Armed in America A History of Gun Rights from Colonial Militias to Concealed Carry Patrick J. Charles
https://textbookfull.com/product/armed-in-america-a-history-ofgun-rights-from-colonial-militias-to-concealed-carry-patrick-jcharles/ Methods for Human History: Studying Social, Cultural, and Biological Evolution Patrick Manning
A History of Architecture and Trade draws together essays from an international roster of distinguished and emerging scholars to critically examine the important role architecture and urbanism played in the past five hundred years of global trading, moving away from a conventional Western narrative. The book uses an alternative holistic lens through which to view the development of architecture and trade, covering diverse topics such as the coercive urbanism of the Dutch East India Company; how slavery and capitalism shaped architecture and urbanization; and the importance of Islamic trading in the history of global trade. Each chapter examines a key site in history, using architecture, landscape and urban scale as evidence to show how trade has shaped them. It will appeal to scholars and researchers interested in areas such as world history, economic and trade history and architectural history.
Patrick Haughey is a Professor of Architectural History at Savannah College of Art and Design, USA, where he teaches modern, urban and global architecture history. His research uses a multidisciplinary approach to architecture history, deploying world systems, economics, history and cultural geography. His scholarship critiques the impacts of colonialism and finance on architecture and urbanism. He also teaches studio, drawing and rendering for the Interior Design and Architecture Departments.
Routledge Research in Architecture
The Routledge Research in Architecture series provides the reader with the latest scholarship in the field of architecture. The series publishes research from across the globe and covers areas as diverse as architectural history and theory, technology, digital architecture, structures, materials, details, design, monographs of architects, interior design and much more. By making these studies available to the worldwide academic community, the series aims to promote quality architectural research.
For a full list of titles, please visit: www.routledge.com/architecture/series/RRARCH
From Doxiadis’ Theory to Pikionis’ Work
Reflections of Antiquity in Modern Architecture
Kostas Tsiambaos
Thermal Comfort in Hot Dry Climates
Traditional Dwellings in Iran
Ahmadreza Foruzanmehr
Architecture and the Body, Science and Culture
Kim Sexton
The Ideal of Total Environmental Control
Knud Lönberg-Holm, Buckminster Fuller, and the SSA
Suzanne Strum
The Architecture of Medieval Churches
Theology of Love in Practice
John A.H. Lewis
A History of Architecture and Trade
Patrick Haughey
A History of Architecture and Trade
Edited by Patrick Haughey
First published 2018 by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge
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A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Haughey, Patrick, editor.
Title: A history of architecture and trade / edited by Patrick Haughey.
Description: New York : Routledge, 2018. |
Series: Routledge research in architecture | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017030220 | ISBN 9781138635739 (hardback) | ISBN 9781315206363 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Architecture and society—History. | Commerce—Social aspects—History.
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017030220
ISBN: 978-1-138-63573-9 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-20636-3 (ebk)
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Acknowledgments vii Author biographies ix
Introduction: The architecture of trade is as old as human history
PATRICK HAUGHEY
1 Legacies of colonialism: Towards an architectural history of capitalism
PATRICK HAUGHEY
2 Spices, spies, and speculation: Trust and control in the early Batavia-Amsterdam system
ROBERT COWHERD
3 Cities of incense and myrrh: Fantasy and capitalism in the Arabian Gulf
NASSER RABBAT
4 Borneo, the river effect, and the spirit world millionaires
5 House as marketplace: Swahili merchant houses and their urban context in the later Middle Ages
6 An anachronism of trade: The Mercato Nuovo in Florence (1546–1551)
LAUREN JACOBI
7 Merchant identity: The cartographic impulse in the architectural sculpture of the Llotja of Palma de Mallorca
DORON BAUER
8 The travels of a merchant throughout the Islamic World
CECILIA
FUMAGALLI
9 Savannah’s Custom House: A peculiar construction of galvanized iron, apparently durable and well-adapted to a southern climate
DENNIS
DE WITT
10 The modernization of a port in British India: Calcutta, 1870–1880
ANIRUDDHA BOSE
11 Building the marble elephant: The creation of Philadelphia’s iconic City Hall
GLEN UMBERGER
Acknowledgments
In February of 2015 the Architectural History department at Savannah College of Art and Design held its 9th and final international Symposium on the Architecture of Trade, co-directed by Patrick Haughey and Robin Williams. While this book was inspired by the symposium, it is neither a compendium of the topics presented nor a publication affiliated with the department or the college.
Books like this require the effort of a number of people. First and foremost, I would like to thank my wife. Without her, I cannot be who I am. For all of my work I am extremely grateful for my family and friends, who, with an abundance of patience both challenge and support me.
I must thank Robin Williams, my department chair and co-director of the 2015 9th Symposium: The Architecture of Trade, for his tireless commitment to the discipline of architectural history and to our community. The Savannah Symposium was a vital bi-annual gathering of scholars from all over the world and the department of Architectural History. As of now, this is the last book to be inspired by the hundreds of participants and supporters, as the symposium has been cancelled.
The Savannah Symposium, my inspiration as an educator, and our department would not be possible without the support of Savannah College of Art and Design. As always, behind the scenes of the symposium and our department are some very special people including, among many: Marilyn Armstrong, Sandra Hatteberg, Susan Richards and Alice Eisner, as well as our own dedicated students and professors. In addition, I received valuable edits and advice on my chapter from Professor John Carey Murphy and former architecture student Samson Johnson, among others. I would also especially like to thank the editors and people at Routledge Publishers for their patience.
Finally, I would like to thank my colleagues from my History, Theory and Criticism family at MIT, especially Robert Cowherd and Mark Jarzombek who helped inspired my research, as well as my other friends here in Savannah and elsewhere for supporting my decades-long history obsession. I am grateful for all of the teachers in my past who have left their mark. To all the authors whose contributions made this volume possible, thank you for your dedication, timeliness and support. Any and all errors or misunderstandings of their contributions are of course my own doing.
Now more than ever, it is important that readers, scholars, schools and publishers stand up to what seems to be an endless assault against education, history and humanity.
This book is dedicated to my students, past, present and future, whose passion, insight and trust have always kept me inspired.
Author biographies
Doron Bauer is Assistant Professor of Art History at Florida State University, USA. He received his PhD in 2012 from Johns Hopkins University. He has received a number of awards, including Research Fellowship, Kunsthistorische Institut in Florenz (2016); Predoctoral Research Fellowship, Kunsthistorische Institut in Florenz (2011–2012); La bourse d’échanges culturels de la Conseil Général de la Vienne (2010–2011); Chateaubriand Fellowship, French Ministry of Foreign Affairs (2009–2010) and Singleton Graduate Fellowship, The Singleton Center for the Study of Premodern Europe (2009–2010). He is the co-editor of a forthcoming book, Art in the Kingdom of Majorca: An Anthology of Sources (Universitat des les Illes Balears, 2017); ‘‘Milk as Templar Apologetics in the St. Bernard of Clairvaux Altarpiece from Majorca” (Studies in Iconography, 36, 79–98, 2016); and “Castus Castor (The Chaste Beaver): Some Reflections on the Iconography of the Southern Portal of Santa María de Uncastillo” (Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies, 1, 213–230, 2009).
Aniruddha Bose is Assistant Professor of History in the History and Political Science Department at Saint Francis University, Loretto, Pennsylvania, USA. He received his PhD in History from the Department of History at Boston College, Massachusetts in 2013. He is the author of “Science and Technology in India: The Digression of Asia and Europe,” History Compass (February 2007). Dr Bose is currently revising a manuscript based on his doctoral dissertation tentatively titled “Modernization and Class Conflict: The British Raj on the Calcutta Waterfront.” His research for this project has been supported by generous grants from the Clough Center for the Study of Constitutional Democracy in Boston College, where Dr Bose was a Graduate Fellow (2011–2012) and by a University Fellowship from Boston College. It has also been supported by grants from the Faculty Development Committee at Saint Francis University and the School of Arts and Letters at Saint Francis University. The manuscript is currently under contract with Routledge.
Robert Cowherd is an Associate Professor of Architecture at Wentworth Institute of Technology, Boston, USA. He was a 2014–2015 Fulbright
biographies
Scholar pursuing research on the role of design in the social transformations of Latin American cities. He is a board member of the Global Architectural History Teaching Collaborative and the author of “Cultural Construction of Surakarta,” in The Emerging Asian City, Vinayak Bharne, ed. (2012), as well as “Identity Tectonics: Contested Modernities of Java and Bali, in Across Time and Space: The Politics of Architecture in Modernity, Patrick Haughey, ed. (2016). He holds a PhD in the History and Theory of Architecture, an Urban Design Certificate from MIT, and a BArch from The Cooper Union. His research focuses on the history and theory of architecture and urbanism in Southeast Asia and Latin America and is informed by extensive field work in the developing world; including work in post-tsunami Aceh, where his open-source model for village mapping and planning was widely applied.
Dennis De Witt is Vice-Chairman and former President of the Metropolitan Waterworks Museum in Boston, USA. He holds Masters’ degrees in Architecture from Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania. He is currently a Commissioner of the Massachusetts Historical Commission. His past academic affiliations include Head of the Department of History, Theory and Criticism at the Boston Architectural College; Research Associate at the Harvard Graduate School of Design and ArchaeologistCartographer on the Broken-K Pueblo expedition for The Field Museum. In addition to helping research and develop the Waterworks Museum’s permanent exhibits, he designed and curated “Vinal/Wheelwright: The Work of Each as Boston’s Official City Architect,” 2016 and “The Art of Engineering” (concerning nineteenth-century colored-ink-wash engineering drawings), 2015. De Witt was US co-curator of “Aqueducts of Portugal,” 2014. His previous publications include: Arthur H. Vinal and Edmund March Wheelwright: Architects of the Chestnut Hill High Service Pumping Station, Metropolitan Waterworks Museum, Boston, 2016; The Brookline Reservoir Gatehouse, National Historic Landmark Nomination, 2015; “Conspicuous Iron and the Cochituate Aqueduct Gatehouses,” The Journal of the Society for Industrial Archaeology, 2015; Modern Architecture in Europe: A Guide to Buildings Since the Industrial Revolution, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, E.P. Dutton, New York, 1987; and “Neo-vernacular: eine Moderne Tradition,” Architese, 9, 1974. He also contributed to Art and Architecture of the Metropolitan Waterworks, Metropolitan Waterworks Museum, Boston, 2011 and edited and co-authored Benjamin Thompson & Associates, Process Architecture, Tokyo, 1990.
