They Called Us Savages Part 2: The Cannibal Label Was a Legal Weapon — Teacher Resources

They Called Us Savages — Part 2

The Cannibal Label Was a Legal Weapon — Teacher Resources

King Charles II of England did not just consume corpse medicine. He made his own.

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Quiz — They Called Us Savages — Part 2

PART A — MULTIPLE CHOICE

1. What was the King's Drops?

B) Powdered human skull dissolved in alcohol, produced and consumed by King Charles II of England.

Students should be able to identify the King's Drops precisely — both its composition and its royal origin. King Charles II did not merely consume corpse medicine prescribed by his physicians. He produced his own formula: powdered human skull dissolved in alcohol. This distinction matters because it demonstrates that the consumption of human remains was not merely a passive medical practice but an active, personally invested one at the highest levels of European royalty. Students who answer A, C, or D are misidentifying the preparation entirely.

2. How did King Charles II's physicians use the King's Drops on his deathbed in 1685?

C) They administered forty drops of it down his throat every single day.

Students should be able to state the specific method and frequency — forty drops, every single day. The precision of this detail matters: it was not an occasional or emergency treatment. It was a daily pharmaceutical regimen administered by licensed royal physicians to the King of England as he lay dying. The specificity of forty drops daily demonstrates the institutionalized, systematic nature of European corpse medicine at the highest levels of society. Students who answer A, B, or D are misidentifying the method of administration.

3. Which of the following European monarchs also consumed corpse medicine according to the lesson?

B) Queen Mary II, King Francis I of France, Christian IV of Denmark, and William III.

Students should be able to identify all four monarchs named in the lesson. The breadth of royal participation across multiple countries and centuries — England, France, Denmark — demonstrates that corpse medicine was not an eccentric English practice but a pan-European royal tradition. Each of these monarchs presided over colonial empires that simultaneously labeled African and Indigenous peoples as cannibals. Students who answer A, C, or D are selecting groups of monarchs not documented in this lesson.

4. What was the last recorded date of human mummy listed for sale in a European medical catalog?

D) 1924.

Students should be able to state the specific year — 1924 — and understand its significance. 1924 is not the Middle Ages. It is not the Renaissance. It is not even the Victorian era. It is the 20th century — the same decade as commercial aviation, the radio, and the Harlem Renaissance. The persistence of the mummy trade into 1924 means that European corpse medicine was not a medieval relic but a sustained commercial institution that overlapped with living memory. Students who answer A, B, or C are selecting earlier dates that significantly misrepresent the duration of the practice.

5. What was the legal significance of the cannibal label under European colonial law?

C) Peoples labeled as cannibals could be lawfully enslaved.

Students should understand the precise legal function of the cannibal label — it was not merely a cultural insult but a legal instrument that created the basis for enslavement under European colonial law. This is the central argument of the lesson: the cannibal label was a weapon. It was applied to peoples European colonizers wished to seize and enslave, and the application of the label itself became the legal justification for everything that followed. Students who answer A, B, or D are misidentifying the legal function of the label.

6. What did Dr. Richard Sugg state about European consumption of human flesh compared to peoples in the so-called New World?

C) That it is entirely possible Europeans were consuming more human flesh than anyone in the so-called New World.

Students should be able to state Dr. Sugg's documented conclusion precisely and understand its source — a peer-reviewed academic at the University of Durham, published by Routledge. This is not a fringe claim. It is an academically documented conclusion from one of the most credible scholars in the field. The significance of this claim is that it directly inverts the colonial narrative: the people calling Africans cannibals were themselves the most prolific consumers of human flesh. Students who answer A, B, or D are misrepresenting or contradicting Dr. Sugg's documented conclusion.

7. What is the lesson's argument about the African perspective on European arrival?

C) That from where Africans stood — Europeans who seized, stripped, and carried their bodies across an ocean could reasonably be understood as cannibals.

Students should be able to articulate the African perspective argument precisely. The lesson does not merely argue that Europeans were hypocrites. It argues that from the actual experiential position of African people — who were seized, stripped of everything, and carried across an ocean in the holds of ships — the behavior of Europeans met every functional definition of cannibalism: the seizure and consumption of bodies for the benefit of another group. Students who answer A, B, or D are misidentifying or mischaracterizing the lesson's argument.

