Rev Left Radio - The Counterrevolution of 1776 w/ Gerald Horne

Episode Date: March 2, 2021

Listen to the full Guerrilla History episode here: https://guerrillahistory.libsyn.com/gerald-horne

We're back on guerrilla history, and we're joined by our distinguished guests, and it's truly an honor to say that we're joined by Professor Gerald Horn, who's the John Jay and Rebecca Moore's chair of History and African American Studies at the University of Houston. He's written, what's the latest count? almost 40 books at this state, including a wide, wide variety of topics, everything from boxing to jazz, to Hollywood, to Paul Robeson, but I'll name a couple of his books just in case you people are looking for something to pass your pandemics with reading, because you're not going to find much better than what Professor Horn puts out there. Some of his books that I'd recommend are Paul Robeson, the artist is revolutionary, race to Revolution, the United States and Cuba during slavery and Jim Crow, confronting black

Jacobins, Mao in Harlem, W.E.B. Dubois, a biography, Black and brown, African Americans and the Mexican Revolution. And then the three books that were going to be focused today. The Donning of the Apocalypse, Slave Resistance and the Origins of the United States of America in the long 16th century, the apocalypse of settler colonialism, the roots of slavery, white supremacy, and capitalism and 17th century North America in the Caribbean and the book that we're going to start off with the counter-revolution of 1776. Professor Horn, it's an absolute pleasure to have you on here, and I can speak for all of us when I say that I'm a big admirer of yours. Well, thank you for inviting me. Of course, it's our pleasure. So without further ado,

let's get into here. We're going to talk about the counter-revolution of 1776, and we already talked about in our introduction about how the narrative surrounding the foundation of the United States is really entrenched. And it's almost based on misconceptions as much as it is on actual historical fact. And so why don't I just unleash you and allow you to kind of talk through your narrative of the counter-revolution of 1776, possibly starting with the glorious revolution of 188. Okay. So the so-called glorious revolution of 1688, 1689 in England, in many ways is a revolt by the merchant class against the monarch, not least because in 1672, the monarch had established the royal African company, which was an attempt to add a system to the sort of

of in Kuwait process of ensnaring and enslaving Africans in particular. The merchant class wanted to elbow in to this lucrative process, which helped to bring eye-watering, eye-popping profits. Sometimes you could invest $1 and get $1,700 back, and with that kind of profit, you had some who might sell their firstborn in order to enter that dirty business, not to mention some African they didn't know. And so, and fundamentally, the so-called glorious revolution, which clipped the wings of the monarch at root, and in essence, was about a naked grab for filthy lucre. And what happens is that the monarch is set on a path to being a figurehead.

I think it's fair to say that Queen Elizabeth in 2021 does not exercise the kind of authority and power that King Henry VIII did in the 1530s, for example, which I think is a gross understatement. So with the merchants forcing the deregulation of the African slave trade, free trade in Africans is how I put it, the merchants descend upon Africa, with the maniacal energy of craze bees, manicling and handcuffing every African in sight, dragging them across the Atlantic, leading to an exponential rise in profiteering, not to mention a significant and profound increase in the number of enslaved Africans,

not least in the Caribbean, Jamaica and Barbados in the first instance. And this helps to turbocharge the sugar plantations, since they have so many laborers, but it also tends to turbocharge ferocity, because it should not be seen as a revelation that people do not necessarily want to work for free, particularly work under the lash, and also have this rather noxious system of white supremacy and racism imposed upon them. So this leads to slavery, revolts repeatedly, which in any case had been a characteristic of the Caribbean leading up to the end of the 17th century, because part of the problem from the point of view of London with the Caribbean was that the African population so outnumbered the settler population.

So what happens as the ferocity and intensity of slave revolts begins to skyrocket in the Caribbean, you have many of the settlers. make the Great Trek, as I call it, from the Caribbean to the North America mainland, and historians of Southern Africa might recognize that phrase, great trek, because I adapted from that historiography, which describes what happens in the 1830s after London takes over South Africa and tries to impose the abolition of slavery and the settlers who were mostly an amalgam of Dutch and French Huguenots, the so-called Afrikaners, begin to make the Great Shreff Northward to escape the jurisdiction of London. In any case, the settlers begin to flee onto the North American mainland,

but that does not necessarily solve their problem, even though they are outnumbering the Africans on the North American mainland, which is part of the key to understand. the subsequent history of the United States of America. That is to say that they were not able to escape slave revolts because you had slave revolts in New York City, assisted by the French and Quebec in 1712 in South Carolina, 1739, 1740, assisted by the Spanish in Florida. New York again, a few months later, assisted by the Spanish and the French. So at a certain point, London decides that if these settlements in North America are going to be viable, they have to eliminate the threats posed to their existence and survival from French Canada, Quebec, and from Spanish Florida, which leads to the seven years war, 1756 to 1763. As you know, London is infamously able to defeat the French in Canada, leaving behind, shall we say, a still-restive Quebecois population, and at least temporarily, is able to oust the Spanish from Florida. since London had executed this grand maneuver on behalf of the settlers, they go to the settlers in North America and try to collect taxes to pay for this expenditure of blood and treasure. But perhaps because the settlers were so accustomed to getting things for free by dent of slave labor, they were in no mood to pay taxes, which,

as you know, is still a tendency of the 1% in the United States as we speak. London also made the maneuver through the so-called rural proclamation of 1762, 1763, to keep the settlers from moving west invading the territory of the indigenous population, the Native American population. But this brings London into conflict with religious. state speculators, such as George Washington, for example. Just like in June 1772, when the courts in London seek to illegalize slavery in England itself, there is a fear on the North American mainland that this decision could leapfrog the Atlantic, calling into question and jeopardizing

these grand fortunes built upon slave labor and dispossession of the indigenous population by dint of, quite frankly, genocidal methods. And this creates a very combustible situation that explodes in 1775, 1776, they're about triggering what many call the American Revolution, which I call a counter-revolution in light. of its underlying purposes, and also in light of its underlying history and subsequent history, it's a rather strange revolution, indeed, that leads to enhanced genocide, mass enslavement, even though, I'm afraid to say, that forces left, right, and center, at least in the United States, and even some of our friends in Canada, who really should know better, since they're the next-door neighbors of these genocidars, still have accepted in whole cloth this novel interpretation of these events of the 18th century. And, of course, if you look at the subsequent history, other than what I've just outlined,