Cecilia Fumagalli obtained her Bachelors’ and Masters’ degrees in Architecture at Politecnico di Milano, Italy, in 2006 and 2009, respectively, and a Masters’ in Technology, Architecture and City in Developing Countries at Politecnico di Torino in 2012. Since 2013, she is a PhD candidate in Architecture at the Architecture, Built Environment and Construction
Author biographies xi
Engineering Department, Politecnico di Milano. Her research and publishing focus on the relationship between the character of the so-called Islamic city and the issues posed by the international institutions operating in the heritage field. Since 2006 she has worked at the Politecnico di Milano as a Teaching Assistant and in various Architectural Design Studios as an architect and urban designer. Fumagalli also collaborates with international organizations in many restoration and urban rehabilitation projects in different countries—notably in Morocco, Mauritania and Malaysia.
Thomas Gensheimer is a Professor of Architectural History at the Savannah College of Art and Design, Georgia, USA, where he teaches courses in World Architecture, African Art and Architecture, and Islamic Art, Architecture and Cities. He received his PhD from the University of California Berkeley in 1997, where he was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship to conduct research in Kenya on the urban history of the medieval East African coast prior to European contact. Professor Gensheimer has worked in Pakistan excavating the ancient Indus Valley city of Harappa and has lectured and published on the cities of the East African coast, as well as Swahili medieval houses and tombs. He served as co-director of the 4th, 6th and 7th Savannah Symposiums and has co-authored the edited volume World Heritage and National Registers: Stewardship in Perspective (Transaction Publishers, 2015). His most recent publication is a chapter on Swahili houses for Swahili World, one of Routledge World Series publications. He also serves as a board member for the Historic Sites and Monuments Commission for the city of Savannah, Georgia.
Patrick Haughey is a Professor of Architectural History at Savannah College of Art and Design, Georgia, USA, where he teaches Modern, Urban and Global Architecture History, as well as Architecture Studio. He received his PhD in the History, Theory and Criticism of Architecture from MIT in 2009. He is the editor and author of Across Time and Space: The Politics of Architecture in Modernity (Transaction Press, 2017), derived from the 8th Savannah Symposium that he co-directed. He is also a co-author of Robin Williams ed., Buildings of Savannah (2016). Recently, he has presented topics, including “Global Savannah: An Economic History, 1733 to the Present,” sponsored by the Society of Architecture Historians and National Endowment of the Arts for the Reading the City series, May 4, 2016 in Savannah: “Cartel Urbanism: Finance and the Architecture of Displacement, Towards a New History of Urbanization.” He was Presenter and Chair of the Geographies of Violence session at The Worlds of Violence, 9th Pan-European Conference on International Relations, September 23–26, 2015, Catania, Sicily; “The Architecture of the Slave Economy,” MIT, May 16, 2015, Cambridge; “The Politics of Style: Historicism and the City,” Spatial Politics, American Association of Geographers’ Conference, April 7, 2017, Boston. He is also a member of the Andrew Mellon Foundation-funded Global Architecture History and Teaching Collaborative.
Author biographies
Lauren Jacobi joined the History, Theory and Criticism faculty at MIT, USA, in 2013. Her research interests focus on the history of late-medieval through pre-industrial Italian architecture and urbanism with an emphasis on connections across the Mediterranean world. She applies economic and sociological concerns to studying urban growth and transformation, architectural history and visual culture. Prior to her position at MIT, Jacobi was a visiting lecturer in the Department of Art History at Dartmouth College. She has also taught at New York University, where she completed her PhD in 2012. She is the author of publications on topics ranging from issues about how money was made to work in the late Middle Ages, to the topographic location of international and local banks in Rome, to the medallic representations of Pope Paul V’s architectural projects. Jacobi was a Rome Prize Fellow at the American Academy in Rome from 2015–2016 where she has been working on a book project in which she studies the topography of money in and beyond Renaissance Florence. Her research has received support from the Kress Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Dutch Institute in Florence, the American Numismatic Society and the Morgan Library and Museum, among other institutions.
Mark Jarzombek is a Professor of the History and Theory of Architecture at MIT, USA, and is one of the country’s leading advocates for global history. He has published several books and articles on that topic, including A Global History of Architecture, Wiley Press, 2006, with co-author Vikram Prakash and illustrator Francis D.K. Ching and Architecture of First Societies: A Global Perspective, Wiley Press, 2013. His Urban Heterology: Dresden and the Dialectics of Post-Traumatic History (Lund University, 2001) rethinks the conventions of urban history, an issue he also addresses in Krzysztof Wodiczko, City of Refuge: A 9/11 Memorial (Blackdog Publisher, 2009), which he edited with Dr Mechtild Widrich. He is currently working on a new book, Architecture Modernity Enlightenment. Recent scholarship includes “Architecture: The Global Imaginary in an Antiglobal World” (Grey Room, 61, Fall 2015), “The Rise of the So-called Premodern” (GSAPP Transcripts: The Urgencies of Architectural Theory, Columbia University, 2015) and “The Shanghai Expo and the Rise of Pop-Arch” (Log, 31, Spring/Summer 2014). Jarzombek serves on the board of several journals and academic institutions including the SSRC and the Buell Foundation and has organized several major international conferences on topics such as Holocaust Memorials, Architecture and Cultural Studies, and East European Architecture. He is the co-founder and Chair of the Andrew Mellon Foundation-funded Global Architecture History and Teaching Collaborative.
Nasser Rabbat graduated with a Diplome of Architecture from the University of Damascus, Syria, in 1979. He received his Masters’ of Architecture at
Author biographies xiii
University of California, Los Angeles in 1984 and his PhD in Architecture, Art, and Environmental Studies at MIT in 1991. He is the Aga Khan Professor of Islamic Architecture and the Director of the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture (AKPIA) at MIT. Rabbat is a world-renowned scholar and advocate for the re-conceptualization of Islamic architecture as a coherent, yet fluid, multifaceted, and open-minded field of study. In 2007, he was a visiting professor at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Munich, followed in 2009 at the École des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris. He has received The J. Paul Getty Postdoctoral Fellowship, as well as fellowships from the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study Fellowship, The American Research Center in Egypt Fellowship the Chaire de l’Institut du Monde Arabe. Recently, Dr Rabbat received the BritishKuwait Friendship Society Prize in Middle Eastern Studies (2011). He has authored numerous books and edited volumes, including The Citadel of Cairo: A New Interpretation of Royal Mamluk Architecture, Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1995; Making Cairo Medieval, eds. Nezar AlSayyad, Irene Bierman & Nasser Rabbat, Lantham, MD: Lexington Press, 2005; The Citadel of Cairo: A Guidebook, Cairo: Supreme Council of Antiquities, 2010; in English and Arabic: Al-Mudun al-Mayyita: Durus min Madhih wa-Ru’an li-Mustaqbaliha (The Dead Cities: Lessons from its History and Views on its Future), al-Aws Publishers, 2010; Mamluk History Through Architecture: Building, Culture, and Politics in Mamluk, Egypt and Syria, London: Tauris I. B., 2010) and is editor of The Courtyard House between Cultural Reference and Universal Relevance, London: Ashgate, 2010). He has authored dozens of scholarly articles in both English and Arabic, and is the author of the BBC’s Museum of Lost Objects series.
Glen Umberger earned a Master of Fine Arts in Architectural History from Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD), Georgia, USA, in 2015. His thesis, “Philadelphia City Hall: Redefining the Civic Image of the Modern American City” was awarded the Outstanding Architectural History Graduate Thesis for the 2014–2015 academic year. Mr Umberger is currently the Manager of Special Projects for the New York Landmarks Conservancy. He is also an Adjunct Instructor at New York University, School of Professional Studies, Center for Applied Liberal Arts, where he teaches courses on New York City’s architectural history. Mr Umberger has presented two academic papers: “Curing Architectural Amnesia: A New Look at a Forgotten Famous Civic Masterpiece,” 2014 Annual Meeting Southeast Chapter of the Society of Architectural Historians (SESAH), Fayetteville, Arkansas and “Building Philadelphia’s Marble Elephant: The Economics and Politics of Creating an Iconic City Hall for the Workshop of the World,” Architecture of Trade, 9th Savannah Symposium, Savannah, Georgia. Mr Umberger has also been inducted into the Gamma Eta Chapter of Tau Sigma Delta Honor Society in Architecture and Allied Arts.
Introduction
The architecture of trade is as old as human history
Patrick Haughey
The exchange of manufactured goods and foodstuffs has formed an integral part of human history in almost every corner of the planet from our earliest days of our existence down to the present.1
Trade is as old as humanity. Indeed, the exchange of goods may be what has always defined humans in relationship to each other. While economists, sociologists, and historians have been writing about trade for centuries, trade is rarely included in the history of architecture. This is itself rather surprising, as the activity of trade is often facilitated by architecture.2 More often than not, trade is what pays for architecture.
In 1415, Prince Henry convinced his father, Portuguese King Joao, to conquer the Muslim North African city of Ceuta (Morocco) and launched the process of establishing a series of private trading posts down the Atlantic coast of Africa. For the rest of the century, Portuguese trading posts controlled the trade activities of the African coast in an effort to ensure that Portuguese traders were the primary beneficiaries of the lucrative exchange; especially with the rich gold and salt mines of the Ashanti and Mossi via trading centers of the West African Gold Coast and up the Niger River to Djenne and Timbuktu.
By 1440, Lisbon had a monopoly on Atlantic trade from their islands and West Africa where they traded for pepper, which came to West Africa overland from Alexandria and Mozambique. They also trade for the pepper now grown in Guinea. One of the great myths of history is that Venice began its decline when the Turks conquered Constantinople in 1453—a bias of Christian history. In fact, Venice was already in decline due to the rise of Lisbon, who were able to undercut their trade in spices by harvesting them at the western end of the Muslim trade routes in West Africa and from their newfound monopoly on cheap sugar. Portugal was also the first European Empire to realize the potential of sugar indigenous to Southeast Asia, planting it on their islands of the Azores, Goree, and the Canary Islands, although Muslim merchants had already successfully planted the crop in Sicily. To make the trade work, Lisbon traded spices and sugar for grain, wool, copper,
and timber in Antwerp, which they exchanged for spices, pepper, and gold in West Africa. The gold helped to finance their expeditions around Africa to the Indian Ocean and eventually the China Sea (see Chapter 2 for more).
