I get why the writers chose an open ending. Why they wanted to explore “story is true, story is untrue” concept. But I feel like Flint wasn’t really the right person for it. His story is all about unveiling of the truth. Of shading light onto the things that history tried to bury. And Silver’s story is all about not knowing the truth. “What happened to him? Was is the truth?” would’ve fitted him perfectly. I know it wasn’t possible because of TI, so they had to do it with Flint, but… meh.

I agree, Anon. I think the ultimate irony is having a character whose entire story hinges on truth be condemned to being nothing more than the stories that are told about him – it’s a tragedy that they underscore in the narrative with the stories that are told about Charles Vane, actually. Jack says to the woman he talks to in Philadelphia that Charles was one of the bravest men he’d ever known, only to be shown in no uncertain terms that it doesn’t matter what someone’s friends say of them – it only matters what their enemies say, especially when those enemies win, and that’s the very thing that James was fighting all along. That, right there, is the heart of it, and it’s why it makes it a screaming, hair-ripping, agonizing thing to see James and Thomas fall prey to the same thing

Silver, on the other hand- he’s never been anything but one story after another. He’s never actually BEEN as opposed to being SAID TO BE, if that makes any sense, and in a way it makes him even more dangerous as a character because it sort of means that we know nothing about him. He’s no more and no less than what people say about him and I think that he derives power from that. He reminds me, actually, of every dangerous, fae character that has ever walked the pages of a fantasy novel – I’m talking straight out, Goblin King kind of power that’s derived from the power that people agree to give him. Anyway – what I’m saying in a long-winded kind of way is that I agree, Anon. James Flint is meant to be about truth and justice and fighting back against the stories told about him, whereas John Silver has only ever been a story, albeit a particularly powerful one.

I believe that from the middle of the third season James has come to reconcile James McGraw and Flint within himself. A place where James McGraw and Flint exist together, occupy that space together, and that’s the person we see in the finale.What do you think?

I think that’s exactly what we’re seeing, Anon. I think the dreams of Miranda are significant in that when they end, we see James start to be able to function again the way we’re used to him doing. He goes to the Maroon Queen, makes his speech to her, and it’s the first time all season that we see him actually believe that there’s something worth fighting for beyond vengeance against England for Miranda’s death. He says himself in the beginning of s3 that he’s fighting because of what England did to Miranda (and of course, to Thomas – that’s been true all along, though, and goes without saying). As of the middle of s3, though – that’s when we see him give up completely and then Miranda in his head raises the idea that he’s not alone. Whatever you want to believe she meant, I think that’s the moment that James picks himself up off the ground, dusts little bits of Flint off of himself, and figures out how to live with what’s left. I distinctly remember several moments in s4 when I found myself thinking “oh thank fuck – he’s doing so much better,” and it’s because he’s stopped being just Flint and clawed some bit of McGraw back out of the depths. I think that’s also why he throws himself so wholeheartedly into being part of the Maroons’ cause – because it gives him someone to fight alongside, someone that understands what he’s been saying.

my unpopular oppinion is that Vane shouldn’t have complained about being a Slave so much because he was white and it probabely wasn’t very bad to him

jamesflintmcgrawhamilton:

friends and foes, we have our first troll!

yeah, i’m sure whatever left these scars wasn’t ‘that bad’

im sure being branded was a right picnic

im sure this kind of work was a walk in the park

whatever left him “so goddamn afraid"? probably just him being dramatic. im sure when he talked about “the visit from the taskmaster in the dead of night” he was just exaggerating.

“wasn’t very bad” oh yeah? fuck you, i disagree

bean-about-townn:

So I just realised why James is so insistent that Silver making people believe something doesn’t make it true. Because if it is true, then England making the world believe that he is a monster makes him one. In the same way that he believes England is not inevitable, he believes that the power of the stories that he and Silver both use has limits:

It is natural for men new to power to assume that it has no limits. Trust me. It does.

And I think that the root of their different perceptions of how important this is has a lot to do with the effect that the stories told about them had on them. Silver said he was:

No one. From nowhere. Belonging to nothing.

