WEBVTT - Part Two: Thomas Thistlewood: Slave Plantation Owner and Diarist 0:00:01.800 --> 0:00:08.800 Also media. Uh huh, I do it's now that we 0:00:08.840 --> 0:00:12.080 used to script to the zoom Lady going recording in progress. 0:00:12.440 --> 0:00:14.880 I know, I know. Whatever happened to the zoom Lady 0:00:15.480 --> 0:00:19.640 another job taken by automation. I think it was an 0:00:19.680 --> 0:00:21.439 automated job to begin with. I think that was a 0:00:22.239 --> 0:00:26.280 who complains when the when the robots get taken their 0:00:26.360 --> 0:00:29.920 jobs taken by other robots, you know, we need solidarity 0:00:29.960 --> 0:00:32.080 with some of the robots against the other robots. 0:00:32.200 --> 0:00:36.320 I think I think Wally from that from that movie, Wally. 0:00:36.120 --> 0:00:36.560 Is the one. 0:00:36.560 --> 0:00:38.080 Oh no, I hate that son of a bitch. 0:00:38.640 --> 0:00:40.159 Why I love Wally. 0:00:41.000 --> 0:00:42.720 I'll fight I'll fight. 0:00:42.560 --> 0:00:44.120 Wally Lealy alone. 0:00:44.280 --> 0:00:45.040 I don't like him at all. 0:00:45.080 --> 0:00:46.120 Why don't you like Wally? 0:00:46.680 --> 0:00:49.440 It's not his business coming around picking ship up? You know, 0:00:50.760 --> 0:00:52.040 you're so literally what. 0:00:52.000 --> 0:00:55.720 He's programmed for. You're such a hater I am. 0:00:55.760 --> 0:00:58.240 I'm fundamentally a hater because that's my job. I'm Robert 0:00:58.280 --> 0:01:01.520 Evans and this is Behind the Bastards, a podcast for haters, 0:01:01.680 --> 0:01:04.080 by haters, often about haters. 0:01:04.800 --> 0:01:06.640 Forgive Me, produced by a. 0:01:06.680 --> 0:01:12.319 Lover, Produced by a lover and our guest today T 0:01:12.440 --> 0:01:14.640 T Lee, Would you like to talk about a guy 0:01:14.680 --> 0:01:15.920 we hate again some more. 0:01:17.080 --> 0:01:18.679 You know, do I have a choice? 0:01:19.000 --> 0:01:21.679 No? No, no, you know what this is exactly I 0:01:21.920 --> 0:01:23.160 this is what I love to. 0:01:23.080 --> 0:01:27.119 Do, is to be forced to hear about a bad man. Yeah. 0:01:27.200 --> 0:01:31.360 I was forced to read about him. Yeah, I mean 0:01:31.400 --> 0:01:35.600 I forced myself. This is all fundamentally on me. Yeah, 0:01:35.720 --> 0:01:37.920 I made my choices. I could have written about anyone. 0:01:38.360 --> 0:01:39.840 I will say, if I had to hear it from anyone, 0:01:40.560 --> 0:01:42.039 I would choose you, Robert and so. 0:01:42.240 --> 0:01:44.080 Well, thank you. So I will if I had to 0:01:44.160 --> 0:01:46.840 choose to tell anyone, I would tell you, because you would. 0:01:47.080 --> 0:01:49.640 You and I share the deepest bond that two people 0:01:49.720 --> 0:01:52.400 can at work, which is you both accidentally took a 0:01:52.480 --> 0:01:54.880 huge dose of mushrooms together while filming a video for 0:01:54.960 --> 0:01:55.440 the Internet. 0:01:56.440 --> 0:02:00.400 That is still very much yeah, never forgotten. Every once 0:02:00.400 --> 0:02:04.120 in a while someone will bring that up, a stranger like, did. 0:02:04.000 --> 0:02:05.800 You get high on mushrooms once? 0:02:05.920 --> 0:02:06.400 Yeah? 0:02:06.440 --> 0:02:08.519 Online. I'm like, yeah, that was me. 0:02:08.800 --> 0:02:10.519 And I always say, by the way, it was cleared 0:02:10.520 --> 0:02:12.200 by legal it's completely legal. 0:02:12.360 --> 0:02:16.119 Actually, these were legal mushrooms. They're unregulated, you know they 0:02:16.160 --> 0:02:22.480 were they were unregulated. A lot was unregulated in those days. Uh, 0:02:22.880 --> 0:02:28.320 the Internet before like twenty sixteen. You know, yeah, before 0:02:28.400 --> 0:02:31.520 everything got worse. Yeah, speaking about the stuff that's much 0:02:31.520 --> 0:02:34.160 worse than that. Let's get back to this horrible guy 0:02:34.200 --> 0:02:43.320 in Jamaica Thomas Thistle would. So in Part one, I 0:02:43.639 --> 0:02:46.320 discussed the fact that Thomas thistle Would considered himself a 0:02:46.320 --> 0:02:49.000 bit of a naturalist, and that his documentations of all 0:02:49.040 --> 0:02:51.600 of the different crimes he committed were, in his own eyes, 0:02:51.639 --> 0:02:54.400 something he saw as a contribution to the scientific record. 