In 1498, Vasco de Gama rounded the Cape of Good Hope and introduced the relatively peaceful Indian Ocean to violence and extortion. In 1510, Alfonso de Albuquerque conquered Goa and proceeded to try to conquer every port between Aden and Malacca to ensure a complete monopoly. While Lisbon, for the most part, remained the political capital of the Portuguese trading empire, the region of Goa, with its port at Daman Diu, was the economic capital, controlling the vast administration of the Estado de Indies. Eventually, the global powerhouse of the Estado de Indies was challenged by their European neighbors. However, Goa remained Portuguese for centuries until the newly-minted independent nation of India took it back by force in 1961.
Portuguese trading ships were armed with cannon, a technology that was new to the ports along the African coast. After several centuries of open trade dominated by Muslim and Chinese sea traders, the Portuguese exploited local rivalries and used cannon fired from their ships to batter lightly fortified port towns into submission. The Cartaz trade monopoly system is named after the “cartaz,” or “letter,” certifying the payment of ‘The Royal Fifth’—a 20% tax or trade duty—to the Portuguese crown. Failure to produce such a letter could result in the confiscation of cargo, the destruction of ships, or death. The original ambition of the Cartaz System was to make Portuguese merchants the sole beneficiaries of the most lucrative trade commodities, particularly pepper. The market prices of spices brought through long chains of middlemen to from the Spice Islands (Indonesia) were based on the incremental price increases each time it changed hands along the way. By bypassing as many of the middlemen as possible, Portuguese merchants limited competition and concentrated profits in their own hands
The East was low-volume, but its products commanded a massively high price. Returns on pepper, mace, cloves, cinnamon, and nutmeg in Lisbon could reach 180 times the price paid in Calicut on the Malabar Coast and reach higher than that in Antwerp, London and Bruges. Lisbon’s wealth was derived from the unprecedented profits from the Portuguese dominance of sea-based trade routes along the Atlantic coast of Africa, the Indian Ocean and the China Sea all the way to Japan. Prior to the arrival of the Portuguese under the Muslim Trading System, when pepper arrived in Europe it was more valuable than gold. The arrival of the Portuguese fleet in the Indian Ocean and their virtual monopoly of the spice trade to Europe by 1580, as well as the slave trade from the Captaincy of Angola to their American colonies, paid for a number of impressive architectures and infrastructure back in Lisbon, including the Tower of Belem and the Monastery of Saint Jerome.
The Tower of Belem was built from 1510–1514 to protect the Portuguese Fleet as it departed for Africa and later, India. It is also a reference to the
endless crusade to return the “Holy Lands” to Christianity at the behest of the 15th-century Papal Bulls and in the aftermath of the conquest of the Turks. Only seven ships made the trip out of Lisbon to Goa in the early years, so protecting them from European competitors was important, as was ascending Lisbon’s dominance over trade not only north to Antwerp, but into the Mediterranean due. The Tower of Belem (a reference to Bethlehem), is an exemplary architecture of both power and the multiple cultural influences on the Iberian peninsula. The naming of the Tower, if not its form, from scripture would come to play an important role in the both the Estado de Indies and the Americas under Portuguese rule. Towers to protect valuable harbors were not new to the region, as they were prominent throughout the coastal lands controlled by Muslim rulers for centuries, as well as the many others, from the Visigoths to the Carthaginians and Romans. What is relatively unique about the Tower is that it was designed and built by Fransisco Arruda, who studied architecture across the straits in North Africa. The tower is built with what is known as the Manueline style (after the King). The style is a hybrid of the Byzantine-Islamic style typical of Umayyad and Almohad Al-Andalucia and North African structures, with delicate horseshoe arches, details and stonework. Much of the architecture
Figure 0.1 Jeronimos Monastery, before 1755 (first half of the 18th century (PD)).3
in both Portugal, Spain and their colonies overseas is influenced by the long ties with both Byzantine and Arabic craftsman, many of whom converted to Christianity by force, or to avoid the Inquisitions that begin in the middle of the 15th century, rather than be forced away from their homes. You can also see similar features in the cloister of the Monastery of Saint Jerome, as well as in the remnants the Palace of the King that was later remodeled to imitate French Versailles in the 17th century, after the devastating earthquake the destroyed the city in 1755.
The Monastery of Saint Jerome (1516–1544) is also known as the “Pepper Cathedral,” despite the fact that it was largely built with a tax on non-pepper spices (Figure 0.1). King Manuel originally funded the project with money obtained from the Vintena da Pimenta, a 5% tax on commerce from Africa and the Orient, equivalent to 70 kilograms (150 pounds) of gold per year. Pepper, cinnamon and cloves went untaxed because those profits went to the crown. With the influx of riches, the architects built one of the largest buildings in Europe. The narrow columns on the interior are adorned with the representations of the riches from the Indies, including the important peppercorns. The ornamentation also illustrates images of navigation instruments as well as “exotic” plants and animals from the colonies. Vasco de Gama, whose navigation around the Cape of Good Hope allowed the Portuguese fleet to the exploit the Indian Ocean and the modern poet Luís de Camões, who commemorated de Gama’s achievements, are buried here in elaborate tombs. In 1833, the Monastery was secularized; its art stripped and the space abandoned before restoration began in 1863 that has completely altered its exterior appearance, demolished significant portions of the building, and relocated the tombs.
By the turn of the century, the Monastery of Saint Jerome became a secular temple for the burial and commemoration of a few nationalist poets, as well as for Dictator António de Oliveira Salazar, who was interned there for ten years in 1951 before his body was moved to a new memorial. The Tower and the Monastery are in the neighborhood of Belem, where for the past four centuries, Portugal has used monuments and architecture to commemorate its discoveries while eliminating the violence of its exploitation. Included here are the Praça do Império, built in 1938 to commemorate the dictatorship and new 1933 Constitution of the Estado Nova, which permanently enshrined Portugal’s “civilizing powers” beyond its European boundaries. The Praça briefly held an exposition celebrating the triumphs of Portugal’s age of exploration.4
As other European powers reduced Portugal’s influence on the East, Lisbon increasingly relied on the violent exploitation of Angola and Brazil’s slave-based economies for its wealth. Indeed, Angola spans around 481,226 square miles along the southwest coast of Africa and is notably rich in mineral reserves, including oil, iron, copper, bauxite, diamonds and uranium. After the loss of Goa in 1961, the Captaincy of Angola was the primary source of Portugal’s wealth. However, by the 1970s, the collapse of oil
prices, the postcolonial tensions throughout much of Africa and the civil wars from Algeria to Angola, created a complex and violent rupture in the last remaining large colony of the former Portuguese empire, from which the host country and its leadership in Lisbon never fully recovered.
While the 1938 exposition was temporary, the fountain with the crests of the families from that era remains along with Salazar’s 1960s monument to Henry the Navigator, the Padrão dos Descobrimentos. The endless remodelling of the large former monastery continued into the 1960s when the Maritime Museum was added to the building, completing the Monastery’s role as a centuries-long monument to Portugal’s once vast Trading Empire.
Chapter summary
This volume owes its existence to the generous work and research conducted by its authors and, of course, the hard work of its publisher. Indeed, we hope that this volume serves as an inspiration for the renewal of research into how architecture influences and participates in trade on a global and local scale across time. It is not intended to be comprehensive; rather each chapter is a specialized look at trade through the lens of eleven Architectural Historians. Indeed, much of what historians and economists have written about trade unfairly privileges a Eurocentric model. Yet the emergence of this European trading world—particularly the new financial innovations such as banking, bond markets, and currency arbitrage that paid for and gave birth to the art and architecture of the “Italian” Renaissance, exists precisely because it was at the intersection of the European textile trade and the centuries-old Muslim Trading World that spanned from Cordoba to East Africa and the China Sea.5
In the first chapter, Patrick Haughey cites architectural evidence and history to prove that the features of contemporary global capitalism were in existence long before Adam Smith theorized its existence or Karl Marx offered his widely-read critique. What is more, it has been operative on a global scale centuries before the emergence of the neoliberal post-World War order of the late twentieth century. “Legacies of Colonialism: Towards an Architectural History of Capitalism,” argues that contrary to popular belief, the origins of what we now think of as financial capitalism and its mythical “free-market” ethos can be traced to the coercive and violent laws that enabled an on-going 500-year global war over resources for profit originating in the late 16th century, with colonialism by profiteering shareholders in English charter companies, as well as in the simultaneous systems of consumerism, slavery, and coercion that underwrote both the Industrial and “American” Revolutions.
In Chapter 2: “Spices, Spies, and Speculation: Trust and Control in the early Batavia-Amsterdam System,” Robert Cowherd reveals the coercive and violent origins of capitalism through the architectural and urban lens of the Dutch East India Company. Cowherd examines the specific formal-spatial
conflicts of Dutch Batavia (Jakarta) and offers insights to these larger sets of instrumental forces that constitute a set of prerequisites for the operations of early European adventures in expanded trade relations. Batavia exemplifies an architecture of control characteristic of the widely-dispersed type of the European fortified port town. For several centuries, Europeans were driven by religious imperative and greed to break the tightly held Muslim spice trade monopolies supplying Venice from then mythical locations far to the east. Among the multiple elements that figure prominently into the 16thand 17th-century history of discovery, capture, defense, and control of the transcontinental networks of exchange is the architecture of an interconnected series of fortress-port-factory-towns. Like the technologically sophisticated ships shuttling goods, munitions, priests, soldiers, laborers, finance, and information between ports of call, the port towns themselves were designed to minimize the labor needed to move goods and secure the town against all threats, whether external or from the population of the town itself. One of the lasting legacies of these port towns is the strategy of strict physical segregation and social fragmentation, permitting a handful of Europeans to guard against insurrection.
