Women Were Oppressed

Among the early recorded observations of Native American culture, made at a time before the presence of Europeans had significant impact on it, are the writings of Jesuit named Juan Nentuig. Born in what was then a part of Germany, and is now a part of Poland, his name is recorded variously as Nentvig, Nentwig, Nentoig, Johann Nentwich, and Jean. These variations are both a result of the flexible concept of orthography which existed at that time, and a result of a career which brought him into contact with many different languages and the need to transliterate his name into those languages. He spent time in Bohemia, and arrived in the New World around 1750.

His accounts of Native American culture reveal that women were treated like animals. Note how women are pursued in the wedding ceremony; such pursuit would have been symbolically even more powerful in a culture which engaged in, and relied on, constant hunting. Clearly, the men were "hunting" the women. Beyond the hunting motif, the behavior toward women in this culture was aggressive and perhaps even violent. The manner in which a boy would capture a young woman after overtaking her in the chase must have been painful. Women in this Native American culture were objectified into passive recipients of aggression and violence; to be grasped by the nipple - instead of any other body part - was to turn the women into a sexual object, was to force her obedience by means of pain, and to identify the women as that body part.

Women in this Native American community are public property - they are forced to dance naked, and the marriages are forcibly consummated in public. These cultural practices are designed - consciously or not - to chip away at the women's sense of personal identity, sense of personal freedom, and ability to make meaningful and consequential decisions in their lives. The Jesuit's account reveals the systematic humiliation of the women:

The ceremonies of their heathenish weddings are not fit to be described in detail. I shall only mention the more decent. They gather together, old and young, and the young men and marriageable women are placed in two files. At a given signal the latter begin to run, and at another signal the former to follow them. When the young men overtake the young women each one must take his mate by the left nipple and the marriage is made and confirmed. After this preliminary ceremony they devote themselves to dancing, and as I remember to have heard, brides as well as bridegrooms dance in the costume of primitive innocence. Then all at once they take mats of palm tree leaves, which are prepared beforehand, and without further ceremony each couple is placed on a mat, and the rest of the people go on rejoicing.

It might be easy to dismiss the Jesuit's narrative as being colored by mere prudery, if it were not clear that there was an absolute imbalance of power. To be sure, the Jesuit was influenced by his European heritage, which caused him to recoil at the scenes described.

By the mid-1700's, European culture had embraced the ideal of a marriage on the basis of mutual consent, a relationship of bilateral respect and affection. Admittedly, Western Civilization sometimes failed to live up to this ideal - although women were no longer bought and sold like cattle, marriages were still sometimes arranged for financial and political reasons; ironically, women in the upper classes were more vulnerable to losing their freedom in choosing a spouse. The landless peasants at the bottom of European society had nothing about them which would cause anyone to want to arrange their marriages: no political or economic influence was at stake. But possibly among the aristocrats, and certainly among the dynasties, some marriages were constructed with an eye to power rather than to affection.

Again, while imperfectly implemented, the European tradition had also at least recognized that violence against women was wrong. Wife-beaters were socially ostracized, and wife-beating was considered a sin. By contrast, the Native American society had institutionalized and ritualized physical abuse.

By the time the Jesuit recorded his observations in the mid-1700's, Europe had already seen Eleanor of Aquitaine, Hildegard of Bingen, and Queen Christina of Sweden: women whose social, political, economic, and culture influence was significant and beyond dispute. Maria-Theresa was the Habsburg Holy Roman Empress and Queen of Austria, Bohemia, and Hungary, and held her own against Frederick the Great of Prussia. (A note on orthography: Queen Christina was 'Kristina Augusta' on the throne of Sweden, and 'Christina Alexandra' afterward, also sometimes spelled 'Christine'; Maria-Theresa's dynasty is sometimes spelled 'Hapsburg'.) It was impossible for Native American women to attain any role of such significance, or even any role of even a fraction of such significance.

Western Civilization still had some way to go: it would not be until 1869 that the Territory of Wyoming would give the vote to women, and female suffrage would not become nearly universal until the early twentieth century. Despite these shortcomings, however, the European tradition had already embarked on the path of recognizing women in way which was inherently impossible for the Native American cultures. Within the framework of European culture, it was at least possible to conceptualize women as fully enfranchised participants in politics, economics, arts, and culture; it was possible to formulate personal relationships in which women expressed their full humanity. It didn't always consistently happen, but it was possible. It was not possible in the Native American societies which were premised upon the axiom that women essentially were objects, treated as property, and subject to an institutionalized humiliation at the hands of men. The humiliation of women was a foundation of Native American society.