0:02:54.760 --> 0:02:57.400 And he also considered like what he was specifically the 0:02:57.440 --> 0:02:59.840 sexual violence he employed as like a part of his 0:03:00.040 --> 0:03:04.200 work as a farmer. You know, slaves aren't entirely treated 0:03:04.240 --> 0:03:06.519 the same as livestock in his mind, but they're treated 0:03:06.560 --> 0:03:08.040 more like livestock than people. 0:03:08.200 --> 0:03:08.359 Right. 0:03:08.600 --> 0:03:10.799 The only reason in which they're kind of different from 0:03:10.880 --> 0:03:13.000 life is that is that they're more valuable, right, like 0:03:13.040 --> 0:03:16.600 a slave is does an enslave person represents a huge 0:03:16.639 --> 0:03:21.079 store of value. Right, They're worth a lot more than 0:03:21.200 --> 0:03:23.839 like most livestock are. Right, So these are not. That's 0:03:23.880 --> 0:03:26.040 part of why even when you hear about something like, oh, 0:03:26.080 --> 0:03:28.960 he caught this this woman with a knife, it's not 0:03:29.080 --> 0:03:32.280 that common for them to kill because that's a lot 0:03:32.280 --> 0:03:35.360 of money on the line, right, that represents somebody's money. 0:03:35.360 --> 0:03:38.000 It's not out of humanitarianism or anything like that. They 0:03:38.080 --> 0:03:40.920 just it's it's that's pretty dark. Yeah, yeah, that's all 0:03:41.000 --> 0:03:44.080 this is to them. Yeah. One of the things that 0:03:44.120 --> 0:03:48.040 I find most interesting about the journals of Thomas Thistlewood 0:03:48.160 --> 0:03:50.240 is the degree to which things that are like these 0:03:50.280 --> 0:03:53.520 really horrible sex crimes are just like bracketed in between 0:03:53.600 --> 0:03:56.360 stuff like, oh, one of my lambs gave birth or 0:03:56.360 --> 0:03:59.400 I killed a snake, right, Like he literally like put 0:03:59.520 --> 0:04:03.160 it in tween stuff like that. And in her study 0:04:03.160 --> 0:04:06.480 for Small Ax Journal, Heather Vermulion explains that by doing 0:04:06.560 --> 0:04:11.400 things like this, he's quote enclosing particular rape records within 0:04:11.560 --> 0:04:15.240 signifiers of his progress an increase in livestock and a 0:04:15.320 --> 0:04:20.159 decrease in the threatening of the undomesticated creaturely population, right, 0:04:20.720 --> 0:04:24.120 And so what he's seeing is like, what I'm doing 0:04:24.200 --> 0:04:26.800 is a part of this like taming of the natural world. 0:04:26.880 --> 0:04:28.880 It's the same as getting rid of, you know, a 0:04:28.880 --> 0:04:30.920 snake that we have no use for because it will 0:04:30.960 --> 0:04:33.520 just eat our livestock. Or it's the same as one 0:04:33.560 --> 0:04:37.480 of my livestock giving birth right and Darwin's theory of 0:04:37.520 --> 0:04:40.440 evolution didn't exist yet, right, that's not published until the 0:04:40.520 --> 0:04:43.720 late eighteen fifties. But people who would wind up being 0:04:43.760 --> 0:04:47.599 Darwin's precursors are alive and publishing books of science in 0:04:47.640 --> 0:04:49.240 this period of time. And these are a lot of 0:04:49.240 --> 0:04:52.840 the guys that Thomas Thistlewood is a fan of. Right, 0:04:52.920 --> 0:04:56.560 He's like, this is his We don't have like YouTube yet, 0:04:56.600 --> 0:04:58.760 but like this is very much the kind of content 0:04:59.200 --> 0:05:01.680 that he is he is ingesting, right, is these like 0:05:01.760 --> 0:05:05.240 early and some of them are bullshit? Right, yeah, Like 0:05:05.279 --> 0:05:07.320 this is his manusphere, right, is like this mix of 0:05:07.680 --> 0:05:11.040 works of science and works of like literature and satire 0:05:11.440 --> 0:05:14.200 and like literal like just like lies that are also 0:05:14.240 --> 0:05:16.039 being passed off as science. Like all of this is 0:05:16.040 --> 0:05:18.880 like part of his intellectual diet, and one of the 0:05:18.920 --> 0:05:20.760 books that was most influence. 