But the stories told about him made him a King; gave him power, respect, and love. Whereas James already had those things – Thomas calls him:

A rising star with a bright future in the Admiralty.

Yet because of the stories told about him and his relationship with the Hamiltons, he lost all of that.

Once it had been applied to Thomas, once our relationship had been exposed, defiled, scandalised… everything ended.

Yes, James does use stories like Silver does – but not against people he cares about. And he doesn’t ever seem to believe that other people believing his stories makes them real – he actually seems to reject that idea.

In season 1, Silver says:

Guilt is natural. It also goes away if you let it.

That’s obviously not true, and I think on a deeper level, even he knows that – but he seems determined to believe that it’s possible to just let go of things like that; guilt, his past, etc. which perhaps explains why he seems to think it’s possible that Billy, James and Madi could forgive him for what he did to them in s4. But they can’t let go of their past experiences – of what he did to them – and honestly, I don’t think that he can either.

I wanted to thank you for your post about the plantation You could do the same about the treaty signed by the maroons I read something online you but I’ m sure you know something more in depth about it From what I read there were some horrible clauses I mean if the war was not to be fought because history tells us so the same goes for that treaty thanks :)

You know, Anon – that’s a very good idea!

So – for anyone who was not aware, the treaty that the historical Maroons signed, and that was the basis for the treaty Woodes Rogers offered in the show – sucked. It sucked big time, and here’s why.

A little background. Historically, the Maroon Wars were ended by not one but two treaties, given that there were two different groups of Maroons, the Windward and Leeward Maroons, both of whom inhabited Jamaica at the time. I’ve picked out a selection of clauses from both treaties, because they strongly resemble each other.

All of these quotes come from the website of the National Library of Jamaica

Source

So – Problematic Clause Number One:

That the said Captain Cudjoe, the rest of his Captains, Adherents and Men, shall be for ever hereafter in a perfect State of Freedom and Liberty, excepting those who have been taken by them, or fled to them within the two Years last past, if such are willing to return to their said Masters and Owners, with full Pardon and Indemnity from their Masters and Owners for what is past. Provided always, That if they are not willing to return, they shall remain in Subjection to Captain Cudjoe

Please note this clause. It’s bullshit, because it’s asking the Maroons to hand over their own people or, even worse in some ways, to enslave them themselves.

“But wait!” you might say. “Couldn’t that clause be taken to mean that they’ll just be subject to Cudjoe’s rule?” And yes, it very well could, except:

That if any Negroes shall hereafter run away from their Master or Owners, and fall into Captain Cudjoe’s Hands, they shall immediately be sent back to the Chief Majistrate of the next Parish where they are taken; and those that bring them are to be satisfied for their trouble, as Legislature shall appoint.

From the Windward Treaties:

That in case Captain Quao, or his people, shall take up run away negroes that shall abscond from their respective owners, and shall be paid for so doing as the legislature shall appoint.

Yeah. There it is. They were expected to not only hand over any people who had fled to them within the last two years – they were expected to hand over any escaped slaves PERIOD who made their way to the Maroons. I’d also like you to note the phrase “satisfied for their trouble.” They were offering A REWARD for the Maroons to participate in slavery from that point on – asking them to fucking SELL PEOPLE BACK TO THE ENGLISH. If the treaty that was offered to Madi and her people was anything like this – why the fuck would Julius support it? He and his people definitely fall into the category of “people who had run away to the Maroons within the last two years.” They definitely would have understood that they were not safe among their own people – go ahead, raise your hand if you think that the English definitely intended to have black people selling black people, even perhaps those who were not runaways, while the local magistrate gave a wink and a nod and just took whoever was brought to him on the theory that they ran from SOMEONE. I’m not saying it happened that way, but I’m saying that was the intent.

Onward. Next Problematic Clause:

That they shall have Liberty to plant the said Lands with Coffee, Ginger, Tobacco and Cotton, and breed Cattle, Hogs, Goats, or any other stock, and dispose of the Produce or Increase of the said Commodities to the Inhabitants of this Island. Provided always, That when they bring the said Commodities to Market, they shall apply first to the Custos, or any other Majistrate of the respective Parishes where they expose their Goods to Sale, for Licence to vend the same.

