Historical Tidbit
The radicalness of America, when it was founded as a free democracy, is something easy to forget. Encountering passages like this in a history book can be jarring:
Today, a correspondent sent me another example. She's an avid hiker, and came across this place while walking the south coast of England. It seems dramatic sea-coast changes in the Middle Ages (yes, there were such things before the internal combustion engine) opened up a stretch of beach near the town of Hastings that was a true no-man's land. As such, it gradually became a place where people built houses and businesses and thrived without the burden of taxation and other duties that every level of government forced on its citizens.
And when the authorities came calling, as they inevitably did, the citizens responded by defiantly running up the Stars and Stripes.
"In 1784, a British ship on a passage from India stopped at the Comoro Islands in the Mozambique Channel, off the coast of southern Africa. It found that the African inhabitants had risen in revolution against their Arab rulers. Their rallying cry was 'America is free! Cannot we be?' "
Today, a correspondent sent me another example. She's an avid hiker, and came across this place while walking the south coast of England. It seems dramatic sea-coast changes in the Middle Ages (yes, there were such things before the internal combustion engine) opened up a stretch of beach near the town of Hastings that was a true no-man's land. As such, it gradually became a place where people built houses and businesses and thrived without the burden of taxation and other duties that every level of government forced on its citizens.
And when the authorities came calling, as they inevitably did, the citizens responded by defiantly running up the Stars and Stripes.
By 1822 it was estimated that more than 1000 souls had acquired ramshackle, incommodious but rate-free accommodation on the shingle bank, guaranteed to provoke the great and the good on the Borough Council, Aldermen and councillors alike. Added to the freedom from expense there was the allegation (equally provoking but largely unfounded) of lawless and licentious behaviour amongst the inhabitants of this motley collection of habitations. A few half-hearted attempts were made to impose official control and the immediate response to this was the American flag (a contemporary symbol of freedom) being run up in defiance. And so the America Ground was born.
The America Ground was not the haphazard collection of squats that officialdom liked to imply. It was a properly organized community supplying most if not all of its own needs. Barry Funnel's "The America Ground" tells us that it had among others a "carpenter, miller, mast and blockmaker, baker, brewer, cowkeeper, fishermen, gardener". Lodging houses were a major industry as was pigkeeping, in fact these two appear to be the main sources of activity, dominating all others. These others
included warehousing for tallow, rope and coal. Lime-kilns were present as were a sawing house, stonemasons and a tallow factory, multiple piggeries, a slaughterhouse and butchers. There was a gin palace, and perhaps surprisingly a school. This does not on the face of it suggest the sink of iniquity rumoured among the rest of the Town of Hastings but more that of simple folk getting on with the business of life.
