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The Land of Tears: A Brutal History of Colonization, Trade, and Globalization in Africa
By Robert Hams
Translated by Feng Xiaoyuan
Published by Guangdong People's Publishing House in March 2022
Through the journey of three famous adventurers who first entered the african hinterland, this book presents the history of the brutal plunder of equatorial Africa by European and American colonists. The intervention of external forces has torn apart the original social structure and political system (rainforest separation of powers) in equatorial Africa and replaced it with colonial rule methods such as colonial chiefdom and autonomous states, and the colonists have used trade and deception to exploit indigenous peoples in the name of science and humanism. Globalization has enabled the Western countries to complete the primitive accumulation of capital, but it has made equatorial Africa unrecognizable. To this day, the region remains one of the poorest and most chaotic places in the world, suffering from civil war, terrorism, extreme poverty and piracy.
Chapter One: Manima
1874-1876, Everetton, Connecticut, USA
The 220 acres of land in Essex, Connecticut, are owned by The Constant Cheney Company, a manufacturer that produces ivory combs, billiards and piano keys. It quickly became a corporate town of shops, apartments, and a row of Gothic houses for company employees. Between 1874 and 1876, the company built a three-story factory and two two-story factories along the Falls River, collectively referred to as the "Downstream Plants", for ivory processing. A quarter of a mile upstream, it built a new three-story building, known as the "Upstream Factory," handmade with ivory-clad wooden piano keys. It is clear that the company is making a big push into the production of ivory for pianos.
The company's name outlines the complexity of industrially producing ivory products. Samuel Konstock began the ivory business in 1832, when he and his brother partnered to open a factory that produced ivory combs and toothpicks. To harness water power to drive circular saws and other machines, the plant was built along the Falls River, a small river that travels 4 miles into the Connecticut River. In 1847, the partnership between the two brothers broke down, and Samuel moved upstream to fight for dams and water rights, including the excavation of a large ditch to bring river water into the factory to meet production and manufacturing needs. In 1851, Samuel bought 220 acres of farmland adjacent to his factory, which later became the site of his company building. Samuel was already financially stretched during the acquisition, and in 1853 he had to borrow $1,000 from his father-in-law. In 1860, George Cheney, an ivory trader from Providence, Rhode Island, invested $3,500 to buy a quarter of Samuel's company, which gave Samuel, who was in desperate need of investment, a large sum of money. In return, he made Cheney his official partner and renamed his business Konstock Cheney & Company.
George Cheney started out as an ivory trader. In 1850, at the age of 20, he first came to Zanzibar as an escort on board the Sacramento, the chief trader. The SACRAMENTO was one of several ships owned by Rufus Green of Providence, Rhodes. The voyage did not appear to have been a success, and the ship returned with $6,000 worth of unsold merchandise. Captain John Condon blamed it all on George Cheney. The captain wrote in his log: "He often spoke of the next voyage ... If they sent him as an escort again, it would be a mistake. He sells almost nothing and always comes to ask for my judgment when he buys something. But George Cheney won't be fired easily because he's after Rufus Green's daughter Sarah. In 1851 he returned to Zanzibar in one of Rufus Green's ships, but this time he was no longer an escort, and it was difficult to tell if he had undertaken any actual work.
In March 1853, Cheney began his third trip to East Africa, accompanied by his newly married wife Sarah. The couple spent nearly two years in Zanzibar, where Cheney bought ivory, cloves and coba gum (a resin used to make varnish); supervised temporary hires who packed shipping cargo; and cleared customs through Zanzibar Customs. Cheney also sold bundles of Merikani— a white cotton cloth from Salem, Massachusetts— to Swahili and Arab traders who went inland in search of ivory, along with barrels of gunpowder. By the time he left Zanzibar on 19 June 1855, Cheney had become a seasoned businessman.
Exchanging Cloth for East African ivory may seem like a very decent deal, but beneath the glossy surface, the trade is deeply linked to slavery. The cotton used in the Massachusetts textile mills came from enslaved Africans in the southern United States, while caravans in East Africa transported not only ivory but also captives, subsidizing the slave trade with the profits from ivory. New England ivory traders traveling to Zanzibar are well aware of the connection, and even ordinary Americans are not unaware of the unethical effects of the ivory trade. In 1844, the Reverend Alexander Sessions of Salem had to deny any claim that the U.S. Consul in Zanzibar, Richard S. P. Waters is rumored to be a slave trader. In a letter to Consul Waters, Pastor Sessions tried to downplay the influence of the rumors. He wrote: "Don't let this innuendo occupy an inappropriately important place in your mind. ”
In 1857, George Cheney traveled to Zanzibar with his father-in-law Rufus Green to begin his fourth and final trade voyage. For two years, the two men bought ivory, koba gum, and cloves, transported them to Providence by Rufus Green's ship, and then sold cotton, gunpowder, and other New England products to Arab and Swahili caravan merchants. Green is very satisfied with the good trading environment in Zanzibar. In a letter to U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Frederick Seward, he wrote: "All facilities allow access to agents of permanent foreign firms. I have never been to any country or city where foreigners are so safe in person or property like Zanzibar. I lived there for two years, during which time I traded more than $200,000. There is no record of how much George Cheney made on that trip, but a few months after returning to Providence in February or March 1860, he bought a quarter-stake in Samuel Constock's ivory comb manufacturing company.