you also get a glimpse of the preceding history. What I mean by that is if you look at the overrated, vaunted U.S. Constitution, which in its First Amendment calls for freedom of religion, In some ways, this was an attempt to circumvent the religious wars that had gripped Europe, not least since Martin Luther in 1517 had inaugurated the secession from the Vatican, from the Catholic Church, or for that matter, trying to circumvent the pernicious bigotry of anti-Semitism, which had dogged Europe for some centuries. Indeed, you may know that England had expelled this Jewish population in 1290, 1291,

but in contestation with the Catholic powers led by Spain and to a certain degree France, London, which had moved towards the Protestant faith under Henry VIII in the 1530s, made the grand, great compromise of seeking to incorporate the Jewish population that was fleeing the Iberian Peninsula, fleeing from Spain and Portugal in the first instance. Of course, some of these Jewish refugees fled to Protestant Holland. Some fled to Muslim Ottoman Turkey, for example. So the First Amendment was an attempt to reconcile these religious tensions. It was intermittently successful. What I mean is that even today in the United States, you have anti-Semitism, for example.

Anti-Catholicism has been beaten back to a degree. But all of this, of course, was in aid of a larger purpose, which is creating a new kind of identity politics of whiteness. That is to say, those who had been warring on the shores of Europe. English versus Irish, English versus Scots, English versus Welsh, British versus German, German versus Pole, Pole versus Russian, Serb versus Croat, Northern Italian versus Southern Italian, the list is endless. All of a sudden, in a maneuver that would make Madison Avenue blush, when they cross the Atlantic, they're rebranded as, quote, white, which in the trade union movement, of which I have been apart, we used to to call that pork chop unity. Unite on the basis of mutual gain. And mutual gain, of course, is seizing the land of the indigenous, stocking it with enslaved Africans. And that becomes, I'm afraid to say, the subsequent history of the United States. Now, needless to say, the black

folk in North America were not passive observers to this historical process. Even mainstream and bourgeois historians acknowledge, although they don't try to explain it, that by several orders of magnitude, black people oppose the so-called patriots, led by George Washington. They did not engage in class collaboration. They engaged in class struggle. What I mean is, if you look at this process of settler colonialism, which has gripped North America for centuries now, it's a classic example of settler colonialism. That is to say, if you look at the settlement of what came to be called North Carolina in the 1580s, it was a multi-class formation that crossed the Atlantic on behalf of the 1% in London. Just like in 1607, when London establishes its toehold in what they call Virginia, it's sponsored by the grantees of London.

including early investors in the East Indian Company, early pillagers of West Africa, et cetera. And there's a kind of class collaboration, although if you're interested, we can talk about a kind of class struggle that does erupt to a degree amongst the European settlers. But in any case, I would say class collaboration has been the understudied, understated theme of settler colonialism. And you can't begin to understand the Trump phenomenon. You can't begin to understand January 6, 2021 without understanding class collaboration, even though that may come as a revelation to some of my friends on the left in the United States, who oftentimes torture the electoral figures until they scream,

that it's only the 1% that voted for Trump, which is mathematically impossible in the land of 320 million. were 74 million to vote for Trump in November 2020, and the 74 million only being part of the 1%. The figures do not add up. And in any case, to return to this thread of class struggle amongst the Africans, of course, this continues as the United States attains liftoff in the war of 1812, where the United States and Canadians please take note, sought to seize Canada for its, own narrow purposes. And then, of course, burning the precursor of today's Toronto. And in return, in August 1814, the red coats descend up on Washington, D.C., and return the favor. And, of course, they're joined by black people who attack Washington as well, sending President James Madison

and his girl-a-spouse Dolly fleeing into the streets one step ahead of the posse. And then the black people get on the ships and flee to Trinidad and Tobago, where their descendants continue to reside. In retaliation, of course, you have the national anthem of the United States, the star-spangled banner, a very militarized national anthem, by the way, which in his third stanza, not surprisingly, attacks black people specifically because of their so-called lack of patriotism, although I'm not sure why you should expect patriotism from an enslaved population. I mean, you really must be diluted. I mean, you must be smoking the drapes to believe that sort of nonsense. So in any case, throughout this period, leading up to the U.S. Civil War, you had class struggle amongst the Africans, sometimes with arms, even though the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, the right to bear arms, did not apply, surprise, surprise, to the indigenous population nor the black population. It was for the settlers so that they could rally easily to put down uprisings by the indigenous and the settlers. Nonetheless, as you know, in 1831, Annette Turner and brothers

and sisters in Virginia got hold of weapons and began an uprising against slavery before they were captured and executed in mass. But in any case, I think, I've strayed beyond the purview of your question, so I'll stop here for a follow. Yeah, so there's a million directions that I could take this in. I think I'll choose this one. If we are to understand the Revolutionary War, as you say, convincingly, as primarily a counter-revolution, and we understand slavery as instrumental to the development of American capitalism, how do these two things together help us more fully understand the civil war? war specifically, which you mentioned towards the end of your answer. There's a lot of myths around all

of these things, of course, but with those two things in mind, how does it help shed more light on what the civil war was actually about? And how, as you mentioned, I believe, the Confederates were claiming to be the true heirs in some ways to the founding fathers. Well, as I say in the final pages of my 1776 book, quite literally, I'd be the last person to object to the abolition of slavery. But to put forward this idea that, which historians know this, that when the Civil War erupted, as Lincoln made it clear, that if to save the union was the primary purpose, and if that involved keeping slavery, so be it, if it involved abolition of slavery, so be it, because abolition was a secondary purpose. As you know,

part of the argument in North America, circa 1861, was basically to limit the expansion of slavery because the slave-owning class was habitually expansionist. And I should also say it would be a mistake to suggest, as some tend to do, to think that amongst the settler class, the two major factions were pro-slavery and abolitionists. I think it may be fair to say that if you have a dichotomy between pro-slavery and anti-slavery with a further definition that anti-slavery could mean no black people allow period. I mean, if you look at the early history of Oregon, which has fortunately been the site of tumult in recent months, oftentimes with the activists raising the slogan, a slogan that I think in many ways is visionary,

objecting to the state based on stolen people, on stolen way. That is to say, stolen people being the African, stolen land being indigenous. So Africans, excuse me, Oregon, as it was being launched into the union in 1850, said no Negroes allowed. That's one of the reasons why Portland has one the smallest black populations to the state. So I think it's fair to suggest that on the cusp of the U.S. Civil War, you had a pro-slavery faction clearly in Dixie. You had an abolitionist faction centered principally, I would say, in the black community with some Euro-American allies, such as the great John Brown. And as a footnote, I was trying to watch Good Lord By Bird with Ethan Hawke. I couldn't watch it. I mean, because they seem to be portraying John

Brown as being an absurdist figure. And I just couldn't. But if anybody wants to clarify, I didn't watch the whole thing, because I couldn't. We actually did a brief episode among the three of us talking about John Brown in light of the series. And I had exactly the same reaction to the first and second episode that they were portraying him as something of a madman, even a buffoon. in various ways in attempting to re-center a kind of black voice that was cynical about John Brown's real intentions and motives because they were full of fancy and outrageous and that he was incompetent in his goals. Over the course of the series, it improved.

