Welcome MAY 2012
Richard III is, and no doubt will continue to be, the medieval figure who excites the most because of Shakespeare's dark
When the USA fought Britain, who came out on top?
characterisation of the king.
PAGE 50
debate. In large part that's
This year is the World Shakespeare Festival, so with a renewed focus on the Bard, particularly on the BBC, it's a pertinent moment to consider whence Shakespeare got his ideas about Richard. Tum to page 26 to read the piece from Paulina
_���...L...I,... .. .�+-
Kewes about Shakespeare's sources.
..
__
That's not the only pOint of contention in this issue. We're also looking at Britain's
How Shakespeare brought Richard's reputation to a new low PAGE 26
reaction to the Jewish revolt in advance of the creation of the State of Israel in the 1940s, a forgotten pivotal figure in the development of
Waging war on technology in the 1 9th century
Islam, and the eminently debatable point about whether it was America or Britain that actually triumphed in the 1812 war between them.
PAGE 78
History is, of course, all about differing opinions and interpretations, so I hope you find these features both diverting and provoking.
How Britain reacted to the killing of PM Spencer Perceval
You may well have an opinion yourself. If so, we have a letters section poised and ready to
A different perspective on Britain's history PAGE 34
receive your trenchant observations. Dr David Musgrove EDITOR
H Discover a world of history... (���� ,/�\ BBC History Magazine
Britain's bestselling history magazine is published every four weeks, available from all good newsagents and on subscription
historyextra.com The website of BBC History Magazine
:J www.historyextra.com
Books The BBC History Magazine titles, 100 Places that Made Britain a nd The Celebrated Pedestrian, are ava ilable from the BBe shop :J www.bbcshop.com
\�\"
�/
Weekly podcast
'�.r......... .�
The BBC History Magazine podcast is available to download every week. You can download each episode for free from our website or subscribe via iTunes [pod casts are generally released on Thursdays]
:J www.historyextra.com/podcast-page
Facebook and Twitter Keep up to date with the magazine, our digital offerings and the latest history news via our Twitter feed :J twitter.com/historyextra and our Facebook page :J facebook.coml historyextra
NEW iPad edition
We've just launched an iPad version of the magazine, with digital enhancements. You can find it at the Apple Newsstand
:J www.historyextra.com/ipad
NEW Kindle edition
BBC History Magazine is now available for the Kindle and the Kindle app. You can p u rchase individual issues or a subscription from the Amazon website
:J www.historyextra.com/ kindle
Contents MAY 2012
�
Contact us PHONE
Subscriptions & back issues 0844 844 0250 Advertising 0117 314 8752 Editoria10117 314 7377 EMAIL
FEATURES
Editorial historymagazinefahistoryextra.com Subscriptions & back issues
bbchistorymagfaservicehelpline.co.uk POST
Editorial BBC History Magazine, Immediate
Media Company Bristol Limited, Tower House, Fai rfax Street, Bristol BS1 3BN
22 A popular murder? Gordon Pentland looks at why the assassination of a British prime minister was welcomed by some
Subscriptions & back issues BBC History Magazine, PO Box 279, Sittingbourne, Kent ME9 8DF
�
•••
In the US/Canada you can contact us at: PO Box
421133,
Palm Coast,
FL 32142
bbchistory0emailcustomerservice.com Toll free
800-342-3592
26 Why did Shakespeare revile Richard III?
Paulina Kewes explains how the king became a Shakespearean monster
34 The history of you and me
Michael Wood champions the ordinary people of the past
39 Trouble in Palestine Matthew Hughes analyses Britain's unsuccessful attempts to quell a Jewish uprising in the 1940s
EVERY MONTH II Letters I] Milestones: It happened in May
News
IEJ Breaking news 19 News from the journals iii News roundup Dl World news in context: Mexico m Big Days in History by Dominic Sand brook m Changing Times by Ch ris Bowlby m Book I'eviews 1 1 new history books reviewed ED TV&Radio What's on in May
Out About
46 The Thames triumphant Robert J Blyth explores a long history of royal pageants on the London river
50 When Washington burned Andrew Lambert challenges American claims to have emerged victorious from the 1812 war with Britain
ED Where history happened: The Luddites II! Ten things to do in May III Ye olde travel guide: Paris in 1 80 2
Miscellany
m Q&A: Your historical questions answered III Crossword: Win A History of Food in 100 Recipes m Puzzles m My history hero by Mark Easton 48
Subscribe
Free book when you subscribe today
58 The midwife of Islam Tom Holland reappraises a seventh century Muslim warlord whose legacy is still felt today 4
USPS Identification Statement sse HISTORY [iSSN 1469-8552) [USPS 024-177) May 2012 is published 13 times a year under license from SBe Worldwide by Immediate Media Company Bristol. 9th Floor, Tower House, Fairfax S tree t, Bristol BS 1 3BN, UK. Oistributed in the US by Evergreen Marketing, 116 Ram Cat Alley, Suite 201, Seneca, SC 29678-3263. Periodicals postage paid at Seneca, SC and additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER: S end address changes to BBC HISTORY. PO Box 421133, Palm Coast, FL32142-1133
BBC History Magazine
Letters MAY 2012
...
