Everyone’s heard that pirate’s call each other “matey”. What you probably haven’t heard is that the word matey comes from “matelote”.
In the Caribbean this word was used between buccaneers to signify a life partner. Matelotes could inherit from each other, shared space, fought together, could speak for each other when one was incapacitated or absent, and more often than not the relationship was romantic and sexual.
That’s right folks. Pirates had a term for their gay life partners.
In light of this, I present to you a new alternative for significant other and partner. Bring back matelote.
(You can learn more about the practice of matelotage in: The Origins and Role of Same-Sex Relations in Human Societies by James Niell)
Arrr! Matelotage was such a great idea!
In an age when the English Navy ran on “rum, sodomy and the lash,” (as noted in many writings of the time), homosexual relationships were punishable by death.
The result here was that in the English Navy, relationships went underground. Very often, they became forced, often between a superior and a subordinate. When English crews went on the account, becoming pirates, they looked for a way to legitimize relationships of honest affection. Matelotage [French; meaning ‘seamanship’] , now used as an English word, became a term for a legal marriage between two men.
[…]
In pirate society (and only pirate society) two men could “marry.” They would exchange gold rings, and pledge eternal union. After this, they were expected to share everything. Plunder and living spaces were obvious, but couples in matelotage were also known to share other property, and even women. If one of the partners was killed in action, pirate captains were careful to make sure that the surviving member received both shares of plunder, as well as any appropriate death benefits.
Simply put, homosexual relationships had been kept under wraps by people in fear for their lives because of draconian laws. Among sailors who had practiced this form of release themselves, it lost its sense of being alien, and so became accepted and legitimized as soon as they (by turning pirate) gained the right to make their own laws. {X}
Another excellent addition!
What if we learned all these things growing up? What if experts on different aspects of history wrote a history book together. What if the editor ensured that POC, women LGBTQA and other minorities’ histories weren’t erased.
I am all for specialization. I follow blogs that show me history and the modern world from different perspectives.
Because my sixteen years of education are incomplete. Woefully incomplete.
I’d like to add that for the most part, these aren’t “separate” histories! Relevant MPoC tags and searches for this topic include:
Before I
return to my ‘Black Sails’ art posts, I would like to say a few words about
those unfortunate wigs that we have, by now, probably all had a good laugh
about.
I should
probably point out that I’m far from an expert on wigs (and hope never to have
to become one *knocks on wood*;)). When it comes to paintings, I can at least
claim to be an interested layman; wigs, however, are not at all my specialty,
so you should take everything I’m writing here cum grano salis.
(Spoilers for seasons 1 and 2 of ‘Black Sails’ below.
No spoilers for season 3 that I can think of, except for one tiny, not really
spoilerish reference.)
The first such hairpiece that we see on Thomas
Hamilton’s head is a so-called allonge
wig, i.e. a full-bottomed wig:
(All
screencaps in this post were taken from here.)
An allonge is
a wig of very long, usually dark, curls. (The classic allonge style was dark brown,
but over time men started to prefer ever-lighter colours like grey and white,
with added powder on top.)
Now, as you
can probably guess from the French name, allonge wigs were originally invented
in France and popularised by King Louis XIII in the first half of the 17th
century, in other words: this style is already quite ‘old school’ at the time
this ‘Black Sails’ scene is set in. It’s not exactly out-dated or old-fashioned
yet, but it’s certainly a rather conservative look. At the beginning of the 18th
century (the era ‘Black Sails’ is set in) these types of wigs were only worn by
the aristocratic class or judges anymore and were considered pretty formal even
then.
In other
words, Thomas in this scene represents the face (if not the heart) of the
establishment. When we are introduced to him, he comes in an official capacity:
He comes on behalf of his father (who, in turn, speaks on behalf of the Crown)
to meet the new Navy liaison. In this scene, Thomas represents his family and
their interests.
This
reading is backed up by the fact that Thomas’s father Alfred Hamilton, once we
meet him a few episodes later, is wearing a very similar brown allonge:
Time to dose you up with lots of facts about a tiny fraction of the amazing women that have helped shape this world into what it is today.
This is a long post. Don’t hate. They each worked harder in any given minute of their lives than you’ll have to to scroll through their stories. Maybe you can remember just one of them and tell their story to someone else today, or maybe you already know them. Either way, they are #important, and I hope you’ll agree.
