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Hello and welcome to new books and Christian Studies. I'm your host, Ryan Shelton, and today I'm very pleased to be joined by Dr. Jeremy Banks. He's the author of New Light on the Old Colony, Plymouth, the Dutch Context of Toleration, and Patterns of Pilgrim, Commemoration, published in October of 2019 by Brill as part of the Early American History Series.
Dr. Banks, thank you so much for joining us and welcome to the show. Thank you. Well, it is an honor to have you here talking with us about this real treasure.
I wonder if you could just share with us a little bit about your distinguished and long career working in this field of Pilgrim's Studies. Perhaps it would be best to mention how I landed in that field. I mean, trained as an art historian, and my specialty was 15th and 16th century art and craft production in Leiden based on archival research. I went to work at the Leiden Municipal Archives and was asked what I knew about the pilgrims and I said nothing.
I said, do it anyway. That was in 1980. And it proved to be a topic that could receive quite a bit more attention than it had until then. It also was something where I thought my general interest in social history could be focused on this particular topic in Cincinnati.
Then several books about the pilgrims but also published numerous volumes of previously unpublished documents from their colony. So that is my background. It was a surprise to discover that half the colony records had never been published and most of the time records have not been published. So I started working on that and the book that we're talking about today is a compilation of articles and comments about various aspects of the subject since my interest began in 1980.
That's wonderful. Well, this volume that we're discussing, new light on the old colony. As you've mentioned, it has a real variety of essays and articles. By no means exhaustive as the four page bibliography that you've included of your own work at the back of the book suggests.
I wonder a little bit about the story of this particular volume. Where did some of these articles originate? Or maybe how did you decide what would belong in this volume and what were some of the organizing principles that went into the book that we had in hand? The first part of the book deals with the history of the colony itself.
In the first chapter, it tries to provide an overview of the colony that goes all the way to the end of the colony. Most histories of the pilgrims give the first few years, fairly famous events. Some of them add a bit about King Philip's War in 1675. But you'll have a hard time finding information about the period between say 1630 and 1675 or after 1675.
So I wanted to talk about the development of the colony as a whole and not concentrate only on people who came on the Mayflower first ship. So that was part of the organizing concept there. But also as an art historian, it's interesting to look at how people have seen events from those years and portrayed them in historical paintings. So the second part has to do with ways of commemoration.
Another part, I guess that's the third part, but another part is to do with toleration as a background of the pilgrim story. And the Mennonite activities of toleration in the 70th century, a practically unknown international effort to put an end to persecution of Swiss and Palatine Mennonites, coordinated by Dutch Mennonites. And it is out of this background that Sean Robinson of the pilgrims and Roger Williams got to their ideas for religious toleration, which also involves us in a discussion of John Locke. So all these things fall together in an overview of topics connected with the pilgrims.
Thank you for that introduction. Well, maybe as we work through our conversation, we'll touch a little bit on each of those three main sections. And let's start with this first part of the book, talking about the colony of Plymouth itself. You're addressing this pilgrim colony and as someone who's been interested in Plymouth historiography for some time, what have been some of the gaps that you've tried to fill or what have been some of the trends in the way that Plymouth colony has been studied by historians that you've that you've sought to correct or amend?
Largely, pilgrims have been used to serve other purposes and I'm interested to know what did happen, what did they record, it was happening and what might have happened that they didn't consider important. But when you get to questions of what people have done with it, then our question is, was the Mayflower Compact important as a basic document for the colony that's been denied for about 50 years, that is simply an ad hoc document of limited use. And so discovering that on all of their compilations of their laws throughout the entire period, they start with that repeating it, showed that to them it was a basic document that isn't to say it was the foundation of democracy or anything like it. So these questions that go through historiography of the pilgrims return in different forms.
One of the things I think is important about them, which didn't get too much emphasis before, is the introduction of civil marriage. They adopted civil marriage in their colony and cited Dutch law as the source of it. This is the first introduction of civil marriage in English law anywhere. And its implication is the separation of church and state, which is something that they quite consciously carried out in their civil society.
