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Is Byzantine Studies a
Colonialist Discipline?
Toward a Critical Historiography

Edited by Benjamin Anderson and Mirela Ivanova

Is Byzantine Studies a Colonialist Discipline?
ICMA BOOKS | VIEWPOINTS

Copublished by the International Center of

Medieval Art and Penn State University Press,
the ICMA Books | Viewpoints series aims to
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will typically be data-rich, issue-driven, and
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The Viewpoints series is interdisciplinary
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current critical developments in art-historical
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Is Byzantine Studies a
Colonialist Discipline?
Toward a Critical Historiography

Benjamin Anderson and Mirela Ivanova

The Pennsylvania State University Press

University Park, Pennsylvania
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Anderson, Benjamin, editor. | Ivanova, Mirela

(Historian), editor.
Title: Is Byzantine studies a colonialist discipline?
: toward a critical historiography / [edited by]
Benjamin Anderson and Mirela Ivanova.
Description: University Park, Pennsylvania : The
Pennsylvania State University Press, [2023] | Series:
ICMA books. Viewpoints | Includes bibliographical
references and index.
Summary: “A volume of essays by scholars of
Byzantine art, history, and literature addressing
the entanglements between the academic
discipline of Byzantine studies and the practice
and legacies of European colonialism”—Provided
by publisher.
Identifiers: LCCN 2023005021 | ISBN 9780271095264
(paperback)
Subjects: LCSH: Imperialism—Historiography.
| Byzantine Empire—Study and teaching—
Historiography. | Europe—Colonies—
Historiography. | LCGFT: Essays.
Classification: LCC DF505 .I83 2023 | DDC
945/.701—dc23/eng/20230213
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023005021

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ansi z39.48–1992.
Contents

List of Illustrations (vii)

Preface: The Historical Conjuncture (ix)

Introduction: For a Critical Historiography

of Byzantine Studies (1)
Benjamin Anderson and Mirela Ivanova

Part 1: How Is Byzantine Studies (Re)produced?

1 Hieronymus Wolf’s Silver Tongue: Early Byzantine
Scholarship at the Intersection of Slavery,
Colonialism, and the Crusades (39)
Nathanael Aschenbrenner and Jake Ransohoff

2 Byzantine Archaeology: Teaching the Tenth

and the Twentieth Centuries (52)
Hugh G. Jeffery

3 Byzantium in Exile (58)

Şebnem Dönbekci, Bahattin Bayram, and Zeynep Olgun

Part 2: How Is Byzantium (Re)produced?

4 Methodological Imperialism (75)
Nicholas S. M. Matheou

5 The Price of Admission (83)

Anthony Kaldellis

6 Byzantine Studies: A Field Ripe for Disruption (90)

Averil Cameron

7 Subaltern Byzantinism (98)

Maria Mavroudi
vi Contents

Part 3: How Are Byzantine Texts (Re)produced?

8 Byzantine and Western Narratives:
A Dialogue of Empires (111)
Arietta Papaconstantinou

9 The Ethnic Process (121)

Alexandra Vukovich

10 Publication and Citation Practices: Enclosure, Extractivism,

and Gatekeeping in Byzantine Studies (133)
Matthew Kinloch

Part 4: How Is Byzantine Art (Re)produced?

11 The South Kensington Museum, Byzantine Egyptian
Textiles, and Art-Historical Imperialism (145)
Arielle Winnik

12 From Ethnographic Illustration to Aphrodisian Magistrate:

Changing Perceptions of an Early Byzantine Portrait (153)
Stephanie R. Caruso

13 Expanding and Decentering Byzantium: The Acquisition

of an Ethiopian Double-Sided Gospel Leaf (162)
Andrea Myers Achi

14 Equity, Accessibility, and New Narratives for

Byzantine Art in the Museum (172)
Elizabeth Dospěl Williams

A Collective Bibliography Toward a

Critical Historiography of Byzantine Studies (179)
List of Contributors (189)
Index (193)
Illustrations

I.1. Solar diagram, Handy Tables of Ptolemy (18)

I.2. The separation of light from darkness (Genesis 1:3–5) (19)
I.3. Saint Michael defeating an attack on Constantinople (20)
I.4. Saint Peter and Bishop Petros I (22)
I.5. The meeting of Muhammad and Herakleios (23)
I.6. “The idolatry of the Ishmaelites” (24)
1.1. The coat of arms of Johann Jakob Fugger (42)
3.1. Interior of Hagia Sophia (69)
7.1. Mark Doox, Saint John Coltrane Enthroned (100)
7.2. Photis Kontoglou, murals, City Hall, Athens (103)
7.3. Brother Robert Lentz, OFM, Lion of Judah (104)
11.1. Plate depicting Byzantine Egyptian textiles (150)
12.1. Portrait of a benefactor (Rhodopaios?), Aphrodisias (154)
12.2. Engraving depicting the dance of the Chohos (158)
13.1. Double-sided gospel leaf, Tigray, Ethiopia (164)
13.2. Double-sided gospel leaf, Tigray, Ethiopia (165)
14.1. Installation of the “Emperor Roundel,” Dumbarton Oaks (173)
14.2. Phalera or harness pendant, Persia (176)
Preface: The Historical Conjuncture

In the summer of 2020, two events, at first glance unrelated, rendered

a series of questions about the study of the medieval Mediterranean
unavoidable. What is the remit of the field called “Byzantine studies”?
In which forums may Byzantinists speak with authority? What is the
basis of that authority, and how should it be deployed? When are schol-
ars compelled to engage in public debate?
The first event occurred on 25 May 2020, when a Minneapolis police
officer murdered George Floyd, an unarmed Black man, on camera. The
footage spread via social and mass media, becoming a metonym for an
entire system of racecraft, of structural inequality upheld by racialized
violence and newly exacerbated by a global pandemic.1 Renewed resis-
tance to this system crystallized under a phrase. “Black Lives Matter”
denotes in practice a social movement, but it is grammatically a credo—
one rejected, moreover, by many in power. The footage of Floyd’s mur-
der demonstrated that, to the agents of contemporary colonialism,
Black lives do not matter.2 The focus of the resistance thus expanded
from the immediate context of US-American policing to a transna-
tional reassessment of the enduring legacies of European colonialism
and white supremacy.
Contemporary private cultural institutions—most obviously muse-
ums and universities—are founded upon the fruits of structural ineq-
uities: surpluses unjustly accumulated and dedicated to a perpetual,
secular, mass of remembrance. At the same time, cultural profession-
als abhor outward demonstrations of racism and regularly seek to dis-
tinguish their institutions’ present activities from the circumstances
of their founding. Perhaps unsurprisingly, therefore, such institutions
took center stage in this new transnational reassessment of colonial-
ism. Many issued formal statements. Here is a characteristic document
from the summer of 2020:
x Preface: The Historical Conjuncture

At British Art Studies, we know from our work to date how thor-
oughly entangled histories of British art are with the legacies
of colonial violence, oppression, slavery, and systemic racism.
These histories manifest themselves variously in artworks,
art-historical writing, museum displays, and other forms of
heritage conservation. Acknowledging the ways that Brit-
ish histories and cultural production have been complicit in
anti-Blackness, colonial violence, slavery, and white suprem-
acy is only the first step. Recognising and dismantling the rac-
ism that affects and is perpetuated in our institutions today is
the essential next step.
The Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art and the
Yale Center for British Art, the co-publishers of BAS, have both
shared statements of solidarity in response to the killing of
George Floyd by Minneapolis police on 25 May 2020, and the
Black Lives Matter protests throughout the United States,
United Kingdom, and around the world.3

Somewhere between a mea culpa and a manifesto, this statement

reveals how the murder of George Floyd caused those in positions of
cultural authority to engage seriously with the relationship between
their professional activities and the duties of global political citizen-
ship. Could the study of British art contribute to a more just society?
If so, then how? If not, why bother?
The relevance of colonialism to the study of British art, the cul-
tural production of a colonial empire, seems obvious. So too does that
of colonialism to those disciplines, such as classics, that have histori-
cally contributed to the assertion of Eurocentrism and white suprem-
acy. For these disciplines, 2020 was not the first reckoning. After the
white supremacist violence in Charlottesville in August 2017, the Soci-
ety of Classical Studies, American Historical Association, and many peer
organizations denounced the appropriation of their scholarship by rac-
ists. At this point, however, Byzantinists saw no need to enter public
debate, even as members of the misogynist, racist “alt-right” increas-
ingly turned to Byzantium (or their concept thereof) as a model for a
patriarchal, Christian state.4
Preface: The Historical Conjuncture xi

In the following years, Adam Goldwyn and other Byzantinists consis-

tently pointed out the importance of engaging in public debate beyond
the confines of the academy, including on online platforms such as Red-
dit and Twitter.5 Thus, by the summer of 2020 it was no longer possi-
ble for Byzantinists to ride out the next reckoning. On 7 June 2020, the
Byzantine Studies Association of North America (BSANA), of which one
of us (Benjamin Anderson) was president at the time, published a state-
ment via its listserv and website. It expressed solidarity with the Black
Lives Matter movement and announced a small fund for Byzantinists
of color as well as an initiative to decolonize Byzantine studies, spear-
headed by the question “Is Byzantine Studies a colonialist discipline?”6
BSANA’s call led to a collaboration with the New Critical Approaches
to Byzantine Studies Network, hosted at the Oxford Centre for Research
in the Humanities, of which the other of us (Mirela Ivanova) was a found-
ing member. Our first joint venture was a webinar, Towards a Critical
Historiography of Byzantine Studies, held on 13 August.7 The second is
the volume before you.
Oswald Spengler writes that “a philosophical question is merely a
thinly veiled desire to receive a particular answer that is already implied
in the question itself.”8 If this is true, then our question was not and is
not philosophical. It is intended rather to initiate a conversation within
and beyond Byzantine studies in the hopes that the answers would be
unexpected. In our opinion, the present volume amply fulfills that hope.
Initial responses to our question ranged from curiosity and enthu-
siasm to ridicule and scorn.9 Many sat in the middle: supportive of our
broader aims, but skeptical of the relation between the practice of Byz-
antine studies and contemporary politics, in particular Black Lives Mat-
ter and the project of decolonization. And yet, at precisely the same
moment, a second event, at first glance entirely distinct, triggered a
public discourse in which Byzantinists felt compelled to engage, thereby
demonstrating the thoroughly politicized nature of the existing disci-
pline of Byzantine studies. These events are covered in detail in this
volume by Şebnem Dönbekci, Bahattin Bayram, and Zeynep Olgun; here
we provide a brief outline.
On 29 May 2020, the Turkish government celebrated the anniver-
sary of the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople (1453) both outside
xii Preface: The Historical Conjuncture

and inside Hagia Sophia.10 Built as a church in the sixth century, Hagia
Sophia became a mosque after the conquest; since 1935, it had operated
as a museum. The Greek foreign minister swiftly objected, specifically
to “the reading of passages of the Quran inside Hagia Sophia.”11 The pro-
test elicited a response from Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan,
who stressed the sovereignty of Turkey’s borders: “Greece is not the
one administering this land, so it should avoid making such remarks.
If Greece does not know its place, Turkey knows how to answer.”12
Next, the Council of State (Danıştay), Turkey’s highest administra-
tive court, agreed to hear a suit to reopen Hagia Sophia to Muslim wor-
ship. Various national organizations of Byzantinists issued proleptic
condemnations of the anticipated result, including the Greek Commit-
tee of Byzantine Studies (8 June), the Italian Committee of Byzantine
Studies (23 June), the French Committee for Byzantine Studies (26 June),
and the National Committee of Byzantine Studies of the Russian Fed-
eration (29 June).13
The Danıştay, undeterred, ruled in favor of the plaintiffs on 2 July;
one week later, on 10 July, Erdoğan transferred jurisdiction over Hagia
Sophia from the Ministry of Culture and Tourism to the national Direc-
torate of Religious Affairs (Diyanet). Hagia Sophia was a mosque again.14
This precipitated another round of letters. John Haldon, as president of
the International Association of Byzantine Studies (Association Interna-
tionale des Études Byzantines—AIEB), wrote (13 July) that the decision
“damages Turkish scholarship and research in both the humanities as
well as the natural sciences in a way that is likely to have direct con-
sequences for Turkish participation in international scientific enquiry
for some years to come.” A few days later (18 July), the AIEB announced
that the International Congress of Byzantine Studies, planned for 2021 in
Istanbul, would be postponed and moved, citing both the ongoing pan-
demic and “concerns associated with issues of heritage management.”
The conversion of Hagia Sophia into a mosque made evident that,
despite earlier hesitations to connect our practice with political global
citizenship in support of Black Lives Matter, Byzantine studies is, in fact,
a political discipline. Our professional practice is inseparable from our
geopolitical circumstances. When a historical monument of great sig-
nificance to the discipline became a pawn of regional politics, Byzantine
Preface: The Historical Conjuncture xiii

studies mobilized its national and international committees to inter-

vene and to reprimand both the Turkish state and ultimately also our
Turkish colleagues on the ground. A group of Turkish graduate students
of Byzantine studies in Turkey wrote in response (20 July): “In an era
of identity politics, it is all too easy to be stigmatized as ‘the enemy’
in our own field of study on account of presupposed affiliations. At a
time when we need your support more than ever, we are left to feel
ostracized.”15
The historical conjuncture of (1) the global reassessment of the lega-
cies of colonialism and (2) the controversy around Hagia Sophia requires
that we ask what Byzantine studies and Byzantinists have stood for in
the past and stand for today. As various as their answers may be, the
contributors to this volume are united by their recognition of the value
of this project and their desire to pursue it in a fashion both critical and
generous.