But I did think that that was interesting. It may be worth checking out the rest of it, but that's just as a note that I completely understand your perspective on. that series. I've read this article in the New Yorker about Ethan Hawke and the actor who plays John Brown, who of course is a celebrated Hollywood figure and he had said growing up, Paul Robson was one of his heroes. So I said, I got to watch, you know, this guy says Paul Robson is one of his heroes and he's playing John Brown, I got to watch this. But I have to say, I couldn't get past the first five minutes. But in any case, to go back to the thread. So you have this pro-slavery

faction. Admittedly, you have an abolitionist faction, centered in the black community, because obviously they don't want slavery with allies like John Brown and others. But then you have the white man's country faction, which is a huge faction. And in some ways, the white man's country faction is the triumphant faction of post-1865. The white man's country faction is sort of the tip of the sociopolitical iceberg amongst the settler class to a degree to this very day. Having said that, I should also say that one of the central aspects of the U.S. Civil War that oftentimes receives an attention from bourgeois historians, mainstream historians, is the fact that it accelerated the process of dispossession of the indigenous population.

I was reading a tome by self-proclaimed radicals the other day that was saluting the Homestead Act, the early 1860s, whereby the U.S. government basically was turning over Native American land to these settlements. Somehow, I guess they feel this leads to, I'm not sure what their thing. I won't speak for them. But in any case, the Civil War was a disaster for the indigenous population. Even though the Native American population was split, some fought with the Confederacy, some fought with the Union government, all of them got shafted, irrespected. And so this obviously accelerates capitalist development post-1865 because with the ongoing expropriation and wars against the Native Americans that stretched forward from 1865 to the end of the 19th century, and into the 20th century, you have their land taken and railroads built, oftentimes with cheap Chinese immigrant labor, by the way. And this infrastructure project in some ways serves a similar purpose to say similar infrastructure projects of the United States. For example, mass

electrification or the interstate highway system, construction of airports, etc. So it gives a shot in the arm to capitalism, just as the war profiteering, which was humongous during the U.S. Civil War, with tax dollars turned over willy-nilly to plutocrats of various sorts, also helps to boost capitalism in the capitalist class, which in many ways is the story of the U.S. Civil War, although I would be remiss if I failed to acknowledge that another aspect of the U.S. Civil War that's still bedeviling this country is the expropriation without compensation of the slave-owning class, which creates an embitter class leading directly to the Ku Klux Klan, racist terrorism, the foiling of black voting rights,

and the foiling of the expansion of democracy, which turns in a formally enslaved labor class into a cheap labor class, or in some ways, a disguised slave labor class. Because, you know, after the U.S. Civil War, you have the so-called convict lease system whereby black people are arrested on flimsy grounds and then leased out to do that. various entrepreneurs to basically work for free, which helps to create this culture that's still with us, in fact, is detailed in the documentary by Ava DuVernay, the Hollywood Black Woman Hollywood director called 13th. This prison industrial complex, which is still a fix to the United States of America, which provides these black people to work for next to nothing in prison.

So once again, I'll stop and let you intercede. I have a brief interjection before I let Adnan ask his question. And this is just for clarification on my part. You mentioned about Portland being very, very white based on its history. But also, correct me if I'm wrong, but Georgia was originally kind of founded as a all-white colony. And yet today, it's, I believe, the most racially diverse or the most, black in any case state in the United States. So maybe just very briefly, am I right on that? Georgia was founded as an all-white colony, correct?

1730s, absolutely. It was a way to throw up a wall. When I talk about this in my 1776 book, to throw up a wall between South Carolina, which was a citadel for slavery and Spanish Florida. And as noted, with Stoneholds revolt in 1739, 1740, you had Spanish coming into South Carolina stirring up the niggers. So you have this all-white colony, so-called in Georgia. The problem there was that it's recreating the class tensions of Europe by having all Europeans, because some of the Europeans have to be workers and some are going to be into 1%. And so you're just creating class tensions, which can be destabilizing to settler colonialism. And then the settlers are past masters of smuggling. And so almost from the beginning, you have the smuggling in to Georgia

enslaved Africans. And as you suggest, the 2010 census showed that Georgia had more black people than any of the U.S. state, which shows that the all-white colony project didn't necessarily work. And I'm eagerly awaiting the figures from the 2020 census. There's so many directions. This is fantastic. Maybe to come back to the backdrop historically and ideologically of the 1776 counter-revolution, as you have it. Obviously, a lot of American historians have a very different view about it. You know, and, you know, there is something to these Republican, you know, and democratic ideals and so on that gets discussed a lot as a response either because of, you know, the idea of no taxation

without representation or other kind of complaints against the, you know, the imperial government. But there are some who suggest that there were some radicals and, you know, like Thomas Payne and common sense and that there was this radical enlightenment tradition that was philosophically and politically important. So I'm just wondering, how do you situate some of the more radical, like, of course, the Constitution we know was, and many American historians will characterize the Constitution as turning away from the more radical and egalitarian possibilities of, you know, the Declaration of Independence and so on. And they will point to, you know, Thomas Payne, common sense, you know, rights of man, and these kinds of ideals. How do you

situate that kind of European enlightenment tradition in the context of the history that you're talking about. Is it possible that there are more than one kinds of thing going on, or do you see some way in which this is important and appropriated by this settler class to achieve their political ends? How do you deal with those arguments about people who want to see that philosophical and political heritage involved? Well, first of all, with regard to time, I don't think that some of our friends on the left have dealt with him adequately. What I mean is if they had dealt with him adequately, they'd look at his reservations about the Haitian revolution, which was a true revolution, 1791 to 1804, in some ways a direct