Actually, ‘fall’ has its origins as an Anglo-Saxon word, and was popularized for use to denote the season around the 16th century from the poetic term ‘the fall of leaf.’ In the language that would develop after 1066, words that were coded as being common or lowly generally had Anglo-Saxon roots while the ‘educated’ words of the elite had French and Latin roots. This is why, even in modern English, we use ‘cow,’ which has an Anglo-Saxon origin, for the animal out in the field and ‘beef,’ which has a French origin, for the food to be consumed. The poor handle the animal while the rich eat the meat, and that is reflected in the language. The language of the conquerors was elevated while the language of the conquered was made base and common. If ‘autumn’ sounds smarter than ‘fall,’ that is only the linguistic snobbery of history talking.
I fucking hate this post a passion anytime I see it and whenever it comes around with the rebuttal attached I enthusiastically reblog
1. The Black Panthers were birth like any revolution out of a necessity for change.
2. The symbolism of the Panther wasn’t just because black is beautiful.
3. In 1966, at Merritt College, Huey P. Newton & Bobby Seale created The Black Panthers.
4. After the Watts Riots of 1965, and inspired by Robert Williams’ Negroes with Guns, the organization’s intentions were to empower the black community.
5. And they did so in congruence with the law.
6. But as the law would have it…
7. But this was still a telling moment as to how politically powerful the Panthers were even at an early stage.
Commercial Break
8.
But the Panthers forged forward because this was about protecting their communities, even though they were facing the unchecked police.
9. The Panthers were considered to be a terrorist organization though.
10. And then things changed.
11. And 2 days after MLK’s assassination, the Panthers’ first recruit Bobby Hutton was gunned down. He was 17yo.
A mysterious gold object weighing 8.5kg has been discovered in an old building in a Jerusalem cemetery. Experts at the Israel Antiquities Authority are so baffled as to what it is they are seeking help from the public to identify it.
The object – which would be worth around £200,000 in today’s market if it is solid gold, although it may just be gold-plated – was discovered by a maintenance worker at the cemetery. They found a “suspicious object” buried inside an old building within the cemetery grounds and contacted the police.
A controlled explosion revealed the item. Details of the cemetery and building in which it was discovered have not been disclosed. “The object was turned over to Antiquities Authority inspectors for examination; however, the archaeologists announced that they had never before encountered such an item,” the IAA said in a statement. Read more.
I dont Think any of the les mis cast actors can be black. If you were black in France in 1800 you would be lower class. And it was before integration. It is not historicly correct that Javert, a police officer with High status, would have been black. I love norm Lewis, but no. And eponine cant be black, and have white parents. Im not racist, i repeat not racist
Everything about this is factually wrong.
-There very much were black people in high status positions in France in the 1800s. Here, check out the Dumas Family —General, famous author, and hey, another fairly successful author!. Sure, most black people would not have been high status— most PEOPLE, period, were not among the social elite, because that’s how an elite works. And racism was certainly a complicating factor for anyone not white. But 1800s France was not 1800s USA, the systems in play were very different, and the options for racially marginalized groups were likewise different.
– Eponine can totally be “black withwhite parents”. Or white with black parents! (cw:racism, both those links) SO COULD ANY OF THE CHARACTERS, Because Genetics. It’s a lot more complicated than people seem to realize!
All this, of course, on top of the realities of theater that I’ve seen other people mention in the notes to this post re:colorblind casting, the fact that we accept ENGLISH SPEAKERS in 1820s-1830s France (and Hugo didn’t talk overmuch about race but he has ACTUAL CHAPTERS to say on language), and, y’know, the singing thing (although there IS a surprising amount of actual singing in the Brick.) And anyone claiming to be Not A Racist might want to first wonder why they find RACE the objectionable adaptational issue, rather than the English, the singing, or the wildly inaccurate clothing in most stage productions (the xylophone, now, THAT would not have been happening. At least not on Enjolras. But I’m willing to go with it, aren’t you, OP?).
I’m going to guess it’s at least partly because, ESPECIALLY in the USA, ALL OF US are subject to certain cultural narratives that prioritize race as a focus and normalize historical racism, whether we ourselves want to believe those narratives or not. Which is the only reason I’m posting here; it’s certainly not because I’m an expert in the field. I’m not one of the real heavy researchers, I’m not equipped to answer fine-detailed questions about the history of race relations in France past OR present (and I expect to be offered corrections and criticism on this post really fast, AS IT SHOULD BE, because this is important!). But that’s kind of my point; it took me all of thirty minutes to look up most of this (INCLUDING the non-Tumblr commissioner stuff, and there was more of that if I’d needed to construct pay records etc. on my own), and that’s on dialup. We don’t have to accept the whole “history is for white people” idea, and why would anyone WANT to?