0:05:20.279 --> 0:05:22.080 Exactly like the manuscre right now. 0:05:22.720 --> 0:05:26.080 Yeah, there's yeah, and there's one of the one of 0:05:26.160 --> 0:05:28.960 the things that is weirdly common with like it's a 0:05:30.000 --> 0:05:32.760 it relates directly to a problem we have today is 0:05:32.800 --> 0:05:36.680 people taking works of satire seriously and then building their 0:05:36.680 --> 0:05:39.600 for their like views of the world around them. Like 0:05:39.680 --> 0:05:42.200 that that happens today with you know, shit like we 0:05:42.240 --> 0:05:44.720 can talk about South Park and the movie Starship Troopers, right, 0:05:44.760 --> 0:05:47.279 where a lot of people don't get the joke and 0:05:47.400 --> 0:05:50.360 wind up or take the joke in a specific way 0:05:50.480 --> 0:05:52.640 and wind up using it as part of like a 0:05:52.680 --> 0:05:55.680 worldview that justifies some pretty fucked up things and shit 0:05:55.800 --> 0:05:57.680 like that is happening back then. And one of the 0:05:57.680 --> 0:05:59.799 things one of the ways it happens to Thomas thistle 0:05:59.800 --> 0:06:02.279 w is he he becomes a fan of this like 0:06:02.400 --> 0:06:07.279 satirical tract published in seventeen fifty two called the Man Plant, 0:06:07.480 --> 0:06:11.080 or a Scheme for Increasing and Improving the British Breed. 0:06:11.880 --> 0:06:14.719 And this is this is like a you've heard of 0:06:14.720 --> 0:06:19.599 like Thomas Swift's a modest proposal, right yeah, where he's 0:06:19.600 --> 0:06:21.120 like he's talking about it we should, Oh, you know, 0:06:21.160 --> 0:06:23.760 there's all these poor people starving in Ireland. What if 0:06:23.800 --> 0:06:25.880 we ate Irish babies? What if we like allowed them 0:06:25.880 --> 0:06:28.880 to be sold as food? And it's like it's a 0:06:28.960 --> 0:06:32.480 sad Like he's joking about how cruelly people talk about 0:06:32.520 --> 0:06:35.600 the poor, right and particularly poor Irish like that it's 0:06:35.960 --> 0:06:38.919 that's the joke, is like how awful his society is 0:06:38.960 --> 0:06:41.360 to this group of people, right, that they're treating their 0:06:41.400 --> 0:06:43.880 babies like a like chicken to be farmed for food, 0:06:43.920 --> 0:06:47.960 almost right, like like that's that's the point Swift was making, right, 0:06:48.040 --> 0:06:51.599 And some people get the joke and some people don't. 0:06:52.040 --> 0:06:54.840 And Thistlewood comes across a book that's a similar thing 0:06:54.880 --> 0:06:57.520 to what Thomas Swift is doing, called The Man Plant, 0:06:57.520 --> 0:06:59.359 and it's written we don't know exactly who wrote it. 0:06:59.440 --> 0:07:03.320 The author's pseudonym was Vincent Miller. And it's really weird 0:07:03.400 --> 0:07:06.480 because it comes out in seventeen fifty two, so there's 0:07:06.480 --> 0:07:10.239 no theory of evolution. Our knowledge of heredity is very 0:07:10.320 --> 0:07:13.280 limited in the seventeen fifties, right, we're starting to get 0:07:13.320 --> 0:07:15.320 an understanding of it, but it is not what we'd 0:07:15.400 --> 0:07:19.360 call developed. And this work, as a joke is an 0:07:19.400 --> 0:07:23.040 early eugenics text. It's really fascinating. It's like a pre 0:07:23.360 --> 0:07:28.360 genetics understanding of eugenics, again written as a bit, because 0:07:28.360 --> 0:07:32.720 the gist of this book is that this guy Vincent Miller, 0:07:32.920 --> 0:07:37.600 is basically saying, hey, we need like there's a lot 0:07:37.640 --> 0:07:41.200 of problems like with the there's a problem of inequality 0:07:41.280 --> 0:07:44.920 between the sexes, right, because pregnancy is so dangerous and 0:07:45.000 --> 0:07:48.720 painful for women and part