-
- ...
<'..�'\� ..." ��( ..........................................................
" ,�
�
\.>y��,\"
,
to: �,: A bearer of bad tidings I
\
: o� , ....... j. -�- ...
,,�
I
The review by Juliet Gardiner of the book by Sean Longden, Blitz Kids, (March, Books), with its reference to 14 year olds delivering telegrams announcing deaths in action, brought back some difficult memories. My 1 4th birthday was on 2 January 1945 and I started work as a boy messenger (T22) just before Christmas 1944 in north-west Kent, which was in the London postal region. I recall that I was 5ft lins at the time and the enclosed photograph shows that within the uniform there was room for growth. In adulthood I reached 5ft l l ins. Inevitably it became my lot to deliver such tragic telegrams. They were given the priority 'CC' and were delivered by boy messengers messenger, 1 944/45 between the hours of Sam and Spm - with the police taking over the task during the night. I can still remember some of the delivery addresses. We quickly became street-wise and with such telegrams we always knocked on the wrong door so that the neighbour was readily on hand to deal with the distraught family. ,
Eric Greaves, Southport
We reward the writer of the letter of the month with our Pick of the Month book. This issue it is The Norman Conquest by Marc Morris.
Read the review on page 61
Blinkered views I have some thoughts on The Great Divide (February issue). I must first acknowledge that a five-page article is not adequate to cover the subject involved but that is reality. I believe your writer has a very outdated 'Old World' attitude to the 'New World' - we discovered them, they were backward, cruel and so on. South American cultures had a system of farming involving terraced gardens which enabled them to have a two-year store of food. The author fails to acknowledge that they were highly 6
organised, built large temples and cities and had an artisan class doing work in gold and silver. Nor does he recognise that they developed an accurate calendar and studied astronomy and other sciences. North American natives were also highly organised, lived in communities and helped the immigrants survive in the 'New World'. They farmed and hunted and had systems of self government. Yes, there were wars and battles on both New World continents but to claim that the Old World
was advanced because of monotheism is simply a case of wearing blinkers. May I remind the author of the Spanish inquisition, several crusades to the Holy Land, the ill treatment ofJews in many countries, the burning of witches and heretics and so on - all very civilised, of course, and all because our god is better than yours! My point is that history is full of battles, killing and murder - not just the Americas. Comments about drugs in the Americas are simply not worth commenting on as opium and alcohol have a long history in the Old World. For further reading and an alterative view of New World history, might I suggest Stolen Continents: The "New World" Through Indian Eyes or What Is America?, both by Ronald Wright.
me. Now I can hardly wait to have it passed on to me so I can read about all the interesting events I had never heard of. I am continually surprised at just how interesting history is, even the occasional battle! Thank you for a marvellous magazine that has reintroduced me to history, but what a time I have wasted just because of that one teacher. Looking back I can see he was a fool; and that he made me one too. Barry Woods N o rfolk
John Bower Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada
Not fooled any more When I was a youngster at school I loved history. But then at the age of about 13, I had a history teacher whose only passion was the battles of the English Civil War. So week after week all we did was draw up the battle plan, label the formations, name the commanders, and log how many went into the battle and how many died, and how. For me that killed history. I hated it with a passion equal to that of my teacher and dropped it from my education as soon as I could. And so history passed me by with no interest whatsoever except for a few bits and pieces I came across over the years (I am now 62). I admit I am largely ignorant of most of history, from choice. But then my wife, who loves history, started to purchase your magazine, and passed it on to
View from England I notice, as usual, that making pejorative comments about the English is considered politically okay (Britain's Medieval Identity Crisis, March). The 'English' kings who do not win the regard of the historical writer, Jocelin, were Norman and Angevin and regarded themselves as NOT English, the English being a defeated people and ignorant peasants. Attitudes of superiority began, I think, with the Normans rather than the English. The 'Scottish' kings of this time were largely descended from Alfred the Great, via Edward the Exile. Quite English, really. I am English, partly descended from immigrants, and I love my country and its history. I am hurt at the almost constant blame and criticism. It is very odd that people say the English have an identity crisis yet seem not to talk about the English people but Norman, sse History Magazine
The opinions expressed byour commentators are their own and may not represent the views of BBC HistoryMagazine orthe Immediate Media Company
themselves 'English', so your claim that they were "NOT English" puzzles me.