We thank everyone who participated in the webinar (some forty col-

leagues in total) and those who responded to our question under
separate cover. Sophie Moore and Alexandra Vukovich designed and
implemented the three-part program of small-group discussions, a for-
mat that was inspired in turn by an earlier conference co-organized by
Nicholas Matheou.16 Roland Betancourt, series editor for Viewpoints,
and Eleanor Goodman, executive editor at Penn State University Press,
welcomed our proposal for a collaborative volume that would continue
the conversations begun in the webinar.
In order to preserve the dynamic and multivocal character of
that meeting, we solicited short contributions (“position pieces”) in
response to one or both of the following questions: Is Byzantine stud-
ies a colonialist discipline? How can we write a more critical historiog-
raphy of Byzantine studies? We furthermore asked authors to focus on
one object, site, text, problem, subfield, or scholarly practice and to
advance their arguments with minimal footnotes.
Our introduction to the volume, by contrast, attempts a synthetic
account of the critical historiography of Byzantine studies. Rooted in
the discussions held during the webinar, it has continued to evolve in
dialogue with the position pieces and the two anonymous reviewers, to
xiv Preface: The Historical Conjuncture

whom we are deeply grateful for their detailed comments on the draft
manuscript. We presented sections of our draft introduction during
a roundtable discussion (“Theorizing Byzantium and Byzantine Stud-
ies”) at the Twenty-Fourth International Congress of Byzantine Studies,
Venice, on 23 August 2022 and shared a complete draft of the preface
and introduction with the Research on Art & Visual Culture workshop
at Cornell University on 6 October 2022. We thank all who joined and
discussed.
Taken as a whole, accordingly, this book offers a multitude of views
on Byzantine studies during a fascinating moment of self-reflection. It
reveals, in brief, a field in motion.
We conclude with thanks to those who helped lend this volume
its final form: to Sam Barber for assistance in preparing the final man-
uscript for submission, to managing editor Laura Reed-Morrisson for
copyediting the manuscript, to Ayla Çevik for preparing the index (and
the Department of History of Art and Visual Studies at Cornell Univer-
sity for funding her work), and to editorial assistant Maddie Caso and
production coordinator Brian H. Beer for shepherding the volume into
print.

Notes
1. Karen E. Fields and Barbara J. Fields, Racecraft: The Soul of Inequality in Amer-
ican Life (London: Verso, 2012).
2. For Black Americans as “a submerged nation in the heartland of U.S. impe-
rialism, the main bulwark of the collapsing colonial system,” see Harry Haywood,
For a Revolutionary Position on the Negro Question (Chicago: Provisional Organiz-
ing Committee for the Reconstruction of a Marxist-Leninist Communist Party,
1958), available online at Marxists Internet Archive, accessed 13 July 2022, https://​
www​.marxists​.org​/history​/erol​/1956​–1960​/haywood02​.htm. See further Harry
Haywood and Milton Howard, Lynching: A Weapon of National Oppression (New
York: International Pamphlets, 1932), available online, with an introduction (on
“the national question”) by Erin Gray: Erin Gray, Harry Haywood, and Milton
Howard, “Lynching: A Weapon of National Oppression (1932),” Viewpoint Maga-
zine, 9 January 2017, https://​v iewpointmag​.com​/2017​/01​/09​/lynching​-a​-weapon​
-of​-national​-oppression​-1932/.
3. BAS Editorial Group, “Editorial,” British Art Studies 16, 30 June 2020, https://​
britishartstudies​.ac​.uk​/issues​/issue​-index​/issue​-16​/editorial​-574.
4. Adam J. Goldwyn, “Byzantium in the American Alt-Right Imagination: Par-
adigms of the Medieval Greek Past Among Men’s Rights Activists and White
Preface: The Historical Conjuncture xv

Supremacists,” in The Routledge Handbook on Identity in Byzantium, ed. Michael

Edward Stewart, David Alan Parnell, and Conor Whately (London: Routledge,
2022), 424–39; Roland Betancourt, “Why White Supremacists and QAnon Fans
Are Obsessed with the Byzantine Empire,” Salon, 8 March 2021, https://​w ww​
.salon​.com​/2021​/03​/08​/why​-white​-supremacists​-and​-qanon​-fans​-are​-obsessed​
-with​-the​-byzantine​-empire​_ partner/.
5. See especially Adam Goldwyn, “The Byzantine Workings of the Mano-
sphere,” Eidolon, 11 June 2018, https://​eidolon​.pub​/the​-byzantine​-workings​-of​
-the​-manosphere​-37db3be9e66.
6. “Statement by the Officers and Board of the Byzantine Studies Association
of North America,” Byzantine Studies Conference 2020 website, 7 June 2020,
https://​bsc2020​.net.
7. For a report on the webinar, see Benjamin Anderson and Mirela Ivanova,
“Towards a Critical Historiography of Byzantine Studies,” Byzantine Studies
Conference 2020 website, accessed 13 July 2022, https://​bsc2020​.net​/Towards​
-a​-Critical​-Historiography.
8. Quoted in Holly Case, The Age of Questions (Princeton: Princeton Univer-
sity Press, 2020), 100.
9. For an example of the latter, see Anton Kulikov, “Why Is Decolonization of
History So Popular Today?,” Pravda, 11 June 2020, https://e​ nglish.​ pravda.​ ru/​ world​
/144661​-decolonization​_history/.
10. For a first attempt at a history of these developments, see Brian Croke,
Flashpoint Hagia Sophia (London: Routledge, 2022).
11. “Ministry of Foreign Affairs Announcement on Today’s Reading from the
Quran in Hagia Sophia, on the Anniversary of the Fall of Constantinople,” Hellenic
Republic Ministry of Foreign Affairs website, 29 May 2020, https://​w ww​.mfa​.gr​
/en​/current​-affairs​/statements​-speeches​/ministry​-of​-foreign​-affairs​-announce
ment​-on​-todays​-reading​-from​-the​-quran​-in​-hagia​-sophia​-on​-the​-anniversary​
-of​-the​-fall​-of​-constantinople​.html.
12. “Hagia Sophia Decision Does Not Concern Greece, Erdoğan Says,” Daily
Sabah, 9 June 2020, https://​w ww​.dailysabah​.com​/politics​/diplomacy​/hagia​
-sophia​-decision​-does​-not​-concern​-greece​-erdogan​-says. For an analysis of
the controversy from the standpoint of international law, see Lando Kirchmair,
“Turning Hagia Sophia into a Mosque (Again): Has International Law Anything to
Say About That?,” Völkerrechtsblog, 21 July 2020, https://​voelkerrechtsblog​.org​/de​
/turning​-hagia​-sophia​-into​-a​-mosque​-again/. Kirchmair concludes that “inter-
national law in the form of the World Heritage Convention does not forbid the
announced change of status or holds only weak sanctions ready.”
13. For a letter signed by an international group of Byzantinists and Ottoman-
ists, see Friends of Hagia Sophia, “An Open Letter About the Status of Hagia
Sophia,” Medium, 30 June 2020, https://​medium​.com​/@hagiasophia​/an​-open​
-letter​-about​-the​-status​-of​-hagia​-sophia​-bea9afd1a62f.
14. For an analysis of the court’s decision, see “The Hagia Sophia Case,” Har-
vard Law Review, 11 January 2021, https://h​ arvardlawreview​.org​/2021​/01​/the​-hagia​
-sophia​-case/. For the text of the decision, in Turkish and English, see Tenth
xvi Preface: The Historical Conjuncture

Chamber of the Council of State of the Republic of Turkey, “Court Decision Annul-
ling Cabinet Decision of 1934 Converting Hagia Sophia into a Mosque,” SHA-
RIAsource, 2 July 2020, https://​beta​.shariasource​.com​/documents​/3778. For a
translation of Erdoğan’s decree, see Croke, Flashpoint, 56.
15. See the text of the letter here: https://​docs​.google​.com​/forms​/d​/e​
/1FAIpQLSekKjs1​-Qpt2LgAPu9dQsBf0​-AH0PIHXwJMchZohcx4uO0​-sQ​/viewform.
16. Ilya Afanasyev, Nicholas Evans, and Nicholas Matheou, “Doing Conferences
Differently,” Verso Books Blog, 14 September 2018, https://​w ww​.versobooks​.com​
/blogs​/4028​-doing​-conferences​-differently.
Introduction
For a Critical Historiography
of Byzantine Studies

Benjamin Anderson and Mirela Ivanova

Byzantine studies applies a variety of humanistic disciplines (art history,

archaeology, history, literature, philosophy, theology, and philology) to
the study of cultural, political, and social phenomena within a circum-
scribed chronology (ca. 500–1500 CE) and geography (the eastern Medi-
terranean and adjoining landmasses). If conceptualized as a transnational
and multigenerational project to describe and understand human activ-
ity in the past, it may serve as a model for coalition building and prob-
lem solving in the present and the common envisioning of a just future.
If, by contrast, it is reckoned to be an arcane body of knowledge—diffi-
cult to access and limited in appeal—then it may serve as a redoubt for
reaction, a refuge for the highly educated who seek personal comfort
and security in the present and see little hope for the future.
The question of colonialism is key to the current trajectory of Byz-
antine studies and to the future of the field. That said, we do not pre-
sume to answer our titular question with a simple “yes” or “no,” much
less to save (or to damn) our discipline. Instead, we hope to highlight
the distinctive character of our object of study (the Byzantine Empire)
2 Is Byzantine Studies a Colonialist Discipline?

and of our discipline (Byzantine studies): namely, that both are simul-
taneously colonial and colonized.
We are not the first to inquire into the relationships between Byz-
antine studies and European colonialism. Take, for example, two works
published in 2019: one by Panagiotis Agapitos and the other by George
Demacopoulos. Agapitos studies an extractive mission undertaken by
the Byzantinist Franz Dölger to occupied Athos in 1941 and its relation to
his influential “view of the Byzantine empire as a fully developed system
of a national population under a constitutionally organized state.”1 Dema-
copoulos studies a much older group of texts about Byzantium—those
produced by participants in another extractive colonialist enterprise,
the Fourth Crusade—and employs postcolonial critique to understand
the enduring concepts of Christian difference embedded therein.2
Similarly, we are far from the first to address the historiography of
Byzantine studies. Among the many earlier contributions included in
the bibliography at the end of this volume, we wish to highlight one of
the most recent. Published in 2021 and edited by two contributors to
the present volume, Nathanael Aschenbrenner and Jake Ransohoff, The
Invention of Byzantium in Early Modern Europe offers an impressive “cross
section” of the discipline’s founding figures, albeit without explicitly
addressing their direct participation (or indirect implication) in colo-
nial projects.3
Our concept of “critical historiography” is shaped by two studies of
neighboring disciplines. In The Nation and Its Ruins (2007), Yannis Hami-
lakis demonstrates that modern Greek studies “can only be adequately
addressed if it is positioned within the discourse of post-colonial stud-
ies, and only when the interplay between colonialism and nationalism
is fully explored.”4 Similarly, in Beyond Balkanism (2019), Diana Mish-
kova highlights the origins of southeast European studies in the work
of “scholar-officials” employing “the language of the then triumphant
European colonialism.”5
As the contributors to this volume demonstrate, Byzantine studies
is no less entangled with the practices and legacies of European colo-
nialism than are modern Greek studies and southeast European stud-
ies, even as the contours of its entanglement—the specific knots and
nodes that tie the production of knowledge to projects of colonial rule
Introduction 3

and extraction—are distinctive. It is the job of a systematic critical his-

toriography of Byzantine studies both to map this topography and to
envision the alternatives: how Byzantine studies might contribute to
the formation of a more just and equitable society.
Accordingly, we consider the chapters below and the thematic bib-
liography that follows as contributions to this much broader project.
The bibliography is meant as a tool, not as a comprehensive record of
all works mentioned in this volume. It was compiled collectively by
participants in our original workshop and contributors to this volume.
It reveals that the critical historiography of Byzantine studies is still
a fragmented (more optimistically, a nascent) discourse. None of the
texts cite or refer to any substantial portion of the others. This is not
the intellectual production of a self-conscious field of critical historiog-
raphy; rather, it is an undercurrent of locally occasioned critical reflec-
tions. We hope that in mapping it across disciplines and specialties,
the book and bibliography may serve as a foundation for a more coher-
ent intellectual project, both by gathering various approaches to the
question of colonialism in Byzantine studies and by looking outward
and situating Byzantine studies among the neighboring disciplines of
classics and medieval studies.

Orientalism and Nationalism

Unlike the study of ancient Greece and Rome and the study of the
Western Middle Ages, the study of the Byzantine Empire was never
essential to the formation of modern Europe and the pursuit of its colo-
nial enterprises. Rather, Byzantium was constructed as the decadent,
effeminate foil to a vigorous, manly Europe: in short, as an especially
proximate branch of an imagined Orient.6 Beginning in the nineteenth
century, this marginalization provoked a response on the part of schol-
ars in orthodox Christian nations who sought to construct an equally
imaginary, idealized image of Byzantium as a usable past in the service
of modern political projects.7
The foregoing observations, whose truth we fully acknowledge, have
led some of our interlocutors to pose two objections to our titular ques-
tion. First: Byzantium is so marginalized and orientalized that Byzantine
4 Is Byzantine Studies a Colonialist Discipline?

studies cannot possibly be a colonialist discipline. Second: nationalism,

not colonialism, is at the root of the discipline’s discontents.
It is hard to argue with the premise of the first objection. Of course,
and as we discuss in greater detail below, Byzantium has been mar-
ginalized by traditional histories of Western civilization. In a material
act with symbolic significance, Byzantine strata have been stripped
off excavation sites to reveal the prized yet architecturally formulaic
monuments of antiquity hidden below.8 Even while granting the prem-
ise, however, the conclusion does not necessarily follow. Marginalized
fields of study can be conducted in a colonialist manner: one need look
no further than the histories of the study of Sanskrit philosophy and
Arabic literature.9 In short, while Byzantium may be marginal to Euro-
centric discourse, Byzantine studies, if practiced in a colonialist mode,
can contribute further to its marginalization.
The second objection brings us to questions of definition. What is
colonialism? What is nationalism? And have they been, as the objec-
tion suggests, clearly distinct and mutually exclusive factors in shap-
ing the history of scholarship?
Defining colonialism is not a straightforward task. In 1995, Jürgen
Osterhammel devoted an entire book to this project, delineating six
forms of colonialism, six epochs, and three basic types with a pleth-
ora of subdivisions. According to Osterhammel’s preferred definition,
“colonialism is a relationship of rule between collectives, in which the
fundamental decisions about the lives led by the colonized are made
and carried out by a culturally foreign minority of colonial rulers, unin-
terested in acculturation, and primarily driven by external interests.
In modern history, this is usually combined with missionizing justifica-
tory doctrines, which rest upon the colonial rulers’ conviction of their
own cultural supremacy.”10
Such theoretical work continues, with various authors arguing at
different times that empire and colony are different, or that a colony
is a part of an empire, or indeed that the two concepts are best col-
lapsed.11 Nevertheless, the applicability of the concept of colonialism
to the medieval world remains contested. Osterhammel’s first epoch
is 1520–70, after the end of the Byzantine state and contemporary with
the origin of Byzantine studies.12
Introduction 5

