Hamilton Historical - Vol IV - Issue II Spring 2025

Hamilton Historical An Undergraduate Journal est. 2020

Volume IV Issue II: Spring 2025

Peer-reviwed by Undergraduates for Undergraduates Based out of Hamilton College, Clinton NY.

Hamilton Historical Volume IV, Issue II Spring 2025

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Lara Barreira

LAYOUT CZAR Mikaella Tortusa

Peer Editors Anton Crawford Clara Bennett-Jones Garrett Cordova-Caddes

Peer Readers Nicole McDounough Gabrielle Nakkab Aaron Schwartz Akay Kaya Simon Le Johan Ramirez Galen Horchner

Editor’s Preface

Dear readers, I’m proud to present the second issue of Volume IV of the Hamilton Historical. This marks my second and final edition as acting Editor-in-Chief, and I want to take a moment to express my gratitude to those who have helped make this edition a success. First, heartfelt thanks to our Layout Czar Mikaella–your dedication and creative vision have been essential to this journal. To our peer editors and readers, thank you for your unwavering support and enthusiasm throughout the year; your contributions have made this publication thrive. I’m also thrilled to introduce the incoming Editors-in-Chief: Kate Broeksmit and Peter Hinkle. I am confident they’ll continue to elevate the Hamilton Historical and carry it forward with dedication and insight.

This edition, like those before it, features a diverse collection of historical essays from students at Hamilton College and our peer institutions. Showcasing both historiographical analyses and original research, the issue spans a broad range of topics and time periods. We open with a thought-provoking exploration of the historiography surrounding the Taíno people and their trading networks, authored by Hamilton’s Johan Ramirez. Following this, Sissi Wu of Skidmore College who discusses Jean-Eugène Robert-Houdin and his role in enforcing French colonial power. Next, Simon Le’s writes on the gender roles in the Oneida Community through an analysis of John Humphrey Noyes’s theories on sexual hierarchies. This is followed by Garrett Cordova-Caddes who discusses the historiographical debate on the identity of Tsar Dmitrii I. Finally, to conclude this issue, Clara Bennett-Jones, studies the historiographical discussion on the becoming of Black jazz.

Thank you for your continued readership and support of the Hamilton Historical.

Sincerely, Lara Barreira Editor-in-Chief, 2024-2025

Table of Contents The Taíno Recuperation Project: Uncovering the Paper-trail of Misunderstandings in Classic Taíno Historiography Johan Ramirez

The Father of Modern Magic in French Algeria Sissi Wu

Sexual Hierarchies within the Oneida Community Simon Le

The First False Grigorii: Investigating Historians’ View of Tsar Dmitrii I Garrett Cordova-Caddes

Becoming: Cultural Encounters, Discourse Negotiations, and the Making of Black Jazz Clara Bennett-Jones

The Taíno Recuperation Project Uncovering the Paper-trail of Misunderstandings in Classic Taíno Historiography

Johan Ramirez

Hamilton College - Class of 2028

One of the most prevailing myths about Classic Taíno civilizations is that the decades following the Spanish arrival marked the extinction of their culture and ancestral heritage. A closer examination of post-colonial Taíno historiography reveals that the extermination of the Classic Taíno was both a product of disease and also the result of a centuries-long process supported by Spanish conquerors and historians alike who applied Western paradigms of society to frame the Taíno as inferior and justify their systematic eradication. The term “Taíno” refers to the indigenous peoples who inhabited the Caribbean archipelago during the pre-Columbian era, yet this label often oversimplifies the complexity of their societies, broadly encompassing several Taino groups. Instead of using a term that dilutes each individualized experience, I will focus on the “Classic Taíno” as defined by Irving Rouse—those from Puerto Rico and Hispaniola, who developed more advanced social hierarchies and artisan skills than other Taíno communities.1This essay will examine accounts from Spanish figures like Friar Bartolomé de las Casas and Christopher Columbus, who documented their interactions with Taíno populations and helped establish the dominant narrative of inferiority toward Taíno civilizations. Furthermore, it engages with the work of anthropologist Peter E. Siegel, whose analysis provided a critical framework for evaluating claims about Taíno social inequality, vulnerability, and economic limitations. I seek to revise current narratives about Classic Taíno civilization by looking at accounts by De las Casas and Columbus, alongside recent scholarly work by Peter E. Siegel, arguing that Taíno economic and social systems have been misrepresented in post-colonial discourse and purposefully used to promote an agenda of inferiority, while undermining the ways in which their 1 Irving Rouse, The Taínos: Rise and Decline of the People Who Greeted Columbus (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), 9.

societies fostered social cohesion and developed complex trade networks.

The perceptions of Classic Taíno socio-political structure were fostered by misconceived ideas about the role of ceremonial plazas, spiritual practices, and economic exchange in instituting socio-political structures. The notion that shamanism functioned solely as a tool for enforcing power dynamics, and that bartering systems signified primitiveness has also been misunderstood. These perspectives, often rooted in Eurocentric concepts of governance and economic function, overlook the complex role of ceremonial plazas and shamans as central to regulating trade and institutionalizing a form of social cohesion. However, these roles have been obscured by centuries of Spanish colonial accounts that distorted the Taíno’s social structure through Western paradigms.

In 15th-century Puerto Rico, the plazas of Caguana, Tibes, Palo Hincado, and Villon served as gathering sites where multiple polities convened to exchange the commodities they gathered from maritime trade networks.2 Classic Taíno civilizations shared valuable crops such as cassava, sweet potato, and tobacco with eastern groups of the archipelago in the Lesser Antilles, specifically around Dominica and St.Lucia, while also trading with groups in the western regions, including those in the Bahamas.3 They developed an interregional trade network based on bartering, fostering unity both within and between Taíno communities.4 This system benefited Taínos across the 2 Peter E. Siegel, “Contested Places and Places of Contest: The Evolution of Social Power and Ceremonial Space in Prehistoric Puerto Rico,” Latin American Antiquity 10, no. 3 (1999): 228.

3 Rouse, The Taino, 12.

4 Manuel Antonio García Arévalo y Fernando A. Morbán Laucer, El juego de pelota taíno y su importancia comercial (Santo Domingo: Museo del Hombre Dominicano, 1985), 183.

2 Caribbean Sea by allowing them to cultivate immense amounts of sweet potatoes and yams and making them available to populations on a local and transoceanic scale.5 Many Spanish settlers viewed these exchanges through their European economic paradigm and applied early capitalist concepts including ideas of racial inferiority to invalidate the economic development of Classic Taíno civilizations. In an early chronicle, Bartolomé de las Casas (1484-1566) wrote about an exchange between two chiefs, noting one of them traded a commodity that would be worth “a hundred Castilians” for almost nothing in return.6 By assigning a European conception of value to Taíno trade practices, Las Casas interpreted the transaction through notions of profit and material worth and overlooked the distinct cultural logic embedded in Taíno exchange systems.

He imposed a foreign framework of monetary value that not only misconstrued their barter economy but also suggested that the Taíno lacked material wealth, thus framing them as inferior in the realm of a Eurocentric hierarchy of value.

During a second voyage to the Americas, Christopher Columbus (1451-1506) recounted, “[T]hey will give you whatever they have…in exchange for anything…and I think they would do the same with spices and gold.”7 Columbus insinuated that this perceived lack of awareness of the significance of gold provided a vantage point from which conquerors can view the Taíno as a source of gain. Initial efforts toward conquering this population involved identifying their lack of interest in prized possessions, such as gold, as a symptom of naivety. Spanish settlers concluded that the Taíno’s reliance on bartering and lack of a currency system was a cultural deficiency.

Some scholars have continued to frame Taíno economic activity as disorganized or unsophisticated and portrayed their trade systems as primitive and lacking formal structure. In “Contested Places and Places of Contest,” historian Peter E. Siegel perpetuates this perception of cultural inferiority by arguing that the exchange of goods within Taíno plazas involved “no sense of organized sellers and buyers.”8 He suggested that economic activities in the plazas were just one as5 Rouse, The Taino, 18.

6 Bartolomé de Las Casas, Historia De Las Indias, vol. 1 (Imprenta y Litografía de I. Paz, 1877), 496.

7 Edward Everett Hale, The Life of Christopher Columbus: From His Own Letters and Journals and Other Documents of His Time (GL Howe & Company, 1891), 223.

8 Siegel, “Contested Places and Places of Contest,” 225.

HAMILTON HISTORICAL | Vol. IV Issue22 II | |Issue pect of their practices and lacked any substantial significance within the wider context of Taíno society.9 Furthermore, this idea reduced the important function of bartering systems in fostering solidarity within their society. Dominican historian Roberto Cassá asserted that despite the common belief that the plazas offered a communal space for ceremonial practices and entertainment, they also “served as a means of incipient exchange.”10 Bets placed on ballgames contributed to an ongoing system of exchange, where Taínos from different villages gathered under the premise that trade was based not on commodity value, but on mutual trust and reciprocity. Classic Taínos developed a culture that discouraged profit-seeking and hoarding. According to Dominican scholar García Arévalo, they exchanged material goods for the “enjoyment of a strange or scarce good in the environment.”11 This system allowed foodstuffs grown in limited regions to be shared more widely. Most of the time, individuals would exchange a commodity without receiving anything immediately, trusting that the other person would offer something in return in the future.12 Hence, while Spanish observers applied foreign concepts of wealth to the plazas and Taíno economic system, the real value for the Taíno lay in the strong relationships they built through these exchanges.

In Classic Taíno civilizations, the plazas gradually extended from an arena that institutionalized a system of economic exchange to a political, hierarchical system. This system derived from Taíno beliefs in cosmological order and shamanism. Shamans (behiques) served as intermediaries between the physical world and the spiritual and cosmological realms, providing a vital link between the divine and the Taíno people.13 Central to their power were zemis—deified objects believed to hold magical properties—which symbolized the shamans’ connection to the spiritual realm.

Alongside them were principal men (caciques), who managed village negotiations, oversaw the distribution 9 Siegel, “Contested Places and Places of Contest,” 225.

10 Roberto Cassá, Los Taínos De La Española (Santo Domingo: Editora de la Universidad Autónoma de Santo Domingo, 1974) 119.

11 García Arévalo y Morbán Laucer, El juego de pelota taíno, 180.

12 García Arévalo y Morbán Laucer, El juego de pelota taíno, 183.

13 Katharine Schwantes, Caves, Plazas, and Gods: The Impact of Geomorphology on Taíno Utilization of Ceremonial Sites (2011) 13.

3 of goods, and presided over ceremonial courts.14 Together, shamans and caciques oversaw ritual, economic, and social life, forming the leadership structure of Taíno society. The rest of the Taínos, known as naborias, were commoners who participated as spectators in ballgames, rituals, and dances.15 Although an apparent hierarchical system of power relations existed in Classic Taíno society, there lies a degree of obscurity in judging whether this political system lent to abuses of power. While shamans and caciques held distinct spheres of authority, their powers often merged to manipulate village populations.16 Shamans used their spiritual connections to legitimize political power, with the cacique acting as a vessel for these beliefs.17 However, there is little evidence to support claims that shamans and caciques colluded to manipulate their people. Nicholas Thomas in his study on shamanism described how shamans possessed power through their zemis, but their title was earned only through specialized training, often in apprenticeships.18 Becoming a shaman required rigorous training and it was a respected title among the Taínos. Additionally, the caciques were believed to possess the power of life or death over the populations they ruled, which included the right to sentence individuals to death, but they never exercised such control.19 This restraint of power demonstrates that caciques upheld social order not through coercion, but instead through mutual respect and reciprocity. Despite the power Shamans had, Taíno society was informally based on a consensus basis rather than on the decisions of one individual. It is possible that a few individuals may have used their power to deceive others; however, this never extended to a systemic level. It is also necessary to note the lack of accounts regarding Taíno civilization available before Spanish arrival. The limited illustration of pre-Columbian Taino politics is the root of much of the ambiguity in the question of power abuses.

That being said, it is important to acknowledge that the only recorded instance of wide-scale manipulation of social order within Taíno civilization took 14 Schwantes, Caves, Plazas, and Gods, 9.

15 José R. Oliver, Caciques and Cemí Idols: The Web Spun by Taíno Rulers Between Hispaniola and Puerto Rico (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2009), 30.

16 Siegel, “Contested Places and Places of Contest,” 215.

17 Siegel, “Contested Places and Places of Contest,” 231.

18 Nicholas Thomas and Caroline Humphrey, “Shamans, Prophets, Priests, and Pastors,” in Shamanism, History, and the State, (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1994) 43.