There are no clergymen with rules in government there. And this is quite a contrast to the common idea that they set up a theocracy. So there are these kinds of points that arise and in studying the topic of civil marriage, it's possible to track down exactly what the source was because Bradford mentions the source that he used even by the page number. You can find what edition of what book you got that information from.
So it's very careful work to see where do these ideas come from and how do they affect the colony. One way they affected the colony is that the reputation for being fanatical needs to be modified a bit because they did not persecute the Quakers in the same way as the Quakers were persecuted in Massachusetts Bay Colony. So that topic comes up in a few parts of different essays. They did impose civil fines for refusing to pay taxes and they said they were doing this against the Quakers simply because they refused to pay taxes that had been democratically decided on.
And the Quakers thought paying taxes to support congregational ministers was a theological point and needed to be refused on religious grounds. But according to the government's in the courts, there are all the government's Quakers and others. But according to those in the courts, it wasn't a religious issue. It was a civil issue.
And this is of course very similar to refusing pay taxes to support the Vietnam War. So there are lots of issues that come up already in the 17th century that have questions that recur. The further question that is very important in Plymouth Colony is treatment of the Indians. And I did write another book which is called Indian deeds land transactions in some of the colonies 1629.
In which I published 400 documents have to do with transfer of land from seconds to the colony court. It's clear that most of the time most of the pilgrims were attempting to treat the Indians fairly according to their concept of fairness in English law. That's where you get a lot of problems of understanding. But it is also clear that the Indians they were dealing with already had a concept of private ownership of land, particular parcels of land owned by particular people who were the sirens.
It was not communal tribal land in any way, unlike nomadic cultures somewhere else, but in New England. It's an agricultural and hunting community which had established locations and people had a concept of land law. So this is very new and very contrary to current romantic notions. Well, these themes that you've just touched on are such significant conversations in this field of early America.
Another thing that I noticed in section two of this first part, you've taken us out of the town of Plymouth itself and started to show that there's much more work to be done in some of these other towns within the colony. So you've given orientations to the records of some of these different smaller more overlooked Plymouth towns. I often think that one of the audiences who is interested in these podcasts are graduate students who might be looking for ideas for either masters or doctoral theses. What remains to be done in some of these Plymouth records?
And can you give us just a little orientation to some of the archives and record collections that you've drawn attention to? There are two types of records primarily which form groups. And one is the Plymouth colony records. So we're published in an attempt to publish all of them, but I was interrupted in 1861 by some political event or other where the money got transferred to the army.
That meant that it didn't get finished. Another half of it remains to be done. I did two more volumes, but that means that there are at least maybe six more volumes that could still be transcribed and understood. Those are chiefly later 70th century land records.
Well, that's a matter of quite a lot of significance with regard to the change in the landscape. Initially, when colonists acquired land, it made no difference to the agriculture and hunting practices of the Indians as the population grew and they started using this land and claiming it and fencing it. And there's a change. And so the exchange of land acquisition of large group, large areas of land by limited people is something that needs to be documented and studied and not all of it has been done by any means.
Another one remains to be done is the second half of the wills and inventories Charles Simmons published the first half, but there's another half of the recorded information. That's all separate from the town records. I think there might be a few remaining, but I think I've done all that I could. There's one town where I couldn't even fund them from here and from Biden in the Netherlands, because they didn't.
They were afraid of 400 or 300 of their phone system or something. And I couldn't get through to the town clerk to ask if I could have photocopies or something of the remaining pages. I think most of the records were gone, but there's one town where there might be some. However, when I was living in Sichu, I went over to the town archives and asked if they had any 70th century records.
And the first question was what family are you interested in because nobody could conceive of a question other than a genealogical question. I named a random family and they brought out in volumes. There's something about them in here, but nobody can read it or then discovered that the town of Sichu has the most extensive town records of any town in New England, outside Boston. Wow.
