John Green's book, Everything is Tuberculosis, is a truly great history book. Who knew that thin models, cowboy hats, AND the movie Parasite were all related??
The most unexpected thing for me though was the story of Sierra Leone and how John Green basically does a world-shifting work of writing in just one single one-chapter detour to discuss poverty as a result of colonialism. It blows my mind really.
So John Green gives the perspective I need to be fresh to the idea of colonialism by using someone fresh to colonialism themselves, in the format of a diary entry, the daily vlogging of its day. This is the genius of John Green, he is a master of formatting in a way that transcends the places he works. Great as a YouTuber, speaker, and most of all, writier! So here is a quote from Chapter 2:
"Sierra Leone was a British protectorate for centuries, but even before it was formally controlled by the British, it was terrorized by them. The historian Stephen Greenblatt introduced me to one account, written by a merchant named John Sarracoll, of a 1586-1587 voyage to Sierra Leone:
The fourth of November we went on shore to a town of the Negroes…. It was of about two hundred houses, and walled about with mighty great trees, and stakes so thick that a rat could hardly get in or out. But as it chanced, we came directly upon a port which was not shut up, where we entered with such fierceness, that the people fled all out of the town, which we found to be finely built after their fashion, and the streets of it so intricate that it was difficult for us to find the way out that we came in at. We found their houses and streets so…cleanly kept that it was an admiration to us all, for that neither in the houses nor streets was so much dust to be found as would fill an egg shell. We found little in their houses, except some mats, gourds, and some earthen pots. Our men at their departure set the town on fire, and it was burnt (for the most part of it) in a quarter of an hour, their houses being covered with reed and straw.
This story of destruction and violence accelerated with the transatlantic slave trade. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, roughly four hundred thousand people living in what is now Sierra Leone were kidnapped and sold into slavery, fueling terror throughout the region. Sometimes slave raiders broke into homes in the middle of the night and stole away entire families. Other times, children or young adults were kidnapped while hunting or gathering water. One young boy from the Mende community was kidnapped by Portuguese slave raiders while walking on a road known as the Kaw-we-li, or "War Road," because it was considered so dangerous. This boy was only around six years old when taken from his family and forced onto a slave ship. In adulthood, he went by the name Kaw-we-li, which some scholars theorize was likely the name given him by slavers: They called him after the road where they kidnapped him. It's possible that young Kaw-we-li lost the memory of whatever name his parents had given him, knowing himself only by the location of his kidnapping.
The slave trade directly caused millions of deaths, shut down trade routes, and upended social orders. Communities were devastated, not only because so many people were forced from their land and families, but also because most forms of economic activity-from traveling with goods to selling in a market-came with the risk of being kidnapped.
For Sierra Leone, the story is especially complex. In 1783, Britain emancipated some enslaved people who had fought for the British in the American Revolutionary War.
At least four thousand newly emancipated soldiers were as a result relocated to Nova Scotia in Canada after the war. But many of the relocated emancipated people were unhappy in Nova Scotia, where they still faced discrimination alongside extreme weather, and so in 1791, a Black Loyalist leader named Thomas Peters made the case to colonial authorities that the community should be resettled in a new colony in West Africa. "
Overall, wanted people to have the chance to receive this teaser. The book itself is great, it gives you the ability to read like a page-turner novel while also learning the reasons from a historian why things are going to turn around for the protagonist.
by Historical-Average