Nasser Rabbat, in Chapter 3: “Cities of Incense and Myrrh: Fantasy and Capitalism in the Arabian Gulf,” notes that trade can persist for millennia, transforming the landscape between the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf over time, adapting along the way to invent and reinvent systems of trade as architecture and urbanism. As Rabbat writes, in the second and first millennium BCE, the Arabian Peninsula and the Fertile Crescent witnessed the emergence of highly efficient cities as commercial emporia along the trade routes bringing the luxury goods of Asia to the consumption centers of Antiquity along the Mediterranean. Over time, these legendary cities, Babylon, Byblos, Dura-Europos, Palmyra, Petra, Alexandria, Sanaa, Mokha, Damascus, Baghdad, Cairo, and Istanbul, which rose and fell with the rise and fall of empires, became the subject of myth. This fairy tale image survived their political and commercial decline and tinged the monumental architecture of their Middle Eastern urban heirs in the modern age with an aura of Oriental mystery and opulence. Nowhere is this more evident than in cities of the Arabian Gulf—Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Doha, and Manama— which have become the contemporary “fabled cities of the East” by design. Trade, even as it is mobile, leaves its traces in both architecture and memory. For Mark Jarzombek in Chapter 4: “Borneo, the River Effect, and the Spirit World Millionaires,” the absent elite architecture of Borneo is contrasted with traces left in the landscape that reveal a long ignored yet crucial aspect of global trade. For that reason, Borneo is rarely mentioned in discussions about the development of architecture and cities in Southeast Asia. However, that Borneo was targeted early on by Indian traders because it possessed an extraordinary litany of wealth-producing commodities, from gold, diamonds, camphor, and pearls, which were interesting to the Indian traders to tortoise shells (used by the Chinese as oracle bones), hornbill
ivory (which the Chinese value above true ivory, or even jade, to make belt buckles for high officials), rhinoceros horn (used to treat fever, rheumatism, gout, and other disorders), and edible bird’s nests, a food item so valuable that it was reserved only for the family of the Chinese emperor.
Thomas Gensheimer, in Chapter 5: “House as Marketplace: Swahili Merchant Houses and their Urban Context in the Later Middle Ages,” describes the vibrant, yet often neglected role of the East African coast in this global trade. The port cities of the East African coast had served as centers of commercial exchange centuries before the Portuguese arrived at the end of the 15th century. For over a thousand years, traders from Persia, India, and southern Arabia ventured to the coast, providing the economic foundation for the development of an indigenous and prosperous Islamic urban culture whose cities shared many architectural features common throughout the western Indian Ocean basin. Despite the importance of trade, the presence of extensive bazaars, characteristic of cities throughout the medieval Muslim world, appears to be largely lacking along the Swahili coast. Indeed, Gensheimer explains how, due to the nature of the luxury trade, Swahili domestic structures served as a substitute arena for facilitating inter-regional exchange between foreign merchants and local elites.
While much has been written about the art, architecture, and philosophy of this “Italian” Renaissance era, it was trade and banking that paid for this largess.6 Indeed, due to competition from the Portuguese and the new trade monopoly imposed by the Ottoman Empire, much of the power of this region faded by the late 16th century. Yet, many of the banking families remained powerful. Indeed, by the middle of the 16th century the mercantile loggia, a relic of an earlier period of Tuscan power, re-emerged as a building type that was once again used to demarcate places of trade in Florence and areas of Tuscany under the Medici’s control. Lauren Jacobi, in Chapter 6: “An Anachronism of Trade: The Mercato Nuovo in Florence (1546–51),” argues that this architecture, designed by Giovanni Battista del Tasso between 1546 and 1551 to encourage gold and silk trade, was deliberately anachronistic in its modality, at a time when Florence’s elite paradoxically sought to distance themselves from a connection to commerce.
Doron Bauer, in Chapter 7: “Merchant Identity: The Cartographic Impulse in the Architectural Sculpture of the Llotja of Palma de Mallorca,” reminds us that Spain also had a vibrant and architecturally significant role in trade. His chapter focuses on the closely related Llotja of Palma de Mallorca and the Llotja of Valencia. The two late-medieval gothic buildings were commissioned by merchant guilds in prominent port cities in the western Mediterranean to function as stock markets as well as the seat of the College of Merchants (and in Valencia also of the Consulate of the Sea). Bauer notes that both cities feature large and impressive commercial halls where commodities were brought and their prices were subjected to negotiations.
In Chapter 8, Cecilia Fumagalli brings us back to the architecture of the Muslim Trading World with “The Travels of a Merchant throughout
the Islamic World.” Indeed, for Fumagalli, the Islamic urban world is based on the idea of the market, which is arguably the visible part of the urban structure for visitors. The towns of the entire Islamic world are connected to each other through caravan routes, where goods travel up to suqs and bazars, which are the arrival point of a broader territorial system. Therefore, to understand the Islamic urban and territorial structure, Fumagalli insists that it is from the perspective of the merchant traveling from town to town that we witness how the architectural, urban, and land structures of the Islamic city are shaped to accommodate the merchant during his travels.
While global trade systems and their regional and urban impacts dominate this volume, in Chapter 9, Dennis De Witt introduces new structural evidence on an architectural typology crucial to global trade: “Savannah’s Custom House: A Peculiar Construction of Galvanized Iron, Apparently Durable and Well-Adapted to a Southern Climate.” De Witt reminds us that architecture must be built, and often it must deploy an innovative structure. Further, his scholarship is a reminder that architectural history is forever unfinished. Indeed, as De Witt argues, these structural innovations embodied in the Savannah’s Custom Custom House and its relationship to the Boston Merchants Exchange is quite possibly unique in the history of United States architecture.
Aniruddha Bose challenges the Western narrative of industrialization, by reminding us that much of the colonial world was at the forefront of trade innovation in Chapter 10: “The Modernization of a Port in British India: Calcutta, 1870–1880.” In the 19th century, the Calcutta port was not only the most important trading center in eastern India; it was the capital of the British Raj. From around 1860 to 1910, the British Indian government invested considerable sums to upgrade the port’s infrastructure. Throughout this period, thousands of men, women, and children labored, loading and unloading the cargoes passing through the port. This chapter examines records from 1860–1870 in order to understand the impact of these changes on the port’s workforce. The significance of this research is threefold. First, it sheds light on the processes of class formation in British India, while demonstrating that violence and coercion are embedded in trade. Second, it complicates our understanding of the relationship between technology and subaltern populations in British India. Third, it demonstrates the scale of the Calcutta waterfront, thereby underlining the importance of trade in the architecture of urban India.
Finally, in Chapter 11 Glen Umberger introduces us to an understudied, yet significant late-19th century monument in “Building the Marble Elephant: The Creation of Philadelphia’s Iconic City Hall.” Umberger considers how political resolve managed to produce a monumental municipal building symbolizing the city’s image of itself as the manufacturing capital of the world, without any mortgage, liens, or encumbrances and how, in spite of its cost and size, it is still one of the most overlooked architectural landmarks in the United States. For the next thirty years, Philadelphia would be involved
in the construction of the New Public Building, which was designed by a dedicated small group of world-class architects and artists whose goal was to create an iconic architectural masterpiece that “in some far off future day be all that remains to tell the story of our civilization, and to testify to the dignity and public spirit of our people.” Boasting a didactic sculptural program designed “to express American ideas and develop American genius,” the new City Hall featured a multitude of allegorical representations including commerce, industry, and trade. Remarkably, although conceived during the national financial crisis surrounding the Panic of 1873, the city officially completed their monumental task in July 1901, producing the largest and most expensive municipal building in North America.
Notes
1 Charles Parker, Global Interactions in the Early Modern Age, 1400–1800 (Cambridge University Press, New York, 2010), 68.
2 Parts of this introduction were written with Robert Cowherd for the Andrew Mellon Foundation funded Global Architecture History and Teaching Collaborative. It has been edited and modified for publication.
4 Elen Sapega, “Remembering Empire/Forgetting the Colonies: Accretions of Memory and the Limits of Commemoration in a Lisbon Neighborhood,” History and Memory v.20, n.2, 2008, 19–24.
5 “Italian” is in quotes because there was no such thing as Italy until the 19th century conquest first of northern Italy by Napoleon, followed by the decadeslong invasion southwards of Victor Emmanuel during Risorgimento. Indeed, from around 586 to 1815, what we think of as Italy was a series of shifting territories, Papal States, and Kingdoms.
1 Legacies of colonialism Towards an architectural history of capitalism
Patrick Haughey
A brief history of economics and enlightenment philosophy
The origins of capitalism, as opposed to other forms of exchange, has a murky history. Most economists and historians pinpoint its emergence between its diagnosis by Adam Smith in the late 18th century and its critique by Karl Marx in the late 19th century. Historians attempting to understand the relationship of capitalism have followed this pattern. The eminent American Historian, Joyce Appleby published The Relentless Revolution: A History of Capitalism in 2010. She notes admirably that to claim a start date for capitalism is arbitrary and that it is cultural as well as economic. Despite noting the influence of the Portuguese, Spanish, various Papal decrees and even the Dutch, she claims these only bolster the case for English exceptionalism. For Appleby, capitalism begins in England “with the convergence of agricultural improvements, global explorations, and scientific advances.”1 Indeed, she insists their experience was “unique,” all while she admits that people in Africa, the Middle East and India had capitalism “thrust” upon them; yet, while there is little mention in her book of “revolution” against state-sponsored violence, she does mention the relationship between the Natural philosophers and economic justification and cites the usual suspects in her introduction: Adam Smith, Karl Marx, Thomas Paine, Max Weber, and others.2 She notes Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations (1776) is the first diagnosis of nearly two centuries of history, yet still finds the origins of English capitalism to occur around this moment. This chapter is going to take her at her word. The English did create capitalism, but not in the way she and many others have seen it.3 Appleby’s “global explorations” required state-sponsored violence. The agricultural improvements and scientific advancements leading to the industrial revolution were the result of law and privileged landed power.