So….they have the liberty to grow those crops, but pray tell which one of them in their right mind is supposed to risk someone deciding they’re a runaway slave when they come to market and ending up getting sold themselves? Furthermore, which local magistrate do these people imagine is going to give them license to sell their goods when there are white farmers and white merchants who were most definitely going to get priority and then whoops all the space at the market is gone, so sorry!

That in case this island be invaded by any foreign Enemy, the said Captain Cudjoe, and his Successors herein and after named, or to be appointed, shall then, upon Notice given, immediately repair to any place the Governor for the Time being shall appoint, in order to repel the said Invaders with his or their utmost Force; and to submit to the Orders of the Commander in Chief on that Occasion.

Again – pray tell, whomst exactly is to decide what constitutes appropriate threat for these people to be summarily used in a war that maybe has nothing to do with them? Who exactly gets to say when they’ve done enough, or are they now meant to be soldiers for the English with no say in the matter, aka FUCKING SLAVES AGAIN?! There are holes in this treaty Swiss Cheese would be proud of.

That Captain Cudjoe shall, during his Life, be Commander in Trelawney Town, after his Decease the Command to devolve of his Brother Captain Accompong; and in case of his Decease, on his next Brother Captain Johnny; and, failing him, Captain Cuffee shall succeed, who is to be succeeded by Captain Quaco,and after all their Demises, the Governor or Commander in Chief for the Time being, shall appoint from Time to Time whom he thinks fit for that Command.

See my above criticism, only about a hundred times more strongly stated, since this essentially states that if, say, all of these men were to be killed by – gosh, I don’t know, the fucking Governor himself, perhaps, since he’d benefit greatly from it – the said Governor then gets to appoint his puppet to have control of the Maroons. In fact, I don’t see anything stating he can’t put a white man in charge of them and thus end Maroon independence entirely.

That in case any white man, or other the inhabitants of this island, shall disturb or annoy any of the people, hogs, flock, or whatever goods may belong to the said Captain Quao, or any of his people, when they come down to the settlements to vend the same, upon due complaint made to a magistrate, he or they shall have justice done them.

Yeah. Uh huh. Sure. Anyone care to make a bet on how often justice was actually received in the case of a white man hurting Maroons? I’ll wait.

That Captain Cudjoe with his People shall cut, clear, and keep open, large, and convenient Roads from Trelawney Town to Westmoreland and St. James, and if possible to St. Elizabeth’s.

Uh huh. Sounds legit. Sure. Except, you know – for that thing where open roads – wide open, convenient roads – are really great for anyone who wants to, say, march soldiers to the Maroons’ camp in the future. And oh look – that’s exactly what fucking happened LESS THAN A CENTURY LATER.

That two White Men to be nominated by his Excellency, or the Commander in Chief for the Time being, shall constantly live and reside with Captain Cudjoe and his Successors, in order to maintain a friendly Correspondence with the Inhabitants of this Island.

My, what lovely spies you’ve sent, Lord Governor! Please note that in the case of the Windward Maroons, this number of white men living among black people, reporting back on them, probably assisting in raising tensions and generally causing trouble, was raised to four.

So uh – yeah. Tell me again that the treaty wasn’t shit, or that Madi shouldn’t have rejected it out of hand, or that Julius would have agreed to this, being that it would see him enslaved again in all likelihood? I don’t think so, somehow.

I’m sorry to annoy you, but it really makes me angry to read posts that talk about the shame farm as if it were a holiday village

Me too, Anon. Believe me – me too. I couldn’t possibly disagree more strongly – not only does that treatment of the place ignore the visual evidence we’re presented with in canon, it downplays the horrors of slavery, So, since I’m feeling like flexing my degrees today:

Here’s a little slice of what people forced to work on sugar plantations faced. Warning – this is not for the squeamish, and if you feel like you’re going to be triggered by graphic descriptions of violence or slavery, this is where you might want to hop off this post. I’m putting this discussion under a cut for those reasons, not to spare the feelings of anyone who wants to tell me that Oglethorpe’s plantation is somehow meant to be paradise.

