Speaker 1: Welcome to Noble Blood. A production of iHeartRadio and Grimm
Speaker 1: and Mild from Aaron Manky Listener Discretion Advised Saint Petersburg,
Speaker 1: seventeen fifty nine. A man in full military dress stands
Speaker 1: before the court as Empress Elizabeth prepares to make him
Speaker 1: General in Chief of the Imperial Russian Army, the second
Speaker 1: highest military rank in the Empire. The man is black,
Speaker 1: African born, and he has risen further than almost anyone
Speaker 1: around him. Whatever the assembled nobility thought of the ceremony,
Speaker 1: there wasn't much they could say.
Speaker 2: The man had earned it. Though foreign born, the man
Speaker 2: had been in Russia for over fifty years. He had
Speaker 2: outlasted rivals, survived exile, built fortresses at the edge of
Speaker 2: the known world, and engineered his way into the upper
Speaker 2: ranks of one of Europe's great military powers. But the
Speaker 2: achievement is even more remarkable when you pull back and
Speaker 2: see the full picture of how he got there. He
Speaker 2: was born in Africa, most likely in the late sixteen nineties,
Speaker 2: the son of a local chief. He was captured as
Speaker 2: a child, trafficked through the Ottoman Empire, and eventually shipped
Speaker 2: to Moscow as a gift for Czar Peter the Great.
Speaker 2: The man arrived with nothing, no language, no connections, no
Speaker 2: guarantee of anything beyond whatever use someone might find for him.
Speaker 2: He could have remained a curiosity at court, a symbol
Speaker 2: of the empire's global reach, comfortable maybe, but ultimately ornamental.
Speaker 2: He chose otherwise. His name was Abrahm Petrovitch Gannible, and
Speaker 2: over six decades he transformed himself into one of the
Speaker 2: most formidable military engineers in Russian history. He was a
Speaker 2: nobleman with land and titles, a patriarch whose children would
Speaker 2: go on to distinguished careers of their own, and a
Speaker 2: great grandfather whose most famous descendant would become the greatest
Speaker 2: poet arguably Russia ever produced. This is the story of
Speaker 2: a child who had every conceivable thing taken from him,
Speaker 2: and who spent the rest of his life quietly and
Speaker 2: methodically building something that could not be taken away. A
Speaker 2: story about what happens when extraordinary intelligence meets extraordinary circumstances.
Speaker 2: I'm Danish Schwartz and this is noble blood. Abram Gannibal's
Speaker 2: early life is difficult to pin down. His birth year
Speaker 2: is disputed, his birthplace is disputed. Even the details of
Speaker 2: his capture and journey northward exist somewhere between documented history
Speaker 2: and educated reconstruction, but what we can piece together paints
Speaker 2: a vivid picture. He was born somewhere between sixteen ninety
Speaker 2: six and sixteen ninety eight, most likely in a small
Speaker 2: principality in the region that is modern day Cameroon. His
Speaker 2: father was a local minor chief or prince, not a
Speaker 2: major power, but a man of standing in his community.
Speaker 2: He had livestock, land, multiple wives, and somewhere in the
Speaker 2: neighborhood of nineteen children. By all accounts, a good life
Speaker 2: for the time and region, but his world was under pressure.
Speaker 2: The neighboring principalities had converted to Islam, which gave them
Speaker 2: both ideological cover and practical motivation to view Abram's people
Speaker 2: and family as inferior, even as legitimate targets. When Ottoman
Speaker 2: forces moved through the region, Abram's father died fighting them.
Speaker 2: In the chaos that followed, the boy was seized. His
Speaker 2: sister Lagan reportedly drowned while trying to save him. This
Speaker 2: heartbreak would not be the last for young Abram. He
Speaker 2: was taken to Constantinople, a long and difficult journey that
Speaker 2: culminated in the summer of seventeen o three. He was
Speaker 2: placed in the household of Sultan Ahmed the Third. Abram
Speaker 2: was kidnapped as part of a disturbing trend of that
Speaker 2: era to serve as what European courts of the time
Speaker 2: called a commer more young black attendance, kept at court,
Speaker 2: partly as servants and partly as symbols of prestige and
Speaker 2: global reach. Considered fashionable. It was a dehumanizing institution dressed
Speaker 2: up in the language of exoticism, and it existed across
Speaker 2: courts from Moscow to London. If you've listened to our
Speaker 2: episode on Sarah Forbes Bonetta, you'll recall that not even
Speaker 2: Queen Victoria was above it. It was this custom that
Speaker 2: brought Abrahm the next chapter of his life. After about
Speaker 2: a year in the sultan palace, Abram caught the eye
Speaker 2: of a Russian ambassador in Constantinople, looking for prospects to
Speaker 2: bring back to the court of Czar Peter the Great.
