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The Palgrave Handbook of
Critical Menstruation Studies
Edited by
Chris Bobel · Inga T. Winkler
Breanne Fahs · Katie Ann Hasson
Elizabeth Arveda Kissling · Tomi-Ann Roberts
The Palgrave Handbook of Critical
Menstruation Studies
 Chris Bobel · Inga T. Winkler ·
Breanne Fahs · Katie Ann Hasson ·
Elizabeth Arveda Kissling · Tomi-Ann Roberts
Editors

The Palgrave
Handbook of Critical
Menstruation Studies
Editors
Chris Bobel Inga T. Winkler
Department of Women’s, Gender, and Institute for the Study of Human Rights
Sexuality Studies Columbia University
University of Massachusetts Boston New York, NY, USA
Boston, MA, USA
Katie Ann Hasson
Breanne Fahs Center for Genetics and Society
Women and Gender Studies & Social Berkeley, CA, USA
and Cultural Analysis
Arizona State University Tomi-Ann Roberts
Glendale, AZ, USA Department of Psychology
Colorado College
Elizabeth Arveda Kissling Colorado Springs, CO, USA
Women’s & Gender Studies
Eastern Washington University
Cheney, WA, USA

ISBN 978-981-15-0613-0 ISBN 978-981-15-0614-7 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-0614-7

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2020. This book is an open access publication.
Open Access This book is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0
International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use,
sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you
give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative
Commons license and indicate if changes were made.
The images or other third party material in this book are included in the book’s Creative
Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not
included in the book’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by
statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly
from the copyright holder.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are
exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in
this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher
nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material
contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains
neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Cover image: © Jen Lewis

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature
Singapore Pte Ltd.
The registered company address is: 152 Beach Road, #21-01/04 Gateway East, Singapore
189721, Singapore
 Acknowledgments

A book project of this scope and scale requires the creativity, grit, tenacity,
and goodwill of legions—more than can be properly acknowledged here. Our
exhaustive outreach depended on many intersecting networks of countless
scholars, advocates, and others who helped connect us with the right person
to write the right piece at the right time. We know that every chapter in this
book is possible because of the labor of many and we regret that we cannot
list each of these behind-the-scenes helpers.
But we will take a moment to explicitly name a few people and organizations
whose support of this project was invaluable.
Sharra Vostral helped conceive the rationale and framework for this
handbook. Her visionary work crafting the proposal for this Handbook set
the project in motion, and now, several years later, we remain in her debt.
Our thanks also go to the anonymous peer reviewers who provided incisive
feedback [and encouragement] at both proposal and clearance review stages.
They, too, helped shape this Handbook.
We leaned heavily on several editors and editorial assistants along the way.
In the early days, Michelle Chouinard managed the communication and
organization of our call for proposals. Trisha Maharaj, Victoria Miller, Laura
Charney, and Sydney Amoakoh provided invaluable support for many chap-
ters. During the final and all-important stage of preparing the book for
production, Sydney Amoakoh also single-handedly managed the abstracts,
bios, images, figures and tables, and various consent forms plus more for
more than 130 contributors. Her calm efficiency and capacity to track detail
is a marvel. We also benefited from the hand of Dakota Porter, who stepped
in to help with myriad administrative tasks in the last phase of manuscript
preparation. Many thanks also to Virginia Roaf who provided editorial sup-
port and special appreciation to the peerless Perri Schenker whose invaluable
editorial skills were essential to producing this resource. Others who stepped

v
vi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

in at key moments include Adrian Jjuuko, Marcy Darnovsky, the Center for
Genetics and Society, Radu Dondera, Dawn Dow, and Anna Krakus. We
thank them each.
We also note with gratitude the team at Palgrave Macmillan/Springer
Nature, especially Holly Tyler who first pitched the idea of a handbook to
Chris with irresistible enthusiasm, and Joshua Pitt who succeeded her and
walked with us throughout the subsequent years of this project. He and edi-
torial assistant Sophie Li responded to every query—the trivial, the profound,
and the anxious–with equanimity and unflagging support for our vision for
this book. “Thank you” is too small a phrase.
Finally, we appreciatively acknowledge those who donated resources to
support the book. First, we thank artist Jen Lewis, self-described ‘menstrual
designer’ whose arresting 2015 macrophotograph “The Crimson Wave”
(2015) graces our cover. Second, we express our gratitude to our gener-
ous funders—the Center for the Study of Social Difference at Columbia
University through its Working Group on Menstrual Health and Gender
Justice and the University of Massachusetts Boston Periodic Multi-Year
Review Fund. Without their support, we would not have been able to meet
our ambitious goal of publishing this robust and richly diverse body of work.
And above all, we express our sincerest gratitude to the Water Supply and
Sanitation Collaborative Council whose abiding belief in the value of this
book enabled us to not only engage crucial editorial help, but also covered
the fees necessary to make the digital edition permanently open access world-
wide. From the very beginning, our fervent hope for this book was that it
function as a reliable and accessible ‘go to’ resource for the widest possible
audience, and WSSCC’s generosity makes this truly possible. Thank you!
 About the Cover: Beauty in Blood—
A Macrophotographic Lens on
Menstruation, Body Politics,
and Visual Art

“The Crimson Wave” (2015) exemplifies the Beauty in Blood collection, my

feminist, bioartography project that seeks to confront social taboos pertaining
to menstruation and the female body through macrophotography of men-
strual fluid. I challenge the notion that menstruation is “gross,” “vulgar,” or
“unrefined” through candid, real-life photos of my menstrual blood which
force viewers to see and think about menstruation in an entirely new way.
There is an abstract artistic quality when blood meets water that warrants a
closer look not only by women but also by society as a whole. Capturing the
artful quality of this natural occurrence is my way of progressing ­society’s
view and conversation around menstruation as well as redefining some
traditional fine art aesthetics.
In my opinion, society’s squeamishness about menstruation is completely
ridiculous considering its graphic consumption of bloodshed through vio-
lence in pop culture entertainment, that is, blood sports like boxing, hockey,
and wrestling; video games like Call of Duty; shows and movies like Dexter
and Twilight; and even the news media. Pacifying social taboos only serves to
give more power to society than to the self, and as women we have done that
for far too long. My work quashes this taboo, reclaims feminine power, and
puts menstruation in the context it so rightly deserves.
Creating each piece of work is a four-step process: media (aka blood/men-
strual fluid) collection, design layout (aka pouring), photoshoot, and finally
photo selection. The images of menstrual fluid are obtained in two different
manners. During the early stages, we captured images by mounting a cam-
era on a tripod and strategically angling it over the toilet bowl, so Rob, my
husband, artistic collaborator and project photographer, could snap photos as
soon as I poured the freshly collected menstrual fluid from my cup. After sev-
eral shoots and a desire to capture more dynamic imagery, we began shooting

vii
viii ABOUT THE COVER: BEAUTY IN BLOOD—A MACROPHOTOGRAPHIC …

in a small aquarium (about 15 gallons). Rob discovered a fluid photogra-

phy technique that greatly improved our final designs. Both Rob and myself
approach each shoot with an experimental spirit and love to play with varia-
bles to see how it will effect the menstrual fluid’s movement in the water, for
example, salt density, ratio of freshwater to saltwater, and tools to distribute
the blood. The clarity of the final images can be credited to the use of saltwa-
ter, which slows menstrual fluid movement, and macro lenses, which show us
more than the naked eye can see.
If I have learned anything over the past few years of producing Beauty in
Blood it is that menstruation matters more than most people in society are
willing to recognize; it is deeply embedded in our global body politics and
is a major contributor to the vast gender inequity between men and women
today. Institutionalized hierarchies maintain and support the outdated patri-
archal belief that menstruation makes the female body inferior to the male
body. Billions of dollars are spent annually trying to make women’s bodies
conform to male “norms” by suppressing the natural menstrual cycle through
hormonal birth control. The feminine “hygiene” industry perpetuates
taboo thinking by suggesting the monthly cycle is dirty and socially impo-
lite; it should be concealed in frilly pink wrappers like candy and only very
loosely referenced with blue liquid in product commercials. In my experience,
women and men are hungry for an authentic dialogue about menstruation
and all that encompasses.
It is clear the time is now to stand up and speak out on behalf of men-
struation. It is a natural, messy but beautiful part of life, and just because it is
not a shared experience doesn’t mean it needs to be a divisive topic that aids
gender inequity. Beauty in Blood asserts that menstruation needs to be seen
to help normalize the menstruating body and to acknowledge this part of the
menstruator’s life experience by inviting the viewer to take a closer look and
reflect on their personal gut reactions to the subject of “menstruation.”

Jen Lewis
Menstrual Designer
 Contents

1 Introduction: Menstruation as Lens—Menstruation

as Opportunity 1
Chris Bobel

Part I Menstruation as Fundamental

2 Introduction: Menstruation as Fundamental 9

Inga T. Winkler

3 Bleeding in Public? Rethinking Narratives of Menstrual

Management from Delhi’s Slums 15
Annie McCarthy and Kuntala Lahiri-Dutt

4 The Realities of Period Poverty: How Homelessness

Shapes Women’s Lived Experiences of Menstruation 31
Shailini Vora

5 Opinion: Prisons that Withhold Menstrual Pads

Humiliate Women and Violate Basic Rights 49
Chandra Bozelko

6 Bleeding in Jail: Objectification, Self-Objectification,

and Menstrual Injustice 53
Tomi-Ann Roberts

ix
x CONTENTS

7 Navigating the Binary: A Visual Narrative of Trans

and Genderqueer Menstruation 69
S. E. Frank and Jac Dellaria

8 The Human Rights of Women and Girls

with Disabilities: Sterilization and Other Coercive
Responses to Menstruation 77
Linda Steele and Beth Goldblatt

9 Personal Narrative: Let Girls Be Girls—My Journey

into Forced Womanhood 93
Musu Bakoto Sawo

10 “I Treat My Daughters Not Like My Mother Treated

Me”: Migrant and Refugee Women’s Constructions
and Experiences of Menarche and Menstruation 99
Alexandra J. Hawkey, Jane M. Ussher, and Janette Perz

11 Menstruation and Religion: Developing a Critical

Menstrual Studies Approach 115
Ilana Cohen

12 Personal Narrative: Out of the Mikvah, into the World 131

Tova Mirvis

13 Personal Narrative: Caste Is My Period 137

Deepthi Sukumar

14 Menstrual Taboos: Moving Beyond the Curse 143

Alma Gottlieb

15 Transnational Engagements: Cultural and Religious

Practices Related to Menstruation 163
Edited by Trisha Maharaj and Inga T. Winkler