response to the formation of the United States of America. And like many of these Europeans and Euro-Americans, Tom Payne was queasy about the Haitian revolution. And he was not alone. I think in order to understand the United States contextually in relationship to Britain, for example, the country from which is seceded, you have to understand that Britain had a certain kind of aristocracy of lineage, so to speak, and the United States basically establishes an aristocracy of race. Now, admittedly, there is a broader base. in terms of an aristocracy of race, an aristocracy of lineage. And so I understand why many of our friends of European descent had been a bit blinded, if not bedazzled, by the fact that they were able to get certain rights

in the United States that they did not necessarily enjoy in the mother country. I understand, just like I understand, when Raphael Trujillo, of the 1930s dictator in the Dominican Republic, when he was in the process of massacring Haitians on overtly and crude racist grounds, was opening the door to fleeing Jewish people from Central and Eastern Europe in the 1930s. because he had a project of so-called whitening in terms of what he perceived to be this race conflict with Hayden, the neighbor with which he shares the island we call Hispaniola. So I would understand if there were certain Jewish folks who found refuge in Hispaniola, why they might view the Dominican Republic benignly, perhaps even positively, but in the long run, I don't think that's a very sound point of view. And so likewise, since presumably black people like myself are supposed to be considered citizens and equal,

I can understand why you would have this sort of race lens with regard to our presence in the antebellum era, where our interests are overlooked, swept under the rug, et cetera, in the interests of building a nation intentionally or not misinterpreting so-called bourgeois democratic rights, which after all, and not just bourgeois democratic rights, they're racially coded rights, as I reflected with regard to the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Oftentimes, there are rights designed in principle to repress people like myself. So I think it's long past time in 2021 to have a new vision of the history of this country that takes seriously the idea that people like myself are not going away anytime soon and whose interests should not necessarily be glossed over, just like, for example, Congressman James Clyburn of South Carolina, who, as you know, put Biden over the top in 2020 and South Carolina primary has suggested that the national anthem be jumped and replaced by the Negro national anthem, lift every voice and sing. I would also say to our friends on the left, where I keep hearing this anthem, this land is your land, whenever I go to left wing meetings and, of course, replicate it at the Biden inauguration,

interestingly enough, that is an insult to the indigenous population, because this land is their land, and we're living here at their sufferance, and we need to have some sort of settlement that takes their interests into account and stop sweeping under the rug these meddlesome issues, which in a sense belong in the 19th century. And it's time, I think, for us to advance to the 21st century, particularly since even sober, even less than sober commentators are suggesting that you have a mass base for fascism in this country. And a lot of it has to do with a kind of nostalgia, a kind of revanchism on the part of certain segments of the settler class. and our friends on the left are not helping things by overlooking the true history of this country

which in many ways feeds into this revengeism which ultimately, if we're not careful, is going to consume us all. You're giving me so much red meat to try to chase after all of these threads that you're putting out there. But I definitely need to make sure that we get back to 1776

so I'm going to backtrack a little bit. But before I do that, I just want to mention that I do love the fact that you keep reiterating how overrated our Constitution is. And just as an aside for Adnan and Brett, we definitely should be doing an intelligence briefing on the unratified French Constitution of 1793 at some point. Because I don't think that there's too many people in the United States that know about it. And, well, they should. And anyway, Professor Horn, I've got kind of two points that tie back.

to what we were talking about early on in the conversation regarding 1776, that I think that we should just try to, you know, nail down a little bit more. The first being the involvement of the slaves, the blacks, with the British in the Revolutionary War, and maybe try to tie a bow on why that is that there was, as you said, an order of magnitude more blacks fighting with the British than there was with the colonists at that time. And then the other thing that perhaps you can tie it into the same answer is the role of property in the revolution because I don't think that we've really touched on the role of property in the revolution but of course that's inextricably tied to it though it's never really discussed

well many in your audience may be familiar with Lord Dunmore the last colonial governor of Virginia and on the cusp of 17th. as the settler class was beginning to erupt. Lord Dunmore throws fuel on the fire by seeking to tell the Africans that if they side with London, then they'll be free. And of course, there was a stampede to his side. But at the same time, this infuriated the settlers because, As I say in the 1776 book, there had always been this lurking fear that London would seek to recruit Africans to discipline the settlements. And given the fact that on the cusp of 1776, a significant percentage of the denizens of North America were indigenous, African, etc., perhaps up to 20% African, and that may be an underestimate, and given the fact that London, even to that point, had been recruiting black soldiers into its ranks, which it continued to do after the formation of the United States of America, this was unsettling to the settlers, and in many ways you could draw a parallel between Lord Dumb Dunmore and Abraham Lincoln because the Emancipation Proclamation, which was devised in 1862 to be coming into effect in 1863, was in many ways of warfighting measure because it leads

to enslave Africans given an incentive, just like Lord Dunmore had given an incentive, to flee enslavement to the side of the Lincoln government. And ultimately, I think something like 179,000 black men in particular, don the blue uniform of the Lincoln government and helped to crush the Confederacy. There are a few more stirring examples of class struggle than the enslaved destroying slavery guns in hand. And interestingly enough, as you probably know, those states that did not defect to the

Confederate states of America, it had slavery. The Emancipation Proclamation did not necessarily apply to them, for example. So it's a war-fighting measure, just like Lord Dunmore had a war-fighting measure. And this was nothing new. In my 16th century book, I talk about how the maritime John Brown, which is the term I used for him, Jacques de Soria, in the 1500s, in the area ranging from the northern coast of South America to the Florida streets, was raising havoc in Spanish settlements by promising freedom to the enslaved in return for joining his hearty band. So this has the downside, however, of infuriating the settlers. In fact, some have suggested that in terms of inducing the settlers to break the law, to break their allegiance to the crown, to break their allegiance to London, a signal factor was Lord Dunmore's edict.