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PART B — SHORT ANSWER KEY POINTS

Question 8. The lesson documents that King Charles II, Queen Mary II, King Francis I of France, Christian IV of Denmark, and William III all consumed corpse medicine — while simultaneously presiding over colonial empires that labeled African and Indigenous peoples as cannibals. Using at least two specific details from the lesson, explain what the participation of these specific monarchs reveals about the relationship between European colonial power and the construction of the cannibal label.

A strong answer should include:

• At least two specific details: King Charles II produced the King's Drops — powdered human skull dissolved in alcohol — and his physicians administered forty drops daily on his deathbed in 1685; Queen Mary II consumed the same formula on her deathbed in 1698; King Francis I of France, Christian IV of Denmark, and William III all consumed similar preparations
• What the participation of these monarchs reveals: these were the architects of European colonialism — the people who signed the charters, issued the patents, and built the legal frameworks that authorized the conquest and enslavement of African and Indigenous peoples. Their personal consumption of human remains is not incidental to colonial history — it is part of it
• The relationship between royal corpse medicine and the cannibal label: the same monarchs who were grinding up human skulls and swallowing them as medicine were simultaneously constructing and deploying the legal instrument — the cannibal label — that made the enslavement of African people lawful
• Strong answers will note: the cannibal label was not applied to describe behavior. It was applied to justify seizure. The monarchs who applied it knew exactly what they were doing — because they were doing the same thing themselves

Question 9. The cannibal label was a legal weapon — under European colonial law, peoples labeled as cannibals could be lawfully enslaved. Using at least two specific details from the lesson, explain how this legal function of the cannibal label changes our understanding of European colonial ideology and its relationship to documented European corpse medicine.

A strong answer should include:

• At least two specific details: the cannibal label could be applied by European colonizers to any people they wished to enslave — the application of the label was itself the legal justification for enslavement; the last recorded listing of human mummy for sale in a European medical catalog was 1924 — meaning the same European civilization that applied the cannibal label to others was itself sustaining a commercial trade in human remains into the 20th century
• How the legal function changes our understanding: once we know that the cannibal label was a legal weapon rather than a descriptive term, the entire narrative of European colonial ideology collapses. The label was never about what African or Indigenous peoples actually did. It was about what European colonizers wanted to do to them
• The relationship to European corpse medicine: European colonizers applied the cannibal label to peoples they were simultaneously consuming — their mummies ground into medicine, their labor extracted until their bodies gave out, their land seized under doctrines that declared it empty
• Strong answers will connect: Dr. Sugg's conclusion that Europeans were likely consuming more human flesh than anyone in the New World to the legal function of the cannibal label — demonstrating that the label was deployed in direct inversion of documented reality

Question 10. Dr. Richard Sugg stated that it is entirely possible that Europeans were consuming more human flesh than anyone in the so-called New World — and the lesson argues that from the African perspective, Europeans who arrived on ships and carried African bodies across an ocean were themselves acting as cannibals. Using at least two specific details from the lesson, explain what these two arguments together reveal about who had the power to define cannibalism during the colonial period — and how that power shaped the historical record we inherit today.

A strong answer should include:

• At least two specific details: Dr. Richard Sugg — peer-reviewed, published by Routledge, covered by Smithsonian Magazine and the Mütter Museum — stated that Europeans were likely consuming more human flesh than anyone in the New World; from the African perspective, Europeans who seized people, stripped them of everything, and carried their bodies across an ocean were engaging in a form of cannibalism by any functional definition
• Who had the power to define cannibalism: the people who controlled the ships, the guns, the printing presses, the universities, and the courts. European colonizers defined cannibalism in ways that excluded their own practices while encompassing the practices — real or invented — of the peoples they wished to conquer
• How that power shaped the historical record: Dr. Sugg's work is peer-reviewed and institutionally acknowledged — and it does not appear in a single public school curriculum in the United States, the United Kingdom, or Europe. The power to define cannibalism was the same power used to shape the historical record
• Strong answers will connect: the power to define cannibalism to the power to write history — and will note that both powers were wielded by the same people, in service of the same system, with consequences that persist into the educational materials students encounter today

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