"I’m begging you"

What do you do when you’re approached by a stranger on the street asking for money? They say they need a few dollars for a meal, or a cold drink, or train ticket. Sometimes their requests are simple and lack enthusiasm: a man asks, without explanation and in a mumbled voice, if you can spare some change, his eyes already looking for the next person to petition once you pass him by. Sometimes they are more intense, telling desperate, often implausible, but always emotional stories of misfortune, like the woman I encountered last week who asked for a few dollars for a bus ticket that would let her escape her abusive boyfriend. “Please,” she said, after telling me her story, “please…I’m begging you…I’m begging you…please.” What do you do?

I’ve developed several responses. The simplest and the most common, is to do nothing. Oh, sometimes I’ll give a little shrug, or shake my head and mutter “sorry” (though it’s never quite clear what it is I’m sorry for) and move along, my velocity undiminished. Far too often, I fix my gaze in front me and I walk past without even turning my head. It’s an incredibly dehumanizing thing to pretend that someone doesn’t even exist, and yet I’ve done it many times.

On the other hand, I can give in to their requests. A couple dollars every so often is, in all honesty, trivial. If I yielded to every panhandler I met on the street, my total outlay might amount to $20 per month: a Netflix membership. Strangely enough, I find that the choice to give money is actually more selfish than the choice not to. I know that handing out cash to beggars on the street is more likely to further self-destructive habits than to address real needs. The primary benefit is to me: I feel slightly less light a heartless, bourgeois bastard. A slightly better plan is to directly purchase what the beggar says he needs: a meal, a cold drink, a bus fair, etc. This takes a little more time and might actually count as a ‘good deed,’ but looking inward I find that the motivation is still profoundly selfish; I’m merely trying to avoid the guilt of being stingy and the guilt of furthering someone else’s self-destructive habits. I don’t truly care, or at least I care very little, about the needs of the beggar.

I was deeply moved by my encountered with the woman who wanted money for a bus ticket. Rarely has someone said to me “I’m begging you” and meant it literally. Since then, I’ve been pondering what the proper response was. It’s so easy for me to limit the alternatives to either giving the beggar what he wants or not giving him anything. The problem is that neither of these responses actually helps him in any meaningful way and both of them are designed to serve my own interests, either by avoiding guilt or by avoiding an uncomfortable situation. There is, of course, a third option: I could actually try to help the person asking me for help.

The woman who was “begging” me was obviously lying about her situation (her story was incredible and key details kept changing), but just as obviously she was a woman in need of help. She was ragged, dirty, and marked by bruises and small cuts, the latter quite possibly self-inflicted. She may not have needed a bus ticket, but there can be no doubt that this was a person whose life was in serious distress. In all likelihood, there was nothing I could have done in that moment to help ease the deeper sufferings in her life. But I could have tried to listen to her, to find out what those deeper issues were, because though I might lack the power to help her, others do not. Our home city houses a wide variety of shelters, missions, and programs available to those suffering from addiction, unemployment, depression, neurosis, and abuse. I could, at the very least, have pointed her in the right direction. Whether she accepted it or not, that would have been an attempt to truly help her. As it was, I doubtless gave the impression that I didn’t really consider or care what her true struggles might be…because I didn’t. I should have.

So how can I do better? How can I actually help the people who ask me for help? Well, first I can change my priorities, giving precedence to their needs over my own comfort and guilt. I can be willing to share my time with those who approach me, to focus on finding out how I can help them rather than on how I can get away as quickly as possible. Second, I can learn what sorts of resources exist to provide meaningful help to those in distress. I know the parts of the city in which I’m mostly likely to encounter someone asking me for money. A little research will teach me which shelters and outreaches exist there, who they serve, and how to reach them. This is all information I should have available when I can expect to be petitioned for help. And finally, I can be ready to offer the other sort of help I have. I carry a message of mercy, grace, hope and salvation which all people need but which the poor and distressed are often most willing to hear. I should be ready to share that as well.

