Rebellions Map

Overview:

What is compiled here are 11 of the “Foreign Summary” features from The National Era from 1854-1859 that mention rebellion in some capacity; search term variants also included are ‘rebels,’ ‘mutiny,’ ‘insurrection,’ ‘uprising.’

Each point on the map is placed in the location where the respective rebellion occurred either exactly or generally.

When clicking on each point, the full text of the “Foreign Summary” from The National Era that describes that rebellion will appear in the window along with date and citation information.

A Few Things to Note:

I was surprised by the fairly even distribution of coverage of these events across the globe. I had expected, conversely, to discover more of a waning density of news coverage as one moves further away from the US, Caribbean and Western Hemisphere, but that is clearly not the case. China, India…Estonia!

Speaking of this more far-reaching context, one can note from the text that many of these rebellions includeed a great deal of complexity within them (human figures, goals, ongoingness); they are also contextually demanding, and this context is either quickly given within these features, or not given at all. Some interesting questions to be posed here about expectations of readership, seriality, editorial choices on content and details, etc.

As far as the author(s) of the features are concerned, it’s clearly quite a mixture: some are largely transcribed updates from foreign (usually European or Colonial) news outlets, others seem to defer to military leaders, others are in the (anonymous) voice of The National Era editor. There is obviously quite a range of attitudes and perspectives inherent in these features as a result.

A lot of radio silence on Africa. That’s hardly to suggest that Bailey, Whittier and other contributing editors are unaware that African peoples have been involved in a perpetual rebellion for over 200 years at this point in time, but it’s conspicuously absent from this foreign affairs discussion nonetheless.

More work to be Done!

Regarding my archival search methodology, I can confidently state that this collection of international rebellions make up of a majority of their kind within The National Era, though it is hardly an exhaustive collection – an even wider deployment of search terms may yet cause more relevant events to surface. Alternatively, it might be productive to look for a similar feature within the paper that was titled differently as it seems that the “Foreign Summary” title formalized during the 1856-1860 years.

Further, it may prove valuable to pull similar features from other African American and anti-slavery newspapers of the time (many of which are also available on Accessible Archives) as some of these other publications did some similar work. I chose The National Era for the reasons stated under the “Exhibit Statement” page, but an inquiry into African American newspaper’s coverage of international rebellions would be made all the richer with the addition of these materials.