19 Rouse, The Taino, 19.

place in the aftermath of the Spanish Conquest. Soon after arriving in the Americas, Columbus sought an alliance with Chief Guacanagarí, seeking to use him to fulfill his European agenda. In a voyage account, he described the role of the cacique as “a most important monarch in that region.”20 Missionaries and conquistadors equated their understanding of authority with that of Taíno chiefdoms, applying Western histories of monarchy to their social structure. Spanish voyager Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo refers to the cacique as someone who was “held among these people as among Christians the priests.”21 For European conquerors, the cacique became a religious proxy for which they could exercise greater control over Taíno populations. Chief Guacanagarí mistakenly viewed the Spanish as guests but was ultimately coerced into controlling his people on behalf of the Spanish regime. This interpretation, which was natural for Taínos who relied on the goodwill of people’s trust, led to widespread abuse of political power after Spanish arrival.

In the 1530s, Taíno inhabitants of the Bahoruco region in Puerto Rico, led by Chief Enriquillo, rebelled against Chief Guacanagarí’s collaboration with the Spanish.22 Taíno efforts to reject Spanish rule over the region challenged European beliefs about their docility, showing that the Taínos were committed to rejecting existing systems of oppression. While Spanish accounts propagated the idea that Classic Taínos civilizations maintained hierarchical structures, they used colonizing agendas to depict the Taínos as submissive and easily controlled. Columbus had sensed the Taino’s unwillingness to go against their own social structure and believed it signified that they were “simple creatures” with little concern for individual power or wealth.23 However, based on historical accounts of pre-colonial Taíno society, it is clear that rebellion was not seen as necessary until the Taínos faced oppression and exploitation under Spanish rule. They fostered social cohesion through central courts and maintained this structure through an economy of trust and reciprocity, effectively making power abuse absent.

The history of indigenous populations within 20 Hale, The Life of Christopher Columbus, 252.

21 Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo y Valdés, Historia General y Natural de las Indias (Madrid: Imprenta de la Real Academia de la Historia, 1945).

22 Kathleen Deagan, “Reconsidering Taino Social Dynamics After Spanish Conquest: Gender and Class in Culture Contact Studies,” American Antiquity 69, no. 4 (2004): 605.

23 Deagan, “Reconsidering Taino Social Dynamics After Spanish Conquest,” 176.

4 the Caribbean archipelago has long been characterized by unequal distributions of power and a lacking system of economic exchange. Classic Taínos have been dismissed as primitive and titled as unadvanced. This narrative undermined the progress achieved by the Taíno, whose societies functioned prosperously without reliance on the exploitative structures of European imperialism. Furthermore, it disregarded the historiography that points towards the stronghold in social cohesion built by Classic Taínos who believed in their hierarchical structure and system of bartering to such a degree that they were never willing to oppose it. Much of modern historiography on the Taínos systematically undermined their cultural and social advancements.

As modern Taíno leader Jorge Baracutei Estevez describes, “This is paper genocide: a narrative created by the conquerors and perpetuated by every subsequent researcher,” highlighting how colonial narratives have detrimentally shaped academic discourse about the Taíno.24

24 Kelsey Nowakowski, “Meet the Survivors of the Taíno Tribe: The ‘Paper Genocide’ of the Indigenous People Who Lived in the Caribbean,” National Geographic, November 20, 2020, https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/meet-survivors-taino-tribe-paper-genocide.

HAMILTON HAMILTONHISTORICAL HISTORICAL| | Vol. Vol.IV II | Issue 2

The Father of Modern Magic in French Algeria Sissi Wu

Skidmore College - Class of 2025

Introduction On September 16th, 1856, a prestigious French magician, Jean-Eugène Robert-Houdin, known as the “Father of Modern Magic,” embarked from Marseille aboard the steamship Alexandre, bound for the French colonial territory of Algeria.1 Despite having retired from stage performances to pursue research in applied electricity, he was summoned back to the stage for a “glorious” mission of imperial significance.

After seventeen years of conquest since 1830, France controlled most Algerian territories in 1847.

However, a significant portion of the Algerian population vehemently protested French dominion. Among most anticolonial remnants, impacts from Muslim holy men posed a consistent threat to French dominance.

In response to these challenges, the French government invited Robert-Houdin to show off his magic as a strategy to affirm its colonial authority and cultural superiority over the Arabs in 1856. Robert-Houdin’s memoirs—particularly Confidences d’un prestidigitateur and Les Secrets de la Prestidigitation et de la Magie—offer a rare firsthand account of how magic was mobilized as a form of psychological warfare. These texts are exceptional not only for their descriptions of his illusions but also for the insights they provide into French colonial attitudes, the anxieties of empire, and the performative nature of dominance.

The French government saw Robert-Houdin’s magic as a tool to showcase European technological prowess and to undermine the authority of these religious leaders. By inviting him to perform in front of Algerian audiences, they aimed to impress upon the 1 Jean-Eugène Robert-Houdin, “Chapter XX: A Trip to Algeria,” in Memoirs of Robert-Houdin: ambassador, author, and conjurer.

locals the superiority of French civilization and the benefits of embracing Western culture. This aligns with the broader French colonial ideology of la mission civilisatrice, which advocated for the spread of French civilization to “less enlightened” regions of the world.2 In the case of Algeria, this meant promoting French language, customs, and values as superior to indigenous traditions. This paper will therefore examine Robert-Houdin’s two memoirs in the context of colonial conquest, illustrating how his magic and illusions emerge as a powerful symbol of progress for asserting French colonial power, undermining Islamic authority in Algeria, and subtly reinforcing the superiority of Western civilization.

Figure 1: France (green) and Algeria (orange) on the map.

2 Haley Brown, “French Colonialism in Algeria: War, Legacy, and Memory,” in Bucknell Honors Thesis (2018), 5.

6

Before His Trip: A Short Historical Contextualization After the first industrial revolution, driven by the desire to exploit natural resources and raw materials and expand markets, the nineteenth century witnessed intense competition among European countries for overseas colonial territories. Among these countries, Britain and France were the two most significant players in this game. Britain occupied a more advantageous position due to its navigation technologies and superior location—an island in the North Atlantic Ocean. Starting from the seventeenth century, the developments in British ship-making and maritime activities had prepared Britain for a better chance to obtain colonial overseas. In the War of the Spanish Succession 1702-1713, Britain gained Gibraltar by the Treaty of Utrecht, where a key position connected the North Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean. In the Treaty of Paris in 1763 after the Seven Years’ War, France had to give up all its territories in mainland North America, so Britain took possession of those, effectively removing all foreign military forces from its colonies.

Hence, Britain at that point successfully established a vast empire spanning North America, Africa, and the Caribbean. It became one of the most important colonial powers and the biggest threat to France during the nineteenth century.

Confronted with Britain’s ascendant influence, France sought new colonies to pursue territorial acquisitions as a means of countering British hegemony and advancing its economic interests. The first attempt was Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt in 1798; acquiring Egypt would provide France with a substantial position in the Mediterranean and a gateway to undermine Britain’s control of trade routes to India.3 However, the defeat in Egypt did not alter France’s ambitions in Africa. Instead, it turned French attention to another region in the Mediterranean—Algeria. Before 1827, the area now called Algeria was not defined with clear boundaries and it was a province of the Ottoman Empire named Cezayir-i Garb. This province enjoyed self-governance, even having the ability to sign treaties with other countries prior to the French invasion. It was notorious as a hub of piracy, deriving wealth from extracting payments from those wishing to traverse its waters. The province was home to diverse populations 3 Güven Dinç, “The Ports of Cyprus and the French Invasion of Egypt (1798–1801),” in Mediterranean Studies Vol. 24 No. 1 (Penn State University Press, 2016), 29.

HAMILTON HISTORICAL | Vol. IV Issue22 II | |Issue including nomads, Berbers (the original inhabitants), sedentary Arabs, and Jews of Spanish descent.4 Given its proximity across the Mediterranean Sea from mainland France, Algeria presented an enticing opportunity for colonial expansion. There were no intervening territories between France and Algeria, making it a perfect “door” for France to the Third World. Several factors motivated France’s desire to conquer Algeria besides geographic advantage, including economic interests, securing Mediterranean maritime routes, and asserting its status among the European powers. Ultimately, the invasion commenced in 1830, and by 1847, most of Algerian territories had been subdued by French forces.

Figure 2: Marshal Thomas Bugeaud (1784-1849) and Colonel Joseph Vantini (Yousouf) (1808-66) During the Conquest of Algeria, 1846 (oil on canvas).

The process of colonization is always bloody and brutal. As the French aimed to consolidate its colonial power in Algeria, force suppression was the most efficient method. Between 1830 and 1845, the French army seized flocks and herds, looted granaries, destroyed crops and orchards, and burned villages and cities.5 The army committed atrocities by annihilating some families, killing men, women, and children, and beheading their leaders. As historian V.G. Kiernan asserts, “The worst in the conquest of Algeria occurred in 1845 and made a great stir at the time. A force led

by Pelissier trapped some five hundred men, women, and children in the Dahra caves, and kept fires burning at the entrance until they were all suffocated.”6 French military leaders in Algeria ordered summary 4 Canan Halaçoğlu, “Introduction,” in Occupation and the Colonization of Algeria from 1830 to 1870 : A Struggle for Dominance, (2013), 3 5 Bruce Vandervort, Wars of imperial conquest in Africa, 18301914, (Indiana University Press, 2009), 68.

6 Vandervort, Wars of imperial conquest in Africa, 163.

7 executions on the slightest suspicion and displaying “unnecessary cruelty.”7 The brutality extended to urban areas as well. A French author protesting in 1882 wrote about the French burning the city of Constantine, where 20,000 troops bombarded and attacked the town of 30,000, leaving corpses of the inhabitants strewn “everywhere on the ground.” All areas were covered with bodies so close together that it was difficult to take a step without treading on them. And what to say of this trail of bodies on the torturous contour of the precipice where the unfortunate women had tumbled with their children on being seized with fright at that French author’s entry into the town.8 In the first three decades, the French military massacred between half a million to one million approximately three million Algerian people. By 1875, the French conquest was complete. The war had killed approximately 825,000 indigenous Algerians since 1830.9 As a direct result of this colonial conquest, the total population declined drastically from an estimated three million in 1830 to 2,462,000 by 1876. Throughout the nineteenth century, the Algerian population in urban areas was unable to reproduce itself demographically. This significant demographic decline, both urban and rural, reflects not only the immediate casualties of war but also the later consequences of displacement, impoverishment, and social upheaval caused by colonial rule in the long term. It was not until 1886, 56 years later, that the Algerian population began to approach its pre-colonial levels, with a census revealing 3,287,000 people.10 The colonization process was about territorial acquisition and asserting and consolidating power through brutal means. The French military’s actions underscore the inherently violent and oppressive nature of colonial expansion, which seriously violates France’s historical ideologies of universalism and liberalism established since the Age of Enlightenment and the French Revolution of 1789.

Emerging during the Enlightenment and solidified by the French Revolution of 1789, French republican ideology emphasized individual rights, secular governance, legal equality, and the universality of human reason and dignity. These values were most 7 Ben Kiernan, Blood and soil: A world history of genocide and extermination from Sparta to Darfur, (Yale University Press, 2007), 73.

8 Kiernan, Blood and soil, 368-369.

9 Kiernan, Blood and soil, 364-374.

10 Mahfoud Bennoune, The Making of Contemporary Algeria, 1830–1987: Colonial Upheavals and Post-Independence Development, (Cambridge University Press, 2002), 42.

clearly articulated in the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, which declared that “men are born and remain free and equal in rights.” This document became a cornerstone of French universalism and liberalism, asserting that sovereignty resided with the people and that natural rights—such as freedom of speech, property, and protection from arbitrary arrest— were inalienable and owed to all. French universalism held that these principles were not culturally specific but universally applicable to all of humanity, while liberalism championed civil liberties, representative government, and freedom from arbitrary rule. These ideals were institutionalized through France’s legal frameworks, secular education systems, and republican rhetoric, cultivating a national self-image as a beacon of liberty and equality. Yet in the colonial context, these same values were selectively suspended. Rather than extending universal rights to colonized peoples, the French state often justified racial hierarchies and authoritarian control—undermining the very principles it claimed to uphold.

Figure 3: The number of Algerians were killed in action from 1831 to 1851.