of what he's doing here 0:07:49.080 --> 0:07:51.880 is I think he's kind of making a comment on 0:07:52.360 --> 0:07:55.000 the upper class in his society, in which it's very 0:07:55.040 --> 0:07:58.880 common for women who are of high society after they 0:07:58.960 --> 0:08:02.520 give birth to hand their baby off to like a nurse, right, 0:08:02.560 --> 0:08:06.160 who's going to like actually like feed and take care 0:08:06.160 --> 0:08:08.680 of effect we raise the kid. And so part of 0:08:08.680 --> 0:08:11.000 what part of the satires is he's saying, what if 0:08:11.000 --> 0:08:13.440 we take moms and dads entirely out of the equation 0:08:13.840 --> 0:08:16.920 and raise human beings like animals on a farm. Right, 0:08:17.440 --> 0:08:20.080 And one the way he suggests doing this is like, 0:08:20.120 --> 0:08:22.480 we have to make pregnancy less dangerous. Let's ges state 0:08:22.520 --> 0:08:25.240 embryos in an artificial womb, and that way we can 0:08:25.360 --> 0:08:27.960 keep we can we can remove human beings entirely from 0:08:28.000 --> 0:08:31.520 the business of like raising their children. Right, He's being like, 0:08:31.600 --> 0:08:32.480 this is a sad. 0:08:32.800 --> 0:08:36.680 Point out how the direction we're going is even becoming 0:08:36.760 --> 0:08:39.640 like less removed or more removed and less human, and 0:08:39.880 --> 0:08:44.359 as like a point. But then people are like, great idea, yes, yes. 0:08:44.120 --> 0:08:45.920 And he's you know this, this is where I wanted 0:08:45.920 --> 0:08:47.880 to go into more detail about this, but we're going 0:08:47.960 --> 0:08:50.440 to run long anyway. But it's a fascinating work for me, 0:08:51.240 --> 0:08:54.760 just because of how he's he's very clearly satirizing what 0:08:54.880 --> 0:08:57.559 he sees is like an inhumanity at the highest levels 0:08:57.559 --> 0:09:00.240 of his society, like people aren't even raising or nearing 0:09:00.320 --> 0:09:03.320 their own kids. But part of how he chooses to 0:09:03.559 --> 0:09:06.160 mock that is by kind of laughing at the idea 0:09:06.920 --> 0:09:09.840 of like that, like pregnancy is dangerous for women. And 0:09:09.880 --> 0:09:12.200 it's a little unclear to me if he's actually acknowledging 0:09:12.240 --> 0:09:14.760 that that's an inequality or if he's making fun of 0:09:14.800 --> 0:09:18.400 the people who see it as an inequality. Like I'm 0:09:18.480 --> 0:09:21.120 just not fully versed enough in like the satire of 0:09:21.160 --> 0:09:23.559 the seventeen fifties in England to tell you what he's 0:09:23.600 --> 0:09:27.280 trying to do more. But Vincent Miller, part of what 0:09:27.320 --> 0:09:30.200 he's doing is he's looking at this culture of upper 0:09:30.200 --> 0:09:34.160 class child neglect and he's proposing a hyperbolic solution. Right, 0:09:34.200 --> 0:09:38.080 we create an artificial womb to ges state fertilized embryos 0:09:38.080 --> 0:09:40.680 outside of the human body, and we can raise human 0:09:40.720 --> 0:09:44.920 beings like animals on a plantation. And part of one 0:09:44.960 --> 0:09:46.880 of the things that the eugenics thing that he kind 0:09:46.920 --> 0:09:49.319 of proposes here is he pretends that he's done this, 0:09:49.400 --> 0:09:52.360 He like writes claims about how I convinced this farm 0:09:52.440 --> 0:09:54.840 girl like to give me one of her after she 0:09:54.920 --> 0:09:56.480 had sex with his boy, that she liked to give 0:09:56.520 --> 0:09:58.800 me a fertilized embryo, and I took it out this way, 0:09:58.960 --> 0:10:01.160 and I grew it in a heat cow bladder. And 0:10:01.200 --> 0:10:03.720 the baby's twenty months old now, and it's much healthier 0:10:03.720 --> 0:10:06.280 than a regular baby. And for this reason, I propose 0:10:06.360 --> 0:10:08.960 that this method of growing human beings will yield a 0:10:08.960 --> 0:10:12.720 heartier offspring will get which is proto eugenic. Right, that 0:10:12.760 --> 0:10:15.319 he's saying we will improve, and again as a joke, 0:10:15.440 --> 0:10:18.440 but he's still saying we will improve through this method 0:10:18.679 --> 0:10:21.640 the breeding quality of all of the British people that 0:10:21.679 --> 0:10:23.000 we start putting into the world. 