary “us” versus “them” vision of humanity, reiterating Western dominance over Africa and cementing an asymmetric power balance within international relations in a postcolonial world. While this critique is often well-founded, this chapter focuses on different issues rather than add another voice to the critical chorus. In particular, it seeks to address two areas of investigation that have thus far been neglected: on the one hand, it examines whether musicians constructed only an apolitical and exclusionary vision of humanity and whether such a vision was key to the songs’ popularity. On the other hand, it analyzes what strategies the artists used to construct a particular vision of humanity. Accordingly, this chapter is based on three premises: first, it abandons the Anglo-American focus that has dominated the literature on charity songs and examines a broad selection of songs produced in the 1980s in response to the African famines. Such a diverse pool enables us to reveal layers of different emotions, stories, and messages as well as multiple visions of humanity. Second, to understand how artists convinced millions of people worldwide to identify with starving Africans and help strangers in need by buying their singles, donating to their charities, and attending their concerts, we need to examine the economic-technological framework as well as the various emotions fundraisers addressed in order to expand the circle of concern necessary for successful campaigns.4 Emotions also provide crucial information about the nature and the composition of the circle of concern. Thus, deciphering the musicians’ songs, videos, and performances gives us an insight into how artists envisioned humanity amid emergencies during the 1980s. My third premise draws on Siegfried Kracauer’s thoughts about movies as a historical source; it holds that due to the hundreds of musicians, producers, and managers as well as the success of album sales and fundraising concerts, the charity songs offer valuable insights into the political and sociocultural self-image of a society. Thus, the way in which such musicians construct an emotional circle of concern allows us to grasp the complex cultural representation of complementary and competing visions of humanity during the 1980s. These premises will help us understand “humanity” not as an objective but as a normative category, which despite its various forms

252

Tobias Hof

encouraged and impelled musicians to participate in the fundraising efforts and people to donate at a time of crisis. For a limited time period, the term “humanity” became a powerful, albeit vague, social value, which called upon people’s conscience to help the needy in Africa. In short, during the moment of crisis, the term carried both a purportedly objective meaning of a shared existence between all people and necessarily a normative call to action predicated on that common bond. In the following pages, I will first give an overview of the charity songs that circulated in the mid-1980s, including their impact and commercial success. This is followed by a more thorough analysis of the supergroups behind the songs. Who was involved with these bands, what was their music style, and how did they harness their cultural clout? The remaining two sections will then examine the music videos, concerts, and lyrics to expose their underlying visions of humanity.5

Charity Songs and Emergency Relief On 23 October 1984, the BBC aired a report by Michael Buerk and cameraman Mohamed Amin about the Ethiopian famine. The footage was subsequently shown by four hundred twenty-five of the world’s broadcasting organizations and reached an estimated audience of four hundred seventy million people. The famine became a dominant topic for the next several months and triggered an unparalleled international relief campaign. Despite the worldwide donations, the famine ranks among the worst humanitarian crises of the Cold War with over one million dead.6 When Irish singer Bob Geldof saw Buerk’s report, he was shocked.7 He coordinated with several British music stars to form Band Aid and record the single “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” The single sold more copies than any record previously released in Britain, raising over eight million pounds,8 and was number one for weeks in the British charts and in many other countries. In July 1985, Geldof organized Live Aid, the first “real-time global fundraising campaign with simulcast musical performances,”9 at Wembley Stadium in London and the JFK Stadium in Philadelphia. Thanks to extensive media coverage of this concert, the amount of money raised exceeded all expectations.10 While the size of Geldof’s fundraising campaign was groundbreaking, the involvement of musicians in charitable causes was

“We Are the World”

253

not entirely new. In the 1960s, artists like Bob Dylan and Sam Cooke participated in protest movements that focused on domestic issues, including the Vietnam War and civil rights.11 A decade later, musicians began to address humanitarian grievances on an international scale. George Harrison and Ravi Shankar’s Concert for Bangladesh in 1971 was followed by the concerts An Evening with Salvador Allende (1974) and No Nukes (1979). But compared to the efforts of Live Aid, the resulting $240,000 raised by Harrison’s concerts seemed marginal.12 Satellite technology, cheaper modes of production, and the increase of television sets per household turned concerts and album sales into profitable means of fundraising. In addition, changes in the music industry favored the sale of Western popular music on the global market, as the entire business was controlled by a few major Western companies. The triumph of Western music was also facilitated by the breakthrough of music television in 1981, when US video channel MTV helped create a global youth pop culture, though one that was limited by access to the cable network.13 As a consequence, Western music became a “transnational culture” at the expense of regional music, prompting some critics to denounce it as a form of “Western cultural imperialism.”14 Geldof’s success not only inspired fellow musicians to follow in his footsteps and launch a charity group—we know today of over twenty-five such supergroups (see Table 1).15 In addition, he created a precedent that pressured his colleagues to also engage in fundraising campaigns for the hungry in Africa. Helping in the name of humanity became an inescapable social norm. The bands’ names already revealed a glimpse into their messages. “Band Aid” suggested that immediate help was needed, but also that such help would only cover up the “wound” like a bandage without addressing the causes. The name “Hear ’n Aid” worked on various levels. On the one hand, there is the literal interpretation, where the group urges the audience to “hear us” (listen to the song) and then “aid us”—a direct call to action. On the other hand, the name can also be interpreted as “hearing aid” and thus as a criticism of Western societies’ inaction. Some—like Austria für Afrika or Band für Afrika—stated their mission in obvious, less creative ways. While only a couple of charity songs achieved international fame, including “We Are the World” (USA for Africa), “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” and “Stars” (Hear ’n Aid), most songs were popular in their own countries. “Warum?” (Austria für Afrika), “Tears Are Not Enough” (Northern Lights), and “Éthiopie” (Chanteurs sans fron-

254

Tobias Hof

Table 1. Charity songs for African famine relief (1984–1986). Band

Song

Country

various

“Land of Africa”

various

various

“Starvation/Tam-Tam pour l’Éthiopie”

various

African Artists United Against Famine

“Africa for Africa”

various

Apua! Orkesteri

“Maksamme velkaa”

Finland

Artiesten Voor Afrika

“Samen/Together”

The Netherlands

Australia, Too

“The Garden”

Australia

Austria für Afrika

“Warum?”

Austria

Band Aid

“Do They Know It’s Christmas?”

UK

Band für Afrika

“Nackt im Wind”

West Germany

The British Reggae Artists Famine Appeal Team

“Let’s Make Africa Green Again”

UK

The Cause

“Do Something Now”

USA

Chanteurs sans frontières

“Éthiopie”

France

The Concerned

“Show Some Concern”

Ireland

Forente Artister

“Sammen for livet”

Norway

Hawaii for Africa

“The Way of Love”

USA

Hear ’n Aid

“Stars”

various

Heart of Nashville

“One Big Family”

USA

Hilton Fyle and African Cruise

“Ethiopia”

Austria

Italia per l’Ethiopia

“Volare”

Italy

Kruger Rand-Aid

“Operation Hunger”

South Africa

Northern Lights

“Tears Are Not Enough”

Canada

Rockzenészek az éhezo˝ Afrikáért

“Mondd, mit ér egy falat kenyér“

Hungary

USA for Africa

“We Are the World”

USA

Vlaamse Artiesten Voor Afrika

“Leven Zonder Honger”

Belgium

Voces Unidas—Proyecto Hermanos

“Cantaré, cantarás”

Latin America

Yu Rock Misija

“Za Milion Godina”

Yugoslavia

“We Are the World”

255

tières) were all number-one hits in their respective countries. The song “Tam Tam pour l’Éthiopie” reached number thirty-three in the UK charts, making it the only time a song for African famine relief that was exclusively recorded by African artists entered the British Top 50.16 From January 1985 on, charity concerts took place all around the world, including Australia, Canada, Italy, Japan, the Soviet Union, the USA, West Germany, and Yugoslavia.17 Some of these performances were live-streamed during Live Aid; others—due to the time difference—were recorded first and then streamed. All these concerts “garnered so much attention partially because of [their] use of media . . . to engender an effective response amongst a mass audience.”18 In order to promote their altruism and to increase the donations from album and ticket sales, the musicians and producers waived their own fees.19 In the end, Geldof’s song was not the only one to break records and exceed every expectation: “We Are the World” raised $63 million for aid relief by selling over twenty million copies. Northern Lights and Hear ’n Aid raised more than $3 million each. The German single “Nackt im Wind” raised one million German Marks and the Yugoslavian charity contribution “Za Milion Godina” over $400,000 (making it the most successful song in the history of Yugoslavian music).20 While the amount of money solicited was unrivaled in the history of humanitarianism, many scholars and aid workers complained that the musicians’ shallow emotional appeals shifted the focus away from long-term aid to emergency relief, as the public demanded to see the real-time results of their donations. Speed and visibility were all that counted—and Geldof acknowledged as much: “Long-term aid is less exciting than the Seventh Cavalry arriving with food to bring people back to life.”21 Many music videos captured this moral urgency to act by showing celebrities arriving at the studios, the production process, and musicians holding the music sheet—implying that they did not have enough time to learn the lyrics. These images suggest that the artists rushed to the studios to do their part as soon as they heard about the crisis unfolding in Africa.22 Taken together, they helped put additional pressure on either fellow musicians or the audience to help the needy, although neither the exact nature of the crisis nor the kind of help needed was known for sure. Critics pointed out that by quickly delivering donations at the behest of an uninformed public, musical fundraising campaigns actually caused more harm than they brought relief. Aid was directed by the Ethiopian government to the soldiers fighting against the reb-

256

Tobias Hof

els in Tigray and Eritrea, thus prolonging the country’s civil war.23 One of the most outspoken critics of contemporary relief efforts was Rony Brauman, then president of Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF; Doctors without Borders), who stated the following about Live Aid: “this nice operation with all the big people in the world meeting to express their nice feelings for the destitute and starving and the dying children and so on, this is just bullshit . . . , because at that time the aid was turned against the people of Ethiopia.”24 Although there is some truth in Brauman’s criticism, such statements mainly expose the aid business for what it is: an industry driven by rivalry and jealousy. While the collaboration was never easy, celebrities did cooperate with aid organizations because they needed the latter’s networks in Africa to translate donations into actions. Even Geldof, who had previously criticized NGOs for their inaction and bureaucracy, was no exception.25 But the relationship worked both ways: aid organizations knew very well that they needed to reach out to celebrities and their fundraising campaigns. “If celebrities are involved,” said Lutz Neumann of the German NGO Welthungerhilfe, “people are much more willing to make donations.”26 In their attempt to get a share of the money raised, NGOs were willing to try anything, from outbidding UN aid organizations to flattering celebrity egos.27 In December 1985, CARE USA lauded Band Aid for their “concern for the victims of Africa’s devastating famine” and hoped “that we might work together in this next step.”28 While such collaborations took on a host of different forms, I would like to focus on the two most common types: in some cases, celebrities teamed up with NGOs prior to the fundraising campaigns. As a consequence, people who bought the charity singles knew from the start which organization would benefit. “Nackt im Wind,” for example, was specifically produced for Ein Tag für Afrika (23 January 1985), a fundraising marathon organized by eighteen German NGOs. The proceedings from “Starvation/Tam Tam pour l’Éthiopie” were given to Oxfam and MSF.29 The latter organization, however, had to leave Ethiopia in December 1985 after it criticized the Ethiopian government’s forced resettlement measures, a policy partially supported by NGOs that had received money from Band Aid.30 This fallout might have influenced Brauman’s assessment of Geldof and the broader organization’s efforts. Other groups, like Band Aid, USA for Africa, and Hear ’n Aid, founded nonprofit organizations that administered the donations. NGOs could apply by submitting proposals, and the trust would de-

“We Are the World”

257

cide whether the project was worthy of financial support.31 Thereby, the trusts supported not only emergency programs but also longterm development projects. In addition, they required the NGOs to report about the progress of the projects they funded, and they published their own reports. While these factors did not guarantee an efficient development policy or prevent the misuse of funds, critics of celebrity humanitarianism have often neglected them.32 This overview illustrates that during the early 1980s the “fundraising potential of charity singles and concerts”33 increased exponentially and constituted a phenomenon not limited to well-known Anglo-American relief actions. Geldof encouraged and compelled other musicians to follow his example—not doing so seemed to violate basic ethical norms. Participating musicians became, in contrast to their colleagues of the 1960s and 1970s, leaders of a “famine movement”34 amid a humanitarian crisis that was centered on a specific, contingent understanding of humanity, an understanding they attempted to shape according to their worldview but which nevertheless derived its power from its supposedly timeless, universal nature. This position enabled them to become “bridges between Western audiences and distant tragedies”35 and assume the role of “an educator to the public, an initiator of mass action, and an influence on policy.”36

A Community of Concerned Citizens Who were these artists? To what extent were they known for their social engagement? How did they invest their cultural capital in order to make the goals of the “famine movement” meaningful for a broad audience?37 Musicians appealed not only to an “undifferentiated mass of listeners”38 but to a specific group of people. They needed to be conscious of the expectations of their audience if they wanted to sell music and concert tickets—their educational mediums. Consequently, the audience was not an amorphous group of passive consumers, but one whose choices managers and artists alike needed to consider. Thus, the stories that musicians told were as much a reflection of their own beliefs as they were an assumption of what they thought fans wanted to hear and regarded as social norms.39 Band Aid consisted of forty-nine musicians, all of them wellknown members of the British music scene. Although their styles differed, they all represented mainstream popular music of the mid-

258

Tobias Hof

1980s. Individual peculiarities and musical technicalities aside, many other charity bands also assembled stars who belonged to the mainstream music scene of their countries (e.g., Northern Lights, Italia per l’Ethiopia, and USA for Africa). Their music particularly appealed to white-collar workers and a younger audience. The latter group had become important to the music industry because their income level had increased.40 In addition, most musicians, with some notable exceptions like Bob Dylan and Wolfgang Ambros, had not previously been involved in any social campaigns. Thus, those groups were able to present their message as apolitical, an appeal to “pure humanitarianism” devoid of any ideological undertones. All that counted was helping the needy in Africa.41 Geldof made the apolitical appeal a high priority and did not invite any artists who had already participated in the Rock Against Racism events, which were organized by British musicians between 1976 and 1982 to protest the rise of the Far-Right party National Front and increasing racism in Great Britain.42 The focus of the existing literature on USA for Africa and Band Aid obscures the fact that groups came from a much more diverse musical background. Among these groups, we find country bands (Australia, Too; Heart of Nashville), heavy metal bands (Hear ’n Aid), as well as groups representing musical niches such as Christian rock (The Cause) and folk music (Hawaii for Africa). While country musicians appealed to an older audience, often associated with the rural blue-collar culture, heavy metal had a strong following among urban working-class males.43 This diversity illustrates that the urge and social pressure to act and do something in the name of humanity was not restricted to well-known fighters for social justice; rather, artists with no prior humanitarian experience were able to join this endeavor. Nevertheless, at first glance, most musicians and producers were white—more men than women—and only a few African Americans played prominent roles in the production and performance of the charity singles, among them Stevie Wonder and Lionel Richie.44 Geldof did not mince words when he was criticized for not including African artists in his projects: African stars, he claimed, do not hold any “political traction” and thus were not useful for his agenda. Yet African artists and music were not totally absent, nor were charity songs only associated with apolitical music styles like pop and country. Several reggae and ska artists, many born in Jamaica or African countries, initiated their own supergroups for famine relief, often as

“We Are the World”

259

a deliberate rebuke of Geldof’s project. As social and political protest music, reggae was frequently used by British anti-racism movements.45 Since the 1960s, reggae also became closely linked with the Rastafari movement, which preaches Pan-Africanism and particularly appeals to the African diaspora, promising a united and strong Africa. A key figure of their belief was the Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie, often regarded as the incarnation of Jesus Christ.46 The most well-known example for the Rastafari relief movement was the double-single “Starvation/Tam Tam pour l’Éthiopie,” which was produced by two groups in London and Paris. The song “Tam Tam pour l’Éthiopie” was recorded by African artists who lived in Paris and came predominately from French-speaking African countries. Aside from a few words in English, the lyrics are in a number of African languages.47 “Starvation” was a cover version of The Pioneers’s song with the same name and was performed by British reggae and ska bands and African musicians. The Pioneers were also involved in the group The British Reggae Artists for Africa Team (BRAFA) and their charity single “Let’s Make Africa Green Again.” Another project was initiated by Mutabaruka, a Jamaican reggae artist and Rastafarian, who collaborated with other reggae artists to record the song “Land of Africa.” However, the inclusion of African musicians was not limited to reggae bands.48 Austria für Africa brought Austrian songwriters together with Ethiopian students based in Vienna. The chorus was in the Amharic language and taken from a famous Ethiopian folk song.49 The diversity of music styles seemed to symbolize the existence of a concerned global community, ready to help and support the people in need. Many of the album covers and videos emphasize this sense of community: for covers, either through group pictures or the stars’ signatures and names.50 For videos, the camera usually focuses on whoever is singing the current verse and zooms out to show all participants as soon as the group sings the chorus. While each singer performs his or her lines in seriousness, excitement and happiness take over as soon as everyone sings the chorus.51 The participants’ public display of joy highlights “a sense of joining together”52 and their belief in a good cause. Commonality is further stressed by specific gestures, including hugging, putting arms around each other’s shoulders, and holding hands, as well as stage appearances of managers, sound engineers, and conductors.53 To further emphasize the idea of an all-inclusive community, some bands included famous actors in their performances, such as Gérard Depardieu in Chanteurs sans frontières. While France mobi-