Speaker 2: Abram was selected. Bribes were passed to the Sultan's viziers,
Speaker 2: and in around seventeen oh four, the boy was sent
Speaker 2: to Moscow to be presented to one of the most
Speaker 2: powerful men in the world. Peter the Great had spent
Speaker 2: years dragging Russia into conversation with the rest of Europe,
Speaker 2: obsessed with modernization, with building things, with finding people who
Speaker 2: could do things well, regardless of where they came from.
Speaker 2: When he met Abram, he saw something immediately. This kid
Speaker 2: was sharp, curious, a fast learner. Peter took him under
Speaker 2: his wing immediately. That his protege was the victim of
Speaker 2: what we would now call human trafficking is an obvious
Speaker 2: fact when viewed through a modern lens, but we can
Speaker 2: assume that Peter had genuine affection for the young man
Speaker 2: and genuinely thought that he was helping him by gaining
Speaker 2: him protection and resources he wouldn't have had back home.
Speaker 2: In seventeen o five, Abram was baptized in a church
Speaker 2: in Vilnius. Peter himself stood as godfather. The middle name
Speaker 2: Petrovich essentially branded Abram as part of Peter's lineage. It
Speaker 2: was a pivotal moment, not just religiously but practically. The
Speaker 2: baptism gave Ebram a formal place in the social fabric
Speaker 2: of Peter's court. He didn't know his actual birthday, so
Speaker 2: he used the date of his baptism as a substitute,
Speaker 2: a small, practical act of self creation that somehow feels
Speaker 2: very in character for the man he'd become. Life at
Speaker 2: court suited Abraham. He traveled with Peter on military campaigns,
Speaker 2: serving as valet, a modest job, perhaps, but it allowed
Speaker 2: him to be physically present for some of the most
Speaker 2: consequential military decisions of the era. He was in the room,
Speaker 2: he was watching, and he grew close not just to Peter,
Speaker 2: but to Peter's daughter Elizabeth, a bond that would matter
Speaker 2: enormously later in his life. By his teenage years, he
Speaker 2: was fluent in several languages and showed a particular gift
Speaker 2: for mathematics and geometry, skills that would eventually become the
Speaker 2: foundation of his military career. Peter recognized what he had
Speaker 2: and encouraged him to pursue that path. In seventeen seventeen,
Speaker 2: Abram was sent to Metz, France for formal training. This
Speaker 2: was the highest level of military and scientific instruction available
Speaker 2: in Europe at the time. It was an extraordinary investment,
Speaker 2: and it reflected something real. Peter saw in this boy,
Speaker 2: not a curiosity to be displayed, but a mind to
Speaker 2: be developed. We'll never know if Abram had a genuine
Speaker 2: passion for military strategy or whether learning was as means
Speaker 2: to an end of keeping Peter happy. But either way,
Speaker 2: he was a star on the rise, a generational talent
Speaker 2: that would change the course of Russian history. When Abram
Speaker 2: started school in France, he was a young man with
Speaker 2: a powerful godfather. When he came back six years later,
Speaker 2: he was something different. A soldier, an engineer, a man
Speaker 2: who had chosen his own identity and built it from scratch.