Even Thomas Piketty’s bestselling Capital in the Twenty-First Century (2014) places the origins of capitalism, in his twist, the beginning of wealth inequality at this moment. Piketty pairs the classical natural philosophy of England with its late 18th-century emergence in France under the guise of enlightenment and the rapid explosion of its population. He also unpacks
Thomas Malthus’ infamous Essay of 1798 and David Ricardo’s Principles of Political Economy (1817). Without statistical proof, they were both concerned with rising land rent in the face of demographic and resource pressures. Ricardo introduces the principle of scarcity within the context of supply (land) and demand (resources): if land and its resources are only in the hands of a few, then the solution must be state intervention in the form of taxation. Ricardo assumed land would rise faster than goods, wrongly, according to Piketty, bringing about an apocalypse.4 Piketty goes on to insist that Karl Marx, Das Capital (1867), took Ricardo’s principle of scarcity and applied the principle of infinite accumulation through an analysis of industrial manufacturing. Piketty goes on to insist that Marx predicts an apocalypse where capitalism inevitably fails unless there is a revolution.5 Piketty, using statistics, generates a plausible, but much critiqued, method of demonstrating how infinite accumulation creates an ever-growing wealthy class. Yet, like most economists, he forgets that math is only part of the story. Historians of architecture are no different when they pay attention to capitalism at all. Peggy Deamer, in Architecture and Capitalism: 1845 to the Present (2014), determines the origins of capitalism following the model of economic history:
The first consideration, the time frame and sequence, is determined by the advent of industrial society and with the self-conscious awareness of the working of capitalism. While this ostensibly begins with Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations in 1776, its connection with the built environment comes to the fore in the nineteenth century with the work of John Stuart Mill, Principles of Political Economy (1848), and Karl Marx, Das Capital (1867).6
Deamer insists on a critically important point following her determination of time where she notes that architecture and its relationship to capital are necessarily unstable. This is due in large part to the impact money has on design, where intentions are compromised by the desires of the supplier of capital. Yet, like many historians, she takes the origin of its emergence for granted. Indeed, the authors assembled by Deamer, rather than look at architecture, or the “built environment,” as is mentioned in the introduction, actually attempt to diagnose how architects respond to capitalism, from Henry Cole to Le Corbusier to Rem Koolhaas. This is an excellent exercise. However, it masks how architecture is created by and is embodied in the operation of capitalism.7 Perhaps a more apt title would have been “Architects and Capitalism.” The timeline embraced in this book largely ignores the roles colonialism, industrialization, urbanization, finance and slavery play in the origins and perpetuation of capitalism. In summary, architectural historians tend to take the narrative of economists for granted. What all the authors above have in common is either a deliberate or unintentional neglect of 500 years of colonialism—legacies which continue to
Patrick Haughey
impact the world. Indeed, colonialism and mercantilism then, as now, have a major role in supplying very fabric of architecture. Iron, stone, concrete, oil, copper, timber: these extractive processes at the heart of historical and contemporary architecture are embedded in capitalism and global trade. This resource dependence is often ignored in the practice of architecture and the writing of its history.
When Adam Smith published Wealth of Nations in 1776, he was imposing a Newtonian naturalist universe on an economic system that existed for well over a century. Isaac Newton provides a method for the empirical observation of the natural world.8 Smith imports Newton’s methods to observe the “natural” phenomena of productivity and labor, which he assumes are only regulated by the value of inputs (commodities), inaugurating the idea of Supply and Demand. For Smith, natural philosophy provides science as a means for diagnosing the principles of what is now known to economic historians as the beginning of Classical Political Economy. The universal laws of Newtonian nature provide a clean model for how social and political forces of capitalist market economics operates in the world.9 However, following Smith, observation of the natural world no longer is necessary as its philosophical premise is firmly established, where technological and therefore, scientific progress is linked to capitalism. Thus, the Enlightenment assumes that the state of the world where Europe is dominant at the turn of the 18th century is the result of natural, and therefore inevitable causes, correctly diagnosed through its own use of reason. However, this rationalist scientific philosophy swiftly becomes racial with the publications of JeanBaptiste Lamarck’s Theory of Inheritance of Acquired Characteristics (1801), followed by Josiah Clark Nott and George Robins Gliddon’s Types of Mankind (1858). Reason and nature are thus deployed, along with religion, to justify slavery and violent colonialism.
In the 1870s, economists, having established their universal and thus inevitable, roots in Enlightenment natural philosophy, begin to deploy mathematics in what is known as the Marginal Revolution. William S. Jevons and Leon Walrus apply math to the study of human behavior. Jevons explains, “I have attempted to treat Economy as a calculus of Pleasure and Pain . . . [therefore] it must be a mathematical science in matter if not in language.”10 Leon Walrus, in Elements of Pure Economics (1874) provides the economic discipline’s a priori assumption of the Theory of General Equilibrium, where on balance the cost of pain imposed is canceled out by the benefits of pleasure, just as later economists would insist that supply and demand must, eventually equal out to zero. The preservation of this “beneficial” equilibrium becomes the primary task of the 19th-century nation-state.11 According to Arne Heise:
Leon Walrus’ intention was to show (or, rather, to prove mathematically) that there may exist a system of relative prices (a price vector) which will simultaneously equilibrate all markets – for consumer goods,
Colonialism, architecture, and capitalism 13 capital goods, labor and money, i.e. to create a general equilibrium. In such an equilibrium state, where supply equals demand, excess demand must necessarily be zero.12
Walrus’ Law remains the cornerstone of orthodox economics and its model for the dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model, which is the generally accepted economic principle that ‘‘there can be no overall excess supply or excess demand in an economy comprised of markets where goods, labor, capital, bonds and money are exchanged freely.”13
John Maynard Keynes’ The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (1935), while often seen as refutation of Walrus, proposed that Walrus, while correct on structure, missed the role of debt and credit, and the existence of a monetary economy and that market forces work for every commodity, except that it requires involuntary unemployment.14 Keynesian “liberal” economists do not question the equation; they merely demand that the power of the state is used to minimize public pain in a crisis.15 Indeed, Heise, through a blistering array of equations, cannot help but conclude, trapped in math, that Keynes remains valid after years of confronting the defense and assault on Walrus. This conflict is why architectural history is necessary, as the economists’ reliance on numbers has caused their struggle to zero-out the equation when the concept of the idea of limited resources or the spatial, political and demographic forces make equilibrium in a Walrus market impossible.
The irony of this mathematical purity is that the frictionless mathematics that justifies capitalism through the “pain” equation occurs in what Mark Twain dubbed the Gilded Age. During this period emerging monopolies swallow competitors and reduce the “friction” of labor on the movement of capital through violence, all while protected by law.16 Railroad riots, restrictive immigration laws, company towns and extravagant mansions are the architectural and historical evidence of power and control during this period. The credit event that caused the Long Depression at the end of the nineteenth century prophetically coincided with massive assets gains concentrated in few hands. This condition inspired reform-minded philosophers like Thorstein Veblen to consider the effect of unfettered or privileged asset acquisition on the broader economic landscape in his Theory of the Leisure Class: An Economic Study of Institutions (1899) and his later essays on absentee ownership. The economist Michael Hudson, reviewing Veblen noted that “inherited privilege, monopoly power and land ownership rights were rewarded more than labor . . . The largest asset in every economy was still real estate.” For Hudson, “the key to understanding Veblen’s 1923 essay on ‘Absentee Ownership’ and indeed, the Reform Era, is to analyze land rent, and how urban real estate speculation was becoming not only the fastest way to get rich but also the major customer of banking and high finance. Thus Veblen became justly famous for describing small towns as real estate
promotion projects . . . [and] he described America’s rapid urbanization as a great [zero-sum] real estate game.”17
Systems persist over long periods of time, even as localized sites adapt or transform in response. As Michel de Certeau writes, “The making of history is buttressed by power which creates a space proper (walled city’s, nations, etc.) where the will must write (construct) a system.”18 From an economic standpoint, especially in contrast to trade, capitalism is a relatively new system designed to create wealth from invested capital and compound interest alone, without possessing a tradable skill, inventing technology or providing the labor for production.
Yet, this new form of wealth is increasingly visible long before Adam Smith and can be found in the architecture and history of the colonial era. What is more, the recovery of capitalism’s long history is vital to understanding the emerging modern city. One aspect of colonial capitalist systems is that the benefits of wealth are largely returned to and concentrated in particular cities, financing growth at both ends of the system, in Amsterdam or London at the expense of territories governed in the colonies ruled from cities such as Batavia and Calcutta.19 What is more, it has grown exponentially, through wars, shifting borders and every manner of governance since the 16th century to allow very few people to control vast portions of wealth in today’s global world.20 In short, the economics of pain versus pleasure are not equally distributed as capital or architecture.
Capitalism in the colonial era, and after, therefore is more than a financial innovation. It is a system that has altered the inhabitable world and thus its architectural history. It begins when emerging monarchies and later, nationstates, outsource the extraction and exploitation of conquered territories to for-profit companies in exchange for a fixed fee, taxes and dividends paid to elite power brokers and the state’s treasury. What is more, charter companies relied on a number of financial innovations that predate this period. Banks and the emerging bond markets invented in the city states of the so-called “Italian” Renaissance allowed merchants, nobles and sovereigns to borrow money to invest in better ships and new routes.
Much that we take for granted in contemporary finance was a creation of Florentine banking: denominated currency, checks, receipts and double-entry bookkeeping. With the rise of textile manufacturing in Florence and other bank and trade dominated city-states of the Italian peninsula, came a demand for credit to buy supplies and to pay workers. Banking arrives to meet this demand. Florence becomes the dominant banking site for Mediterranean and European trade routes. The Florentine gold coin, the Florin, was the benchmark currency of Europe for centuries. Florentine banks had agents in cities throughout Europe and into the Middle East, as far away as London, Lisbon, Moscow, Cairo and Damascus. Florentine bankers were the major lenders to the Papacy and kings and nobles throughout Europe. Florentine banking families eventually became the new nobility of the city, forcing out the old feudal nobility.21 This wealth produced the wonders of art and
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grades of the service, from his humble situation as a pastrycook’s boy to the highest dignities in the state, was a practical reproof to the indolent and ignorant nobility, who were now taught to feel that merit was the only recommendation to the favour of the czar. The old system of promotion was closed. The claims of birth and the pride of station ceased to possess any influence at court. The great body of the people, impressed with the justice that dictated this important change in the dispensation of honour and rewards, began for the first time to be inspired with a spirit of emulation and activity; and exactly in proportion as Peter forfeited the attachment of the few, whose power was daily on the decline, he drew around him the mixed wonder and allegiance of the many, whose power he was daily enlarging. Thus were laid the foundations of a mighty empire in the hearts of a scattered population, as various in habits and in language as it had always been discordant in interests and disunited in action.
Having acquired this valuable possession, and secured himself in St. Petersburg against the Swedes, it was the profound policy of Peter to keep up the war between Charles and Augustus, with a view to weaken by diversion the strength of the former. He accordingly made a great offer of assistance to the dethroned king, and despatched General Repuin with six thousand horse and six thousand foot to the borders of Lithuania; while he advanced in person into Courland at the head of a strong force. Here he received a severe check, having fallen in with the Swedish general Lewenhauft, who defeated the Russians after an obstinate battle, in which the czar’s troops lost between five thousand and six thousand men, and the Swedes no more than two thousand. Peter, notwithstanding, penetrated into Courland, and laid siege to the capital, which surrendered by capitulation. On this occasion the Swedes degraded themselves by committing an extensive pillage in the palace and archives of the dukes of Courland, descending even into the mausoleums to rob the dead of their jewels. The Russians, however, before they would take charge of the vaults, made a Swedish colonel sign a certificate that their sacrilegious depredations were the acts of his own countrymen.