Chinese Social and Political Philosophy

The “Spring and Autumn” period of Chinese history is defined as beginning around 770 B.C., when the Zhou dynasty was attacked and not toppled, but suffered a major loss in the influence; instead of being the only power, the Zhou had to content themselves with being the major power alongside other independent, if lesser, kingdoms. During the Spring and Autumn era, the number of kingdoms declined as the more powerful ones annexed the weaker ones; the number of kingdoms sank from a number between 170 and 200 at the beginning of this era to approximately ten at the end of the era, around 479 B.C.

The end of the Spring and Autumn period is the beginning of the “Warring States” period. If the Zhou fell from the being the only power to being the dominant power during the former period, they fell to being merely one of the powers during the latter period. As the name implies, the Warring States period was characterized by warfare, and by advances in warfare. Iron replaced bronze in weaponry. Infantry and cavalry replaced chariot battles. Beyond the advance in technology, this change in warfare affect society. Some Chinese kingdoms adopted conscription – the “draft” – and warfare required the cooperation of the entire population. It was no longer merely an aristocratic contest. By the end of this era, 256 B.C., the Zhou dynasty and its internal sub-groups were pretty much powerless and taken over by the Qin dynasty. The kingdoms which had competed with the Zhou were weakened, having exhausted themselves in warfare, and they would fall around 221 B.C., soon after the end of the Warring States period.

Having defined the Spring and Autumn period, and the Warring States period, one might ask why so many great philosophers, including Confucius and Mencius, emerged in the Spring and Autumn and Warring States Periods. The answer might be found in the types of philosophy propounded by these philosophers. They were concerned with social questions. The tumult during these eras forced such questions into the consciousness of those living through them. By contrast, other styles of philosophy, concerned with questions about time and space, or with questions about cause and effect, were not flourishing during this time.

In an era of upheaval, of significant changes in government or society, ethical questions naturally make themselves felt in those inclined toward philosophical reflection. In an era of stability, e.g. during the Han or Tang dynasties, moral philosophies might be studied and preserved, but more as a matter of academic tradition, and less as a matter of intellectual insight and creativity in response to social conditions. Greece might offer us a parallel: during its era of social crisis (after the Peloponnesian War), its noted political philosophers arose (Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle); during its era of stability, other philosophers were more prone to explore those areas of philosophy (e.g., the nature of time and space) which did not directly address the issues of human society.

Confucius did most of his work during the late sixth and early fifth centuries. In an interesting parallel, Aristotle, who did most of his work during the fourth century, drew a number of the same conclusions. Both of them analyzed human society into ‘atomic’ or basic units. Aristotle saw society as a complex structure built from three simple relationships: husband to wife, employer to employee, and parent to child. Confucius had already concluded that society was a complex composed of simples, but posited five fundamental relationships. To Aristotle’s three, Confucius added older brother to younger brother, and friend to friend. Historians Patricia Buckley Ebrey, Anne Walthall, and James Palais write that Confucius (born 551 B.C., died 479 B.C.)

was the first and most important of the men of ideas seeking to influence the rulers of the day. As a young man, Confucius served in the court of his home state of Lu without gaining much influence. After leaving Lu, he wandered through neighboring states with a small group of students.

Confucius searched “for a ruler who would follow his advice,” and idealized the early Zhou dynasty “as a perfect society.” By implication, Confucius must have thought that the society of his era was deficient. His description of the Zhou was his prescription for his own time: people should devote “themselves to fulfilling their roles.” Apparently he believed that many people were not so devoting themselves. Confucius gathered a following, meaning that others saw things as he did, or came to do so after hearing him. The competing regional monarchies provided a larger audience, inasmuch as Confucius was addressing himself often to rulers and bureaucrats.

Mencius, like Confucius, “traveled around offering advice to rulers of various states.” Had China been unified under a solid dynasty, his potential customer base would have been much smaller. Because these states were in competition, there would have been some motive to at least review Mencius’s presentations, so that no opportunity to surpass a rival state would be overlooked. Under a monolithic dynasty, not only would the audience be smaller, but the audience would be less motivated to consider input regarding its governing style.