And in turn, as I talk about in the 1776 book, you even had fabrications about black people siding with London against the settlers in order to stir up the settler class, which of course reminds us of the politics of the United States in 2021, where you try to use the black scare and the specter of so-called black crime to stampede many Euro-Americans to the right. It's a very successful tactic as the Republican Party and even the Democratic Party could well illustrate. And so I would say once again that what was at issue with regard to these events kicked off by 1776 ultimately is property, not only what I've been referring to in terms of the property and the slave Africans, which is what I've been stressing, but as noted, with regard to the Royal Proclamation of 1763, the land of the indigenous population, which land speculators, like George Washington, are lusted after. We really need a text for those of you who are in touch with the graduate students that focuses on the question of land speculation as a motive force in North America,

I would say particularly in the United States, I would imagine in Canada as well, because I'm doing a project on Texas right now, which was an independent nation from 1836 to 1845, seceding from Mexico because Mexico had moved towards abolition of slavery in the preceding years. And it's apparent, it's evident, that land speculation helps to attract many settlers, Europeans, not only from Louisiana, Kentucky, Georgia, et cetera, but all the way from Europe. They're flooding into Texas for the goal of attaining land. And, of course, this leads to endless cycles of conflict with Native Americans who know how to fight, such as the population we call the Comanches, the population we refer to as the Apaches,

which leads to decades of bloody war before they're virtually liquidated. that's actually perfectly sort of set up for this next question that I wanted to ask because, you know, one outgrowth of the idealist and often, you know, white supremacist retelling of American history is this sort of, you know, in its more softer forms, the ahistorical conception of slaves as generally passive. But even in some more belligerent forms, there are actually some reactionary American textbooks that even portray the slaves as more or less grateful for for free housing and whatnot. children this is they grew up in this society. And one of the things I really appreciate about your work is you just, I mean, systematically destroy all of this myth making, these creation myths around U.S. origins. And one way you do that is you highlight the slave revolts and show them as a long historical process from the very beginning. But you also love to emphasize as you just did the indigenous resistance to settler colonialism as well. So I was wondering about the intersections of these struggles. Did these different groups

consciously sort of always see each other as allies in a common struggle or was it much more complicated than that? Just the intersections of those two liberation and resistance movements is what I'm interested in hearing your thoughts on. Well, the short answer is that it's complicated. I mean, as I said, I'm doing this project on Texas now. And like many historians, I was entering this project with certain hypotheses and certain premises, amongst which were certain alliances between the Africans and the indigenous. But as I was going along with the research, I kept coming across contrary signals. And so the way U.S. historians work, for example, they stick to their hypothesis of premise,

even though they see contrary evidence, where my idea is, You try to explain to the audience, to your readers, why there might have been complications, why there might have been conflicts between the indigenous and the Africans in Texas in the 1830s and the 1840s, and perhaps thereafter. Having said that, I should also say that Florida is oftentimes given as the leading, example of collaboration between the Africans and the indigenous population of going back to the 1500s, because as I tell the story, the invasion of North America is not in the first instance by Londoners, it's by the Spanish.

And it's in Florida, in particular. and there is a settlement established in what is called St. Augustine, Florida, which exists of this very day. And from the inception, there were enslaved Africans brought by the Spanish. And from the inception, there was a kind of a trade in Africans between Spanish Cuba and Spanish Florida. And from the inception, there were alliances between the indigenous and the Africans against the Spanish settlers. Indeed, one of the reasons we're communicating in English right now in North America is that as the English were moving to establish their settlement in Virginia, what they call Virginia, Circus 1607,

the Spanish wanted to intervene, but they were so tied down fighting the indigenous and their African comrades that they were not able to, allowing England to establish this foothole in North America, which ultimately expands through the entire continent. And this alliance in Florida continues. I already mentioned the slave revolt in South Carolina in 1730s, and how that gives rise, even revolts before that, gives rise to this attempt to construct a white colony in Georgia

between South Carolina and Florida. This continues after the U.S. takeover of Florida about 200 years ago. And there's a phenomenon called the Negro Fourth. There have been a number of books written about the Negro Fort because it's a fascinating episode. Before the U.S. takeover of Florida, the indigenous and the Africans have been working with London

to establish this Negro fort, which was armed to the teeth. Of course, London had an interest in perhaps punishing its former colony, perhaps preventing its growth. And of course, I need not detail why the Africans and the indigenous might want to fight these settlers under the U.S. flag. And the Negro Fort ultimately was dispersed, but then that led to a series of wars between these forces and the United States,

some of the bloodiest wars the United States was involved in, in some ways, exceeding in chronology in length, the war in Afghanistan from 2001 to 2021 and counting. Matter of fact, exceeding by far in length, the war in Afghanistan. On the other hand, if you look at the Yonasi War in South Carolina, circa 1715, for example, you'll find that London and the settlers had insisted black people to fight the indigenous population. So it's a mixed picture. I mean, I'm not able to give you, I mean, in fact, if I could, I could probably do it if I had some time to give you some sort of quantitative answer with regard to were the Africans more people? prone to side with the indigenous versus the settlers, my initial response without doing the

calculations would be, yes, they were more prone to side with the indigenous, but I haven't done the calculations. But it's a mixed picture. And then, of course, it's complicated by the U.S. Civil War, because the last Confederate general to surrender, In 1865, it is an indigenous general, Stanwati, who was Cherokee. Of course, the Cherokees tried to assimilate. They had enslaved Africans when they were forced on the long march, the Trail of Tears from Georgia to Oklahoma, supposedly their home forever. There were enslaved Africans marching alongside with them.

And many of the Cherokees were quite hostile to the, U.S. government for good reason, and so many of them sided with the Confederacy. I'm not sure if that was for good reason. But then they lost, and then a battle erupted as to whether or not the Africans would be accepted under Cherokee sovereignty. Actually, that struggle continues to this very day. Also, since some of you were in the United States, tonight, on the public broadcasting. There is a documentary about the Tulsa Massacre of 1921 a century ago where this black community in Oklahoma is routed, subjected to a pogromp.