Part II Menstruation as Embodied

16 Introduction: Menstruation as Embodied 177

Tomi-Ann Roberts

17 The Menstrual Mark: Menstruation as Social Stigma 181

Ingrid Johnston-Robledo and Joan C. Chrisler
 CONTENTS xi

18 The Menarche Journey: Embodied Connections

and Disconnections 201
Niva Piran

19 Resisting the Mantle of the Monstrous Feminine:

Women’s Construction and Experience
of Premenstrual Embodiment 215
Jane M. Ussher and Janette Perz

20 Learning About What’s “Down There”: Body Image

Below the Belt and Menstrual Education 233
Margaret L. Stubbs and Evelina W. Sterling

21 Living in Uncertain Times: Experiences of Menopause

and Reproductive Aging 253
Heather Dillaway

22 The Womb Wanders Not: Enhancing Endometriosis

Education in a Culture of Menstrual Misinformation 269
Heather C. Guidone

23 Premenstrual Syndrome (PMS) and the Myth

of the Irrational Female 287
Sally King

24 The Sexualization of Menstruation: On Rape, Tampons,

and ‘Prostitutes’ 303
Lacey Bobier

25 (In)Visible Bleeding: The Menstrual Concealment

Imperative 319
Jill M. Wood

26 Transnational Engagements: From Debasement,

Disability, and Disaster to Dignity—Stories
of Menstruation Under Challenging Conditions 337
Edited by Milena Bacalja Perianes and Tomi-Ann Roberts

Part III Menstruation as Rationale

27 Introduction: Menstruation as Rationale 349

Breanne Fahs
xii CONTENTS

28 If Men Could Menstruate 353

Gloria Steinem

29 Introducing Menstrunormativity: Toward a Complex

Understanding of ‘Menstrual Monsterings’ 357
Josefin Persdotter

30 Empowered Bleeders and Cranky Menstruators: Menstrual

Positivity and the “Liberated” Era of New Menstrual
Product Advertisements 375
Ela Przybylo and Breanne Fahs

31 “You Will Find Out When the Time Is Right”: Boys, Men,
and Menstruation 395
Mindy J. Erchull

32 Menstrual Shame: Exploring the Role of ‘Menstrual

Moaning’ 409
Maureen C. McHugh

33 Becoming Female: The Role of Menarche Rituals in “Making

Women” in Malawi 423
Milena Bacalja Perianes and Dalitso Ndaferankhande

34 Researcher’s Reflection: Learning About Menstruation

Across Time and Culture 441
Sheryl E. Mendlinger

35 Transnational Engagement: Designing an Ideal Menstrual

Health (MH) Curriculum—Stories from the Field 449
Breanne Fahs and Milena Bacalja Perianes

Part IV Menstruation as Structural

36 Introduction: Menstruation as Structural 469

Inga T. Winkler

37 Practice Note: Why We Started Talking About

Menstruation—Looking Back (and Looking Forward)
with the UN Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights
to Water and Sanitation 475
Virginia Roaf and Catarina de Albuquerque
 CONTENTS xiii

38 Policy and Practice Pathways to Addressing Menstrual

Stigma and Discrimination 485
Archana Patkar

39 Menstrual Justice: A Missing Element in India’s Health

Policies 511
Swatija Manorama and Radhika Desai

40 Practice Note: Menstrual Hygiene Management—Breaking

Taboos and Supporting Policy Change in West and Central
Africa 529
Rockaya Aidara and Mbarou Gassama Mbaye

41 U.S. Policymaking to Address Menstruation: Advancing

an Equity Agenda 539
Jennifer Weiss-Wolf

42 Personal Narrative: Bloody Precarious Activism

in Uganda 551
Stella Nyanzi

43 Addressing Menstruation in the Workplace:

The Menstrual Leave Debate 561
Rachel B. Levitt and Jessica L. Barnack-Tavlaris

44 Monitoring Menstrual Health in the Sustainable

Development Goals 577
Libbet Loughnan, Thérèse Mahon, Sarah Goddard, Robert Bain,
and Marni Sommer

45 Practice Note: Menstrual Health Management in

Humanitarian Settings 593
Marianne Tellier, Alex Farley, Andisheh Jahangir, Shamirah
Nakalema, Diana Nalunga, and Siri Tellier

46 Mapping the Knowledge and Understanding

of Menarche, Menstrual Hygiene and Menstrual
Health Among Adolescent Girls in Low-
and Middle-Income Countries 609
Venkatraman Chandra-Mouli and Sheila Vipul Patel
xiv CONTENTS

47 Interventions to Improve Menstrual Health in Low-

and Middle-Income Countries: Do We Know What
Works? 637
Julie Hennegan

48 Transnational Engagements: Menstrual Health

and Hygiene—Emergence and Future Directions 653
Edited by Victoria Miller and Inga T. Winkler

Part V Menstruation as Material

49 Introduction: Menstruation as Material 669

Katie Ann Hasson

50 Of Mice and (Wo)Men: Tampons, Menstruation,

and Testing 673
Sharra L. Vostral

51 Toxic Shock Syndrome and Tampons: The Birth of a

Movement and a Research ‘Vagenda’ 687
Nancy King Reame

52 Measuring Menstruation-Related Absenteeism Among

Adolescents in Low-Income Countries 705
Anja Benshaul-Tolonen, Garazi Zulaika, Marni Sommer,
and Penelope A. Phillips-Howard

53 Practice Note: ‘If Only All Women Menstruated Exactly

Two Weeks Ago’: Interdisciplinary Challenges and
Experiences of Capturing Hormonal Variation Across
the Menstrual Cycle 725
Lauren C. Houghton and Noémie Elhadad

54 Monitoring Menses: Design-Based Investigations

of Menstrual Tracking Applications 733
Sarah Fox and Daniel A. Epstein

55 “Life is Much More Difficult to Manage During Periods”:

Autistic Experiences of Menstruation 751
Robyn Steward, Laura Crane, Eilish Mairi Roy,
Anna Remington, and Elizabeth Pellicano
 CONTENTS xv

56 Not a “Real” Period?: Social and Material Constructions

of Menstruation 763
Katie Ann Hasson

57 Painting Blood: Visualizing Menstrual Blood in Art 787

Ruth Green-Cole

58 To Widen the Cycle: Artists Engage the Menstrual Cycle

and Reproductive Justice 803
Curated and Edited by Jen Lewis

59 The Modern Way to Menstruate in Latin America:

Consolidation and Fractures in the Twenty-First Century 813
Eugenia Tarzibachi

60 Challenging the Menstruation Taboo One Sale

at a Time: The Role of Social Entrepreneurs
in the Period Revolution 833
Maria Carmen Punzi and Mirjam Werner

61 Transnational Engagements: Smashing the Last

Taboo—Caring Corporations in Conversation 853
Edited by Milena Bacalja Perianes

Part VI Menstruation as Narrative

62 Introduction: Menstruation as Narrative 865

Elizabeth Arveda Kissling

63 Challenging Menstrual Normativity: Nonessentialist

Body Politics and Feminist Epistemologies of Health 869
Miren Guilló-Arakistain

64 Menstrual Trolls: The Collective Rhetoric of Periods

for Pence 885
Berkley D. Conner

65 Menstruation Mediated: Monstrous Emergences

of Menstruation and Menstruators on YouTube 901
Lise Ulrik Andreasen
xvi CONTENTS

66 Rituals, Taboos, and Seclusion: Life Stories of Women

Navigating Culture and Pushing for Change in Nepal 915
Jennifer Rothchild and Priti Shrestha Piya

67 From Home to School: Menstrual Education Films

of the 1950s 931
Saniya Lee Ghanoui

68 Degendering Menstruation: Making Trans Menstruators

Matter 945
Klara Rydström

69 Sex During Menstruation: Race, Sexual Identity, and

Women’s Accounts of Pleasure and Disgust 961
Breanne Fahs

70 Normality, Freedom, and Distress: Listening to the

Menopausal Experiences of Indian Women of Haryana 985
Vanita Singh and M. Sivakami

71 The Messy Politics of Menstrual Activism 1001

Chris Bobel and Breanne Fahs

72 Transnational Engagements: Women’s Experiences

of Menopause 1019
Edited by Milena Bacalja Perianes and Elizabeth Arveda Kissling

Index 1029
 Notes on Contributors

Jane Hartman Adamé is a customer engagement and user research

professional and former hairdresser living with hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos
Syndrome, a connective tissue disorder. Jane is a co-creator of FLEX Cup, an
inclusively designed menstrual cup made in collaboration with Andy Miller,
a medical device designer. Jane turns customers into co-designers from her
home in Oakland, CA.
Rockaya Aidara is a gender, equity, and human rights policy specialist with
over 10 years’ experience in development and international cooperation. At
the Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council she designed and
implemented the Joint Programme on Gender, Hygiene and Sanitation,
which used menstrual hygiene management as an entry point to address gen-
der inequalities in WASH. Prior to joining WSSCC, Rockaya worked with
the UN Agency on Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment, the UN
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and the European Foundation
FEDRE. She supported programs on women’s political participation, as well
as advocacy campaigns on violence against women, peace and security, and
climate change.
Lise Ulrik Andreasen is a Ph.D. fellow at The Danish School of Education
at Aarhus University, Denmark. Based on fieldwork, her Ph.D. project exam-
ines lived and embodied experiences of young menstruators in Denmark.
Lise’s research on menstruation and youth intertwines with her interests in
feminist theories of gender, sexuality, science, methodologies, materiality,
affect, politics, utopia, care, and ethics. She holds an M.A. in women’s studies
from University College Cork, Ireland, and an M.A. in educational anthro-
pology from Aarhus University. Lise is a member of the Society for Menstrual
Cycle Research and lives in Copenhagen, Denmark with her partner and two
children.

