A Book for the Ages

Jill Lepore's Book of Ages is a great way to end the semester.  Lepore brings Jane Franklin to life before the reader's very eyes.  Lepore does a fantastic job of looking at Franklin's personal life and the way that she is caught up in a web of forces much larger than herself, such as the growing influence of paper currency.  Lepore doesn't just use Franklin's life as a starting block to jump into another contemporaneous event, but goes to show the way these forces affected the person central to this microhistory's keyhole, Jane Franklin.  One not only learns about the societal customs that affected all aspects of women's life, especially education, but one gets to see these customs at work on the ground level, influencing people in the flesh.  Reading this book has really influenced the way in which I want to take my own paper.  Lepore's style not only brings the Franklins to life, but also entices the reader by portraying the setting in which our characters are found as both exciting and troubling.  One example of Lepore's writing that I intend to use as inspiration for my own project is the way in which she looks at Jane's surroundings and analyzes the role that debt played in the changing economy.  War veterans were being brought to court over debts that they hadn't paid.  Nadezhda Mandelstam, the central figure in my own microhistory, discusses the way that Stalin's decision to enforce collectivization led to dearth when it came to food throughout the Soviet Union.  I hope to be able to look at the relationship between my own central figure and the larger forces at work with at least some small degree of the success that Lepore has put on display.

The Wonderfully Readable Results of Loving Too Much

In 2001, twelve years before she published Book of Ages, Jill Lepore wrote an article for the Journal of American History about “Historians Who Love Too Much.” When we reviewed that article during our first week of class, we talked about the trap Lepore described as a hazard for historians who write biographies and microhistories – getting too close to the subject, losing objectivity, becoming blind to the parts of the story that don’t conform to the ideal. In a 2013 article for The New Yorker called The Prodigal Daughter, Lepore removes any doubt that she loved Jane Franklin Mecom too much. She was writing about Jane at the behest of her own mother, then in her eighties, destined to die before the book was finished.

Book of Ages was the perfect book to wrap up this course. It challenges the expectations of historical writing, whether microhistory, biography, or other conventions. It defies categorization. Lepore herself argued, in discussing her methods, that Jane Franklin Mecom’s life does not fit neatly into any of the standard conventions of historical writing – history, biography, autobiography, or fiction (pg. 270). She wove together elements of all these genres, and more. Is it a microhistory? To some extent, it fits the criteria we have established: Lepore uses Jane’s life to examine the larger historical context of 18^th century America, writing in exceptional narrative prose, illuminating an otherwise unknown side of a well-known story. But Book of Ages is something different. The San Francisco Chronicle called it a “double biography,” telling the stories of both Jane and her famous brother, Benjamin Franklin. But the source material for Jane’s early life is sparse, so Lepore uses unconventional methods to fill in the gaps, borrowing quotes from Jane’s later writings, following tangents to explore the Franklin ancestry back to its earliest records in England, and even incorporating brief biographical sketches of other famous Janes (Jane Grey and Jane Austen), influential authors of the 18^th century, and occasionally people who had little or no direct correlation to the subject of the book. It is not so much a biography or a history as a book about living in Boston and Philadelphia in Franklin’s time, with content drawn equally from records, imagination, and interpolation.

The bottom line is that Jill Lepore has, through her unique methodology, crafted a brilliant book that is informative, imaginative, and a joy to read. It may or may not be a microhistory, and although that question may have some relevance in our current class, the real strength of Lepore’s work is that it proves that a well-written book does not need to fit into any predefined genre.

The Amazing Ben 'n Jen Considered

It seems easy to view Jill Lepore's Book of Ages as a biography, particularly when she calls it a biography (although one that she says "borrows from the conventions of fiction").  (P. 269).  But her tipoff about fiction is only one element that seems to also make the book a microhistory.  Others include, for example, the use of a personal, discreet event (the sibling relationship of Franklin and Mecom) as a lens on a number of larger issues in the 18th century: issues of women, poverty, debtors, lunatics, medicine, politics, fame, the rise from humble origins, and even history.  It also uses letters as its primary source, a microhistory hallmark.  Additionally, it focuses (at least partially) on the life of an "obscure" person.  Perhaps the moral of this book, and our class, is that the definition of a microhistory can cover an extremely broad spectrum of "conventions of different kinds of writing about lives."  (P. 270).

It’s like writing history… Just make it up as you go

The story of Domingos Alvares is a fitting one for this point in our class and our ongoing discussions about microhistory. Not only does it refer back to previous readings, particularly The Diligent and Two Princes of Calabar, but it brings to light several of the themes we have explored in our efforts to define what a microhistory is, and what is permissible in the writing of a narrative history like this.