Soon, Samuel Constock's farm grew into a small commercial town. Between 1867 and 1874, Samuel Constock sold the land near his large house to the managers of the company in order to build a long row of Gothic houses along the main street. In 1872, Constock established an in-house shop selling groceries and general merchandise, and set up a venue on the second floor for corporate functions and public events. Later, when the men's dormitory building could no longer accommodate all male workers, the company moved a former seminary building near the factory downstream to be used as a dormitory building. Later, the company built a new dormitory building for female employees. In the 1870s, the company had about 45 workers working in downstream factories, consuming 9,000 pounds of ivory per month; 150 workers making wooden piano keys in upstream factories.
George Cheney's investment allowed Samuel Konstock's ivory comb manufacturing company to move from producing ivory combs and toothpicks to piano keys and billiard balls. From 1850 to 1900, with the increase in the mechanization of piano production, piano production in Europe and the United States increased by as much as 10 times, while the sales price was greatly reduced. Official statistics on American manufacturing in 1860 showed a growing demand for pianos from prestigious American families. The data shows that in a country with a population of 31 million, 21,000 pianos can be produced every year. An article in the July 1867 Atlantic monthly stated: "Almost every decent couple believes that a piano is no less important than a kitchen utensil. ”
In the 1830s, the American piano industry produced about 2,500 pianos of ordinary quality each year, and by the 1840s, Jonas Chaklin had improved piano manufacturing techniques at his factory in Boston—hiding an integrated cast iron frame in a wooden shell that brought American piano manufacturing into an era of great prosperity. Chaklin's old factory building burned down in 1852, and the company replaced it with a new five-story building that became the largest industrial building in the United States at the time.
In 1853, a German immigrant named Henry Steinway and his sons opened a small piano manufacturing workshop in New York City. Like Jonas Chaklin, Steinway used cast iron frames, but he connected the strings in different ways, increasing the tension of the strings, allowing them to resonate better on the castanet and improving the sound quality. Within a few years, Steinway pianos began to appear in major concert halls. In 1861, a Steinway piano debuted with the New York Philharmonic. While Steinway and Chucklin differed a lot in piano design, they both agreed that white piano keys should be inlaid with ivory, while some American manufacturers still use mother-of-pearl or hawksbill turtles. The ivory-encrusted piano keys give a smooth but slightly sticky touch and are the first choice for concert pianists.
Another fast-growing use of ivory is to make billiard balls. Michael Ferran of New York City, one of the finest billiards players in the United States at the time, noted in 1850 that during his career, the number of billiard room and billiards players experienced phenomenal growth. Billiards was once the exclusive entertainment of the rich, but now the increase in billiard rooms in the city has made people with less high incomes join the ranks of playing billiards, making billiards gradually become popular. At one time, Phelan recalled, there were fewer than 16 pool tables available throughout New York City, and by 1850, there were more than 400 pool tables, and new billiard rooms were opened in New Orleans, Philadelphia and Boston. Between 1858 and 1859, almost every bar in a city as far as Chicago had at least one pool table, which fully proved the popularity and popularity of billiards.
PattyLand, 4 miles from Konstock Cheney, borrowed from The Konstock Cheney model. The Pattyland Company is located on the banks of the River Dippe, Connecticut. In 1863, patti brothers, Julius Patti and George Rand Company merged to form the Patty Rand Company. At the time, all three companies were producing piano keys. The combined company has three dams along the Dip River, plus a town reservoir, providing ample water for its machines to operate. With the flourishing of the piano keys business, in 1866, Pattyland built a new larger factory. Part of the expansion was financed by Rufus Green, who invested a large sum of money in the Patty Brothers in 1860 and became a director of the company. At this point, the two competing ivory companies are linked to each other to an unprecedented degree.
In general, the Konstock Cheney Company and the Partiland Company have almost monopolized the production of ivory piano keys in the United States, and they are also the main producers of ivory billiard balls and combs. Investments by ivory traders George Cheney and Rufus Green show that Zanzibar's ivory trade is increasingly vertically integrated with Connecticut's ivory products manufacturing industry. While Cheney and Green knew little about cutting ivory or managing factories, they knew quite well the global network that connected the Connecticut Valley and East Africa. At the other end of the net, Arab and Swahili caravans were going deep into the African hinterland in search of ivory and captives.
Robert Harms, Henry A. Lee of African History in the History Department of Yale University J. Heinz Chair Professor, a globally renowned expert on African studies. He has won the Mark Linton Prize in History, the Frederick Douglas Book Prize, and the J. Russell Prize.
Author: Robert Harms
Editor: Zhou Yiqian