260

Tobias Hof

lized their cultural heavyweights, Canada mustered the North American sports world: at the end of the video for “Tears Are Not Enough,” the producer cut to the National Hockey League’s 37th All-Star Game on 12 February 1985 in Calgary. All this was a precursor of what was to come in the following months: celebrities from the fashion and sports worlds would follow the example of their colleagues from the music world and stage their own charity fundraising campaigns like Fashion Aid and Sport Aid.54 Live Aid expanded this sense of a community: musicians, comedians, and actors from many parts of the world came together (personally or virtually) for one event, and with live-streams from Yugoslavia and Moscow, the concert transcended Cold War blocs, a masterful nod to the touted apolitical message. Concerts are typically one of the few events where fans can get close to their stars. This was particularly important at a time when MTV fostered the cultlike adoration of celebrities in younger generations. By including youth in the stars’ community of concerned citizens, they “became connected to . . . a moral crusade to ‘feed the world.’”55 The supergroups also connected with their fans via their music videos, making viewers believe that the stars are just “like you and me”: nearly all artists renounced all pomp and wore only casual attire.56 In addition, some videos included scenes in which the celebrities gave autographs to fans. While critics might decry such scenes and visualizations as a sign of vanity, it can be perhaps more accurately viewed as recognition of the bond between the musician and the fan by a common dedication to relief action.57 The diversity of the groups helped transcend national boundaries, age cohorts, social classes, and political ideology, creating “a concerned and committed . . . community”58 amid a humanitarian crisis. What made the impression of a caring community even stronger was the fact that it overcame the typical individualism of the music industry, which was known for its rivalry and competition.59 However, this image of a global community of concerned citizens brought together in the name of humanity was hardly more than skin deep. First, the music industry remained a business based on individualism. Some musicians complained about the cheesiness of the songs they performed, while others had difficulties assembling prominent stars because many companies forbade their contracted musicians to participate in the group.60 Second, the community was dominated by Western popular music and musicians, most likely because it had to appeal to a Western audience—where the money was. While not totally absent, as some scholars imply, the scarcity of

“We Are the World”

261

African musicians, music, and lyrics further highlights this inequality of representation. Third, the community was still constrained within fixed boundaries. Words like “transnational” and “global” are often used to describe the worldwide reach of this community. However, cable TV, radio, and other technological innovations were needed to observe and ultimately participate, excluding those who could not access the medium through which the cause was championed. In addition, songs were usually written in each group’s native language, putting the focus on the national rather than on the global audience. Only the songs in English might have reached beyond language barriers.61 Last, Band Aid and Live Aid immediately faced criticism from within the music scene itself. Thus, despite its normative power, Geldof’s apolitical and exclusionary vision of humanity was highly contested. Fellow artists criticized the exclusion of African musicians, the deliberately apolitical stance, and the (mis)use of images of starving children. While some artists initiated their own charity projects, others railed against the entire charity scene. In 1986, the British anarcho-punk band Chumbawamba released their album Pictures of Starving Children Sell Records, directly criticizing Geldof.62

Representation of Africa and the Famine To what extent did such criticism translate into different, perhaps opposing, views of humanity on the part of the musicians who sang about African famines? The music videos for “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” and “We Are the World” include singers and sound engineers, but no images of Ethiopia or any other African country. Many other videos also focus on the songs’ production or the live performance on TV, while the object of the fundraising campaigns, Africa, remains absent.63 Yet if we expand our sample, we realize that groups like Northern Lights, Voces Unidas, and Heart of Nashville did use images of Ethiopia taken from the widely known TV reports in their videos.64 Later, these images were also used in live performances and fundraising appeals during Live Aid.65 The viewer is confronted with masses of hungry people in a state of desperation, sitting helplessly on the ground. We see crying children and mothers cradling their babies as they stoically endure their hardships in a “world of dread and fear” (“Do They Know It’s Christmas?”).66 The selection of these images confirms that the music industry followed the same logic as Western media: African disasters

262

Tobias Hof

only qualified as such after a humanitarian tragedy had struck and images of undernourished bodies were available. Some aid workers protested the repeated use of shocking photographs of starving children, but in the end most NGOs and fundraising campaigns fell back on these images, as they were a highly efficient way of raising money.67 At first glance, the majority of the songs’ lyrics or the band names mention Africa and/or Ethiopia; one such example is “Éthiopie” (Chanteurs sans frontières). The French artists sing of a “slowly dying” Ethiopia where “only graves bloom.”68 These lines show that even if Ethiopia was mentioned, the fact remains that most songs were written by Westerners for a Western audience and thus employed well-known stereotypes about the African continent as a dreadful, miserable place perishing under a merciless sun.69 The deliberately imprecise nature of these stereotypes allowed artists to recycle these songs for later disasters; the song “We Are the World” was also used after the devastating earthquake in Haiti in 2010. Closely connected to the description of Africa is how most of these songs explain the underlying reasons for the food crisis: the famine was a natural disaster caused by drought and a lack of rain. Band Aid claims that “the only water flowing is the bitter sting of tears,” and Chanteurs sans frontières comments that “they’ve never seen the rain . . . in this land of drought.” Critics rightfully argue that this kind of naturalistic depiction helped promote an apolitical oversimplification of the events in Ethiopia, with no discussion of contributing political and economic factors.70 By doing so, the artists reiterated the narratives that were used by Western diplomats, politicians, and aid workers alike. Ethiopian officials also preferred these narratives, which shielded them from criticism for a failed agrarian policy and a resource-heavy civil war.71 In their seminal works, Frantz Fanon and Edward W. Said argue that Western descriptions of foreign places are foremost projections of the Western self-image. The charity songs’ lyrics and videos are a case in point.72 “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” refers to “the other ones” and reminds the listener that there is “a world outside your window,” while Forente Artister acknowledges that “it can be hard living where you live.” The juxtaposition of a concerned Western “world of plenty” and a hapless Africa emphasized the hopeless situation of the latter. By constructing a helpless “Third World,” celebrities were then able to articulate a Western identity that was altruistic and pure of heart in contrast to the individualistic and self-centered societies preached by Margaret Thatcher in Great Britain and Ronald Reagan in the United States.73

“We Are the World”

263

The lyrics offer many examples illustrating the belief in the rightfulness of Western (humanitarian) intervention: “If they ever needed us,” Heart of Nashville sings, “they need us now,” and Northern Lights adds that “only we can make the difference.” USA for Africa and Chanteurs sans frontières even take ownership of life and death by stating, “Let’s give them life,” and “it’s time to lend a hand to life.” Such a messianic characterization of Western intervention also appeared in music videos—though not as often as one might think; the viewer barely sees clips of white people giving out food and planes flying in relief aid, which might have undermined the immediacy of an unmitigated disaster.74 Still, taken together, these lyrics and videos gave “the impression that the West was coming to the rescue of the incompetent Africans.”75 One may ask whether all charity songs followed this narrative, or did bands that, for example, featured stars from Africa tell a different story? The voice of the African diaspora is captured by the song “Starvation.” As a cover of a 1971 song, the lyrics do not directly comment on the situation in Ethiopia. The video, however, does address reasons for the famine, striking a totally different tone to all the other songs: images of starving Ethiopian children are followed by images of overfilled silos and rich cornfields in the West during harvest. Thus, while drought is not directly mentioned in the lyrics—although the video does show images of barren land—“Starvation” heavily condemns the imbalance of global food distribution as the main reason for the famine. Even with this twist, the video portrays African dependence: an undernourished child looks up at the viewer and reaches out his or her hand. Then the video cuts to an upward view of Annie Whitehead—a white British jazz musician—playing the trombone, the implication being that she as a symbol of the predominantly white West would provide the requested aid. On the other hand, the cut can also be interpreted in a slightly less patronizing way: the viewer has switched roles and places. At first s/he had been the one giving aid to the child, but now s/he was the one needing aid from the musician. In contrast to pop songs, BRAFA’s reggae song “Let’s Make Africa Green Again” focuses on long-term development “to make [Africa] . . . a rich and fertile land.” All that was needed was a little help to turn the ship around, so that Africans could take their fate into their own hands. The song also suggests that Africa once had been a rich land, a criticism against Western exploitation and colonialism. While BRAFA’s critique is subtle, “Land of Africa” does not hold back and chastises Western policy toward Africa. Blaming the West for divid-

264

Tobias Hof

ing and oppressing Africa, the song calls upon the African diaspora to help their homeland to overcome the challenges of famines, war, and Apartheid. This call for African solidarity was clearly echoing the Pan-Africanism of Rastafarian belief. Critical voices, however, were not limited to reggae songs. Austria für Afrika’s song, “Warum,” attributes the famine’s cause to the authoritarian regime in Addis Ababa, accusing it of exploiting the hungry for their political agenda of repression and civil war. Austria für Afrika’s song also scolds the Soviet Union for sending weapons to continue the civil war. The song establishes Ethiopia’s presence by using a local folk song for the chorus. While the chorus emphasizes Ethiopia’s miserable state, it also references the country’s glorious past as something that could be revitalized by African hands. With this, the song gives Ethiopians a place in the narrative as an agent rather than a passive bystander. Another Western song referring to the civil war is “The Garden” by the country group Australia, Too. The drought is mentioned in the song and images of barren wasteland appear in the video, but the war features most prominently in the song. The artists sing of a time when “the war is over,” and in the video, children sit on bombs and Ethiopians carry machine guns. “The Garden” stands out for another reason: the image of Africa as a merciless place contrasts with video footage of Ethiopians working in a field, planting seeds, and eating the food they harvested. This imagery contradicts the image of the passive, helpless Ethiopians so dominant in many other songs.76 Similar to “Let’s Make Africa Green Again,” “The Garden” tells a story of “help to self-help,” a guiding Western development principle since the 1960s and considered “the only suitable development concept for the so-called Third World.”77 This is also captured in the lyrics: all the Ethiopians needed was “help to get them started.” These examples illustrate that although helping the starving in Africa in the name of humanity had become a social obligation, the songs offered various stories about Africa and the famines that considered different historical and national contexts as well as audiences. Most songs were meant to be apolitical and perpetuated a simplified narrative in order to highlight the urgency of the situation. They characterized Africa as a dreadful place and natives as helpless and passive. However, there were exceptions that mentioned and sometimes even showed the wider sociopolitical context, condemned the imbalance of worldwide food distribution, chastised Western relief policy, and exhibited Africans’ agency. The more simplistic, apolitical songs were designed to appeal to the broadest

“We Are the World”

265

possible audience in order to garner the largest possible amount in donations—and they were successful in doing so. The songs that were written with an eye for accuracy in representation rather than commercialization (e.g., “The Garden”) risked alienating some part of their aspiring Western audience and therefore constituted a commercial gamble in terms of fundraising.78

Religion, Omens, and Emotions Many charity songs constructed what Stuart Hall has described as the “West and the Rest.”79 While those songs leave listeners with little doubt that it is “our” social obligation to help, the question remains of how the artists tried to convince “us” to do so—a question that is even more important when we look at the songs that struck a more political tone. To this end, I would like to focus on three prominent themes: religion; the African famines as harbingers for the rest of the world; and the emotions of hope, guilt, and pity when confronted with the hardship of others. Modern humanitarianism has both religious and secular roots, each of which has influenced and framed the way help was and continues to be given.80 The bands combined these two concepts in order to appeal to a broad audience. While most musicians—with the exception of The Cause—were not publicly known for their involvement in the church, Christian symbols and overtones feature prominently in their songs. “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” refers to one of the most important Christian holidays. The title might seem strange and rather tone-deaf given that Ethiopia has one of the oldest Christian churches and Christmas in Ethiopia takes places in January.81 However, I argue that the songwriters intended to construct the sharpest contrast possible by juxtaposing the joyful consumption characteristic of Christmastime in the West with the devastating situation in Ethiopia and were less interested in religious accuracy.82 Nevertheless, “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” and many other songs utilize words clearly related to religion and Christianity. These include, among others, “pray,” “faith,” “God,” “heaven,” and “belief.”83 In addition, the depictions of the famine remind listeners of Buerk’s documentary, in which he describes the famine as “biblical” and the “closest thing to hell on earth.”84 Last but not least, the Christian idea of salvation features in several songs. USA for Africa states that “we’re saving our own lives,” and BRAFA asks to “grant us salvation.” The concept of salvation was sometimes accompanied by references

266

Tobias Hof

to a punitive God and the Last Judgment. Northern Lights reminds its audience that “heaven knows that tears are not enough,” urging people to do something rather than wallow in sorrow for the starving. Other groups integrated Christian symbolism in their videos. While the group The Cause can be seen praying and having a Last Supper together, The Concerned’s video features a Catholic priest who applauds the artists’ engagement. Why was Christianity such an important component of the visions of humanity in the 1980s? One obvious reason was timing: “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” was released in the weeks prior to Christmas, when charitable giving is usually at its height, fueled by a combination of benevolent goodwill and a desire for last-minute tax deductions.85 Yet references to Christianity were not just an anachronistic appeal to a bygone belief in charity or a traditional missionary zeal. Rather, they resonated with youth who grew up in an individualistic society and witnessed a church open to issues like global justice. Churches were using equality advocacy to win back younger members, who had been drawn away since the 1960s by the protest movements around social justice, the North-South conflict, climate change, and population growth.86 These debates also changed the Western perception of the African famines. Whereas the 1970s-era famines were considered a problem of the “Third World,” the famines of the 1980s threatened Western ideals of prosperity and advancement when framed as signs of overpopulation and a glimpse into a likely future. The relationship between an overpopulated world and food production became an integral part of the heated Western public discourse. Thus, Alan Berg, Deputy Director of the new Population and Nutrition Projects Department in the World Bank, implied that the world is a lifeboat with a capacity of one hundred but with one hundred twenty-five people in it. If anyone is to survive, twenty-five people must be sacrificed—the implication being that those twenty-five were not part of the Western world. This exclusionary vision of humanity was heavily criticized by aid workers as both technically wrong and morally indefensible.87 Some charity songs referred to this discourse and implied that what was happening in Africa might also happen to the seemingly advanced and untouchable Western countries. While “Nackt im Wind” mentions the potential arbitrariness regarding the region affected by famine, the song “Starvation” leaves no doubt: “Starvation,” the musicians sing, “is spreading across all nations.” Some of these music videos imply that hunger already poses a challenge that goes beyond

“We Are the World”

267

Africa by showing images of children from different continents.88 As a consequence, many supergroups such as Heart of Nashville and Chanteurs sans frontières were created not only to raise donations for African famine relief but to “feed the hungry . . . around the world” (“One Big Family”) in order to “resurrect a world that’s dying” (“Do Something Now”).89 While USA for Africa tells the audience that “the world must come together as one,” Heart of Nashville reminds listeners that Africans are “brothers, sisters, just like you and me.” Meanwhile, Voces Unidas is convinced that “there will always be a place for every human being,” and Forente Artister states that “the world is one world.” All of these lyrics must be contextualized within the Western discourse; they express less of an altruistic, universalistic worldview—which would have clashed with the songs’ “us” versus “them” narrative— than a symbol of Western solidarity. Nevertheless, the message is clear: there is still hope for everyone if the world comes together as “one.” Hope, of course, was one of the key emotions that many songs emphasized. It was foremost propagated by uplifting scores, even when accompanied by pessimistic lyrics or imagery of undernourished children. Pop itself as a musical style captured people’s imaginations and appealed directly to the listeners, encouraging them to believe that they had the power to effect change.90 In addition, images of cheerful artists and smiling children served to spread a feeling of hope. This tone was particularly noticeable in AngloAmerican and Australian charity songs, but also in reggae songs such as “Land of Africa” and “Let’s Make Africa Green Again.”91 Some European groups struck a different tone and chose to appeal to the listeners’ guilt. Since the 1970s, the global perception of famines has triggered a debate about guilt in regard to the Western relationship with Africa.92 Impetus came from intellectuals such as Edward W. Said, from philosophers like Peter Singer, and from economists including Amartya Sen, who exposed the past and present Western exploitation of Africa.93 This debate was also reflected in certain charity songs. While Band für Afrika evoked guilt by criticizing colonialism and “the sins of our ancestors,” The Concerned railed against a failed development policy, arguing that “faith can’t feed, and hope can’t last with charity spelt G-U-I-L-T” while at the same time implying that “guilt” was a bad adviser for development aid.94 While these examples contradict the criticism that charity songs never dealt with the topic of Western exploitation, they do remain an

