Thomas Carlyle: In a symbol there is concealment and yet revelation

I probably promised that I would not write about the Salem city seal in a previous post but here I am again writing about the Salem city seal. I just can’t help myself: the process through which it will likely be discarded has resumed again with the Salem City Council and frankly, the seal and its context, past and present, is really the only Salem topic I’m inspired to write about these days. I’m working on a much longer piece for an academic journal, so I’m using the blog as a trial run, and consequently I would love your questions, comments, and critique!

A short introduction and recap because it’s been a while. If you are new to this blog and to Salem you might presume that our city seal would depict a witch on a broomstick. This image is everywhere, including on our police cars, but in fact our official city seal, marking city documents and correspondence, depicts an East Indian merchant at its center, flanked by a ship and a pepper tree with an olive-branch bearing dove above and an assertive motto (“To the Farthest Point of the Rich East”) below. Of these two Salem emblems, you would think that the witch would be the objectionable image: the victims of 1692 were not practicing witchcraft so why are we representing them with a figure of a witch? We killed them because of that identification; they died asserting their innocence. But no, it’s the figure at the top that has been deemed “harmful” because its central figure represents an Asian stereotype or caricature (both terms are used) and its pacifist dove conceals the violence that accompaned Salem’s incredibly prosperous trade with the East Indies in the first half of the nineteenth century. In this view, the First and Second Sumatran Expeditions of the U.S.. Navy (1832 and 1838), retaliatory campaigns after Malay attacks on American ships which were indeed very violent, block out the entire extent and impact of Salem’s lucrative 40-year pepper trade, the revenues from which literally built this city.

To address concerns about the seal, a Task Force was created by the Mayor and City Council and given the charge to conduct historical research, gather public input, and review design considerations before submitting a final report with recommendations. This committee was supposed to be comprised of 11 members and sit for 18 months; it had 8 members who deliberated for 6 months. As the first charge was deemed quite important, two historians were appointed to the task force, including an academic who is an internationally recognized expert on Islamic society and culture in Sumatra. In my view, historical documentation and analysis was given short shrift repeatedly in favor of nineteenth and twentieth century images (most of which dated after the seal’s creation) curated to demonstrate an increasingly negative western depiction of Asian people over the period. Things became very interesting last summer when a succession of people from Aceh, Sumatra’s westernmost province and the region where the pepper trade was the most active, began lobbing for the seal’s preservation with assertions that they were honored by this representation. Salem’s Acehnese figure showed up on the cover of an Indonesian book entitled The Pepper Coast. A Historical, Archaeological and Economic Study of the Spice Trade in Bandar Susoh and Kuala Batu. 

Nevertheless, critics of the seal maintain(ed) that this was a local issue. Even though they are the ones represented on the seal, the opinions of the Acehnese don’t count! So much for worldly Salem. The Task Force completed its report (which excluded all documentary footnotes originally—thankfully put back in as an appendix) and submitted it to the City Council with a recommendation to change the seal. Months went by and a practically new council was was elected, which took up the matter only last week. I attended the meeting expecting to hear a vigorous debate, but instead there was a successful motion to simply accept the Task Force report and recommendation and change the seal. Despite the historical research charge embedded in the original order, several councillors asserted that the historical context of the seal was irrelevant: my own ward councillor repeated the assertion that history shouldn’t matter several times. And here we are: there has to be another vote but I think Salem’s venerable seal is history.

I find it sad that these councillors can’t see a bigger picture, because the seal has opened up all sorts of windows for me, or I should say, the figure on the seal has inspired questions and the search for answers. Who is this person? Why does the clothing change in depictions? Why does the gender of the figure change in the mid-19th century, as it appears in print and other genres? The evolution of an 1830s Sumatran figure in the original seal (top left), featuring clothing that its creator, City councilor George Peabody, would have seen, to a more generalized Imperial China depiction in Ross Turner’s 1888 “refresh” (bottom left) is particularly fascinating. Turner hadn’t been to East Asia, presumably he based his depiction on images and textiles he saw in the Peabody Museum. People in Salem in 1888 were likely far less familiar with Asian people than their predecessors were a half-century before, and the next generation would be even more removed. But certainly not disinterested. We have a great chapter in Salem’s Centuries by my colleague Michele Louro and the Salem State Library Dean Elizabeth McKeigue on Walter G. Whitman, a professor of Physical Sciences at Salem State who spent a year at the University of Nanking in 1925. During that time he traveled throughout Asia and collected and created a portfolio of images which he presented in a series of popular slide lectures when he returned home. Whitman was just one local collector/connector, illustrating the continuing ties between Salem and the East in the twentieth century.

Walter G. Whitman papers (M.7) at Salem State University Archives and Special Collections.

But even back in the “Golden Era” of Salem’s trade with East Asia a century earlier there is more to know, more to explore. I’ve been captivated by a quote from Captain Stephen Phillips about the presence of Asian “Lascars” for years, and just a cursory glance at the digitized crew lists for Salem ships from 1799-1979 at the Mystic Seaport Museum indicates there were East Asian seamen onboard—and presumably in Salem. (“Lascar” is a British term for seamen from pretty much anywhere in the entire Indian Ocean region).  Of course I’d like to know a lot more about the “servants” Phillips references as well. Who were all these people? What are their stories? Did they remain in Salem or go elsewhere to find their fortunes? Are their descendants still around?

Stephen Phillips miniature, Historic New England; Salem Crew lists at the Mystic Seaport Museum.

For me, history is about people, so the new seal, likely stripped down to as few unobjectionable objects as possible, will cease to be inspirational. The councillors of nearly two centuries ago who approved our present city seal were seeking a human connection; our current councillors are looking for something else. I’m not sure what. I just hope they don’t employ AI as was the case with that damn anime cat chosen as the mascot for our 400th anniversary! I whipped up this slop in 2 seconds and am not impressed.