xvii
xviii NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Robert Bain is a statistics specialist at UNICEF and has been a member

of the WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme for Water Supply,
Sanitation and Hygiene since 2014. Prior to joining UNICEF, he worked as
a researcher for the Water Institute at the University of North Carolina at
Chapel Hill and the University of Bristol with a primary research focus on
monitoring drinking water quality. Robert received his Master of Engineering
from the University of Cambridge and MIT in 2008.
Jessica L. Barnack-Tavlaris is an associate professor in the Department of
Psychology at The College of New Jersey; she teaches classes in health and
social psychology, and research methods. Her research interests include atti-
tudes toward menstruation, stigma toward women’s reproductive health,
and the transition from infertility to motherhood. She is the book and media
review editor for Women’s Reproductive Health, the official journal of the
Society for Menstrual Cycle Research.
Anja Benshaul-Tolonen has been an assistant professor of economics at
Columbia University’s Barnard College since 2015, working on economic
development and applied economics. One strand of her research focuses
on health and gender, including menstruation and school absenteeism,
stigma around menstruation, and household health investment and knowl-
edge. Another strand focuses on natural resource extraction and how the
sector interacts with local economic development, health, and gender. Her
research methods include quasi-experimental analysis and randomized con-
trol trials, and large datasets. She also teaches econometrics and development
economics.
Mayuri Bhattacharjee is a menstrual health educator and trainer who
has reached more than 8000 menstruators through her Menstrual Health
Workshops in Assam and West Bengal. As a changemaker of change.org’s
She Creates Change Fellowship, she runs a digital campaign called Dignity
in Floods (www.change.org/dignityinfloods) to build women-friendly flood
relief shelters in Assam. She is a climate reality leader at The Climate Reality
Project and a World Economic Forum Global Shaper. She won the 2019 Ton
Schouten Award for WASH storytelling from IRC WASH.
Ingrid Goldbloom Bloch is a self-taught artist who sees beauty in
common objects. She is known for creating art that is humorous and
­thought-provoking, and transforms everyday objects into something entirely
different from their intended purpose with the goal of creating conversa-
tions. Composed of hardware store finds, street debris, and stumbled upon
items, her m­ ixed-media sculptures draw upon the traditions of contemporary
fiber arts and assemblage. Ingrid’s work has been collected by museums as
far-reaching as Germany’s The Bikini Museum, Azerbaijan’s The Waste to
Art Museum, and Ripley’s Believe It or Not! Museums in Orlando and Los
Angeles. She lives in Needham, Massachusetts with her husband, two teenage
sons, and a parakeet.
 NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS xix

Chris Bobel is professor and chair of women’s, gender and sexuality stud-
ies at the University of Massachusetts Boston. Chris is the author of The
Managed Body: Developing Girls and Menstrual Health in the Global South
(Palgrave Macmillan), New Blood: Third Wave Feminism and the Politics of
Menstruation (Rutgers University Press), The Paradox of Natural Mothering
(Temple University Press), the co-edited collections (with Samantha Kwan)
Embodied Resistance: Breaking the Rules, Challenging the Norms, and Body
Battlegrounds: Transgressions, Tensions and Transformations (both with
Vanderbilt University Press). Chris is the past president of the Society for
Menstrual Cycle Research and a fellow of the Working Group on Menstrual
Health & Gender Justice at Columbia University. She is often consulted by
the mainstream media about the rapidly growing menstrual activist move-
ment. She is at work on a new ethnographic project exploring contemporary
activism inspired by grief and trauma.
Lacey Bobier is a sociology Ph.D. candidate at the University of Michigan.
Her research focuses on adolescent girls, sexual subjectivity, and their roles in
the gender power structure. Her previous publications examine early childhood
sexuality education, while her current work considers the construction and reg-
ulation of girls’ bodies through such mediums as magazines and school policies.
Danielle Boodoo-Fortunè is a poet and visual artist from Trinidad and
Tobago. Her first collection of poems, Doe Songs (Peepal Tree Press) was
awarded the 2019 Bocas OCM Price in Poetry. Her paintings have been featured
in numerous arts publications and exhibitions in the Caribbean and abroad.
Gabriella Boros has shown her prints, paintings, and multimedia works
nationally and internationally. Currently focusing on woodblock prints and
handmade books, she also does nature photography, acrylic on wood panel,
drawings, sculptures, and found object cheese boxes. Gabriella’s narratives
reflect her European parentage, Israeli birth, and American childhood. Her
latest works include a solo show at Stockholm’s Ze Zig Zag Zone and a print
in the “Spinoza: Marrano of Reason” show in Amsterdam. In 2020, she will
complete a residency at the Bernheim Arboretum and Research Forest, where
she will create a series of installations commemorating Kentucky women and
the native plants that represent them.
Chandra Bozelko was the first incarcerated person to have a regular byline
in a publication outside of prison. Her newspaper column, “Prison Diaries,”
became an award-winning blog. She has won many awards and fellowships
for her writing and criticism of the United States criminal justice system.
Bozelko is now a syndicated columnist with Creators Syndicate and serves as
the vice president of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists.
Janelle Chambers is a mother of three children, two sons and a daughter.
She identifies as a lesbian woman and is in a long-term relationship with a
very loving wife.
xx NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Venkatraman Chandra-Mouli leads the work on adolescent sexual and

reproductive health (ASRH) in the World Health Organization’s Department
of Reproductive Health and Research. His work includes building the evi-
dence base on ASRH, and supporting countries to translate evidence into
action through well-conceived and well-managed policies and programs. His
experience is global in scope and spans over 30 years, during which he has
contributed substantially to a number of WHO publications and the work
of numerous national-level bodies and front-line organizations around the
world. Dr. Chandra-Mouli has presented in global, regional, and national
conferences, and (co)authored books, book chapters, articles, blog pieces,
and around 90 peer-reviewed journal articles.
Jieun Choi is a freelance journalist and videographer currently based in
Seoul, South Korea. She finds beauty in telling stories of the unheard. With
relentless curiosity, Jieun dives into various realms of the society in which
she lives. Previously, she worked at a media startup, Korea Exposé, cover-
ing mainly society, culture, and gender issues of the Korean Peninsula. She
has experience working in arts and media scene in Seoul, Hong Kong, and
Melbourne. Choi holds a B.A. in fine arts from the University of Hong Kong.
Joan C. Chrisler is the Class of 1943 Professor Emerita of Psychology at
Connecticut College, where she taught courses in gender, social, and health
psychology. She is internationally known for her research and writing on the
psychology of women and women’s health issues, including menstruation,
PMS, body image, and aging. She is editor of the Women’s Reproductive
Health journal. Her most recent books are The Routledge Handbook of
Women’s Sexual and Reproductive Health (forthcoming), Woman’s Embodied
Self: Feminist Perspectives on Identity and Image, and Lectures on the Psychology
of Women.
Ilana Cohen is an independent researcher. She holds an M.A. in anthro-
pology and women, gender, and sexuality studies from Brandeis University,
where she studied the menstrual hygiene management sector and menarche
ceremonies in Tamil Nadu, India. She earned B.A.s in cultural anthropology
and Jewish women and gender studies from the School of General Studies
at Columbia University and List College at the Jewish Theological Seminary.
She is a research associate at Verité, a nonprofit organization dedicated to
ensuring safe, fair, and legal working conditions worldwide.
Berkley D. Conner is a doctoral student in communication studies with a
concentration in rhetoric and public advocacy at the University of Iowa. Her
scholarship broadly examines health and medicine from a humanistic perspec-
tive, particularly around cultural rhetorics of menstrual health. She is espe-
cially interested in how menstruators’ subjectivities are negotiated between
their capacity as regulated spaces and their capacity to weaponize their bodies
for resistive purposes. Her current research explores medical and public dis-
courses about various modes of menstrual management.
 NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS xxi

Laura Crane is an associate professor at the Centre for Research in Autism

and Education (CRAE) at UCL Institute of Education, where she is also
deputy director. Laura’s work focuses on two main areas: the education and
healthcare experiences of autistic people, their families and the professionals
who work with them; and developing an evidence base to promote access to
justice for witnesses on the autism spectrum (in both the criminal and family
justice systems). Laura is a strong advocate of public engagement and com-
munity outreach; ensuring that research is accessible to the public, to policy-
makers, and—importantly—to the autistic community and their allies.
Amina Darwish is the Muslim chaplain at Columbia University. She has
received ijaza in Islamic studies and in the 10 Qira’at. She also studied indi-
vidually with various Islamic scholars. She earned a B.S. in chemical engineer-
ing from Kuwait University, an M.S. in industrial engineering and a Ph.D. in
chemical engineering from the University of Cincinnati. She previously served
as an adjunct professor in Islamic studies at Northern Kentucky University,
the Muslim chaplain at the University of Cincinnati, and as the content
development coordinator at the Muslim Youth of North America. She is the
founder and CEO of Mercy in Action.
Catarina de Albuquerque is chief executive officer for the global
­multi-stakeholder partnership, Sanitation and Water for All. From 2008 to
2014, she was the first UN Special Rapporteur on the right to safe drinking
water and sanitation. Between 2004 and 2008 she presided over the negoti-
ations of the Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Economic,
Social and Cultural Rights, which the UN General Assembly approved by
consensus on December 10, 2008. Ms. de Albuquerque was awarded the
Human Rights Golden Medal by the Portuguese Parliament (December 10,
2009) for outstanding work in the area of human rights.
Jac Dellaria is a queer, trans illustrator, and cartoonist currently based in
Chicago, IL. His work focuses on his personal experiences with transitioning
and managing the balance between one’s sexual orientation and gender identity.
Jac studied comics at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, and also creates
work under the name Wrigley. Jac’s art can be found at www.jacdellaria.com.
Radhika Desai has a Ph.D. in sociology from Indiana University,
Bloomington. Her work spans women’s work, early childhood development,
financial inclusion, livelihood promotion, microfinance, and entrepreneurship.
Radhika has brought together knowledge and practice as a program man-
ager, social impact and gender evaluation specialist, researcher, and teacher
for postgraduate students of women’s studies. Her writings include Women’s
Work Counts: Feminist Arguments for Human Rights at Work (PWESCR,
2015) and “Livelihoods of the Poor” in the 2011 State of India’s Livelihoods
Report (SAGE Publications, 2011).
xxii NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Heather Dillaway is a professor of sociology, director of the Bachelor

of Science in Public Health Program, and associate dean in the College of
Liberal Arts and Sciences at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan.
Dillaway’s research focuses on women’s menopause experiences and the
reproductive health experiences of women with physical disabilities.
Anna Druet is a researcher, science and education manager at Clue, as well
as a public health and femtech advocate. She aims to help people know more
about their bodies and raise awareness of the central importance of reproduc-
tive and biological autonomy to global welfare.
Noémie Elhadad is an associate professor of biomedical informatics, affil-
iated with Columbia University’s Computer Science and Data Science
Institute. Her research interests lie at the intersection of machine learning,
natural language processing, and medicine. She investigates ways in which
observational clinical data and patient-generated data can enhance access to
relevant information for clinicians, patients, and health researchers alike, and
the ultimate potential of such access to impact healthcare and the health of
patients.
Daniel A. Epstein is an assistant professor in the Department of Informatics
at the University of California, Irvine. His research is in the area of human–
computer interaction (HCI), where he studies how personal tracking tech-
nology can acknowledge the realities of everyday life. He leverages this
understanding to develop and evaluate new apps and interfaces which better
account for those realities. He holds a Ph.D. in computer science and engi-
neering from the University of Washington.
Mindy J. Erchull is a professor of psychological science and a member
of the Women’s and Gender Studies Program at the University of Mary
Washington. She has a Ph.D. in social psychology from Arizona State
University. Her research focuses on the objectification and sexualization
of women, feminist identity, division of labor and parenting, and women’s
reproductive health. Her menstrual cycle research has largely focused on edu-
cation about and attitudes toward menstruation and menstruators.
Breanne Fahs is a professor of women and gender studies at Arizona
State University, where she specializes in studying women’s sexuality, crit-
ical embodiment studies, radical feminism, and political activism. She has
authored five books and three edited collections: Performing Sex, Valerie
Solanas, Out for Blood, Firebrand Feminism, Women, Sex, and Madness, The
Moral Panics of Sexuality, Transforming Contagion, and Burn it Down. She
also works as a clinical psychologist in a private practice, where she specializes
in sexuality, couples work, and trauma recovery.
Johanna Falzone attributes her creative roots to growing up in the 90s
under the influence of punk rock music, feminism, Nickelodeon cartoons,
and Barbie. These forces have incited her attraction to pretty imagery ranging
 NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS xxiii