This is a quotation from a man named Sir Thomas Lynch, written in 1672, regarding the conditions on sugar plantations. This pertained, mainly, to slaves working in the West Indies:

“If a Mill-feeder be catch’d by the finger, his whole body is drawn in, and is squees’d to pieces, If a Boyler gets any part into the scalding Sugar, it sticks like Glew, or Birdlime, and ‘tis hard to save either Limb or Life.”

Here’s another, from a Thomas Tryon (and no, I am not ignoring the irony/horrifying but coincidental fact that both these men are named Thomas and had a problem with how sugarworks were run).

“ the Climate is so hot, and the labor so constant, that the [Black] Servants night and day standing great Boyling Houses, where there are Six Seven large Coppers or Furnaces kept perpetually boyling; and from which with heavy Ladles and Scummers, the Skim off the excrementatious parts of the Canes, till it comes to its perfection and cleanness, while others as Stoakers, Broil, as it were alive, in managing the Fires; and one part is constantly at the Mill, to supply it with Canes, night and day, during the whole Season of making Sugar, which is about six Months of the year".

Source

For a really good look at the whole process of growing sugar cane, there’s a summary here:

http://www.discoveringbristol.org.uk/slavery/routes/places-involved/west-indies/years-work/

Here’s another horrifying set of descriptions:

“During the rolling season of 1846 his Negro man Jacob escaped with only a dislocated collarbone and “some severe bruises about the head” after he “was cuaght by the cane carrier of the Mill” and “carried with the drum as far as his shoulder.” Some years later, another Palfrey slave “lost his forefinger” when his left hand was “lacerated by the engine.” On another Louisiana plantation a female slave got her dress caught in the mill, and “before the engineer could stop the miller her arm had gone under” as well as part of her ear. As a result, she lost the arm, and the engineer suffered a severely “mashed” foot from “stoping the engine so suddenly.”“

Source

I’d like to draw attention to a phrase there – “only a dislocated collarbone.” Anon – readers – have you ever dislocated something? Ever had a bone out of place? There’s no only about it. In fact, it usually results in screaming in agony until it’s put back in place regardless of what the movies tell you. It hurts, and if you don’t believe me, you can come and listen to my shoulder go click pop crunch thump any day of the week, and that’s just what I suspect is a rotator cuff injury that hurts like anything when the barometric pressure changes.That’s the least of the injuries you’d be facing if you got caught in a sugar mill – or rather, the least of the injuries Madi’s people had to look forward to on the plantations they were being kept on. The least that Thomas and James could look forward to if they had to stay at that place and do Oglethorpe’s bidding and got unlucky or were too tired to be careful (and that happened regularly). Now – let’s talk about the diseases that are endemic to that region and were particularly experienced by slaves.

This article discusses some of the things that slaves at the time faced in terms of disease. Again – it wasn’t pretty. Smallpox, dysentery, tuberculosis, lung disease, parasite-born illnesses – the list goes on and on and on. I don’t doubt that in his time at that plantation, Thomas had seen a lot of death, and that’s even WITH the dubious proviso that they’re being well cared for, which I don’t actually recall anyone saying – only that they were “taken care of,” which could mean a lot of things, but which I’m going to take to mean that they’re generally given food, adequate amounts of water, shelter, and not beaten to a pulp on a regular basis. That last I have my doubts about too, given that we can see the guards carrying cudgels on their belts and carrying muskets, apparently to keep the workers in line.

I will give the show full points, too, for historical accuracy in that Oglethorpe’s plantation is not a cotton plantation. At this point in American history, the British were attempting to colonize the area north of Spanish Florida. This was in direct response to the Dutch colonies’ success in farming sugar cane and the equal success the British and Spanish were having in other colonies which was making them big profits. Oglethorpe’s plantation is located, as we’re told, in Savannah, which is exactly in the right region for them to be farming sugar cane, and in fact we are shown the canes growing in the field during the reunion scene.