The contradiction between French universalism and particularism peaked in French Algeria, profoundly shaping its constitution and legislative framework.

While philosophers in the Age of Enlightenment explored what was the proper relationship of the citizen to the monarch or the state, accounts of universalism was the modern humanistic doctrine of universal rights

HAMILTON HAMILTONHISTORICAL HISTORICAL| | Vol. Vol.IV II | Issue 2

8 were still lacking.11 This loophole was remedied during the French Revolution of 1789 when the association of universalism and human rights was instituted crucially due to the practice of philosophies and the birth of Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen.

The former two Articles were: Men are born and remain free and equal in rights.

Social distinctions may be founded only upon the general good. The aim of all political association is the preservation of the natural and imprescriptible rights of man. These rights are liberty, property, security, and resistance to oppression.

Central to this declaration were principles of universal equality, secular natural law, political participation, freedom of speech, and a belief in the absolute power of the voice du people.12 Under the Constitution of 1848, Algeria became French territory officially.

However, to spread the enlightenment of “civilization,” France drifted from its revolutionary roots grounded in universal equality. Algeria was divided into two sections, one civilian, and the other military. The civilian section was largely European, centered on Algiers and the ports. The military section was the countryside and almost wholly native, Arab and Berber. Divided into three provinces the Algerian natives were ruled by local chiefs recognized by the military governors, rather more liberally than the settlers would have preferred.13 The territorial division of Algeria into civilian and military sectors exemplified this departure. The French lived under one law, while the indigenous peoples were subject to at least two others—Islamic law in their capacity as civil persons, and a wholly separate French law in their capacity as criminals and delinquents.

There were at least three judges and three jurisdictions for all these laws, which frequently overlapped. This system, characterized by multiple laws, judges, and jurisdictions, violated the foundational principles of legal unity established by the Napoleonic Code. The separated legislative framework differentiated French and Arabs. Despite Napoleon III’s declaration of equal protection for both settlers and natives, constitutional 11 Naomi Schor, “The Crisis of French Universalism.” Yale French Studies, no. 100 (2001): 46.

12 Dale Van Kley, The French Idea of Freedom: The Old Regime and the Declaration of Rights of 1789 (Stanford University Press 1997), 10.

13 Jame Heartfield, “The Death of the Subject,” in Algeria and the defeat of French Humanism, (Sheffield Hallam University, 2002).

contradictions persisted.

The Senatus-Consult laws of 1863 and 1865 ostensibly aimed to safeguard native rights and grant them citizenship. However, in practice, these laws often resulted in discrimination and disenfranchisement.

For instance, while intended to formalize land rights, the Senatus-Consult laws precipitated the rapid reduction of traditional land holdings among indigenous populations.14 Similarly, while ostensibly offering a path to citizenship, the requirement for Algerians to adopt French legal status for personal matters effectively marginalized them within the colonial legal system. Moreover, the imposition of taxes on all Algerians further underscored the oppressive nature of colonial rule, fostering a stark dichotomy between the ideals of France as the champion of human rights and the reality of France as a colonial power. The resulting colonial regimes presented oppressed Arabic populations with “the image of ‘France the colonizer’ which coexisted uneasily with ‘France of the Rights of Man.’”15 Decrees stripped the majority of Muslim Algerians of citizenship in their homeland and institutionalized discrimination against indigenous languages, customs, and land rights in favor of the colonial French populations.

In French Algeria, the ideal of French universalism never existed, instead, particularism and systemic oppression intertwined. These conditions fueled intermittent rebellions against the French, only to be brutally quelled by bolstered imperial forces. Meanwhile, la mission civilisatrice, or the civilizing mission, dictated all facets of social “improvements,”spanning education, religion, economics, and governan ce.

Algerian society suffered profound disruption—not merely through physical displacement and oppression, but also through calculated assaults on local identities, customs, and spiritual beliefs which were seen as obstacles to complete colonial dominance. Amidst this volatile backdrop, Robert-Houdin wielded illusions and magic to reinforce the superiority and divinity of colonial power.

Jean-Eugène Robert-Houdin Born in 1805 to a French family of watchmakers in Blois, France, Robert-Houdin’s path seemed destined to follow his father’s footsteps to become a 14 Heartfield, “The Death of the Subject.”

15 Martin Evams and John Phillips, Algeria Anger of the Dispossessed (Yale University Press, 2007), 27.

9 watchmaker. His memoirs—Confidences d’un prestidigitateur and Les Secrets de la Prestidigitation et de la Magie—recount a strict childhood under his father’s tutor, with little room for liberty amidst the demands of studying horology. Nevertheless, an accidental chance encounter as a young man unlocked his lifelong passion and initiated his journey toward becoming a legendary conjurer. He watched a magic performance by a conjurer Dr. Carlosbach. As nutmegs materialized, disappeared, and even emerged from an audience’s nose in the performance, the young Robert-Houdin was in shock, addressing the conjurer as “Professor of Mystification.”16 Though started replicating mechanisms and equipment used in magic shows, Robert-Houdin quickly developed an interest in the artistry of performance and deception itself. His inherent curiosity and superior mechanical skills soon propelled him from amateur experimentation to creating magic shows by cleverly integrating the latest scientific technologies of the age, for example, electricity.17 This novel combination captivated Parisian audiences, transcending magic from a pastime of the lower class to the entertainment of the wealthy. By the 1840s, Robert-Houdin had attained celebrity status, later known as the Father of Modern Magic. Moreover, by the beginning of the nineteenth century, illusionists had emerged as a powerful symbol of progress in the West, as a scientific popularizer and a debunker of superstitions, but also as a catalyst of critical controversy in the expanding public sphere, claiming “disenchantment as [a] raison d’être in the post-Enlightenment world.”18 This ideology foreshadowed his journey to Algeria where he utilized deception to navigate delicate political situations, using fake illusions to create real impacts on history.

When Robert-Houdin received an invitation letter from Army Colonel François-Edouard de Neveu, the political director of the Bureau of Arab Affairs, he initially hesitated. This letter begged him to proceed to Algeria and give his performances before the Muslims due to the expanding influence of Muslim holy men, identified as marabouts.19 Robert-Houdin rejected the invitation until June 1856. He exhausted ex16 Robert-Houdin, Memoirs of Robert-Houdin: ambassador, author, and conjurer, 27.

17 Robert-Houdin, Memoirs of Robert-Houdin: ambassador, author, and conjurer, 36.

18 James W. Cook, The Arts of Deception: Playing with Fraud in the Age of Barnum, (Harvard University Press, 2001), 179 19 Graham M. Jones, “Modern Magic and the War on Miracles in French Colonial Culture,”in Comparative Studies in Society and History 52, no. 1 (2010) 67.

cuses and mentioned, “...and thought it cost me much to quit my retreat and brace the caprices of the Mediterranean in the worst month of the year, I decided on going.”20 Upon his arrival on September 27, 1856, Robert-Houdin acknowledged his mission carrying a quasi-political character. In the context of France’s colonial conquest and subjugation of Muslim Algerians, his modern European illusionism was developed as an “imperial spectacle” choreographed to awe and beguile the indigenous audiences. Through dramatically deconstructing locally revered rituals as mere trickery, his performances aimed to disenchant Muslim spiritual authority and reinforce stereotypes portraying North Africans as irrational and credulous. On the other side, his science-based illusions showcased European technological prowess and mastery of natural laws, symbolizing a narrative of rational supremacy deserving of obedience. In this way, Robert-Houdin’s performances served as a tool to assert colonial dominance and consolidate French control over Algeria.

During His Trip Robert-Houdin gave his first influential performance before the Arabs in French Algeria on October 28, 1856. The audience included French “privileged” colonial officials and some sixty Arab chiefs in red mantles, symbolizing their submission to France.21 Before Robert-Houdin’s act, a couple of local Arab sorcerers had performed simple tricks rooted in folklore.

Compared to those sorcerers’ shows with simple tricks, he believed that his experiments backed by modern science would appear as inexplicable miracles to the Arab spectators.22 Robert-Houdin began with relatively small-scale tricks, such as the five-franc pieces (the vanishing coins) and the Inexhaustible Bottle. However, these opening acts did little to amuse or impress the audience. To fulfill his mission of undermining the influence of local marabouts (Islamic religious leaders), he needed to startle and terrify the Arabs by displaying a sense of supernatural power.23 One of Robert-Houdin’s most creative and famous tricks, the Light and Heavy 20 Jones, “Modern Magic and the War on Miracles in French Colonial Culture,” 286.

21 Jones, “Modern Magic and the War on Miracles in French Colonial Culture,” 294.

22 Jones, “Modern Magic and the War on Miracles in French Colonial Culture,” 294.

23 Jones, “Modern Magic and the War on Miracles in French Colonial Culture,” 296.

HAMILTON HAMILTONHISTORICAL HISTORICAL| | Vol. Vol.IV II | Issue 2

10 Chest pushed the atmosphere to a climax. He presented a small but solidly built wooden box and handed it to the spectators for inspection. He then proclaimed that, through his conjuring abilities, he could manipulate the box’s weight, making it so light that a child could lift it effortlessly, or so heavy that even the most powerful man could not move it. As he stepped forward, holding the mysterious box, he invited any confident spectator to test their might against supernatural prowess: “From what you have witnessed, you will attribute a supernatural power to me, and you are right. I will give you a new proof of my marvellous authority, by showing that I can deprive the most powerful man of his strength, and restore it at my will. Anyone who thinks himself strong enough to try the experiment may draw near me.”24

Whispers of Shaitan (Satan) and Djenoum (genii) circulated among the spectators.26 In contrast, the French privileged officials remained calm and satisfied with the Arabs’ reactions.

Figure 4: The Light and Heavy Chest.

A middle-height and muscular Arabic man volunteered for the trial. Engaging him in conversation, Robert-Houdin subtly questioned the Arab’s confidence in his own strength, calmly warning that any strength would diminish in the magician’s hands. The Arab maintained his skepticism with a disdainful smile.

As the Arab attempted to lift the box, it stubbornly resisted his efforts, defying his considerable strength.

Frustration and exhaustion painted his expression with each futile attempt, gradually giving way to a dawning realization of the inexplicable forces at play. Despite the temptation to retreat, he found himself spurred on by the encouragement of other Arabs, driving him to persist in proving his resilience. Summoning his remaining strength, he made a final effort to lift the box.

Yet, to his astonishment and dismay, his once formidable muscles betrayed him, an invisible force left him kneeling in defeat. This invisible force was electricity concealed within the box and triggered by Robert-Houdin’s signal. The magician quickly released the second signal to intercept the electricity immediately. At that moment, the Arab, whom Robert-Houdin called “Hercules,” raised his hands over his head, shouted “Allah,” and fled the scene, overwhelmed.25 Though momentarily shaken by the spectacle, he allowed a brief pause for the audience to recover from the emotional intensity before continuing with the performance, leaving them to ponder the boundaries between reality and illusion.

What terrified the Arabs was the same force that established Robert-Houdin as the father of the modern style of conjuring—electricity. In another memoir, The Secrets of Stage Conjuring, the Light and Heavy Chest is documented in detail. There are three main pieces of equipment: a sturdy hardwood box adorned with metal clasps, a curved handle, and a diamond-shaped strike plate surrounding the keyhole. When this trick debuted in Paris in 1845, the principle of electromagnetism was little known to the Europeans. The secret of this apparatus lay in a concealed piece of iron affixed to its bottom, hidden beneath a thin veneer resembling wood. In performance, the chest could be easily lifted initially, but when set on a runway between the stage and the audience—directly over a hidden electromagnet—no amount of force could move the box.27 In his earlier Parisian shows, Robert-Houdin had presented the trick

24 Jones, “Modern Magic and the War on Miracles in French Colonial Culture,” 296.

25 Jones, “Modern Magic and the War on Miracles in French Colonial Culture,” 297.

26 Jones, “Modern Magic and the War on Miracles in French Colonial Culture,” 297.

27 Jean-Eugène Robert-Houdin, “Chapter IV: The Light and Heavy Chest,” in The Secrets of Stage Conjuring, 55-56

Figure 5: Notes from The Light and Heavy Chest.

11 as a demonstration of a burglar-proof chest, assuring audiences that no thief could move the box once activated, thus securing any valuables locked inside. When he brought the trick to Algeria in 1856, he seized the opportunity to dramatize scientific knowledge differentials between Europe and North Africa.