0:10:23.120 --> 0:10:27.680 Right, But he's talking about like like it's interesting that 0:10:27.760 --> 0:10:31.200 he's talking about breeding of white people. And then there's 0:10:31.240 --> 0:10:34.400 like this parallel world where they're talking about breeding slaves 0:10:34.400 --> 0:10:38.360 and they're both dehumanizing. But one is like, let's breed 0:10:38.520 --> 0:10:42.000 more of quote unquote superior white people, and the others like, let's. 0:10:41.800 --> 0:10:43.559 Bring more of these people we don't consider human. 0:10:43.960 --> 0:10:46.600 Well, yeah, and so that's like such a weird like 0:10:47.480 --> 0:10:49.559 I don't know, like a weird cognitive dissonance. 0:10:50.200 --> 0:10:52.360 I think that's part of the satire too, is him saying, Hey, 0:10:52.440 --> 0:10:54.760 if we apply it, here's what happens if we apply 0:10:54.840 --> 0:10:57.760 the logic we're using on slave populations in places like 0:10:57.840 --> 0:11:02.079 Jamaica to white English people. Isn't that fucked up? Right? 0:11:02.200 --> 0:11:04.160 Like he's he's I think part of this is is 0:11:04.200 --> 0:11:06.440 Miller trying to get people in his society to like 0:11:06.559 --> 0:11:08.720 think about it this way, right. I think that's part 0:11:08.720 --> 0:11:13.080 of the satire. So obviously this guy does not is 0:11:13.120 --> 0:11:16.760 not seriously suggesting this, Nor did he literally just state 0:11:16.840 --> 0:11:20.240 a baby and a cow's uh black, Like that's you 0:11:20.280 --> 0:11:23.360 can't do that, right, Like that's like he's this is 0:11:23.400 --> 0:11:28.199 a bit. It's a little unclear to me how we 0:11:28.280 --> 0:11:32.280 know this influenced Thomas Thistlewood, because he writes, he quotes 0:11:32.360 --> 0:11:35.640 extensively from this tract in his diary. He writes about 0:11:35.679 --> 0:11:37.560 it a bunch at the time that he reads it, 0:11:38.120 --> 0:11:40.800 and there's some some evidence some of the scholars who 0:11:40.840 --> 0:11:43.320 study his journals have suggested that this played like a 0:11:43.440 --> 0:11:46.480 role in his intellectual development and how he treated people. 0:11:46.760 --> 0:11:49.040 And it's kind of I kind of think I don't 0:11:49.040 --> 0:11:51.760 know if it's that he missed the satire entirely or 0:11:51.760 --> 0:11:53.800 that he just like a lot of these tech bros 0:11:53.840 --> 0:11:56.439 who read science fiction and there's like things in there 0:11:56.440 --> 0:12:00.880 that you're not emulate. The Matrix, right, it's a torment 0:12:00.960 --> 0:12:04.280 nexus situation where like Vincent Miller is describing the torment 0:12:04.360 --> 0:12:07.720 nexus that is treating people like Livestock, and Thomas Thistle 0:12:07.920 --> 0:12:13.000 was like, what a cool idea. Why don't idea exactly right? 0:12:13.080 --> 0:12:14.480 Well, you described it so well. 0:12:14.559 --> 0:12:17.720 Yeah, because it's like all the people who the worst, 0:12:17.880 --> 0:12:21.320 like tech bros, will bring up like the Matrix as 0:12:22.040 --> 0:12:24.800 and it's like they completely missed the point and like 0:12:25.200 --> 0:12:26.720 and people, Yeah, it's wild. 0:12:26.720 --> 0:12:28.559 It's like you completely missed it. 0:12:28.640 --> 0:12:31.080 Oh, especially when like those anti trans tech bros are 0:12:31.080 --> 0:12:33.960 big fans or like guys like entertainer fans. The Matrix 0:12:34.040 --> 0:12:36.160 is like, you motherfuckers missed the point as hard as 0:12:36.160 --> 0:12:36.960 it could be missed. 0:12:37.679 --> 0:12:39.679 You ever actually looked at this movie? 0:12:40.080 --> 0:12:44.000 Yeah, this is not like the authors are around, they've 0:12:44.040 --> 0:12:44.920 talked about this. 0:12:45.320 --> 0:12:49.000 Yeah, yeah, like this is what it means. 