Yet even if I am prepared, there are still more difficulties. I cannot always stop to spend time with the needy. I have responsibilities to colleagues and family members, responsibilities to keep my word about when I’ll be a certain places, and the duties attendant with work and school that mean I must be diligent about completing the tasks set out for me. But there are times when I can stop, when I can try to help without betraying my commitments to others, and at those times I should. Furthermore, it seems reasonable to assume that if I can learn about the resources that exist to aid the needy, so can they. That they are still begging on the street may mean that they have little interest in these services and thus little interest in what I can offer other than money. I should be prepared to accept that to, to be rejected even by the one asking for help.

To tell the truth, this plan scares me. I am uncomfortable and afraid around the very poor, even around those who aren’t asking me for anything. I prefer to be merciful and generous from the distance of an organized charity and a checkbook. I should, no doubt, think less about my own comfort and more about others.

“But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Then your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, because he is kind to the ungrateful and wicked. Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful” (Luke 6:35-36)

“Give to him who asks you, and from him who wants to borrow from you do not turn away.” (Matthew 5:42)

To infinity...

Once again, Pixar has proven itself to be the master of animated pathos. Staggering out of the theatre today after undergoing the sound emotional drubbing that is Toy Story 3, I was surprised anew at how deeply I can be made to care for, to emotionally connect with, an animated character (and a plastic-faced cowboy toy, at that). It's a wonderful movie: a deeply satisfying conclusion to the story of Woody, Buzz and Andy. It's clever and funny and engrossing throughout and you should see it. Just don't plan on doing anything mentally or emotionally strenuous immediately afterward...we came home and had ice-cream.

This is hardly the first time Pixar has managed to unexpectedly play on my heart-strings. WALL-E (2008) was, for me, the first entirely computer generated character who I found that I really cared about by the end of the movie, which is remarkable since he was a robot. Up (2009) achieved something similar just in laying out the back story for the main plot, telling an incredibly moving and tragic story of friendship, love, dreams, disappointments, death and loneliness that could make your eyes glisten, all in the first 20 minutes of the movie. But Toy Story 3 had more to work with than either of these movies. These are characters we know; characters we first met in 1995 in the original Toy Story (yep, it really has been 15 years); we need to know it turns out OK for them in the end.

More so than the previous installments in the series, Toy Story 3 touches on deep and serious themes. Toy Story 2 brought up issues of trust, friendship, loyalty, and abandonment. The new movie engages with all those issues (if anything more so than the last one) but also tells a 'coming of age' story and looks at the inevitability of change and loss as well as, in its own way, the problems of immortality.  It manages, at different times, to be laugh-out-loud funny, immensely tragic, truly scary, and  thoughtfully contemplative. All of this is still wrapped in a kid's story about childrens' toys, but there's no missing the deeper themes if you're an adult. The plot is especially poignant for those (myself included) who were children when the first movie came out and have, like Andy, grown up since then. Toy Story 3 captures the bitter-sweetness inherent in letting go of the past, in moving on to different phases of life, by showing how one boy's past tries to let go of him and to move on, itself, to new things. It's really quite brilliant in its way.

As we left the theatre and drove home, we talked about whether or not it was a movie we'd recommend for kids. There's a lot of stuff that's quite scary, both in the creepy sense and the fear-of-betrayal-or-abandonment sense. There are numerous close calls and last-minute saves in life threatening situations. And of course that's all on top of the other emotionally draining issues the film wrestles with. In the end, though, we just weren't sure how much of it young kids would actually pick up on. There were plenty of them in the theatre with us and they all seemed to be fine at the end: it was only the adults who left with tear-streaked faces. In the end, I guess it all comes down to the temperament of the individual kid, though I think I'd avoid taking very small children simply because of the intensity of some of the scary scenes. In my opinion, while many kids will doubtless enjoy it, Toy Story 3, like several of Pixar's more recent films, is really meant for adults, and especially for people who went to see the original Toy Story in the theatre 15 years ago. It's a terrific movie, and if I were going to introduce a rating system in this blog (which I'm not), I would no doubt rate it highly.