Speaker 2: What he didn't know was that the protection he'd always
Speaker 2: relied on was about to disappear. But first France, in
Speaker 2: seventeen eighteen, Abram joined the French Royal Army, the most
Speaker 2: sophisticated military institution in Europe. Two years later he enrolled
Speaker 2: in the Royal Artillery Academy at La Fair, where the
Speaker 2: mathematics of fortification and the physics of artillery were treated
Speaker 2: as serious intellectual pursuits. He was exactly where he needed
Speaker 2: to be, and he thrived. It was during these years
Speaker 2: in France that he took a new surname, a decision
Speaker 2: that spoke volumes about the man he was becoming. He
Speaker 2: chose the name Gannibal, the Russian transliteration of Hannibal, the
Speaker 2: great Carthaginian general who crossed the Alps with war elephants
Speaker 2: and terrified Rome for decades. This was no accident. He
Speaker 2: was a black man, up brooded and dragged across continents,
Speaker 2: remaking himself as a soldier in Europe, claiming his place
Speaker 2: among the most brilliant military minds. He also apparently made friends.
Speaker 2: Paris in the early eighteenth century was alive with Enlightenment thinking, philosophy, science,
Speaker 2: and the radical notion that reason could and should reshape
Speaker 2: human society. Abram moved through those circles, and if his
Speaker 2: biographers are to be believed, he ended up in conversation
Speaker 2: with some of the era's greatest minds. It said that
Speaker 2: Voltaire called Abrahm quote the dark star of the Enlightenment.
Speaker 2: Whether or not that actually happened, it's clear he was
Speaker 2: quickly growing into a man of distinction, even if that
Speaker 2: distinction is loaded down by racist microaggressions. And then war interrupted.
Speaker 2: During the War of the Quadruple Alliance, conflict broke out
Speaker 2: between Spain and a coalition of European countries. A Brahm
Speaker 2: Gannibal thought for France, rising to the rank of captain.
Speaker 2: During one battle, he took a blow to the head
Speaker 2: and was captured by Spanish forces. He spent time as
Speaker 2: a prisoner of war before he was released in seventeen
Speaker 2: twenty two. Never one to let external circumstances slow him down,
Speaker 2: he went right back to his studies. By seventeen twenty three,
Speaker 2: a Brahm's education was complete. He returned to Russia, became
Speaker 2: an engineer, and took on a role as mathematics tutor
Speaker 2: for one of the Tsar's personal guard units. He was
Speaker 2: home back in Peter the Great's orbit, things were good,
Speaker 2: and then in seventeen twenty five, Peter the Great died.
Speaker 2: The court shifted overnight. The man who had pulled a
Speaker 2: Bram from the Ottoman sultan household, who had stood as
Speaker 2: his godfather and protector, sent him to France and saw
Speaker 2: his potential before anyone else was gone. And the person
Speaker 2: who stepped into the vacuum of power was Prince Menshikov,
Speaker 2: a man with no particular fondness for a Bram. Petrovitch Ganibl.
Speaker 2: Menshikov's issues with Ganibel were numerous. Here was a man
Speaker 2: who was foreign born black and had received one of
Speaker 2: the finest educations available anywhere in Europe. He spoke multiple languages,
Speaker 2: he had a head wound from actual combat, and as
Speaker 2: Peter's protege, he was a clear symbol of the old
Speaker 2: regime in a court suddenly navigating a brutal transition of power.
Speaker 2: None of that made Abrahm an ally to Menshikov. It
Speaker 2: made him a threat, or at least a convenient target.
Speaker 2: In seventeen twenty seven, Gannibal was exiled to Siberia. Dispatched
Speaker 2: to the far eastern edge of the Empire, near the
Speaker 2: Mongolian border, Gannibal threw himself into engineering work. He designed
Speaker 2: and oversaw massive construction projects, drawing on everything he had
Speaker 2: learned during his studies in France. During that exile, he
Speaker 2: became one of the most capable military engineers in all
Speaker 2: of Russia. He was pardoned in seventeen thirty completed his
Speaker 2: service in seventeen thirty three, and then came back west.
Speaker 2: During this time he also became a married man. This
Speaker 2: is where the story gets considerably more complicated. In seventeen
Speaker 2: thirty one, Gannibal married a Greek woman named Evdokia Dioper.
Speaker 2: The marriage was not voluntary on her part. She was
Speaker 2: forced into it, and she made her feelings known early
Speaker 2: and often. The relationship was volatile from the beginning, built
Speaker 2: on mutual hostility and almost no common ground. When she
Speaker 2: gave birth to a white baby, who was unmistakably not
Speaker 2: Gannibal's child, his suspicions about her fidelity were confirmed in
Speaker 2: the most public way imaginable. He had her arrested and imprisoned.