In bringing the concept of colonialism to bear on the historiogra-

phy of Byzantine studies, we do not intend to contribute to this tech-
nical-definitional debate. We have not chosen colonialism because we
believe it to be a clear and bounded concept better suited to explaining
East Rome than the commonsense “empire.” Concepts in the world are
never siloed off from one another, nor are they composed of discrete
sets of necessary and sufficient conditions. Their use is often messy,
“a complicated network of similarities, overlapping and criss-crossing,”
guided more by family resemblance than essence.13 Empire and colo-
nial empire have more commonalities than differences. Both rely on
the existence of a hierarchical extractive regime encompassing vast
swaths of peoples, cultures, and linguistic traditions. But they are dif-
ferent in what they evoke and in the history of their study.
Accordingly, we chose to bring colonialism to the discussion because
we hoped that its history would help reframe some key questions relat-
ing both to the history of Byzantium and to the history of Byzantine
studies. In particular, we believe that the field of postcolonial studies
offers us the tools to think critically about both the Byzantine Empire
and the field dedicated to its study.
With respect to the history of Byzantium, the term “empire” is suf-
ficiently ubiquitous in our field to have assumed a robust moral ambiv-
alence. It means different things to different people and thus allows
consensus without productive debate. Asking whether Byzantium was
a colonial empire, even only as a rhetorical provocation, can help rein-
troduce specificity and genuinely productive disagreement. “Colonial-
ism” conjures the realities of extraction and exploitation upon which
empires are based more vividly than the celebrationist studies of the
Byzantine Empire’s survival (on which see Nicholas Matheou’s chapter
below). It provokes a different emphasis, different semantic and emo-
tional associations, and, ultimately and most productively, different
responses. Foremost of these is a concern with the subaltern, the col-
onized and oppressed whose lived experience the term brings to the
forefront: “the experiences of those people who suffered as a result of
state and institution formation.”14
In terms of the history of the discipline, scholars and scholarship
are useful within colonialism as, in Osterhammel’s terms, one means by
6 Is Byzantine Studies a Colonialist Discipline?

which colonial rulers convince themselves of their own cultural suprem-

acy. This dynamic has been well explicated in postcolonial studies, dat-
ing back to the foundational works of Edward Said, Gayatri Chakravorty
Spivak, and Talal Asad. These and many other thinkers have elucidated
the role of academies and scholars in the distribution of resources and
power. As Robert J. C. Young wrote in 1990, and in dialogue with Spiv-
ak’s work, “the difficult political questions . . . emerge from the analy-
sis of colonialism because it combines its critique of Western history
with one of Western historicism, showing the enactment of the links
between the two in the colonial past and the neocolonial present. The
effect of this has been to produce a shift away from the problem of his-
tory as an idea towards an examination of Western history’s and his-
toricism’s contemporary political ramifications. For that history lives
on: its effects are operating now.”15 Who gets to speak, and who does
not, is a question as relevant to our medieval sources as it is to our
modern conference programs, and colonialism impacts both.
By bringing the concept of colonialism to our field, we do not deny
the impact of nationalism on Byzantine studies. As Partha Chatter-
jee demonstrated in his 1986 Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World,
the discourses of nationalism and colonialism have much in common,
including their civilizing mission and their patriarchal sense of gender
and sexuality. Indeed, although nationalist discourse “challenged the
colonial claim to political domination, it also accepted the very intellec-
tual premises of ‘modernity’ on which colonial domination was based.”16
Moreover, to construct the nation from the top down itself requires a
form of colonization, which irons out the creases of regional and local
difference.17
It is perhaps unsurprising, therefore, that nationalism as a discourse
emerged from centers of imperial and colonial rule.18 Some of the regions
whose medieval histories are studied under the remit of Byzantine stud-
ies—including Turkey and the Balkans—were never directly colonized
by modern European powers.19 Other regions, such as the Caucasus,
Egypt, Palestine, Iraq, and Syria, were. Nevertheless, the intellectual
elites of both were often educated in colonial capitals: Amsterdam,
Brussels, London, Moscow, Paris, Vienna.
Introduction 7

Accordingly, we do not seek to dismiss the role of nationalism in

the construction of Byzantine studies, both historically and today.
Rather, we hope that by placing nationalist scholarly production within
a broader framework of colonial relations and intellectual hegemony,
we might view the role of nationalism in our field differently. Let us
begin by rejecting the pernicious distinction, effectively highlighted by
Chatterjee, between the “good” nationalism of the West and the “evil”
nationalism of the East.20 Nationalism is a condition that unavoidably
shapes all scholarship in Byzantine studies, regardless of the national
affiliations of the author. The question, then, is what we choose to do
with it. Can this shared condition serve not as a cause for perennial
lament, or mutual recrimination, but as a tool for comparing our own
field to others and for building transnational resistance to the ongo-
ing material and intellectual legacies of European colonialism?

Empire and Discipline, Colonizer and Colonized

Features of colonialism and coloniality can be found at different times
in both the East Roman Empire in the medieval Mediterranean and in
the modern discipline of Byzantine studies. This ambiguity makes Byz-
antium an especially fascinating object of analysis and should allow
Byzantine studies to contribute productively to postcolonial studies.
Byzantine history is conventionally related in terms of the shifting
fortunes of the East Roman state and its post-1204 successors, espe-
cially of their elites. Periods traditionally viewed as “golden ages”—
the era of Justinian, for example—are unmistakably marked by colonial
empire. In raw material terms, Corisande Fenwick has shown that the
Justinianic conquest of North Africa did not represent the return of
the beloved king, but rather an aggressive and unwelcome exploit-
ative regime run out of small fortifications amid the sprawling, yet no
longer defensible, urban landscapes.21 Similarly, Anthony Kaldellis has
argued that Byzantine rule in eleventh-century Bulgaria “looks more
like an occupation”: Bulgaria was governed “through primarily military
and fiscal institutions, without giving its people much opportunity to
rise in the Roman system.”22
8 Is Byzantine Studies a Colonialist Discipline?

To these instances of direct colonial rule, we may add less direct

mechanisms of Byzantine colonialism: in particular, production of eth-
nographic and geographic knowledge and conversion to Orthodoxy. East
Roman bureaucrats recorded information about the histories of nonlit-
erate peoples in the Balkans and central Asia for the purposes of dip-
lomatic domination. The most famous example is the De administrando
imperio by Emperor Constantine VII (913–59), the functions of which have
been aptly characterized by Paul Magdalino: “Constantine applies to
each geographic area on the imperial horizon the degree of historical
narrative and topographic description that is appropriate to his impe-
rial and . . . dynastic interests. The depth and angle of coverage varies
not only according to the quantity and quality of his sources and the
degree of processing, but also, and I would argue primarily, according
to the potential for imperial intervention and domination, both inside
and outside the empire.”23 For all its distortions, this record is often all
we have for imagining what those subalterns would say if they could
speak. As Alexandra Vukovich notes in this volume, who gets to name
a people is not a neutral question.
The relation of Orthodox missions to Byzantine colonialism is more
complex. Sergey Ivanov has charted the central contradiction of mis-
sionary work in Byzantium, which pitted a universalist, Christian dis-
course against an exceptionalist, civilizing one: “What happened when
these two discourses collided with each other? Almost always the cul-
tural snobbery inherited from the Roman Empire prevailed. Only Impe-
rial Christianity, in which the Imperial predominated over the Christian,
was recognized as genuine. A barbarian was located outside the dichot-
omy of ‘Christianity’ versus ‘paganism.’”24 In other words, Byzantine
missions closely resemble Osterhammel’s “missionizing justificatory
doctrines, which rest upon the colonial rulers’ conviction of their own
cultural supremacy.” It is telling that Dimitri Obolensky, the twen-
tieth-century Russian-British historian, employed the term “com-
monwealth” to describe the influence that Byzantium exerted on its
neighbors by means of its perceived religious authority.25 Perhaps he
sought merely to render the Byzantines sympathetic by analogy to the
British Empire’s postwar rebranding as a soft-power “commonwealth.”
In doing so, however, he opened up the possibility that Byzantium
Introduction 9

could itself be colonial. Outside our field, the colonial nature of Byzan-
tine missions has not gone unnoticed. For example, Alan Strathern has
compared Byzantine conversion of the Slavs with more recent colonial
Portuguese missions in Sri Lanka and Oceania.26
So, Byzantium could be colonial—and yet it could also be colonized.
In periods for which the principal narrative frame has been the decline
of state power, claimants to the inheritance of East Rome found them-
selves vassals or clients to emergent foreign powers. In the seventh
century, elite authors bemoaned the collapse of Roman hegemony in
the Mediterranean.27 After 1204, Constantinople and large portions of
the southern Balkans were added to the colonial conquests of the cru-
saders. Loss of territory continued, and East Roman elites lamented
their reduced state in elaborate prose. Many simultaneously integrated
into the new elite cultures—be they Latin or Islamicate—that shaped
the early modern eastern Mediterranean.28
So far, all these questions have concerned the shifting fortunes
of Byzantine elites on a global stage. By contrast, the exploitation of
masses of non-elites from the empire’s various ethnic communities
was a constant through the Byzantine millennium. These people served
the state as its laborers and soldiers in its various deadly wars. In the
late medieval period, they were exploited by the colonial ventures of
the Venetians and Genoese, who took control of key territories in the
Aegean and Black Sea.29 There is, of course, no need to assume that
exploitation along ethnic or linguistic lines is any less extortionate
than that done by “foreign” elites.
In brief, throughout Byzantine history, we find the key features of
colonialism both exerted by the East Roman state upon others (includ-
ing its own subaltern) and exerted by others upon East Roman elites or
their claimant successors. The Byzantine Empire—at different times
and places, and in regard to different social classes—was both colonist
and colonized.
Multiple contributors to this volume, including Arietta Papacon-
stantinou, Alexandra Vukovich, and Nicholas Matheou, draw atten-
tion to the realities of this violence, both physical and semantic. They
thus participate in a growing resistance within medieval studies to
the abstraction of medieval violence. As Geraldine Heng has written,
10 Is Byzantine Studies a Colonialist Discipline?

since it is “fictionalized as a politically unintelligible time, because it

lacks the signifying apparatus expressive of, and witnessing, modernity,
medieval time is . . . absolved of the errors and atrocities of the mod-
ern, while its own errors and atrocities are shunted aside as essentially
nonsignificative, without modern meaning, because occurring outside
the conditions structuring intelligible discourse on, and participation
in, modernity and its cultures.”30 By naming colonial violence when we
see it in our sources—whether enacted by, against, within, or despite
Byzantium—we render Byzantine history intelligible as human history
and thus combat the fictionalization of Byzantium as an extrahistori-
cal entity.
Like Byzantium, the discipline of Byzantine studies, embedded as
it is within national academic regimes, has found itself on both sides
of the colonial/colonized coin. In the longue durée of Western historiog-
raphy, the study of the East Roman Empire has always been the pre-
serve of a hyperliterate elite, versed in dead languages and provisioned
with the necessary corpora and instrumenta. Similarly, its entanglement
with European colonialism has remained a constant over time, even
as its institutional configurations have shifted. As Aschenbrenner and
Ransohoff show in this volume, the earliest humanist scholars of Byz-
antium, such as Hieronymus Wolf, relied for their patronage on the
system and profits of early modern European colonialism, while the
knowledge they produced was instrumentalized in power politics (as,
for example, a tool against the Ottomans).31 The efflorescence of Byz-
antine studies at the court of Louis XIV (1643–1715) coincided with the
establishment of the French colonial empire in North America and the
Caribbean. Jean-Baptiste Colbert was the architect of France’s notori-
ous Code Noir, which legitimated and regulated slavery in the colonies;
a patron of the Byzantine du Louvre, a new corpus of Byzantine historical
works; and a collector of medieval Greek manuscripts, nearly nine hun-
dred in total, all now in the collection of the Bibliothèque nationale de
France.32 Whereas absolutist France deemed Byzantine splendor wor-
thy of emulation, the balance shifted in the following century, even as
the relation to contemporary empire remained. For Edward Gibbon,
the long history of the Roman Empire exposed the flaws of universal
Introduction 11

monarchy; Britain’s maritime empire (he believed) was immune to any

analogous decline into despotism.33
These colonial entanglements continued into the age of universities.
As Ihor Ševčenko observed, the “old Byzantinists” of the late nineteenth
and early twentieth centuries “lived in an elitist world that was deemed
conceptually and intellectually stable. . . . It was commonly understood
that few people would land at the top and that those who did would
wield considerable power.”34 Some wielded that power directly in the
service of colonial empire. For example, as a Byzantinist, Arnold J. Toyn-
bee wrote an authoritative monograph on Emperor Constantine VII; as
a colonialist, he served as a delegate to the Paris Peace Conference of
1919.35 The nature of his advocacy is intimated in his Nationality and the
War, in which he explicitly calls for the colonial partition of Afghani-
stan between Russia and British India.36
Not all Byzantinists were so directly involved, but Byzantine stud-
ies legitimized itself as a discipline in part through the promise of pro-
ducing useful knowledge for the colonial powers that funded it. Thus,
for example, Karl Krumbacher, justifying the independence of his dis-
cipline in the first issue (1892) of the Byzantinische Zeitschrift—the first
journal dedicated to Byzantine studies and, to this day, one of the most
prestigious—remarked that “neither the Turkish nor the present-day
Greek nor indeed the Slavic law can be understood without the his-
tory of Byzantine law.”37
Krumbacher’s claim is characteristic not only in its instrumental-
ity but also in its perception of Byzantium as a superior, civilizing force
within the complex linguistic and religious landscape of the eastern
Mediterranean—in his words, “a unique, half-cultured, half-wild ethnic
complex that lies between civilized Europe and barbaric Asia.”38 As Papa-
constantinou shows in this volume, the so-called Oriental Churches,
too, were perceived as secondary emanations from Byzantine Chris-
tianity, to be studied by Byzantinists who believed the achievements
of Latin and Greek far superior to those of Coptic or Syriac. Even now,
the study of medieval Armenian, Georgian, Syriac, Coptic, or Slavonic
is often offered as a supplement to Byzantine studies proper; in the
Metropolitan Museum’s influential exhibition and catalogue of 1997,
12 Is Byzantine Studies a Colonialist Discipline?