Most of the narrative doesn't point out that one of the reasons you had so many black people with a kind of wealth in Tulsa as opposed to other U.S. cities is that these black people under Confederate indigenous rule were some of the few black people who actually got the kind of reparations of 40 acres of a mule. But then what happens is that a hundred years ago, the settlers say, you know, you know what, you Negroes have much too much. So we're taking that too. So any of it, that's my long-witted response to your question. Well, I want to, my proclivity is to take us further back in history, since I'm interested in earlier periods and these origins. But also, I just wanted to comment that

this is also one of the things that I find so interesting about what you've done with these three works is that in revising radically this narrative of 1776 and the revolution by looking at the background to it, slave insurrections and so forth that are taking place in the 13 colonies and in the Caribbean is that you're going further back in time and you're also globalizing the story. So instead of this being just a national story, it's about events and processes that are taking place across the Atlantic. It involves, you know, major world systems being reorganized and reframed. And interestingly, you also kept going further and further back, which I'm very interested in why you felt that you had to,

what it was that you were finding when you went further back and how that reframed maybe what you think. But the key issue seems to me, the heart of the juxtaposition, you know, really the heart of all of this seems to be, from my perspective, a transition from forms of religious exclusion and identity to the construction of whiteness, white supremacy, and a whole racial regime,

a racial regime of capitalism. a racial regime in politics, a racial regime basically in organizing society on that level of exclusion and who's part of this in-group. So I'm really intrigued by how you see that dynamic unfolding, and if that's part of the reason why you had to keep going further and further back, because the European Wars of Religion, you know, there's both an internal, you know, Christendom story, which is of heresy becoming an actual problem where, you know, it's no longer a heresy. It's called Protestantism because it wins in all the other, you know, dissident movements get suppressed. And so they're called heretics. So there's that internal kind of problem of how to resolve major conflicts within Europe and then with, you know, in the settler colonies that they establish. And the other one is, of course, you know, religious difference with Jews and with Muslims. Jews as an internal, you know, kind of dissident religious community that's suppressed

and oppressed. And you mentioned that, you know, that their expulsion and that something of the dynamics of anti-Judism that becomes later anti-Semitism is also relevant in your story. And also confronting this Muslim threat that is a rival in geopolitical terms and in religious terms. So there seem to be too dynamic. And this period, as you go further back, is very crucial for resolving these problems. And it's not so clear to us in the 18th and 19th century histories, we don't, especially 19th and 20th century histories, we don't think about religion as being that relevant. So I wanted you to talk a little bit more about that transition. And

is it a real break or, you know, how does Christianity in some ways contribute to a kind of construction of whiteness? Well, I agree. It's not a real break, although as today, in Western Europe in particular, you've had much more of a de-emphasis of religion, whereas in the United States, I would argue that as a nation that was at the tip of the spear during the Red Scare and the Cold War, which was an international phenomenon, or global phenomenon, the United States had to repress class-based entities and organizations more enthusiastically than some of its pure nations. And I think

that then that creates a kind of ideological vacuum that leads to the recrudescence of religion as a factor. And indeed, you can't watch the video from January 6, 20, or I try to understand the Trump phenomenon, the Trump base of 74 million, without understanding what even the mainstream calls white Christian nationalism, which in my estimation is sort of an outgrowth of this repression of the class project. But to return to what I take to be the nub of your question, as you know from the 16th century book, in many ways it begins with the crusades at the end of the 11th century, where you have a certain unity of Western European Christendom and the othering, as they say, in the United States, of the Muslim population towards the end of reclaiming what they call it to be the Holy Land. And as I see it, that whole process carries the seeds of the succeeding project, which is the race project. And in fact,

In fact, the internal antagonists, to use your term, speaking of the Jewish populations, as I say in the first few pages of the 16th century project, many of the tropes and the modes of persecution that are visited upon the Jewish population in England before they're expelled or sort of transferred in some ways to other populations, such as the black population, in terms of anti-miscegenation, for example. in terms of sort of distorting their physiognomy, for example. And I think that one of the reasons I keep going back is that it's a desperate effort to try to get to the roots of the issue because I think, because as you know, many of us don't write history just for the sake of writing history. I mean, I've told the story about the mainstream historians who go to a physician and the physician wants to take a medical history and because physicians feel if they take a medical history, they know what afflicted your parents and your grandparents and your great-grandparents. They can provide a better diagnosis for yourself. and the mainstream historian is sort of puzzled by this whole process

because they feel that you should just study history for history's sake. And so they don't think that it should be studied so you can come up with a diagnosis. So I'm trying to come up with a diagnosis so that I can come up with a prescription so I can help this process of overturning this monster. And so therefore, that's one of the reasons why I keep going back. And I'm not sure if I've gone back as far as I can, even in talking about the end of the 11th century. I just read this book about this youngest story in the UCLA called Divine Variations. And he takes the story back to the origins of Christianity itself, approximately 2,000 years ago.

And then he fast forward to the 18th century. the 19th century, which I think is a mode that's worth pursuing. And I think that one of the reasons we try to look at this as a global phenomenon, because it is a global phenomenon. I mean, the United States is not a thing in itself. It does not operate in a vacuum, even though you could be easily misled to think otherwise. We all know, even mainstream its story has acknowledged that the rise of national liberation movements in Africa and the Caribbean and elsewhere, along with the socialist count, puts pressure on the United States to try to do something about its more horrific forms of Jim Crow. And that kind of global process is not

unique to the 20th century. You have to understand the rise of Ottoman Turkey and the pressure it was placing on the Western Europeans, particularly in the 15th century, which then impels the Iberians to almost, they're almost fleeing from the Ottoman Turks as they begin to set sail for across the Atlantic and, you know, further south, for example. So I think we have to understand all these phenomena because I think part of, you know, you have this phenomenon now in the United States called Afro-pessimism. And, hey, if I didn't understand what was going on the world, I'd be pessimistic, too. I mean, surrounded by all these reactionaries, you know, these white Christian nationalists, neo-fascists, armed militia groups,

they had infiltrated 18,000 police departments, the U.S. military is on a pause right now to try to deal with white extremism in its ranks. So if I were just focused on the States, I'd be pessimistic, too. As a matter of fact, I'd probably be looking to move, quite frankly. And actually, I am thinking about moving, even though I'm not pessimistic. So that shows you where that's at it. So in some, as I say in the last pages of the introduction of the 16th century book, you've had this transition from religion to race to class. The general crisis of the race system ignited by the Haitian Revolution, 1791 to 1804,

creating an entire crisis for that entire system, causing London to come to the conclusion of the better part of wisdom is to end its role in the African slave trade at 1807, then the 1830s moving to end slavery itself. And then with the destruction of the slave system, you have the fertile conditions in the United States at least, and I would say in many sites globally, for the rise. of class-based systems, unions, working-class parties, ultimately a socialist system. But then, as we know, that system began to retreat. And once again, you have the rise of this white Christian nationalism. Although I'm optimistic that we can turn back this latest iteration of intense religiosity. and I say this particularly after the aftermath, in the aftermath of January 6th, 2021,