268

Tobias Hof

exception rather than the norm.95 Yet some songs went even a step further, criticizing the donation process itself as a modern take on the sale of indulgences. Austria für Afrika claimed that the majority of listeners only sent money to alleviate guilt, and Band für Afrika accused listeners of donating to downplay their culpability. This criticism might seem hypocritical given that the entire point of charity songs was to collect money; nevertheless, it brought methods of Western development aid into question and challenged people’s long-standing opinions on the subject. Both European and Anglo-American songs appealed to the feeling of pity. Pity, in this context, stems from the aforementioned victimization of Africans and is typically intense whenever children are concerned.96 Children personify innocence and helplessness and can be construed as allegories for an Africa that has to be cared for by the West.97 However, by the 1980s, the suffering of children in the Global South was no longer viewed as an isolated phenomenon but as part of a global childhood crisis during a time of unprecedented population growth. Helping children worldwide was now perceived as a way to save the future of humanity. “As a fundraising tactic,” Laura Suski notes, “few methods rival the success of child sponsorship,”98 which evokes strong emotional responses across social, economic, and cultural strata. Every song and most concerts included children in one way or another. Prominent examples are lyrics like “we are the children” (“We Are the World”), “children of Ethiopia” (“Éthiopie”), “the children die” (“Land of Africa”), “children of Africa” (“Let’s Make Africa Green Again”), and “who cries for the children?” (“Stars”). Several videos put images of crying, playing, eating, and laughing babies and children from Africa and elsewhere front and center.99 Bands like The Concerned and The Cause even involved their own children in the production of the videos—a masterful tactic, as it emphasized that children are the future of humankind, reiterated the notion of “one world” united, and highlighted the “spontaneity” of the entire fundraising campaign.100 Images of undernourished children could also be found on album covers—the cover for Za Milion Godina shows a white hand holding an undernourished African child—and on the posters and brochures for Live Aid.101 During the concert, one image showed a starving child close to death: four-year-old Birhan Woldu, who would go on to become “The Face of Famine.” Apart from showing masses of helpless people, the personification of suffering can also enforce emotional appeals and can be recycled for future events. During the

“We Are the World”

269

Live 8 concert in 2010, Birhan Woldu joined Geldof and Madonna on stage to thank the audience for her rescue and plead for more support for Ethiopia and Africa.102 While emotional stories were key to the success of the fundraising campaigns, some artists did not want to risk their message going unheard. Thus, in videos and lyrics a less subtle call for help can be found. The Concerned calls on people to send “your money there today”; Hear ’n Aid admits that “songs will never change it alone, so we are calling you”; and BRAFA asserts, “let us give what we have and just a little more.” Some music videos end by mentioning the NGO that would receive the donations, sometimes accompanied by the aid organization’s bank account.103 This overview illustrates that bands did not just rely on a single strategy to enlarge the circle of concern and construct a specific vision of humanity; strategies varied widely and were sometimes riddled with contradictions. In particular, the differences between the Anglo-American songs and those from Germany and Austria suggest that despite the globalization of the music industry and the attempt to appeal to a global audience, national peculiarities and national ideas of giving and charity should be considered when looking at celebrity humanitarianism.

Conclusion The charity songs and concerts of the 1980s were commercially successful and represented a milestone in the history of celebrity humanitarianism. Nevertheless, despite (and perhaps because of) their success, they have attracted a lot of criticism. Some scholars have argued that these celebrities’ emotional education of the uncritical majority cemented a vision of humanity that was apolitical, morally charged, and rooted in the belief of Western superiority.104 Indeed, many songs perpetuated colonial-era stereotypes of Africa as the “Dark Continent.” The case can be and has been made that the entire business of celebrity humanitarianism is simply a new method of African exploitation. Sometimes, however, this criticism seems to ignore the fact that the majority of celebrities and donors were socialized in the West, the reality of humanitarian emergencies, and the question of what could have been done instead. While this should by no means minimize the problematic stories people like Geldof told in order to advance their own charity brand, it opens three other lines of inquiry.

270

Tobias Hof

First, it illustrates that the charity songs and messages they propagated did not operate in a vacuum. Rather, they were so successful because they took up a vision of humanity that seemed appropriate for an emergency and appealed to the self-image of so many Westerners—an apolitical and exclusionary vision centered around Western superiority and civilization. Second, a wider analysis of charity songs—in particular the lyrics, the videos, as well as the bands themselves—reveals that the criticism is mostly directed toward Band Aid and Live Aid. This narrow focus has drastically hindered the exploration of a more complex and diverse set of groups, messages, and visions of humanity found in songs about the African famines. And third, the analysis of the charity songs shows that the visions of humanity they created in light of the 1980s African famines did not belong to a fixed and objective concept, even as that very subjective, normative category derived its power from its seeming objectivity. Geldof’s success encouraged other musicians to follow in his footsteps and spurred the audience to donate to a just cause in the name of a thinly constructed “humanity.” The artists’ vision of humanity, however varied, was contested by others and lost its social power as soon as the crisis seemingly passed. Taken together, these three points highlight that visions of humanity and humanitarian actions depend on more than just the actual humanitarian crisis and can wax and wane accordingly. In addition, the variety of songs mirrors the tension between a universalist, inclusionary concept of humanity and an exclusionary one rooted in the belief of a Western civilizing mission. While some songs appealed to feelings of guilt during a time when the “world of plenty” was on full display in department stores, others focused on what could happen to citizens of the industrialized world in the future. Some songs spread a message of hope, reminding people that together “we” can overcome suffering; others offered an appeal to religion, or castigated an indifferent mentality of giving in the Western world, condemning past “sins” and avoiding any references to Christianity. And some songs even pointed out the sociopolitical factors that contributed to the famines and criticized a failed Western (development) policy toward African countries. Thus, it seems an oversimplification to claim that while we can find a more critical discourse about Africa and the famines among intellectuals in the 1980s, celebrities were only peddlers of a simple narrative.105 Musicians did not operate in isolation from their social and political surroundings; their songs’ different visions of humanity mirrored changes within the Western discourse on humanitarianism

“We Are the World”

271

and development aid that had been brewing since the late 1960s. Heated debates about overpopulation, transnational civil rights movements, anti-war protests, and postcolonial intellectuals raised Western awareness of the “Third World” and led to a more critical examination of the North-South conflict. Under these circumstances, some aid organizations reevaluated their long-standing approaches to development aid, paving the way for the “help to self-help” approach—far from a flawless concept, but one that at least attempted to include the native population in development projects. However, the visible suffering of the Ethiopian population called into question the habits and efficiency of the “help to self-help” approach. Confronted with the humanitarian crises in Africa, it seemed easier to fall back on a traditional vision of humanity rooted in the belief of Western superiority and civilization as well as colonial stereotypes. By far not all charity songs followed this trend, but the ones that did were among the most commercially successful, illustrating that calls for Western intervention in Africa were very popular with a Western audience. Although many songs seemed to call for solidarity with Africa, their vision of humanity, one of a Christian community dominated by the West, actually reinforced the controversial “lifeboat theory”: it clearly showed who would be able to overcome the global challenges and who had the power to decide who would be saved and who would not—namely, the white, often male, aid worker or celebrity. Or in the words of USA for Africa: “We are the ones who make a brighter day.” Band Aid and Live Aid suggested a new symbolic world order based on the idea of an international community of people, which challenged ideological and national concepts of belonging that were dominant during the Cold War, particularly in the context of individualistic societies in Reagan’s America and Thatcher’s Great Britain. Echoing the UN resolution of 1981, they constructed the image of a depoliticized global society where all that counted was the humanitarian act of donation.106 While this apolitical message might have dominated the charity song business and depoliticized the African famines in the name of humanity, they also inspired more critical counternarratives about Africa, hunger, and the “Third World.” When taken together, the variety of bands, the songs’ lyrics, and the music videos created “the cultural space for . . . the emergence of a more politicized popular music.”107 Without their success, concerts such as the Mandela Tribute against Apartheid in South Africa might have never received the attention they did.

272

Tobias Hof

Tobias Hof is Privatdozent for modern history at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Munich and the 2022/23 Hannah Arendt Visiting Chair at the University of Toronto. His research focuses on the history of humanitarianism, the history of terrorism and counterterrorism, as well as the history fascism. He is the author of Staat und Terrorismus in Italien, 1969–1982 (2011) and Galeazzo Ciano: The Fascist Pretender (2021) as well as many journal articles and book chapters, including “Of Italian Perpetrators and Victims: Forced Migration in the Italian-Yugoslavian Border Region, 1922–1954” (2021).

Notes I would like to thank the Gerda Henkel Foundation for supporting this work. 1. Müller, “The ‘Ethiopian Famine’ Revisited,” 67. Geldof’s interview has since been reduced to the quote “Give me the fucking money.” Cited in Cooper, Celebrity Diplomacy, 54. 2. Müller, “The ‘Ethiopian Famine’ Revisited,” 67. 3. For the following, see Kapoor, Celebrity Humanitarianism; Müller, “Long Shadow”; Rijven and Straw, “Rock for Ethiopia”; Shah et al., “Bono.” 4. See Boltanski, Distant Suffering; Chouliaraki, Spectatorship of Suffering. 5. All information about the songs can be found on lyricstranslate.com, genius. com, songtexte.com, discogs.com, and youtube.com. The lyrics of the following songs could not be located: “Operation Hunger,” “Ethiopia,” “Tam Tam pour l’Éthopie,” and “Africa for Africa.” Some bands, including Northern Lights and The Concerned, also produced documentaries about their charity songs, which can also be watched on youtube.com. 6. See Franks, Reporting Disasters. 7. Geldof, Is That It?, 61. 8. Kapoor, Celebrity Humanitarianism, 14. 9. Hoffman and Weiss, Humanitarianism, 218. 10. Garofalo, “Understanding Mega-Events,” 27. 11. See Eyerman and Jamison, Music and Social Movements, 106–139. 12. De Waal, “Humanitarian Carnival,” 51; Richey and Ponte, Brand Aid, 32; Shah et al., “Bono,” 277; Yrjölä, “Invisible Violence,” 1. 13. The interdependence between the music industry, television, and celebrity humanitarianism was on full display during the 1985 MTV Video Music Awards, when Geldof received the Special Recognition Award and USA for Africa won the Award for Best Group Video and the Viewer’s Choice Award. 14. See Garofalo, “Understanding Mega-Events,” 20–24; Lahusen, Rhetoric, 67–69 and 71–73; Marshall, Celebrity and Power, 55; Westley, “Bob Geldof,” 1023–1026. 15. While most songs were newly written, “Volare” and “Starvation” were both cover versions of older songs. 16. Dibango, Three Kilos of Coffee, 116. For the success of “We Are the World,” see “Die Größen der Rockmusik.” Some songs, however, underperformed, including “The Garden,” “One Big Family,” and “Volare.” 17. See Ronald Reagan Library, WHORM Subject File, CO001-01, 315156, Metal for Meals, Press Release; Götz et al., Humanitarianism, 130; Garofalo, “Understanding Mega-Events,” 30; McFadyen, “The First Carousel.” 18. Shah et al., “Bono,” 278. See also Westley, “Bob Geldof,” 1013.

“We Are the World”

273

19. Rijven and Straw, “Rock for Ethiopia,” 200. 20. See Götz et al., Humanitarianism, 133; “Die Größen der Rockmusik.” 21. Cited in Garofalo, “Understanding Mega-Events,” 28. See also Kapoor, Celebrity Humanitarianism, 23; Richey and Ponte, Brand Aid, 271. 22. Velasco-Pufleau, “Chansons humanitaires.” 23. See Edkins, Whose Hunger?, 72, 119, and 125; Hague et al., “Voice of the People,” 16; De Waal, “Humanitarian Carnival,” 52. 24. Cited in Cooper, Celebrity Diplomacy, 64. 25. Franks, Reporting Disasters, 82–84. For Band Aid’s cooperation with NGOs, see National Archives (Kew), FCO 31/4616, 34, Telegram Howe (London) to Khartoum, 9 April 1985. 26. Cited in “Hungerhilfe.” 27. New York Public Library, CARE Records, Box 1241 (hereinafter “NYPL 1241”), Letter Tom Neu to Peter Davies, 22 November 1985, 1. 28. NYPL 1241, Letter Russell Piccione (New York) to Penny Jendon, Band-Aid Trust (London), 25 October 1985. 29. See Archiv Deutscher Caritas Verband, Bestand AA, Signatur 187.1/6.025, Fasz. 17, Notiz, ARD II, Gespräch beim Deutschen Roten Kreuz, Bonn, 18 December 1984; Archiv Diakonie, Bd. 9443, Letter Botho Prinz zu Sayn-Wittgenstein to Raeuker, 3 December 1984. Also, see Götz et al., Humanitarianism, 131. Other examples include Chanteurs sans frontières and BRAFA, whose proceedings went to MSF, the French Red Cross, and Save the Children. 30. Müller, “The ‘Ethiopian Famine’ Revisited,” 70. Menschen für Menschen, for example, received financial support from Band Aid and helped Ethiopians who were already resettled. 31. See NYPL 1241, Telex Care Britain to Care NY, 26 December 1985; NYPL 1241, Draft Tom Neu to Peter Davies, 22 November 1985. USA for Africa and Band Aid distributed guidelines for the proposals. See NYPL 1241, USA for Africa, Proposal for Project to Further African Recovery/Development, Project Proposal Guidelines. In 2018, the Band Aid Trust donated its archives to the National Library of Ireland. However, when writing this article, the archives were not catalogued yet. 32. For long-term projects, see NYPL 1241, CARE/USA, Proposal: Eight African Projects, 28 October 1985; NYPL 1241, Peter Davies (InterAction) to Members of the African Emergency Subcommittee, 2 November 1985; NYPL 1241, Tom Neu (InterAction) to Members of the African Emergency Subcommittee, 3 December 1985. For the reports, see NYPL 1241, USA for Africa, USA for Africa Release First Annual Report, 5 March 1986. For the control of the funded projects, see NYPL 1241, Band Aid, Guidelines for Preparing Six Monthly Project Reports; NYPL 1241, Telex Care Britain to Care New York, Ethiopia, 13 February 1986. 33. Shah et al., “Bono,” 270 and 277. Also see Richey and Ponte, Brand Aid, 32–33. 34. Hall and Jacques, “People Aid.” 35. Götz et al., Humanitarianism, 128. 36. Shah et al., “Bono,” 277. 37. Lahusen, Rhetoric, 121. 38. Lahusen, Rhetoric, 63. 39. In his criticism of celebrity humanitarianism, Kapoor mentioned this important fact only in passing. See Kapoor, Celebrity Humanitarianism, 42. 40. Lahusen, Rhetoric, 57 and 65; Marshall, Celebrity and Power, 159. 41. Müller, “The ‘Ethiopian Famine’ Revisited,” 62–64. This idea of “pure humanitarianism” was not completely new but emerged in the late 1970s. See Merziger, “Radical Humanism.” 42. Hague et al., “Voice of the People,” 9.

274

Tobias Hof

43. Lahusen, Rhetoric, 65 and 86. 44. See Kooijman, Fabricating the Absolute Fake, 26. Other examples include Heart of Nashville, The Cause, and Australia, Too. 45. Peres da Silva, Wie klingt die globale Ordnung, 128–129. 46. See Daynes, Time and Memory. 47. Due to copyright issues, the lyrics have never been released. See Winders, Paris Africain, 41–43. 48. In 1986, the group African Artists United Against Famine produced the single “Africa for Africa” in Nigeria. 49. Götz et al., Humanitarianism, 131–132. 50. For example, see “Mondd, mit ér egy falat kenyér,” “Maksamme velkaa,” and “Sammen for livet.” 51. For example, see “Do They Know It’s Christmas?,” “We Are the World,” “Éthiopie,” “The Way of Love,” “Maksamme velkaa,” and “Cantaré, cantarás.” Exceptions are the German and Austrian videos. See Velasco-Pufleau, “Chansons humanitaires.” 52. Shah et al., “Bono,” 279. 53. For example, see “Do Something Now,” “Cantaré, cantarás,” “Sammen for livet,” “The Garden,” “Maksamme velkaa,” “Show Some Concern,” “We Are the World,” and “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” 54. “Fashion Designers to Aid Africans”; Franks, Reporting Disasters, 73; van Ginneken, Collective Behaviour, 53. 55. Shah et al., “Bono,” 279. 56. Runtagh, “Heal the World.” 57. For example, “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” and “Show Some Concern.” 58. Lahusen, Rhetoric, 65. 59. Rijven and Straw, “Rock for Ethiopia,” 200. 60. See “Country Music’s ‘We Are the World’”; Niasseri, “Darum war ihr Live-AidKonzert.” 61. Lahusen, Rhetoric, 66. The Dutch song “Samen” was also produced in English. 62. Glasper, The Day the Country Died, 381; Müller, “The ‘Ethiopian Famine’ Revisited,” 67. 63. Shah et al., “Bono,” 280. 64. Velasco-Pufleau, “Chansons humanitaires,” claims that these images were only included in videos at the end of the 1980s. 65. Kapoor, Celebrity Humanitarianism, 14. 66. See Edkins, Whose Hunger?, 109; Kapoor, Celebrity Humanitarianism, 40–42. 67. See Manzo, “Imaging Humanitarianism.” 68. Ethiopia is also mentioned in “Do Something Now” and “Land of Africa.” 69. For example, “Nackt im Wind,” “Do Something Now,” “The Garden,” and “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” 70. Edkins, Whose Hunger?, 111–112. 71. Caritas, Bestand AA, Signatur 187.1/6.025, Fasz. 17, Notiz, Freiburg, 18 January 1985. 72. Shah et al., “Bono,” 278. 73. Kapoor, Celebrity Humanitarianism, 26. 74. One example is “Tears Are Not Enough.” 75. Edkins, Whose Hunger?, 109. 76. Another video that shows the agency of Africans is “One Big Family.” 77. Büschel, Hilfe zur Selbsthilfe, 15. 78. “The Best of 2015.” 79. Hall, “The West and the Rest.”