Instead of focusing on the trick itself, Robert-Houdin emphasized presenting his abilities as a wizard, showcasing his apparent power to sap the strength of even the mightiest warrior on command.

Whereas in the earlier Soirees Fantastiques, his ingenuity and clever props had been front-and-center (he was a noted builder and exhibitor of automatons and other ingenious mechanical devices, having been trained as a watchmaker).28 In Algeria, he was demonstrating a mysterious magical power. As the muscular Arab man struggled in vain to lift the chest, the magician masterfully shifted the focus of the performance, transforming a clever mechanical trick into a display of his supernatural abilities, sapping the Arab’s strength at will. Several days later, on November 5, the colony’s official French-language newspaper, Le Mo algérien, reported enthusiastically on Robert-Houdin’s successful performance: “Marshal [Randon] considered that showing the Arabs a Christian superior ... to their phony shereefs, who have tricked them so often, would encourage them to uncover and frustrate future impostures, and to resist—through knowledge of the cause—their own shameful excitation. May these performances, of which all of Algeria long will speak, have their desired effect!”29 In a word, the Light and Heavy Chest is a remarkable trick with an unremarkable appearance, which is even widely regarded as an iconic device of wonder and mythologized as the trick that helped “stop a war” between the Arabs and as well as undermined the influence of marabouts.

Marabouts are descendants of the Prophet Muhammad and Muslim religious leaders who historically had the function of a chaplain serving as a part of an Islamic army. Some of them founded religious Islamic mystical brotherhoods, for instance, the ‘Isawiyya, to expand their influence and resist the French government. ‘Isawiyya was a mystical Sufi order famous for ecstatic rituals involving seemingly miraculous feats.30 These displays of apparent invulnerability to pain and 28 Robert-Houdin, “Chapter IV: The Light and Heavy Chest,” 59.

29 Michel Seldow, Vie et secrets de Robert-Houdin, (Fayard, 1971).

30 Jones, “Modern Magic and the War on Miracles in French Colonial Culture,” 67.

danger were central to the ‘Isawiyya’s claim of divine power, fostering a belief in their supernatural abilities among the local population. During Robert-Houdin’s time in Algeria, he was a performer as well as a spectator. He witnessed a ceremony of the ‘Isawiyya.

François-Edouard de Neveu, an influential figure who orchestrated Robert-Houdin’s mission and served as his guide, was at the time the leading European expert on popular forms of North African Islam. He provided valuable insights into the social organization and religious practices of Algerian Islam, including the performances of groups like the ‘Isawiyya. Notably, de Neveu was among the first to critically describe the ‘Isawiyya as theatrical magicians guilty of inadequately disenchanting their own trickery,’ suggesting that their apparent miracles were merely theatrical tricks based on his research on the social organization of Algerian Islam in 1839.31 According to ‘Isawiyya’s 1850 engravings, ‘Isawiyya gave performances to show off their supernatural power and divinity passed from God. Isawi walked on a piece of red-hot iron, stuck a knife into the cheek, etc. However, Robert-Houdin compared the Isawi unfavorably to second-rate mountebanks, portraying their rituals as primitive spectacles rather than legitimate spiritual practices.

Drawing on his training in illusion and stagecraft, he systematically dismantled the supposed miracles of the ‘Isawiyya. For example, he revealed that the performer who appeared to thrust a knife into his cheek was simply stretching the skin with a blunt object, while the man who consumed prickly pear spines had likely prepared them beforehand and withheld them from inspection to increase the illusion’s effect.

Similarly, the devotee who lay bare-bellied on a supposedly sharpened saber had turned his back during the act, giving time to dull or cover the blade with a protective cloth. When presented with dangerous animals, Robert-Houdin argued that the creatures were either defanged or of harmless species. In exposing these performances, Robert-Houdin positioned himself not just as a magician but as a rational, enlightened European—invoking scientific knowledge and skeptical inquiry as tools of empire. His debunking of local religious practices aligned with broader imperial narratives that framed indigenous knowledge as backward and irrational. In this context, the deployment of scientific reasoning was not neutral—it was a deliberate strategy to assert French cultural superiority and 31 Narcisse Faucon, Le Livre d’or de l’Algérie. Vol. 1. 2d éd.

(Augustin Challamel, 1890).

12 discredit Islamic authority. By cloaking his illusions in the language of logic and empiricism, Robert-Houdin helped advance the civilizing mission, using the language of science to legitimize colonial domination.

Furthermore, Robert-Houdin uncovered the scientific truth behind other feats, suggesting that some ‘Isawiyya discreetly deposited rocks and broken bottles distributed by the muqaddam back into his robes, while others indeed chewed and swallowed glass.

Unconvinced by their demonstrations, he conducted experiments himself, feeding a cat an “enormous meatball full of pounded glass,” which survived unharmed.32 Subsequently, he repeated the procedure at social gatherings, eventually consuming carefully pulverized glass himself. Even the fire handlers, whose apparent immunity to extreme temperatures impressed many, failed to deceive Robert-Houdin. He referenced research indicating that powdered alum could protect the tongue from high temperatures, corroborating his own experience that moisture provided a sufficient buffer against red-hot, even molten, metal. Besides, he reasoned that the frequently barefoot Arabs had developed calloused feet, akin to horses’ hooves, allowing them to walk on white-hot iron without discomfort.33 In the memoir, Robert-Houdin discredited the ‘Isawiyya by elucidating the deceptive techniques behind their hadra ceremony, equating them with charlatanic impostors. By systematically exposing their tricks, he successfully portrayed Muslims as irrational and credulous, undermined their authority, and diminished their influence over the indigenous population, aligning with the broader colonial agenda of cultural domination and control. The subsequent year, in 1857, Le Moniteur Universel published an article recounting Robert-Houdin’s story.

Le Moniteur Universel was the main French newspaper during the French Revolution and served as the official journal of the French government for a long time. It strikingly concluded, “Today the marabouts are totally discredited among the natives, who, by contrast, hold the famous illusionist as an object of veneration.” This comment thus ironically reveals the duality of French rule and the stripping away of the fundamental values of the French Revolution—French liberalism and universalism. Instead of embodying these ideals, French governance in Algeria served an imperialistic purpose, fundamentally undermining the very principles it claimed to promote. The relationship 32 Faucon, Le Livre d’or de l’Algérie, 561.

33 Faucon, Le Livre d’or de l’Algérie, 565.

HAMILTON HAMILTONHISTORICAL HISTORICAL| | Vol. Vol.IV II | Issue 2 between Robert-Houdin, the famed French illusionist, and French colonial rule in Algeria highlights this irony. Robert-Houdin’s role in Algeria was emblematic of the way French authority, grounded in the rhetoric of enlightenment and universal equality, was paradoxically deployed to reinforce imperial control. His performance, designed to demonstrate French superiority and rationality, contradicted the values of liberalism and universalism, which were supposed to champion freedom and equality. Rather than promoting the liberal principles of the Revolution, the use of Robert-Houdin as a tool of colonial subjugation revealed how the French government manipulated its own ideals to serve an imperial agenda. His presence in Algeria symbolized the imposition of an artificial order, one that claimed to bring enlightenment while, in practice, stripping away the autonomy and dignity of the Algerian people. In this way, Robert-Houdin’s performance not only embodied a cultural hegemony but also became a mechanism for the erosion of the very ideals of liberty and fraternity that the French Revolution had espoused.

After His Trip The denial of Algerian cultural identity extended beyond the end of Robert-Houdin’s trip, as France sought the incorporation of Algerians into French culture as a means of exerting control. Through la mission civilisatrice, there was no more direct policy other than imposing a “Frenchness” educational system. This attempt was to replace Arab educational values with French ones, intending to perpetuate Algerian subordination by instituting enduring structural changes to pre-colonial education and implicitly challenging its religious spirit. As a result, the French never stopped building public schools to educate more than a small minority of school-age Algerian children. They generalized this educational policy across a broader scope with a larger population as well. Until 1962 the French colonial administration dominated education, not merely in the places of institutional learning, but also in the varied other social activities generally thought to be a part of education.34 In French schools, the official language is certainly French, so Algerian students were compelled to adopt the French language and customs at the expense of their own cultural heritage. Yet this imperial attempt faced resistance from Muslims 34 Alf Andrew Heggoy, “Education in French Algeria: An Essay on Cultural Conflict,” in Comparative Education Review 17, no.

2 (1973): 180.

13 who viewed public education as integral to religious training. Economic factors also contributed to Muslim families’ reluctance to send their children to French schools. Although by 1930 Algeria was fifth among exporters of France (Great Britain, the United States, Germany, and Belgium) and fourth importer of French goods (Great Britain, Belgium, and Germany), most Algerian families suffered from poverty and basic living conditions since the only jobs created for Algerians were unskilled laborers.35 Consequently, by 1954, less than 15 percent of Algerian children aged 5 to 14 were enrolled in schools, leaving a vast majority without access to formal education due to the prohibitive costs associated with building schools and training sufficient teachers.36 Overall, the denial of Algerian cultural identity through a series of “enlightened” programs reflects that inequalities and injustices have left deep scars on Algerian society, altering everything from education and language to governance and identity.

Conclusion Through Robert-Houdin this conjurer’s symbolic dismantling of spiritual authority structures and exhibitions enforcing Orientalist stereotypes about rational European ascendancy, the colonial regime aimed to further cement its vise grip over Algerian populations. While the long-term impacts of Robert-Houdin’s peculiar role remain debated by historians, his 1856 Algerian trip is an extraordinary example of how entertainment magic shows served as a Trojan Horse for imperial ideology. His performances represented but one calculated act in a broader colonial projection to undermine indigenous identity, belief systems, and cultural resistance through illusions. From this perspective, the “magic” he brought to Algeria aimed to consolidate imperialism in its own civilizing domination over Algeria.

35 Heggoy, “Education in French Algeria: An Essay on Cultural Conflict,” 184.

36 Heggoy, “Education in French Algeria: An Essay on Cultural Conflict,” 186.

Sexual Hierarchies within the Oneida Community Simon Le

Hamilton College - Class of 2025

Nested in the rolling hills of upstate New York, a nineteenth-century experiment redefined love, marriage, and sexuality. What if the key to spiritual salvation lay not in monogamy, private property, and the nuclear family ideals of the nineteenth century but in its entire dissolution? John Humphrey Noyes established the Oneida Community (OC) in 1848 and embraced the radical experiment of utopian living. Rooted in the principles of Perfectionism, the OC believed that Christ’s second coming had already occurred by providing pathways for a life without sin. Noyes believed in a community free of sin through collective ownership, shared labor, and an unorthodox relationship with marriage and sex —a belief they called “Bible communism.” The OC measured salvation not through sermons or prayers but in the shared bed, where love, power, and the “scandalous” reshaping of faith intersected. Noyes developed an argument that positioned biological and theological principles at the center of Christian community.1 The OC embraced “complex marriage” and dissolved exclusive romantic relationships, committing to a theological belief of mutual love and equality. Although complex marriage liberated women and promoted gender equality, it simultaneously created a pathway for consolidating power among elder male members. The goal of this paper is to evaluate the paradoxical nature of the OC’s use of sexuality as an instrument of control. There exists an interplay between gender and sexual empowerment alongside male authority figures. In pursuing this argument, I will focus on the Community’s practices, such as male continence, mutual criticisms, ascending and descending fellowship, and their roles in constructing the balance of power, gender, and spirituality.

To understand the Community’s unique sexu1 Ellen Wayland-Smith, Oneida: From Free Love Utopia to the Well-Set Table (New York: Picador, 2016), 77.

al practices, we must explore Noyes’ understanding of God and the material universe. Noyes saw the church as two parts: the flawed “Visible Christendom,” worthy of judgment, and the perfect “Resurrection Church,” revived through Christian Perfectionism.2 In addition, Noyes uses the Apostle Paul as a guiding principle in his construction of the community, even embracing the “Pauline spirit of anti-legalism.”3 The Apostle Paul established a framework to challenge conventional marriage. Jesus and Paul never married, thus suggesting an alternative model of relationships within the Christian framework.4 The interpretation of these Christian ideals manifested in the development of complex marriage and, to Noyes, refuted the sinful and possessive nature of monogamy and exclusive romantic attachments that hindered spiritual salvation.5 Noyes condemned both monogamy and polygamy, arguing that each treated women as property, viewing this as a violation of 2 Stewart Davenport, Sex and Sects: The Story of Mormon Polygamy, Shaker Celibacy, and Oneida Complex Marriage (University of Virginia Press, 2022), 34.