which I really interpret it as a hinge moment in the history of the United States. Well, since you brought up class, you know, maybe we just each have a final question. You've been so generous with your time. But since you brought up class, I did want to follow up with just one remark. that Robin Kelly made about the 16th century book, that it unraveled some of the secrets of so-called primitive accumulation. And I guess what that question, what I'm asking about is how you see the development of capitalism being very intimately connected in this period of transition from feudalism. We were talking about the construction of whiteness during this

period, but also this period of transition from feudalism to capitalism, you know, historians have started now to talk about it a little bit, you know, a little bit more, but it used to just be glossed over in these sorts of even Marxist histories, you know, based histories of, you know, how do we get to industrial capitalism so that now we have people finally starting to look at how colonial exploitation, enslaved labor was all constitutive of the forms of accumulation that allowed for the so-called European takeoff. And so in addition to U.S. origins, it seems that you have something to say here about how capitalism really gets going, you know, that is not always incorporated into how we think

about that development as an internal European social relations question without these inputs of, you know, exploitation on a grand and global scale. So I'm wondering if, you know, how do you see this story of capitalism being informed by and informing this process during this kind of early period? Well, fortunately, there are others who have addressed this question. I would look at the Nigerian historian, Joseph Iniquori, England, and the Industrial Revolution. Of course, Eric Williams of Trimdad in Tobago. capitalism and slavery, a new edition that's coming out within weeks. Walter Rodney of Guyana, how Europe underdeveloped Africa.

And actually, I think my 17th century book is more illustrative of the seeds of capitalism than the 16th century book, which for obvious reasons, since once you get closer to the Industrial Revolution, once you get closer to the late 18th century and Adam Smith, you're able to, to more easily espy the roots. And in the 17th century book, I talk about how in the 1650s there is a turning point with the rise of republicanism and Oliver Cromwell

and the temporary retreat of the monarch, well, the beheading of the monarch to be blunt. And this then as a company by the expansionist tendencies of Oliver Cromwell, not only in Ireland, where he's still a despised figure, and that's part of the primitive accumulation process as well, but also in the Caribbean,

because his initial plan in the 1650s was really to oust the Spanish altogether from the Caribbean, but he succeeds in Jamaica, and at the same time that Oliver Cronwell is ousting the Spanish from Jamaica, you have the Dutch comrades, Protestant comrades of London. They had temporarily seized Brazil from the Portuguese. But at that particular moment in history, the Portuguese have come roaring back. Many of those who are allied with the Dutch or Jewish, they fear the inquisitorial policies of Spain,

neighbor. They're looking for a place to flee to and serendipitously from their point of view. There's Jamaica. In Brazil, they had made significant advances in terms of sugar being produced by enslaved labor. They bring those processes to Jamaica and ultimately throughout the so-called British possessions in the Caribbean, which leads to the sugar boom. which sends a flood of wealth and capital into the coffers of London because sugar is not only used to sweeten your tea and coffee, it's seen by some as a miracle drug, and this accumulation of wealth then allows London to further strengthen its military.

It allows London to strengthen its Navy, because one of the secrets of London as a glance at the map will indicate is that it's an island monarchy and on the one hand does not have to spend as much on a land army as its neighbor across the channel France has to do but it has to spend quite a bit on a navy to not only guard its shores but also to more easily reach lands that are being plundered in its backyard, such as Ireland.

And this building of a Navy and a building of ships then helps to create a working class, which then is paid wages, and then that allows for the circulation of the wages in terms of buying goods, and building more housing and all the rest. It also allows for the transport of more settlers across the Atlantic in these vessels that are built, which in turn creates more wealth for London. It allows for the transporting of more Africans from West Africa to the Caribbean.

And now you begin to see that we arrived where we began. Talking about the glorious revolution and the rise of a merchant class and the rise of the great wealth that they're creating, that they're helping to create, I should say, and that this then plants the seeds of this iniquitous system we refer to as capitalism, which is still bedeviling us based upon the shameless exploitation. of legions and the crass and gross exploitation of what could be called a number of plutocrats. A system that is still with us today, a system that at least in the United States has been heavily based upon a class collaboration. I say I have a review coming out in the nation out of New York in a few days. And one of the points I make there, is that class collaboration can be considered one of the highest forms of white supremacy

and white supremacy can be considered one of the highest forms of class collaboration. And it's that factor that is a, to an extent, to this point has been a stabilizing factor, although I would like to think that its role as a stabilizing factor is beginning to erode, at least we can only be so lucky.

And listeners, just to be aware, when Professor Horn says in a few days, we're recording this on February 8th. So, yeah, it'll already be out by the time that you're hearing this. So Professor Horn, I've got just a very, the question won't be brief, but I'm going to ask you to keep your answer brief so we can get to Brett's final question.

But this is going to allow you to pitch one of your other books. So there are parallels between the counter-revolution of 1776, which we've been talking about, and your book, Race to Revolution, the United States, and Cuba during slavery and Jim Crow. Namely that, as you point out, Cuba was temporarily under British control at some time, and the British did undertake some of these. You could think of them as regulations or restrictions on slavery, and it caused a lot of tensions with the mainland here. I don't know if you want to just talk about some of those parallels and then perhaps about kind of how crazed the slave trade was in driving the influx of Africans into Cuba after 1776 then. Well, in a brief piece in the American Historical Review that I published maybe a year or two ago, I tried to suggest briefly that you can draw a thread from the glorious revolution,

to 1776 to 1836 when Texas accedes from Mexico to 1861, when finally the slavery as a locomotive for profiteering and change begins to be reversed, at least in the United States, by 1861, although those slave, pro-slave forces were triumphant, 1688, 1776, 1836, 1836. Cuba figures in because, as suggested, in the aftermath and during the seven years war, 1756 to 1763, London had temporarily taken over Cuba. That's part of the process of relieving pressure on its settlements from Georgia heading northward to the Massachusetts Bay Colony. And there's a lot of consternation amongst the wild enslavers of these settlements, because London, even then, is trying to restrain some of their lust in terms of, because they thought that Cuba was underslaved to use that term. And so they wanted to bring in more.