the material remains of such cultures are displayed as testaments to

the “glory of Byzantium.”
This intellectual environment shaped the discovery and use of Byz-
antine material culture. In this volume, Arielle Winnik shows how the
acquisition of Byzantine-period materials was directly entangled with
colonial rule. Art from the Byzantine period was taken from Egypt during
the so-called British Protectorate, then displayed and interpreted in
step with the broader colonial project of nineteenth-century Britain.
At other times the relations were far more complex than colonizer-col-
onized, as discussed in this volume by Hugh Jeffery, with reference to
the archaeological work done by the Russian Archaeological Institute
in Constantinople (1885–1914), and by Stephanie Caruso, with reference
to such local agents as Osman Hamdi Bey, the French-educated direc-
tor of the Ottoman Imperial Museum in Istanbul.
By drawing attention to connections between European colonial-
ism and the emergence of Byzantine studies, we do not discredit the
genuine intellectual curiosity that has motivated many individuals to
undertake arduous scholarly labors, often with little remuneration or
recognition. We seek, instead, to elucidate the underlying conditions
that have enabled such work and to which each scholar has of neces-
sity responded, whether explicitly, through support or opposition, or
(as far more frequently) implicitly, through silence. We must engage
frankly with the fact that Byzantinists could, at one time or another,
be the profiteers of colonial wealth, the intellectual architects of colo-
nial rule, or simply passive but complicit participants in these wider
political processes.
This view of Byzantine studies may seem fully at odds with some of
the other essays in this volume. More generally, it may appear jarring
to some Byzantinists today, whose experience has often been defined
by a sense of marginality. The East Roman Empire has never held the
same central position in narratives of Western civilization as its classi-
cal ancestor. As Averil Cameron notes in her contribution to this volume,
even some prominent chairs of Byzantine studies held a disparaging
attitude toward Byzantine culture and civilization. Consider, for exam-
ple, a judgment by Romilly Jenkins, then Lecturer in Modern and Medie-
val Greek at the University of Cambridge and later named to the Koraes
Introduction 13

Chair of Modern Greek and Byzantine History, Language and Literature

at King’s College, London: “The Byzantine Empire remains almost the
unique example of a highly civilized state, lasting for more than a mil-
lennium, which produced hardly any educated writing which can be
read with pleasure for its literary merit alone.”39 Or consider how Cyril
Mango, briefly Jenkins’s successor in the Koraes Chair and later Bywater
and Sotheby Professor of Byzantine Greek at the University of Oxford,
concluded his account (still widely praised) of the Byzantine reception
of classical statuary: “Here ends our sad story—sad, because the Byz-
antines derived so little benefit from the statues that they took care
to preserve. Byzantium fulfilled its historic role by transmitting to the
more receptive West the Greek heritage in parchment and paper; it was
unable to transmit in the same fashion and at the right time the heri-
tage in bronze and marble.”40 As Kaldellis notes in this volume, the der-
ogation of Byzantium by Byzantinists represents the internalization of
the Eurocentrism of the (Western) academy: a Eurocentrism that left the
medieval Roman empire in the cold while laying claim to ancient Greek
and Roman culture as the foundations of Western liberal democracy.
In this account, Byzantium is no more than the hapless but nec-
essary conduit of the surviving scraps of classical culture (“the Greek
heritage in parchment and paper”). Frequently, editions of classical
sources extract excerpts and publish them with no reference to their
medieval collectors. Figures as complex as Constantine VII and Eusta-
thios of Thessaloniki—not to mention the anonymous but equally com-
plex authors of the Souda lexicon and similar compilations—are seen
as no more than passive vessels for this great inheritance.41
It is tempting to characterize this as a problem of representation:
Byzantium lacks a national successor, and thus Byzantine studies lacks
an advocate in the world of national academies.42 The young Greek
state, as Hamilakis has shown, was eager to cash in on Western fascina-
tion with classical Athens and accordingly remained ambivalent toward
its Byzantine past. In the historiography of other Balkan nations, Byz-
antium has become an uncomfortable reminder of Eastern isolation, its
textual output no more than an awkward imperial record from which to
rescue national histories.43 Nor is Eurocentrism the only foe of a flour-
ishing Byzantine studies. As Şebnem Dönbekci, Bahattin Bayram, and
14 Is Byzantine Studies a Colonialist Discipline?

Zeynep Olgun discuss in this volume, other hegemonic frameworks can

marginalize Byzantine history, such as (in Turkey) a mythologizing glo-
rification of the Seljuks and Ottomans.
One might argue in response that the Byzantines were in fact truly
European, or truly Anatolian, but this is an intellectual dead end. The
politics of representation will not save Byzantine studies. Efforts to
integrate Byzantium into Europe, as Kaldellis notes, harm both others
(for example, those east of Byzantium who are pushed out) and the
discipline itself. The cost of admission is too high. It solidifies existing
parochialisms, when the ambiguous status of Byzantium might help
rather to destabilize and dissolve them.

Race Before Modernity

How might this destabilization work in practice? By way of an example,
we turn to one of the most contested questions in premodern scholar-
ship today: the origins of race and racism.44 A steady stream of publi-
cations over the course of the last two decades have argued that race
and racism existed in the classical world and in the Middle Ages. In
2004, Benjamin Isaac published his case, entitled The Invention of Rac-
ism in Classical Antiquity.45 In 2018, unperturbed by this, Geraldine Heng
published her The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages.46 Other
contenders for the birth of prejudice, and particularly anti-Black prej-
udice, can be found in the histories and rhetoric of Judaism, Islam, and
Christianity, or in ancient philosophy.47
By contrast, and as Jules Gleeson has recently observed, “Byzantine
studies still awaits a treatment of racism and ethnic-prejudice equiva-
lent to Geraldine Heng’s book The Invention of Race in the European Mid-
dle Ages.”48 Indeed, one would be hard-pressed to argue that modern
racism or white supremacy were invented in Byzantium—precisely
because Byzantium rarely, if ever, served as a positive exemplum for
the architects of European colonialism. Nevertheless, and as we dis-
cuss in detail below, anti-Black prejudice is amply attested in Byzan-
tine art and literature. Accordingly, a view from Byzantine studies can
help shift the discussion of premodern race from a debate about ori-
gins to an analysis of cultural practice.
Introduction 15

In its broadest outlines, the debate about origins pits gradual-

ism against catastrophism. The former position identifies elements
of ancient and medieval thought that later evolved into modern rac-
ism. For example, Cord Whitaker identifies a medieval transition from
a “desire for unity” to the “desire for strife,” predominantly in the con-
text of religious thought. When the desire for strife was bonded to a
metaphorical conception of sin as black and salvation as white, con-
temporary hierarchies of race began to fossilize.49
Among scholars of premodern race, Heng is one of the most uncom-
promising in her assertion that the logic and functions of racism can
be found in the medieval world. For Heng, race “is a structural rela-
tionship for the articulation and management of human differences.”
It thus names “a repeating tendency . . . to demarcate human beings
through differences amongst humans that are selectively essentialized
as absolute and fundamental, in order to distribute positions and pow-
ers differentially to human groups.”50 Her benchmark example is thir-
teenth-century England, where the state used a series of racializing
policies and technologies to demonize Jews, legalize violence against
them, and eventually expel them en masse. For Heng, not calling this
racism is a historiographical failure.
The objections raised against this literature are plentiful, and
some have been motivated by ill will. But a more potent and intellec-
tually robust critique holds that our modern racial order is different in
kind, not degree, from those of the classical and medieval world. The
catastrophes of colonialism and transatlantic slavery and the subse-
quent globalization of white supremacy render modern racism funda-
mentally distinct from the production and policing of racial, ethnic, or
religious difference in the premodern world.
Vanita Seth and Charles Mills are among the most recent and forceful
advocates of this position. For Seth, looking for race in the Middle Ages
is a failure of intellectual historical practice, as it rests on “the implicit
presumption that racism is an empty vessel residing outside the his-
tory it is said to contain.”51 She suggests instead “that it is possible to
speak of conversations across time without presuming a continuity of
meaning over time. . . . One can recognize, for example, the long history
of Christian vilification of Jews or Muslims without thereby presuming
16 Is Byzantine Studies a Colonialist Discipline?

that medieval renderings of heathens and infidels share the same con-
ceptual meaning as contemporary anti-Semitism or Islamophobia.”52
Similarly, Mills emphasizes the radically unique conditions that pro-
duce and sustain modern white supremacy and, with it, the possibil-
ity of an oppositional Black philosophy. For him, a number of necessary
conditions must be fulfilled for racial subordination to be identified,
including “the existence of race as a social category, the existence of
Blackness as one of the extant racial categories, and the subordination
of Africans and Afro-descendant populations under that designation.”53
The premodern world cannot fulfill this third condition in particular,
because “even if race as ideology, discourse and iconography is older
than the conventional post-war narrative claimed, race as a planetary
system is unambiguously modern. . . . Race is ontologized in a way that
it is not in premodernity because inherited discourses of racial stigma-
tization, whether secular or Christian, now have coercive power behind
them in the form of the racial state.”54 While Mills grants that medieval
states could be racial, pointing to Heng’s example of thirteenth-cen-
tury England, the modern, post-Enlightenment racial state is rendered
unique by the contradiction between the “declared universal equality”
of liberalism and the new inequalities that it consolidated.55

Byzantine Anti-Blackness
We turn now to the question of race in Byzantium, in the hopes that it
might help dissolve the strong dichotomy between the gradualist and
the catastrophist positions on premodern race. Since Byzantium was
neither the origin of nor the chosen exemplum for modern Europe,
Byzantine ideas about race cannot have evolved directly into modern
racism and white supremacy. We are therefore free to consider not
whether Byzantium was (or Byzantines were) racist, but how certain
ideas about skin color could be deployed to different ends under dif-
ferent circumstances. Skin color was not and is not the only basis for
racialization, but a study of the full complexity of race in Byzantium
lies outside the scope of this introduction. Accordingly, and because of
the origin of our volume in Black Lives Matter, we focus here on Byz-
antine anti-Blackness.
Introduction 17

In this investigation, we take our cue from Stuart Hall’s concept of

“the elements of a cultural practice,” which “do not in themselves have
any necessary political connotations. It is not the individual elements
of a discourse that have political or ideological connotations; it is the
way those elements are organized together into a new discursive for-
mation.”56 In the following, we are concerned with a specific element of
Byzantine cultural practice, namely, the figure of the Ethiopian demon.
Our question is not “Is this figure racist?” but rather “How has this fig-
ure been recombined and deployed to political ends?”
All students of Byzantine art and literature confront the frequent
representation of demons as Black, African, and ugly.57 In a character-
istic example from the tenth-century Life of Saint Basil the Younger, the
saint’s late servant, Theodora, relates that on her death she “saw clearly
multitudes of Ethiopians standing around my bed, creating a distur-
bance and commotion . . . contorting in mockery their black and gloomy
and dark faces, the mere sight of which alone seemed to me most ter-
rifying and more bitter than even the Gehenna of fire.”58 The medieval
figure of the Ethiopian demon shares with modern anti-Black stereo-
types an association between black skin and African origin, on the one
hand, and moral and aesthetic depravity, on the other.59 In Theodora’s
account, moreover, as in other contemporary saints’ lives, the demons
are counterpoised to beautiful, virtuous, White angels: “As I turned
my eyes here and there away from the loathsome and accursed sights
and directed the spiritual gaze of my soul elsewhere (for I could in no
way stand to see or hear the chatterings of those polluted creatures),
I suddenly saw two exceedingly beautiful young men just then coming
toward me, their heads resplendent with golden hair, their skin white
as snow, exceedingly sweet in appearance, clad in dazzling garments.”60
The figure of the Ethiopian demon finds precedents in earlier eras.
In pre-Christian Greek and Latin literature, “demonic beings” and “the
unquiet dead” were characterized by black skin, sometimes associated
with African origin.61 For example, Suetonius describes a masque “in
which scenes from the lower world were represented by Egyptians and
Ethiopians.”62 However, some ancient authors considered the fear of
Black people to be childish, a principle enunciated by the geographer
and historian Agatharchides (second century BCE): “But the Ethiopians
 Fig. I.1 Solar diagram
from the Handy Tables
of Ptolemy, ca. 800.
Vatican City, Biblioteca
Apostolica Vaticana,
Vaticanus graecus
1291, fol. 9r. © 2023
Biblioteca Apostolica
Vaticana.

will terrify the Greeks. How? By their blackness and the strangeness of
their appearance? Among us such fear does not persist beyond child-
hood. In wars and important disputes, however, the matters at issue are
decided not by appearance and color but by daring and intelligence.”63
The demonic combatants of early Christian literature both hard-
ened preexisting associations between black skin and moral and aes-
thetic depravity and weakened the accompanying skepticism.64 Among
the earliest examples is the Acts of Peter, in which Marcellus beholds in
a vision the apostle beheading a demon, “a most hideous woman, in
appearance entirely Ethiopian, not Egyptian, but completely black.”65
As David Brakke has argued, such stories served above all to illustrate
their heroes’ divinely granted clarity of vision, which enables them to
perceive the demons’ blackness.66
The contrast between demonic blackness and saintly clarity of
vision was further developed in middle Byzantine hagiography. In the
Introduction 19

tenth-century Life of Saint Andrew the Fool, the hero explains that only
blackness separates demons from angels: “the angels of God are spot-
less and pure . . . whereas the demons are useless, black, dark, sinful,
and accursed.”67 The faces of the righteous shine with white light.68 By
contrast, the devil’s eyes emit smoke, as when a monk recognizes the
devil “in the shape of a black Ethiopian, smoke coming forth from his
eyes.”69 In the closely related Life of Niphon, the hero’s friend tells him,
“your face looks black, like an Ethiopian,” upon which Niphon “realized
that his vision had been darkened from the multitude of his sins.”70
The association between black skin and visual impairment may
underlie the Byzantine convention of representing night as a Black
woman. The goddess Nyx appears rarely in ancient Greek and Roman
art and is not distinguished by skin color.71 By contrast, in the Vati-
can Ptolemy, produced around the year 800 in Constantinople, a ring
of twelve “black- and white-skinned women represent the night and
the day, respectively” (fig. I.1).72 In the Octateuchs, manuscripts of the
eleventh and twelfth centuries that contain the first eight books of the
Bible, personifications of Night and Day accompany Genesis 1:3–5, the
separation of light from darkness. Once more, Night is a dark-skinned
woman at left, Day a light-skinned boy at right, and the hand of God
illumines the latter (as in fig. I.2).73
One final aspect of the Ethiopian demon is worthy of note in the
present context: its conflation with the figure of the Muslim “Saracen.”