And Sichu turned out on the evidence there and text records to have become the major town of Plymouth Colony from about 1650 on. Nobody has paid attention to that in histories of the colony. The published records of Sichu take up three long volumes. And there's plenty of information that could be studied in that.
I would say comparing those things with the records from other New England towns would be a revival of interest in the small town history. A revival because I was a subject in the 1970s that got a lot of interest in it hasn't been 50 years. But by comparison with the new records sort of published with that, I think you could find more questions to answer than will be in thought about 50 years ago. It's very interesting.
I'm going to move us now to the second part of this book that talks about the Dutch context of religious freedom and toleration. Now you talk some about the origin of religious freedom, or at least the toleration in Holland itself, and then some of the reasons why it became a haven for religious dissenters in the 17th century. Where did this idea of religious freedom in Holland come from? Religious toleration was imposed on various images factions in the attempt to overthrow the Hopsburg domination here.
And William of Orange, who had been brought up in the Catholic court, but raised Lutheran was working with all of the reformed leaders, the Calvinists, as well as with Lutherans and with some conservative Catholics who were opposed to structural changes that chose the fifth and then wanted to bring about in the Catholic church here, which meant taking away some of their lands. And so to keep everybody unified, religious toleration was imposed and became part of the basic union of those in revolt against Hopsburgs. The words were fine. They're very good.
They also come into documents that seem to have inspired American documents later. Declaration of Independence had some similarities with the rejection of Hopsburg being here. And within a few years, the actual situation was that there was less toleration than the words seemed to imply. The words were quite people read in England, and the Netherlands achieved a reputation which continues for remarkable religious toleration.
The pilgrims were also aware that a group with similarities to their own had fled from London to Amsterdam in the 1590s, and then received an existence that was tolerated. They didn't know that the reformed ministers of Amsterdam tried to point into that, that the mayors of Amsterdam protected this diversity of thought. So it was a less straightforward toleration than the superficial idea would be, but it was real. And the amount of toleration was much greater in the lower countries and elsewhere, and that extended also to the publication of books.
It was not censorship here until imposed at the order of James I of England. So it was a real toleration, and among the people who came up with theoretical justifications of it was Peter Twisk leading Mennonite who wrote a history of sentiments of toleration from about 2000 years. And as he came down to see it, he also stopped off in London and had a few day conference to discuss things with the pilgrims. So we have a direct connection between Peter Twisk and John Robinson, who lead with the pilgrims, who after the first time, he was a little bit more than a little bit more than a little bit more than a little bit more than a little bit more than a little bit more than a little bit more.
Reading the Bible literally, they thought if everything human is imperfect after the fall, so is every judgment about theology. And so is every theology and you can't tell where it is imperfect because you are imperfect. Therefore, you should be tolerant. That doesn't say you have to agree or allow people in your group, but you should not be a persecutor.
And this is a reason for finding that Plymouth Colony is much less rigid against people who think differently than other colonies at the time. We could go into how they treated the Quakers. They said very clearly that they did not have all those Quakers for religious ideas, but only because the Quakers refused to pay taxes that had been approved by democratic vote. However, the Quakers said those taxes were being used to support congregational ministers, and we don't think that that is religiously allowable.
So for the Quakers, it was a religious point, but for the others, they thought they were not persecuting the Quakers for religion. So it's just like the arguments that they reformed in Switzerland used to prosecute Mennonites, and that is how the Mennonites got inspired to think about how does this work and organize the international effort to get politicians and theologians and even city governments to write letters asking for toleration of Mennonites. So we find that toleration formulated by the Mennonites and the remonstrons, and it is in that group that John Locke was visiting and his letter on toleration was written and dedicated to one of the leading remonstrons to the Middle East. And the leading remonstrons to thinkers in this field, Philip of Newbore.