3 Wayland-Smith, Oneida, 130. The Oneida Community did not have a written constitution or any formally established law as Noyes rejected contractual notions of governance. He viewed the relationship between humans and God as a unified divine whole, rather than the traditional covenant theology that separated the two entities.

4 Davenport, Sex and Sects, 42. A key scripture that Noyes uses came from Luke 20:27-40. Jesus answers a question about marriage and with “The children of this world marry and are given in marriage: but they which shall be accounted worthy to obtain that world, and the resurrection from the dead, neither marry, nor are given in marriage.” Perfectionists use this passage to refute traditional marriage as an earthly construct and interpret it as a call to embrace communal relationships as a part of their pursuit of perfection.

5 Noyes believed that conventional marriage catalyzed selfishness because it prioritizes the nuclear family over the collective good.

15 women’s freedom. Noyes viewed Complex marriage as “really nothing but a combination of polygamy and polyandry” with the power to liberate women from the constraints of monogamy.6 The OC women had financial security and support systems to raise children and participated equally in a system that freed them from dependence on male partners for social standing. This newfound equality spread to other areas as men and women in the OC worked more frequently and closely than in any other commune of their time.7 The OC, in theory, created an environment that dismantled gender hierarchies through the redistribution of responsibilities in parenting, labor, and economic production.8 However, the practical implementation of gender equality tells a different story. The Perfectionists asserted that men and women complemented each other, yet they considered men inherently superior. Noyes held a deeply traditional perspective and used the teachings of Apostle Paul as foundational to his misogynist ideals. Noyes envisioned a “spiritual hierarchy of the universe,” where “God stood above Christ, Christ stood above man, and man stood above woman.”9 Noyes justified this gender hierarchy through biblical references such as Ephesian 5:23, “The husband is the head of the wife,” and Timothy 2:12, “I permit no woman to teach or to have authority over men.”10 He openly criticized women’s rights activists, deeming them “misguided” in their advocation of “entire equality,” and viewed the relationship between men and women as “superior and subordinate.”11 How, then, could a community preach equality while inequality is rooted at its core? Noyes spoke of complementarity relationships but practiced subordination, grounding the Community’s belief in a spiritual framework that left little room for reinterpretation. By rooting his ideals in scripture, Noyes ensured that gender parity in the 6 “Decadence of Marriage,” The Circular 13, no. 4 (Jan. 27, 1876).

7 Carl J. Guarneri, “Reconstructing the Antebellum Communitarian Movement: Oneida and Fourierism,” Journal of the Early Republic 16, no. 3 (1996): 463–88. https://doi.org/10.2307/3124059.

8 John Humphrey Noyes, (Anthony Wonderley, ed.), John Humphrey Noyes on Sexual Relations in the Oneida Community: Four Essential Texts (Clinton, NY: Richard W. Couper Press), 2012, excerpts.

9 Spencer Klaw, Without Sin: The Life and Death of the Oneida Community (New York: Penguin Press, 1993), 133–134.

10 Anthony Wonderley, Oneida Utopia: A Community Searching for Human Happiness and Prosperity (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2017), 34.

11 “Man and Woman—Their True Relation,” The Circular 12, no.

2 (Mar. 12, 1863); Davenport, Sex and Sects, 233.

HAMILTON HISTORICAL | Vol. IV Issue22 II | |Issue OC remained an illusion—a contradiction held in theological justification. The very structure that promised equality undermined it, thus creating a paradox where fairness was preached but never realized.

Another facade to the OC’s movement of women’s empowerment lay within the practice of male continence, in layman’s terms, the “pull-out method.”12 Noyes remained strongly opinionated and harbored almost antagonistic feelings towards ejaculation. In his first annual report, Noyes writes, “Ordinary sexual intercourse is a fleeting act, ending in exhaustion and disgust. Even if it begins in the spirit, it quickly devolves into the flesh; that is, the amative, which is spiritual, is overwhelmed by the propagative, which is sensual. The resulting exhaustion naturally gives rise to self-reproach and shame, fostering aversion and secrecy regarding the sexual organs.”13 Thus, Noyes instructed his male followers to avoid ejaculation during intercourse, a practice framed as a means to spiritual discipline and population control and to women, who often bore the physical and social costs of childbearing with little recourse, male continence, and the OC served as a lifeline, offering unprecedented relief. The practice, at least in appearance, gave women a measure of reproductive agency. Male continence eliminated reliance on traditional contraceptives, which remained few, unreliable, and stigmatized at the time. Without the immediate constraints of pregnancy, women could theoretically enjoy sexual relationships more freely.

In this sense, male continence heralded an egalitarian innovation—freeing women from the confinements of their reproductively dictated role and aligning with the OC’s broader ethos of mutual respect and shared responsibility.

Noyes’s solution to childbirth burdens placed male dominance at the center, reinforcing ideas of male superiority. He declared ejaculation “the grand problem,” positioning men as the ultimate controllers of reproduction.14 Male continence, rather than empowering women, framed men as the sole agents of reproductive freedom. Noyes claimed that men, through their self-restraint, determined whether pregnancies occurred, elevating male action above women’s agency. Noyes assigned semen a near-mystical importance, 12 Lawrence Foster, “Free Love and Feminism: John Humphrey Noyes and the Oneida Community,” Journal of the Early Republic 1, no. 2 (1981): 165–83, https://doi.org/10.2307/3123007.

13 First Annual Report of the Oneida Association: Exhibiting Its History, Principles, and Transactions to Jan. 1, 1849 (Oneida Reserve, NY: Leonard, 1849), 33.

14 First Annual Report of the Oneida Association, 31.

16 describing it as a vital life fluid and condemning its expulsion as “shameful,” “exhausting,” and “disgusting.”15 This focus prioritized male vitality while ignoring the physical toll childbirth placed on women. Noyes viewed ejaculation as a moral and spiritual act, framing men’s ability to control it as central to the community’s success. He reduced women to passive participants in this framework, stripping them of autonomy while placing men in positions of ultimate authority.

Additionally, Noyes further asserted male superiority through the rejection of other forms of birth control. He viewed condoms as unnatural and disgusting because they stripped male control as it relied on external methods. Noyes also condemned abortion, not out of concern for women, but due to his obsession with preserving male bodily purity. Noyes viewed masturbation as selfish and wasteful.16 He argued it drained male vitality and offered no social value to the community, despite posing no risk of pregnancy.17 This constant and heavy fixation on the male body reinforces male centrality and continues to exclude women from the conversation entirely.

Noyes claimed that male continence promoted “love, unity, and fellowship without the burden of children.”18 His framing placed men at the heart of this vision. Men refrained from ejaculation, safeguarded community vitality, and maintained harmony through discipline. Women received no active role in this dynamic. Noyes designed a system where men held all agency over reproduction. The practice of male continence reinforced patriarchal control and its use as a tool for women’s liberation. Noyes’s framework reduces women to supporting roles and glorifies men as spiritually and morally superior as he perpetuates male dominance under the guise of women’s reproductive freedom. Though male continence was framed as a spiritual practice meant to liberate women from childbirth, it ultimately reinforced male dominance under the guise of liberation.

Noyes constantly perpetuated a false reality within the community and even used mutual criticism as a governance system, which he adapted from the European tradition of the chapter of faults. Inspired by St. Paul’s exhortations to “admonish,” “rebuke,” and “reprove,” the process required priests and nuns to 15 First Annual Report of the Oneida Association, 33.

16 John Humphrey Noyes, Male Continence, 2nd ed. (Oneida, NY: Office of the Oneida Circular, 1877), 21.

17 Noyes, Male Continence, 31.

18 Davenport, Sex and Sects, 50.

openly acknowledge their own faults as well as those of each other.19 Noyes first came across this idea during his time at Andover Seminary when he joined a renegade group that practiced similar open confessions of personal struggles and inadequacies, becoming the catalyst for when he would institutionalize this practice at Oneida. For Noyes, mutual criticism, which involved systematic public scrutiny of individual members by the entire “family” (from which he excluded himself), eliminated the need for formal laws and rules.

Mutual criticism functioned as a tool to reinforce Noyes’s dominance and continues to perpetuate male superiority. As aforementioned forms of control, mutual criticism was framed as a means of spiritual refinement, but in reality, it disguised its true purpose: solidifying Noyes’s control over the OC while reinforcing pre-existing power hierarchies. As Noyes himself expressed, mutual criticism “played a highly significant role” in “the framework of religious and moral discipline.”20 While mutual criticism should have promoted communal responsibility and spiritual refinement, in practice, it upheld a rigid authority structure with Noyes at the apex, shielded from critique. Other members endured public humiliation designed to correct perceived or imagined misconduct, but Noyes exempted himself from the same treatment. The purposeful exclusion of Noyes from the process of mutual criticism inherently establishes a hierarchy where Noyes’s authority remains unchallenged, strengthening his patriarchal ideology masked under spiritual pretexts.

The very public nature of mutual criticism became a psychological weapon. People in the community lost self-confidence and autonomy. Mutual criticism normalized the public shaming of community members and stripped them of self-confidence. A member stated, “Criticism was to the Community what ballast is to a ship. To the individuals, it was as fire is to gold,” acknowledging its role in maintaining order in the community while simultaneously capturing its capacity to burn away personal confidence and autonomy.21 For women, this process continues to perpetuate gender hierarchies as they typically lack the structural power to push back against the male-dominated hierarchy.

Women’s voices remained subordinate to the authority 19 Spencer C. Olin, “The Oneida Community and the Instability of Charismatic Authority,” The Journal of American History 67, no. 2 (1980): 285–300, https://doi.org/10.2307/1890409.

20 First Annual Report of the Oneida Association, 10.

21 Alan Estlake, The Oneida Community: A Record of an Attempt to Carry Out the Principles of Christian Unselfishness and Scientific Race Improvement (London: George Redway, 1900), 58.

17 of Noyes and other male elders. Noyes frequently saw himself as a general leading the Lord’s Perfectionist army, ruthlessly suppressing dissent and harshly denouncing those he deemed deserters.22 In 1849, he reframed the metaphor, declaring, “The kingdom of God is an absolute monarchy,” leaving no question about who reigned as monarch.23 In declaring the community an “absolute monarchy,” Noyes revealed the true function of mutual criticism: not as a tool for communal growth, but as a means of solidifying his authoritarian rule and suppressing any challenges, especially from women, whose voices were structurally and spiritually silenced.

Furthermore, mutual criticism worked in tandem with complex marriage and ascending fellowship to tighten Noyes’s grip on the community.24 By regulating sexual relationships, Noyes controlled not only members’ intimate lives but also their ability to challenge his authority. Women’s sexual autonomy existed only within the parameters set by Noyes and the elder men, who dictated the rules of partnership under the guise of communal harmony. Noyes’s policy of assigning young men to postmenopausal women for their first sexual experiences prevented pregnancies. Still, it also reinforced the idea that sexual and spiritual authority rested with older males. This dynamic prioritized male needs, desires, and control, ensuring that the structure of mutual criticism extended beyond verbal judgment to the physical realm of relationships.

If mutual criticism was not enough, Noyes quite literally established a spiritual hierarchy within the community to place himself at the top. Noyes developed a system for advancing to perfection. According to him, community members should “seek for association with those that are better than ourselves, select out the best that we know of.”25 This system, framed as a guiding factor for members to make progress towards sexual and spiritual maturity, also legitimizes Noyes’ 22 Davenport, Sex and Sects, 199.

23 First Annual Report of the Oneida Association, 12.

24 The Ascending Fellowship was a practice where older members of the community would select a virgin to be their spiritual responsibility. The women over 40 would act as sexual mentors to the adolescent boys, and also served as religious role models.

While, on the other hand, older men would often introduce young women to sex.

25 Circular, April 3, 1856 (“seek for association”); Alfred Barron and George Noyes Miller, eds., Home-Talks by John Humphrey Noyes, Vol. 1 (Oneida, NY: The Community, 1875), 203–9; Robert S. Fogarty, “Oneida: A Utopian Search for Religious Security,” Labor History 14, no. 2 (Spring 1973): 227.

HAMILTON HAMILTONHISTORICAL HISTORICAL| | Vol. Vol.IV II | Issue 2 leadership and standing.26 Noyes’s oversight of sexual relationships formed the foundation and primary function of OC governance. Noyes portrayed the older members of the community as “pilots” who serve as guides to steer the youth and inexperienced through their sexual awakening.27 Noyes insisted that younger members “ascend” and engage in relationships with older superiors so the elders can pass on their wisdom. This structure gave elders control over every aspect of these relationships.

