by Gideon Defoe
‘Establishing a republic’ is a better rallying cry than ‘being angry at cheap foreign jerky’, so that’s what the uprising pretended to be about. Luck would have it that a lot of Italian would-be republicans were mooching around Rio having noisy ‘secret’ meetings. They’d gather in cafés and hold earnest student-y conversations about political theory. One of them, a young Giuseppe Garibaldi, bored of the endless discussions, favoured more direct action. A meeting with one of the captured Ragamuffin leaders while visiting a jail persuaded him to join their cause.
Although it was 40 years before Garibaldi mania would see biscuits named in his honour and little porcelain figurines of him for sale in all the best London shops, he was already a brilliant military strategist. Together with his equally daring lover Ana, he led the small gaucho navy to an unlikely victory. On 11 September 1836, the Riograndense Republic proclaimed itself independent from the empire of Brazil, though the ongoing war and the itinerant nature of the gauchos meant it moved capitals five times in the space of its nine-year existence. But to the Italian revolutionaries’ disappointment, the gauchos didn’t really care about lofty republican ideals. As soon as Brazil agreed to protect their jerky profits, self-interest won out and the Riograndense government and country collapsed peacefully back into the empire. If he wanted to start a country, Garibaldi was going to have to do it somewhere else.
* How to make beef jerky: cut your choice of steak (flank steak is good) into thin strips one-eighth of an inch thick. Slice with the grain for chewier jerky. Marinate as you see fit, with pepper, salt, soy sauce, Worcestershire sauce, etc. (mix it all in a bowl and then leave your jerky in the marinade in the fridge for at least a few hours). If you don’t own your own dehydrator, lay the jerky out on a wire rack (over a baking tray) and cook at 175 degrees Fahrenheit for about three hours. Turn over the jerky and cook for another three hours.
Maryland in Africa
1834–57
Population: <1,100
Capital: Harper
Languages: English, Grebo
Currency: US dollar
Cause of death: famine and unfriendly neighbours
Today: part of Liberia
///unsociable.optimist.elbow
There were two types of white people in the US state of Maryland in the 1830s: the really racist ones and the not-quite-as-bad-but-still-let’s-face-it-fairly-racist ones. The really racist ones were pro-slavery. The not-quite-so-racist ones were anti-slavery but worried that former slaves would inevitably Get Up to No Good. The idea both groups hit upon was simple: wouldn’t it be great if all the people of colour could be persuaded to go and live somewhere else? Africa, perhaps …
For the most part, the black Marylanders weren’t keen on this plan. Partly because Africa was thought to be a place of snakes and cannibals, and partly because the former slaves very fairly reasoned that having lived in the new world for several generations, they were every bit as American as their white neighbours. Even so, the newly formed Maryland State Colonization Society (an offshoot of the already established American Society for Colonizing the Free People of Colour of the United States) managed to persuade a small group to set sail for the West African coast. It’s hard to blame those who took the offer up, because being a freed slave was almost as bad as slavery at this point: you had no rights, no vote and almost certainly no job. The boat hired by the society was covered in barnacles and the captain was a drunk, but like all colonists, those on board had dreams of a better life.
The colony of Liberia had already been established some years before as a home for freed American slaves, but the Maryland society decided to go it alone. Dr James Hall was the brains behind the operation. An ill man who was escaping treatments including ‘antiphlogistic therapy’ (in which inflammation in one part of the body is supposedly reduced by irritating another part, an inexplicably popular remedy at the time), he pored over his maps and finally identified the fertile-looking spot of Cape Palmas as a good location for the new Maryland.