“We Are the World”

80. 81. 82. 83. 84. 85. 86. 87.

88. 89. 90. 91. 92. 93. 94. 95. 96. 97. 98. 99. 100. 101. 102. 103. 104. 105. 106. 107.

275

Barnett, Empire of Humanity, 49–56. Müller, “The ‘Ethiopian Famine’ Revisited,” 66. Edkins, Whose Hunger?, 109. For example, “Tears Are Not Enough,” “We Are the World,” “Cantaré, cantarás,” “Land of Africa,” “Do Something Now,” and “Nackt im Wind.” Kapoor, Celebrity Humanitarianism, 14. Edkins, Whose Hunger?, 109. Großbölting, “Von der Nächsten- zur Fernstenliebe,” 244–246; Holzem, “Bedrohtes Leben,” 26–27. World Bank Group Archives, Records of Office of External Affairs, Folder 1651311, Alan Berg, Fear of Trying. A Response to Triage and Lifeboats, 21 February 1975. Also, see Frey, “Neo-Malthusianism.” For example, “Cantaré, cantarás,” “The Way of Love,” “One Big Family,” and “Za Milion Godina.” See Velasco-Pufleau, “Chansons humanitaires.” Lahusen, Rhetoric, 81. For example, “One Big Family,” “The Garden,” and “We Are the World.” Holzem, “Bedrohtes Leben,” 21. See Said, Orientalism; Sen, Poverty; Singer, “Famine.” Other examples that mention guilt are “Do They Know It’s Christmas?,” “Land of Africa,” and “Starvation.” For the criticism, see Edkins, Whose Hunger?, 120; Kapoor, Celebrity Humanitarianism, 43. Edkins, Whose Hunger?, 113. See Großbölting, “Von der Nächsten- zur Fernstenliebe,” 249–250; Edkins, Whose Hunger?, 113. Suski, “Children,” 212. Also see Vernon, Hunger, 32. For example, “One Big Family,” “The Garden,” and “Cantaré, cantaras.” Infants also feature in the video “The Garden.” Shah et al., “Bono,” 279. BRAFA chose a drawing by a child for their album cover. Campbell, “Iconography of Famine.” For example, “Tears Are Not Enough” and “The Garden.” Shah et al., “Bono,” 278–280. For this allegation, see Müller, “The ‘Ethiopian Famine’ Revisited,” 61. Edkins, Whose Hunger?, 118 and 122. Garofalo, “Understanding Mega-Events,” 30.

Bibliography Barnett, Michael. Empire of Humanity: A History of Humanitarianism. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2011. Boltanski, Luc. Distant Suffering: Morality Media and Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. Büschel, Hubertus. Hilfe zur Selbsthilfe: Deutsche Entwicklungsarbeit in Afrika 1960–1975. Frankfurt/New York: Campus, 2014. Campbell, David. “The Iconography of Famine.” In Picturing Atrocity. Photography in Crisis, edited by Geoffrey Batchen et al., 79–105. London: Reaktion Books, 2012.

276

Tobias Hof

Chouliaraki, Lilie. The Spectatorship of Suffering. London: Sage Publications, 2006. Cooper, Andrew F. Celebrity Diplomacy. Boulder: Paradigm Publishers, 2008. “Country Music’s ‘We Are the World.’” Music Weird, 6 March 2017. Retrieved 12 November 2021 from http://www.musicweird.blogspot .com/2017/03/country-musics-we-are-world.html. Daynes, Sarah. Time and Memory in Reggae Music: The Politics of Hope. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2010. De Waal, Alexander. “The Humanitarian Carnival: A Celebrity Vogue.” World Affairs (Fall 2008): 43–55. Dibango, Manu. Three Kilos of Coffee: An Autobiography. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1994. “Die Größen der Rockmusik spielen für die Hungernden in Afrika.” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 11 July 1985: 7. Edkins, Jenny. Whose Hunger? Concepts of Famine, Practices of Aid. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000. Eyerman, Ron, and Andrew Jamison. Music and Social Movements: Mobilizing Traditions in the Twentieth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. “Fashion Designers to Aid Africans.” New York Times, 20 October 1985. Franks, Suzanne. Reporting Disasters: Famine, Aid, Politics and the Media. London: Hurst Publisher, 2013. Frey, Marc. “Neo-Malthusianism and Development: Shifting Interpretations of a Contested Paradigm.” Journal of Global History 6 (2011): 75–97. Garofalo, Reebee. “Understanding Mega-Events: If We Are the World, Then How Do We Change It?” In Rockin’ the Boat. Mass Music and Mass Movements, edited by Reebee Garofalo, 15–36. Boston: South End Press, 1992. Geldof, Bob. Is That It? London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1986. Glasper, Ian. The Day the Country Died: A History of Anarcho-Punk 1980– 1984. Cherry Red Books, 2006. Götz, Norbert, Georgina Brewis, and Steffen Werther. Humanitarianism in the Modern World; The Moral Economy of Famine Relief. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020. Großbölting, Thomas. “Von der Nächsten- zur Fernstenliebe? Bundesdeutsche Kirchen auf der Suche nach Relevanz zwischen 1960 und 1980.” In Wenn Hunger droht. Bewältigung und religiöse Deutung (1400–1980), edited by Andreas Holzem, 241–254. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2017. Hague, Seth, John Street, and Heather Savigny. “The Voice of the People? Musicians as Political Actors.” Cultural Politics 4, no. 1 (2008): 5–24. Hall, Stuart. “The West and the Rest: Discourse and Power.” In Formations of Modernity, edited by Stuart Hall and Bram Gieben, 275–331. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1992.

“We Are the World”

277

Hall, Stuart, and Martin Jacques. “People Aid: A New Politics Sweeps the Land.” Marxism Today (July 1986): 10–14. Hoffman, Peter J., and Thomas G. Weiss. Humanitarianism, War, and Politics: Solferino to Syria and Beyond. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2017. Holzem, Andreas. “Bedrohtes Leben—bedrohter Glaube (1400–1980). Religiöses und soziales Bewältigungshandeln in Hungerkatastrophen—zur Einleitung.” In Wenn Hunger droht. Bewältigung und religiöse Deutung (1400–1980), edited by Andreas Holzem, 1–34. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2017. “Hungerhilfe: Schokolade für Zuckerkranke?” Der Spiegel, 21 January 1985: 88. Kapoor, Ilan. Celebrity Humanitarianism: The Ideology of Global Charity. London: Routledge, 2013. Kooijman, Jaap. Fabricating the Absolute Fake: America in Contemporary Pop Culture. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2008. Lahusen, Christian. The Rhetoric of Moral Protest: Public Campaigns, Celebrity Endorsement and Political Mobilization. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1996. Manzo, Kate. “Imaging Humanitarianism: NGO Identity and the Iconography of Childhood.” Antipode 40, no. 4 (2008): 632–657. Marshall, David P. Celebrity and Power: Fame in Contemporary Culture. Minneapolis: University of Minneapolis Press, 1997. McFadyen, Warwick. “The First Carousel.” Sydney Morning Herald, 12 July 2011. Retrieved 12 November 2021 from https://www.smh.com.au/ lifestyle/the-first-carousel-of-celebrity-for-cause-20110712-1hbzw.html. Merziger, Patrick. “The ‘Radical Humanism’ of ‘Cap Anamur’: A Turning Point for the Idea, Practice and Policy of Humanitarian Aid.” European Review of History 23, nos. 1–2 (2016): 171–192. Müller, Tanja R. “‘The Ethiopian Famine’ Revisited: Band Aid and the Antipolitics of Celebrity Humanitarian Action.” Disasters 17, no. 1 (2013): 61–79. ———. “The Long Shadow of Band Aid: Revisiting the Dynamics between Famine and Celebrity.” Third World Quarterly 34, no. 3 (2013): 470–484. Niasseri, Sassan. “Darum war ihr Live-Aid-Konzert nicht wirklich spektakulär.” Rolling Stone, 11 July 2020. Retrieved 12 November 2021 from https://www.rollingstone.de/queen-live-aid-1609565/. Peres da Silva, Glaucia. Wie klingt die globale Ordnung. Die Entstehung eines Marktes für World Music. Wiesbaden: Springer, 2016. Richey, Lisa Ann, and Stefano Ponte. Brand Aid: Shopping Well to Save the World. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2011. Rijven, Stan, and Will Straw. “Rock for Ethiopia.” In World Music, Politics, and Social Change: Papers from the International Association for the Study of Popular Music, edited by Simon Frith, 198–209. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1989.

278

Tobias Hof

Runtagh, Jordan. “Heal the World: 20 Songs for a Good Cause.” Rolling Stone, 22 November 2018. Retrieved 12 November 2021 from https:// www.rollingstone.com/music/music-lists/benefit-concerts-songsgood-cause-geldof-live-aid-720175/. Said, Edward W. Orientalism. New York: Vintage Books, 1979. Sen, Amartya. Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982. Shah, Ami V., Bruce S. Hall, and Edward R. Carr. “Bono, Band Aid, and Before: Celebrity Humanitarianism, Music, and the Objects of Its Action.” In Soundscapes of Wellbeing in Popular Music, edited by Gavin J. Andrews, Paul Kingsbury, and Robin Kearns, 269–288. Farnham: Ashgate, 2014. Singer, Peter. “Famine, Affluence, and Morality.” Philosophy and Public Affairs 1, no. 3 (1972): 229–243. Suski, Laura. “Children, Suffering, and the Humanitarian Appeal.” In Humanitarianism and Suffering: The Mobilization of Empathy, edited by Richard A. Wilson and Richard D. Brown, 202–222. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. “The Best of 2015.” Chart Beats, n.d. Retrieved 12 November 2021 from https://www.chartbeats.com.au/2015/09/30-years-ago-this-weekseptember-22-1985.html. van Ginneken, Jaap. Collective Behaviour and Public Opinion: Rapid Shifts in Opinion and Communication. London: Routledge, 2003. Velasco-Pufleau, Luis. “Chansons humanitaires, dépolitisation des conflits et moralisation des relations internationales à la fin de la Guerre froide.” Dans Relations internationales 156, no. 4 (2013): 109–123. Vernon, James. Hunger: A Modern History. Cambridge: Belknap Press, 2007. Westley, Frances. “Bob Geldof and Live Aid: The Affective Side of Global Social Innovation.” Human Relations 44, no. 10 (1991): 1011–1036. Winders, James A. Paris Africain: Rhythms of the African Diaspora. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006. Yrjölä, Riina. “The Invisible Violence of Celebrity Humanitarianism: Soft Images and Hard Words in the Making and Unmaking of Africa.” World Science Review 5, no. 1 (2009): 1–23.

Afterword

LANGUAGES OF COMMON HUMANITY Siep Stuurman

It is agreed that, henceforward, the character “yi” [barbarian] shall not be applied to the government or subjects of Her Britannic Majesty in any Chinese official document. —Article 51 of the Treaty of Tanjin (1858)1

In colloquial speech, the word “humanity” has three meanings: (1)

the collection of all human beings on the planet, as in “the story of humanity”; (2) the quality of being human, as in “the humanity of all peoples on the earth”; and (3) the kindness or benevolence of people we admire, as in “the exemplary humanity of Mother Theresa.” The antonym of the second and third meanings is “inhumanity” or “dehumanization.” All three meanings appeal to feelings of empathy and reciprocity.2 Without further specification, however, it is hard to say how far and to whom those feelings will extend. Humanity is an abstraction, and abstract concepts have no clearly defined boundaries. Historically, as Jessica C. E. GienowHecht, Sönke Kunkel, and Sebastian Jobs put it in the introduction to the present book, humanity in the transatlantic world was “a normative and often empty signifier.” Abstract concepts can open up a space for the imagination, but they may equally well hide silent exclusions. To identify silent exclusions, we can ask an elementary question: did discourses of humanity include a vision of common humanity, and if so, which exclusions were deemed unacceptable and which were passed over in silence? An examination of a world-historically significant equality-text will make clear what I have in mind. The French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, passed by the National Assembly Notes for this section begin on page 295.

280

Siep Stuurman

in August 1789, states in its first article that “men [les hommes] are born and remain free and equal in their rights.” However, the Declaration says nothing about gender. The word “women” does not figure in the text. In French, les hommes can mean “the human beings” but also “the male human beings.” In the late eighteenth century, the basic intuitions of the overwhelming majority of the French—including most French women—took the subjection of women for granted. Even so, literate French female activists sent a sizable number of petitions to the National Assembly demanding equality and citizenship. But to no avail: the citizenship of women was tabled by a few members of the assembly but never made it to a plenary session. The rest was silence. Looking back at the last two centuries—roughly from the French Revolution to the present time—can we identify a watershed moment in discourses about common humanity? I think we can: World War II gives us a demarcation line. We have an intellectual history of humanity before the fall of the Axis powers, and we have a postwar history. In the postwar period, discourses of common humanity and human rights were widely disseminated and acquired more authority than in the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century, a period that was dominated by the global color line, the two world wars, and the rise of totalitarian regimes.3 The collection of chapters presented in this book fits in a prewar and postwar narrative. Four of the chapters recount crucial episodes from the mid-nineteenth century to the aftermath of World War I, and five others deal with themes from the Cold War era that began right after 1945 and provisionally ended with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the implosion of Soviet communism. In this postscript I will first discuss the concepts of humanity and human rights, and then try to flesh out the differences between the two periods—while also looking out for similarities and analogies.

Axial Age(s), Axial Breakthroughs, and the Invention of Common Humanity However, to show that I am not using a geopolitical and military turning point as a hinge in intellectual history, I begin with a famous book published by the German philosopher Karl Jaspers in 1949, five years after the defeat of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. In Vom Ursprung und Ziel der Geschichte, Jaspers develops a vision of the history of humanity that can be read as a counterpoint to Nazi ideology

Languages of Common Humanity

281

but also as an early experiment in global intellectual history. The two readings are closely related, as Jaspers’s philosophical history focuses on the first formulation of powerful discourses of common humanity in what he called the “Axial Age.” Between 800 and 200 BCE, he identified the emergence of a new way of thinking about humanity in the teachings of Greek philosophy, Judaic monotheism, Zoroastrian religion, the Buddhist “opening of the mind,” and Chinese Confucianism. To Jaspers, these teachings meant much more than mere history: “From what was then . . . created and thought humanity lives until today.”4 As common humanity is a second-order concept, common humanity and thinking about thinking emerged together. The core of common humanity is the conviction that while there are empirical differences and empirical similarities between people, the similarities are more fundamental than the differences. The American sinologist Benjamin Schwartz has characterized the time span demarcated by Jaspers as “the age of transcendence,” because the thought systems he identified were not simply the laws of cities and empires but were grounded in divine, sacred, or philosophical truths.5 Nowadays, some historians question the timelines proposed by Jaspers. Instead, they speak of Axial breakthroughs in specific civilizations over a much longer period in global history that runs from ca. 1000 BCE to ca. 700 CE, thus including the introduction of Islam, which soon would become the central civilization of the Old World, the only one to maintain contacts with all the others.6 These criticisms are well taken, but Jaspers’s point that the world still “thinks back” to the Axial intellectual innovations and reworks the notions of common humanity invented and created in those times remains valid. Jaspers was not alone in highlighting the values of common humanity and the equal dignity of all human beings. In 1948, the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In December 1949, UNESCO, the UN office for education, science, and culture, convened a committee on the problem of race with the critical and anti-racist anthropologist Ashley Montagu as rapporteur. The next year the committee proposed to abolish the concept of race because it lacked any biological foundation.7 Admittedly, angry reactions by British physical anthropologists occasioned a revision and a second report, but henceforth the concept of race was tainted and questionable. In 1955, Edward Steichen’s exhibition “The Family of Man” opened in New York. The exhibition can be seen as the pictorial pendant of the UN Universal

282

Siep Stuurman

Declaration. It toured the world and attracted more than nine million visitors, while the catalog sold a million copies.8 Aimé Césaire, one of the founders of Négritude, a literary and philosophical current that Césaire himself has defined as “a revolt . . . against European reductionism,” also entered the fray. In 1950, he published the first version of his Discours sur le colonialisme, wherein he stated that the origins of Nazism and fascism were to be found in the colonial culture of violence and death.9 In his Cahier d’un retour au pays natal (1939), a semibiographical essay written in blank verse, Césaire mentions humanity not as an accomplishment but as work that has yet to be done: “It is not true that the work of man is finished / and that we have nothing to achieve in the world . . . but the work of man is only just beginning . . . and no race has the monopoly of beauty, intelligence, power; and there is place for all at the rendezvous of victory.”10 All these writings reflect on the transition from a world darkened by totalitarianism and colonialism to a world that takes the idea of a universal humanity seriously, not as a proud achievement but as a daunting challenge.