To the extent that Mencius is considered a Confucian, one may treat Mencius and Confucius together. To the extent that Mencius innovated beyond Confucius, one may contrast the two.

Both of them were interested in advising rulers about how to govern well; both were interested in discovering the truths about society which could inform men about how to best structure their communities. Both of them saw that the imperative for ideal behavior rested upon all social classes, and individuals from all classes needed to live properly in order for the kingdom as a whole to enjoy the benefits of wisdom. Mencius identifies empire, state, feudal lord, high official, and common person in one aphorism; empire, state, family, and person in another. He is not describing an exact taxonomy, so that the reader need not see a conflict between the two listings; rather, his point is that all levels of society are necessary if the whole is to flourish. Confucius structured his view of society around five pivotal relationships: father/son, husband/wife, ruler/subject, older brother/younger brother, and friend/friend; he saw each of these roles as important, and all of them need to be fulfilled well in order for a civilization to prosper.

Mencius and Confucius identify loyalty as a key virtue: the former writes that “never has a person given to true goodness abandoned those close to him” and the latter said that a son might even be justified in committing perjury out of filial loyalty. (Mencius is known to us largely from a collection of aphorisms and quotes called The Mencius. This book, of unclear authorship, is available in an edition by Daniel Gardner.)

Both Confucius and Mencius see the gaining of knowledge as a form of self-cultivation which leads to wisdom. The former sees learning as the first step, leading in a chain reaction to true intentions, a right mindset, a cultivated personality, harmonious households, a well-governed state, and finally a tranquil empire; the latter casts himself as an example, writing that one of his strengths is to “understand words” and to be “nurturing” his “vast, flowing qi … partner of righteousness.” Clearly, qi is a central term for Mencius, but it suffices to make the point at hand to note that, whatever it is, Mencius is advocating a form of self-cultivation.

In passing, for the purposes of the present discussion, Mencius and Confucius are very similar. For other purposes, certain divergences are detectable: while Confucius contemplated a variety of social spheres – family, friendship, government – Mencius clearly places more emphasis on government and less on the other two. When Mencius does mention the other two, he is viewing them in terms of their impact on government, and not for their own sakes. On the other hand, when compared with Zhu Xi and the neo-Confucians, Mencius is still very close to the original Confucius.

Another key Confucian concept is ritual. This points to the concreteness of Confucius, as opposed to the abstractness of some later neo-Confucians. ‘Ritual’ is physical for Confucius – he is concerned about the mats on the floor, and the precise circumstances in which one should prostrate one’s self. He is concerned that the funereal and burial rituals for his newly-dead friends be carried out correctly. He is not an other-worldly person.

Humility is important, and more so in a ruler. A ruler who self-corrects not only models humility for his subjects, but inspires them by his earnestness.

The correct use of terminology is central to Confucius, because it helps one both to avoid hypocrisy and to be precise and careful in one’s speaking and thinking. Attention to usages and definitions are the mark both of the scholar and of the honorable ruler. On this question, the most impractical and the most practical converge. The academic philosopher may spend great effort examining the definition of a word like ‘time’ or some other concept. A ruler may be careful in using terms like ‘tax’ and ‘penalty’ and ‘fine’ precisely (as a recent U.S. Supreme Court case has shown!). Both fall under Confucius’s injunction to ‘rectify names.’

In sum, Confucius has a number of points – largely echoed by Mencius – about how a human society should be organized and how it should function. Those points may be gathered under the broad headings of ‘scholarship’ and ‘physicality’ as follows: Confucius was concerned with reading, studying, investigating, and learning (those four verbs occur often in the Analects), and much of his scholarship had as its subject matter texts, people, dynasties, empires, and events from the past. His emphasis upon studying concrete things is expressed in his preference for ‘studying’ over ‘thinking’ and he did not spend time meditating upon abstractions. His preference for ritual carries his concreteness from his study of the past into his actions in the present.