POLISH AFFAIRS
The greatest part of Courland, as well as the whole of Ingria, had now been conquered in detail by Peter, and, as Charles was still engrossed by his operations in Poland and Saxony, he returned to Moscow to pass the winter; but intelligence of the approach of the Swedish king at the head of a powerful force towards Grodno, where the combined armies of Russia and Saxony were encamped, recalled him from his repose. Peter immediately hastened to the field, and found all the avenues occupied by Swedish troops. A battle ensued near Frauenstadt, in which the flower of the confederated battalions, under the command of General Schullemberg, to the number of eighteen thousand men, six thousand of whom were Russians, suffered a complete defeat. With an insignificant exception, they were nearly all slain. Some authorities attribute this disaster to the treachery of a French regiment, which had the care of the Saxon artillery; but it is certain that the most sanguinary atrocities were committed on both sides, in a contest upon the issues of which two crowns appeared to be dependent.
The consequences of this overthrow would have been immediately fatal to Augustus, but for the energy of the czar, who, rapidly organising an army of twenty thousand men, urged that wavering prince to take advantage of the absence of Charles in Saxony, and throw himself once more into Poland. A revolt in Astrakhan called Peter into that part of his territories; but he deputed General Patkul, a brave Livonian, who had formerly made his escape from the hands of Charles, and had passed from the service of Augustus into that of the czar, to explain the necessity of the measure. Augustus yielded to the advice of his ally, and marched into Poland; but he had no sooner made good his progress than, suddenly panic-struck by the increasing successes of Charles, he resolved to sue for peace upon any terms at which it could be procured. He accordingly invested two ambassadors with full powers to treat confidentially with Charles, and had the temerity to cast Patkul into prison. While the plenipotentiaries were negotiating this shameful treaty at the camp of Charles XII, Menshikov joined the forces of Augustus at Kalish with
W M K
thirty thousand men. The consternation of Augustus at this unexpected reinforcement was indescribable; and his confusion amounted almost to despair upon the receipt of intelligence that ten thousand Swedes, under the command of General Meierfeldt, were on their march to give him battle.
In this dilemma he transmitted a private message to General Meierfeldt to inform him of the negotiation he had opened with his master; but that general, naturally treating the whole affair as a mere pretext to gain time, made preparations for hostilities. The superior force of the Russians decided the fate of the day, and, after having defeated the Swedes with great slaughter, they entered Warsaw in triumph. Had Augustus relied upon the energy and friendship of his ally, he would now have been replaced upon his throne; but the timidity that tempted him to cast himself upon the mercy of Charles was prolific of misfortunes. He had scarcely entered Warsaw as a victor when he was met by his own plenipotentiaries, who placed before him the treaty they had just concluded, by which he had forfeited the crown of Poland forever. His humiliation was complete. Thus the weak and vacillating Augustus, fresh from a triumph that ought to have placed him upon the throne of Poland, was a vassal in its capital, while Charles was giving the law in Leipsic and reigning in his lost electorate.
His struggles to escape from the disgrace into which his folly and his fears had plunged him only drew down fresh contempt upon his head. He wrote to Charles a letter of explanation and apology, in which he begged pardon for having obtained a victory against his will, protesting that it was entirely the act of the Russians, whom it was his full intention to have abandoned, in conformity with the wishes of Charles; and assuring that monarch that he would do anything in his power to render him satisfaction for the great wrong he had committed in daring to beat his troops. Not content with this piece of humility, and fearing to remain at Warsaw, he proceeded to Saxony, and, in the heart of his own dominions, where the members of his family were fugitives, he surrendered in person to the victorious Swede. Charles was too conscious of his advantages not to avail himself of them to the full, and not only made the timid Augustus fulfil all the stipulations of the treaty, by which he renounced the crown of Poland, abandoned his alliance with the czar, surrendered the Swedish prisoners, and gave up all the deserters, including General Patkul, whom Augustus had arrested by a violation of good faith, but he forced him to write a letter to Stanislaus, congratulating him on his accession to the throne. The unfortunate Patkul was no sooner delivered into the hands of Charles than he condemned him to be broken on the wheel and quartered.
The timid and treacherous conduct of Augustus and the deliberate cruelty of Charles drew from Peter expressions of unbounded indignation. He laid a statement of the whole circumstances before the principal potentates of Europe, and declared his determination to use all the means in his power to drive Stanislaus from the throne of Poland. The first measure he adopted was the holding of a conference with several of the Polish grandees, whom he completely gained over to his side by the suavity of his manners. At a subsequent meeting it was agreed that the throne of Poland was in fact vacant, and that a diet should be summoned for the purpose of electing a king. When the diet assembled, Peter urged upon their attention the peculiar circumstances in which the country was placed, and the impossibility of effecting any substantial resistance against the ambitious intrigues of Charles, unless a new king were
placed upon the throne. His views were confirmed by the voice of the assembly, who agreed to the public declaration of an interregnum, and to the investiture of the primate in the office of regent until the election should have taken place.
CHARLES XII INVADES RUSSIA (1707 A.D.)
But while these proceedings were going forward at Lublin, King Stanislaus, who had been previously acknowledged by most of the sovereigns of Europe, was advancing into Poland at the head of sixteen Swedish regiments, and was received with regal honours in all the places through which he passed. Nor was this the only danger that threatened to arrest the course of the proposed arrangements for the settlement of the troubles of Poland. Charles, whose campaign in Saxony had considerably enriched his treasury, was now prepared to take the field with a well-disciplined army of fortyfive thousand men, besides the force commanded by General Lewenhaupt; and he did not affect to conceal his intention to make Russia the theatre of war, in which purpose he was strengthened by an offer on the part of the Porte to enter into an offensive alliance with him against Peter, whose interference in the affairs of Poland excited great jealousy and alarm in Turkey. Charles calculated in some degree upon the support he might receive from the Russians themselves, who, he believed, would be easily induced to revolt against Peter, in consequence of the innovations he had introduced and the expenses that he would be likely to entail upon them by a protracted war.
[1707 ]
But the people of Russia were well aware that mere personal ambition did not enter into the scheme of Peter, and that, although he had broken through many antiquated and revered customs, yet that he had conferred such permanent benefits upon the empire as entitled him to their lasting gratitude. Whatever prospects of success, therefore, Charles might have flattered himself upon deriving from the dissatisfaction of the great mass of the community were evidently vague and visionary. But the argument was sufficient for all his
purposes in helping to inspire his soldiers with confidence. About this time the French envoy at the court of Saxony attempted to effect a reconciliation between Charles and the czar, when the former made his memorable reply that he would treat with Peter in Moscow; which answer being conveyed to Peter produced his equally memorable commentary—“My brother Charles wishes to play the part of Alexander, but he shall not find a Darius in me.”
Rapid preparations were made on both sides for the war which had now become inevitable. In the autumn of 1707 Charles commenced his march from Altranstadt, paying a visit to Augustus at Dresden as he passed through that city, and hastening onwards through Poland, where his soldiers committed such devastations that the peasantry rose in arms against them. He finally fixed his winter quarters in Lithuania. During the time occupied by these movements Peter was wintering at Moscow, where, after an absence of two years, he had been received with universal demonstrations of affection. He was busily occupied in inspecting the new manufactories that had been established in the capital, when news reached him of the operations of the Swedish army. He immediately departed, and, with six hundred of the guards established his headquarters in the city of Grodno. Charles no sooner heard of his arrival at that place than, with his usual impetuosity, he hastened forwards with only eight hundred men to besiege the town.
By a mistake, the life of Peter was nearly sacrificed. A German officer, who commanded the gate towards which Charles approached, imagining that the whole Swedish army was advancing, fled from his post and left the passage open to the enemy. General consternation prevailed throughout the city as the rumour spread; and the victorious Charles, cutting in pieces the few Russians who ventured to contest his progress, made himself master of the town. The czar, impressed with the belief that the report was true, retreated behind the ramparts, and effected his escape through a gate at which Charles had placed a guard. Some Jesuits, whose house, being the best in the town, was taken for the use of Charles, contrived in the course of the night to inform Peter of the real circumstances; upon which the czar re-entered the city, forced the
Swedish guard, and contended for possession in the streets. But the approach of the Swedish army compelled him at last to retire, and to leave Grodno in the hands of the conqueror.
The advance of the Swedes was now marked by a succession of triumphs; and Peter, finding that Charles was resolved to pursue him, and that the invader had but five hundred miles to traverse to the capital, an interval unprotected by any places of consequence, with the exception of Smolensk, conceived a masterly plan for drawing him into a part of the country where he could obtain neither magazines nor subsistence for his army, nor, in case of necessity, secure a safe retreat. With this design he withdrew to the right bank of the Dnieper,[40] where he established himself behind sheltered lines, from which he might attack the enemy at an advantage, preserving to himself a free communication with Smolensk, and abundant means of retreat over a country that yielded plentiful resources for his troops.
In order to render this measure the more certain, he despatched General Goltz at the head of fifteen thousand men to join a body of twelve thousand Cossacks, with strict orders to lay waste the whole province for a circle of thirty miles, and then to rejoin the czar at the position he had taken up on the bank of the Dnieper. This bold movement was executed as swiftly as it was planned; and the Swedes, reduced to immediate extremity for want of forage, were compelled to canton their army until the following May. Accustomed, however, to the reverses of war, they were not daunted by danger or fatigue, but it was no longer doubtful that both parties were on the eve of decisive events. They regarded the future, however, with very different hopes. Charles, heated with victories, and panting for further acquisitions, surveyed the vast empire, upon the borders of which he now hung like a cloud, as if it were already within his grasp; while Peter, more wary and self-possessed, conscious of the magnitude of the stake for which he fought, and aware of the great difficulties of his situation, occupied himself in making provision against the worst.c
REVOLT OF THE COSSACKS OF THE DON; MAZEPPA
Meantime there were foes at home that had demanded the attention of he czar.a The strelitz were not the only military body belonging to old Russia whose existence had become incompatible with the requirements of a modern state. The undisciplined Cossack armies, which had hitherto formed a rampart for Russia against barbarian hordes, were also to undergo transformation. The empire had many causes of complaint against the Cossacks, particularly those of the Ukraine and the Don who had formerly sustained the usurper, Dmitri, and from whose ranks had issued the terrible Stenka Radzin.