Even were all of this not true, though, Anon – the point is that both James and Thomas are being held against their wills. We see James being walked through those gates in heavy chains. We know for a fact that Thomas is being kept there against his will, because if he were not, I can guarantee you he would have come looking for James and Miranda years ago. Max says it herself, and Oglethorpe echoes the thought – the plantation is a place where people “cease to be.” It’s meant to be a place where people go to be forgotten – to be wiped out of their own stories, to be wiped out of history entirely. There’s nothing about being forgotten that’s good – not when the forgetting is not by choice.

What I’m getting down to, Anon, is that the shame farm is not a good place. It’s spoken of in the narrative as a place that is an alternative to death, but neither of the people using it as a get out of hell free card are without reasons to lie to themselves about the nature of the place. Max needs to believe that she would have been sending Silver to a place where he could be comfortable, and Silver very much needs to believe the same thing in order to live with himself after what he does to James. To some extent, maybe he needs to believe that survival is always preferable to death – he certainly seems to not understand that there are things in life worth dying for and not to be lived without, or he wouldn’t do what he did.

The fact is that I don’t care how tolerant Oglethorpe is toward his workers’ sexualities, he’s still keeping men in a damn sugar cane plantation and forcing them to do a very dangerous job in a dangerous place.

I hope you can help me, maybe my memory is bad and english is not my language, but when exactly Thomas said he would forgive only the white pirates. I always thought that when Thomas was talking about changing things and correcting the old world mistakes he was referring to much more things.What do you think about?

*puts my historian hat on* I think that Thomas Hamilton was doing the absolute best he could have done given the shitty situation he’d had handed to him. It was not within his power to just hand the island back to the native peoples there, so he was attempting to help the people there the only way he could – to pardon every last one of them, and given that they were a conglomeration of all different ethnicities, religions, and creeds, I’d say that all of them definitely did not refer to just white pirates. His eventual goal may have been proving that the people of Nassau could self-govern. In trying to push through the pardons, Thomas was trying to change the way that England viewed the poor – he was trying to get the nobility to see that granted a chance, the people of Nassau would prove to want to be productive, law-abiding citizens of the Empire, not criminals, thus disproving the idea that the nobles had that the poor were born criminals by nature. it was kind of a thing at the time – strict social stratification of the sort that’s become ingrained in English society over the past several centuries had begun to exist, and England had also adopted a really rigid criminal code where the punishment for a lot of things was death. If you want a good book on the subject, I can recommend The Thieves’ Opera by Lucy Moore.

Anyway – long story short – no, I do not think Thomas was talking about just pardoning white pirates. I think, as James noted at least twice, Thomas wanted an end of British rule in the West Indies, or at least an end of tyranny. I think he would have supported the notion of the people of Nassau ruling themselves – James specifically said in s4 that the victory he felt was impending in Nassau was one that Thomas had given his life for, meaning that they shared that goal.

prev anon Before anyone says that I’m woobifying Flint… What I meant was even if we’ll assume that Flint fought out of rage, it’s not like the months he spend on the Maroon island did not have effect on him. It’s not a stretch to think that after having Thomas back and looking for a less violent way to get out, they would approach Oglethorpe and work their magic on him. Giving him the idea to turn the camp into something better, to ban slavery, etc.

I can fully imagine James getting Thomas back and being loathe to put him in danger through trying to break out. I can also fully imagine Thomas dredging up some bit of himself that’s been beaten half to death to persuade one last person one last time that he should listen to Thomas and things proceeding from there. I can’t imagine Thomas not boiling with anger the entire time, though, that he has to beg and plead and argue for his freedom – that he has to play the reasonable man that he once was in order to be allowed to do anything so radical as be free again. I mean – put yourself in Thomas’ shoes. He’s been taken from his family. He’s been tortured, imprisoned, abused in every possible way, enslaved – and now he must be patient? I can imagine him finding it in him, but I can also imagine him getting James back and finding the bit of himself that’s been burning with rage this entire time, much the way Miranda was.