By declaring a “natural attraction between superiors and inferiors,” Noyes imposed a hierarchy that prioritized male authority.28 He reinforced this imbalance by placing himself at the top, using spiritual rhetoric to justify his dominance. The fellowship’s implementation highlighted its inequities. Older women bore the responsibility of mentoring young men, initiating them into sexual practices, and ensuring male continence to prevent pregnancies. The system stripped older women and young men of personal choice, reducing their relationships to disciplinary exercises. Noyes dictated the terms of access to younger women, demanding young men first demonstrate control over their bodies according to his rules.29 Noyes used the fellowship to impose order on the community’s sexual relationships. He dictated pairings, set rules for engagement, and maintained strict oversight. This control extended far beyond mentorship, turning relationships into tools for enforcing his authority. The system did not create equality; it established Noyes’s dominance while perpetuating male control in every aspect of the community’s life.

Noyes treated young women differently, using their “magnetism” and attractiveness as justification to insert himself into their lives. He declared his responsibility to initiate them into the community’s sexual practices, granting himself exclusive access to them.

Noyes demanded that “love gravitate toward me,” exposing the fellowship’s true purpose: strengthening his authority.30 Through this system, Noyes claimed both spiritual and physical control over young women, 26 Monique Patenaude Roach, “The Loss of Religious Allegiance among the Youth of the Oneida Community,” The Historian 63, no. 4 (2001): 787–806.

27 Foster, Free Love, 238-239.

28 John Humphrey Noyes, “Physical Suggestions on the Subject of Amativeness: Home-Talk by Noyes,” Sept. 20, 1851, in Free Love in Utopia, ed. Foster, 238–239 29 Wayland-Smith, Oneida, 88.

30 John Humphrey Noyes, “The Campaign among the Children,” 56.

18 aligning with his belief in male superiority. By positioning men as superior and himself as the ultimate authority, Noyes reinforced a system where women and younger members served his vision. He denied them autonomy, framing their participation as a spiritual duty and necessity.

In the end, the Oneida Community did not abolish patriarchy, it just simply rebranded it. Beneath the language of mutual love and Christian perfection lay a system engineered to maintain male control, sanctified by scripture and masked by the illusion of progress. Noyes transformed sexuality into a theology, and theology into a tool of subjugation. Women were promised liberation but received conditional freedom, filtered through the hands of male authority. The OC becomes not just a case study in failed utopia, but a reflection of a deeper American contradiction: the enduring entanglement of idealism and inequality. Its legacy is not one of spiritual perfection, but of how easily radical visions twist to serve. In Oneida, equality was preached yet patriarchy was practiced.

The First False Grigorii Investigating Historians’ View of Tsar Dmitrii I Garrett Cordova-Caddes Hamilton College - Class of 2027

As part of a propaganda campaign to delegitimize Tsar Dmitrii I (r. 1605-1606), Dmitrii’s political opponents, Tsar Boris Godunov (r. 1598-1605) and Tsar Vasili Shuiskii (r. 1606-1610), propagated the theory that Dmitrii was not the son of Tsar Ivan IV but actually the monk Grigorii Otrepyev. Scholars of the Time of Troubles—the civil war which ravaged Russia from 1598-1613—continue to debate the true identity of “the False Dmitrii,” and the theory claiming that Dmitrii and Grigorii were the same person remains prevalent. Re-examining the historiography of the period in regard to the identity of Tsar Dmitrii into question the validity of political testimony I callsinto as unbiased evidence and the role that political actors play in the historical narrative. Despite the popularity of this Dmitrii-Grigorii theory, there is ample evidence to disprove that Tsar Dmitrii I and Grigorii Otrepyev were the same person. The strongest support for the Dmitrii-Grigorii theory, the testimony of the monk Varlaam, is unreliable because Varlaam’s motives were self-serving in order to clear himself of wrongdoing after Dmitrii’s death. Further, the testimony of Jacques Margeret shows that Dmitrii and Grigorii both existed independently at the same time. Finally, the dissimilarity of their physical appearances, as well as Dmitrii’s lack of fear of being recognized as Grigorii makes it nearly impossible to believe that Dmitrii and Grigorii were the same person. Given the unreliability of the evidence supporting the Dmitrii-Grigorii theory and the strength of argument against it, scholars of this period should dismiss Grigorii Otrepyev as a possible identity for Tsar Dmitrii I. The Dmitrii-Grigorii theory originated from the political instability in Russia during the late-sixteenth and early-seventeenth centuries. When Tsar

Feodor I died in 1598, he had no heirs.1 This left a power vacuum which various noble families sought to exploit in order to put their own candidate on the throne.2 During this succession crisis, rumors began to circulate around Russia that Dmitrii Ivanovich, Tsar Feodor’s half-brother, was alive and preparing to claim the throne.3 Dmitrii Ivanovich had “died” in 1591 under suspicious circumstances, supposedly slitting his own throat with a knife while having an epileptic fit.

Instead, these rumors claimed that Dmitrii’s “death” had been an assassination attempt, and after surviving, he had been hidden away and raised in secret.4 When Boris Godunov took the throne, rumors of Dmitrii’s survival quieted down for a time, but in 1603, Dmitrii reappeared in Poland.5 By August 1604, Dmitrii appeared on the Russian border with an army backed

by King Sigismund III of Poland and the Polish Sejm, declaring that he was there to claim his rightful place on his father’s throne.6 The threat of invasion by an unknown figure pushed Boris Godunov to begin a campaign to unmask the pretender, which would eventually become the Dmitrii-Grigorii theory.

1 Maureen Perrie, Pretenders and Popular Monarchism in Early Modern Russia: The False Tsars of the Time of Troubles (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 1.

2 Sergei F. Platonov, The Time of Troubles: A Historical Study of the Internal Crisis and Social Struggle in Sixteenth and Seventeenth-Century Muscovy, trans. and ed. John T. Alexander (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1970), 64.

3 Perrie, Pretenders and Popular Monarchism, 35.

4 Chester S. Dunning, Russia’s First Civil War: The Time of Troubles and the Founding of the Romanov Dynasty (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2001), 64.

5 Philip L. Barbour, Dimitry: Called the Pretender, Tsar and Great Prince of All Russia 1605-1606 (New York: Macmillan, 1967), 9.

6 Barbour, Dmitry, 9.

20 The evidence for the Dmitrii-Grigorii theory was weak from its inception. Boris Godunov entrusted the task of identifying the pretender to Patriarch Iov and Semyon Godunov, who returned with the assertion that the pretender Dmitrii was the monk Grigorii.7 The proof that Patriarch Iov and Semyon Godunov offered to support their assertion was the chronological alignment of Grigorii’s disappearance from Moscow and Dmitrii’s appearance in Poland. In March 1602, Grigorii, who had been a scribe for Patriarch Iov, was sentenced to life imprisonment at a monastery for thievery.8 Rather than serve his sentence, Grigorii fled Moscow with two other monks, Misail Povadin and Varlaam Yatsky.9 In the fall of 1602, Grigorii parted ways with Varlaam and Povadin, going to the Polish town of Hoszcza while the other two went to Derman.10 Grigorii disappeared from Hoszcza just before Dmitrii appeared and began to raise a Polish army.11 To Boris Godunov, Grigorii’s convenient disappearance in such proximity to Dmitrii’s appearance demonstrated that they were the same person. However, the fact that both Dmitrii and Grigorii were in Poland around the same time does not make them the same person.

Boris Godunov advanced this theory because Grigorii provided a convenient scapegoat for the identity of Dmitrii. The Dmitrii-Grigorii theory weakened Dmitrii’s claim on numerous levels. First, Grigorii’s criminal past cast a negative shadow over Dmitrii, and his flight from Moscow served as incriminating evidence.12 Patriarch Iov might have denounced the tsarevich as Grigorii because of this past, turning two fugitives into one. Second, Grigorii’s status as a defrocked monk weakened Dmitrii’s legitimacy and diminished his support base. Russian society viewed monks who abandoned religious life negatively and associated them with the devil, magic, and sorcery.13 Semyon Godunov might have selected Grigorii because his position as a defrocked monk was seen as a valuable means of delegitimizing Boris Godunov’s principle political opponent. The fact that all parties involved had strong incentives to propagate the Dmitrii-Grigorii theory suggests that Boris Godunov, Patri7 Barbour, Dmitry, 317.

8 Perrie, Pretenders and Popular Monarchism, 45.

9 Perrie, Pretenders and Popular Monarchism, 47.

10 Perrie, Pretenders and Popular Monarchism, 49.

11 Barbour, Dmitry, 8.

12 Barbour, Dmitry, 65.

13 Chester Dunning, “Who Was Tsar Dmitrii?” Slavic Review 60, no. 4 (2001): 720.

HAMILTON HISTORICAL | Vol. IV Issue22 II | |Issue arch Iov, and Semyon Godunov indicted Grigorii out of convenience, not veracity After Dmitrii’s invasion of Russia and deposal of Boris Godunov, discussion of his true identity paused, but after Dmitrii was assassinated by Vasili Shuiskii, the Dmitrii-Grigorii theory gained new life.

Even though their leader was dead, Dmitrii’s allies— and additional false Dmitriis—continued to fight Vasili Shuiskii for the entirety of his reign.14 The threat of Dmitrii’s supporters drove Vasili Shuiskii to revitalize Boris Godunov’s propaganda campaign in an attempt to weaken their loyalty to Dmitrii. Vasili Shuiskii would certainly have known about the cultural phenomena which made Grigorii a good scapegoat, which explains why he also declared that Dmitrii and Grigorii had been the same person.15 Propagators of the Dmitrii-Grigorii theory under Vasili Shuiskii relied on the testimony of Varlaam Yatsky to justify their claims. Varlaam attested that Dmitrii and Grigorii were the same person in a letter sent to Tsar Vasili Shuiskii in 1606.16 Varlaam’s testimony included a description of the route Grigorii, Mihail, and Varlaam took out of Russia, as well as reports on Grigorii’s interests. Varlaam claimed that Grigorii studied Latin and Polish on their journey and had taken an interest in Lutheranism.17 These accusations were carefully crafted to alienate the Russian Orthodox population. Varlaam insisted that he had not known Grigorii’s true identity during their travels and had tried to warn the Polish government of Dmitrii’s fraudulence when he found out the truth.18 Varlaam’s testimony became the cornerstone of Vasili Shuiskii’s Dmitrii-Grigorii propaganda in the seventeenth-century and has since remained a crucial piece of evidence for Dmitrii-Grigorii historians, such as Maureen Perrie and Ruslan Skrynnikov.

Modern scholarship has found that much of the propaganda put forth by Vasili Shuiskii was unsound, but Varlaam’s testimony stands out for its reputation of veracity across the field. Recent studies by Sergeĭ Platonov and L. E. Morozova have shown that most of the stories told as part of Vasili Shuiskii’s propaganda were manufactured by Mikhail Tatishchev, one of Shuiskii’s strongest allies and an architect of Dmitrii’s assassination.19 On the other hand, Varlaam’s testimo14 Platonov, The Time of Troubles, 96.

15 Dunning, “Who Was Tsar Dmitrii,” 707.

16 Perrie, Pretenders and Popular Monarchism, 50.

17 Perrie, Pretenders and Popular Monarchism, 49.

18 Perrie, Pretenders and Popular Monarchism, 46-7.

19 Dunning, “Who Was Tsar Dmitrii,” 707.

21 ny is verified by two independent documents from the period. The first document is the report which Adam Vishnevetsky, the nobleman to whom Dmitrii first revealed himself in Poland, sent to King Sigismund III in 1603. Vishnevetsky’s report included a recollection of Dmitrii’s journey from Russia, as told to him by Dmitrii, which is nearly identical to the one in Varlaam’s testimony. There is no evidence to suggest that Varlaam had seen or even knew about Vishnevetsky’s report, so the correspondence supports the authenticity of Varlaam’s testimony regarding the route traveled.20 The second document is a book owned by Vasili Ostrogski, a Polish nobleman with whom Grigorii stayed on his way from Russia to Poland. The book bore an inscription which recorded that Varlaam, Misail, and Grigorii were all present at Ostrog. Written under the name Grigorii, in the same hand, were the words “Tsarevich of Muscovy.”21 The book confirmed that Grigorii stayed at Ostrog, which was one of the places recorded in Varlaam’s testimony. The discovery of this second source increased the reputability of Varlaam’s testimony among Dmitrii-Grigorii scholars in recent years, but while the inscription confirms the veracity of the route described in Varlaam’s testimony, that is where the confirmation ends. Even though the accounts agree, this only proves that Dmitrii and Grigorii’s route from Russia to Poland was the same, not their identities.