Fig. I.2 The separation

of light from darkness
(Genesis 1:3–5), twelfth
century. Smyrna, Evan-
gelical School A.1 (lost),
fol. 4v. D. C. Hessel-
ing, Miniatures de l’Oc-
tateuque grec de Smyrne
(Leiden: Sijthoff, 1909),
fig. 3.
20 Is Byzantine Studies a Colonialist Discipline?

Fig. I.3 Saint Michael defeating an attack on Constantinople, 1347–49, from the
church of the Archangel Michael, Lesnovo, North Macedonia. Photo: Erich Lessing /
Art Resource, New York.

For example, in the eleventh-century Life of Saint Neilos of Rossano, the

devil places “terrible snares” in the hero’s path, among them “a crowd
of Saracens—black Ethiopians with wild eyes, evil faces, all appear-
ing like demons—reclining beneath a grove of trees.”74 As Kalina Yam-
boliev observes, “the vitriolic language the hagiographers employed
in reference to the Muslims, in sharp contrast to the terms of angelic
purity they assigned to the demeanor of the saints, was essential to
the affective framing that promoted Italo-Greek oppositional identity
to the Muslim Saracen.”75
For an analogous figure of the Black Saracen in visual art, consider a
fourteenth-century painting in the Monastery of the Archangel Michael
in Lesnovo, which depicts the first Arab siege of Constantiople (674–
78). The attacking sailors, identified by the inscription as “Saracens,”
are vanquished by the archangel (fig. I.3). As Paul H. D. Kaplan remarks,
“the nine attackers all have tightly curled hair and dark skin. Although
their ethnicity surely denotes Islamic religious identity, the presence
of the winged archangel Michael also suggests that the dark men have
a demonic dimension.”76 Thus, both saint’s life and painting take an
additional step: the racialization of Muslims as Black.
Introduction 21

In most of the representations discussed thus far, the figure of the

Black Ethiopian serves as a foil to a figure of divine Whiteness. The
Ethiopian demons at Theodora’s bedside in the Life of Saint Basil the
Younger are contrasted to White angels; the personification of Night
serves as a foil to divine illumination; and the figures of Black Muslims
reinforce the divine protection accorded to Christians. In this sense,
the Ethiopian demon falls short of Mills’s final necessary condition for
the existence of racism. The intent was not to subordinate Africans.
Byzantine anti-Blackness did not spur wars of conquest against Afri-
can states. Nor is it clear that it correlated to, or encouraged, prejudi-
cial treatment of black people in Byzantium.77
Nevertheless, and as Yamboliev writes, medieval hagiography and
European anti-immigrant discourse share a common structure and
purpose: “The resonant utilization of an affective rhetoric of violence,
danger, and invasion, whether directed at Muslim ‘Saracens’ or mod-
ern migrants is, at its root and across the centuries, a language of
self-preservation employed by those who seek to protect traditional
hierarchies of power and privilege.”78 Just as contemporary anti-immi-
grant discourse results in actual violence against the individuals whom
it casts as foreign, so too did the metaphorical conception of Black-
ness in premodernity directly affect the lives of Africans—for exam-
ple, the actors in Suetonius’s masque, and the Ethiopian man who was
kidnapped by Venetians and forced to mock imperial ceremonial in the
reign of Emperor Manuel I Komnenos (1143–80).79

Cultural Practice, Then and Now

Returning now to Hall’s account of the elements of cultural practice,
it remains for us to investigate how Byzantine concepts of Blackness
could be deployed in new discursive formations with distinct politi-
cal connotations.
We have sought in vain the textual record of Black Byzantines. We
know no analogues in medieval Greek literature to the Black poets who
used Arabic poetic forms to comment upon their racialization.80 For a
reflection on Byzantine racialization, we might rather turn to the Nubian
painters at the cathedral of Pachoras, who carefully distinguished the
22 Is Byzantine Studies a Colonialist Discipline?

Fig. I.4 Saint Peter and

Bishop Petros I (974–
97) from the cathe-
dral of Pachoras, Faras.
National Museum in
Warsaw, 234031 MNW.

dark brown complexion and black mustache of Bishop Petros I (974–97)

from the white complexion and white beard of Saint Peter (fig. I.4).81
As Andrea Myers Achi and Seeta Chaganti write, Nubian art is “of nei-
ther Byzantium nor Africa” but “of both worlds.”82 It therefore provides
a space within which black artists could represent and reconceive the
poles of Byzantine anti-Blackness, simultaneously preserving differ-
ence and rejecting any associated moral or aesthetic hierarchy.
However, Byzantine concepts of Blackness have also been deployed
in a manner closer to their original purposes, namely, to produce an
ideal concept of Whiteness. Consider, as an example, the illuminated
manuscript Biblioteca Marciana Gr. VII, 22 (=1466), executed in 1592 in
Venetian-ruled Crete by the artist Georgios Klontzas.83 Over the course
Introduction 23

of some 217 paper folios containing extensive texts in Greek and over
400 drawings in pen and ink, the Klontzas Codex presents a universal
history from a Christian viewpoint. Of these, 22 folios and 25 drawings
relate the life of the Prophet Muhammad from an explicitly anti-Mus-
lim perspective. Muhammad’s skin is consistently marked by cross-
hatching, in contrast to those around him; the manuscript, accordingly,
depicts him as Black.84
In one drawing, for example, the blackness of Muhammad, at right,
establishes by contrast the whiteness of the Byzantine emperor Her-
akleios, at left (fig. I.5). Another drawing, entitled “the idolatry of the
Ishmaelites,” accompanies an excerpt from the anti-Muslim treatise
of John of Damascus, according to which the Arabs “worshipped the
morning star and Aphrodite” (fig. I.6).85 The artist uses the same tech-
nique, crosshatching, to depict both the skin of the worshippers and

Fig. I.5 The meeting of

Muhammad and Her-
akleios, 1592. Venice,
Biblioteca nazionale
Marciana, Marc. gr. VII,
22 (=1466), fol. 48r.
Photo courtesy of the
Ministero per i beni e
le attività culturali e
per il turismo.
24 Is Byzantine Studies a Colonialist Discipline?

the atmosphere that envelops them: their Blackness, and the obscu-
rity of their vision, the ultimate source of their heresy.
The Klontzas Codex gathers many of the elements of Byzantine
anti-Blackness. Black skin is associated with moral depravity, obscu-
rity of vision, and Muslim faith. It thereby establishes the Whiteness
(and corresponding righteousness) of the Byzantines. To what end?
Klontzas was an affluent, Greek Orthodox resident of Chandax, the
center of Venetian rule. His Black Muhammad serves, at least in part,
to establish the Whiteness (and righteousness) of the subaltern com-
munity to which he belonged.86
Klontzas was not a Byzantinist, but he was a contemporary of the
first full-time scholars of Byzantium. As Aschenbrenner and Ranso-
hoff observe in this volume, the work of one such scholar, Hieronymus
Wolf, was funded in part by the labor of enslaved Africans and Native
Americans and was intended in part to aid European powers in the

Fig. I.6 “The idolatry

of the Ishmaelites,”
1592. Venice, Biblioteca
nazionale Marciana,
Marc. gr. VII, 22 (=1466),
fol. 43r. Photo courtesy
of the Ministero per i
beni e le attività cul-
turali e per il turismo.
Introduction 25

fight against the Ottomans. Wolf’s investment in Byzantium was very

different from Klontzas’s—Aschenbrenner and Ransohoff note that he
“reserved special loathing for the people he sometimes called Byzan-
tini”—but both were produced at the nexus of race and colony, and
they entailed a careful and deliberate organization of the preexisting
elements of Byzantine cultural practice.
The primary challenge posed by this comparison, then, is to under-
stand Byzantine studies, the academic discipline, as part of a much
broader field of cultural production, within which the elements of Byz-
antine cultural practice have been deployed to a dizzying variety of ends
by a wide cast of characters: scholars, yes, but also artists, authors,
politicians, and amateurs.
Many have followed Klontzas and Wolf in placing elements of Byz-
antine culture at the service of anti-Muslim polemic. In 2006, Pope
Benedict XVI quoted at length from the work of “the erudite Byzan-
tine emperor Manuel II Palaiologos” (1391–1425) in an address held at
the University of Regensburg. Benedict used the Byzantine author to
position Christian Europe as the heir to Greek reason, in contrast to
Muslims, who posit an “absolutely transcendent divinity,” whose “will
is not bound up with any of our categories, even that of rationality.”87
In 2016, Serbian president Tomislav Nikolić opened the Twenty-Third
International Congress of Byzantine Studies in Belgrade by calling upon
attendees to assist him against the majority-Muslim state of Kosovo.
He then compared himself to Emperor Constantine XI Palaiologos (1449–
53), who had likewise “turned to Europe to ask for help against the infi-
dels [неверника].”88
Benedict is a scholar—albeit not a Byzantinist—and Nikolić is not,
but both share a conception of Byzantium as an “antemurale state,”
or “Christendom’s rampart against the barbarians.”89 This conception
appears in Krumbacher’s founding statement, too: “This multiform con-
fusion of peoples [i.e., Byzantium] formed in the past Europe’s defen-
sive wall against Asiatic barbarism.”90 As Byzantium had witnessed the
rise of Islam, Byzantine polemics against Islam (such as those by John of
Damascus, Niketas Byzantios, and Manuel II Palaiologos) are accorded
a particular authority.91 Similarly, as Byzantium fell to a Muslim power,
26 Is Byzantine Studies a Colonialist Discipline?

its fate becomes a cautionary tale—either of its own doctrinal intran-

sigence or of the Western powers’ failure to intervene.92
In extreme versions of the latter trope, Byzantium becomes the
original “lost cause”: a strong Christian state betrayed by European
powers.93 This conception permeates right-wing American discourse
on Byzantium.94 It finds its grisliest manifestation in the manifesto
penned by the white supremacist who murdered fifty-one people in
two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand on 15 March 2019, which
proclaimed that “until the Hagia Sophia is free of the minarets, the men
of Europe are men in name only.”95
There is another way. Other artists and authors have followed the
lead of the Nubian painters at Pachoras and reconfigured the elements
of Byzantine cultural practice to anti-racist ends. Take, for example, the
artist Mark Doox, whose work Maria Mavroudi discusses in her contri-
bution to this volume. Doox’s self-described “iconoclastic icons” expose
the “weakness in our sacred images, which have been steeped in Ameri-
can divisions of race and power.”96 Many more examples of such progres-
sive appropriations, ranging from the playful to the studied, appeared in
a recent exhibit at the Pera Museum on Byzantium in popular culture:97
for example, the artist Fikos, who painted Greek-Nigerian basketball
star Giannis Antetokounmpo in Byzantine style;98 the Greek Commu-
nist comic artists of the mid-twentieth century, who related Byzan-
tine history through the lens of “an implicit pacifism, internationalism,
and universalism”;99 and the authors of science fiction, who take Byz-
antium as a starting point for “pondering about notions of empire.”100
So too can Byzantine studies, as a scholarly pursuit, be practiced
in a decolonial mode. Geraldine Heng and Sierra Lomuto have called
for a global medieval history that is not simply a diversity exercise but
one that actively dethrones European hegemony through the introduc-
tion of multiple centers and temporalities.101 Byzantinists have much
to offer this project, but not by demanding greater representation in
traditional forums for business-as-usual work—more Byzantine art in
undergraduate surveys, more Byzantine articles in flagship journals,
more chairs of Byzantine studies. Instead, we must begin by actively
questioning our own orthodoxies: first and foremost, those about the
strength and beneficence of the Byzantine state, the pliancy of its
Introduction 27

subjects, its dazzling image in the eyes of its neighbors, and even its
coherence as a stable object of analysis.
Byzantium’s peculiar position, as a medieval state that lacks an obvi-
ous modern successor, can in this sense count to its advantage. Byzan-
tium’s national homelessness draws to its study many of those whom
former British prime minister Theresa May derogatorily called “citizens
of nowhere.”102 Early-career Byzantinists today often lead itinerant lives
on short-term (one-year or even one-semester) contracts across conti-
nents and countries. The neoliberalization of the academic market has
meant that, across East and West and across national boundaries, the
experiences of early-career scholars have much in common. Global pre-
carity has opened possibilities for global solidarities. This kind of soli-
darity can result in critical reflection, and it is not surprising that many
contributors to this volume have received their intellectual formation
not in single, siloed, national academies but through engagement with
multiple national, and indeed multi- and transnational, scholarly insti-
tutions and discourses.
In short, Byzantine studies is increasingly practiced beyond national
boundaries, and its object of study defies traditional national histories.
It should accordingly play a leading role in the production of a new, rad-
ical, global history. This potential can only be realized on the basis of a
constant and critical examination of our own history and our own cul-
tural practice. In our introduction, we have attempted to review the
former. But it is not enough to simply be conscious of the contradic-
tion that we inhabit and share with our fellow scholars in other disci-
plines: our material reliance upon the spoils of hierarchical systems of
oppression (be they colonial, imperial, or national) that we outwardly
abhor. We must also make use of the distinctive nature of our field of
study—our own intellectual capital—to change the conditions that our
own students and successors will inherit.
A number of contributors to this volume suggest concrete steps that
we can take toward this goal. For example, Matheou calls for us to write
histories that do not simply avoid identifying with a particular modern
nation but rather disavow identification with states (both empires and
nations) altogether. Matthew Kinloch asks us to think explicitly about
whom we cite and why: these are political choices, even if they seem
28 Is Byzantine Studies a Colonialist Discipline?

natural and commonsensical. Finally, Andrea Myers Achi and Elizabeth

Dospěl Williams ask how we can transform the institutions whose cus-
todians we may become.
Taken as a whole, the following chapters illuminate the mecha-
nisms by which Byzantine studies and the very idea of Byzantium,
as a distinctive culture with its own art and literature, are produced
and reproduced. Colonized and colonizer, cultural hegemon and exotic
other, Byzantium and its scholarly reception remain ripe fields for crit-
ical inquiry. Their potential to generate new radical histories lies pre-
cisely in their ambiguity. If the proposals found in this volume oscillate
between the simple and practical and the utopian, we consider that a
virtue—we must not let the pessimism of the intellect suffocate the
optimism of the will.