That's another point of conflict that leads to the revolt of 1776. Interestingly enough, for the so-called Revolutionary Republic, by the 1790s, the United States had replaced Spain as the major transporter of Africans to Cuba, which is a strange outcome for a so-called revolutionary republic. And to fast forward, even today, although we are optimistic that the current regime in Washington will move towards normalizing relations with Cuba, Cuba. It's no secret that there are still those in the United States who, as was said in the 19th century, they see Cuba as a white apple that will fall from the tree into the hands of Uncle Sam. So Cuba has been a major focus of the so-called Republicans in North North America for decades, if not centuries. So you ask for a brief answer, so I'll stop there, although I could go on. And it's true that every one of your books could be and deserves a full

episode of its own. I think I speak for all of us when I say that we're very grateful for the generosity that you've given us with your time today, Professor Horn. Last question, and, you know, this entire episode has been thinking about history, which is crucial to understanding the present, but I'm also interested in your vision of how to move forward. So given everything we've discussed today, what are some of your thoughts on the way forward generally for the socialist left generally and for black and indigenous liberation movements

specifically situated as we are here in 2021? Well, the short answer is that a prime objective for those forces you just mentioned should be strengthening working class organization. unions in the first instance, not only in the United States, but particularly in the United States. And with a particular emphasis on strengthening unions that have a significant base of what in London they call BIPOC, black indigenous people of color, that is to say, in their ranks. and I think that this would go a long way to creating muscle that would be useful for the entire progressive movement

because my experience has been that when unions are strong, the entire progressive movement is strong and that ultimately I think that this could lead and would lead to more or a or more political parties based upon this union strength, not least in the United States of America, but I would say once again throughout the world. Now, I would like to think that we may be on the cusp of that particular trend. I mean, there's talk about least introducing to the U.S. Congress legislation with regard to making easier to organize unions, of course, there's going

to be resistance. But the fact that there is even talk about it is a gigantic step forward because if it is introduced that allows us to mobilize, but it's not just those organizations as well. I've been kicking myself lately because the Black Lives Matter movement has been encountering some problems lately. And I have to say that it doesn't come as a surprise to me, but I didn't write about it, didn't speak out about it on any venue, because, you know, these are young people I figured, you know, they don't want to hear from an old fart like myself. But now that they're encountering problems, I'm kicking myself because I think the problems

could have been circumventing of problems of decentralization, you know, the romance, of decentralization, the romanticizing of leaderless resistance, so to speak. But still, you know, the movement is still with us. It's still vibrant. We need replicas of that movement in the Native American community in particular, in the Latinx community in particular, in the Asian Pacific community in particular. because I think that ultimately we have to see an organizing of all of these different exploited groups in the context of organizing a working class movement with these movements of creating rivulets

that create a mighty stream, a mighty river, that will be powerful enough to tear down these walls of oppression that are currently holding us back. Amazing. Simply amazing. We had, again, listeners, the great, and I don't use that lately, the great Gerald Horn, John Jay and Rebecca Moore's chair of history and African American studies at the University of Houston on the show to talk about several of his works, but with a focus on the counter revolution of 1776, slave resistance and the origins of the United States of America.

Professor Horn, it was an absolute pleasure having you on the show. And I know that I speak for both of the guys when I say, come back, please, in the future. And last thing that I'm going to have you do before we let you go and we go into our wrap-up, what's the next thing that the listener should be looking out to come out from you? Well, since the archives are closed,

some of the projects I've been working on sort of in a state of suspended animation. You know, I'm working on a project on Texas. There was a line in the New York Times just a few days ago that said Texas is to the United States as the United States is to the world. That is to say, as sort of a reactionary beacon, so to speak. So I'm looking at the early history of Texas

and what I perceive to be the roots of U.S. fascism, which I see is embedded in the Lone Star State. And I'm working on a project on Washington, D.C. as well because actually one of my recommendations for the progressive movement, today is that it go all out for statehood of Washington, D.C., to create two senators who would be probably the most progressive senators in that body. Despite gentrification, Washington, D.C. is still about 50% black, for example. And one of the things I'm pointing out in this book

is how that demography has hampered U.S. imperialism. For example, I might even start the book with the Secretary of Defense in the early 1970s trying to go from the Pentagon to the White House for a meeting to plan bombings of Vietnam. But all the Negroes are demonstrating, so he's stuck in traffic. So it sort of slows down that entire process. And then, since I'm spending so much time in lockdown, I've started this project just by reading old books

and what's online about Egypt and Ethiopia post-U.S. Civil War because what happens after the U.S. Civil War is that a number of the Confederates moved to Egypt, believe it or not. And by the 1870s, they're leading invasions of Ethiopia. Believe it or not. So I'm working on this project. It's in the infant stages of these U.S. nationals in Egypt and Ethiopia. And then, of course, you have to sort of expand to look at Sudan, for example, today's Eritrea, which, of course, is once part of Ethiopia, you know, the Suez Canal. As a matter of fact, I'm thinking of having the project go from the creation of the Suez Canal, which is a turning point for the British Empire, 1869, because it allows London to get to India more easily. And then London decides to, well, you know, we should just take over Egypt all. together, which happens by 1882, up to 1996, the Suez Crisis, which is a turning point in the history of imperialism, because you have this piratical attack by Israel, Britain, and France on NASA's Egypt, that fails. And it has enormous implications for the British Empire and for French imperialism.

So that's another project. And then also much more in the embryo stage than infant stage is this project about the Southeast Asia. I had started, I wanted to do it initially. There's this guy, you can look them up, the white Raja of Sarawak, the Brooke family. They rule Sarawak in Southeast Asia from the mid-19th century up to the Japanese invasion of the 1940. So I wanted to do something on that because one of the things I'm learned about British imperialism and British colonialism, not far behind or the Yankees, I mean, tailing after, like my book on Kenya, it turns out that the richest settler in colonial Kenya was actually a Euro-American, for example. But since I'm in lockdown, I'm not sure if I can, there's not enough in terms of dissertations, master's theses, so I'm thinking about expanding it. to Southeast Asia, then I can get to the Philippines,

so I know there's a lot of the Philippines. And they put that in the whole context of the U.S. and Southeast Asia with a focus on black Americans. So anyway, those are my projects. Listeners, if you didn't believe me when we were introducing Professor Horne, when I said that he has an absolutely incredibly diverse range of expertise, that answer alone should pretty much lay that bare. So again, we were talking to Gerald Horn.

Professor Horn, thank you for coming on and hope to speak with you in the future. Listeners will be right back with the wrap-up.