Though it corroborated the routes, the writing under the name Grigorii calls into question the veracity of Varlaam’s testimony as a whole. The inscription’s placement under the line creates an ambiguity in its meaning. Either the book was given to Varlaam, Misail, and Grigorii, the tsarevich of Muscovy, or it was given to Varlaam, Misail, Grigorii, and the tsarevich of Muscovy. Closer reading strengthens the theory of four travelers—the theory in which Dmitrii and Grigorii are separate people. The inscription utilized the first-person in its dedication, which suggests that one of the travelers wrote it themselves.22 If there were only three travelers, none of them are likely candidates. Grigorii, hiding his identity as the tsarevich Dmitrii from his enemies in Moscow, would not leave physical evidence that Boris Godunov could use against him. Varlaam, in his petition to Tsar Vasili, claimed that he had not known that Grigorii and Dmitrii were the same person until “after they had parted company in Lithuania,” so Varlaam could not have written it either, unless he was 20 Perrie, Pretenders and Popular Monarchism, 50.

21 Perrie, Pretenders and Popular Monarchism, 49.

22 Perrie, Pretenders and Popular Monarchism, 49.

lying to the Tsar.23 Misail was a tertiary figure throughout the journey to Poland and was not involved with Dmitrii’s invasion, so it is unlikely that Misail would be involved in a scheme to cover up Dmitrii’s identity.

This leaves only one probable explanation, that Dmitrii, Grigorii, Varlaam, and Misail all traveled to Poland together, and that Dmitrii, having convinced Vasili Ostrogski to support him, felt comfortable leaving record of his presence in the house of his ally. If this were true, Varlaam’s account of Grigorii’s route was the same as Vishnevetsky’s account of Dmitrii’s route not because Dmitrii and Grigorii were the same person, but because they traveled together.

Moreover, the inscription reveals that Varlaam lied in his letter to Vasili Shuiskii, eroding the veracity of his testimony. If there were four travelers, Varlaam lied to Shuiskii about the number of men who accompanied him. If there were three travelers, Varlaam lied to Shuiskii about knowing that Grigorii was secretly Dmitrii. Whichever the lie was, it was likely an attempt to absolve Varlaam of any wrongdoing by supporting Shuiskii’s Dmitrii-Grigorii theory. At the time of writing, Shuiskii’s government in Moscow had named Varlaam an accomplice of Dmitrii’s escape from Moscow and subsequent invasion.24 Thus, the motive underlying Varlaam’s petition was almost certainly to clear his name. Varlaam wrote in his petition that when he first found out about Grigorii’s identity as Dmitrii, he rushed to Cracow to warn King Sigismund III about the pretender, however other evidence reveals that Varlaam was one of the monks who helped convince Sigismund that Dmitrii was the true tsarevich.25 Due to such contradictions, the most logical explanation is that Varlaam’s testimony was an attempt for a once-loyal supporter of Dmitrii to clear his name after Dmitrii’s death. If Varlaam switched sides after Dmitrii’s death and wrote his testimony to clear his name, Varlaam likely omitted Dmitrii from the journey in order to support Vasili’s propaganda. This destroys the testimony’s credibility as crucial support for the Dmitrii-Grigorii theory.

Unlike Varlaam’s testimony, the account of Jacques Margeret becomes stronger with the possibility of four travelers. Margeret was a French mercenary who served Boris Godunov, Dmitrii, and Vasili Shuiskii. His account was one of few contemporary sources 23 Perrie, Pretenders and Popular Monarchism, 46.

24 Perrie, Pretenders and Popular Monarchism, 49.

25 Perrie, Pretenders and Popular Monarchism, 46; Dunning, “Who Was Tsar Dmitrii”, 715.

22 which mentioned Dmitrii and Grigorii existing as separate people. Margeret’s account reported that Grigorii claimed to have accompanied Dmitrii out of Russia in 1602.26 Margeret proposed that there were four travelers independently of the Ostrogski inscription—which there is no evidence to believe he had any knowledge of. Margeret was a firm believer that Dmitrii was the legitimate son of Ivan IV and thus devoted a large portion of his testimony to denouncing various theories of his identity, including the Dmitrii-Grigorii theory put forth by Boris Godunov.27 Unlike other contemporaries, Margeret departed Russia soon after Dmitrii’s death, and thus had no incentive to switch sides like Varlaam might have.28 Margeret wrote that he spent the winter of 1605-1606 at the court of Dmitrii in the city of Putivl, and he often saw Dmitrii and Grigorii together.29 Two Jesuit priests who were staying at Putivl at the same time also reported to seeing the two independently.30 To defend against such assertions, some Dmitrii-Grigorii scholars asserted that Dmitrii might have created a “false Grigorii” to combat Boris Godunov’s rumors.31 However, a “false Grigorii” would have caused problems for Dmitrii, as it would have meant admitting his fraudulence to another person, who could have betrayed him.32 Margeret’s testimony continued to chronicle the life of Grigorii even after Dmitrii was dead. Margeret claimed that Dmitrii had sent Grigorii to Iaroslavl due to his drinking problem, where he remained until after Dmitrii died. Margeret also claimed that after Dmitrii’s assassination, Vasili Shuiskii sent for Grigorii to be returned to Moscow, likely because allowing Grigorii to remain free threatened his propaganda.33 Although Margeret’s testimony is the only source which mentions this, scholars on both sides of the debate treat Margeret’s testimony as a source of the highest veracity.34 If true, this claim would prove that even Vasili Shuiskii knew that Dmitrii and Grigorii were not the same person. The strong, reputable ev26 Jacques Margeret, The Russian Empire and Grand Duchy of Muscovy: A Seventeenth-Century Account, trans. Chester S. L. Dunning (Pittsburg: University of Pittsburg Press, 1983), 82.

27 Margeret, Russian Empire, 82 28 Margeret, Russian Empire, XIX. 29 Margeret, Russian Empire, 82 30 Barbour, Dmitry, 325.

31 Ruslan G. Skrynnikov, The Time of Troubles: Russia in Crisis, 1604–1618, trans. Hugh F. Graham (Gulf Breeze, FL: Academic International Press, 1988), 3.

32 Barbour, Dmitry, 325.

33 Margeret, Russian Empire, 82.

34 Margeret, Russian Empire, 82n320.

HAMILTON HAMILTONHISTORICAL HISTORICAL| | Vol. Vol.IV II | Issue 2 idence contained within Margeret’s testimony, paired with Margeret’s lack of incentive to lie, make it a compelling counterargument against the Dmitrii-Grigorii theory.

If Dmitrii and Grigorii were truly the same person, it seems unlikely that Dmitrii would never have been recognized as Grigorii during his time on the throne, however there are no accounts in which Dmitrii was mistaken for Grigorii on the basis of physical appearance. Contemporary accounts asserted that Dmitrii and Grigorii looked nothing alike, and Margeret claimed that Grigorii was at least ten years older than Dmitrii.35 The population of Moscow would have been familiar with Grigorii’s appearance, since, before fleeing Moscow, Grigorii was frequently in the public eye as the secretary for Patriarch Iov.36 If Dmitrii and Grigorii were the same, someone surely would have recognized Dmitrii as Grigorii when the Tsar marched through Moscow.37 However, neither the general public nor the Otrepyev family identified Dmitrii as Grigorii. When Dmitrii was in Poland, Boris Godunov sent Smirnoy Otrepyev, Grigorii’s uncle, to identify the pretender.38 Smirnoy’s failure to recognize Dmitrii told the Polish government that Boris Godunov did not know who the pretender was, despite his propaganda.39 Further, Margeret remarked that Dmitrii never acted as if he was afraid of being recognized as anyone other than Dmitrii Ivanovich, even when meeting Mariia Nagoi, his supposed mother.40 His conviction led Margaret to assert that if Dmitrii was not the true son of Ivan IV, he truly believed that he was.41 Such physical inconsistencies between accounts of their appearances and the lack of recognition by Smirnoy Otrepyev and the people of Moscow make it undeniable that Dmitrii and Grigorii were not the same person.

Vasili Shuiskii’s attempts to discredit Dmitrii and spread the Dmitrii-Grigorii theory led him to destroy much of the information that might have allowed modern historians to reconstruct the true identity of Tsar Dmitrii I. Though it may be impossible to say who Dmitrii truly was, it is unquestionable that he was not Grigorii. The evidence for the Dmitrii-Grig35 Skrynnikov, Time of Troubles, 3; Margeret, Russian Empire, 82.

36 Barbour, Dmitry, 65.

37 Margeret, Russian Empire, 82n316.

38 Margeret, Russian Empire, 82n317.

39 Dunning, “Who Was Tsar Dmitrii”, 713.

40 Margeret, Russian Empire, 89.

41 Margeret, Russian Empire, 75n284.

23 orii theory that Boris Godunov, Vasili Shuiskii, and their allies left behind, such as the fabricated stories of Mikhail Tatishchev and the heavily-biased testimonial of Varlaam, are not reliable enough to identify Dmitrii as Grigorii. The example of these sources reiterates the importance of interrogating the authenticity of testimonial evidence and how the secondary motives of political actors might have ramifications which effect an entire historiographical field. On the other hand, reliable counterevidence, such as Jacques Margeret’s account of the Time of Troubles and physical discrepancies between the two, contradict the evidence relied upon by subscribers to the Dmitrii-Grigorii theory. Ultimately, scholars of the Time of Troubles should no longer entertain Grigorii Otrepyev as a possible identity for Tsar Dmitrii I.

Becoming Cultural Encounters, Discourse Negotiations, and the Making of Black Jazz Clara Bennett-Jones

Hamilton College - Class of 2027

To fully grasp the revolutionary dimensions of Black jazz, it is not enough to study live performance.

One must immerse themself in the process of jazz and embrace an essential piece of its history: the history of ‘becoming.’ This history speaks to a perpetual present, a constant motion of cultural currents that extends beyond any single live performance. It acknowledges the negotiations through which Black jazz is reshaped by identity and religious politics, as well as sites of cultural contact—whether spiritual, geographic, or technological—that generate new meanings and tensions for the genre. Focusing on these negotiations beckons historians to look toward encounters: who is engaged, who is excluded, and what is at stake. Especially generative is the work of Robin D.G. Kelley, Ruth Feldstein, Richard Brent Turner, and Alexander Weheliye, whose respective histories remedy the myopic focus on live performance that veils a deeper complexity to jazz. By focusing on this space, these authors elucidate the transformations, trajectories, and discourses of jazz to reveal the dynamic cultural sites and developments that inevitably fall into the periphery when studying live performance.

Robin Kelley’s analytic focus is on the musical convergences that transformed the ethos of Black jazz in the twentieth century. His monograph begins by rejecting precedent frameworks which place live performance on a narrow pedestal. Kelley proclaims his focus on “specific places, people, movements, cultures [that] provided fertile ground for new music and musical practices.”1 With a particular interest in the African diaspora, Kelley looks at transnational encounters that engaged the collaboration and friction between African music and jazz music. He observes that this friction 1 Robin Kelley, Africa Speaks, America Answers: Modern Jazz in Revolutionary Times (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012), 5.

created a discourse with respect to how much Africa as a cultural concept ought to influence Black jazz in America. His monograph highlights this tension as it pertains to the works of Guy Warren, Randy Weston, Ahmed Abdul-Malik, and Sathima Bea Benjamin, all of whom sought to “find new modes of expression that spoke to what they often understood as a linked struggle.”2 Ultimately, he strives to understand these musicians’ search for new ways to generate connections between their art and their sense of self through transnational encounters. Kelley carries these profiles throughout the twentieth century in Africa and the diaspora, noting how they created spaces that facilitated and negotiated tensions and controversies that informed what would become of their music. In doing so, he reveals dimensions of Black culture and jazz that are only perceivable when focusing on that trajectory.