0:12:49.000 --> 0:12:49.560 We'll never know. 0:12:49.760 --> 0:12:54.040 You're like, yeah, okay, so I think part of the 0:12:54.040 --> 0:12:57.400 big impact that this this satire satiric work has on 0:12:57.480 --> 0:13:00.480 Thomas is the way in which the author described human 0:13:00.520 --> 0:13:02.800 breeding in agricultural terms, and I'm going to quote a 0:13:02.880 --> 0:13:05.880 passage from this book. It is then easy to be 0:13:05.960 --> 0:13:08.280 conceived that by ridding the women of the plagues and 0:13:08.320 --> 0:13:10.959 fatigue of gestation, they may team anew at much shorter 0:13:11.040 --> 0:13:13.400 intervals of time. They may then become like those fertile 0:13:13.440 --> 0:13:15.680 fields that yield two or three crops in a season, 0:13:15.920 --> 0:13:18.319 and their fecundity will only be limited by such small 0:13:18.360 --> 0:13:21.200 reposes as the necessity of lying fallow will require for 0:13:21.240 --> 0:13:24.240 the reparation of the ground. They will continue longer able 0:13:24.240 --> 0:13:27.080 and apt for impregnation, so that, upon a moderate estimate, 0:13:27.120 --> 0:13:30.800 a well disposed, well constituted, and industrious woman may furnish 0:13:30.800 --> 0:13:33.160 her country with one hundred and thirty to one hundred 0:13:33.160 --> 0:13:36.760 and forty or more children. So it's very much like 0:13:36.800 --> 0:13:40.560 again talking about women like a field and talking about 0:13:40.720 --> 0:13:44.920 human babies as crops. You know, you can see a 0:13:45.000 --> 0:13:49.760 GIF is supposed to like this. I think Miller is 0:13:49.800 --> 0:13:53.120 saying this is bad, right, that's why it's a satire. 0:13:53.200 --> 0:13:54.960 But this or what is just like what a cue? 0:13:56.160 --> 0:14:00.640 Yeah as well, because it's even you say now I'm 0:14:00.679 --> 0:14:04.080 like it's satire. But then I'm like, I don't know 0:14:04.120 --> 0:14:07.280 how far we've Like, right, some people may look at 0:14:07.280 --> 0:14:10.360 that today and you know, there's the whole childwise breeders 0:14:10.800 --> 0:14:13.080 then look at that and be like, yeah. 0:14:12.760 --> 0:14:16.600 Look at the the pro natalist movement, right, Like there's 0:14:16.640 --> 0:14:19.080 more than a little of that in here, right, Like 0:14:19.360 --> 0:14:22.400 the of this, like, yeah, we can breed stronger and 0:14:22.440 --> 0:14:25.880 better people to improve the nature of society. It always 0:14:25.920 --> 0:14:27.480 gets to be a problem when you're thinking about like 0:14:27.520 --> 0:14:29.960 how can we how can we make the next generation, 0:14:30.240 --> 0:14:33.680 like tinker with it genetically to make it better? Which 0:14:33.720 --> 0:14:35.280 is I mean, that's part of what's interesting. This is 0:14:35.320 --> 0:14:38.360 in seventeen fifty two, this comes out and it is 0:14:38.520 --> 0:14:41.640 kind of talking about like genetic engineering in a way, right, 0:14:41.720 --> 0:14:45.000 and before we knew what those words meant. But it's 0:14:45.080 --> 0:14:48.840 a proto tract in that line of like science fiction, right, 0:14:50.280 --> 0:14:53.040 Like there's there's bits of Gatica in this, right, like 0:14:53.080 --> 0:14:55.840 that Gatica has bits of this in its DNA, if 0:14:55.880 --> 0:14:59.560 you'll forgive the term, right, the movie Gatica this idea 0:14:59.560 --> 0:15:02.000 of like we're well, by changing this, we make people 0:15:02.040 --> 0:15:04.160 that are heartier and stronger and we can ship them 0:15:04.160 --> 0:15:07.560 over sea. We're creating plantations of men, right, That's what 0:15:07.680 --> 0:15:10.360 Miller writes in this book. And then we'll ship all 0:15:10.400 --> 0:15:14.600 these people that we've grown like crops over to populate 0:15:14.640 --> 0:15:18.120 the colonies. Quote. By this means we shall see infinite 0:15:18.120 --> 0:15:21.280 broods