Notes
1. Panagiotis A. Agapitos, “Franz Dölger and the Hieratic Model of Byzantine
Literature,” Byzantinische Zeitschrift 112, no. 3 (2019): 707–80.
2. George Demacopoulos, Colonizing Christianity: Greek and Latin Religious Iden-
tity in the Era of the Fourth Crusade (New York: Fordham University Press, 2019).
3. Nathanael Aschenbrenner and Jake Ransohoff, eds., The Invention of Byzan-
tium in Early Modern Europe (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library
and Collection, 2021).
4. Yannis Hamilakis, The Nation and Its Ruins: Antiquity, Archaeology, and National
Imagination in Greece (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), x.
5. Diana Mishkova, Beyond Balkanism: The Scholarly Politics of Region Making
(Abingdon: Routledge, 2019), 15.
6. On the relation between Byzantine studies and Orientalism, see Averil
Cameron, The Use and Abuse of Byzantium: An Essay on Reception (London: The
School of Humanities, King’s College, 1992); Robert S. Nelson, “Living on the
Byzantine Borders of Western Art,” Gesta 35, no. 1 (1996): 3–11; Dimiter G. Ange-
lov, “Byzantinism: The Imaginary and Real Heritage of Byzantium in South-
eastern Europe,” in New Approaches to Balkan Studies, ed. Dimitris Keridis, Ellen
Elias-Bursać, and Nicholas Yatromanolakis (Dulles, VA: Brassey’s, 2003), 3–23;
Averil Cameron, Byzantine Matters (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014);
Premysław Marciniak, “Oriental Like Byzantium: Some Remarks on Similarities
Between Byzantinism and Orientalism,” in Imagining Byzantium: Perceptions, Pat-
terns, Problems, ed. Alena Alshanskaya, Andreas Gietzen, and Christina Hadjiafx-
enti (Mainz: Verlag des Römisch-Germanischen Zentralmuseums, 2018), 47–54;
Leonora Neville, Byzantine Gender (Leeds: Arc Humanities Press, 2019), 5–21; and
Yannis Stouraitis, “Is Byzantium an Orientalism? Reflections on Byzantium’s
Another random document with
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quick! Take a look and see if ye can sight a sail. [Kanaka shins quickly up
the bole of the coco palm to the top and looks out on all sides of him. The
others rise painfully to their feet and gaze up at him with awakened hope.]
Jimmy—[Suddenly, in a glad voice.] I see um—see sail, Captain.
Cates—[Waving his arms frenziedly.] Sail—ho!
Jimmy—Look plenty like trade schooner, Captain. She no change course
she fetch plenty close by here. She make full sail, she got plenty fella wind
out there, she come quick.
Horne—[Clapping Cates on the back.] Headin’ straight for us, Cates,
d’you hear?
Bartlett—How far d’ye reckon she be?
Jimmy—She’s five, six fella mile, Captain.
Bartlett—Come down. [The Islander slides down. Bartlett exclaims
exultantly.] Didn’t I tell ye? In the nick o’ time. When she makes in close
we’ll go down to the reef and yell and wave at her. They’ll see! The luck’s
with us today! [His eyes fall on the treasure and he starts.] But now—
what’s to do with this chest—the gold?
Horne—[Quickly.] You ain’t going to tell them on the schooner about
it?
Cates—They’d claim to share with us.
Horne—More like they’d steal it and knife us in the bargain. I know the
kind on them schooners.
Bartlett—[Scornfully.] D’ye think I’m cracked? No, we’ll bury it here.
Cates—[Regretfully.] Leave it behind for anyone to find?
Bartlett—We’ll bury it deep, where hell itself won’t find it—and we’ll
make a map o’ this island. [He takes a sheet of paper and a stub of pencil
from his pocket—pointing to the foot of the tree.] Dig a hole here—you,
Horne and Jimmy—and dig it deep. [The two head down and commence to
hollow out the sand with their hands. Bartlett draws on the paper.]
There’s the lagoon—and the reef—and here’s this tree—the only one on the
island—’twould be hard to miss. [To Cates, who is peering over his
shoulder.] And here where the tree is, d’ye see, Cates, I’ll make a cross
where the gold is hid.
Horne—[Over his shoulder, without ceasing his work.] How d’ye know
the lay o’ this island—to find it again?
 Bartlett—By the last reckonin’ o’ the Triton’s. It’s writ on a page I
tore from the log-book. And from there we headed due north in the boat,
unless the compass lied—four days—a hundred and fifty miles, I reckon.
[Exultantly.] Oh, all hell’d not stop me from findin’ this place again when I
know the gold’s here. Let us once get home and I’ll fit out a small schooner
the four of us can sail, and we’ll come back here to dig it up. It won’t be
long, I swear to ye!
Horne—[Straightening up.] This deep enough, sir?
Bartlett—It looks to be.
Jimmy—[Who has straightened up and is looking off left—suddenly
points excitedly.] He look, Captain! Cook fella, he look here! Boy he look,
too! They look plenty too much, Captain! [All four stand staring off at
Butler and the boy, whose presence on the island they have forgotten in
their mad excitement.]
Cates—[In stupid dismay.] They’ll know where it’s hid, sir!
Horne—They’ll tell ’em on the schooner!
Cates—[Wildly.] We’ve got to do for ’em, Captain! Gimme your knife,
Jimmy—your knife—— [He stumbles toward the Islander, who pushes him
aside brusquely, looking questioningly toward the Captain.]
Bartlett—[Who has been standing motionless, as if stunned by this
forgotten complication—slowly.] There they be watchin’ us, the sneakin’
dogs! Sit down, an’ they won’t see. [They all squat in the sand.] I was
forgettin’ they was here. [Striking his knee with clenched fist.] We’ve got to
do somethin’ damn quick! That schooner’ll be up soon where they kin sight
her—and they’ll wave and yell then—and she’ll see ’em!
Horne—And good-bye to the gold for us!
Jimmy—[Eagerly.] You say fella word, Captain, me kill um quick. They
no make plenty cry for schooner! They keep damn still plenty too much!
Bartlett—[Looking at the Islander with mad cunning but replying only
to Horne.] Aye, it’s good-bye to the gold, Horne. That scum of a cook—
he’s made a mock o’ us—sayin’ it wasn’t gold when he knew it was—he’ll
tell ’em—he’ll get joy o’ tellin’ ’em!
Horne—And that scrub of a boy—he’s no better. He’ll be in with him
neck and crop.
Cates—[Hoarsely.] Knife ’em—and be done with it—I say!
 Bartlett—Or, if they don’t tell the schooner’s skipper it’ll only be
because they’re plannin’ to come back themselves—before we kin—and
dig it up. That cook—there’s somethin’ queer in his mind—somethin’ he
was hidin’—pretendin’ not to believe. What d’ye think, Horne?
Horne—I think—time’s gettin’ short—and talkin’ won’t do no good.
[Insinuatingly.] They’d do for us soon enough if they was able.
Bartlett—Aye, murder was plain in his eyes when he looked at me.
Horne—[Lowering his voice to a whisper.] Tell Jimmy—Captain
Bartlett—is what I say!
Bartlett—It’s agin the law, Silas Horne!
Horne—The law don’t reach to this island.
Bartlett—[Monotonously.] It’s against the law a captain’s sworn to
keep wherever he sails. They ain’t refused duty—nor mutinied.
Horne—Who’ll know they ain’t? They’re trying to steal what’s yours—
that’s worse’n mutiny. [As a final persuasion.] And Jimmy’s a nigger—and
under no laws. And he’s stronger’n you are. You couldn’t stop ’im.
Bartlett—Aye—I couldn’t prevent——
Jimmy—[Eagerly.] I fix um, Captain, they no tell! [Bartlett doesn’t
answer, but stares at the treasure. Horne makes violent motions to Jimmy to
go. The Islander stares at his master’s face. Then, seeming to read the direct
command there, he grunts with satisfaction, and pulling his knife from it’s
sheath, he goes stealthily off left. Cates raises himself on his haunches to
watch the Islander’s movements. Horne and Bartlett sit still in a strained
immobility, their eyes on the chest.]
Cates—[In an excited whisper.] I see ’em! They’re sittin’ with their
backs this way! [A slight pause.] There’s Jimmy. He’s crawlin’ on his hands
behind ’em. They don’t notice—he’s right behind—almost atop o’ them. [A
pause. Cates gives a fiendish grunt.] Ugh! [Butler’s muffled cry comes
from the left.] Right in the middle of the back! The cook’s done! The boy’s
runnin’! [There is a succession of quick screams from the boy, the padding
of feet running toward them, the fall of a body, and the boy’s dying groan.]
Horne—[With satisfaction.] It’s done, sir!
Bartlett—[Slowly.] I spoke no word, remember that, Silas Horne!
Horne—[Cunningly.] Nor me neither, sir. Jimmy took it on himself. If
blame there is—and who’d blame him for it?—it’s on him.
 Bartlett—[Gloomily.] I spoke no word! [Jimmy returns noiselessly
from the left.]
Jimmy—[Grinning with savage pride.] I fix um fella plenty, Captain.
They no tell. They no open mouth plenty too much!
Cates—[Maudlinly.] You’re a man, Jimmy—a man with guts to him—
even if you’re a—— [He babbles incoherently.]
Jimmy—[As the Captain does not look at him.] I go climb fella tree,
Captain? I make look for schooner?
Bartlett—[Rousing himself with an effort.] Yes—go up. [The Islander
climbs the tree.]
Horne—[Getting to his feet—eagerly.] Where away, Jimmy?
Jimmy—She come, Captain, she come plenty quick.
Horne—[Looking in the direction Jimmy indicates.] I kin see her tops’ls
from here, sir. Look!
Bartlett—[Getting to his feet—stares out to sea.] Aye! There she be—
and makin’ towards us fast. [In a flash his sombre preoccupation is gone,
and he is commander once more. He puts the anklet in his hand into his
coat pocket—harshly.] Come down out o’ that? They’s work to do. [Jimmy
clambers down.] Did ye leave—them—lyin’ in plain sight on the open
sand?
Jimmy—Yes. I no touch um, Captain.
Bartlett—Then ye’ll touch ’em now. Go, bury ’em, cover ’em up with
sand. And mind ye make a good job o’ it that none’ll see. Jump now!
Jimmy—[Obediently.] I go, Captain. [He hurries off left.]
Bartlett—Down to the reef with ye, Horne! [Giving the prostrate
Cates a kick.] Up out o’ that, Cates! Go with Horne, and when ye see the
schooner hull up, wave to ’em, and yell like mad, d’ye hear?
Horne—Aye, aye, sir!
Bartlett—I’ll stay here and bury the gold. It’s best to be quick about it!
They may turn a spyglass on us when they raise the island from deck! Off
with ye! [He gives Cates another kick.]
Cates—[Groaning.] I’m sick! [Incoherently.] Can’t—report for duty—
this watch. [With a shout.] Water!
Bartlett—[Contemptuously.] Ye dog! Give him a hand, Horne.
 Horne—[Putting a hand under his shoulder.] Up, man! We’re to signal
the schooner. There’ll be water on board o’ her—barrels of it!
Cates—[Aroused, scrambles to his feet, violently shaking off Horne’s
hand.] Water aboard o’ her! [His staring eyes catch the schooner’s sails on
the horizon. He breaks into a staggering run and disappears down toward
the beach, right rear, waving his arms wildly and shouting.] Ahoy! Ahoy!
Water! [Horne walks out quickly after him.] [Left alone, Bartlett, after a
quick glance around, sinks on his knees beside the chest and shoves both
hands into it. From the chest comes a metallic clink as he fingers the pieces
in his hands gloatingly.] Ye’re safe now! There’s none to tell left livin’!
He’s dead—damn him!—that lied about ye. And ye’ll rest safe here till I
come back for ye! [In a dreaming tone, his eyes fixed before him in an
ecstatic vision.] No more whalin’ on the dirty seas! Rest to home! Gold!
I’ve been dreamin’ o’ it all my life! Aye—we’ll rest now, Sarah! Your father
be a rich man, Nat and Sue! [Shaking himself—savagely.] Ye fool! What
drivel be ye talkin’? Loosin’ your senses, be ye? Time ye was picked up!
Lucky! [He shoves down the lid and places the chest in the hole. He pushes
the sand in on top of it, whispering hoarsely.] Lay safe, d’ye hear. For I’ll
be back for ye! Aye—in spite of hell I’ll dig ye up again! [The voices of
Horne and Jimmy can be heard from the distance shouting as

[The Curtain Falls]