Thinking the Unthinkable

Here’s something interesting. In the 1790s and the first years of the 1800s, women in the New Jersey could vote. Not all women, of course, but then not all men either; property requirements were still in effect (a fact which excluded all married women, since technically all their property belonged to their husbands). Nonetheless, in New Jersey, and only in New Jersey, some women legally could, and did, vote and have their votes counted.

The special thing about New Jersey was the word “inhabitants.” Whereas all other state constitutions specified that their franchise was limited to men, New Jersey’s 1776 state constitution left the word “inhabitants” unqualified by gender in declaring that “all inhabitants of this Colony…shall be entitled to vote….” There’s some debate as to whether or not this constitutional aberration was intentional, and in 1807 the New Jersey legislature brought the state in line with the national norm by clarifying that, from thence forth, “inhabitants” meant “white men.” For about thirty years, however, women had the vote and took advantage of it (occasionally over and over again in a single election, but that’s another story). However, that’s not what’s so interesting.

What’s interesting is that, in many of the American colonies before the Revolution, the language dictating who could and could not vote was just as gender-neutral as New Jersey’s became in 1776. And yet, except for a very few individual incidents, women did not vote. That’s not to say that they could not vote; it’s to say that the question of whether or not they could never came up. The idea of a woman voting was, for most colonists, literally unthinkable. It was so unheard of, so far “out there,” that it hardly occurred to anyone to forbid it. Hence the absence of gendered specificity in the franchise requirements of so many colonies.

The McNeil Center for Early American Studies hosted a round-table discussion last night on Rosemarie Zagarri’s book Revolutionary Backlash: Women and Politics in the Early Republic, which makes reference to the brief period of women’s franchise in New Jersey. I bring it up here because it reminded me of an intriguing truth: some the greatest transitions in history have involved shifts, not in what people did or even what they thought they should do, but in what they imagined was possible.  It’s one thing to believe quite strongly that only men should be allowed to vote. It’s something else to have never even considered the possibility of a woman voting.

There’s a certain kind of blissful ignorance in the unthinkable. The man (or woman, for that matter) who has never really imagined the possibility of a female franchise is certainly nonetheless a narrow-minded sexist. But he is a sexist without the passion, without the twisted, derogatory logic and chauvinistic arguments that are so integral to maintaining a conscious bigotry. He’s also, in his own way, singularly immune to change. You cannot reason with someone who finds your argument so outlandish as to dismiss it out-of-hand or finds it so absurd as to view it as hysterical. An idea first has to be taken seriously, to enter the realm of true contemplation, before it can ever possibly become convincing.

In the view of some historians, and I’ll hesitantly place myself among them, one of the most dramatic effects of the American (and later the French) Revolution was to make the previously unimaginable imaginable. The rhetoric of equality and liberty, hardly new, was deployed so liberally and repeatedly that people, some for the first time, began to seriously think about what it meant for all people to be “created equal.” The effects were not always laudable; after all, once the idea occurred to them, all the new states except for New Jersey simply added explicit prohibitions against women voting. But it was a first, and necessary, step. The idea of human equality had to work its way into the minds of the people, even if it would be centuries before they actually started to think it was a good idea.

If it’s difficult to imagine the idea of women voting being truly unthinkable in the early 1700s, we might set it alongside some other once ‘unthinkable’ ideas. The idea that slavery is a terrible evil is a notion that, at various times for various societies, has been outside the realm of serious contemplation. Before about 1750, you find precious little evidence of anyone even raising the possibility, and it isn’t until the 1800s that anyone really bothered to develop coherent counter-arguments in favor of slavery. Such things simply weren’t needed before.