of subjects serve to in people and enrich as 0:15:21.280 --> 0:15:24.040 well as our island, as those vast tracts in North 0:15:24.080 --> 0:15:27.080 America which are so thinly inhabited, which are now obligated 0:15:27.120 --> 0:15:30.640 to be stocked with other foreign refugees. A naturalization bill 0:15:30.680 --> 0:15:32.560 will thus be out of the question. We may also 0:15:32.560 --> 0:15:35.320 then more reasonably grasp the conquest of both the indies, 0:15:35.520 --> 0:15:38.080 our actual possessions and those which we shall infallibly by 0:15:38.120 --> 0:15:41.440 dint of superior numbers procure, will be abundantly supplied with 0:15:41.520 --> 0:15:43.920 swarms of our own subjects and become as populous as 0:15:44.040 --> 0:15:48.840 China itself. And part again, there's this knowledge that we're 0:15:48.880 --> 0:15:52.920 only peopling the new world we need. It's mostly slaves 0:15:52.920 --> 0:15:55.240 in a lot of these colonies, right, slaves or local 0:15:55.280 --> 0:15:59.840 people that we're ruling, because British people can't survive that 0:15:59.840 --> 0:16:02.600 way well in all of these places, right. And part 0:16:02.640 --> 0:16:04.680 of the joke that Miller's like, He's like, no, no, no, 0:16:04.880 --> 0:16:06.440 what if we could get rid of all of these 0:16:06.480 --> 0:16:09.600 non white people by just outbreeding them with these human 0:16:09.640 --> 0:16:12.640 beings we grew on a field and again saying that 0:16:12.680 --> 0:16:15.480 to satirize a lot of the attitudes at his time. 0:16:16.120 --> 0:16:19.480 But I don't think everyone gets is interprets it that way. 0:16:20.120 --> 0:16:22.920 We know Thistlewood owned a copy of this book after 0:16:22.960 --> 0:16:24.880 it was published, and he wrote about it in his 0:16:25.000 --> 0:16:27.640 diary several times. I don't know that he picked up 0:16:27.640 --> 0:16:30.720 the critique of aristocratic family dynamics, but the idea of 0:16:30.760 --> 0:16:33.880 peopling newly conquered territory and improving the quality of new 0:16:33.920 --> 0:16:36.240 generations was clearly on his mind, and that's how he 0:16:36.320 --> 0:16:38.640 saw a lot of what he was doing. I found 0:16:38.800 --> 0:16:41.560 very little analysis of his impact of this the impactless 0:16:41.560 --> 0:16:43.960 book had on him, other than what Heather vver Mullin writes, 0:16:44.680 --> 0:16:47.640 Thomas Thistlewood has a lot of male biographers, and they 0:16:47.680 --> 0:16:50.480 mostly ignore this kind of stuff. When a lot of 0:16:50.560 --> 0:16:54.080 them ignore the fact that he's committing sex crimes at all, right, 0:16:54.400 --> 0:16:56.000 like some of them like the most some of them 0:16:56.040 --> 0:16:58.440 will say is that like, Well, there's some debate as 0:16:58.520 --> 0:17:00.480 to whether or not you know, what he was doing 0:17:00.560 --> 0:17:02.840 was consensual, and it's like, well, there's really not like 0:17:03.000 --> 0:17:09.040 he owned these people. Yeah they couldn't read Latin, but yeah, 0:17:09.040 --> 0:17:12.280 there's a lot of like this stuff gets mixed. Vermullin 0:17:12.359 --> 0:17:14.320 is one of the only female scholars that I've seen 0:17:14.359 --> 0:17:17.160 analyzed this Wood's writing, and she does center the man 0:17:17.640 --> 0:17:21.200 this book in her discussions of why he wrote about 0:17:21.200 --> 0:17:24.000 his sex crimes the way she did when discussing passages 0:17:24.040 --> 0:17:26.480 from Miller's book that he exerpted for his diary, she 0:17:26.560 --> 0:17:30.280 concludes Thistlewood transcribes these passages after he has begun his 0:17:30.280 --> 0:17:33.439 classification of enslaved women in rape records, which suggests that 0:17:33.480 --> 0:17:36.560 his practice has preceded, or at least existed in reciprocal 0:17:36.600 --> 0:17:40.359 relationship to his engagement of pseudoscientific theory. In other words, 0:17:40.359 --> 0:17:43.040 he does start writing about what he's doing. It's like 0:17:43.400 --> 0:17:46.520 he would consider his sexual exploits before he reads this book, 0:17:46.920 --> 0:17:48.760 but the way he quotes from it suggests that he 0:17:48.840 --> 0:17:52.840 considers it to justify a provided justification to his behavior right, 0:17:53.160 --> 0:17:57.320 and that justification may have helped him continue to find 0:17:57.359 --> 0:17:59.560 ways to explain to himself why what he was doing 0:17:59.600 --> 0:18:00.960 was okay, right. 