from the grotesque to the overtly feminine with whimsical nods to childhood
in her paintings, illustrations, poetry, films, short stories, and screenplays.
Johanna is also classically trained in ballet and modern dance. She attended
Suzanne Farrell’s Young Dancer’s Workshop in 2007 and 2008; as well as
Canada’s Royal Winnipeg Ballet School’s 2008 Summer Program. Currently
based out of Florida, she remains a fierce Winnipeg Jets fan and Tim Hortons
iced coffee and donut lover.
Alex Farley has worked with WoMena as a research and project management
officer. She holds an M.Sc. in African development from the London School
of Economics, with a specialty in gender-sensitive humanitarian policy and
programming.
Sarah Fox is a President’s Postdoctoral Fellow at Carnegie Mellon
University’s Human Computer Interaction Institute. Her research focuses on
how technological artifacts challenge or propagate social exclusions by exam-
ining existing systems and building alternatives. Her work has earned awards
in leading computing venues, including ACM, CSCW, CHI, and DIS, and
has been featured in the Journal of Peer Production, Design Issues, and New
Media and Society. She holds a Ph.D. in human-centered design and engi-
neering from the University of Washington.
S. E. Frank is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Wisconsin–Madison
in the Department of Sociology. She currently studies menstruation in
United States institutions, including law and the military. Sarah lectures for
Madison’s Department of Legal Studies and Sociology and leads gradu-
ate teaching trainings across the university. The present research on queer-
ing menstruation won the Alpha Kappa Delta Sociology Honors Society
Graduate Student Paper Award at the American Sociological Association
in 2019 and the 3-Minute Thesis Competition at the Midwest Sociological
Society in 2019. Follow her work at https://teachingfrankly.com.
Rosa Freedman is the inaugural professor of law, conflict, and global devel-
opment at the University of Reading. She received her LLB, LLM, and
Ph.D. from the University of London, and is a member of Gray’s Inn, the
UN Secretary-General’s Civil Society Advisory Board, and the UK Foreign
Office’s Women Peace and Security Steering Committee. Freedman’s research
and publications focus on the UN, particularly human rights bodies and sys-
tems, peacekeeping, and accountability for human rights abuses commit-
ted during such operations. Her publications include two monographs, two
co-edited collections, and articles in the American Journal of International
Law, European Journal of International Law, Leiden Journal of International
Law, and Human Rights Quarterly, among others.
Saniya Lee Ghanoui is a Ph.D. candidate in history at the University of
Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her dissertation is a transnational cultural his-
tory that investigates the development of the movements for sex education
xxiv NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

in the United States and Sweden from 1910 through 1962, the interactions
between these two countries, and their signature method of education: the
sex education film.
Krystal Nandini Ghisyawan is an independent Indo-Caribbean, queer
feminist scholar working in the areas of female same-sex desire, LGBTQI
advocacy, and women in Hinduism. She holds a Ph.D. in sociology from
the University of the West Indies and is a former postdoctoral associate at
Rutgers University. She is a director on the board of the Silver Lining
Foundation and has guided the organization’s research and development
agenda since 2014. She is currently completing her manuscript, Erotic
Cartographies: Mapping Caribbean Subjectivities, Spaces, and Queer Decolonial
Praxis, which explores the space-making practices of same-sex loving women
in Trinidad.
Carla Giacummo has channeled her passion for promoting open discussion
on menstruation and elevating it as a vital sign into building Eco-Ser in 2012.
She has also been a Menstrupedia co-publisher for Spanish since 2015. She
regards the platform as the perfect tool for girls around 9 to learn about peri-
ods, and as an invaluable community of nonprofits, health institutions, teach-
ers, doctors, and others who promote menstrual literacy in Latin America, the
United States, Spain, and other countries worldwide. Driven by her love for
the art of connection, Giacummo has also worked as an executive secretary,
piloted her own clay atelier for children 10 and older, and is the mother of
two boys.
Sarah Goddard is a global health and international development profes-
sional. Her work has focused on governance, health, water, and sanitation,
and sustainable urban development in low- and middle-income countries.
Sarah has a Master of Public Health and Master of Arts in international
affairs from Columbia University and an undergraduate degree from Brown
University.
Beth Goldblatt is an associate professor in the Faculty of Law at the
University of Technology Sydney, Australia, and an honorary associate pro-
fessor in the School of Law at the University of the Witwatersrand, South
Africa. She works on equality, human rights, comparative constitutional law
and feminist legal theory, focusing on gender and poverty. She is the author
of Developing the Right to Social Security—A Gender Perspective and co-editor
of two collections on women’s social and economic rights. Beth is a member
of the UTS Law Health Justice Research Centre and a co-convener of the
UTS Feminist Legal Research Group. She previously worked as a researcher
on disability issues.
Alma Gottlieb is the (co)author/(co)editor of nine books. Gottlieb began
her publishing career with Blood Magic: The Anthropology of Menstruation,
an award-winning collection that helped inaugurate a modern, feminist
 NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS xxv

approach to menstruation cross-culturally. Gottlieb has held fellowships and

grants from the Guggenheim Foundation, National Endowment for the
Humanities, and Social Science Research Council, and has held teaching/
research appointments at Princeton University, École des Hautes Études
(Paris), Catholic University of Leuven, and elsewhere. A Professor Emerita
at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Gottlieb is currently a
Visiting Scholar in Anthropology at Brown University. She holds a Ph.D. in
anthropology from the University of Virginia.
Ruth Green-Cole is a mother, artist, curator, academic, curriculum devel-
oper, educationalist, and the former director of the Whangarei Art Museum, a
regional art gallery in Northland, New Zealand. Her research interests include
the leaky and maternal body in contemporary art, the sacred feminine, gen-
der studies, feminist theory, and contemporary and modern New Zealand
art. She received a Master of Art with first-class honors in art history from
the University of Auckland in 2014 for her thesis, “Visualising Menstruation:
Gendered Blood in Contemporary Art.” Green-Cole posts about menstrua-
tion and visual art on her blog at http://hyperheterotopia.com/.
Heather C. Guidone is the program director of the Center for
Endometriosis Care. For more than 25 years, she has focused on endometrio-
sis education, research facilitation, policy reform, patient-centered care, health
literacy, engagement and adherence, and more. A board-certified patient
advocate and health educator, she serves on many councils, committees, and
special interest groups on endometriosis, pelvic pain, gynepathologies, and
women’s health issues, and has contributed to countless books, articles, and
publications on these topics. She is active in several professional health organ-
izations, including as a PCORI ambassador and contributing member of the
Society for Menstrual Cycle Research.
Miren Guilló-Arakistain is a professor in the social anthropology pro-
gram in the Department of Philosophy of Values and Social Anthropology
at the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU). She is a graduate of
­UPV-EHU in social and cultural anthropology and pedagogy and holds a
master’s in feminist and gender studies. Her research interests are anthropol-
ogy of medicine and health, social theory of the body, feminist epistemolo-
gies, agency, and social change. Her forthcoming doctoral thesis examines the
politics of menstruation, gender relations, identities, and corporalities. She is
part of AFIT Feminist Anthropology Research Group at UPV-EHU.
Katie Ann Hasson writes, speaks, researches, and teaches about the social
and political aspects of human genetic and reproductive technologies. She is
currently program director on genetic justice at the Center for Genetics and
Society. Katie earned her Ph.D. in sociology with a designated emphasis in
women, gender, and sexuality from the University of California, Berkeley, and
was previously an assistant professor of sociology and gender studies at the
University of Southern California.
xxvi NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Alexandra J. Hawkey is a postdoctoral researcher at the Translational

Health Research Institute at Western Sydney University, Australia. Her
research interest is women’s sexual and reproductive health, including wom-
en’s fertility and contraception choices, cancer screening and survivorship,
sexuality, sexual health, and menstruation and menopause. Alex also has
a special interest in working alongside marginalized communities, such as
migrant and refugee women.
Lubabah Helwani currently works in bioethics at the University of
Southern California. Her educational background includes an M.S. in medi-
cal and cultural anthropology from Harvard University, with a focus on wom-
en’s menstrual health from the Ash-Sham region of Syria.
Julie Hennegan is a research associate at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg
School of Public Health. Her research focuses on menstrual health and
hygiene, and the design and evaluation of complex social and behavio-
ral interventions for women’s health. Julie holds a D.Phil. from the Centre
for Evidence Based Intervention at the University of Oxford, an M.Sc. in
­evidence-based social intervention from the University of Oxford (UK), as
well as a B.Psy.Sc. (Hons I) from the University of Queensland (Australia).
Lauren C. Houghton first became interested in women’s health as an
anthropologist when she learned women in the Global South menstru-
ate three times less across their lifetimes than women in the Global North.
In the Department of Epidemiology at Columbia University’s School of
Public Health, she now uses mixed-methods to understand how culture gets
beneath the skin through hormones, specifically regarding puberty, the men-
strual cycle, breast cancer risk, and women’s broader reproductive lives. She is
currently exploring the use of digital menstrual health in studying the causes
of breast cancer, and in the dissemination and implementation of the latest
breast cancer science.
Andisheh Jahangir currently works with the World Health Organization
country office in Iran and volunteers with WoMena. She holds a Master of
International Public Health from the University of Sydney.
Ingrid Johnston is an experimental psychologist with expertise in social and
health psychology. She taught full-time at SUNY, Fredonia for 12 years in the
Psychology Department, focusing on women’s health, psychology of women
and health psychology. She is currently a professor of psychology and associ-
ate dean for Lesley University’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. She has
published extensively in the area of women’s reproductive health, with par-
ticular emphasis on psychosocial aspects of embodiment. She has served on
the board for the Society for Menstrual Cycle Research for almost 20 years.
Johnston has served this organization as program chair, president, and past
president.
 NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS xxvii