Why do I go this far? Well, because once I was reading about Roger Williams and read that it's impossible to see where he got his idea for his book on religious knowledge and so that's interesting. And I pulled it out, and the first thing he says is I was reading a pamphlet, and it says this, so what pamphlet turns out he was reading something which goes back to Peter Twisk. He was reading John Mennon written from Twisk, and it repeats the form and the content, so we have all these things conducted and showing that Dutch religious toleration is Dutch in origin, but not from the Dutch government, particularly not from the Dutch reform, but from the dissenters who were tolerated to make their speech and books in the Netherlands.
So that goes well beyond what most people think of with the pilgrims, but it interests me in a way of intellectual history. Absolutely. No, what you've done is you've contributed so much to this. What seems like this back and forth debate between whether the pilgrims and the Puritans were or weren't the same thing.
I mean, it's just like there's this pendulum that seems to go in early American historiography between seeing them as more similar, seeing them as very distinct and back and forth. But what you've done is you've shown that there's there are some really significant distinctions that that maybe need to be attended to. Is that accurate? There are such distinctions, but there isn't a division between Puritans and pilgrims.
And in the very word Puritan, it implies that you're purifying something which did not exist in New England. So in New England, the division disappeared, whatever it might be. The pilgrims were separated from the Church of England. The Puritans in general thought it would be possible to save it and purify it.
But in New England, they had established a congregational system and it became known by themselves as the New England Way. And they don't make a distinction between Puritan and pilgrim to the theology is very much the same. Well, I'd like to move now to the last section of your book, which I found to be some of the more interesting sections. And I think this maybe does come out of your background as an art historian.
You use some art historical methods to examine imagery of the way pilgrims have been remembered. I love this quote. You said that the pilgrims have been like a screen on which people could project whatever they wanted to have as their own ancestral virtues to justify their own points of view. What is going on in these patterns of pilgrim commemoration?
And especially, I found your distinction between iconography and iconology to be really, really illustrative. I had the privilege of studying under Unriven de Val, a Rembrandt scholar whose emphasis on iconology was great and was the inventor of the so-called icon class approach to studying subjects of depiction. And the iconology is to try to decide what are the implications of compositions and how does it relate if you see one painting? How does it relate visually to other pictures that might or might not be the same suppose of subject?
When you see a subject which many people are not descendants of the buildings might think is a group of fairly unimportant people portrayed in major grandiose terms. And the question is how do you visualize that? And the major big picture is the subject painting of the landing from the early 19th century. I looked at that and I realized that what I was seeing there was the composition of Rembrandt's Nightwatch in reverse.
Nightwatch had been published as an engraving of it in reverse, but the time the painter was active and I'm pretty sure he saw it. He may have been seen the painting itself. I think he traveled to Europe. But if you look at it that way people were familiar with the Nightwatch and unconsciously would see that's an important painting.
Therefore if you see something that looks like that it must be an important event. And this I applied to other pictures as well and we see a reliance of Dutch group portraits, again Rembrandt, in trying to portray the study of the Mayflower Compact, putting it into an impossible interior of a ship's cabin. The space of such a ship does not allow for the faces that are in these paintings. And it's not even certain that such a thing was done inside below decks.
I think maybe above decks would be more likely. But in any case looking at all these various portrayals do make use of existing visual ideas. It suggests that importance was conveyed by the reference to other works of art. And then when we have the costumed parades that still go on, that's very interesting.
The parades in Plymouth where people dress up like their ancestors and they go from one place to another and reaffirm the values of their ancestors. I trace that back to Burgundian, for example, entries, and that's quite an interesting little comparison because similar gestures, similar and quasi-religious reassertions of loyalty and of value just go on for centuries. And that's where my article is going with several different kinds of topics. It is a fascinating article.
Maybe to wrap up our discussion of this book. We're recording this at the beginning of November. So for our American listeners, we're just around the corner from what might be the only program commemoration. They'll be the experience on a regular basis.