0:18:01.000 --> 0:18:03.399 It's like finding yeah, like the echo chambers sort of 0:18:03.560 --> 0:18:05.800 like looking for more signs that he's going down the 0:18:05.840 --> 0:18:06.560 right path. 0:18:06.800 --> 0:18:09.080 Right right exactly, Like that's something he's got to do 0:18:09.160 --> 0:18:11.879 for himself. Here we know that during the week in 0:18:11.920 --> 0:18:15.080 which he first reads The Man Planned, he oversees the 0:18:15.160 --> 0:18:18.520 harvest season at his plantation, and he chooses to mark 0:18:18.560 --> 0:18:21.680 the occasion by picking out another victim to sexually assault. 0:18:22.000 --> 0:18:24.440 Immediately after the entry in which he notes that he's 0:18:24.480 --> 0:18:28.840 finished this book, he writes, am kum eve suptear in 0:18:28.880 --> 0:18:32.159 the old Negro house. Paid a bit, right, In other words, 0:18:32.520 --> 0:18:36.119 he slept with this woman, assaulted her on the ground, 0:18:36.160 --> 0:18:40.000 that's what supterum means it near the slave house, and 0:18:40.040 --> 0:18:43.680 he paid her the equivalent of like a dollar or two, right, 0:18:43.920 --> 0:18:46.399 And so that that's coming in immediately after he like 0:18:46.520 --> 0:18:50.199 exerts passages from this book. These things exist his like 0:18:50.280 --> 0:18:53.840 intellectual diet, and then the things that he is doing 0:18:53.880 --> 0:18:56.719 and justifying based on the stuff he's reading all exists 0:18:56.800 --> 0:19:00.399 kind of in the same continuum together Vermilini's lanes. In 0:19:00.400 --> 0:19:02.600 other words, after noting that he returned to text that 0:19:02.640 --> 0:19:06.600 imagined plantations of men thistlewood records that he raped enslaved 0:19:06.600 --> 0:19:08.359 woman named Eve, and that he did so at the 0:19:08.440 --> 0:19:12.440 estate's current harvest site. Put differently, in an engineered Eden, 0:19:12.520 --> 0:19:16.280 the pseudoscientist Vincent Miller grew his ter Philius from an 0:19:16.280 --> 0:19:19.320 egg extracted from the womb of his gardener's daughter, Thistle 0:19:19.320 --> 0:19:21.679 would mark the time of harvest by raping an enslaved 0:19:21.680 --> 0:19:25.080 woman named Eve. Right, there's this weird degree to which 0:19:25.200 --> 0:19:28.040 what he's noting down and the things that he's partaking, 0:19:28.119 --> 0:19:30.600 he makes them almost fit the things that he's doing. 0:19:32.200 --> 0:19:34.760 See, this is why I men shouldn't be allowed to read. 0:19:34.880 --> 0:19:35.040 You know. 0:19:35.240 --> 0:19:37.159 It's like ideas. 0:19:38.400 --> 0:19:43.600 Well, I got good news about literacy levels. 0:19:43.640 --> 0:19:45.840 Too many ideas rapes. 0:19:45.600 --> 0:19:45.920 You know. 0:19:46.480 --> 0:19:48.760 Maybe, yeah, this is why you need this is why 0:19:48.760 --> 0:19:51.440 maybe it's useful sometimes to like do your This is 0:19:51.480 --> 0:19:54.359 the danger of the autodidact is encountering too much about 0:19:54.359 --> 0:19:56.679 the world outside the context of having to talk with 0:19:56.720 --> 0:20:00.280 other people about it. Right, who might be like, I don't, man, 0:20:00.320 --> 0:20:02.199 it seems like seems like he might have gone some 0:20:02.240 --> 0:20:04.919 crazy places with this. Maybe you're just using all this 0:20:04.920 --> 0:20:07.480 stuff you're reading as a justification to be shitty to people. 0:20:09.080 --> 0:20:11.439 But you know, he's in a way. I think this 0:20:11.480 --> 0:20:14.240