Spain Suffers: Oppression Unleashed

Prior to the year 711 A.D., Spain enjoyed a reasonably prosperous and peaceful era. Under Roman rule, Spain enjoyed, in some ways, perhaps more lenient treatment than the territory in and around the city of Rome itself; as a relatively remote colony, the governors from Rome were happy as long as taxes were paid, as long exports continued to make their way to Rome, and as long as there was no massive civil unrest. The Roman governors were content to allow the inhabitants of Spain to do more or less as they pleased.

Around 409 A.D., the Roman presence in the area began to gradually contract back toward Rome, and after a transitional stage in which various provinces of Spain were substantially independent of each other, the Goths consolidated a sort of monarchy. Important to note is the diversity of the Iberian Peninsula at this point: Christians and Jews lived peaceably in the same towns.

This would end with the invasion of ruthless Muslim armies. In 711 A.D., they landed in Spain and would control, over the next several centuries, varying sections of Spain. They probably never controlled all of the Iberian Peninsula at one time; pockets of resistance often remained in the northwest.

The occupying Islamic armies made life difficult: they destroyed the synagogues of the Jews, and the churches of the Christians, and forbade the construction of any new synagogues or churches. Jews and Christians had to rise in the presence of Muslims, were not allowed to be on horseback in the presence of Muslims, and were required to wear special identifying markings on their clothing. Officially, these oppressions were recorded by the Muslims as the 'Pact of Umar' or the 'Code of Umar' ('Omar' is also a variant transliteration). Unofficially, Islamic troops assigned to occupational duty in Spain plundered and raped.

A bit of sarcastic propaganda circulated by the Muslims, and trustingly adopted by some later historians, was that the Islamic occupational armies ushered in a 'golden era of tolerance' in Spain. Historian William Chester Jordan writes:

Spain, except for a few relatively small Christian principalities in the Pyrenean north, was completely under Muslim domination from 711. The conquerors imposed their rule on a vast population of Christians and a substantial number of Jews. It is sometimes said that under Muslim rule, at least until the wars of Christian reconquest began in earnest, Christians, Jews and Muslims lived in a state of convivencia. Though always a minority throughout the period of their domination of the peninsula, the number of Muslims was steadily increasing from conversion and immigration. Confident of their continued hegemony, the argument goes, they lived amicably with Christians and Jews, even while denying them full rights. Yet all enjoyed freedom of religion, even if the religions of the conquered peoples were considered inferior to Islam. Architecture, poetry and other forms of cultural and intellectual expression in the subject communities borrowed freely from and adapted Arabic and Islamic motifs and tropes.

Thus, according to this cynically produced disinformation, the era was one of peaceful coexistence, religious freedom, and reciprocal artistic inspiration. In reality, the Jews and Christians of Spain were robbed and exploited:

Recently this picture has been criticized as idealized or even as a more or less deliberate distortion imposed on the narrative of pre-Reconquest Spanish history by liberal and anti-clerical scholars writing in the modern period. Hating what Spain was perceived to have become - a priest-ridden, racialist, and economically and politically backward society when elsewhere in Europe 'Enlightenment' came to prevail - many nineteenth- and twentieth-century scholars imagined a time when the Church had little power, pureness of Christian blood or lineage was irrelevant and work and play among people of all faiths made for a prosperous and forward-looking society. But if convivencia of this sort is a myth, it remains true that the

Islamic occupational armies stationed in Spain possessed an ideology which justified violence against Jew and Christians, which sought the eventual extinguishing of "infidel" religion, and which sought the establishment of a permanent caliphate over not only the Iberian Peninsula, but over all of Europe. The Muslim vision was a Europe free of Christians and Jews and under Islamic military government. Having conquered Spain, the Muslims hoped to use it as one base from which to launch the final attacks which would destroy the rest of Europe; Italy and various Mediterranean islands would be other bases for these planned invasions. As historian Will Durant writes:

Having established their position in the Peninsula, the Moslems scaled the Pyrenees and entered Gaul, intent upon making Europe a province of Damascus. Between Tours and Poitiers, a thousand miles north of Gibraltar, they were met by the united forces of Eudes, Duke of Aquintaine, and Charles Duke of Austrasia. After seven days of fighting, the Moslems were defeated in one of the most crucial battles of history (732); again the faith of countless millions was determined by the chances of war. Thenceforth Charles was Carolus Martellus, or Martel, Charles the Hammer. In 735 the Moslems tried again, and captured Aries; in 737 they took Avignon, and ravaged the valley of the Rhone to Lyons. In 759 Pepin the Short finally expelled them from the south of France.