Ina Jurga is an engineer, educator, networker, and advocate with more than
15 years’ experience in the WASH sector. Working for the Berlin-based NGO,
WASH United, she co-initiated and coordinates the international Menstrual
Hygiene Day (28 May). Each year this day is dedicated globally to breaking
the silence around menstruation and menstrual hygiene management.
Kalvikarasi Karunanithy has a B.A. in commerce from Pondicherry
University and an M.A. in business administration from Sathyabama
University. She works at Eco Femme in sales and marketing and is a men-
strual educator in the organization’s Pad for Pad Program. She feels a strong
connection to nature and the environment and currently resides in Tamil
Nadu, India.
Danielle Keiser has been a vivid and integral player in the menstrual health
community since 2013, when she helped launch and grow 28 May, Menstrual
Hygiene Day. Danielle is the CEO and executive director of the Menstrual
Health Hub (MH Hub), a female health impact organization focused on eco-
system building, knowledge sharing, and high-level advocacy around men-
strual health worldwide. Using women-centered design and a human rights
approach, the MH Hub consults various entities on female health innovation,
investment, communications, and business strategy.
Sally King is the founder of Menstrual Matters (www.menstrual-matters.
com), a freely accessible and evidence-based website about how to identify
and manage menstrual cycle-related symptoms. She also writes a popular
blog about the way in which menstrual health relates to gender inequalities.
Sally has over a decade’s experience in research quality assurance roles within
human rights organizations and programs. She has an M.A. in research meth-
ods (qualitative & quantitative) and is currently doing a Ph.D. on the topic of
premenstrual syndrome at King’s College London.
Elizabeth Arveda Kissling is professor of women’s and gender studies at
Eastern Washington University. Her research focuses on women’s health, bod-
ies, and feminism, and especially how these issues are represented in media. Her
newest book about abortion activism and social media, From a Whisper to a
Shout, was published in 2018 by Repeater Books. As the author of Capitalizing
on the Curse and related articles, she is best known for her research on media
representations of menstruation. Her pronouns are she and her.
Kuntala Lahiri-Dutt is a professor at Australian National University,
and teaches gender and development in the university’s Masters in Applied
Anthropology and Participatory Development Program. She has written
extensively on women and gender in relation to the environment, focusing on
water, agriculture, and extractive resources. More information can be gleaned
from her staff page: https://crawford.anu.edu.au/people/academic/
kuntala-lahiri-dutt.
xxviii NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Gerda Larsson is co-founder and managing director of The Case for Her,
an innovative funding collaborative that invests in early-stage markets within
women’s and girls’ health. Driven by a passion for women’s rights and gen-
dered development, Gerda has built a career scaling CSR efforts, organiza-
tions, and philanthropic foundations. She is also the chair of the Mitt Alby
Foundation, chair of the 1325 Policy Group, a board member of the East
African e-commerce company, Kasha, and a jurist for the feminist film price,
The Anna Award. Gerda has a B.A. in urban planning and a master’s in devel-
opment practice from Stockholm University.
Rachel B. Levitt is a master’s student in clinical mental health counseling
student at Monmouth University. Her research interests include sexuality and
gender identity, attitudes towards menstruation, the mental health effects of
internalizing the male gaze, and feminist counseling.
Jen Lewis is the conceptual artist and menstrual designer behind Beauty in
Blood, a transformative macrophotography and video art project that con-
fronts the social taboos pertaining to menstruation and the female body. She
received her B.A. in the history of art from the University of Michigan (Ann
Arbor) in 2001. Her work has been displayed in group exhibitions interna-
tionally, such as Period Pieces at the Urban Artroom (Sweden) and the 9th
Annual Juried Art Show at The Kinsey Institute (USA). Jen also curated
a special theme exhibit, “Widening the Cycle: A Menstrual Cycle and
Reproductive Justice Art Show” for the joint 2015 conference of the Society
for Menstrual Cycle Research and the Center for Women’s Health and
Human Rights.
Libbet Loughnan is a data and monitoring specialist. She has worked in
international development, including the World Bank, UNICEF, and WHO
since 2003. She works across the full data cycle, particularly in the monitoring
and analysis of progress on WASH and gender-related SDG indicators, pro-
gram monitoring, the methodological development of equality measures and
indicators, surveys, and in supporting data partnerships. Libbet has a Master
of Public Health with the LSHTM, and an undergraduate degree from the
University of Melbourne.
Trisha Maharaj is an independent researcher focusing on cultural and reli-
gious practices related to menstruation and women’s experiences and atti-
tudes in the Hindu diaspora of Trinidad. She recently graduated from
Columbia University with an M.A. in human rights studies. She also holds
a B.A. in international studies with a regional focus in Africa from American
University.
Thérèse Mahon is WaterAid’s global lead on menstrual hygiene manage-
ment and has been working on the issue since 2006. Thérèse works with
WaterAid’s country programs to develop and implement MHM program-
ming; and to generate evidence on MHM to influence policy and practice
 NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS xxix

globally. She is the co-author of the book, Menstrual Hygiene Matters and
led a regional situation analysis of MHM in schools in South Asia. She also
contributed to the development of the Joint Monitoring Programme (JMP)
global guidance for monitoring MHM-related indicators for SDG4 and 6 in
schools.
Phoebe Man is a multimedia artist, independent curator and associate pro-
fessor at the School of Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong. Her
socially engaged animations, videos, and installations call for active engage-
ment from her audiences, and have been featured in over 180 exhibitions
and festivals worldwide. In 2017, Man was selected as one of four interna-
tional artists to join the Wapping Project Berlin Residency program. Her
most recent work, Free Coloring: If I Were centers on sexual assault, invit-
ing audiences to engage in discussions and create artwork from one of three
perspectives: “if I were a victim,” “if I were a perpetrator,” and “if I were a
bystander.”
Swatija Manorama has been active in the campaign group, the Forum
Against Oppression of Women, Mumbai, since the mid-1980s. She holds a
bachelor’s degree in microbiology, a master’s in anthropology, and a post-
graduate diploma in gerontology. She has authored and co-authored vari-
ous books and papers addressing issues such as women and religion, science,
health and reproductive health, including Coping with Plural Identities (Red
Globe Press, 2002) and Introduction to Fertile Futures: Grounding Feminist
Science Studies Across Communities (Routledge, 2001) with co-author
J. Elaine Walters.
Lina Acca Mathew has twelve years’ experience teaching undergraduate
and postgraduate law courses in India. She is an assistant professor at the
Government Law College Kozhikode and has taught in various law colleges
in Kerala. She was awarded her Ph.D. from the Faculty of Law at Queensland
University of Technology, Australia in 2017 on legislative models for prose-
cuting child sexual abuse in India. She completed her LLM at the National
Law School of India University and her LLB at the Government Law College
Thiruvananthapuram. She has publications and conference presentations con-
cerning laws on women and children, cyber law, and legal education.
Mbarou Gassama Mbaye holds an Education Doctorate in international
education from UMass, Amherst. She has been working for the last twenty
years on gender issues in West and Central Africa. She has also coordinated
programs at UN Women on gender, public policies, and budget, mainly in
the sectors of health, education, environment, and water and sanitation.
Annie McCarthy is an anthropologist interested in the ways marginal-
ized children negotiate and challenge institutions that seek to preserve, fos-
ter or establish “childhood.” McCarthy’s doctoral research explored the
ways a group of slum children in Delhi, India, navigate the complexities and
Another random document with
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greatly embarrassed to deal with it.[293] Any reply that should
repudiate either the treaty obligation or the principles of American
liberty and self-government was out of the question; any reply that
should affirm either the one or the other was fatal to the system
established by Congress in Louisiana. John Randolph, on whose
shoulders the duty fell, made a report on the subject. “It is only under
the torture,” said he, “that this article of the treaty of Paris can be
made to speak the language ascribed to it by the memorialists;” but
after explaining in his own way what the article did not mean, he
surprised his audience by admitting in effect that the law of the last
session was repugnant to the Constitution, and that the people of
Louisiana had a right to self-government.[294] Senator Giles said in
private that Randolph’s report was “a perfect transcript of Randolph’s
own character; it began by setting the claims of the Louisianians at
defiance, and concluded with a proposal to give them more than they
asked.”[295]
Under these influences the three delegates from the creole
society succeeded in getting, not what they asked, but a general
admission that the people of Louisiana had political rights, which
Congress recognized by an Act, approved March 2, 1805, to the
extent of allowing them to elect a General Assembly of twenty-five
representatives, and of promising them admission into the Union
whenever their free inhabitants should reach the number of sixty
thousand. Considering that the people of Louisiana were supposed
to be entitled to “all the rights, advantages, and immunities of
citizens,” Messieurs Sauvé, Derbigny, and Destréhan thought the
concession too small, and expressed themselves strongly on the
subject. Naturally the British minister, as well as other ill-affected
persons at Washington, listened eagerly to the discontent which
promised to breed hostility to the Union.
“The deputies above mentioned,” wrote Merry to his Government,
[296] “who while they had any hopes of obtaining the redress of their
grievances had carefully avoided giving any umbrage or jealousy to
the Government by visiting or holding any intercourse with the agents
of foreign Powers at this place, when they found that their fate was
decided, although the law had not as yet passed, no longer abstained
 from communicating with those agents, nor from expressing very
publicly the great dissatisfaction which the law would occasion among
their constituents,—going even so far as to say that it would not be
tolerated, and that they would be obliged to seek redress from some
other quarter; while they observed that the opportunity they had had of
obtaining a correct knowledge of the state of things in this country,
and of witnessing the proceedings of Congress, afforded them no
confidence in the stability of the Union, and furnished them with such
strong motives to be dissatisfied with the form and mode of
government as to make them regret extremely the connection which
they had been forced into with it. These sentiments they continued to
express till the moment of their departure from hence, which took
place the day after the close of the session.”
Another man watched the attitude of the three delegates with
extreme interest. Aaron Burr, March 4, 1805, ceased to hold the
office of Vice-president. Since the previous August he had awaited
the report of his friend Colonel Williamson, who entered into
conferences with members of the British ministry, hoping to gain their
support for Burr’s plan of creating a Western Confederacy in the
Valley of the Ohio. No sooner was Burr out of office than he went to
Merry with new communications, which Merry hastened to send to
his Government in a despatch marked “Most secret” in triplicate.[297]
“Mr. Burr (with whom I know that the deputies became very
intimate during their residence here) has mentioned to me that the
inhabitants of Louisiana seem determined to render themselves
independent of the United States, and that the execution of their
design is only delayed by the difficulty of obtaining previously an
assurance of protection and assistance from some foreign Power, and
of concerting and connecting their independence with that of the
inhabitants of the western parts of the United States, who must always
have a command over them by the rivers which communicate with the
Mississippi. It is clear that Mr. Burr (although he has not as yet
confided to me the exact nature and extent of his plan) means to
endeavor to be the instrument of effecting such a connection.”