You have this essay that is a topography of the ongoing setting the record straight that seems to be something of a new cottage industry. So for families gathering around the Thanksgiving table who are going to hear, well, this isn't what really happened. What are those kinds of stories that they're going to hear? It's very fashionable now to say that the first Thanksgiving wasn't a Thanksgiving or something like that, that it was a tense meeting of natives and pilgrims whose knowledge exercise attracted the attention of what full natives came up.
Rather than going into those details, I think I'd like to say what I believe it was. It's quite true that it was not a Thanksgiving like a later New England Thanksgiving. I think people have made what I don't agree with is the subsequent events I had anything to do with what that was. It was a little reversal of the chronology.
So we look at what happened. Another thing is that the argument, particularly by James Deeds, but other people is that it was a secular harvest festival like what they had in England. Okay, but there weren't any secular harvest festivals in England. I have a copy of the book of Common Prayer as used at the time in the pilgrims.
It has an obligatory prayer to start the harvest festival by requiring that, which it was required. It made it impossible to have a secular harvest festival. So it's not like something that is an England, who are these pilgrims anyway that you think they might want to try to recreate what they're trying to get away from? So then what does it they do?
It's said that it lasted for three days. Or does it say that? When I read it, it doesn't say that. It says that the Indians came for three days.
It says that there was militia exercises and talks about food and so forth. If the pilgrims aren't trying to recreate harvest festival, obviously it was not in England or anything else from England. What was it? It matches the description of suckled in the Bible.
Harvest first of all, you went to invite whoever is within your boundaries to participate. This would account for the presence of the natives. It's the last week. Now if you read what the description is, it doesn't say it was only three days.
It says the Indians were there for three days. So I think it's quite possible it lasted a week. The pilgrims are people who tried to rearrange their lives according to the Bible and to do it as literally as possible. But the one thing that is a little odd, not in the Bible, is the militia exercises and the possibility of games or whatever.
And that is what they experienced only third of October in Leiden, which was the Thanksgiving every year for the lifting of the siege of Leiden. Started with a religious ceremony followed by a meal followed by a week of not only militia exercises, but a market and relaxation and games. Now that was considered by the pilgrims to be a very proper Protestant event commemorating God's mercy to the Dutch. And it's combining these things, the instructions for so-called and a few details from October 3 that you come up with everything that is different about the first Thanksgiving in 1621.
So that's what I think we're looking at. I feel as though we've only skated on the surface of all the wonderful work that is available in this volume, New Light on the Old Colony. Of course, that was bound to be the case, clocks in at over 500 pages. So there's plenty more that listeners can find that we've not even touched on.
But you've been so generous with your time today to come and share with us about this book. Before we let you go, what's next for you? Two things I would mention. I don't know what's next for me, of course, but I did write another book after this called Just Science Wompa Talk and the Titticket Reserve of the Medici's at Massachusetts Tribe.
And it is a documentary exposition of the establishment of the Titticket Reserve in 1664, which is a subject of disputes now because the Nationalary Wompa know-Nolks are trying to claim it to claim it to be. That's really unfortunate because MASHBEE's reserve was also established and they haven't taken charge of that. Three reserves were established then and all three of them should be recognised, but not all given to the wrong tribes. One last thing in terms of this interview having to do with religious topics.
One of the interesting things going on at the time of the problems was the controversy about Conrad Forstius, who was named to be on many as a successor. And in my book I indicate that some of his ideas are relevant to the development of what has now been considered process theology. So the book even goes in that direction. Well that sounds very interesting indeed.
This has been a conversation with Dr. Jeremy Bangs. He's the author of New Light on the Old Colony, Plymouth, the Dutch Context of Toleration, and Patterns of Pilgrim Commemoration. You can get your copy now from Brill.
Thanks to our listeners for tuning in to this episode of the New Books Network. You can visit newbooksnetwork.com and browse our library of over 12,000 author interviews. But that's it for now. I hope you have a great day.