In 1706 the Cossacks of the Don had revolted against the government of the czar because they were forbidden to give asylum in their camp to refugee peasants or taxpayers. The ataman Boulavine and his aids, Nekrassov, Frolov, and Dranyi, called them to arms. They murdered Prince George Dolgoruki, defeated the Russians on the Liskovata, took Tcherkask, and menaced Azov, all the while proclaiming their fidelity to the czar and accusing the voyevods of having acted without orders. They were in turn defeated by Vasili Dolgoruki, Bulavin was murdered by his own soldiers and Nekrassov with only two thousand men took refuge in the Kuban. After clearing out the rebel camps Dolgoruki wrote: “The chief traitors and mutineers have been hung, together with one out of ten of the others; and all the bodies have been placed on rafts and allowed to drift with the current that the Dontsi may be stricken with terror and moved to repent.”
Since the disgrace of Samoilovitch, Mazeppa had been the hetman of the Little Russian Cossacks in Ukraine. Formerly a page of John Casimir, king of Poland, he had in his youth experienced the adventure made famous by the poem of Lord Byron and the pictures of Horace Vernet. Loosened from the back of the untamed horse that fled with him to the deserts of Ukraine, he at once took rank in the Cossack army, and rose by means of treachery, practised against all the chiefs in turn, to fill the highest posts in the military service. His good fortune created for him numerous enemies; but the czar, who admired him for his intelligence and had faith in his fidelity, invariably delivered over to him his detractors. He put to death the monk
Solomon for revealing his intrigues with Sophia and the king of Poland, and later denunciators shared the same fate.
Ukraine, meanwhile, was being undermined by various factions. In the Cossack army there was always a Russian party, a party that wished to restore the Polish domination, and a party which designed to deliver over the country to the Turks. In 1693 Petrik, a Turkish chief, invaded Ukraine but failed in his attempts at subjugation. Moreover, profound dissent existed between the army and the sedentary populations of Ukraine. The hetman was constantly scheming to make himself independent, the officers of the army objected to rendering an account of their actions to others, and the soldiers wished to live at the country’s expense without working or paying taxes. The farmers, who had founded the agricultural prosperity of the country, the citizens in towns who were not secure in the pursuit of their avocations, the whole peaceful and laborious population, in fact, longed to be free from this turbulent military oligarchy and called upon the czar at Moscow to liberate them.
Mazeppa represented the military element in Ukraine and knew that he was odious to the quiet classes. The czar showered proofs of confidence upon him, but Mazeppa had reason to fear the consolidation of the Russian state. The burdens that the empire imposed upon the vassal state were day by day becoming heavier, and the war against Charles XII served to increase them still more. There was everything to fear from the imperious humour and autocratic pretensions of the czar, and the imminent invasion of the Swedes was certain to precipitate a crisis; either Little Russia would become independent with the aid of strangers, or their defeat on her soil would deal the death-blow to her prosperity and hopes for the future. Knowing that the hour was approaching when he should be obliged to obey the white czar Mazeppa allowed himself to be drawn into communication with Stanislaus Leszczynski, the king of Poland elected by the Swedish party. The witty princess Dolskaia gave him an alphabet in cipher. Hitherto Mazeppa had given over to the czar all letters containing propositions of betrayal, just as the czar had surrendered to him his accusers. On receiving the letters of the
princess he remarked with a smile: “Wicked woman, she wishes to draw me away from the czar.”
When, however, the hand of the sister of Menshikov was refused to one of his cousins, when the Swedish war and the passage of Muscovite troops limited his authority and increased taxation in his territory, when the czar sent urgent injunctions for the equipment of troops after the European fashion, and he could feel the spirit of rebellion against Moscow constantly growing around him, he wrote to Leszczynski that though the Polish army was weak in numbers it had his entire good will. His confidant Orlik was in the secret of all these manœuvres, and several of his subordinates who had divined them undertook to denounce him to the czar. The denunciation was very precise and revealed all the secret negotiations with the emissaries of the king and of the princess Dolskaia; but it failed before the blind confidence of the czar. Palei, one of the denunciators, was exiled to Siberia; Iskra and Kotchonbei, the remaining two, were forced by torture to avow themselves calumniators, and were then delivered over to the hetman and beheaded. Mazeppa realised that good fortune such as his could not long endure, and the malcontents urged upon him the consideration of the common safety. At this juncture Charles XII arrived in the neighbourhood of Little Russia. “It is the devil who brings him here!” cried Mazeppa, and placed between his two powerful enemies he exerted all his craft to preserve the independence of his little state without giving himself into the hands of either Charles XII or Peter the Great. When the latter invited him to join the army he feigned illness; but Menshikov approaching simultaneously with Charles XII, it was necessary to make a choice. Mazeppa left his bed, rallied his most devoted Cossacks about him, and crossed the Desna for the purpose of effecting a junction with the Polish army. At this the czar issued a proclamation denouncing the treason of Mazeppa, his alliance with the heretics, his plots to bring Ukraine once more under vassalage to Poland and to restore the temples of God and the holy monasteries to the uniates. Mazeppa’s capital, Baturin, was taken by Menshikov and rased to the ground, his accomplices perished on the wheel or the scaffold.g
MAZEPPA JOINS CHARLES XII; PULTOWA
Mazeppa with his army passed over the Desna; his followers, however, believed they were being led against Charles, and deserted their hetman as soon as his views were known, because they had more to fear from Peter than to hope from Charles. The hetman joined the Swedes with only seven thousand men, but Charles prosecuted his march and despised every warning. He passed the Desna; the country on the farther side became more and more desolate, and appearances more melancholy, for the winter was one of the most severe; hundreds of brave Swedes were frozen to death because Charles insisted upon pursuing his march even in December and January. The civil war in Poland in the mean time raged more violently than ever, and Peter sent divisions of his Russians to harass and persecute the partisans of Stanislaus. The three men who stood in most immediate relation to the Swedish king, Piper, Rehnskold, and Levenhaupt, belonged, indeed, among the greatest men of their century; but they were sometimes disunited in their opinions, and sometimes incensed and harassed by the obstinacy of the king.
[1708-1709 . .]
Mazeppa fell a sacrifice to his connection with Charles, his residence (Baturin) was destroyed by Menshikov, and his faithful Cossacks, upon Peter’s demand, were obliged to choose another hetman (November, 1708). Neither Piper nor Mazeppa could move the obstinate king to relinquish his march towards the ill-fortified city of Pultowa. Mazeppa represented to him in vain that, by an attack upon Pultowa he would excite the Cossacks of the Falls (Zaparogians) against him; and Piper entreated him, to no purpose, to draw nearer to the Poles, who were favourable to his cause, and to march towards the Dnieper; he continued, however, to sacrifice his men by his march, till, in February (1709), a thaw set in.
He was successful in gaining the favour of the Zaparogians through their hetman, Horodenski; but fortune had altogether forsaken the Swedes since January. In that month they were in possession of Moprik; in February, the battles at Goronodek and
Rashevka were decided in favour of the Russians; in March, Sheremetrev took Gaditch, which was occupied by the Swedes, and thereby gave a position to the Russian army which could not but prove destructive to the Swedes, who were obliged to besiege Pultowa without the necessary means, because their intractable king insisted upon the siege. In April and May, the Swedes exerted themselves in vain in throwing up trenches before the miserable fortifications of Pultowa, whilst the Russians were enclosing them in a net. One part of the Russians had already passed the Vorskla in May, and Peter had no sooner arrived, in the middle of June, than the whole army passed the river, in order to offer a decisive engagement to the invaders.
Rehnskold acted as commander-in-chief at the battle of Pultowa; for Charles had received a dangerous wound in his foot ten days before, and was unable to mount his horse. The Swedes on this day performed miracles of bravery, but everything was against them, for the Russians fought this time at least for their country, and had at length gained experience in the field. The defeat of the Swedes is easily explained, when it is known that they were in want of all the munitions of war, even powder and lead, that they were obliged to storm the enemy’s fortifications in opposition to an overwhelming numerical force, and that Levenhaupt and Rehnskold were so much disunited in opinion that the former, in his report of the engagement at Pultowa, makes the bitterest complaints against the commanderin-chief, which have since that time been usually adopted by all historians. Of the whole Swedish army, only fourteen or fifteen thousand under Levenhaupt and Kreuz succeeded in erecting an illfortified camp on the Dnieper, where they were shut up by the Russians and the river.
This small force might possibly have succeeded in fighting its way into Poland, and Charles had at first adopted this determination; he was, however, with great trouble, induced to pass the Dnieper, and accompanied by a small guard, to take refuge in Turkey. His plan was to reach the Bug over the pasture lands which then belonged to the Tatars on the Black Sea, and, aided by the Turks and the Tatars, to make his way first to Otchakov and then to Bender, whence he
hoped to persuade the Turks to take part in the Polish affairs. As soon as the king had escaped (July 10th, 1709), Levenhaupt, mourning over the sacrifice which the wilfulness of Charles had brought upon his Swedes, concluded a capitulation, in virtue of which all the baggage and artillery were surrendered to the Russians, together with the remnant of the Swedish army, which, calculating those who had been taken prisoners in the battle, amounted in all to about eighteen thousand men.
Charles’ flight to Bender, and his long residence of five years in Turkey, were the most favourable events which could have occurred for the accomplishment of Peter’s great plans. He was now master in Poland. In the Swedish, German, and French adventurers who had been in Charles’ army, he received the very best instructors of his people. Among those who entered into his service, there were experienced officers, artillerymen, architects, and engineers.
The Swedes, who for thirteen long years were neither set at liberty nor accorded by their impoverished country the usual support of prisoners of war, were distributed over the whole of Russia, and sent far into Siberia They founded schools and institutions, in order to get a livelihood, and used their knowledge and experience against their will for the promotion of Peter’s designs. This was the more important, as there was not a man among those many thousand prisoners who was not in a condition to teach the Russians to whom he came something of immediate utility, drawn from his experience in his native land. Many never returned to their homes, because they had raised up institutions and commenced undertakings which were as advantageous to themselves as to the Russian Empire.e
[1711 ]
THE GREAT AT THE BATTLE OF PULTOWA
(Painted for T H ’ H W by Thure de Thulstrup)
PETER AND THE POWERS
A treaty was entered into by Poland, Prussia, and Denmark, which restored to those states
PETER
the conquests of Gustavus Adolphus, and to Russia her sovereignty over her ancient possessions of Livonia, Ingria, and a part of Finland. When these preliminaries were settled, Peter went in person to make a defensive treaty with the elector of Brandenburg, the first king of Prussia; a mode of negotiation unusual amongst sovereigns, but which was perfectly consistent with the individual character and promptitude of the czar. Having concluded these important plans, he proceeded to reduce some Swedish fortresses, and to bombard the town of Riga, the capital of Livonia, where he lost between nine and ten thousand men by a pestilence that was then raging in that place. The garrison, struck down by two enemies—the plague and the Russians, and scarcely able to decide which was the more fatal—speedily capitulated; and Livonia was once more rendered tributary to Muscovy.