For this purpose Burr asked the aid of the British government,
and defined the nature of the assistance he should need,—a British
squadron at the mouth of the Mississippi, and a loan of half a million
dollars.
 “I have only to add that if a strict confidence could be placed in
him, he certainly possesses, perhaps in a much greater degree than
any other individual in this country, all the talents, energy, intrepidity,
and firmness which are required for such an enterprise.”
Pending an answer to this proposal, Burr was to visit New
Orleans and make himself the head of creole disaffection.
Merry was launched into the full tide of conspiracy. At the close of
Jefferson’s first term he saw reason to hope that he might soon
repay with interest the debt of personal and political annoyance
which he owed. While Yrujo was actively engaged in bringing upon
Madison the anger of Spain and France, Merry endeavored to draw
his Government into a system of open and secret reprisals upon the
President.
That the new French minister was little better disposed than
Merry and Yrujo has been already shown; but his causes for ill-will
were of a different and less personal nature. Before Turreau’s arrival
at Washington in November, 1804, Pichon in one of his last
despatches declared that Jefferson had already alienated every
foreign Power whose enmity could be dangerous to the United
States.
“The state of foreign relations offers a perspective which must put
Mr. Jefferson’s character to proof,” Pichon wrote to Talleyrand in
September, 1804.[298] “The United States find themselves
compromised and at odds with France, England, and Spain at the
same time. This state of things is in great part due to the indecision of
the President, and to the policy which leads him to sacrifice everything
for the sake of his popularity.”

The complaint was common to all French ministers in the United

States, and meant little more than that all Presidents and policies
displeased them by stopping short of war on England, which was the
object of French diplomacy; but this letter also showed that in
Pichon’s eyes the President had no friends. When Turreau arrived, a
few weeks afterward, he quickly intimated that the President need
expect from him not even such sentimental sympathy as had been
so kindly given by Pichon.
 At the same moment it was noticed that Jefferson changed his
style of dress. “He has improved much in the article of dress,” wrote
Senator Plumer in December, 1804;[299] “he has laid aside the old
slippers, red waistcoat, and soiled corduroy small-clothes, and was
dressed all in black, with clean linen and powdered hair.” Apparently
the President had profited by the criticisms of the British minister,
and was willing to avoid similar comments from the new French
envoy; but he supposed that the Frenchman would show equal
civility, and assume an equally republican style. He was mistaken.
November 23, undisturbed by Merry’s experience, Turreau
presented himself at his first audience in full regimentals, and with so
much gold lace that Jefferson was half inclined to resent it as an
impertinence.[300] Turreau next refused to meet Merry at dinner. He
followed up these demonstrations by embracing the cause of Yrujo,
and ridiculing Madison to his face. He began by warning his
Government that “these people have been thoroughly spoiled; it is
time to put them back into their place.”[301]
Turreau became intimate with the deputies from Louisiana, and
notified Talleyrand that a separation of the western country from the
Union was universally expected. Already, within three months of his
arrival, he put his finger on the men who were to accomplish it.[302]
Destréhan, he said, was a man of high merit; “but being only
moderately ambitious, and head of a numerous family,—having
acquired, too, a great personal esteem,—he is not likely to become
the principal mover in innovations which are always dangerous
without a combination of evidently favorable chances. It is still less
likely that he will ever be the instrument of strangers who should
seek to excite troubles for their personal advantage.” As for Sauvé,
much inferior to his colleague in abilities, he would be guided by
Destréhan’s influence. Derbigny was different. “Young still, with wit,
ready expression, and French manners, I believe him to be greedy of
fortune and fame; I suspect that every rôle will suit him, in order to
acquire the one or the other; but there are men of more importance
whom circumstances are taking to Louisiana.”
 Then Turreau, for the information of Talleyrand, drew a portrait of
the military commander of Upper Louisiana, who had his
headquarters at St. Louis, and whose influence on future events was
to be watched.
“General Wilkinson is forty-eight years of age. He has an amiable
exterior. Though said to be well-informed in civil and political matters,
his military capacity is small. Ambitious and easily dazzled, fond of
show and appearances, he complains rather indiscreetly, and
especially after dinner, of the form of his government, which leaves
officers few chances of fortune, advancement, and glory, and which
does not pay its military chiefs enough to support a proper style. He
listened with pleasure, or rather with enthusiasm, to the details which I
gave him in regard to the organization, the dress, and the force of the
French army. My uniform, the order with which I am decorated, are
objects of envy to him; and he seems to hold to the American service
only because he can do no better. General Wilkinson is the most
intimate friend, or rather the most devoted creature, of Colonel Burr.”
Talleyrand had become acquainted with Burr in the United States,
and needed no warnings against him; but Turreau showed himself
well-informed:
“Mr. Burr’s career is generally looked upon as finished; but he is far
from sharing that opinion, and I believe he would rather sacrifice the
interests of his country than renounce celebrity and fortune. Although
Louisiana is still only a Territory, it has obtained the right of sending a
delegate to Congress. Louisiana is therefore to become the theatre of
Mr. Burr’s new intrigues; he is going there under the ægis of General
Wilkinson.”
Perhaps Turreau received this information from Derbigny, which
might account for his estimate of the young man. Certainly Derbigny
knew all that Turreau reported, for in an affidavit[303] two years
afterward he admitted his knowledge.
“In the winter of 1804–1805,” Derbigny made oath, “being then at
Washington City in the capacity of a deputy from the inhabitants of
Louisiana to Congress, jointly with Messrs. Destréhan and Sauvé, he
was introduced to Colonel Burr, then Vice-president of the United
States, by General Wilkinson, who strongly recommended to this
deponent, and as he believes to his colleagues, to cultivate the
acquaintance of Colonel Burr,—whom he used to call ‘the first
 gentleman in America,’ telling them that he was a man of the most
eminent talents both as a politician and as a military character; and ...
General Wilkinson told him several times that Colonel Burr, so soon
as his Vice-presidency would be at an end, would go to Louisiana,
where he had certain projects, adding that he was such a man as to
succeed in anything he would undertake, and inviting this deponent to
give him all the information in his power respecting that country; which
mysterious hints appeared to this deponent very extraordinary, though
he could not then understand them.”
What Derbigny in 1807 professed not to have understood,
seemed in 1804 clear to Turreau and Merry as well as to others.
Turreau closed his catalogue by the significant remark: “I am not the
only person who thinks that the assemblage of such men in a
country already discontented is enough to give rise to serious
troubles there.” The treasonable plans of Burr and Wilkinson were a
matter of common notoriety, and roused anxious comment even in
the mind of John Randolph, who was nursing at home the
mortification of Judge Chase’s acquittal.[304] Randolph complained
of “the easy credulity of Mr. Jefferson’s temper,” which made the
President a fit material for intriguers to work upon. Certainly at the
close of his first administration Jefferson seemed surrounded by
enemies. The New England Federalists, the Louisiana creoles, Burr
and his crew of adventurers in every part of the Union, joined hands
with the ministers of England and Spain to make a hostile circle
round the President; while the minister of France looked on without a
wish to save the government whose friendship Bonaparte had
sought to obtain at the cost of the most valuable province and the
most splendid traditions of the French people.
 CHAPTER XVIII.
After aiding to negotiate the Louisiana treaty at Paris, in April
and May, 1803, Monroe, as the story has already told, being
forbidden by Bonaparte to pursue his journey to Madrid, followed his
alternative instructions, to take the post which Rufus King was
vacating in London. King left England in the middle of May, 1803;
Monroe arrived in London July 18, when the war between England
and France was already two months old.
The mild Addington ministry was still in power, and nothing had
yet happened to excite Monroe’s alarm in regard to British policy in
the United States. On the contrary, the ministry aided the Louisiana
purchase with readiness that might reasonably have surprised an
American minister, while the friendliest spirit was shown by Lord
Hawkesbury in all matters of detail. Except the standing dispute
about impressments, every old point of collision had been
successfully removed by King, whose two conventions,—the one for
discharging British debts recognized by treaty, the other for settling
the boundaries of New England and of the northwest territory,—
seemed to free the countries for the first time from the annoying
inheritance of disputes entailed by the definitive treaty which closed
the Revolutionary War in 1783. The calm which seemed to prevail
throughout England in regard to her relations with America
contrasted sharply with the excitement shown by the English people
in all their allusions to the Corsican demon, as they thought him,
whose regiments, gathering at Boulogne, they might expect to see at
any moment encamped at Hastings, where no hostile camp-fire had
burned since the night, seven hundred years before, when the body
of an English king, hedged about with the dead bodies of a whole
English aristocracy, lay stiff and stark on the bloody hillside, victims
of another French adventurer. England was intent on her own
imminent dangers; and under the strain which the renewal of her
painful efforts brought with it, she was glad to leave America alone.
Yet calm as the atmosphere appeared to be, signs of future storm