More recently there’s the issue of moral-vegetarianism and animal rights. There was a time in my own life when it had never even occurred to me that eating a hamburger might be an act comparable with murder. It’s a concept which, I think, still lingers on the fringe of the seriously imaginable in American society. If moral-vegetarianism is ever to really take hold in America, we will first have to reach a point at we seriously contemplate why it is that we think it’s OK to kill and devour other animals and then ask ourselves if those reasons are logical and consistent. Thus far, those sorts of questions have very little common currency. We’re still far more pre-occupied with other quandaries, like “Do I want fries with that?”

Guiding Questions (Part 3 of 3)

Meaning of "occupation"

My second area of focus investigates the meaning behind the term "occupation" and questions whether or not the British military's stay in Philadelphia qualifies. When we think of a 'military occupation', we generally envision something like the German occupation of France in WWII or, more recently, the American occupation of Iraq. We think of foreign armies implementing governance at gunpoint, of "collaborators" who offer support for the invaders, and of insurgents or a 'resistance' which denies the legitimacy of the invasion and strives to reinstate the previous regime. Does the British occupation of Philadelphia (or of the other American cities) fit this model?

Certain similarities are readily apparent. The British army certainly took and held the city only by the use and threat of force. Collaborators and insurgents were obviously present, and they performed their typical roles. But there are also some difficulties in calling this a true "occupation" like that in WWII France or modern Iraq. Was the British military truly "foreign"? In hindsight we know that the American colonies did become a new nation, a nation separate and distinct from the British empire, but we must be cautious about reading future transitions back into the past. At the time, the fate of America was not yet determined, and for many Americans (and most Britons) the colonies were still very much a part of the empire, albeit a part plagued by violent dissension and civil unrest. To the loyal colonists in Philadelphia, and certainly to commanders of the British army, the "occupation" of the city was not the act of a foreign invader but the intervention of lawful power on behalf of peaceful and law-abiding citizens; patriot-Philadelphia was not so much conquered by Britain as British-Philadelphia was liberated from insurgent "patriots."

But developing a loyalist perspective of the royal army's time in Philadelphia is only half the issue. We would also do well to think critically of the months and years immediately surrounding 1777/78. Pennsylvania's government was radically altered in 1776 with the creation and implementation of a new state constitution. This new government is generally held as the most "radical" of the new state governments and often lauded for its widening of democracy and 'Declaration of Rights' which promised citizens rights to expression, to legal council, to speedy trial by jury, to protection against self-incrimination and other high-minded ideals. The text itself is something to be proud of, but serious problems arise when one examines how the new government actually behaved and how it came into existence.

Though many historians support the new state government as one of the few that was truly "of the people," others have strongly criticized it, particularly for its treatment of Quakers, neutrals and loyalists (often with complete disregard for the 'Declaration of Rights'), its use of the militia, and its tacit support for extra-legal actions undertaken by mobs who supported it.

There are, indeed, some similarities between what happened when the British invaded in 1777 and the events related to the change of government in 1776. In both cases, extra-legal forces intervened to significantly alter the government through the use (or threat) of force. Those who had been political insiders were replaced with their former opponents. The new governments both implemented new economic regulations and imposed oaths of loyalty and allegiance  (and/or religious belief) of the sort that were anathema to some of the colonies founding principles. Both claimed, at some point, that they came to overthrow an illegitimate government. Both were joyfully celebrated by their supporters and inspired panic and despair in their opponents.

It is, perhaps, too much to say that Philadelphia was ever "occupied" by revolutionary radicals from the western counties just as it was "occupied" by the British army. But for certain elements in the city, particularly Quakers and neutrals who preferred the old pre-1776 constitution to either British military rule or the radical revolutionary government, the two opposing sides my have seemed equally threatening and terribly similar in their demands for loyalty, their intolerance of dissent, and their desire to tightly control life in the city. Investigating these similarities, real and perceived, is the second major theme of my dissertation.