Despite the drunk captain and the barnacles, the colonists survived the voyage and Dr Hall went to sit down for a ‘palaver’ with King Freeman, representative of the local population, the Greboes. They haggled over the price the settlers would pay for the land. The traditional way of looking at these encounters is to see wily Westerners ripping off naive natives. But it’s not clear who was playing who. Previous would-be settlers in the region had also offered goods in exchange for the land. Invariably, these strangers had found the place too tough and hostile, given up and gone home. The Greboes possibly figured there was a good chance of history repeating itself. So why not winkingly ‘sell’ their land, seeing as it would only be a temporary deal?*
Sure enough, the colonists struggled. Their houses had leaky roofs and muddy floors. The mangrove swamps were malarial.† They relied upon the locals for food, but the recent harvests had been so bad there wasn’t any. When they tried to farm their land, they found their crops failed miserably. Most subsisted on a diet of cabbage palm and potato leaves. A dispute over the price of sheep led to a violent uprising. Dr Hall tried to intervene to stop the locals conducting their witchcraft trials, which didn’t go down well. And it turned out that King Freeman wasn’t king of everything he’d claimed.
When Liberia announced independence from the American Colonization Society in 1847, Maryland did the same, but the declaration didn’t mean a whole lot. Famine loomed. Disputes with the Greboes over the land got worse and bloodier. It became clear that the country couldn’t stagger on much longer without help. In 1857, the surviving colonists quietly voted to be swallowed up by their neighbour for their own protection.
A grim postscript in case the story isn’t already grim enough for you: the Bridgestone Corporation, which operates as Firestone in Liberia, was found guilty of forced labour by the UN as recently as 2005. Modern-day slavery goes on flourishing in the state set up for free slaves.
* Initial native demands for their land: 20 puncheons of rum, 20 cases of guns, 20 barrels of powder, 20 bales of cloth, 20 brass kettles, 20 boxes of hats, 20 boxes of cutlasses, 20 boxes of beads, 100 iron pots, 20 cases of looking glasses, 100 dozen red caps, 200 iron bars, 20 knives, 20 crates of wash basins, 20 hogsheads of tobacco, 1 box of umbrellas, 100 boxes of pipes, 20 kegs of flints, 2 boxes of large copper wire, 2 gross of spoons, 3 gross of forks, 100 tumblers, 100 bottles of wine, 20 boxes of soap, 10,000 fish hooks, 100 tin pails, 100 stone jugs, 20 demijohns, 20 cases of snuff boxes, 20 boxes of candles, 2 cases of bells, 20 suit cloths, 3 beds and bedsteads, 6 boxes of cloth, 3 cock’d hats, 6 epaulettes, 3 dozen flags (source: Hall, 2003).
† Dr Hall was about 60 years ahead of his time with his use of ‘sulphate of quinine’ to ward off malaria, though he had no clue how it worked. Medical science of the time blamed the disease on the mangroves rather than the mosquitoes.
The Republic of Texas
1836–46
Population: >140,000 (by 1847)
Capitals: too many
Languages: English, Spanish, French, German, Comanche
Currency: the Texas ‘redback’ dollar
Cause of death: it didn’t really want to exist in the first place
Today: part of the USA
///monday.preoccupied.gangs
When the Brexit results were announced, a small group in Texas got very excited. If the fey, famously reticent limeys could risk their economy collapsing for the sake of some semi-mythical nostalgia then surely the comparatively bold ‘Texians’ could too. The press even started referring to ‘Texit’, because annoying portmanteaus are universally loved by lazy journalists no matter where in the world you are. The republic would rise again!
At the beginning of the nineteenth century you’d find three words scrawled on the door of abandoned houses throughout the United States: ‘Gone to Texas’. The United States had experienced its first financial wobble in 1819, and Texas – still part
of Mexico at this point – was seen by many as a better bet than staying put.* An independent Texas would come about as a direct result of this sudden mass migration. In fact, the republic had already briefly popped into existence (and then popped straight back out again) in 1813. Americans fighting the Spanish on behalf of Mexico decided to go it alone, only to be instantly crushed by the Spanish army. The revolution of 1835 – this time against the much-despised Mexican leader Santa Anna – enjoyed more success. A brief war and the heroic last stand at the Alamo gave Texas the origin story it needed.