 ACT TWO
Scene—Interior of an old boat-shed on the wharf of the Bartlett place on
the California coast. In the rear, a double doorway looking out over the
end of the wharf to the bay with the open sea beyond. On the left, two
windows, and another door, opening on the dock. Near this door, a cot
with blankets and a pillow without a slip. In the center, front, a table with
a bottle and glasses on it, and three cane-bottomed chairs. On the right, a
fishing dory. Here and there about the shed all sorts of odds and ends
pertaining to a ship—old anchors, ropes, tackle, paint-pots, old spars, etc.
It is late afternoon of a day six months later. Sunlight filters feebly
through the stained, cobwebby window panes.
As the curtain rises, Bartlett and Silas Horne are discovered. Horne
is in working clothes of paint-stained dungaree. If his sufferings on the
island have left any marks on his dry wizened face, they are undiscoverable.
In Bartlett, however, the evidence is marked. His hair has turned white.
There are deep hollows under his cheek-bones. His jaw and tight-lipped
mouth, express defiant determination, as if he were fighting back some
weakness inside himself, a weakness found in his eyes, which have
something in them of fear, of a wishing to avoid other eyes. He is dressed
much the same as when on the island. He sits by the table, center, his
abstracted gaze bent on the floor before him.
Horne—[Who is evidently waiting for the Captain to my something—
after a pause, glancing at him uneasily.] I’d best be gettin’ back aboard the
schooner, sir. [Receiving no answer he starts for the door on the left.]
Bartlett—[Rousing himself with an effort.] Wait. [After a pause.] The
full tide’s at dawn tomorrow, ye said?
Horne—Yes, sir.
Bartlett—They know we’ll be sailin’ then, don’t they—Cates and
Jimmy?
Horne—Yes, sir. They’re all ready. Oh, Cates and Jimmy’ll be glad o’
the word—and me, too, sir. [With a greedy grin.] It’s all we’ve been talkin’
of since ye brought us down here—diggin’ up the gold!
 Bartlett—[Passionately.] Aye, the gold! We’ll have it before long,
now, I reckon. That schooner—the way we’ve fitted her up—she’d take a
man safe to the Pole and back! We’ll drop anchor here with the chest on
board in six months, unless—— [Hesitates.]
Horne—[Uneasily.] What, sir?
Bartlett—[Brusquely.] The weather, ye fool! Can ye take count before
o’ storms an’ calms?
Horne—We’ll trust to luck for that. [Glancing at the Captain curiously.]
And speakin’ o’ luck, sir—the schooner ain’t been christened yet.
Bartlett—[Betraying a sudden, fierce determination.] She will be!
Horne—There’d be no luck for a ship sailin’ out without a name.
Bartlett—She’ll have a name, I tell ye! A name that’ll take all curse
away and leave her clean. She’ll be named the Sarah Allen, and Sarah’ll
christen her herself.
Horne—It oughter been done, by rights, when we launched her a month
back.
Bartlett—[Sternly.] I know that as well as ye. [After a pause.] She
wasn’t willin’ to do it then. Women has queer notions—when they’re sick,
like. [Defiantly—as if he were addressing someone outside of the room.]
But Sarah’ll be willin’ now! She’ll be willin’ in spite o’—— [Catching
himself and abruptly lowering his voice.] The schooner’ll be christened
tomorrow at dawn afore she sails.
Horne—Yes, sir. [He again turns to go, as if he were anxious to get
away.]
Bartlett—Wait! There’s somethin’ else I want to ask ye. Nat, he’s been
hangin’ round the schooner all his spare time o’ late. I seen him talkin’ to
you and Cates and Jimmy. [With rising anger.] I hope ye’ve remembered
what I ordered ye, all three. Not a word o’ it to him! I said I’d keep him out
o’ this, for his own good, mind! And if I thought any of ye—— [His fist is
raised threateningly, and he glares savagely at Horne.]
Horne—[Retreating a step—hastily.] No fear o’ that, sir! We’ve been
keerful. But it’s hard. He’s a sharp one, Nat is. And when we tells him the
schooner’s fitted out for tradin’ in the islands, he just laughs. He’s gettin’
the wind on somethin’—without any o’ us sayin’ a word.
 Bartlett—[In relieved tones.] Let him s’spect all he’s a mind to—as
long as he don’t know. It ain’t that I’m afeerd to tell him o’ the gold, Silas
Horne. He’ll share that, anyway. [Slowly.] It’s them—other things—I’d
keep him clear of.
Horne—[Immediately guessing what he means—reassuringly.] We was
all out o’ our heads with thirst and sun when them things happened, sir.
Bartlett—Mad? Aye! But I ain’t forgot—them two. [Harshly.] I’d
rather be you nor me, Silas Horne. You be too rotten bad to care. And I’d
rather be Cates or Jimmy. Cates be too dull to remember, and Jimmy be
proud as a boy o’ what he done. [He represses a shudder—then goes on
slowly.] Do they ever come back to you—when you’re asleep, I mean?
Horne—[Pretending mystification.] Who’s that, sir?
Bartlett—[With sombre emphasis.] That cook and that boy. They come
to me. I’m gettin’ to be afeered o’ goin’ to sleep—not ’feered o’ them, I
don’t mean. [With sudden defiant bravado.] Not all the ghosts out o’ hell
kin keep me from a thing I’ve set my mind on. [Collecting himself.] But
I’ve waked up talkin’ out loud—to them—and I’m afeerd there might be
someone hear me. That’s why I’ve been sleepin’ down here to the boat-
house all alone.
Horne—[Uneasily—with an attempt to be reassuring.] You ain’t all
cured o’ that sun and thirst on the island yet, sir.
Bartlett—[Evidently reassured—roughly.] O’ course! D’ye think I’d
really believe in things in nightmares? [With an attempt at conviviality.] Sit
down a bit, Horne, and take a grog. [Horne does so. Bartlett pours out a
half-tumbler full of rum for himself and shoves the bottle over to Horne.]
Horne—Luck to our vige, sir.
Bartlett—Aye, luck! [They drink. Bartlett leans over and taps
Horne on the arm.] Aye, it takes time to get cured o’ thirst and sun! Lucky
that tradin’ schooner picked us up the time she did.
Horne—If she hadn’t—we’d been as dead men—as them two.
Bartlett—[Somberly—after a pause.] I spoke no word, Silas Horne,
d’ye remember?
Horne—Nor me. Jimmy did it alone. [Craftily.] We’d all three swear
Bible oaths to that in any court. And even if ye’d given the word, there ain’t
no good thinkin’ more o’ it, sir. Didn’t they deserve all they got—that thief
o’ a cook and that boy? Wasn’t they plottin’ on the sly to steal the gold?
Bartlett—[His eyes gleaming.] Aye!
Horne—And when you said he’d get no share of it, didn’t he lie to your
face that it wasn’t gold—thinkin’ we’d leave it be and he’d git it all for
himself?
Bartlett—[With sudden rage.] Aye, brass and junk, he said, the lyin’
scum! That’s what he keeps sayin’ when I see him in sleep! He didn’t
believe—makin’ a mock o’ me—an’ then he owned up himself ’twas gold!
He knew! He lied a-purpose! He was a cunnin’ rat—a thief ashore afore
they shipped him with us, I reckon.
Horne—[Eagerly.] Most like, sir.
Bartlett—[Rising to his feet—with confident defiance.] They deserved
no better nor they got. Let ’em rot! [Pouring out another drink for himself
and Horne.] We’ll drink, an’ then ye get back to the ship. Tell Cates and
Jimmy we sail at dawn—sure! [He drinks.]
Horne—Luck, sir! [He drinks. There is a knock at the door on the left
followed by Mrs. Bartlett’s voice calling feebly, “Isaiah! Isaiah!”
Bartlett starts but makes no answer. He seems suddenly sunk in gloom
again. Horne turns to him questioningly.] It’s Mrs. Bartlett, sir. Shall I open
the door?
Bartlett—No. I ain’t aimin’ to see her—yet awhile. [Then with sudden
reasonless rage.] Let her in, damn ye! [Horne goes and unhooks the door.
Mrs. Bartlett enters. She is a slight, slender little woman of fifty.
Sickness, or the inroads of a premature old age, have bowed her shoulders,
whitened her hair, and forced her to walk feebly with the aid of a cane. A
resolute spirit still flashes from her eyes, however, and there is a look of
fixed determination on her face. She stands gazing at her husband. There is
something accusing in her stare.]
Bartlett—[Avoiding her eyes—brusquely.] Well? What is it ye want o’
me, Sarah?
Mrs. B.—I want to speak with you alone, Isaiah.
Horne—I’ll be gettin’ back aboard, sir. [Starts to go.]
Bartlett—[In a tone almost of fear.] Wait. I’m goin’ with ye. [Turning
to his wife—with a certain rough tenderness.] Ye oughtn’t to walk down the
hill here, Sarah. The doctor told ye to rest in the house and save your
strength.
Mrs. B.—I want to speak to you alone, Isaiah. You never come to home
no more, hardly, so I had to come to ye. [Accusingly.] You know it ain’t
walkin’ is sappin’ my strength, Isaiah.
Bartlett—[Very uneasily.] I’ve got to work on the schooner, Sarah.
That’s why I’ve no time to home.
Mrs. B.—She’ll be sailin’ soon?
Bartlett—[Suddenly turning on her defiantly.] Tomorrow at dawn!
Mrs. B.—[With her eyes fired accusingly on his.] And you be goin’ with
her?
Bartlett—[In the same defiant tone.] Yes, I be! Who else’d captain
her?
Mrs. B.—On a craft without a name.
Bartlett—She’ll have that name.
Mrs. B.—No.
Bartlett—She’ll have that name, I tell ye.
Mrs. B.—No.
Bartlett—[Thoroughly aroused, his will tries to break hers, but finds
her unbending. He mutters menacingly.] Ye’ll see! We’ll talk o’ that later,
you and me. [With sudden apprehension.] But not now. They’s plenty o’
time yet for that. Come on, Horne, we’ll get aboard. [Without a further
glance at his wife he strides past her and disappears through the doorway,
followed by Horne. Mrs. Bartlett sinks down in the chair by the table.
She appears suddenly weak and crushed. Then from outside comes a girl’s
laughing voice. Mrs. Bartlett does not seem to hear, nor to notice Sue
and Drew when they enter. Sue is a slender, pretty girl of about twenty,
with large blue eyes, reddish-brown hair, and a healthy, sun-tanned, out-of-
door complexion. In spite of the slightness of her figure there is a
suggestion of great vitality and nervous strength about her. Drew is a well-
set-up, tall young fellow of thirty. Not in any way handsome, his boyish
face, tanned to a deep brown, possesses an engaging character of healthy,
cheerful forcefullness that has its compelling charm. There would be no
chance of mistaking him for anything but the ship’s officer he is. It is written
on his face, his walk, his voice, his whole bearing.]
 Sue—[As they enter.] He’ll either be here or on the schooner, Danny.
[Then she sees her mother, with startled amazement.] Ma! Good heavens,
what are you doing here? [Throwing her arms around her neck and kissing
her.] Don’t you know you shouldn’t——
Mrs. B.—[With a start—turning to her daughter with a forced smile.]
There, Sue, now! Don’t go scoldin’ me. [Then seeing Drew—in a tone of
forced gaiety.] And if there ain’t Danny Drew—back home to port at last!
You can kiss an old woman, Danny—without makin’ her jealous, I reckon.
Drew—[Kissing her—with a smile.] I don’t know about that, Ma
Bartlett. [Heartily.] It certainly seems good to see you again—and be back
again myself.
Mrs. B.—We’ve been expectin’ you right along this past month. Then
we read in the paper t’other day where your ship’d reached San Francisco,
and we knew you’d be down any day. Sue’s been on pins and needles ever
since.
Sue—[Protestingly.] Ma!
Drew—We were delayed in Valparaiso, waiting for cargo. [With a grin.]
It’s a long time to be away from Sue—four months.
Sue—[Laughing.] It seems more like four years!
Drew—You remember, Ma, I left just after the big excitement here—
when Captain Bartlett turned up after we’d all heard the Triton was wrecked
and given him up for lost. That was sure a wonderful surprise when he
walked into the house that day.
Mrs. B.—[Her face clouding—in a tone of deep sorrow.] Yes. [Drew is
surprised and glances at Sue questioningly. She sighs. Mrs. Bartlett gets
to her feet with difficulty, assisted by Drew. She forces a smile.] I’ve taken
on a third leg since you was here, Danny!
Sue—We’ll help you back to the house. You can’t climb that steep hill
alone.
Mrs. B.—Shucks! I’m sick o’ the house. I need sun and fresh air, and
today’s so nice I couldn’t stay indoors. I’ll take your arm to hold on to,
Danny. No, I ain’t goin’ up to the house yet awhile, so don’t you try to bully
me into it, Sue. I’m goin’ to set in the shade o’ this shed out on the wharf
and watch your Pa workin’ on the schooner. Ain’t much time left to see her,
Sue. They’re sailin’ tomorrow at dawn, your Pa says.
 Sue—Tomorrow? Then—you’re going to christen her?
Mrs. B.—[With grim determination.] No, I ain’t, Sue! [Catching
Drew’s glance fixed on her with puzzled curiosity, she immediately
attempts to resume her joking tone.] Shucks! Here’s Danny wonderin’ what
silliness we’re talkin’ of. It’s just this, Danny. Captain Bartlett, he’s got a
crazy notion in his head that just because his ship was wrecked last vige
he’ll give up whalin’ for life. He’s fitted out this little schooner for tradin’
in the Islands. More money in that, he says. But I don’t agree with no such
lunatic notions, and I’m just that stubborn I’m not goin’ to set my approval
on his craziness by christenin’ his ship with my name, like he wants me to.
He’d ought to stick to whalin,’ like he’s done all his life. Don’t you think
so, Danny?
Drew—[Embarrassed.] Why, sure—he’s rated one of the smartest
whaling skippers here on the coast—and I should think——
Mrs. B.—Just what I tell him—only he’s that stubborn. I’d best get out
quick while it’s still sunny and warm. It’s damp in here for an old body.
[Drew helps her to the door on the left, opens it, and the two go out,
followed by Sue, who carries a chair. After a pause, Sue and Drew return.
Sue carefully shuts the door after them. Her face is troubled.]
Drew—[Looks at her for a minute, then comes and puts his arm around
her and kisses her.] What’s the trouble, Sue?
Sue—[Trying to force a smile.] Nothing, Danny.
Drew—Oh, yes there is! No use putting me off that way. Why, I’ve felt
it hanging about in the air ever since I first looked at your mother.
Sue—Yes, she’s failed terribly since you saw her last.
Drew—Oh, I don’t mean just sickness—only—did you notice how she
had to—force herself—to joke about things? She used to be so cheerful
natural. [Scratching his head in honest puzzlement.] But—that ain’t what I
mean, either. What is it, Sue? Maybe I can help somehow. You look
worried, too. Pshaw! You can tell me, can’t you?
Sue—Why, yes, Danny—of course—if I could tell—only I’m just as
puzzled as you over what it comes from.
Drew—[Persuasively.] Well, you sit down and tell me what’s happened
since I’ve been away. Then maybe we can put our heads together and figure
out what’s wrong, and turn to get things ship-shape again. [Sue sits down
but does not speak. Drew remarks as if to get her started.] That schooner’s
a smart little craft for sailing, I should say. I didn’t notice no one about
working, though.
Sue—No. They’re probably below in the cabin, drinking. That’s all
they’ve been doing lately. The schooner’s been ready to sail for two weeks
—but Pa has kept waiting—I don’t know what for. Yes, I do know, too—I
think I guess. He’s been waiting for Ma to give in and christen the ship with
her name. But she won’t give in. You heard her.
Drew—Well, I suppose she does take it to heart that he’d give up the
business he’s been in all his life to go in for something new—at his age.