In the meanwhile Charles was employing all his interest at Constantinople to prevail upon the sultan to undertake a war against Russia, which the sultan was easily induced to embrace, in consequence of the ravages committed by the Muscovite troops on the frontiers of Turkey, and the rapidly extending power of the czar on the sea of Azov and the Black Sea. The khan of the Crimean Tatars naturally regarded with apprehension the Russian establishment at Azov, which the Turks had been forced to surrender a few years before; and he, therefore, strengthened the arguments that were submitted to the Divan to persuade them into a declaration of hostilities against the common enemy. A statement setting forth the formidable advances that Russia was making in her navy on the Don and in the harbour of Taganrog, and of the spirit of acquisition she was constantly exhibiting in her encroachments upon the border lands, was laid before the council by Poniatowski, the active friend of the Swedish king, and was immediately assented to by the mufti. In order to render the views of the sultan still more impressive, Count Tolstoi, the czar’s ambassador at Constantinople, was arrested in the public streets, and committed to the castle of the Seven Towers.
The indignity offered to Peter in the person of his minister was scarcely necessary to inflame his irritable temper. Within a short space of time his plenipotentiary in Saxony was broken on the
wheel, and his ambassador in London imprisoned for debt; but these events had taken place before the battle of Pultowa, which suddenly elevated him to the highest consideration amongst contemporary sovereigns. The insult, therefore, which the sultan cast upon him by the arrest of Count Tolstoi was the more acutely felt, as it appeared to treat him with contempt in the very hour of victory. He soon made the necessary arrangements for the approaching war, sending one division of his army to Moldavia, another to Livonia; and fleets to Azov, the Baltic, and the Black Sea. It was necessary, however, to return to Moscow to make provision for the government during his absence, and while he was there he issued a conscription for the purpose of recruiting his army.
CATHERINE ACKNOWLEDGED AS PETER’S WIFE (1711 A.D.)
The time was now arrived for acknowledging before his subjects his marriage with Catherine, which had taken place privately in 1707; and accordingly, on the 6th of March, 1711, the czarina Catherine Alexievna was solemnly declared to be his legitimate wife. The ascendency which Catherine had acquired over him was not more extraordinary than it was propitious. Peter’s disposition was naturally impatient and cruel, and when he was excited to acts of severity he could not be restrained by any appeal to his reason or his humanity. The only influence that possessed any permanent power over him was that of female society; and the remarkably sweet temper of Catherine, who was never known to be out of humour, invariably tranquillised him, even in his most angry moods, so complete was the fascination she exercised over his mind that the agony of those spasmodic fits to which he was subject yielded to her soothing presence. Without forgetting the low condition from which she sprang, she maintained the pomp of majesty with irreproachable propriety, and united an air of ease and authority that excited the admiration of those by whom she was surrounded. She was not distinguished by that lofty beauty which would seem to sympathise with these august qualities; nor was she either very brilliant in conversation or of a very quick imagination, but she was graceful and animated; her features were pretty and expressive, and a tone
of good sense and kindness always pervaded her actions She was admirably formed for the sphere she embellished, and, above all, for the peculiar necessities of the era that called her to the throne. Her devotion to Peter was boundless. She constantly attended him, even upon occasions of the utmost danger, and especially upon this eventful expedition, when she accompanied him upon his campaign into Turkey.
WAR WITH TURKEY
The whole body of troops which the precautions of the czar had enabled him to collect amounted to 130,000 men; but, being distributed in different quarters, and failing to join the czar on the Pruth, as he expected, he was obliged to proceed with an army that fell short of 40,000 men. The perils of the enterprise were so apparent that Peter issued orders requiring the women who followed in the train of the army to return; but Catherine, who insisted upon remaining with the czar, prevailed upon him to retract his determination. This slight circumstance eventually proved to be the salvation of the czar and his empire.
From Sorokat the army proceeded to Jassy, where Peter was led to expect supplies from the prince of Wallachia, with whom he had entered into a secret negotiation; but the sultan, warned of the prince’s intended revolt, suddenly deposed him, and appointed Cantemir in his place. But Cantemir, who was a Christian prince, was no less inclined to assist the czar, and proffered him such aid as he could command; admitting very candidly, however, that his subjects were attached to the Porte,[41] and firm in their allegiance. In this extremity Peter found himself at the head of a very inadequate force in the heart of a wild and rugged country, where the herbage was destroyed by swarms of locusts, and where it was impossible to procure provisions for the troops. The dangers of his situation, however, offered a valuable test of the fidelity and endurance of the soldiers, who, although they suffered the most severe privation, never uttered a single complaint.
In this state of things, intelligence was received that the Turkish army had crossed the Danube, and was marching along the Pruth. Peter called a council of war, and declared his intention of advancing at once to meet the enemy; in which measure all the generals, except one, expressed their concurrence. The dissentient officer reminded the czar of the misfortunes of the king of Sweden in the Ukraine, and suggested to him the possibility that Cantemir might disappoint him; but Peter was resolved, and, after a fatiguing march for three nights over a desert heath, the troops arrived on the 18th of June at the river Pruth. Here they were joined by Prince Cantemir, with a few followers, and they continued their march until the 27th, when they discovered the enemy, to the number of 200,000 men, already crossing the river. There was no alternative left but to form the lines of battle; and Peter, perceiving that the enemy was endeavouring to surround him with cavalry, extended his lines a considerable way along the right bank.
The situation of the army at this juncture was extremely unfortunate. The great body of the Turkish soldiers were before the Russians on one side of the river, and on the other the hostile Tatars of the Crimea. The czar was thus completely surrounded, his means of escape by the river were cut off, and the great numbers of the Turks rendered a flight in the opposite direction impossible. He was placed in more critical circumstances than Charles at Pultowa, and he had been misled, like that unfortunate prince, by an ally who did not possess the power of fulfilling his promise. But his presence of mind and indomitable courage never forsook him. He formed his army, which consisted in detail of 31,554 infantry, and only 6,692 cavalry, into a hollow square, placing the women in the centre, and prepared to receive the disorderly but furious onslaught of the Turks. It is evident that, if the forces of the sultan had been commanded by skilful officers, the contest must have been speedily terminated. But the superior discipline of the Russians was shown in the steadiness with which they met the charge, and maintained themselves against such great odds. The Turks injudiciously confined their attack to one side of the square, by which, although the loss sustained by the Russians was immense, the czar was enabled constantly to relieve the troops, and supply the front with fresh men. The fight continued
for three days. Their ammunition was at last exhausted, and there remained no choice between surrendering and making a desperate attempt to cut their way through the enemy. This latter proposition is said to have been entertained by Peter, who proposed to force a passage in the night, accompanied by his officers and a few select men; but it is extremely unlikely that he should have contemplated a step that must inevitably have sacrificed the czarina and the remnant of his brave army.
Catherine’s Heroism; the Peace of Pruth
It is not improbable, however, that Peter may have conceived some heroic design for forcing a passage; but the certainty of failure must have overruled such an intention almost as soon as it was formed. After the agitation of that eventful day, he surrendered himself to the anxiety by which he was oppressed, and, retiring to his tent on the third night, gave strict orders that he should be left undisturbed. It was on this occasion that the genius and influence of the czarina preserved the empire, her consort, and the army. She who had accompanied him through so many dangers, who had shared in the toils of the field without murmuring, and partaken in the fatigues consequent upon his reforms and improvements, had a right to be heard at a moment of such critical importance. In despite, therefore, of his prohibition she entered his tent, and representing to him the perils by which they were on all sides environed, urged upon him the necessity of seeking to negotiate a peace. She not only suggested this measure, which was probably the very last that might have occurred to Peter, but she undertook to carry it into effect herself. It is the immemorial custom in the East to approach all sovereigns, or their representatives, with presents, and Catherine, aware of that usage, collected all her own jewels and trinkets, and those of the women who had accompanied the expedition, giving a receipt for their value to be discharged on their return to Moscow, and dispatched the vice chancellor, accompanied by an officer, with a letter from Marshal Sheremetrev to the grand vizir, proposing negotiations for a treaty of peace.[42]
Some hours elapsed, and no answer was returned. It was supposed that the bearers of the letter were put to death, or placed under arrest, when a second officer was despatched with a duplicate of the letter, and it was determined in a council of war, that, should the vizir refuse to accept the proffered terms, an attempt should be made to break through the enemy’s ranks. With this view an intrenchment was rapidly formed, and the Russians advanced within a hundred paces of the Turkish lines. A suspension of arms, however, was immediately proclaimed by the enemy, and negotiations were opened for a treaty
It would appear strange that the vizir should have consented to a cessation of hostilities under such circumstances, when the Russians were completely at his mercy; but he was aware that the Russian troops in Moldavia had advanced to the Danube after reducing the town of Brabilow, and that another division of the general army was on its march from the frontiers of Poland. He, therefore, considered it advisable to avail himself of that opportunity to dictate to Peter the terms upon which he wished to terminate the campaign, knowing that if he postponed the treaty he would be compelled to renew the war against the whole force of the empire. The conditions he proposed were sufficiently humiliating. He demanded the restitution of Azov, the demolition of the harbour of Taganrog, the renouncement of all further interference in the affairs of Poland and the Cossacks, a free passage for Charles back to his own country, and the withdrawal from the sea of Azov and the Black Sea. Peter subscribed to all these conditions, but refused to deliver up Prince Cantemir to the sultan, declaring that he would rather cede to the Turks the whole country as far as Kursk than violate his word.
This treaty, however, did not satisfy the expectations of Charles; and, indeed, obtained for him scarcely any advantage. The only passage it contained which directly related to him was that which bound Peter to give him a safe return home, and to conclude a peace with him, if the terms could be agreed upon. He never ceased to importune the sultan to dismiss the vizir and make war upon Russia, until the Porte, wearied by his ungrateful and frantic complaints, at last recalled the pension allowed him, and sent him an