Alvares himself embodies much of what we have seen in other protagonists throughout this course. His story, or what there is of it, comes to us through testimony in a court of the 18th century Portuguese Inquisition. We know of his capture in Dahomey, his enslavement in Brazil, and his resourcefulness that enabled him to buy his freedom in Rio. We know that, like the main characters in several of the other books we have read, he found himself on the wrong side of the religious tyranny of the world he had been thrust into. We know that he had a certain amount of knowledge of African vodun practices, and that he was cunning enough to parlay whatever knowledge he had into a practice as a spiritual healer that tended to agitate his white overseers while empowering him with a level of popular power and financial wherewithal that was unusual for someone in his circumstances. His persistent efforts to improve his situation would be his undoing over and over, as such activities were viewed with suspicion and fear by Christian clergy.

Alvares’ greatest power was his ability to improvise and adapt. When traditional African Sakpata healing was called for, he was able to assume that role. When it became clear that the Christians held the power and would not tolerate his pagan ideology, he implemented Christian emblems and phrases in his “cures.” When even that wasn’t enough, he invoked the natural world and claimed that there was no supernatural element of any kind in his healing powers. When opportunities arose to cast himself as a diviner of Moorish gold instead of a spritual healer, he took on that role – being careful to stage his scams so that he provided himself adequate time to get away before he was found out. In short, he was making it up as he went. But he was also smart, and not everything was made up. He incorporated enough knowledge of actual botanical medicine to provide legitimate treatments when possible, although we do not know whether his botanical knowledge came from early tutelage in Africa or from later encounters with practitioners in Brazil or Portugal.

The only problem with this book, and one we have grappled with, argued about, conditionally accepted, and sometimes criticized harshly, is James Sweet’s occasional reliance on conjecture. As we have established, this is often necessary in microhistory, and generally makes the narrative better. But there has to be a basis of fact, and Sweet makes some points that seem to be less factually grounded than the claims we have observed from other authors. For example, on page 24 Sweet explains that it is likely that Alvares’ parents were “more than simple devotees of the vodun; they quite likely were priest,” basing this likelihood primarily on their names. Ok, I can accept this analysis, but then he takes it further and translates this status onto Alvares himself, saying, “What seems likely, though, is that by the time Oyo and Dahomey began their warfare in 1728, Domingos Alvares was already a powerful spiritual and political leader…” What makes that likely? The fact that he later claimed that his parents had the names of spiritual leaders? The fact that, upon landing in Brazil, he was able to convince other slaves that he had spiritual connections? I think it is possible that he was a spiritual leader at some level in Africa, but at the age of 18 I think it would be less likely that he was a powerful priest, and more likely that he was a gifted con artist who had been exposed to enough vodun that he could fake the funk when it benefitted him. We find out later that some of the treatments he was using in Portugal were things that he learned in Brazil, or even in the Algarve. This, coupled with his propensity to add other tricks to his repertoire as he went along, makes it likely that his real vocation was not as a Sakpata priest, but as a skilled con artist and scammer who plied the tricks of his trade in a desperate effort to survive in the most difficult and challenging circumstances imaginable.

Small Revolutions

Sweet's exploration into the relationship between African ideas and European structure are interesting. The subject of Domingo Alvarez is a particularly interesting subject - though the whole 'free man sold back into slavery' is a common trope in the slave narrative, to see a man that is a vodun   healer gives it enough of a twist that keeps it fresh. Looking at his healing as a sort of weapon to undercut Europe's power is an especially interesting twist - a whole new meaning of that tired adage 'stay true to yourself.' Him holding onto his culture, his identity while being kidnapped and forced into slavery in a whole new country and culture is not only admirable, it is remarkable. Most people, when forced into a new situation, have to learn how to adapt, if only for survival. Alvarez holding onto his faith and identity (by keeping his old name, despite respecting his new one) despite being baptized in their faith is a small revolution.

Being a slave, he did have to play the game of obeying his masters and helping them when he could. However, his skills in the arts of healing were advantageous to him - and no doubt to other African slaves - in that he could make a patient better or worse simply based on the fact that he could conceal his knowledge of plants  because they didn't have the information. We spoke about the power of slaves a few weeks ago, and I think that this really correlates with those ideas. Slaves may not have obvious powers, but they can mount these small revolutions.