Sue—He mortgaged the house to get money to buy and fit out this
schooner. You know he lost most everything when the Triton was wrecked.
He’d only had her two years, and she cost him a pile of money. Then, too,
he’s lost a lot all his life—since he and Ma moved out here from the East—
investing in all sorts of silly mining ventures—gold mines that always
turned out to be only holes in the ground. As far back as I can remember
he’s never seemed to care about the whaling business—the oil. Ambergris
was what he was after. Finding one chunk of that meant more to him than a
full cargo of oil.
Drew—[With a grin.] “Old Ambergris.” That’s what they call him along
the coast—behind his back, of course. I reckon he was sort of prospecting
the Pacific Ocean looking for an ambergris mine. [Apologetically.] Sounds
as if I was making fun of him, but you remember how you’n’ me ’n’ Nat
used to laugh about it together.
Sue—It’s past a laughing matter now, Danny.
Drew—And what do you reckon the real trouble is?
Sue—Something between him and Ma—something that only the two of
them know. It all seemed to start one morning after you’d left—about a
week after he’d come home with those three awful men. During that first
week he acted all right—just like he used to—only he’d get talking kind of
wild now and then about being glad the Triton was lost, and promising we’d
all be millionaires once he started making trips on the schooner. Ma didn’t
seem to mind his going in for trading then. Then, the night of the day he
bought the schooner, something must have happened between them. Neither
of them came down to breakfast. I went up to Ma, and found her so sick we
sent for the doctor. He said she’d suffered a great shock of some kind,
although she wouldn’t tell him a word. I found Pa down in this shed. He’d
moved that cot down here, and said he’d have to sleep here after that
because he wanted to be near the schooner. It’s been that way ever since.
He’s slept down here and never come up to the house except at mealtimes.
He’s never been alone with Ma one second since then, I don’t believe. And
she—she’s been trying to corner him, to get him alone. I’ve noticed it,
although she does her best to hide it from Nat and me. And she’s been
failing, growing weaker and sicker looking every day. [Breaking down.] Oh,
Danny, these last months have been terrible! I’m so glad you’re back again.
Drew—[Soothing her.] There! It’ll all come out right.
Sue—I’m sure that’s why she’s crept down here today. She’s bound
she’ll see him alone before he sails.
Drew—Well, maybe it’s for the best. Maybe when they’ve had it out,
things’ll clear up.
Sue—Yes, perhaps. But I can’t help feeling—it’ll only make it worse.
Drew—[Frowning.] Seems to me it must be all your Pa’s fault, Sue—
whatever it is. Have you tried to talk to him?
Sue—Yes—a good many times; but all he’s ever said was: “There’s
things you wouldn’t take interest in, Sue. You’ll know when it’s time to
know.”—and then he’d break off by asking me what I’d like most to have in
the world if he had piles of money. And then, one time, he seemed to be
terribly afraid of something, and he said to me: “You hustle up and marry
Danny, Sue. You marry him and get out of this.”
Drew—[With an affectionate grin.] That does sound crazy—any man
wanting to get rid of you that way. [A note of entreaty in his voice.] But I
surely wish you’d take his advice, Sue! [He kisses her.]
Sue—[With intense longing.] Oh, I wish I could, Danny.
Drew—I’ve quite considerable saved now, Sue, and it won’t be so long
before I get my own ship, I’m hoping, now that I’ve got my master’s
certificate. I was hoping at the end of this voyage——
Sue—So was I, Danny—but it can’t be this time. With Ma so weak, and
no one to take care of her but me—— [Shaking her head—in a tone of
decision.] I couldn’t leave home now, Danny. It wouldn’t be right. I
couldn’t feel really happy—until this thing—whatever it is—is settled
between Pa and Ma and they’re just as they used to be again. [Pleadingly.]
You understand, don’t you, Danny?
Drew—[Soberly.] Why—surely I do, Sue. [He pats her hand.] Only, it’s
hard waiting. [He sighs.]
Sue—I know. It’s just as hard for me.
Drew—I thought maybe I could help; but this isn’t anything anyone
outside your family could mix in. [Sue shakes her head. He goes on
gloomily after a pause.] What’s the matter with Nat? Seems as if he ought
to be able to step in and talk turkey to your Pa.
Sue—[Slowly.] You’ll find Nat changed, too, Danny—changed terribly.
He’s caught the disease—whatever it is. You know how interested in his
work he’s been ever since they put him in the designing department down in
the shipyard?
Drew—Yes.
Sue—[With emphasis.] Well, all that’s changed. He hates it now, or at
least he says he does. And when he comes home, he spends all his time
prowling around the dock here, talking with those three awful men. And
what do you think he told me only the other day? That he was bound he’d
throw up his job and make this voyage on the schooner. He even asked me
to ask Pa to let him go.
Drew—Your Pa doesn’t want him to, eh?
Sue—Why, of course not! Leave a fine position he worked so hard to get
just for this crazy notion! Pa’d never let him. He’s even ordered him to keep
off the schooner and not to talk to those men.
Drew—Funny Nat’d like to go to sea. He’s always seemed to want to
fight shy of it.
Sue—The terrible part is, he’s got Ma worried to death—as if she wasn’t
upset enough already. She’s so afraid he’ll go—that Pa’ll let him at the last
moment. She’s always pleading with Nat not to think of it—so that he keeps
out of her way, too. Poor Ma! She’s only got me to talk to.
Drew—Maybe I can help after all. I can talk to Nat.
Sue—[Shaking her head.] He’s not the same Nat, Danny.
Drew—[Trying to be consoling.] Pshaw, Sue! I think you just get to
imagining things. [As he finishes speaking, the door in the rear opens and
Nat appears. He is a tall, loose-framed boy of eighteen, who bears a
striking resemblance to his father. His face, like his father’s, is large and
bony, with deep-set black eyes, an aquiline nose, and a wide, thin-lipped
mouth. There is no suggestion in Nat, however, of the older man’s physical
health and great strength. He appears an indoor product, undeveloped in
muscle, with a sallow complexion and stooped shoulders. His thick hair is a
deep black. His voice recalls his father’s, hollow and penetrating. He is
dressed in a grey flannel shirt and corduroy trousers. Drew calls out to
him, heartly.] Hello, Nat! Speak of the Devil! Sue and I were just talking
about you. [He goes toward Nat, his hand outstretched.]
Nat—[Comes toward them, meets Drew, and shakes his hand with
evident pleasure.] Hello, Danny! You’re a sight for sore eyes! [His manner
undergoes a sudden change. He casts a quick, suspicious glance from
Drew to his sister.] You were talking about me? What about?
Sue—[Quickly—with a warning glance at Drew.] About your work
down at the shipyard.
Nat—[Disgustedly.] Oh, that. [In a tone of reasonless irritation.] For
God’s sake, Sue, let me alone about my work. Don’t I have to live with the
damn thing all day, without your shoving it in my face the minute I get
home? I want to forget it—get away!
Drew—Go to sea, eh?
Nat—[Suspiciously.] Maybe. Why? What do you mean?
Drew—[Warned by a glance from Sue, says carelessly.] Well, that’s
where you’d be apt to go, isn’t it?
Nat—[Suspiciously.] That isn’t what you were thinking, Danny.
[Turning to his sister—angrily.] What have you been telling Danny?
Sue—I was talking about the schooner—telling him that she sails
tomorrow.
Nat—[Dumfounded.] Tomorrow? [Overcome by sudden, nervous
excitement.] It can’t be. How do you know? Who told you?
Sue—Ma. Pa told her.
Nat—Then she’s been talking to him—telling him not to take me, I’ll
bet. [Angrily.] Oh, I wish Ma’d mind her own business!
Sue—Nat!
Nat—Well, Sue, how would you like it? I’m not a little boy any more. I
know what I want to do. I want to go with them. I want to go more than I’ve
ever wanted anything else in my life before. He—he doesn’t want me. He’s
afraid I—But I think I can force him to—— [He glances at Drew’s amazed
face and stops abruptly—sullenly.] Where is Pa?
Sue—He’s aboard the schooner.
Nat—[Disappointedly.] Then it’s no good trying to see him now. I’ll
have to wait.
Drew—Sound’s funny to hear you talking about going to sea. Why, you
always used——
Nat—[Wearily.] I know. This is different.
Drew—You want to see the Islands, I suppose?
Nat—[Suspiciously.] Maybe. Why not?
Drew—What group is your Pa heading for first?
Nat—[More suspiciously.] You’ll have to ask him. Why do you want to
know? [Abruptly.] You better be getting up to the house, Sue—if we’re to
have any supper. Danny must be hungry. [He turns his back on them. They
exchange meaning glances.]
Sue—[With a sigh.] It must be getting late. Come on, Danny. You can
see Pa later on. [They go toward the door in the rear.] Aren’t you coming,
Nat?
Nat—No. I’ll wait. [Impatiently.] Go ahead. I’ll be up before long.
Drew—See you later, then, Nat.
Nat—Yes. [They go out, rear. Nat paces up and down in a great state of
excitement. The door on the left is opened and Bartlett enters. His eyes
are wild, as if he had been drinking heavily, but he shows no other effects.
Father and son stand looking at one another for a second. Nat takes a step
backward as if in fear, then straightens up defiantly.]
Bartlett—[Slowly.] Is this the way ye mind my orders, boy? I’ve told
ye time an’ again not to be sneakin’ and spyin’ around this wharf.
Nat—I’m not sneaking and spying. I wanted to talk to you, Pa.
Bartlett—[Sits down by the table.] Well, here I be.
Nat—Sue said the schooner sails tomorrow.
Bartlett—Aye!
Nat—[Resolutely.] I want to go with you, Pa.
 Bartlett—[Briefly—as if dismissing the matter.] Ye can’t. I’ve told ye
that before. Let this be the last time ye ask it.
Nat—But why? Why can’t I go?
Bartlett—Ye’ve your own work to do—good work. Attend to that and
leave me to mine.
Nat—But you always wanted me to go on voyages to learn whaling with
you.
Bartlett—This be different.
Nat—[With excited indignation.] Yes, this is different! Don’t I know it?
Do you think you can hide that from me? It is different, and that’s why I
want to go.
Bartlett—Ye can’t, I say.
Nat—[Pleadingly.] But why not, Pa? I’m not a boy. I can do a man’s
work on a ship, or anywhere else.
Bartlett—[Roughly.] Let’s have done with talk! Your place is here,
with Sue and your Ma, and here you’ll stay.
Nat—[Angrily.] That isn’t any reason. But I know your real one. You’re
afraid——
Bartlett—[Half rising to his feet.] Ye say that to me? [Recovering
himself with an effort and settling down again.] Keep a clapper on your jaw,
boy. That’s talk I’ll not put up with. [With a touch of uneasiness—forcing a
scornful laugh.] Afeerd! Afeerd o’ what? Did ye ever know me to be
afeerd?
Nat—Afraid of what I know, of what I might find out if I went with you.
Bartlett—[With the same forced, uneasy scorn.] And what d’ye think
ye’d find out, Nat?
Nat—First of all that it’s not a trading venture you’re going on. Oh, I’m
not a fool! That story is all right to fool the neighbors and girls like Sue. But
I know better.
Bartlett—What d’ye know?
Nat—You’re going for something else.
Bartlett—What would that be?
Nat—I don’t know—exactly. Something—on that island.
Bartlett—What?
 Nat—I don’t know. But I could guess a lot of things. [With sudden
excitement.] Ambergris! That’s it! Is that it? It must be. That’s what you’ve
been hunting for years.
Bartlett—Aye—and never found! [He gets to his feet with a forced
burst of laughter.] Ambergris! Ye fool of a boy! Ye got that notion out o’
some fool book ye’ve been reading, didn’t ye? And I thought ye’d growed
to be a man! [More and more wild in his forced scorn.] Ye’ll be tellin’ me
next it’s buried treasure I be sailin’ after—pirates’ gold buried on that island
—all in a chest—and a map to guide me with a cross marked on it where
the gold is hid! And then they be ghosts guardin’ it, ben’t they—spirits o’
murdered men? They always be, in the books. [He laughs scornfully.]
Nat—[Gazing at him with fascinated eyes.] No, not that last. That’s silly
—but I did think you might have found—
Bartlett—[Laughing again.] Treasure? Gold? [With forced sternness.]
Nat, I be ashamed of ye. Ye’ve had schoolin’, and ye’ve been doin’ a man’s
work in the world, and doin’ it well, and I’d hoped ye’d take my place here
to home when I be away, and look after your Ma and Sue. But ye’ve owned
up to bein’ little better nor a boy in short britches, dreamin’ o’ pirates’ gold
that never was ’cept in books.
Nat—But you—you’re to blame. When you first came home you did
nothing but talk mysteriously of how rich we’d all be when the schooner
got back.
Bartlett—[Roughly.] But what’s that to do with silly dreams? It’s in
the line o’ trade I meant.
Nat—But why be so mysterious about trade? There’s something you’re
hiding. You can’t say no because I feel it.
Bartlett—[Insinuatingly—with a crafty glance at his son.] Supposin’
in one of them Eastern trading ports I’d run across a bit o’ business with a
chance for a fortune in it for a man that wasn’t afeerd of the law, and could
keep his mouth shut?
Nat—[Disappointed.] You mean illegal trading?
Bartlett—I mean what I mean, Nat—and I’d be a fool to tell an
overgrown boy, or two women—or any man in the world, for the matter o’
that—what I do mean.
 Nat—[Turning toward the door in the rear—disgustedly.] If it’s only
that, I don’t want to hear it. [He walks toward the door—stops and turns
again to his father.] No, I don’t believe it. That’s not like you. You’re not
telling the truth, Pa.
Bartlett—[Rising to his feet—with a savage sternness in which there is
a wild note of entreaty.] I’ve listened to your fool’s talk enough. Get up to
the house where ye belong! I’ll stand no more o’ your meddling in business
o’ mine. I’ve been patient with ye, but there’s an end to that! Take heed o’
what I’m sayin’, if ye know what’s good for ye! I’d rather see ye dead
tonight than sail on that schooner at dawn. I’d kill ye with my own hands
first! [With a sort of sombre pride.] I’ll stand alone in this business and
finish it out alone if I go to hell for it. Ye hear me?
Nat—[Alarmed by this outburst—submissively.] Yes, Pa.
Bartlett—Then see that ye heed. [After a pause—as Nat lingers.]
They’ll be waitin’ for ye at the house.
Nat—All right. I’ll go. [He turns to the doorway on the left, but before
he gets to it, the door is pushed open and Mrs. Bartlett enters. Nat stops,
startled.] Ma!
Mrs. Bartlett—[With a forced smile.] Run along, Nat. It’s all right. I
want to speak with your Pa.
Bartlett—[Uneasily.] Ye’d best go up with Nat, Sarah. I’ve work to
do.
Mrs. Bartlett—[Fixing her eyes on her husband.] I want to talk with
you alone, Isaiah.
Bartlett—[Grimly—as if he were accepting a challenge.] As ye like,
then.
Mrs. Bartlett—[Dismissing Nat with a feeble attempt at a smile.] Tell
Sue I’ll be comin’ up directly, Nat.
Nat—[Hesitates for a moment, looking from one to the other uneasily.]
All right, Ma. [He goes out.]
Bartlett—[Waits for Nat to get out of hearing.] Won’t ye set, Sarah?
[She comes forward and sits by the table. He sits by the other side.]
Mrs. Bartlett—[Shuddering as she sees the bottle on the table.] Will
drinkin’ this poison make you forget, Isaiah?