Guiding Questions (Part 2 of 3)

Effects of the occupation

There are several different ways to look at the effects of the British occupation of Philadelphia. Numerous people were displaced or fled the city, buildings and property was damaged or destroyed, people's lives and businesses were disrupted and fortunes were lost (and in some cases made). The population was permanently altered. Some who fled the city never returned, others ran to the city for British protection and remained after the army withdrew; still others who had long lived in Philadelphia left their homes to follow the British to New York, Halifax, London or elsewhere. The change in personnel led to a change in the economy, society and politics, particularly as loyalists and conservatives who were seen as to cozy with the imperial regime were replaced by patriots and radicals.

All these changes are worthy of attention, but the particular transformations I'll be focusing on are shifts in loyalty and conviction for Great Britain and/or American Independence. It's an accepted fact that Britain could not hope to subdue the entirety of America by force. Though the empire's armies and navies greatly outclassed the forces of the Continental Congress, they were themselves dwarfed by the vastness of the colonies' population and geography. If Britain was to retain America, it had to win the loyalty of her people and motivate the King's loyal subjects to reject and resist message of independence being spread by the 'revolutionaries.' This is the battle for the 'hearts and minds' of the American populace. In some respects Britain lost this battle before the Revolutionary War had even begun. John Adams famously wrote that the crucial mental shift that turned loyal British colonists into revolutionary American citizens was "effected from 1760 to 1775, in the course of fifteen years before a drop of blood was spilled at Lexington." Such might have been the case in New England, where the hammer of British oppression had come down the hardest in 1774 when Parliament closed the port of Boston and effectively nullified Massachusetts's right to govern itself. Elsewhere, however, the people of the American colonies were still uncertain of where their loyalty lay, and over the course of the war many would come to question whether American independence was truly worth the blood and treasure it would cost to achieve.

As the British military captured the great cities of America (Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Charleston...etc), it subjected itself and Britain to the scrutiny of uncertain Americans. Along with the royal governors and crown appointees, the British army became the foremost representative of the King and Parliament in America, capable of dispensing justice or tyranny, of establishing decency or disorder, of preserving or violating the rights of the colonists. Through its administration of the occupied cities, the army had the ability to win over reluctant revolutionaries and to motivate apathetic or insecure loyalists to stand-up to their more radical friends and neighbors. Yet it also risked alienating its existing allies, driving would-be friends of the government into the arms of revolutionaries, and proving that the rhetoric of the revolution condemning British rule was all too true.

My dissertation will attempt to weigh the how the activities of the British army in Philadelphia and the other occupied cities affected this battle of for hearts and minds. By looking through the eyes of a variety of contemporaries (rich and poor, white and black, loyalist, patriot and neutral) I hope to discover how the people's perception of the British empire, and consequently their perception of American independence, shifted as a result of the occupations. Did the military's presence serve to justify the King's rule and support the promise a peaceful and prosperous reunification with the empire? Or did it appear to vindicate the accusations of the ardent revolutionaries and prove the absolute necessity of independence? More broadly still, what inherent challenges did Britain's occupying army face (or must any occupying army face) in attempting to simultaneously maintain order, support a war effort, and win friends among the populace?

Throughout the war, the British army was plagued by its inability to hold all the ground it could conquer. Only rarely could Washington do more than retreat in the face of British advances, and local militia companies offered little resistance to the royal army. As the army cleared the revolutionaries from a county or region, the loyal supporters of the King would emerge, declaring their hitherto secretive allegiance to the empire and (all too often) using the protection of the British army to avenge themselves on local enemies who had sided with the patriots. Yet while Britain could easily invade many areas, it lacked the manpower and resources to maintain a presence in many of them at once. Inevitably, the army would eventually move on to its next objective or withdraw back to its strongholds. Then, bit by bit, the revolutionaries and their militias would return from their exile and the loyalists, who before the army had come had been protected by either their feigned neutrality or false mouthing of revolutionary slogans, would find themselves exposed to the wrath their neighbors. The result was severe damage to loyalist morale and a steady loss of faith in Britain's ability to protect its subjects. 