Speaker 2: She spent the next eleven years there, but Gannibal had
Speaker 2: already moved on. In seventeen thirty five, he took up
Speaker 2: with a woman named Christina Regina Stelberg, the daughter of
Speaker 2: Scandia Navan and German nobility. They married in seventeen thirty six,
Speaker 2: a year after the birth of their first child, while
Speaker 2: he was still legally bound to Evdokia. It was technically bigamy,
Speaker 2: since his divorce from his first wife wouldn't be finalized
Speaker 2: until seventeen fifty three. At this point, Gannibal received a
Speaker 2: fine and a formal reprimand, and Evdokia was sent to
Speaker 2: a convent for the rest of her life. His second marriage, meanwhile,
Speaker 2: was deemed lawful retroactively. The contrast between the two marriages
Speaker 2: is stark. With Christina, Abrahm found something he clearly hadn't before,
Speaker 2: genuine partnership. She was faithful and warm, and he appreciated
Speaker 2: both qualities enormously, probably more than most men would given
Speaker 2: his history. They went on to have ten children together,
Speaker 2: But id Dookia's story is far more disturbing and not
Speaker 2: an altogether sympathetic chapter in Gannibal's story. By her account,
Speaker 2: Gannibal was a cruel husband, prone to physical abuse. We
Speaker 2: can't tell if the relationship was marred by racism on
Speaker 2: Evdokia's part, the couple's genuine incompatibility, or other factors, but
Speaker 2: the fact is that a woman was forced to marry
Speaker 2: a man she didn't want, was treated badly by him,
Speaker 2: and when she sought connection elsewhere, was locked up for
Speaker 2: over a decade. Whatever the norms of the era, it's
Speaker 2: worth pointing out the injustices now that we can see them.
Speaker 2: But before any of that domestic stability eventually took shape,
Speaker 2: the political winds shifted again, this time in Gannibal's favor.
Speaker 2: In seventeen forty one, Peter's daughter Elizabeth became the Empress
Speaker 2: of Russia. The girl Gannibal had grown close to in
Speaker 2: the early years at court. The one he'd been loyal
Speaker 2: to like family was now in charge of everything, and
Speaker 2: she hadn't forgotten him. Gannibal was welcomed back into prominent
Speaker 2: with both arms open. He became a senior figure in
Speaker 2: her court, receiving major military appointments, and in seventeen forty
Speaker 2: two was given a sprawling country estate with land, a
Speaker 2: manor house, and hundreds of serfs. The man who was
Speaker 2: brought to Moscow as someone else's property now owned property
Speaker 2: of his own, and lots of it. That same year,
Speaker 2: he petitioned for and received formal nobility and a coat
Speaker 2: of arms. For the crest, he chose an elephant, a
Speaker 2: nod to the continent of his birth and perhaps has
Speaker 2: chosen namesake and a single word FuMO. The meaning has
Speaker 2: been debated ever since. It may be a word in
Speaker 2: the Kotoko language of his people, meaning homeland, or it
Speaker 2: may be an acronym for a Latin phrase for tuna
Speaker 2: vitam mim mutavit omnino. Fortune has changed my life entirely.
Speaker 2: In seventeen fifty six, he was appointed Chief Military Engineer
Speaker 2: of the Russian Army, In seventeen fifty nine, he received
Speaker 2: the rank of General in Chief, the second highest military
Speaker 2: rank in the Imperial Russian Empire. The boy from Cameroon,
Speaker 2: trafficked through Constantinople exiled to Siberia, had come back and
Speaker 2: climbed high as the system would allow, and he wasn't
Speaker 2: finished yet. By seventeen sixty two, Gannibal had served the
Speaker 2: Russian Empire for the better part of six decades. He'd
Speaker 2: survived the chaos after Peter's death, survived say Siberia, survived
Speaker 2: a disastrous first marriage, outlasted enemies and rivals, and entire reigns.
Speaker 2: When Peter the Third briefly took the throne that year,
Speaker 2: In seventeen sixty two, Gannibal was officially retired. The decision
Speaker 2: was blamed on his advanced age, but the true meaning
Speaker 2: was simple, thanks for everything, but we're done with you.