I’ve been reading Oglethorpe’s wiki. He seems to be very different from what they showed on BS. No word on labor camps. Seems like the unjustly imprisoned people he brought from England weren’t imprisoned, but made into a proper settlers. And he banned slavery in Georgia. Is it bad that I’m gonna take credit from him and fantasize that he did all that after having discussions with James and Thomas? That just fits their characters so well.

It’s not bad at all. I’ve seen the bio of the real James Oglethorpe and he seems to have been a decent man – in fact, historically, when Georgia was founded slavery was banned in the state, mostly due to Oglethorpe’s strong anti-slavery beliefs. I simply can’t support interpreting James Oglethorpe as being the same person that we see in the show, because it’s made quite clear by Silver and Max both that the men Oglethorpe is using to till his fields are not there of their own free will, and that, to me, is slavery. I’m kind of sad that they took the name of a good man and applied it to someone who is so completely antithetical to what James Oglethorpe actually believed in – I can’t help but feel that the historical Oglethorpe would be disgusted at the idea of being associated with the self-aggrandizing, hypocritical, frankly delusional, slaving piece of shit we see in the show. They’ve got their history right in that it’s a sugar plantation, but other than that, they’ve quite missed the point of Georgia as a colony and what it was actually founded on.

Hi… sorry but I don’t remember that flint and silver were based on people really existed… maybe madi but they are from a novel, aren’t they? And the legacy between pirates and maroons never happened, please correct me if I’m wrong because you talk about the final as what happened in it has consequences in our time

Flint and Silver are, yes, from a novel. So are Billy Bones, and Gates, and Max, and Eleanor Guthrie and her father are only loosely based on real people. Vane, though, and Teach, and Rackham, and Bonny, and Hornigold, and Rogers, and yes, even the Maroon Queen were real people. Julius could arguably be based on an entirely real person. They existed. The pirates of Nassau existed, they did in fact manage to irritate the shit out of the British to such a degree that pardons were given as a way to make them stop being a threat to British rule in the region, and the Maroons’ fight with the English was also a thing. That treaty that Rogers offers to Madi in 4×09? Was real, and let me tell you, the terms of the historical treaty were awful. There were pirates who resisted the pardons, Vane and Rackham most definitely among them. Pirates did in fact lay siege to Charleston around this era, and there was very definitely a ship called the Urca de Lima (a nickname, actually – the ship’s proper name was the Santisima Trinidad, and she wrecked just off of Fort Pierce in Florida in, you guessed it – 1715.

What I’m saying, Anon, is that while Flint and Silver did not exist, the fact is that the events that they’ve been firmly inserted in the middle of DID. And that takes this discussion from the realm of “it’s a novel and we can’t know what would have happened afterward” to the realm of “we most certainly do know the fallout of Silver’s decisions and it’s bad. Really, Really Bad.” So while I cannot say that Silver’s decisions have any impact on the world I live in – I can say in all certainty that they had one hell of an impact in the universe that he lives in, and on all the people in it for generations to come.

More to the point – his decisions, fictional though they might be, do in fact have an impact on our world here in that I don’t think it’s ok to ever, ever portray them as being acceptable, because that’s the kind of thing that leads to people internalizing some really harmful ideas. Like the notion that you can ever enslave someone for their own good. Or that making decisions for oppressed minorities when you’re not among that minority yourself is alright. Or that you can ever, ever ignore your loved ones’ fondest dreams and hopes and deepest fears in favor of what you want for them and have them just – roll over and let you take over the running of their lives while you treat them like a naughty child that can’t make their own decisions. Once that kind of thinking takes hold, that’s when Silver’s actions start to be replicated by real people in the real world and that’s the point at which we all have a problem that’s based on what started out as fiction. So in a way, yes – I do think that Silver’s actions have consequences in our time, and I do think that we need to read his actions in his own setting with the knowledge of what the continuation of British rule in the West Indies led to in our world and presumably his. I think we need to take a good long look at what men like him agreed to in the real world and understand that it got a lot of innocent people killed, enslaved, and tortured, and understand that in his own universe, Silver was the one making the decision that led to that for everyone.