The Status of the Human As an abstract concept, humanity is the collection of all living beings we call human (note that this is a circular definition), but the use of the word “humanity” in history does not always live up to this inclusive logic. Again and again, politicians, journalists, and other speakers and writers use “human” and “humanity” in a more restricted sense, as some sort of “super-We” that loudly or silently excludes large swaths of the world’s population. I have already referred to the silent exclusion of women in the French Declaration of 1789. Similar silent exclusions are found in Article 2 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which forbids discrimination on the grounds of race, color, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth, or other status. In 1948, this could not be read as a complacent endorsement of Western civilization. In that year, to take one example out of many, thirty of the forty-eight states of the United States had laws outlawing or declaring null and void marriages between whites and non-whites.11 Consequently, the antidiscrimination list of Article 2 has to be read as a yardstick for future practices. However, everyone reading the Declaration today will notice the absence of homosexuality from the list: In 1948, homosexuality was

Languages of Common Humanity

283

defined as sinful by religious authorities and as unnatural by physicians and psychologists. Consequently, it was not recognized as a valid model of personhood. In other words, homosexuals were not included in the definition of the “human” that was self-evident to the authors of the Universal Declaration. However, if we look for a definition of the “human” or “humanity” in the 1948 Declaration, we shall not find it. Article 1 refers to the metaphor of “the human family” and the obligation of all human beings to act toward one another “in a spirit of brotherhood [sic].” The words “nature” and “natural” are not used except in Article 16, where the family is called “the natural and fundamental group unit of society.” References to a religious or metaphysical foundation are also absent. The Roosevelt committee had decided to forgo such language on the advice of Peng-Chun Chang, the Chinese member, who had warned against the adoption of religious or philosophical ideas that would privilege some civilizations over others.12 And so it happened that the Universal Declaration lacks any reference to “human nature.” Suzy Killmister’s contribution to the present book advocates a radical alternative to the grounding of human rights in a concept of human nature that is itself grounded in some definition of the human. All definitions of an essence of humanity, she argues, can be used to exclude people who do not have the required capacities. For instance, if reason is such a capacity, individuals who are mentally challenged can be excluded. Killmister proposes to see human rights as social constructions that we want to make into global norms. But then she concludes: “Moreover, when considering the global iteration of the human, the boundaries of the human are shaped by human rights practice, which extends membership to all Homo sapiens.” I think this a very good and eminently useful historical description of what human rights practitioners and activists have been doing since the end of World War II, basically adding new antidiscrimination clauses to Article 2—the equality article—of the 1948 Universal Declaration. However, it cannot be denied that Homo sapiens is a biological, natural kind and not a social construction. That is, all Homo sapiens share a great many properties and capacities. The five races in the standard classification of nineteenth- and twentieth-century “scientific racism” share all those properties and capacities.13 The maintenance of skin color in large populations is not the result of heredity but of the working of heredity under social closure. The difference between creolization in South and Central America and the

284

Siep Stuurman

more dichotomous racial composition of the United States makes that abundantly clear. Craniometry was long ago exposed as pseudoscience. Inferring cognitive capacities from brain size and weight is plain nonsense. No one, to my knowledge, has ever stated that heavier and bigger computers are better than lighter and smaller ones. In his book on the fallacy of race, published at the end of World War II, Ashley Montagu mentions that the Paleolithic Neanderthals had larger brains than the average twentieth-century white man. However, he went on to say, no white scholar has ever concluded that Neanderthals had a higher cognitive capacity (some physical anthropologists then retorted that the Neanderthals suffered from “cranial hypertrophy”; yes, and “poverty” comes from the word pauvreté).14 Consequently, a solid core remains. Nobody who belongs to the biological species of Homo sapiens can be deprived of human rights (of course, animal rights are a different matter). Even so, the historian cannot use the bottom line of Homo sapiens as a transhistorical term. Other periods needed—and will perhaps need in the future—other solid cores. To show what I have in mind, I will go back in time to the seventeenth-century English Revolution. My example is the Putney debates in the general council of Cromwell’s New Model Army in October 1647, when the king was imprisoned by the forces of the Long Parliament and the political future of England seemed to hang in the balance. In that historical moment, the limits of the thinkable were pushed forward. In a lengthy pamphlet, “The Agreement of the People,” the democratic movement of the Levelers demanded adult male franchise. Colonel Thomas Rainborough, their chief spokesman, defended their demands in the following terms: “For really I think that the poorest he that is in England hath a life to live, as the greatest he . . . and I do think that the poorest man in England is not at all bound in a strict sense to that government that he hath not had a voice to put himself under.” Henry Ireton, who supported the status quo, immediately retorted: “Give me leave to tell you, that if you make this the rule I think you must fly for refuge to an absolute natural right, and you must deny all civil right.”15 Universal notions of equality are typically invoked by outsiders seeking to make claims that go beyond the given historical dispensation. Rainborough framed his argument in terms of natural rights because historically informed good sense told him that Saxon liberties and the Ancient Constitution were not sufficient to make his case. To be more precise, the force of his argument lay in the linkage between the concrete historical notion of the freeborn Englishman

Languages of Common Humanity

285

and the universalist language of natural freedom and equality. If he had grounded his demands by a reference to Homo sapiens, his audience would have wondered what, if anything, a Homo sapiens was. In the European seventeenth century, natural rights were regarded as ultimately coming from God. That was then an intelligible and meaningful language that commanded authority. That Ireton used it as a term of abuse shows that he was fully aware of what kind of intellectual move Rainborough was making. To avoid any misunderstanding, I am aware that since the Enlightenment we cannot rely on a transcendent—religious or deistic—foundation of philosophical concepts. As Immanuel Kant declared in the “Vorrede” of the first edition of the Critique of Pure Reason (1781): “Our age is the veritable age of critique, to which everything must submit. Religion, by its holiness, and legislation, by its majesty, usually seek to escape it. But then they come under suspicion and cannot lay claim to the sincere respect . . . that reason only confers on what has withstood its free and public scrutiny.”16 Consequently, modernity cannot seek its philosophical foundations in some higher, transcendent reality or in the wisdom of times past. As Jürgen Habermas puts it in Der Philosophische Diskurs der Moderne (1988), “modernity must extract its normativity out of its own reality.”17 Like modern equality, to which they are closely linked, human rights are human artifacts. Elsewhere, I have characterized common humanity and equality as “inventions” and not as discoveries of empirically verifiable truths. Because of the ever-ongoing dynamics of history, humanity has to be reinvented over and over again. My position is thus close to Killmister’s, but not identical to it. Her term “social constructions” has been deployed to uncover the arbitrary elements in gender regimes, nationalist pride, racist exclusions, and so on. It has worked as a powerful antidote to the pretensions of arbitrary inequalities that abound in our world. But the norms advocated by human rights activists are far from arbitrary. Following Aristotle, we may regard them as phronesis, a type of practical wisdom situated between the absoluteness of mathematical episteme and the volatility of mere doxa.18 It cannot be mathematically demonstrated that torture, mass murder, arbitrary restrictions on liberty, starving people to death, and white supremacy are wrong in themselves, but we have quite good grounds to condemn them. Accordingly, human rights have a high degree of robustness. Skeptics are of course perfectly capable of shooting holes in them, but then they can also demonstrate that

286

Siep Stuurman

I cannot know whether my own body exists or not—so why worry? I really wonder what a mathematical justification of human rights, or—worse—a human rights algorithm, would look like. And even if it were feasible, most ordinary people would not be convinced. On the other side of the fence, “social construction” is too weak. Yes, many people would say, I respect your social constructions—on the condition that you respect mine too. I feel that an argument grounded in practical reason will convince far more people. Most human rights NGOs and activists routinely deploy such arguments. They know quite well that a recourse to an abstract and universalistic concept of “human rights” is not sufficient to convince ordinary people that they must contribute in some way to a human rights campaign. To attain that goal, you must show what the abstraction “violation of human rights” looks like in practice, and what such violations do to their victims. That is why pictures, films, and the like are used in human rights campaigns. Graphic description or depiction of what human rights violations look like at close range makes it harder for people to say, “That is no concern of mine.” On the positive side, they can divulge examples of how NGOs have assisted refugees to build a new life in the country where they finally have arrived, for instance by helping refugees find a job or complete their education.

White Supremacy, Civilization, and Social Class as Stand-Ins for Humanity Michael L. Krenn takes us back to the now almost forgotten world of craniometry and polygenism. Samuel George Morton, a Philadelphia physician, he tells us, was a racist physical anthropologist whose name “means absolutely nothing” to today’s Americans. But in is his own time, Morton acted worldwide through his contacts with scientific colleagues in America and Europe as a champion of the “American way.” To him, that meant the continuing slaughter of Native Americans, the ongoing westward expansion of American “civilization,” the defense of chattel slavery, and the celebration of Anglo-Saxon racial supremacy. In the mid-nineteenth century, all of this was considered reputable scientific knowledge. Krenn concludes with a brief survey of the afterlife of Morton’s skulls. His skull collection remained in place and could be freely consulted. In the 1980s, John Michael, an undergraduate student, found and remeasured them, concluding that Morton’s measurements

Languages of Common Humanity

287

were correct. He had not manipulated the evidence to prove his racist conclusions. Michael’s findings, published in the journal Current Anthropology in 1988, were taken up by the psychologist J. Philippe Rushton, who regarded them as proof of “what he had always thought,” namely that blacks had smaller brains and consequently were less intelligent. Rushton published his conclusions in 1997 in the National Review, a conservative periodical that had always supported white leadership in the southern states. According to the National Review, Southern whites deserved leadership because they were “the advanced race.” While “scientific” racism fell into disrepute after 1945, it did not disappear. From time to time, the presumed lower IQ of African Americans was presented as hard data and explained in racial terms. Scientific racism has survived into our times because a great part of the American people still do not accept African Americans as fellow citizens. Though on a lesser scale, hardcore racism and antisemitism are also on the rise in Europe, mainly in the orbit of right-wing populism. Morton may have passed into oblivion, but that is not true of his intellectual legacy. Sarah Epping presents a similar argument about the use of the concept of “civilization” by the American Assyriologists and photographers who in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century excavated sites in Iraq and shipped their findings to US museums. However, their opinions about the Iraqis they enlisted as assistants in their fieldwork were not complimentary, to put it mildly. Hermann Hilprecht, one the leading lights in this grand project, found nineteenth-century Iraq a failure: “Where apparently a dense population and a high grade of civilization had formerly existed, there prevails at present nothing but utter ruin, lawlessness, and poverty.” In this way, they arrived at a genealogy of civilization that ran from Mesopotamia to the Greeks and the Roman Empire, to Christianity, and thence to European civilization, to finally arrive in white, protestant America as the beacon of civilization in their own time. This genealogy, they thought, represented the highway of the history of humanity. The unilinear vision of the history of humanity made its way to the Western civilization courses in numerous American universities. Many young Americans ingested this partial and biased story as the history of humanity tout court. They knew that “elsewhere” there also existed “other” lands and peoples, but their histories and artifacts were a sideshow, not really worth knowing. In ancient and modern history, such partial concepts of civilization were instrumental in empire-building. The dominant literate

288

Siep Stuurman

people of all empires have always seen themselves as the heirs of true humanity and true civilization.19 After the turn of the twentieth century, in particular in post-9/11 America, the “war on terror” has reinforced this use of civilization. People who were defined as “terrorists” were placed outside the bonds of humanity and outside the domain of the law. And yet there were also attempts, more in line with the legacy of Karl Jaspers, to arrive at a more ecumenical vision of civilization—or, better still, of civilizations in the plural. In her study of Jewish philanthropy and the refugee crisis in Russia in 1881 and 1882, Barbara Lambauer wants to attend to the tensions “inherent in the norms and understanding of ‘humanity’” that drew on a canon of Western values and norms. The Alliance Israélite Universelle started its endeavor to assist the Russian Jews who sought refuge in Europe and North America in the wake of the pogroms of the 1890s. Soon they faced the problem of which refugees they should select. Almost as a matter of course, they privileged individuals and families they considered literate, educated, and fit for “Westernization.” On the ground, the latter qualification meant that they should stand a good chance of getting through American immigration procedures. In this way, the meaning of humanity gradually became less universal and more linked to social class and education. In the process, the universality of the idea of humanity gave way to a class-based subset of people, the category of educated and “civilized” Jews. Once again, the idea of humanity was reduced to “civilization.” Instead of restricted versions of humanity, Andrew M. Johnston takes us to an international group of feminist women who sought to enlarge the scope of humanity. They declared that most current notions of humanity actually defined common humanity as common masculinity. For centuries, the feudal order had been run by a male warrior caste. But now, in 1915, they contended, the catastrophe unfolding in the trenches of northern France showed the bankruptcy of the masculine warrior mind. By contrast, the emergent new industrial urban order would further social justice and progress and pass beyond war and nationalism. In this imagined modernity, full political citizenship for women and the taming of toxic nationalism would go hand in hand. However, their vision of humanity was confined to the white Atlantic world and did not include Asia and Africa. They did not appeal to a strong concept of civilization, but their language, dress, and “habits of the heart” tacitly assumed norms of “civilized demeanor.”

Languages of Common Humanity

289

After World War II: An Age of Human Rights? Seen in a long-term historical perspective, the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights represents a major turning point in world history. It should not be judged by the grand claims made by some of its advocates, nor by the disappointment of others at the failure of the United Nations to protect human rights in the Cold War. Both Cold War camps criticized human rights violations in the other camp but denied or silently condoned violations in their own camp. The Universal Declaration marks the moment when an inclusive concept of humanity acquired the status of a global normative value, formally—albeit not wholeheartedly—underwritten by almost all the sovereign states then in existence, including the great powers. In the final vote in the General Assembly of the United Nations, no state voted against adoption, although the communist states, Saudi Arabia, and South Africa abstained. The Declaration also marks a significant moment in public intellectual history. It brought into circulation an authoritative language and a template on which all subsequent defenders of human rights have drawn.20 As I have indicated, the Declaration contained no metaphysical or philosophic foundations and no definition of humanity. The chapters by Betsy Konefal and Nicholas J. Cull discuss the various strategies and tactics used in the struggle against dictatorships in Guatemala and South Africa that used torture, murder, and imprisonment without trial as routine instruments of governing. South Africa codified white supremacy in the doctrine of Apartheid, while the Guatemalan regime, installed by a CIA-sponsored coup, branded anyone who advocated social justice as a “communist.” In both cases, the language of human rights was used in declarations that addressed a worldwide audience. In 1958, Angelo Roncalli, born to a frugal peasant family, was elected as Pope John XXIII. Under his guidance, church teachings took a socially progressive turn. His second encyclical, Pacem in Terris (1963), addressed to all of humanity instead of to Catholics only, endorsed human rights and duties as the foundation of world peace, outlining a Christian doctrine of social justice.21 In 1967, when dictatorial regimes mushroomed throughout Latin America, Pope Paul VI (John’s successor) condemned communism and revolutionary uprisings but made a crucial exception for states with “a manifest longstanding tyranny which would do great damage to fundamental personal rights and dangerous harm to the common good

290

Siep Stuurman

of the country.” Paul VI here stands in a long line of anti-tyrannical doctrines that can be traced back all the way to Thomas Aquinas, who declared that the people had the right to depose “excessive tyrants.”22 The final stage of this way of thinking was called Liberation Theology. And so the political language of human rights was wedded to the political language of a Christian social revolution. The struggle against South African Apartheid also resulted in a mix of different political languages and visions of common humanity. Apartheid functioned as an epicenter of anti-racist world politics during the entire Cold War. Literature on the hardships of ordinary people in South Africa used a language of a shared humanity across borders and oceans. Missionaries and priests, who considered Apartheid a violation of the Christian principle of the brotherhood of humanity, also reported back to their churches on the wretched life of black South Africans. Another highly effective approach was to focus on one victim with which the public could identify. Nelson Mandela, with his characteristic mixture of gravitas, dignity, and a sharp intellect, was the perfect example. In 1988, a daylong concert was played to celebrate Mandela’s seventieth birthday. The concert was watched in sixty-seven countries by an audience of some six hundred million people. The black Christian community in South Africa, under the leadership of bishop Desmond Tutu, invented a new language of humanity, which was based on the idea of Ubuntu, which can be expressed in the maxim “I am because you are.” A fascinating analogy is Ren, the Chinese character for “humanity” or “humaneness”: a combination of the character for “man” or “person” with the character for “two.” Present-day political theorists would classify Ubuntu and Ren as communitarian languages of liberty and equality.