Speaker 2: It's done. He petitioned Catherine the Great, who would overthrow
Speaker 2: that husband Peter, within months, asking that neighboring land be
Speaker 2: added to his estate in recognition of fifty seven years
Speaker 2: of service. No one ever wrote back. He left Saint Petersburg,
Speaker 2: and he didn't return. The resentment stayed with him, passed
Speaker 2: down through family stories long after he was gone, a
Speaker 2: legend of ingratitude that his children and grandchildren kept alive.
Speaker 2: But retirement, even a bitter one, suited Gannibal in ways
Speaker 2: that court life never fully had. He settled into his estate,
Speaker 2: the one that Empress Elizabeth had given him, surrounded by
Speaker 2: land and family, and the particular freedom that comes from
Speaker 2: having nothing left to prove. He spent his entire adult
Speaker 2: life navigating a world that required him to be useful, strategic, indispensable.
Speaker 2: Now he could simply exist. He was, by most accounts,
Speaker 2: a passionate landlord in his final years who took genuine
Speaker 2: satisfaction in managing his property. He died on April twentieth,
Speaker 2: seventeen eighty one, likely in his eighty fifth year. The
Speaker 2: cause was listed as a cranial illness traced back ultimately
Speaker 2: to the head wound he had taken in France over
Speaker 2: sixty years earlier, fighting at a Spanish fortress when he
Speaker 2: was barely in his twenties. His body had been carrying
Speaker 2: that injury his entire life. He left behind ten children
Speaker 2: with Christina, a coat of arms with an elephant on it,
Speaker 2: and a life so strange and full that it almost
Speaker 2: defies summary. His children did well. His eldest son, Ivan
Speaker 2: became an accomplished naval officer who rose, like his father,
Speaker 2: to the rank of General in chief. Another son, Osip,
Speaker 2: had a daughter named Nadezhda, and Nadeesha had a son.
Speaker 2: That son was Alexander Pushkin. Pushkin is, by most measures,
Speaker 2: the greatest writer in the history of the Russian language, poet, novelist, playwright,
Speaker 2: the figure that most completely captures the essence of Russian literature.
Speaker 2: And he was Abram Gannibal's great grandson, a fact he
Speaker 2: was deeply aware of and deeply proud of. After finishing school,
Speaker 2: Pushkin tracked down his great grand father's last surviving son,
Speaker 2: a man named Peter, and interviewed him about his great
Speaker 2: grandfather's life. Pushkin came back years later, writing in his
Speaker 2: diary that he wanted to extract every memory Peter still had.
Speaker 2: What came out of those conversations was an unfinished novel
Speaker 2: called The More of Peter the Great, in which a
Speaker 2: fictionalized version of Ebram navigates the Russian court, a brilliant
Speaker 2: outsider in a world that can't quite decide what to
Speaker 2: do with him. Pushkin drew on his great grandfather's experiences
Speaker 2: and wove in his own. The two lives rhymed in
Speaker 2: ways that clearly meant something to Pushkin, both men of
Speaker 2: African descent, both moving through Russian society on the strength
Speaker 2: of their mind, and both aware of how much their
Speaker 2: difference defined how the world saw them. Gannibal's birth place
Speaker 2: remains a point of contention. For years, scholars assumed he
Speaker 2: was from Ethiopia. Russian researchers favored a region in what
Speaker 2: is now Ertrea. Both governments eventually claimed him, naming streets
Speaker 2: after him and creating monuments in his honor. It's understandable
Speaker 2: why they would both want to claim such a remarkable
Speaker 2: and interesting figure, but modern research points towards Lagone Berni
Speaker 2: in what is now Cameroon, the region Gannibal himself referenced
Speaker 2: in his petition to Empress Elizabeth. In twenty ten, representatives
Speaker 2: from Russia and Estonia, the Cameroonian ambassador, and the Sultan
Speaker 2: of Lagone Bierni gathered at the old Royal Artillery Academy
Speaker 2: in La Faire, France. There, at the place where Gannibal
Speaker 2: had studied nearly three hundred years earlier, they unveiled a
Speaker 2: commemorative plaque. It identified him as a graduate of the Academy,
Speaker 2: as chief Military Engineer and General in Chief of the
Speaker 2: Imperial Russian Army, and as the great grandfather of Alexander Pushkin.