Niche businesses sprang up to cater for the new country. The Library of Congress contains an advert for Texan Universal Pills: ‘Prepared after a careful personal examination of the diseases incident to this climate, and with a particular reference to the health, comfort, and happiness of the Citizens of this Republic’ (general directions include ‘keep up large evacuations to cleanse the system’). But shared diseases and regular bowel movements aren’t enough to hang a country on, and Texas never truly established a national identity. Partly because from the very start the nation intended to join the United States. The republic was broke: it had inherited a million-dollar debt from the revolution, and the population was too cash-poor to pay much in the way of tax. They issued their own money, but with nothing to back it up it instantly lost its value.† The Comanche still controlled great swathes of the country’s supposed territory. That the republic lasted for even ten years was more down to the fact that many in the Union vehemently opposed Texas joining. It was ‘that valley of rascals’, and the North feared that it would swell the power of a slave-owning South. Which could in turn start a terrible civil war. But luckily the naysayers were persuaded that was Project Fear talking.
None of this has stopped self-styled Texians from trying to keep the flame of independence alive. The extra-hardcore ones don’t even want to secede from the Union, because, as far as they’re concerned, they never legally joined in the first place. They produce their own currency, have their own supposed court of law, and occasionally get raided by the FBI because neither of those things are very legal.‡
* This immigration would continue throughout the life of the state: in 1836 there were 30,000 whites, 5,000 black slaves, 3,470 Mexicans, and 14,200 Native Americans. By 1847, the numbers were: 103,000 whites, 39,000 black slaves, 295 free blacks, and nobody even bothered to count the Native Americans.
† The republic failed to pay the £160 rent on its London embassy (a room above an off-licence) until 1986, when an unofficial delegation finally turned up to settle the bill.
‡ In 2003, the state of Texas passed a law obliging school children to salute the Texas ‘Lone Star’ flag as well as Old Glory. It is probably best not to mention the whole West Florida thing.
The Congo Free State
1885–1908
Population: estimates vary, but approximately 20 million (at the start), 8 million (by the end)
Capitals: Vivi, Boma
Languages: French, Dutch, and over 200 indigenous languages
Currency: Congo Free State franc
Cause of death: too evil even for turn-of-the-century Europe to stomach
Today: The Democratic Republic of the Congo
///eagles.clocking.daily
Lots of the countries in this book have misleading names, but none are as totally wrong as ‘the Congo Free State’. And lots of the people in this book are terrible bastards, but none of them are as irredeemably grim as Leopold II of Belgium.
His father – Leopold I – had interviewed for the position of King of Greece but turned it down and went with the Belgium vacancy instead. He almost instantly regretted taking the job, finding his kingdom boring and parochial. Thinking it might be fun to start an empire he began to eye up Texas but died before his colonial dreams could be fulfilled. Unfortunately for everyone, his son – an unattractive, arrogant teen who grew up to be an even worse adult – inherited his dad’s expansionist streak. He briefly considered buying Sarawak off James Brooke. Then somewhere more lucrative caught his eye.
The explorer Verney Lovett Cameron had recently completed a coast-to-coast journey across Africa and wrote a letter to The Times detailing his exploits. He told of a ‘magnificent and healthy country of unspeakable richness’. Dollar signs flashed in Leopold’s eyes. The immediate problem: he wasn’t an absolute monarch. There were annoying issues like ‘public opinion’ and ‘a government’ to deal with – and neither of those had any interest in colonising Africa. But Leopold was well-connected and immensely rich, and that goes a long way when it comes to doing whatever you fancy.