Music and Songs as a Universal Language According to Edward Steichen, the creator of the exposition “The Family of Man,” photography was a “universal language.” While writing was bogged down in national or regional communities, pictures could speak “equally to everybody in the world.”23 The same can be said of music and songs. It is worth recalling that people had pictures, music, and songs before the invention of writing. In their contributions to the present book, Stéphanie Gonçalves, Anaïs Fléchet, and Tobias Hof investigate the meaning and significance of music and songs as languages of common humanity.

Languages of Common Humanity

291

Gonçalves takes us back to October 1964, when the Ballet du XXème siècle, directed by Maurice Béjart, performed Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony on a Brussels stage. More than a hundred singers and ninety dancers from Asia, Africa, and Europe appeared on stage. The multicultural composition of the ballet was important for Béjart. You cannot “present a ballet by saying ‘all men are brothers’ and only stage white people,” he explained. The final movement was Schiller’s Ode to Joy, the joy that accompanies friendship between peoples. Béjart, Gonçalves tells us, presented his ballet as “a hymn to humanity and a call against racism.” The performance was a great success: over the years, more than a hundred thousand visitors watched and heard it. Fléchet investigates the work of Yehudi Menuhin, a world-class violinist, at the UNESCO International Music Council. She shows that Menuhin sincerely and deeply believed in the power of music to maintain fruitful exchanges between nations and cultures, but that he also had close relations with the American State Department. The International Music Council, of which Menuhin was elected president in 1968, became embroiled in two major international controversies, first about Russian dissidents and later about UNESCO’s condemnation of Israel. The Menuhin case shows that belief in music as a “universal language” can yield valuable results, as in the frequent cooperation between European and Asian musicians organized by Menuhin, but that on the other hand it can blind the participants to the political instrumentalization of these lofty ideals by states and lobbyists. In the final contribution, Tobias Hof discusses yet another use of music and songs, this time to collect money to help the victims of a disastrous famine in Ethiopia. In July 1985, the Live Aid concert reached an audience of one and a half billion people. Hof relates that “for a limited time period, the term ‘humanity’ became a powerful, albeit vague, social value, which called upon people’s conscience to help the needy in Africa.” However, in most cases the language was Eurocentric and paternalist: “we,” the good people in the West, must aid “them,” the victims in Africa. The latter were, in songs and films, represented as passive. History “happened to them” but they themselves had no agency. The stereotype of Africa as a continent “without history” was reinforced in numerous television reportages of the famine, which mostly featured energetic and healthy white people doling out food to visibly undernourished black people, with particular attention to black children and babies.

292

Siep Stuurman

Conclusion In this book, we have encountered several political, economic, biological, and theoretical as well as literary, musical, and pictorial languages of humanity. In the nineteenth century, we met with reductionist languages of humanity, which was equated with the white or “Caucasian” race or with a “Western” civilization that was also white. Both were intentionally reductionist and white or Western supremacist. At the turn of the century, we encountered a Jewish philanthropy that in practice, despite universalistic aims, became wedded to a class- and education-based approach. Their language remained in the Jewish orbit but was not intentionally reductionist. They assisted the emigration of some hundred thousand Jews, but that result came at a price: they did not do much for the destitute and the poor. Their language of humanity was paternalist, a trait we also encounter in most post-1945 aid policies and practices. The women’s movement for “peace and freedom” stated their aims in a language that went beyond masculinity and nationalism. Theirs was an intentionally universalist language of humanity, but in practice it remained a white, North Atlantic vision. Let us recall that white supremacy was also challenged at Versailles, but not by the feminists. The Japanese, who sat at the table of the victorious in Versailles, advocated the inclusion of the principle of racial equality in the charter of the League of Nations. But in the end their proposal was swept aside by the virulent opposition of the white-settler colonies in the British Empire and by the United States.24 Looking at the second half of the twentieth century, the picture changes. What in Versailles was a bridge too far had now become feasible. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights set a new global standard but did not endorse national self-determination, which quickly became the key goal of the spokespeople of anti-colonialism and decolonization. The Universal Declaration combined two sorts of rights, rights of liberty and freedom from discrimination, and socioeconomic and cultural rights. The first type of rights were the rights of individuals against encroachments by the state, while the second type represented claims on states to ensure food and shelter, affordable schooling, or a meaningful cultural life for their inhabitants. By contrast, national self-determination was a collective right, proclaiming an equal right to self-government for all collectives that could make a credible claim to nationhood. Universal human rights underwrote democratic citizenship, whereas national self-determination was couched in a language of state formation and mass

Languages of Common Humanity

293

mobilization. What they shared was a staunch rejection of white supremacy, but there was also a latent tension between the two in their attitudes to individual liberty. However, as we have seen in the cases of Guatemala and South Africa, the Universal Declaration said nothing about armed resistance to blatantly oppressive state power, while most spokespeople of national self-determination, with the significant exception of Gandhi, claimed a right to violent resistance if all other roads were blocked. Liberation Theology took a similar stance, albeit with more circumspection. In the three chapters on sound and songs, we came across different visions and practices of common humanity. Using sounds, songs, and visual images, these actors reached larger audiences than written texts ever did, equaled only by the photographic exposition “The Family of Man” in the 1950s. Their visions of humanity differed on several counts: decidedly universalist and anti-racist in Maurice Béjart; combative but also decidedly “Western” in Yehudi Menuhin; universalist on a grand scale but also white paternalist in the music, songs, and television reports of the 1980s. The white paternalism of the pop songs was a feature of virtually all development aid. The aid agencies duly became aware of the risks of being accused of white paternalism, and accordingly their operations currently are presented under the flag of “development cooperation.” Let me finish with a brief observation on the tensions between homogenizing universalisms and the vindications of diversity in many present-day debates. Equality and liberty are universal human rights, but they can be articulated in different ways. On one side stand liberal-individualist articulations; on the other side we meet with liberal-communitarian articulations. The relation between an individualist and a social conception of human nature was also a bone of contention in the drafting of the Universal Declaration. Vladislav Ribnikar, the communist member of the Roosevelt committee, proposed that individuals should be defined by their duties to “society as organized in the state,” but the other members feared that such a formula would open the door to authoritarian government. Charles Malik, who hailed from Lebanon, preferred to start from the individual as the bearer of rights. The Chinese member, Peng-Chun Chang, advocated a middle course based on the Chinese character Ren, which he rendered as “twopeople-mindedness.” The final compromise was Article 29: “Everyone has duties to the community in which alone the free and full development of his personality is possible.”

294

Siep Stuurman

Of course, the significance and specification of rights have to be realized in the ambit of democratic national states. As national states, they tend to promote a certain amount of homogeneity to avoid cultural and political fragmentation. As democratic states, however, they have to respects the rights and liberties of their inhabitants. Thus, every state has to strike a balance between homogeneity and difference (I am of course aware that many present-day states are not democratic, but that is a practical rather than a theoretical problem). On a global scale, a similar need for a balance is manifest, often expressed in an opposition between the language of human rights and the language of a clash of civilizations. To guarantee every inhabitant of the planet a modicum of basic human rights, more homogeneity than exists today will probably be needed. To further a global exchange of ideas and knowledge, a basic English vocabulary, also known as “Globish,” is slowly becoming a worldwide lingua franca. But it would be superfluous, unwise, and, above all, extremely dangerous to pursue an across-the-board cultural homogenization of world culture. Finally, we may ask how realistic the prospect of human rights can be when the majority of states in our world are violators of human rights. Here, it is useful to recall Hannah Arendt’s critique of human rights in The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951). Looking back at the vicissitudes of refugees and stateless people in the interwar years, she noted that people who had only “human rights” were reduced to “the abstract nakedness of being nothing but human.”25 Such people were at the mercy of states who decided whether they would live or die. Only people who were citizens or subjects of national states stood a chance to live decent lives, though totalitarian regimes could transform them overnight into “enemies of the people” or into “Jewish vermin.” The sole positive conclusion of Arendt was to point out the urgency of the “right to have rights.” Article 15 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights posits that “everyone has the right to a nationality” and that “no one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his nationality nor denied the right to change his nationality.” But the Declaration also affirmed the sovereignty of the nation-states that were the members of the United Nations. So Arendt’s paradox remains, but is now a paradox or a tension that sits at the heart of the United Nations. Reading Arendt’s chapter on “the decline of the nation-state and the end of the rights of man” today is a disconcerting experience. The

Languages of Common Humanity

295

increasing disregard for the rights of refugees and immigrants from “failed states” as well as the curbing of the rights of asylum seekers in Europe and North America recalls what happened in the interwar years. And yet history does not repeat itself. Countless workers and refugees from countries outside and inside Europe have entered and settled in the European Union from the 1960s to the present. Rightwing populists have attempted to destabilize democratic European nation-states, but so far they have only been partly successful in parts of Eastern Europe. The only European state that has fallen apart is Yugoslavia, the last remnant of the multinational empires that succumbed after World War I. The wisest course open to us today is to reread Arendt’s pessimistic diagnosis without giving up on human rights, and to recall another voice from the dark interwar years, Antonio Gramsci, who warned that the pessimism of the intellect should always be accompanied by the optimism of the will.

Siep Stuurman is professor emeritus of the history of ideas at Utrecht University. His books include The Invention of Humanity: Equality and Cultural Difference in World History (2017), for which he received the Carlson Award from the Department of Psychiatry of Cornell University, and François Poulain de la Barre and the Invention of Modern Equality (2004), which was awarded the George Mosse Prize by the American Historical Association. He is a consultant editor of The Journal of the History of Ideas.

Notes 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14.

Cited in Liu, Clash of Empires, 32. See Stuurman, “Humanity”; Stuurman, “Dehumanization.” On the global color line, see Lake and Reynolds, Drawing the Global Color Line. Jaspers, Vom Ursprung und Ziel, 19; my translation. Bellah and Joas, The Axial Age, 11. See also Fingarette, Confucius. See the essays by Jan Arnason and Jan Assmann in Bellah and Joas, The Axial Age. See Montagu, Statement on Race. See Stuurman, The Invention of Humanity, 520–526. Césaire, Discours sur le colonialisme, 12–14; 79–92, for the discussion of Négritude. Césaire, Cahier d’un retour, 57. See the list in Montagu, Man’s Most Dangerous Myth, 263–267. See Glendon, A World Made New, 146–147. See Hacking, “Why Race Still Matters.” Montagu, Man’s Most Dangerous Myth, 54–55.

296

Siep Stuurman

15. Cited in Woodhouse, Puritanism and Liberty, 53. 16. “Vorrede zur ersten Auflage,” Kritik der Reinen Vernunft, in Kant, Werke, 13n; my translation. 17. Habermas, Der Philosophische Diskurs, 16; my translation. 18. See Taylor, “Politics.” 19. See Bowden, The Empire of Civilization. 20. I paraphrase here the more elaborate discussion in Stuurman, Invention of Humanity, 486–487. 21. See Kelly, The Oxford Dictionary of Popes, 320–322. 22. See Coleman, A History of Political Thought, 112–114. 23. Steichen, “Photography,” 160. 24. See Shimazu, Japan, Race and Equality. 25. Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 300.

Bibliography Arendt, Hannah. The Origins of Totalitarianism. Orlando: Harvest Books, n.d. Bellah, Robert N., and Hans Joas, eds. The Axial Age and Its Consequences. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2012. Bowden, Brett. The Empire of Civilization: The Evolution of an Imperial Idea. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009. Césaire, Aimé. Cahier d’un retour au pays natal. Paris: Présence Africaine, 1983. ———. Discours sur le colonialisme. Paris: Présence Africaine, 2004. Coleman, Janet. A History of Political Thought: From the Middle Ages to the Renaissance. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 2000. Fingarette, Herbert. Confucius—The Secular as Sacred. New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1972. Glendon, Mary Ann. A World Made New: Eleanor Roosevelt and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. New York: Random House, 2001. Habermas, Jürgen. Der Philosophische Diskurs der Moderne. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1985. Hacking, Ian. “Why Race Still Matters.” Daedalus 134 (2005): 102–116. Kant, Immanuel. Werke in Zwölf Bänden. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1968. Kelly, J.N.D., ed. The Oxford Dictionary of Popes. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986. Lake, Marilyn, and Henry Reynolds. Drawing the Global Color Line: White Men’s Countries and the Challenge of Racial Equality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008. Liu, Lydia H. The Clash of Empires: The Invention of China in Modern World Making. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006. Montagu, Ashley. Man’s Most Dangerous Myth: The Fallacy of Race. New York: Columbia University Press, 1945.

Languages of Common Humanity

297

———. Statement on Race. New York: Henry Schuman, 1951. Shimazu, Naoko. Japan, Race and Equality: The Racial Equality Proposal of 1919. London: Routledge, 1998. Steichen, Edward. “Photography.” Wisconsin Magazine of History 41 (1958): 159–173. Stuurman, Siep. “Humanity.” In The Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Globalization, edited by George Ritzer, 963–971. Malden: Blackwell Publishing, 2012. ———. The Invention of Humanity: Equality and Cultural Difference in World History. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2017. ———. “Dehumanization before the Columbian Exchange.” In The Routledge Handbook of Dehumanization, edited by Maria Kronfeldner, 39–51. London: Routledge, 2021. Taylor, C.C.W. “Politics.” In The Cambridge Companion to Aristotle, edited by Jonathan Barnes, 241–243. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Woodhouse, A.S.P., ed. Puritanism and Liberty: Being the Army Debates (1647–49) from the Clarke Manuscripts. London: Dent, 1986.

INDEX

abolitionists, 4 absolute sovereignty, 135 Addams, Jane, 133–34, 135, 140, 141, 142, 147, 148 on League of Nations scepticism of men, 137 Africa charity songs for famine relief, 254 as Dark Continent, 269 famine in, 261 famine relief, 252–57 perceptions of famines, 266 West blamed for oppressing, 263–64 African Americans enslavement, 53 IQ of, 287 African Communist, 192 African Music and Drama Association, 191 African National Congress, 192, 197 Afrikaner National Party, 183 Afrikaners, 182–83 Agassiz, Louis, 56 and Morton, 56, 67–68 Ailey, Alvin, 218 AIU. see Alliance Israelite Universelle Alexander II, Czar, 111–12 assassination, 113 Alliance for Progress, 163 Alliance Israelite Universelle, 13, 19, 288 beginning of, 108–11 Allon, Yigal, 242 Amandla, 193, 194 Ambros, Wolfgang, 258 American explorers exclusionary vision of Iraq, 95 as pioneers, 93–94

Americanism, debate over, 146 American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, 123 American Journal of Science, 57 American Musicological Society, 243 American Oriental Society, 81, 92 Americans contradictory images of Iraq, 94 exclusion of Iraqis from common humanity, 86–89 identification with Iraq, 82 lines of reasoning about Iraqis, 88 view of modern Iraqis, 78–79, 87 American School of Ethnology, 12–13 Amin, Mohamed, 252 Amnesty International, 30 Anatomy of Apartheid, 190 An Evening with Salvador Allende, 253 Anglo-Boer wars, 182–283 Anglo-Jewish Association, 114 Anthology of African Music, 234 anti-apartheid movement achievement, 181–82 cultural outreach, 200 Anti-Apartheid News, 190, 192, 193, 200 anti-Judaism, 111–12 anti-racism movements, 259 apartheid, 289 and art world, 188–89 counter-campaign, 189–91 cultural bases of, 182–83 cultural boycott, 187, 194–95 cultural defence of, 186–87 end of, 181 and film industry, 188 first voices against, 185 gradual end of, 195–98

Index

mainstream criticism of, 196–97 overseas reactions to, 183–84 resistance in South Africa, 185–86 struggle against, 290 Aquinas, Thomas, 290 Arabian Nights Entertainments, 83 Arafat, Yasser, 240, 244 Arbenz, Jacobo, 166 archaeological expeditions, 92 archaeological sites in Iraq, 78 archaeological excavations, 81 Arendt, Hannah, 139, 294–95 Armas, Carlos Castello, 166 Aron, Raymond, 240 art and humanity, 1–2 Art Contra Apartheid, 189 Artister, Forente, 262, 267 Artists United Against Apartheid, 195 Ashcroft, Peggy, 187 Australia, Too, 264 Austria fur Afrika, 264, 268 Avnery, Uri, 244 Axial Age, 281 Ayre, Alfred, 187 Bach, Johann Sebastian, 233–34 Bahrani, Zanab, 85 Baignères, Claude, 219 Balch, Emily Greene, 14, 135–36, 137, 142, 144, 145 ballet Russian school, 212 Soviet approach to, 213 Band Aid, 253, 256, 257–58, 262, 270 criticism of, 261 Band fur Afrika, 267, 268 Barenboim, Daniel, 229, 244 Bari, Tania, 213 Barnard, Christiaan, 190 Barnes, Clive, 219–20 Baron de Hirsch Stiftung, 121 Baron de Hirsch Fund, 121 Bartok, Bela, 231 Batista, Fulgencio, 163 Beatles, 235 Beauvoir, Simone de, 215, 240 Beecher-Stowe, Harriet, 184 Beethoven, Ludwig van, 15–16, 209 Béjart, Maurice, 291 career, 210 global context of work, 211–13 limits of choreography, 218–20