Title Painting. Portrait of a woman.
Creator LESAGE Pierre Alexis (1872—1932)., artist
Date XIX—XX century.
Description (Young black woman, dressed in high-necked blouse, turned three-quarters to the right.)
Photo source: Menil Foundation/
Photographer: Mario Carrieri,
Repository NANTES., Musée des Beaux-Arts.
Source The Image of the Black in Western Art Research Project and Photo Archive, W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research, Harvard University
Title: “Said Abdallah from the Tribe of Mayac in the Realm of Darfour”, a portrait of Seïd Enkess, a freed Black slave who became a professional model in Paris.
Sophie de Tott, Ourika, ca. 1793. From the frontispiece of Roger Little, Ourika, 1998. Ourika is depicted crowning a bust of the maréchal de Beauvau with a garland of flowers. The painting is in a private collection.
Anonymous, Portrait of Ourika, nd. Reproduced in Roger Little,Ourika, 1998; who reproduced it from Léonel de la Tourrasse, Le Château du Val dans la forêt de Saint-Germain. Private collection, Château du Val.
Charles-Henri-Joseph Cordier
Capresse des Colonies
France (1861)
Bust in onyx and patinated bronze and stone on a pedestal of rose veined marble, 96.5 x 54 x 28 cm.
Print for Illustration for Trajes de la Ordenes Religiosas y Militares: Gran Maestre del Orden de la Estrella de Na Sra (en Africa) segun andaba en la Corte de Francia.
France (c. 1780)
Engraving, Print on Paper; 350 x 230 mm.
At the end of the seventeenth century, Louis Aniaba was the protege of Louis XIV, and the first black officer in the French army.
Jean-Baptiste Belley was born in Senegal, kidnapped at a young age and sold into slavery in Saint-Domingue. Over the years he gained his freedom (some sources say he saved money and bought his freedom; others say he earned his freedom through his military service).
In 1793, he was one of three delegates sent to represent Saint-Domingue in the National Convention, and afterward the Council of Five Hundred. He served until 1797, thus being one of the people to vote to abolish slavery in French colonies the first time in 1794.
After losing his seat to Étienne Mentor, he joined Leclerc’s 1802 expedition to Saint-Domingue to take control from Louverture. However, he was arrested by the French and imprisoned in Belle-Île. He died in 1805.
Anne-Louis Girodet de Roussy-Trioson
Portrait de C.[itoyen] Jean-Baptiste Belley, ex-représentant des colonies
The Image of the Black in Western Art Research Project and Photo Archive, W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research, Harvard University
Jean-Antoine Houdon
Portrait Bust
France (1781)
Plaster study for a fountain, 32 cm.
Soisson, Museé Municipal.
(Head of a black woman, her lips parted, looking slightly to the right.) The bust was damaged in World War I, leaving only the head intact.
The Image of the Black in Western Art Research Project and Photo Archive, W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research, Harvard University
Lethière painted this in 1822 from France, but it was never intended to display there. His son Lucien delivered the painting to Haiti in 1823. The scene commemorates the Haitian Revolution, depicting Jean-Jacques Dessalines (right), an ex-slave who led the revolution after Louverture’s arrest and crowned himself the first emperor of Haiti; and Alexandre Pétion (left), a free man of color who defected from Leclerc’s forces and became the first president of the Haitian Republic after Dessalines’ assassination.
The painting was damaged by the 2010 earthquake, and was temporarily moved to France for restoration. After it was fixed, it was displayed in the Louvre briefly before being returned to Haiti.
Did someone really just copy and paste half the MPoC 1800s tag as a
reply to someone spouting nonsense about Le Miserables, including part
of this submission…(screenshot from upthread)?
Also flagging up the fact that the argument about class is irrelevant because we know Valjean was poor, Javert has a line in which he admits “I come from the gutter too”, we have no idea what Fantime’s life was before Cosette, and don’t even get me started on Eponine and the little kid…
Even if you do want to assume that the French Revolutionary period was more racist than it was, you have to acknowledge that at least half the cast was, at least originally, lower class and poor. Your argument therefore sucks and you need a better excuse if you’re that invested in keeping POC off the stage.
Meg's Mumbles 