This phenomenon has been recorded in various places in the Hudson Valley of New York and in the Carolinas. But Philadelphia offers the largest and most dramatic example. Over the course of a single year, the city went from being the 'capital' of the new American nation and seat of the Continental Congress, to the headquarters of the conquering British army, back to the epicenter of revolutionary politics. Those who rashly or prematurely declared themselves for one side or the other often paid dearly when the city became the center of gravity for their opponents. On the other hand, neutrals risked suffering assaults from both sides for their lack of conviction. What became of loyalty to the crown and revolutionary fervor in the midst of this tumultuous period? How devastating was the British withdrawal to their cause?

The social history of Revolutionary Philadelphia offers a us a sharp and severe lesson on the effects of political instability and on the suffering and disillusion that can result when a government, army, or political movement cannot (or does not) standby protect the people who support it.

Guiding Questions (Part 1 of 3)

A major part of planning out a dissertation is identifying the questions your work will try to answer. It isn't enough to say you're going to write about soft cheese production in ancient Uzbekistan. You need to decide whether you're going to write about how ancient Uzbeks produced cheese, or what factors prompted peaks and troughs in cheese production, or when cheese production was first industrialized, or why the social status of a cheese producer was indirectly proportionate to the softness of his cheeses. You could certainly cover more than one of these topics, but in all likelihood you can't cover them all in sufficient detail and with sufficient evidence and analysis in a single dissertation. You have to define precisely which questions you're going to focus on so people know, going in, what sort of contribution to expect. This also makes it easier for someone else who wants to write on soft Uzbeki cheese to recognize what questions remain unanswered. Optimally this is something you want to determine early on so you know how to direct your research.

When it comes to my own work on the British occupation of Philadelphia, I have two main areas of focus. For each I've crafted a "meta-question" and one or more specific questions. The meta-question asks about a general concept, not tied to any particular period or event. These questions are big and somewhat philosophical and my work won't answer them but will (I hope) contribute in the refinement of an answer. The specific questions are tied more directly to particular points in time and space. These are the questions to which I will give an answer, supported as much as possible by solid evidence and logical analysis. 

So, without further adieu:

Major Questions:

1. Effects of the occupation
• Meta-Question - What factors contribute to the effectiveness of a military occupation against a rebellious or insurgent population?
• Specific question(s) - To what extent, and through what means, did the British occupation(s) of American port cities help and/or hinder the battle for the 'hearts and minds' of the American colonists? How did Philadelphians' perception of Great Britain, her armies and her objectives, change as a result of the military's occupation of the city?
2. Meaning of "occupation"
• Meta-Question - What does it mean for a country, an area or a city to be forcibly "occupied"?
• Specific question(s) - Should the British military's taking, holding and governing of Philadelphia in 1777/1778 be regarded as an "occupation"? Should the periods of local dominance by the Associators, Constitutionalists, and militia that bracket the British stay be regarded as "occupations"? What similarities and differences exist in the way Philadelphia's people, particular the Quakers and others who desired to maintain neutrality in the Revolutionary conflict, experienced these periods?

I'll attempt to flesh each of these out in the next two posts.

Recommended (and otherwise)

I noticed today while ordering a book for research that Amazon.com is does a surprisingly good job with its recommendations system. This would in contrast to, say, Netflix.com which for reasons that aren't entirely clear is under the impression that I'd simply adore the movie Planet B-Boy which "affords viewers exclusive access to the underground world of break dancing."

In general, Amazon points me toward a combination of history, Christian non-fiction, and board games: a sound strategy. Today I was encouraged to investigate the games Small World and Castle Panic, both of which look quite interesting. I'm especially intrigued by the latter since its a cooperative game, which is something we don't have yet. There was I time when I thought about purchasing Shadow's Over Camelot to fill that void, but Shadows is an complex, long, and somewhat dark game, which limits the number of potential fellow-players. Castle Panic is simpler, faster, lighter and (a bonus) cheaper, so I think I'll move it to the top of the 'games to buy' list.