were not wholly wanting. Had Monroe been naturally anxious, he
might, without seeking far, have found cause for anxiety serious
enough to take away all appetite for Spanish travel, and to hold him
close to his post until some one should consent to relieve him from
an ungrateful and unpromising duty. The American minister at
London in 1804 could hope to gain nothing either for his country or
for himself, and he stood always on the verge of disaster; but when
he was required to take a “high tone” in the face of a nation almost
insane with anxiety, he challenged more chances of mortification
than any but a desperate politician would have cared to risk.
Monroe had at first nothing to do but to watch the course of public
opinion in England. During the autumn of 1803, while President
Jefferson and Secretary Madison at Washington received Merry with
a changed policy, and all through the winter, while Washington was
torn by “canons of etiquette” and by contests of strength between
Jefferson, Madison, Casa Yrujo, and Merry, the United States
minister in London was left at peace to study the political problems
which bore on his own fortunes and on those of his friends at home,
as well as on the interests of the Union.
Beneath the calm of general society mutterings of discontent
from powerful interests could be heard,—occasional outbursts of
jealousy, revivals of old and virulent passions, inveterate prejudices,
which made as yet but little noise in the Press or in Parliament, but
which rankled in the breasts of individuals. One of the earlier
symptoms of trouble came in a familiar shape. For twenty years,
whenever a question had arisen of hostility to American trade or of
prejudice against American character, the first of Englishmen to
stimulate it, and the loudest to proclaim the dangers of Great Britain,
had been John Baker Holroyd, Earl of Sheffield, whose memory
might have been lost under the weight of his pamphlets had it not
been embalmed in the autobiography of Gibbon. Lord Sheffield felt
such devotion to the British navigation laws as could be likened only
to the idolatry which a savage felt toward his fetich; one might almost
have supposed that to him the State, the Church, and the liberties of
England, the privileges of her nobility, and even the person of her
sovereign, were sacred chiefly because they guaranteed the safety
of her maritime system. This fanaticism of an honest mind led to
results so extravagant as to become at times ridiculous. The
existence of the United States was a protest against Lord Sheffield’s
political religion; and therefore in his eyes the United States were no
better than a nation of criminals, capable of betraying their God for
pieces of silver. The independence of America had shattered the
navigation system of England into fragments; but Lord Sheffield
clung the more desperately to his broken idol. Among the portions
which had been saved were the West Indian colonies. If at that day
the navigation laws had one object more important than another, it
was to foster the prosperity of these islands, in order that their sugar
and molasses, coffee and rum, might give freight to British shippers
and employment to British seamen; but to Lord Sheffield the islands
were only a degree less obnoxious than the revolted United States,
for they were American at heart, complaining because they were
forbidden to trade freely with New York and Boston, and even
asserting that when the navigation laws were strictly enforced their
slaves died of starvation and disease. Lord Sheffield seriously
thought them ungrateful to murmur, and held it their duty to perish in
silence rather than ask a relaxation of the law.
The rupture of the Peace of Amiens, in May, 1803, set Lord
Sheffield again at work; and unfortunately the material lay ready to
his hand. The whole subject of his discourse related to a single fact;
but this fact was full of alarm to the English people. The
extraordinary decrease of British tonnage in the American trade, the
corresponding increase of American shipping, and the loud
exultation of the Yankees over the British shipmasters were proofs of
the danger which menaced England, whose existence depended on
maritime strength. In the month of February, 1804, Lord Sheffield
published a pamphlet,[305] which dwelt on these calamities as due to
the wanton relaxation of the navigation laws and the senseless
clamor of the colonies. He was answered in a pamphlet[306] written
by one of the colonial agents; and the answer was convincing, so far
as Lord Sheffield’s argument was concerned, but his array of
statistics remained to disturb the British mind.
Monroe might therefore count on having, some day, to meet
whatever mischief the shipping interest of Great Britain could cause.
No argument was needed to prove that the navy would support with
zeal whatever demands should be made by the mercantile marine.
There remained the immense influence of the West Indian colonies
to consider; and if this should be brought into active sympathy with
the shipowners and the royal marine against American trade, no
minister in England—not even Pitt himself at the height of his power
—would be strong enough to resist the combination.
The staple product of the West Indian islands was sugar, and
owing to several causes the profits of the planters had until 1798
been large. The insurrection of the Haytian negroes in 1792
annihilated for the time the supply of sugar from St. Domingo; prices
rose in consequence, and a great increase in the number of sugar
plantations naturally followed. Several of the Dutch and French
islands fell into the hands of England, and adventurers flocked to
them, eager to invest British capital in new sugar-fields. Under this
impulse the supply again increased. Cuba, Porto Rico, Guadeloupe,
and at last St. Domingo itself under Toussaint’s rule poured sugar
into the market. American ships carried French and Spanish sugar to
Europe until it became a drug. The high price lasted till 1798; in that
year Pitt even imposed a heavy additional duty upon it as a sure
source of revenue. In 1799 the effect of over-production first became
apparent. During the next few years the price of sugar fell, until great
suffering began to prevail in the islands, and the planters wrote
piteous letters of distress to England. Their agents wrote back that
the English market was flooded with colonial produce: “Send no
more sugar home; give it away rather!” was their advice,—and the
colonists, without the means of purchasing even the necessaries of
life, supplicated government to let them send their sugar to the
United States, to be exchanged for American produce.[307]
This the government dared not do, for the shipping interest must
in such a case be sacrificed. Debarred from this outlet for their
produce, the colonists looked about them for some other resource;
and since they were not allowed to act independently of the
shipmasters, they saw no other course than to join hands with the
shipping interest, and to invoke the aid of the navigation laws. The
glut of the European market was caused by American neutrals, who
were allowed to carry French and Spanish sugars from the West
Indies to Europe. If this neutral trade could be stopped, the supply of
French and Spanish sugar would be left to rot in Cuba and
Guadeloupe, while British colonial produce would enjoy a monopoly
throughout Europe.
Even before the Peace of Amiens this policy gained many
adherents, and the Peace tended to strengthen their influence. The
Addington ministry was not only weak in character, but timid in
policy; and by a natural reaction it threw restless and ambitious
younger statesmen into an attitude of protest. A new departure was
felt to be necessary; and the nervous energy of England, strained
almost to insanity by the anxieties of ten years’ desperate danger,
exhausted itself in the cry for one great commanding spirit, who
should meet Bonaparte with his own weapons on his own field.
This cry produced George Canning. Of him and his qualities
much will be said hereafter, when his rise to power shall have made
him a more prominent figure; here need be noticed only the forces
which sought assertion through him, and the nature of the passions
which he was peculiarly qualified to express. At all times nations
have been most imperilled by the violence of disappointed or terrified
interests; but the danger was never so great as when these interests
joined to a greed for selfish gain the cry for an unscrupulous chief.
Every American schoolboy once knew by heart the famous outburst
of Canning, which began, “Away with the cant of ‘measures, not
men’!” but of the millions of persons who read or heard this favorite
extract few understood its meaning to American interests and
feelings. This celebrated speech, made Dec. 8, 1802, at a time when
Addington’s cautious ministry still held office, was intended to dwarf
Addington and elevate Pitt,—to ridicule caution and extol violence.
“Sir,” cried Canning, “to meet, to check, to resist, to stand up against
Bonaparte, we want arms of the same kind. I vote for the large
military establishments with all my heart; but for the purpose of
coping with Bonaparte, one great, commanding spirit is worth them
all.”
“Arms of the same kind” were, speaking generally, irresponsible
violence and disregard of morality. The great, commanding spirit of
the moment was Mr. Pitt; but between the lines of this speech, by the
light of its author’s whole career, the secret was easily read that in
his opinion the man of the future who could best meet Bonaparte on
his own ground with his own weapons was not William Pitt, but
George Canning.
After many months of warfare against Addington, Canning was
gratified. In May, 1804, Addington retired from office, carrying into
the House of Lords the new title of Lord Sidmouth, while Pitt returned
to power. No one of note returned with him. His old colleague, Lord
Grenville, refused to join his Administration, and Charles James Fox
was personally excluded by King George. To fill the Foreign Office
Pitt could find no better man than Lord Harrowby,—a personage of
very second-rate importance in politics. With a Cabinet so weak as
to command little respect, and reactionary as was required to suit the
King’s growing prejudices, Pitt was obliged to disguise his
feebleness by the vigor of his measures. While creating, by
expenditure of money, a new coalition against Napoleon, he was
unable to disregard the great moneyed and social interests which
were clamoring for a spirited policy against neutrals and especially
against America. In private he avowed his determination to re-
establish the old system, and his regret that he should ever have
been, most reluctantly, induced to relax the maritime rights of Britain.
[308]