Kelley most clearly articulates cultural discourse with his description of Ahmed Abdul-Malik and his encounter with Islam. Born Jonathan Tim Jr., his fascination with the Middle East was unwavering since childhood. Even then, his interests were “always partial to the music of Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Sudan, Turkey, as well as musical traditions from the Indian sub-continent.”3 As he came of age in Brooklyn, New York in the mid-twentieth century, his negative experiences with American jazz, which he considered “surface music” that failed to seek “led jazz down a path of ‘sterility,’” led him to convert to Islam.4 In hopes of revitalizing the mode of jazz he grew up with, Abdul-Malik studied Arabic under the guise of the Muslim Brotherhood, a group associated with the transnational Ahmadiyya movement that proved to be a “magnet for young musicians politicized by racism, 2 Kelley, Africa Speaks, 10.

3 Kelley, Africa Speaks, 91.

4 Kelley, Africa Speaks, 92n95.

25

HAMILTON HISTORICAL | Vol. IV Issue22 II | |Issue

the proliferation of black nationalist movements, and the growing interest in Eastern spirituality.”5 This encounter brought him closer to the sounds of the Islamic diaspora and piqued his interest in what would become the most pressing project of his career: fusing jazz and Arab music.

Concurrent to Abdul-Malik’s encounter with Islam and the Muslim Brotherhood was a shift in America’s perception of the Middle East as a result of Cold War political tensions. These tensions sparked a national “fascination, fear, and curiosity” of Middle Eastern culture which led to America’s exoticization of Arab music.6 The weight of Abdul-Malik’s earnestness to create an Arab-jazz fusion against the vulgarization of Arab music compelled him to seek professional creative opportunities to restore dignity and spirituality to jazz, leading him to form “his first Arab-jazz fusion group” in 1958.7 This group quickly occasioned a cultural crisis in jazz because its iteration of the genre was not aligned with the American musical arena it was entering into and operating within. Instead, Abdul-Malik and his bandmates explored the Arab mode of music, maqām, as a way of connecting the Middle Eastern form with jazz, Since this practice was not palatable for American audiences or other Black jazz musicians, Abdul-Malik’s contemporaries were taken aback by his Middle Eastern sound in lieu of the “shades of Africa” that were widely considered a clearer and more responsible mouthpiece to express the principles of jazz in the revolutionary era.8 Abdul-Malik’s Arab-jazz fusion ultimately created friction wherein the role of Africa was jeopardized by the presence of Islam; the two could not seem to coexist. If Abdul-Malik was to continue to perform as a Black jazz musician, his work was in need of renegotiation—of transformation.

Questions of African styles and its role in jazz music grew all the more prevalent, and for Abdul-Malik, these tensions threatened the commercial success of his music. In an attempt to preserve his career, Abdul-Malik ultimately abandoned the path of Arab-jazz music he embarked on in 1958. In his final performances, he “chose to limit the repertoire to jazz only,” a betrayal of the concept that inspired his career in the first place.9 This trajectory took Abdul-Malik’s music from cacophonous fusions of Islam and jazz to a

sound that was “hardly revolutionary” and unable to pass “the litmus test of authenticity” during his live performances.10 By highlighting this trajectory, Kelley demonstrates the transformations and necessary cultural sacrifices that go into creating jazz in the twentieth century. He unveils the cultural encounters that informed the becoming of Abdul-Malik’s jazz.

Abdul-Malik’s encounter with Islam and religious-cultural politics compromised the revolutionary facets of his music, whereas with female artists like Nina Simone, negotiations with gender politics often came to the fore. In her article, “‘I Don’t Trust You Anymore’: Nina Simone, Culture, and Black Activism in the 1960s,” Ruth Feldstein discusses how Simone infused her lyrics and rhythms with themes of civil and womens’ rights activism. While this culture was a crucial part of her music, “critics of jazz engaged in sometimes acrimonious debates about the ‘appropriate’ role of politics in jazz [and] about discrimination in the industry.”11 These critics often disagreed on the extent to which Simone fused music and politics, yet left Simone out of these debates because it was “rare for African American women musicians, many of whom were singers, to be part of a critical discourse about jazz as art.”12 By virtue of being a woman, Simone picked up sexist epithets that altogether excluded her from negotiations regarding politics in jazz. Her music and lyricism was largely the product of gender politics and her limited role in political discourse, impacting the live performances audiences ultimately received.

Managing these facets on and off stage offers another important dimension of cultural discourse: identity negotiations.

Identity negotiations are significant insofar as they speak to an artist’s consciousness. Richard Brent Turner discusses contradictory notions of self-identity in the context of Islam and jazz. As a whole, his monograph focuses on the relationship between jazz and religious consciousness in order to reveal “a larger history of American musicians, fans, dancers, religious folk, and political activists who practiced African American religious internationalism” and how “jazz provided a springboard for global perspectives about blackness,

5 Kelley, Africa Speaks, 95.

6 Kelley, Africa Speaks, 98.

7 Kelley, Africa Speaks, 103.

8 Kelley, Africa Speaks, 107.

9 Kelley, Africa Speaks, 117.

10 Kelley, Africa Speaks, 117.

11 Ruth Feldstein, “‘I Don’t Trust You Anymore’: Nina Simone, Culture, and Black Activism in the 1960s,” Journal of American History 91, no. 4 (2005): 1355. doi.org/10.2307/3660176.

12 Feldstein, “‘I Don’t Trust You Anymore,’” 1356.

26 self-determination, social justice and resistance.”13 To fully understand the making of this springboard, Turner grounds his work in the American prison as a cultural site. That is, he is interested in how the American prison facilitates and transforms culture. Turner discusses the discourses of incarcerated Black men and their encounters with Islam, noting that among them, the jazz style bebop “offered a creative space where new visions of African American religious internationalism flourished due to its heavy mix of spiritual philosophy, musical practices, and experimentation.”14 In tracing the path from conventional jazz to bebop, Turner unveils how cultural encounters between incarcerated Black performers and Islam transformed what would become of jazz and led them to rethink and reconstruct their conception of the genre and, ultimately, of themselves. Like Kelley, Turner names Abdul-Malik as one of several Muslim converts whose transnational religious encounters caused them to reconstruct their identity and, therefore, their music. However, Kelley and Turner’s analysis of Abdul-Malik split insofar as Kelley handles the tension between Islam and jazz in the abstract, whereas Turner reaches to the American prison to provide a physical space of cultural discourse.

Turner specifically tracks themes of Black masculinity and racial separatism and how they altered the trajectory of Black jazz for incarcerated Muslim men.

Incarcerated Black men who embraced Islamic themes of “resistance to systemic racism and racial separatism” would go on to exemplify “the values of black affirmation, freedom, and self-determination that Islam and bebop shared.”15 In fact, Turner pays specific attention to how incarcerated Muslim converts were “attracted to the improvisational discourses and black Atlantic practices that had reshaped the musical and religious traditions they embraced.”16 In making this connection, he suggests that the American prison provoked their need to connect music and religion to one another. This connection provoked tensions that informed jazz insofar as “religious and musical presentations of African American masculinities overlapped in some incarcerated black men’s experiences,” which ultimately characterized Islamic cultures and bebop.17 By observing incarcerated men’s engagement with Islam, and there13 Richard Brent Turner, Soundtrack to a Movement: African American Islam, Jazz, and Black Internationalism (New York, NY: New York University Press, 2021), 8.

14 Turner, Soundtrack, 10.

15 Turner, Soundtrack, 71.

16 Turner, Soundtrack, 73.

17 Turner, Soundtrack, 175.

fore with bebop, Turner demonstrates how the American prison facilitated an encounter between religion and jazz that transformed the genre. This movement toward bebop in American prisons underscores how jazz is informed by cultural encounters.

In tracing this trajectory between different styles of jazz, it is important to recognize the exclusions from this narrative. Feldstein, for example, admonishes Turner’s typology because it excludes women despite the revolutionary and progressive ideologies with which it purports to espouse. Feldstein explains that Turner and jazz scholars alike “have produced a trajectory from swing to bebop to free jazz within which Simone does not neatly fit.”18 Despite Simone’s political activism and the sacrifices she made to create and sell her art – withdrawing from political discourse, for example – the historiography of bebop continues to exclude women. As Feldstein notes, “despite the actual presence of women jazz musicians, the ‘subcultural’ image of bebop was nourished by a conflation of the music with a style of black masculinity.”19 The tension between Feldstein and Turner speaks to larger ideological debates in Black jazz. In considering bebop’s misogynistic undertones, Feldstein dismantles facile narratives that suggest a lack thereof. Drawing attention to these exclusions allows historians to recognize the shortfalls and potential spaces of growth in the historiography of Black jazz.

In continuing to understand this historiography, it is also important to address how jazz is informed by the reproduction of live performance. While Kelley and Turner consider the confluence of social, political, and religious ideas that precede live performance and produce jazz, their monographs do not get to the point of discussing how jazz is reproduced and the encounters that factor into that reproduction. Alexander Weheliye’s Phonographies: Grooves in Sonic Afro-Modernity fills this gap by discussing the interplay between sound technology, Black jazz, and speech, creating a framework to consider modern Black culture he calls “sonic Afro-modernity.”20 Weheliye uses this framework to reveal how Black music specifically is sounded and heard through shifting sonic technologies.

This technology, he notes, begins with the phonograph, whose invention created a chasm between sound and vision. The phonographic reproduction of sonic data 18 Feldstein, “‘I Don’t Trust You Anymore,’” 1351.

19 Feldstein, “‘I Don’t Trust You Anymore,’” 1356.

20 Alexander G. Weheliye, Phonographies: Grooves in Sonic Afro-Modernity (Durham: Duke University Press, 2005), 13.

27 —of live performance—omitted Black performers’ physical presence, rendering the visceral, in-person interaction between performer and audience moot. This led to “a profusion of cultural maneuvers [that] sought to yoke the two back together” and mitigate the conflict between “the phonograph’s material and ephemeral dimensions.”21 This tension created a crucial and abstract cultural site for understanding Black jazz: the intangible, cultural soundscape of music. This abstract space led to significant discourses on cultural production and reproduction that were “significantly (re)created in their encounter with auditory blackness.”22 That is, the phonograph created a space wherein producers and audiences grappled with the task of oscillating between the human and the inhuman, the concrete and the abstract, which manifest the phonographic grooves of sonic Afro-modernity.

Weheliye’s work reveals all sorts of encounters that surround the production, movement, listening, and reception of sonic technology. He notes that when “visual props disappear, the ghostlike ruminations of the voice stand as the last and only vestiges of the corporeal, sonically folding the body into the voice and vice versa.”23 This folding guides the ear toward the sound process itself and “the ways in which a black voice performs and constructs its corporeality” without the faculty to literally do so.24 Weheliye boldly proposes that the reception of music with sonic technology still involves a sort of human encounter, but requires a tenuous relationship between consciousness and sonic technology to do so. Indeed, the phonograph is not simply the constricted aural reproduction of live performance. Time lags and the elimination of a visual component create a “slippage between vision and knowledge as it applies to race,” and it is within these gaps that new orders of consciousness and corporeal awareness emerge.25 The listener is exposed to an entirely new sense of the music and the musician. The phonograph is, then, a form of encounter between listener and performer that is facilitated, mediated, and transformed through grooves of sonic Afro-modernity.

Weheliye’s attention to this dimension of sound and space informs how jazz is received by its audience. He notes, it “roots subjects in their environment by making that environment audible, while the immersion that 21 Weheliye, Phonographies, 29.

22 Weheliye, Phonographies, 40.

23 Weheliye, Phonographies, 54.

24 Weheliye, Phonographies, 54.

25 Weheliye, Phonographies, 41.

HAMILTON HAMILTONHISTORICAL HISTORICAL| | Vol. Vol.IV II | Issue 2 comes with the listening experience is always tied to a space from whence it originates.”26 By emphasizing this interplay, Weheliye offers a framework that comprehends how spatial discourse and the sounding of Black jazz can maintain an ongoing and revolutionary dialogue.

The modern Black culture that emerges from these grooves is constantly in motion, and understanding this motion demands attention to the cultural sites of discourse that influence jazz. Kelley, Fledstein, Turner, and Weheliye parse the transformations of jazz to reveal its evolution when it necessarily incorporates the politics of religion, gender, incarceration, and sonic technology. The engagements that surround live performance presents a historiography that clearly speaks to the complexity of the artists who create jazz and the discourse negotiations that change their work.

It represents the cultural currents that define Black jazz through offstage dynamics, moving from a narrow focus on live performance to a crucial view of the genre as a truly revolutionary and dynamic art form. These authors invite a more inclusive historiography that acknowledges how identity and revolution echo through the space in which jazz is imagined, negotiated, and heard.

26 Weheliye, Phonographies, 112.