Speaker 2: Four countries in one place, honoring a man none of
Speaker 2: them could fully claim. Ibram Gannibal belonged to all of
Speaker 2: those places and to none of them. He was stolen
Speaker 2: from Africa, educated in France, and rose to prominence in Russia.
Speaker 2: His life was full of contradictions. A man who had
Speaker 2: been property and later owned people himself, someone who could
Speaker 2: be brutal to those who felt had wronged him, including
Speaker 2: his first wife, and also deeply loyal to those he loved,
Speaker 2: A person driven by a hunger to belong that never
Speaker 2: quite left him, even after he had earned every honor
Speaker 2: the Empire could offer. What doesn't contradict is the sheer
Speaker 2: force of what he built. He made himself impossible to
Speaker 2: ignore and then impossible to forget. He was a man
Speaker 2: with a brilliant analytical mind whose legacy extended all the
Speaker 2: way to one of Russia's most expressive and sensitive poets.
Speaker 2: Fortune has changed my life entirely that's one reading of FuMO.
Speaker 2: The other is simply homeland. Maybe in the end Gannibal
Speaker 2: meant both. That's the story of a Brahm Petrovitch Gannibal.
Speaker 2: But keep listening after a brief sponsor break, to hear
Speaker 2: a little bit more about his literary legacy. Outside his
Speaker 2: great grandson, Gannibal's story has a surprising literary connection that
Speaker 2: goes beyond his famous great grandson. Decades after Ganibal's death,
Speaker 2: Vladimir Nabokov sat down to translate Pushkin's master work Eugene
Speaker 2: Oeggan and found himself digging into Gannibal's origins and the process.
Speaker 2: At the time, the prevailing assumption was that Gannibal had
Speaker 2: come from Ethiopia. Nibokov wasn't convinced, and pointed toward regions
Speaker 2: further west and south. He was right to be skeptical.
Speaker 2: The Ethiopian theory eventually collapsed, partly on its own thin
Speaker 2: evidence and partly because researchers exposed the assumption underneath it
Speaker 2: that Ethiopian origins were seen as more prestigious, more capable
Speaker 2: of explaining Gannibal's brilliance than origins deeper in Sub Saharan Africa,
Speaker 2: the people who wanted to honor him had quietly edited
Speaker 2: him into a more acceptable African. That pattern extended to
Speaker 2: his great grandson Pushkin as well. African American scholar, literary critic,
Speaker 2: and historian Henry Lewis Gates Junior addresses this narrow minded
Speaker 2: tendency in the foreword to Under the Sky of My Africa,
Speaker 2: Alexander Pushkin and Blackness quote. Many critics and writers, most
Speaker 2: famously Nibokov, dismissed Pushkin's quote Africanness as a quirk of
Speaker 2: biographical fate, as a factor to be acknowledged only barely,
Speaker 2: if at all, and to be dismissed as irrelevant to
Speaker 2: his artistic life. But these essays make a convincing case
Speaker 2: for the merits of a sustained exploration of the role
Speaker 2: his African ancestry played in Pushkin's creative life, in his
Speaker 2: perception of himself, and in his perception and interpretation of Russia.
Speaker 2: End quote. Pushkin knew what Gannibal had spent a lifetime
Speaker 2: proving that the truest version of a person is the
Speaker 2: one they insist on themselves against every other force that
Speaker 2: says otherwise. Noble blood is a production of iHeart Radio
Speaker 2: and Grim and Mild from Aaron Mankey. Noble Blood is
Speaker 2: hosted by me Dana Schwartz. Writers for Noble Blood are
Speaker 2: Hannah Johnston, Hannah Zwick, Paul Jaffey, Natasha Laski, and me
Speaker 2: Dana Schwartz. The show is edited and produced by Jesse
Speaker 2: Funk and Nomes Griffin, with supervising producer rima Ill Kali
Speaker 2: and executive producers Aaron Mankey, Trevor Young, and Matt Frederick.
Speaker 2: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 2: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.