That Monroe should have been the last person in London to

know the secret thoughts of Pitt was not surprising. The Board of
Trade commonly exerted more influence than the Foreign Office over
the relations of England with the United States; and George Rose,
Vice-President of the Board of Trade, Pitt’s devoted friend and a Tory
after Lord Sheffield’s heart, would never have chosen Monroe as a
confidant of schemes under discussion in his department. Lord
Harrowby was but the mouthpiece of other men. From him Monroe
could expect to hear only what had already been decided.
Nevertheless a little study of the mercantile interests of the city, and
a careful inquiry into the private opinions of men like Rose and
Canning, might have thrown some light on the future, and would
naturally have roused anxiety in the mind of Monroe.
 Pitt’s return to power, with the intention of changing the American
policy which had been pursued since the negotiation of Jay’s treaty,
happened very nearly to coincide with the arrival at the Foreign
Office of Merry’s most alarming despatches, announcing that
Madison required the total abandonment of impressments, the
restriction of blockades and the right of search, and complete
freedom in the colonial trade, as the conditions on which the
friendship of the United States could be preserved. The
announcement of President Jefferson’s high tone was accompanied
by the British minister’s account of his own social mortifications by
the President and the Secretary of State; of the Senate’s refusal to
approve the fifth article of Rufus King’s boundary convention, in
order to attack the British right of navigating the Mississippi; and by
drafts of bills pending in Congress, under which any British admiral,
even though it were Nelson himself, who should ever have taken a
seaman out of an American vessel, was to be arrested in the streets
of the first American port where he might go ashore, and to suffer
indefinite imprisonment among thieves and felons in the calaboose.
May 30, 1804, Monroe had his first interview with Lord Harrowby.
In such cases the new secretary, about to receive a foreign minister,
commonly sent for the late correspondence, in order to learn
something about the subjects on which he was to have an opinion.
Beyond a doubt Lord Harrowby had on his table the despatches of
Merry, written between November and April, which he probably
finished reading at about the moment when Monroe was announced
at the door.
Under such circumstances, Monroe reported to his Government
that Lord Harrowby’s manners were designedly unfriendly; his
reception was rough, his comments on the Senate’s habit of
mutilating treaties were harsh, his conduct throughout the interview
was calculated to wound and to irritate.[309] After this unpromising
experience, two months were allowed to pass without further
demonstration on either side. Then Lord Harrowby called Monroe’s
attention to the twelfth article of Jay’s treaty, which regulated the
commercial relations between the British West Indies and the United
States, and which had expired by limitation. He suggested its
renewal, according to its old terms, until two years after the next
general peace. To this offer Monroe replied, with the utmost
frankness, “that the President wished to postpone this matter until he
could include impressment and neutral rights in the treaty; that we
must begin de novo; that America was a young and thriving country;
that in 1794 she had had little experience, since then she understood
her interests better; and that a new treaty should omit certain things
from that of 1794, and include others. The most urgent part was that
which respected our seamen.”[310]
An approaching contact of opposite forces always interests men’s
imagination. On one side, Pitt and Lord Harrowby stood meditating
the details of measures, which they had decided in principle, for
taking from the United States most of the commercial advantages
hitherto enjoyed by them; on the other side stood Monroe and
Jefferson, equally confident, telling the Englishmen that very much
greater advantages must be conceded. That one or the other of
these forces must very soon give way was evident; and if ever an
American minister in London needed to be on the alert, with every
faculty strained to its utmost, the autumn of 1804 was such a
moment. Monroe, aware of his danger, gave full warning to the
President. Even as early as June 3, after his first interview with Lord
Harrowby, he wrote that a change of policy was imminent. “My most
earnest advice is to look to the possibility of such a change.”[311]
Lord Harrowby also gave every reasonable warning. His reply to
Monroe’s demands for further negotiation was simple,—nothing
need be expected from him. He refused to do any business at all, on
the plea of other occupations incident to the formation of a new
ministry.[312] Monroe sent him the draft of the comprehensive treaty
which Madison had forwarded, but Lord Harrowby declined for the
present to discuss it. Then Monroe came to the conclusion that his
presence in London was no longer necessary; and accordingly, Oct.
8, 1804, he started for Paris and Madrid. Until July 23, 1805, the
legation at London was left in charge of a secretary.
A month after his departure, Lord Harrowby wrote a letter of
instructions[313] to Merry in reply to the series of despatches
received from Washington.
“His Majesty’s government,” he said, “have perceived with
considerable concern, from some of your most recent despatches, the
increasing acrimony which appears to pervade the representations
that have been made to you by the American Secretary of State on
the subject of the impressment of seamen from on board of American
ships. The pretension advanced by Mr. Madison that the American
flag should protect every individual sailing under it on board of a
merchant-ship is too extravagant to require any serious refutation. In
the exercise of the right, which has been asserted by his Majesty and
his predecessors for ages, of reclaiming from a foreign service the
subjects of Great Britain, whether they are found on the high seas or
in the ports of his own dominions, irregularities must undoubtedly
frequently occur; but the utmost solicitude has been uniformly
manifested by his Majesty’s government to prevent them as far as
may be possible, and to repress them whenever they have actually
taken place.”
Intending to pursue the same course in the future, the
Government would without delay give the strictest orders to its naval
officers “to observe the utmost lenity in visiting ships on the high
seas, and to abstain from impressments in the ports of the United
States.”
In regard to commercial questions, Lord Harrowby offered to
consider the treaty of 1794 as in force until some new arrangement
could be formed. Until the decision of the President should be
known, it was “intended to propose to Parliament to lodge the power
of regulating the commerce with America in the King in Council, in
the same manner as before the treaty of 1794.” The offer of
considering the treaty as in force “must be regarded as a boon to
America; and it was made merely under the persuasion that if
accepted it would be accepted with a view to maintain a friendly
relation between the two countries, and to avoid in the interval
everything which could lead to interrupt it. If this system is followed in
America, it will be followed here in every respect with an anxious
desire for the continuance of harmony and cordiality.”
The same conditional and semi-threatening disposition toward
good-will ran through the rest of these instructions. In regard to the
boundary convention, his Majesty’s government would at all times be
ready to reopen the whole subject; “but they can never acquiesce in
the precedent which in this as well as in a former instance the
American government has endeavored to establish, of agreeing to
ratify such parts of a convention as they may select, and of rejecting
other stipulations of it, formally agreed upon by a minister invested
with full powers for the purpose.”
Finally, Merry was to “avoid, as far as possible, any language
which might be conceived to be of a menacing or hostile tendency,
or which might be construed into an indication of a desire on the part
of his Majesty’s government to decline any discussion of the several
points now pending between the two countries.” Lord Harrowby
clearly wished to encourage discussion to the utmost. He left the
“canons of etiquette” unnoticed, and offered not even a hint at any
change of policy meditated by his Government.
So matters remained in England during the last months of
President Jefferson’s first term. On both sides new movements were
intended; but while those of the United States government were
foreseen and announced in advance by Merry, those of the British
ministry were hidden under a veil of secrecy, which might perhaps
have been no more penetrable to Monroe had he remained in
London to watch them than they were to him in his retreat at
Aranjuez.
To the world at large nothing in the relations of the United States
with England, France, or Spain seemed alarming. The world knew
little of what was taking place. Only men who stood between these
forces could understand their movements and predict the moment of
collision; but if these men, like Merry, Turreau, and Yrujo, had been
asked March 3, 1805, to point out the brightest part of Jefferson’s
political horizon, they would probably have agreed with one voice
that everything in Europe threatened disaster, and that the only
glimpse of blue sky was to be seen on the shores of Africa. The
greatest triumph to be then hoped from Jefferson’s peace policy was
the brilliant close of his only war.
 During the year 1804 the little American fleet in the
Mediterranean made famous some names which within ten years
were to become more famous still. With the “Constitution,” the only
heavy frigate on the station after the loss of the “Philadelphia,” and
with half-a-dozen small brigs and schooners, Preble worked manfully
at his task of annoying the Pacha of Tripoli. Three years’ experience
showed that a mere blockade answered no other purpose than to
protect in part American commerce. It had not shaken the Pacha in
the demand of black-mail as his condition of peace. Bainbridge, still
held a prisoner in the town, believed that Jefferson must choose
between paying what the Pacha asked, or sending eight or ten
thousand men to attack him in his castle. Black-mail was the life of
the small pirate rulers, and they could not abandon it without making
a precedent fatal to themselves, and inviting insurrection from their
subjects. Preble could only strike the coast with fear; and during the
summer of 1804 he began a series of dashing assaults with the
“Constitution,” helped by four new craft,—the “Argus” and “Syren,”
fine sixteen-gun brigs; the “Nautilus” and “Vixen,” fourteen-gun
schooners; the “Enterprise,” of twelve guns, and a captured
Tripolitan brig of sixteen guns, re-named the “Scourge,”—all
supported by eight small gunboats borrowed from the King of Naples
who was also at war with Tripoli. Thus commanding a force of about
one hundred and fifty guns, and more than a thousand men, August
3, carrying his flag-ship into the harbor, Preble engaged the
Tripolitan batteries at very short range for two hours. Fortunately, the
Mussulmans could not or did not depress their guns enough to injure
the frigate, and after throwing many broadsides into the batteries and
town, Preble retired without losing a man. His gunboat flotilla was
equally daring, but not so lucky. One division was commanded by
Lieutenant Somers, the other by Stephen Decatur. They attacked the
Tripolitan gunboats and captured three, besides sinking more; but
James Decatur was killed. A few days afterward, August 7, the
attack was repeated, and some five hundred 24-lb. shot were thrown
into the batteries and town. August 24 a third bombardment took
place within the month; and although Preble knew that Barron was
near at hand with a strong reinforcement, August 29 he carried his
flotilla a fourth time into the harbor, and again threw several hundred
solid shot into the town. A fifth bombardment, the heaviest of all, took
place early in September. In these affairs, so poor was the Tripolitan
gunnery or courage that the Americans suffered almost no loss
beyond that of a few spars. The only serious disaster, besides the
death of James Decatur, was never explained. Preble, wishing to try
the effect of a fireship, on the night of September 4 sent one of his
best officers, Lieutenant Somers, into the harbor with the ketch
“Intrepid” filled with powder, bombs, and shell. The “Argus,” “Vixen,”
and “Nautilus” escorted Somers to shoal water, and waited for him to
rejoin them in his boats. They saw the batteries fire upon him; then
they heard a sudden and premature explosion. All night the three
cruisers waited anxiously outside, but Somers never returned. He
and his men vanished; no vestige or tidings of them could ever be
found.
Considering Preble’s narrow means, the economy of the
Department, and the condition of his small vessels, nothing in
American naval history was more creditable than the vigor of his
blockade in the summer of 1804; but he could not confidently assert
that any number of such attacks would force the Pacha to make
peace. A week after the loss of Somers in the “Intrepid” Commodore
Samuel Barron arrived, bringing with him nearly the whole available
navy of the United States, and relieved Preble from the command.
Preble returned home, and was rewarded for his services by a gold
medal from Congress. Two years afterward he died of consumption.
Barron had with him such a force as the United States never
before or since sent in hostile array across the ocean,—two forty-
fours, the “Constitution” and the “President;” two thirty-eight gun
frigates, the “Constellation” and the “Congress;” the “Essex,” of
thirty-two guns; the new brigs, “Hornet” of eighteen, and the “Syren”
and “Argus” of sixteen; the twelve-gun schooners “Vixen,” “Nautilus,”
and “Enterprise;” ten new, well-built American gunboats; and two
bomb-vessels. With the exception of the frigates “Chesapeake” and
“United States,” hardly a sea-going vessel was left at home.
Commanded by young officers like John Rodgers and Stephen
Decatur, Chauncey, Stewart, and Isaac Hull, such a squadron
reflected credit on Robert Smith’s administration of the navy.
 Nevertheless the Pacha did not yield, and Barron was obliged by
the season to abandon hope of making his strength immediately felt.
Six months later the commodore, owing to ill-health, yielded the
command to John Rodgers, while the Pacha was still uninjured by
the squadron. As the summer of 1805 approached, fear of Rodgers’s
impending attack possibly helped to turn the Pacha’s mind toward
concession; but his pacific temper was also much affected by events
on land, in which appeared so striking a combination of qualities,—
enterprise and daring so romantic and even Quixotic that for at least
half a century every boy in America listened to the story with the
same delight with which he read the Arabian Nights.
A Connecticut Yankee, William Eaton, was the hero of the
adventure. Born in 1764, Eaton had led a checkered career. At
nineteen he was a sergeant in the Revolutionary army. After the
peace he persisted, against harassing difficulties, in obtaining what
was then thought a classical education; in his twenty-seventh year
he took a degree at Dartmouth. He next opened a school in Windsor,
Vermont, and was chosen clerk to the Vermont legislature. Senator
Bradley, in 1792, procured for him a captain’s commission in the
United States army. His career in the service was varied by
insubordination, disobedience to orders, charges, counter-charges, a
court-martial, and a sentence of suspension not confirmed by the
Secretary of War. In 1797 he was sent as consul to Tunis, where he
remained until the outbreak of the war with Tripoli in 1801. Tunis was
the nearest neighbor to Tripoli, about four hundred miles away; and
the consul held a position of much delicacy and importance. In the
year 1801 an elder brother of the reigning Pacha of Tripoli resided in
Tunis, and to him Eaton turned in the hope of using his services.
This man, Hamet Caramelli, the rightful Pacha of Tripoli, had been
driven into exile some eight or nine years before by a rebellion which
placed his younger brother Yusuf on the throne. Eaton conceived the
idea of restoring Hamet, and by this act of strength impressing all the
Mahometan Powers with terror of the United States. In pursuit of this
plan he spent more than twenty thousand dollars, embroiled himself
with the Bey of Tunis, quarrelled with the naval commanders, and in
1803 returned to America to lay his case before the President and
Congress.