299 as master of banality, 221 presentation of Ninth Symphony, 209 reshaping Ninth Symphony, 221 Béjart, Maurice de, 15–16 Béjart Ballet Lausanne, 220 Belgian Royal Theater La Monnaie, 209 Berg, Alan, 266 Berger, Gaston, 211 Bergson, Henri, 131 on human rights, 139, 140 role in World War I, 138–19 Two Sources of Morality and Religion, 139 Berlin, Isaiah, 187, 241 Bernays, Edward, 181 Bernoff, Jack, 235, 244 Bernstein, Leonard, 17, 241 Berryman, Philip, 160, 166 Birth of Tragedy (Nietzsche), 215 Bjorklund, David, 9 Black Christ, 189 Black Panthers, 212 Black Power, 218 Blatch, Harriet Stanton, 137 Bloom, Harry, 191 B’nai Brith, 121 Bodenhorn, Barbara, 20 Boers, 182 Bolero (Ravel), 214 Bornoff, Jack, 237, 238 Boulanger, Nadia, 232 Boulez, Pierre, 245 Bowie, David, 250 Boycott Committee, 188 Brauman, Rony, 256 Breytenbach, Breyten, 197 Brezhnev, Leonid, 240 Bridge in Music, 234–35 Brink, Andre, 185, 197, 198 British Museum, 91 British Reggae Artists for Africa Team, 259, 263–64, 265, 269 British Society for the Protection of Aborigines, 59 Brody crisis, 117–18 Buchan, Bruce, 7 Buck-Morss, Susan, 4–5, 133 Buddhism, 281 Buerk, Michael, 252 Buffon, George-Louis Leclerc, Comte de, 55

300 Bulletin de l’Alliance Israelite Universelle, 110 Burnett, Linda Anderson, 7 Busch, Adolf, 230 Busch, Fritz, 230 Cahier d’un retour au pays natal (Cesaire), 282 Caine, Michael, 191 Calhoun, John C., 62 Camara, Dom Helder, 169–70 capitalism, Catholic critique, 167 CAREUSA, 256 Carlos, John, 218 Carlsen, Henning, 188 Cass, Lewis, 59 Casson, Sir Hugh, 189 Castro, Fidel, 162–63,166-167 Catholic Church communism vs. capitalism, 163 dedication to humanity, 175–76 efforts at social justice in Guatemala, 158–60 interest in social concerns, 160–65 Vatican II, 161–64 celebrity humanitarianism, 250–51 Central Committee for Jewish refugees, 115 Césaire, Aimé, 282 Chagall, Marc, 189 Chakrabarthy, Depesh, 6 Chanteurs sans frontières, 253–55, 259, 262, 267 charity concerts with actors, 259–60 Africa and famine, 261–65 amount of money raised, 255 around the world, 255 artists and styles, 257–61 critics of, 255–56 diversity of groups, 260–61 fundraising potential, 257 charity groups, 253 charity songs appeal to listeners’ guilt, 267 appeal to pity, 268 and Christianity, 265–66 commercially successful, 269 for famine relief, 252–57 political tone, 265 and self-image of society, 251 stereotypes of Africa, 269

Index

visions of humanity in, 270 Child of Our Time, 188 child sponsorship fundraising tactic, 268 China, 162 choreography, 214 limits of, 218–20 Christianity, and concert songs, 265–66 Christian rock, 258 Chumbawamba anarcho-punk band, 261 Church in the Modern World, 162, 163, 164 Cicero, Marcus T., 7 Cirque Royal, Brussels, 209 civilization concept of, 287 double meaning of, 87 and empire-building, 287–88 Iraq as birthplace of, 82–83 pre-20th-century idea of, 79 test of, 144 Civilization on Trial in South Africa, 188 civil rights movement, in US, 212 Clegg, Johnny, 196, 198 coercion, and women’s rights, 144 Coetzee, J. M., 185 cognitive capacities, 32, 39 Cold War, 162 and apartheid, 186 effect on Béjart’s work, 212 Menuhin’s activities during, 232–35 Collins, John, 185, 188–89, 192 colonization, 7 Come Back, Africa, 188 Committee for Fairness in Sport, 192 common humanity, 286, 289 as common masculinity, 288 core of, 281 exclusion of Iraqis, 86–89 as invention, 285 notions of, 3 Communist Party of South Africa, 185 Concert for Bangladesh, 253 Concert for Two Violins in D Minor (Bach), 234 Confucianism, 281 Congress for Cultural Freedom, 234 Congress of Vienna, 108 Conrad, Timothy A., 59

Index

Contact magazine, 186 Cooke, Sam, 253 Cooper, Gary, 230 cosmic patriotism, 140, 146 Cosmos (Humboldt), 56 Covid-19 pandemic and Olympic games, 1 Crania Americana (Morton), 53, 57–61, 62, 65, 66 craniometry, 284, 287 Crater group, 168, 170, 175, 176 Crémieux, Adolphe, 109, 112 Critique of Pure Reason (Kant), 285 Cromwell, Oliver, 284 Crossland, James, 7 Cry Freedom, 196 Cry the Beloved Country (Paton), 184, 198 Ctesias, 83 Cuban missile crisis, 212 Cuban Revolution, 163 threat to Catholicism, 166–67 Cull, Nicholas J., 15, 289 cultural boycott of South Africa, 187–88 cultural Cold Warriors, 232 cultural norms, 2 cultural Olympiad, Mexico, 211 cultural outreach, 15 Cultural Presentations Program, 232 Current Anthropology, 287 Damas affair, 109 Dammers, Jerry, 196 “Dancing in the Street,” 250 Dankworth, Johnny, 187 Dannenbaum, Tom, 8 Darwin, Charles, 67, 68 Davies, Alphonso, 21 Death is Part of the Process, 196 Declaration of Human Rights, 5 democratic states, human rights and, 294 Denis, Brutus, 192 Depardieu, Gerard, 259 Department of Defense (US), 77 Department of State (US), 229 Der Philosophische Diskurs der Moderne (Habermas), 285 Dewey, John, 144–45 Diallo, Bakary, 6 Dickenson-Lilley, John, 21

301 Dickson, Samuel Henry, 62 dignity, 31 Dilemma, 188 Diodorus, 84 Diogenes the Cynic, 31 disability, 21 Discours sur le colonialisme (Césaire), 282 diversity, 19–20 Doctors without Borders, 256 Dolfus, Ariane, 215 “Do They Know It’s Christmas?,” 252, 253, 261, 265, 266 Douglass, Frederick, 4, 61 Dry White Season, 196 Duchene, Gabrielle, 136 Dunham, Katherine, 213, 218 Durkheim, Emile, 135 Dussel, Enrique, 164, 171, 173 Dutch Reformed Church, 182 Dylan, Bob, 253, 258 Eckel, Jan, 5 Edinburgh Phrenological Society, 53 Edmonds, Penelope, 5, 9 Egyptology, 61 Eilts, Hermann, 244 Ein Tag fur Afrika, 256 Ejército de Liberacion Nacional, 171 Elorriaga, Manuel Aguira, 167, 168 Ellis Island, 120 Ellul, Jacques, 7 Ellorio, Juan Garciá, 171–72 Enesco, Georges, 230 English Board, 109 English Revolution, 284 Enlightenment, 3–4 humanity from, 229 Epping, Sarah, 13, 19, 287 equality articulation of, 293–94 as invention, 285 Ethiopia, 262, 263 civil war, 256 “Ethiopia,” 253 Ethiopian famine, 252 Exploration of the Bible Lands (Hilprecht), 86–87 “Face of Famine,” 268 Family of Man exhibition, 282, 290, 293 famine movement, 257

302 famine(s) in Africa, 261 perception of, 266 Fanon, Frantz, 6, 262 fascism, origins of, 282 Fashion Aid, 260 Feinberg, Barry, 193 Feldman, Ilana, 8 feminist thought, 38 feminist peace activists, 14 Fifth Afro-Asian Writers Conference, 192 Fight the Famine Council for Economic Reconstruction, 141 Finch, Peter, 192 First Pan African Cultural Festival, 192 Fléchet, Anais, 16, 290, 291 Flourens, Marie Jean Pierre, 66–67 folk music, 258 Fonda, Henry, 187 Force-Bonté (Diallo), 6 formal institutions, 42–43 Franco-Prussian War, 111 Freedom Charter of 1955, 185 Free Museum of Science and Art, 85, 90–92 French Consistory, 109 French Declaration of the Rights of Man, 282 French Indochina War, 212 French MRAP, 213 French Socialist Party, 136 Friedländer, Moritz, 114 From Empire to Humanity (Moniz), 8 Fuerza Armada Rebeldes, 172 Fugard, Athol, 185 Furtseva, Ekaterina, 237, 240 Furtwängler, Wilhelm, 231 Gabriel, Pater, 195 Gandhi, Mahatma, 293 Gaza Strip, 240 Geldof, Bob, 18, 250, 252–53, 255, 258, 259, 261, 269 gender, 38–39 and women’s rights, 134 Gerassi, John, 160, 166, 171 German League for Human Rights, 143 German League of Red Front Fighters, 217 Germany, Nazi Party in power, 124 Giacometti, Alberto, 189

Index

Giddings, Franklin, 135, 136, 142 Gide, Charles, 136 Gienow-Hecht, Jessica C. E., 279 Gilabert, Pablo, 33, 34–35 Gliddon, George, 61, 62 Global North, 80 Global South, 80 Globish, 294 Gods Must Be Crazy, 196 Goldblatt, Cullen, 6 Goldsmid, Sir Julian, 114 Goncalves, Stephanie, 15–16, 19, 290–91 Gordimer, Nadine, 185, 188, 198 Gosself, Kyrill, 19 Gould, Diana, 232 Gould, Stephen Jay, on Morton, 69 Graceland album, 194 Graham, Martha, 215 Greek philosophy, 281 Greene, Graham, 187 Griffin, James, 32–33, 34 Guatemala Catholic activism in, 166–67 Catholic workers in, 158–60 CIA coup, 289 social justice activism, 14–15 guerrilla warfare, 171 Gwangwa, Jonas, 191, 193 Habermas, Jürgen, 285 Hague Resolutions, 143 Haiti earthquake of 2010, 262 Halbwachs, Jeanne, 136, 147 Hall, Stuart, 265 Hammami, Said, 243–44 Hapag, 119 Harrison, Charles C., 91–92 Harrison, George, 253 Harrison, Ronald, 189 Hawaii for Africa, 258 Hear n’Aid, 253, 256, 258, 269 Heart of Nashville, 261, 267 Hebrew Emigrant Aid Society, 115, 116 Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, 123–24 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 4 Helander, Gunnar, 185 Holbraad, Martin, 20 Hepworth, David, 250 Heritage Resource Preservation Playing Cards, 77–78 Hilfsverein der Deutschen Juden, 111

Index

Hilprecht, Hermann V., 85, 86, 89, 92, 93, 287 Hirsch, Maurice de, 13–14, 110, 117, 118 and Jewish mass migration, 118–24 historians, as latecomers, 6 Hodgkin, Thomas, 58 Hodgson, William B., 62 Hof, Tobias, 16–17, 291 Hoggart, Richard, 237 Homo sapiens, 283–84, 285 homosexuality, 282–83 Horowitz, Vladimir, 241 Houser, George, 184, 185 Houston, Whitney, 196 Howard, Frankie, 187 Huddleston, Trevor, 185, 187, 200–1 Huehuetenango parishes in Guatemala, 168 Hugo, Victor, 114 Huisman, Maurice, 214 Hull House, 133 humanitarianism money raised by charity concerts, 255 religious and secular roots, 265–69 humanity. see also common humanity as abstract concept, 282 as abstraction, 279 and African famine, 291 ambivalence on notion of, 107–8 and art, 1–2 Catholic dedication to, 175–76 changed understandings, 4 in charity songs, 270 Chinese character for, 290 in colloquial speech, 279 concept in anti-apartheid movement, 200–1 cultural debates, 1–2 defined by privileged capacities, 35 divided into categories, 52 divided or segmented, 80 from Enlightenment and Romanticism, 229 in Enlightenment thinking, 3–4 in Europe since 16th century, 8 evolution of meanings of, 2–3 exclusionary vision of, 13, 82–89 expanding and inclusive, 8 focus of present literature, 7 and French Declaration of Rights of Man, 279–80

303 indigenous African idea of, 15 Jaspers’ vision of, 280–81 kinds of exclusion, 36 lacking definition in UN Declaration, 283 less universal meaning, 288 malleable idea of, 10 Menuhin’s vision of, 229–30 Morton’s role in defining, 51–52 music and songs as language of, 290–91 musicians’ fundraising efforts, 251–52 in Ninth Symphony, 214–18 norms in Béjart’s art, 21, 211 and Olympic athletes, 1 Pacem in Terris addressed to, 289 in past two centuries, 280 positing an essence of, 35 restricted sense of, 282 in 21st century conflicts, 2 19th century debates, 4–5 20th-century visions of, 5 timeline for thinking about, 281 as totality of human beings, 82 troubled legacy, 3 unilinear vision of, 287 and Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 289 view of musicians, 261 whole organism, 148 women and children in, 9 humanizing norms, 42 human rights Bergson on, 139 boundary policing, 41–42 Catholic defense of, 165 classificatory systems, 140 and cognitive capacities, 32 contemporary theories, 32–33 exclusion of some humans, 34 exclusion problem, 41 grounding of, 283 key challenges facing societies, 41 Lefebvre on, 140 in modern world, 36 and national states, 294 natural kinds, 36–37 normative implications, 40–43 orthodox approaches, 40 and philosophers, 11 philosophers and, 11

304 as social construct, 37–40 social construction perspective, 42–43 standard theorizing about, 29–30 theories of, 34–36 trajectory of, 6–7 widespread assumptions, 30–31 Human Rights, 4 human rights algorithm, 286 Human Rights Without Borders, 30 Human Rights Year, 192 human(s) categories, 43 cognitive capacities, 39 gender and, 38–39 socially constructed concept, 11 social practices determining, 42–43 Humboldt, Alexander von, 56 Hume, David, 7 Husserl, Edmund, 19 hybridity, 63–64 Ibn Khaldun, 3 IMC. see International Music Council industrial order of society, 134 Industrial Revolution, 134 informal social norms, 42–43 inhumanity, 19 International Association of Music Libraries, 243 International Congress of Women, 131 international feminism, 137 International Music Council, 228, 291 Congress in Moscow 1971, 230 growth of, 234 Menuhin elected president, 235 International Paralympics of 2021, 21 International Women’s Suffrage Alliance, 131 Invention of Humanity (Stuurman), 7 Iraq American identification with, 82 ancient names for, 84 antiquities sent to US, 85 within biblical world, 83 citizens views on, 78–79 connection to the Bible, 81 excavation in, 287 Old Testament sites, 83 as origin of humanity, 82–83 under Ottoman rule, 93 reasons for US to be in, 80–81

Index

US troops in, 77–78 and vision of humanity, 13 Iraqis American view of, 87 denied claim to archaeological sites, 90 excluded from common humanity, 86–89 failure to claim sites, 90–91 Ishiguro, Kazuo, 20 Israel, and UNESCO, 240–44 Israelitische Allianz zu Wien, 111 Iyengar, B. K. S., 233 Jacobs, Aletta, 141 Jagger, Mick, 250 Jaspers, Karl, 280–81, 288 Jaworska, Agnieszka, 35 Jefferson, Thomas, 55 Jewish Agricultural and Industrial Aid Society, 121 Jewish aid organizations, 107 Jewish Colonization Association, 121–22 Jewish emancipation in France, 108 Jewish Farmer, 121 Jewish humanitarianism, undermining AIU, 111 Jewish immigrants arriving in US, 113 Jewish philanthropy, 288 and Enlightenment, 108 transnational networks, 111 Jewish refugees, crisis after assassination of czar, 113–14 Jews defenders of equal rights, 108–9 mass migration to US, 118–24 Jobs, Sebastian, 279 Johnson, Anna, 5 Johnston, Andrew M., 14, 288 John XXIII, Pope, 161, 289 Jordan, Pallo, 196 Judaic monotheism, 281 Kant, Immanuel, 139, 285 Kauhanen, Kaj, 237 Kennedy, John F., 11 Khrennikov, Tikhon, 236, 237, 238 Killmister, Suzy, 11, 18, 283, 285 King Kong, 191 Kisselgoff, Anna, 221 Klara and the Sun (Ishiguro), 20