Having failed in their attempt to subjugate all of Europe, the Muslims contented themselves with oppressing Spain.

The emirs and caliphs of Spain were as cruel as Machiavelli thought necessary to the stability of a government; sometimes they were barbarously and callously cruel, as when Mutadid grew flowers in the skulls of his dead foes, or as when the poetic Mutamid hacked to pieces the lifelong friend who had at last betrayed and insulted him.

The physical violence of the Islamic occupiers was paralleled by intellectual violence;

philosophy was silenced, or professed the most respectable conclusions. Apostasy from Islam was punishable with death.

Despite the official propaganda concerning religious tolerance,

many churches had been destroyed, and new ones were prohibited.

To ensure that any remaining Christians did not raise skepticism toward Islam, and to nudge any remaining Christianity toward extinction, the Muslim invaders reserved for themselves

the right to appoint and depose bishops, even to summon ecclesiastical councils. The emirs sold bishoprics to the highest bidder, thought he might be a skeptic or libertine. Christian priests were liable to abuse by Moslems in the streets. Moslem theologians commented freely on what seemed to them absurdities in Christian theology, but it was dangerous for Christians to reply in kind.

Given the ruthless abuse dished out by the Islamic garrisons, the inhabitants of Spain found that even

a minor incident could lead to a major tragedy. A pretty girl of Cordova, known to us only as Flora, was the child of a mixed marriage. When her Mohammedan father died she resolved to become a Christian. She fled from her brother´s guardianship to a Christian home, was caught and beaten by him, persisted in apostasy, and was turned over to a Moslem court. The qadi, who might have condemned her to death, ordered her flogged. She escaped again to a Christian home, and there met a young priest, Eulogius, who conceived for her a passionate spiritual attachment. While she hid in a convent another priest, Perfectus, achieved martyrdom by telling some Moslems what he thought of Muhammed; they promised not to betray him, but the vigor of his exposition so shocked them that they denounced him to the authorities.

For Flora and for Perfectus, merely stating one's beliefs was enough to cause one to fear for one's life - if those beliefs were Christian. In the case of Perfectus,

the judge remanded him to jail for some months, hoping for a change of mood; none came and Perfectus was condemned to death. He marched to the scaffold cursing the Prophet as "an impostor, an adulterer, a child of hell." The Moslems gloated over his decapitation, the Christians of Cordova buried him with pomp as a saint (850).

During the year 850 A.D., and for several years following, Muslims in Spain executed many Christians, whose only crime was having stated that they were Christians. Amid such intolerance, it follows logically that intellectual life declined further, especially because some types of philosophy and astronomy were associated with Christian Europe.

Science and philosophy, in Moslem Spain, were largely frustrated by the fear that they would damage the people's faith.

The languishing of the intellect in Muslim Spain was part of a broader trend, in which Islam academically crippled itself, and left Europe's Jews and Christians to make major advancements in astronomy, physics, chemistry, mathematics, and philosophy. As Spain continued to endure abuse, Muslims achieved similar invasions onto various Mediterranean islands, and occupied the southern end of the Italian peninsula for several decades in the 800's and 900's. Islamic armies also advanced westward across Asia Minor, obliterating the Byzantine culture and people along the way.

This ongoing pressure - continued military incursions into Europe's southwestern, southern, and southeastern frontiers, lasting through the 700's, 800's, 900's, past the year 1000 A.D. - would finally provoke a backlash from Europe. As historian Harold Lamb writes, "a warlike Berber dynasty," the Muslims of northern Africa, continued to dominate "in Spain, and the Christians there were enduring persecutions." Travelers who left the continent were not safe:

the few pilgrims who had penetrated to Jerusalem in the last years brought back tales of hardship and insult. There also a barbarous race, the Seljuk Turks out of central Asia, had driven

into the areas around Syria and Asia Minor. Europe was attacked, if not on all side, certainly on most of them: "So in the west and the east, Moslems were crossing the once-quiescent frontier." Europe's response to several centuries of threat - centuries in which each decade contained military raids and invasions by Muslims - would be an attempt to stop this nearly ceaseless series of attacks by launching a counteroffensive or counterattack, called the Crusades.