African Knowledge in the Atlantic

James Sweet explores the way African ideas helped shape the Atlantic world in his work detailing the experiences of Domingo Alvarez, a West African vodun healer sold into slavery. Allegedly because of the threat their increasing power and wealth posed to the King of Dahomey, members of the Sakpata priesthood were sold to Portuguese slave traders and brought to Brazil. Here Domingo was baptized after receiving an abbreviated form of the catechism. Sweet speculates how he might have received the new faith, and argues how he must have recognized it having similar traits to his own. We learn of creole languages and cures practiced for headaches.  Episodes of syncretism are contrasted with accounts of resistance including the use of violence. Domingo appears to have used his reputation as a 'fetisher' to inspire fear in his masters. "Since Africans possessed knowledge of plants and other substances that were often unknown to European pharmacists, let alone slave masters, they could easily conceal poisons among plant and animal objects that might be used for benign, everyday purposes," says Sweet. (69) In this way, the story of Domingo opens up questions concerning African systems of knowledge and how they were able to define their interaction in the Atlantic world. This is the key purpose of the work, for Sweet says that all to often, "Africans are almost seamlessly woven into the narrative of Western democratic triumphalism, their political challenges framed as crucial to our understandings of liberty, equality, and freedom," instead of understood through their own culture. (6) As a microhistory this work offers a possible portal into viewing the impact of African culture and ideas upon the European imagination.   

Perhapses, Possibilities, and Assumptions in Domingos Alvares

James Sweet’s Domingos Alvares is a fascinating book that makes a significant historiographical contribution. His argument that Alvares’s healing was a way to contest the “European imperial power” (6). It had never really considered how it is that so many of the African voices find their way into our historical documents, but Sweet makes a great point that the majority of them find their way into the documentation through adopting “European” culture, modes of thought, or its imperial project—or, playing the European game. Sweet shows how Domingos—and many others like him who have avoided detection—contested that game through holding onto their own cultural outlook and practices while adapting them to their new environment. This approach is different than just showing how slaves expressed their own agency, but also shows how they maintained separate intellectual world from their oppressors.

Some of the method Sweet employed, however, discomforted me. I understand he had a dearth of sources for the early stages of Domingos life, but there were times when I thought his conclusions less than supported even taking into account Sweet’s use of terms like perhaps and possibly. In particular, I found Sweet’s discussion of Domingo’s adoption of Christianity or parts of Christianity less than convincing. Domingos becomes a generalization himself as his mentality and approaches is surmised from Vodun theology (47-50). His polytheistic religion, for instance, made him open to new beliefs (48). The hierarchy of belief in Catholicism also would have appealed to Domingos, Sweet tells us, because it was similar to the Vodun hierarchy, and Domingos probably viewed his priest as a peer because he too held esoteric knowledge of his faith (49). And Domingos likely “recognized and respected” his new name (while maintaining his old one) because it was a badge of honor (50). Certainly, all of these are possible, but they are based on generalizations of the Vodun religion and how it found expression in its adherents in theory. In this way, Domingos becomes a sort of caricature of the Vodun healer interacting with Christianity, the outcomes of which are logically surmised. Put another way, the basis of Vodun beliefs are theorized on how they would interact with Christian practice. But what we do know about religions is that they are never just a set of beliefs but also infused with cultural inclinations, practices, and world views that are both temporally and terrestrially dependent.

Preceding the discussion on Christianity, Sweet directs the reader to works by Thornton and himself on Catholicism's influence on slaves from Kongo and Angola in an endnote, but he never uses specific examples from those works that would substantiate his “perhaps” claims better. In other words, establishing his assumptions in other empirical practices rather than logical surmise.

Another example is the walk in Rio de Janeiro that Domingos takes, for which Sweet even provided a map. After multiple readings (text and notes), I remain unsure if it was a real walk or a hypothetical one used simply to describe the area in which Domingos lived (81-88). Many of the citations focus specifically on things Domingos might have seen, but not concretely that such a walk existed. Perhaps, I’m overlooking something, but if the walk never took place, I do not think this is the most judicious way to discuss the environment in which Domingos lived.

To be clear, I’m not uncomfortable with his use of perhaps and likely or probably, but the justifications for it. I do understand why he does it, especially in the earlier parts of the books (of which Sweet forewarns the reader). Indeed, Sweet’s evidentiary basis becomes much stronger has the book goes on.  I would characterize my thoughts on his approach in these earlier chapters as uncomfortably accepting. These criticisms aside, I found Sweet’s book to be fascinating and important especially due to the significance of its overall argument.