However, the biggest discovery of the day wasn't a board-game so much as a website about board games. I give you Board Games With Scott which offers "video explorations" of a wide variety of games. The author is an avid gamer who tries out various games and, if he likes them, creates a video explaining how they work, showing off the pieces, and letting you see how an actual game might be played. It's something that's difficult to get out of a written review and really impossible to get from the back of a box. It's definitely a site I'll check with regard to all future game purchases. You can see Scott's run-down on Castle Panic here. I recommend it.

In other news, I finished the Scarlet today (I had about 20 pages left after the weekend and really felt the need to get to the end). I can't strongly recommend it. This is the middle book of the King Raven trilogy and, as is often the case with the second part of a trilogy, it was a little unsatisfying. More so than in the first book I found myself occasionally skipping over multiple pages in order to keep the story moving along. Lawhead's striving for historical accuracy (or at least vague resemblance) is praiseworthy, but sometimes he seems to get carried away in describing the historically accurate details of things that don't really matter. He also has one mystical character who tell stories to the other characters; these stories-within-the-story can sometimes go on for a dozen pages. You have to be a really good writer to get away with that and Lawhead doesn't always pull it off. And finally, near the end, the way in which the 'good guys' foil the plans of the 'evil doers' requires that the 'evil doers' behave a manner so incredibly stupid that it was difficult to take seriously.

The book was still fairly enjoyable, and I'll probably pick up the final work in the trilogy if I see it at the library, but I don't think I'll be making any special trips to go looking for it.

Finished reading...

Finished reading Richard Archer's As If an Enemy's Country: The British Occupation of Boston and the Origins of Revolution this morning.
It was, admittedly, not about the occupation I thought it would be about. Archer looks at the occupation lasting from 1768 to 1770 in response to colonial resistance to trade regulations, not the later occupation under Thomas Gage the preceded the "shot heard 'round the world." This makes the terminology somewhat more perilous, since the term "occupation" generally implies the invasion of a hostile, foreign power, a concept only marginally applicable in 1774 and certain out of place in 1768. Still, a primary question in my own work is how to define "occupation" with regard to the Revolution, so Archer's choice of subject was quite relevant.

Archer does an excellent job in making his characters feel real and vital. Several major players carry over from chapter to chapter (Thomas Hutchinson being the most noteworthy example) and, consequently, one is able to see how they evolved during the crisis. Archer begins in 1763 with the planning out of new British taxes, particularly the new Sugar Tax. The first 100 pages are devoted to popular colonial resistance, disputes within the government, the development of non-importation/consumption pacts, etc. The occupation itself doesn't begin until chapter 7. That and the following chapter (suitably titled "Occupation") are the most enlightening for my purposes as they chronicle the conflicts between the populace and the soldiery. There were questions of where the army was to be housed and who was to pay for it, of what role they would play vis-a-vis the existing town watch, of whether they would be allowed to take jobs from dockworkers, and of the proper interactions between the citizens and the off-duty redcoats.

For example, British soldiers and officers stationed in American cities often grew bored and sought out or constructed unorthodox forms of entertainment, a phenomenon apparent in Boston, New York, Philadelphia and Charleston before and during the war. This could at times involve harassing locals, but it occasionally took on more sophisticated forms. On page 125, Archer records that members of the British government in Boston joined with military officers from the army and navy, as well as various members of the town, to set up bi-weekly entertainments and dinner and dancing. The resistant colonists, concerned lest such finery should win people over to the British cause, cautioned the "Young Ladies of Boston" against participating, lest consorting with such people ruin their reputation. They went so far as to create their own, competing, dancing night, the Liberty Assembly, to draw the naive and vulnerable away from the supposedly damaging influence of British military officers.