Index

Klose, Fabian, 8 Kollek, Teddy, 242 Konefal, Betsy, 14, 18, 289 Kracauer, Siegfried, 251 Krenn, Michael L., 12, 19, 286–87 Krish, John, 188 Kunene, Henry, 189 Kunkel, Sönke, 279 Kymlicka, Will, 41 Labour Party (UK), 187 La Guma, Alex, 192 Laidlaw, James, 20 Lake, Marilyn, 142 Lambauer, Barbara, 13–14, 288 “Land of Africa,” 259, 267, 268 land reform, 164–65 Landsmanschaften, 123 Latin American Episcopal Conference, 161, 173–74 Lauterbach, Eduard, 117 League Covenant, criticism of, 143 League of Nations, 132–33, 138 International Labour Office, 141 Lebret, Louis-Joseph, 264 Lefebvre, Alexander, 140 Lefèvre, Jorge, 213 Leningrad Symphony (Shostakovich), 193 Lethal Weapon, 200 Let My People Go!, 190 “Let’s Make Africa Green Again,” 259, 263, 267, 268 Levelers, 284 Leven, Narcisse, 108 liberation theology, 290, 293 liberty, articulation of, 293–94 Linnaeus, Carl, 55 Live Aid concert, 18–19, 250, 255, 261, 270, 291 criticism of, 261 musicians, 260 organization of, 252 outcome of, 250–51 Long Walk to Freedom (Mandela), 198 Louvre, 91 Luthuli, Chief, 189 Lyell, Charles, 56 Ma, Yo-Yo, 229 MacColl, Ewan, 187 Macmillan, Chrystal, 141

305 Macmillan, Elizabeth, 143 Madonna, 269 Maheu, Rene, 235, 237 Maier, Charles, 17 Makeba, Miriam, 188, 196 Malik, Charles, 293 Mandela, 196 Mandela, Nelson, 192 address to US Congress, 182 birthday concert, 290 concert for, 195–96 focus of anti-apartheid, 195 freed from prison, 197–98 inauguration, 198 president of South Africa, 181 Mandela Tribute against Apartheid, 271 Manifest Destiny, 57–61 Mansion House Committee, 115 Marian Peter, Sister, 159 denunciation of, 172 in Guatemala, 166–67 Maritain, Jacques, 160 Martinez, Menia, 212 Maryknoll Order, 158 Mater et Magistra, 161–62, 167 Matshikiza, Todd, 191 Mayibuye Africa, 193 Mbeki, Govan, 192 Mbeki, Thabo, 192–93, 198–99 Mbembe, Achille, 140 M’Bow, Amadou, Mahtar, 241 Mead, George Herbert, 135, 136 Melly, George, 187 Melville, Marjorie Bradford, 173 career, 158 Melville, Thomas, 158 men, self-created norms, 134 Menuhin, Yehudi, 16, 18, 291, 293 address to Soviet Ministry of Culture, 239 divorce and remarriage, 232 and Israel, 240–44 Israel vs. UNESCO, 241 as liberal utopian, 228 life and career, 230–35 president of IMC, 228–29 private archives, 229 speech to IMC General Assembly, 228 support for Russian dissidents, 230, 236–37 vision of humanity, 229–30

306 Message to the People of the Third World, 169 Messerer, Asaf, 212 Michael, George, 196 Michael, John, 287 military conflicts, 7–8 Mill, John Stuart, 5 Miller, Arthur, 240–41 Mismeasure of Man (Gould), 69 Mission House Committee, 114 Moller, Esther, 9 Moniz, Amanda B., 8 Montagu, Ashley, 284 Montaigne, Michel de, 3 Mortara, Edgardo, 109 Mortara affair, 109 Montefiore, Moses, 109 Montes, Cesar, 172 moral peculiarities, 58–59 Morton, Samuel George, 12–13, 17, 18, 120, 286–87 and Agassiz, 67–68 contributions of skulls to, 60–61 crucial points of work, 69–70 on emancipation, 54–55 fading reputation, 68–69 life of, 52–55 and manifest destiny, 57–61 on moral peculiarities, 58–59 positive reception of work of, 64–66 on racial interbreeding, 63–64 reputation of, 51–52 skull collection, 56 on slavery, 61–63 views on Europeans, 54 Moulaert, Pierre, 219 Moyn, Samuel, 5 MTV video channel, 253 Mudra Afrique, 217 Murphy, Robert D., 232 Musical Anthology of the Orient, 234 music as language of humanity, 290–91 Music Education in the Countries of the Orient, 235 Mutabaruka, 259 “Nacht im Wind,” 255, 256, 266 Naoroji, Dadabhai, 4 Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (Douglass), 61 National Front (UK), 258 National Hockey League, 260

Index

nationalism, 135 versus internationalism, 136 as tool of oppression, 136 National Review, 287 National Security Doctrine (US), 164 national self-determination, 292–93 national states, human rights and, 294 Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, 69 Native Americans Morton’s conclusions on, 59 slaughter of, 52 natural kinds, 36–37, 39 natural rights tradition, 39 Naught for Your Comfort (Huddleston), 185 Nazi Party, 124 Nazism, origins, 282 Neanderthals, 284 Negritude, 282 Netter, Charles, 113–14 Neumann, Lutz, 256 new Christendom, 166 Newer Ideals of Peace (Addams), 133–34, 135 Ngubane, Joshua K., 185 Nicholas, Nola, 230 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 7, 213, 215 Ninth Symphony (Beethoven), 291 artistic and political message, 213 as ballet for peace, 218–19 concept of humanity, 214–18 nongovernmental organizations, and charity concerts, 256–57 No Nukes, 253 Norddeutscher Lloyd, 119 norms humanizing, 42 informal social, 42–43 Northern Lights, 253, 261, 266 Notes on the State of Virginia (Jefferson), 55 Nott, Josiah, 63–64 Ode to Joy (Schiller), 209, 291 Oistrakh, David, 231, 233–34, 236 Olympic Games Barcelona, 198 diplomatic tension, 219 Mexico, 218 On Human Rights (Griffin), 32–33 On the Origin of Species (Darwin), 68

307

Index

Ordaz, Diaz, 218 Oregon Territory expedition, 59–60 Orientalism (Said), 81 Origins of Totalitarianism (Arendt), 294 Ottoman Empire government, 93 Jewish isolation in, 109 Our Slavic Fellow Citizens (Balch), 136, 142 Pacem in Terris, 162, 289 pacifism, 134–35 Pale of Settlement, 112 reduced in size, 114 Palestine Liberation Organization, 240 Pan African Congress, 186 Papal encyclicals, 161 Paralympic games, 1 Paris Peace Conference, 132 women at, 138 Paton, Alan, 184, 198 patriarchy, 41 Paulmann, Johannes, 8, 9 Paul VI, Pope, 162, 164, 165, 174, 289–90 peace, and women’s rights, 144 Peng-Chun Chang, 283, 293 Persinger, Louis, 230 Peters, John P., 82, 87, 88, 90, 92–93 Phillips, Anne, 35 photography, as universal language, 290 phrenology, 53–55 see also Skulls and moral peculiarities, 58–59 Pickering, Charles, 65 Pictures of Starving Children Sell Records, 261 Pinochet, Augusto, 199 Pinter, Harold, 187 Pioneer Fund, 69 Pioneers, The, 259 Plato, 31–32 Pliny, 84 Plissetsky, Azary, 212 Poitier, Sidney, 187, 191 political recognition, 146 political rights and universal norms, 137 polygenism, 287 pop music, 267 pop songs, white paternalism in, 293

Popular Front, France, 217 Population and Nutrition Projects of World Bank, 266 Populorum Progressio, 164, 165, 175 Prichard, James Cowles, 56 Prussia, and Jewish migration, 119 Queen, rock band, 194, 250 race, Morton on, 61 Radio Freedom, 193 Ragaz, Clara, 135 Ramondt-Hirschmann, Cor, 141 Rancière, Jacques, 146 Rashford, Marius, 21 Rastafari movement, 259 Ravel, Maurice, 214 Reagan, Ronald, 262, 271 Reddy, E. S., 195 Redgrave, Vanessa, 187 Reflection Group on Major World Problems, 241 refugee crisis in Russia, 288 refugees, 195 Reggae artists, 258–59 Restrepo, Camilo Torres, 170–71 Retzius, Anders, 56, 66, 67 Ribnikar, Vladislav, 293 Richie, Lionel, 258 Rizal, Jose, 4 Roberts, John, 239 Rock Against Racism events, 258 Rogosin, Lionel, 188 romanticism, humanity from, 229 Roncalli, Angelo, 289 Ross, E. A., 1353 Rostropovich, Mstislav, 238, 239 Rostropovich case, 16 Roth, Philip, 240 Rotten, Elizabeth, 143 Rowland, Christopher, 173 Royal Academy of Music, 229 Rubenstein, Arthur, 241 Rubin, Yitzhak, 242 Rugby World Cup, 198 Ruschenberger, William S. W., 60 Rushton, J. Philippe, 69, 287 Russell, Bertrand, 187 Russia anti-Jewish riots, 113 exclusionary legislation, 111–12 Pale of Settlement, 112

308 Russian Jewish work, 115 Russian Jews attacks on, 114 exclusionary policies, 112 immigration policies, 114–18 migration plan for, 112–13 Sabruno, Jon, 173 Said, Edward W., 81, 244, 262, 267 Salomon, Alice, 145 Sartre, Jean-Paul, 240 Sasson, 9 Savagery, 7 Schiller, Friedrich, 209, 291 Schirren, Fernand, 215 Schlesinger, Arthur, 240 Schmitt, Carl, 140 Schoon, Marius, 197 Schreiner, Olive, 131 Schwartz, Benjamin, 282 Schwimmer, Rosika, 141 science, American, 65–68 scientific racism, 283, 287 Scott, Michael, 185, 187 Sechaba, 192 Second Vatican Council. See Vatican II Sen, Amartya, 267 settlement sociology, 133 sex/gender distinction, 38–39 Shankar, Ravi, 235, 253 Sharpeville massacre, 184 Sheppard, David, 187 Shostakovich, Dimitri, 193 Silliman, Benjamin, 57 Simmel, Georg, 136 Simon, Paul, 194–95 Sinatra, Frank, 194 Sinclair, Mark, 139 Singer, Peter, 267 Six-Day War, 240, 244 ska artists, 258–59 skulls. See also Phrenology deeper meaning of collection, 66 purchase of Morton’s, 69 Retzius on, 66 slavery Jefferson on, 55 Morton on, 61–63 Small, Albion, 135, 136 Smith, Christian, 160 Smith, Tommie, 218 Sobakine, Vadim, 237

Index

social construct, 37–40 social construction perspective, 42–43 social constructions, 285 socialism, Christian form of, 169–70 social kinds, 36 Social Leadership Workshops, 167 sociology, and women’s rights, 135 Solidarité, French notion of, 135 Solzhenitsyn, Alexander, 238, 239 songs as language of humanity, 290–91 Sosa, Marco Antonio Yon, 172 South Africa, 15 apartheid, 289 Black Christians in, 290 British and Dutch settlers, 182 cultural bases of apartheid, 182–83 cultural defense of apartheid, 186–87 culture in new, 198–99 end of apartheid, 181–82 excluded from 1968 Olympics, 218 investigation of past crimes, 198 links to British Commonwealth, 184 new constitution, 198 overseas reactions to apartheid, 183–84 rapid economic development, 183 resistance to apartheid, 185–86 Sharpeville massacre, 184 Truth and Reconciliation Commission, 198 South Africa Foundation, 186 South African Communist Party, 197 Soviet dissidents, Menuhin’s support of, 236–40 Soviet Union, 162 Béjart’s relationship with, 212 Ministry of Culture, 236 Spitting Image TV show, 200 Sport Aid, 260 Starr, Anthony, 238 “Stars,” 253, 268 “Starvation,” 263, 266 “Starvation/Tam Tam pour L’Éthiopie,” 259 states, liberal vs. conservative, 139–40 Statesman (Plato), 31 status, 37 Steichen, Edward, 281, 290 Steinmeier, Frank Walter, 20 Stevens, Denis, 238 Stone, Shepard, 232

Index

Stornig, Katherine, 9 Stravinsky, Igor, 214 Stuurman, Siep, 3, 7, 17 suffrage as civil right, 133 Suga, Yoshihido, 1 “Sun City,” 271 Suski, Laura, 268 Sutherland, Graham, 189 Swanwick, Helena, 144 Symphonie pour un homme seul, 210 Taktakishvili, Otar, 236 „Tam Tam pour l‘Ethiopie,“ 255 Tannenbaum, Julie, 35 Tasioulas, John, 32–33, 34–35 Taylor, A. J. P., 187 “Tears Are Not Enough,” 253, 260 test, for humanity, 20 Thatcher, Margaret, 262, 271 The Cause, 258, 266, 268 The Concerned, 268, 269 “The Garden,” 264, 265 Third World, 162 Live Aid concert and, 250–51 as proletariat of humanity, 169 Thulin, Mirjam, 8 Ticktin, Miriam, 8 Tlateloco massacre, Mexico, 218 Tokyo Ballet, 220 Tokyo Olympics of 2021, 1, 21 Torres, Camilo, 173 Trade School, New York, 121 Treaty of Tanjin, 279 Tippett, Michael, 188 Turcios, Luis, 172 Tutu, Desmond, 19, 197, 200, 290 Two Sources of Morality and Religion (Bergson), 139 Types of Mankind (Nott), 64 Ubuntu concept, 185–86, 197, 199, 290 Uncle Tom’s Cabin (Beecher-Stowe), 184 UNESCO, 228, 229 Bridge in Music, 234–35 campaign against, 240–41 East-West Major Project, 233 International Music Council, 291 Israel controversy, 16 Un instant dans la vie d’autrius (Bejart), 214–15 Union of South Africa Artists, 191

309 United Nations Unit on Apartheid, 194 United States immigrants excluded, 120 Jewish migration to, 118–24 United States Women’s Peace Party, 137 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 79–80, 183–84, 293, 294 adoption of, 281–82 as turning point, 289 University of Pennsylvania, 85 USA for Africa, 256, 258, 267, 271 US explorers acquiring Iraq antiquities, 91 and changes in US-Iraqi relations, 90–94 reasoning about ancient and modern Iraq, 88–89 USSR. see Soviet Union Ustinov, Peter, 187 Uys, Jamie, 196 Van Amringe, William F., 57, 66 Vatican II, 161–64, 170 Veneziani, Emmanuel, 117 Versailles Treaty, and white supremacy, 292 Vidal-Naquet, Pierre, 240 Vienna Allianz, 115, 117, 120, 123 Vietnam War, 193–94, 212 Violence and change in Latin America, 170–71 Violin Concerto (Bartok), 231 Voces Unidas, 267 Voces Unidas Iberoamerica, 261 Vom Ursprung und Ziel der Geschichte (Jaspers), 280 Wales, Julia Grace, 147–48 Ward, William H., 82, 90 War on terror, 288 “Warum,” 253, 264 “We Are the World,” 253, 261, 262, 268 Weiwei, Ai, 1 Welthungerhilfe, 256 Wertheimer, Joseph, 115 West-Eastern Diwan Orchestra, 244 Western music as transnational culture, 253 West European Jewish selfunderstanding, 107 West Meets East album, 228

310 Whitehead, Annie, 263 white paternalism, 293 white supremacy, 41, 68 challenged by Japan, 292 rejection of, 293 Wilby Conspiracy, 191 Williams, R. G., 4 Wilson, Woodrow, 141 Woldu, Birhan, 268–69 Wolfe Expedition, 81 Women at Paris Peace Conference, 138 Women’s Charter, 144 Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, 14 before and after World War I, 147–48 centrality of women’s emancipation, 136 constitution, 142 critic of League Covenant, 143 critic of League Covenant, 141 critic of Paris Peace Conference, 141 critic of sovereign rights, 145–46 critic of sovereignty, 145–46 criticism of peace conference, 141 cultural pluralism, 146 feminist program, 141 feminist program for internationalism, 141 founding of, 131–32 global network, 141 goal of, 132 hopes for League of Nations, 137–38 on international politics, 145 on international reconstruction, 140 mediation in World War I, 132 national self-determination, 140 patriotism vs. self-determination, 140 project of reconciliation, 145

Index

on self-determination, 146 and sociology, 135–36 sphere of moral obligation, 138–39 Women’s Charter, 141 and women’s emancipation, 136 on women’s identity, 146–47 Zurich Resolutions, 142 women’s movement for peace and freedom, 292 women’s rights basis of, 144 and gender, 134 and peace, 144 and peaceful world, 146–47 and political economy, 133–34 as universal, 132 Wonder, Stevie, 195, 258 World of Strangers (Gordimer), 188 World War I claims to political recognition, 146 decided by masculine politics, 132 effect on immigration, 123 effects of, 123–24 outbreak of, 122–23 and pacifism, 134–35 World War II, Menuhin on, 231 Xenophon, 83 Yegorava, Lubov Nikalayevna, 212 Yehudi Menuhin Festival Gstaad, Switzerland, 237 Yom Kippur War, 244 Young, Stella, 21 Yugoslavia, 195 “Za Milion Godina,” 255, 268 Zoroastrianism, 281 Zurich Congress, 132, 138, 145 on race equality, 140