The king set about convincing the world his ambitions towards the Congo were entirely philanthropic. He launched the International Association for the Exploration and Civilisation of Central Africa – effectively a cover story to keep other European powers from getting antsy. Phase Two of the plan was to employ distinguished explorer Henry Morton Stanley (of ‘Doctor Livingstone, I presume?’ fame) to travel through the interior of the continent, ‘purchasing’ millions of acres of land (illiterate tribal leaders marking a piece of paper with an ‘X’ being deemed an important part of keeping this all above board). This wasn’t being done on behalf of Belgium, Leopold made clear – it was a purely personal affair. His own private bit of magnanimous charity, helping out his fellow man.
The initial moneymaker was ivory (and he didn’t skimp on this – by the 1890s most of the region’s elephants were dead), but in the late 1880s John Dunlop invented the pneumatic tyre and even bigger dollar signs started floating in front of Leopold’s eyes. He would become a rubber baron, and his ‘Free State’ would become his personal dictatorial rubber plantation.* The Force Publique, a military made up of European officers and African soldiers, oversaw the districts where the impoverished Congolese were forced to work. While quelling the inevitable uprisings, and to prove they weren’t wasting ammunition, the Force were required to cut off a hand of each of their victims and bring it back as a macabre receipt.
Nowhere was particularly enlightened at the turn of the century,† so it’s a measure of how horrific Leopold’s regime was that when word started to get out it caused a public outcry. A man called Edmund D. Morel, working at a shipping company in Liverpool, was one of the first whistleblowers. He studied the books of his employers and did a simple bit of detective work. The Congo Free State was exporting huge quantities of ivory and rubber. But all it seemed to be importing was a huge quantity of guns – no tradable goods to exchange with the populace. The only conclusion to be drawn: the locals weren’t being paid, and this was a slave state on an industrial scale.
Morel set out to expose it, publishing a series of anonymous articles. The British government started an investigation. In a rare political misstep, Leopold reacted petulantly, calling the Brits hypocrites (not totally unfair, that) and improbably blaming Congo’s rapid depopulation on sleeping sickness. Eventually his own embarrassed government took the Free State off his hands, though not before he’d received a handsome pay-off. Upwards of 10 million had died by then. Leopold himself had never even bothered to set foot in the place.‡
* Leopold’s smash-and-grab plan wasn’t even intended to be sustainable – the rubber in the Congo came from vines rather than trees, which were destroyed in the process.
† Some context: as late as 1906, a Congolese man called Ota Benga was being exhibited in the Bronx Zoo’s primate enclosure.
‡ After Leopold’s death, Belgium embarked upon ‘the great forgetting’. They did such a brilliant job of taking care of the Congo that by the time it won independence there were only a handful of Congolese graduates and not a single doctor, lawyer or engineer.
Ruthenia (Carpatho-Ukraine)
15–16 March 1939
Population: 814,000
Capital: Khust
Language: Ukrainian
Cause of death: Hungary
Today: part of U
kraine
///blighted.sharpener.chatterbox
The chemist Karl Ernst Claus liked to test the strength of acid by dipping his finger in it and touching it to his tongue. After managing to isolate the highly toxic compound osmium tetroxide, he described it as ‘tasting like pepper’. Despite this approach to health and safety, Claus lived long enough to discover an entirely new element: ruthenium, number 44 in the periodic table, named after his motherland, Ruthenia.
As an independent country, Ruthenia lasted more than 15 minutes – but just barely, which is maybe appropriate given that the other famous person hailing from the Ruthenian diaspora is Andy Warhol. The term ‘Ruthenian’ comes from the Rus’ (same as the Russians, Belorussians and Ukrainians), which in turn probably comes from Old Norse. A group of Vikings once made their way across the Baltic, then on into the shadow of the Carpathian Mountains, where they settled down and became woodcutters – or at least that’s a theory. There are a lot of probably-happened and thought-to-haves involved in piecing together the background of this part of the world. It’s this same ethnic vagueness that makes the rest of the Balkans so unpredictable. But however they got there, and whoever they were, for 50 years the Ruthenians and ‘Ruthenia’ were part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. That formally kicked the bucket in 1918, at which point they found themselves in Czechoslovakia.