Though these two chapters (as well as chapter 10), provide insights into the nature of the occupation, there are times when Archer seems to lose track of his subject. Chapter 9 (The Merchants and John Mein) resumes the story of non-importation and the infighting among the merchants and elite of Boston. Though the events of this chapter all transpire in the midst of the occupation, reading it one could easily forget that there thousands of red coats walking the streets of the city.

Archer's final chapters focus on the Boston Massacre, providing an extremely detailed and interesting account and making good use of his earlier work to show how the "Massacre on King Street" was the culmination of more than a year of frustration and antipathy between Bostonians and the occupying soldiers. Accounts of the "massacre" vary wildly, and it is evident that Archer has made up his mind on a few key issues and presents them with little qualification. Still, his interpretation, if not the only one, is a sound one and generally consistent (though I disagree with his conclusion that the eight grenadiers facing a belligerent crowd of ~125 sailors, laborers and artisans could not have been in a life-threatening situation simply because they were the only one's carrying firearms). His narrative at this point possesses that elusive ability to be gripping even though we know how the story ultimately ends. His account of the trials of Preston and the soldiers is also fairly good (though he clear feels they got off too lightly), detailed enough to be intriguing but not so long as to slow down the narrative.

Over all, the book was enjoyable and it felt wonderful to finally read a history book cover-to-cover at a leisurely pace. It's been a long time.

Archer, Richard. As If an Enemy's Country: The British Occupation of Boston and the Origins of Revolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010.

Seal of Confidence

Sarah and I stumbled upon an interesting seal etched into the wall at our local mall yesterday. It's from the old Philadelphia dept. store Strawbridge & Clothier (later Strawbridge's and most recently absorbed by Macy's). The seal displays William Penn making his famous treaty with Lenape chief Tammany and reads "Strawbridge & Clothier...Seal of Confidence".

Now, call me crazy, but if I wanted an image that would send of a message of honesty and trust and would assure potential customers that my prices were fair and that their children's, children's, children would not come to look back on their purchases with deep regret. I don't think I'd choose a picture of a European striking a land deal with a native American. I'm just saying...

In fairness to William Penn and Tammany, the moment depicted in the seal (and displayed somewhat more elegantly by Benjamin West) represents one of the brighter points of early colonization. Penn was remarkable for his deep desire to deal fairly with the native peoples of Pennsylvania and his respect for them as human beings, and relatively equitable and peaceful relations continued through his and Tammany's lives.

Those who followed them were not as just. In 1737 (to name one famous example) the Penn family, desirous of more Lenape land, produced a document which they claimed was a treaty promising the Penn's all the land between the Delaware and Lehigh rivers and extending as far from the junction of the two rivers "as a man could walk in a day and a half." The document was almost certainly a forgery, but the Lenape accepted it at face value, acknowledging that they often measured distance by the rate at which a man could walk.

"Walk," however, is an ambiguous term. To the Lenape it meant a steady but unhurried pace along existing trails. To the Penn's it meant something else. They scoured the colony for the three fastest runners available and sent our scouts to find the easiest and most direct paths. The scouts were followed by woodsmen who cleared and leveled the ground to make the route as smooth and easy as possible. The runner's set out at top speed, stopping only to sleep briefly in the night. Their pace was so intense that two of the three were forced to abandon the trek before the allotted time has passed. But the third persevered, covering somewhere around 60 miles. As a result, the Penn's claimed an area of about 1,200 sq. miles (about the size of Rhode Island). The Lenape, though they eventually accepted the claim, were not pleased. To their mind the accepted distance for a day-and-a-half walk was about 40 miles, and the difference between their expectations and what the Penn's runners accomplished was vastly exaggerated by the course of the Delaware. In the image below, the dotted lines represent the length of the walk which, along with the solid line and the Delaware River, enclose the ceded land. The yellow lines might roughly represent what the Lenape thought they were agreeing to; the red lines represent what they actually gave up after the "walk."