One of Nazi Germany's two Graf Zeppelin-class aircraft
carriers in 1 938. She was never completed
Angevin and Scottish kings and other people in power. When defending Scots, Welsh and Irish, they talk about brave rebels. They rarely allow English people any credit. Please can we have more justice in our history, both in school and in magazines? Betty Norton Preston
Big ships, little impact I thought that Sink the Tirpitz (March) touched on some key points and gave readers a good insight to the whole issue. One point that the author made was particularly excellent: that, having been at the forefront of nations' minds, big ships no longer ruled the waves. This I think is an area very few people look at and it was one I engaged heavily in my dissertation a few years back. In the case of Tirpitz, it raises that wonderful thing in history: what if. If the Germans had completed their only carrier, the GrafZeppelin, the Arctic or even the Atlantic could have been a wholly different theatre of war. The Allies greatly feared the Bismarck and Tirpitz and the addition of GrafZeppelin escorting either of them, or even both, would have been enough for Churchill to commit more capital ships to nullify her threat. This was something Britain could ill afford to do during the war. However GrafZeppelin was never finished and her completion date was always put back as Hitler had other ideas for her materials, mainly U-boats. If she had ventured out with Tirpitz -
Clare Downham: I too am English and love my country. To argue that some people got on well with their non-English n eighbours and that opinions on important issues varied across the country does not strike me as unpatriotic. History is more interesting when it does not conform to stereotypes. By the end of the 12th century, the descendents of the Normans in England had settled here for over a century and were calling
WISH I HAD SAID THAT
in the Arctic she had the potential to block the route off completely, seriously dampening Russia's ability in the war. Big ships had their place in the Second World War but they were ineffective for their purposes and in a way Tirpitz showed that. But with a carrier in support she could have really done some damage to the Allies' supply lanes. With air cover she could nullify the Allied air protection and roam free, destroying convoys.On her own Tirpitz no longer had a real purpose; in conjunction with a carrier and her escort, the battleship could have posed a real threat. I look forward to buying the book that relates to the article. Kevin Baker Gravesend
BY KNIFE AND PACKER
Bevin vs Beveridge I found the choice of Ernest Bevin as My History Hero (March) by Alan Johnson to be most interesting. When Sir William Beveridge's 1942 report and his 1 944 book, entitled Full Employment in a Free Society, were debated in parliament, it was mainly Bevin who was opposed to the introduction of what we came to know as the welfare state. He wanted to fight for higher wages, rather than the raft of measures put together to fight the five great evils of want, disease, ignorance, squalor and idleness that had been described by Beveridge. It was Ernest Bevin who described the proposals as "the social ambulance service". Few of the readers of BBe History Magazine would feel that way nowadays, and I suspect that would include Mr Johnson. Michael A'Bear ELstead, Su rrey
Send us a letter
email:
[email protected] or write to: Letters, BBC History Magazine, Immediate Media Company Bristol Limited, Tower House, Fairfax Street, Bristol BSl 3BN We welcome your letters, while reserving the right to edit them. We may publish your letters on our website. Please include a daytime phone number and, if emailing, a postal address [not for pUblication!.
Letters should be no longer than 250 words
BBe History Magazine
7
Milestones
It happened in May
Many happy returns
27
MAY 1947 Sheila Wells, a 1 9-year-old typist from Nottingham, is given the birthday bumps at Oxenford Farm in Elstead, Su rrey. Sheila was one of thousands of young people to take part in the Ministry of Agriculture's 'Holidays with Pay' initiative, which sought 150,000 volunteers to work on the land in the summer of 1 947.
Milestones Julian Hwnphrys highlights events that took place in May in history
1
MAY 1912
Walkers in London's Kensington Gardens had their first view of Sir George Frampton's bronze statue of Peter Pan, which
had been secretly erected in the park overnight.
8
2
lost as the British hunter-killer submarine HMS Conqueror sank the Argentine cruiser General Belgrano. The Belgrano had been purchased
from the USA and, as the USS Phoenix, it had survived the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1 94 1 .
Adolph Zukor established the Famous Players Film Company to
distribute the film Les Amours de la Reine Elisabeth. By 1 9 1 4 the
15
MAY 1252 The Papal Bull Ad Extirpanda
authorised (but also set restrictions on) the use of torture by the Inquisition
in extracting confessions from heretics.
1
'Mumtaz Mahar, meaning 'jewel of the palace'. After she died in childbirth in 1631 her husband had Agra's Taj Mahal built as her mausoleum.
6
MAY 1412
10
17
MAY 1792
Gian Maria Visconti, Duke of Milan, was assassinated
New York's first stock exchange was established
in front of the Church of San Gottardo in Milan. He was succeeded by his brother Filippo Maria.
when 24 merchants and stockbrokers signed an agreement under a buttonwood tree outside 68 Wall Street.
22 ..
MAY 1912
She landed in a field near Derry/Londonderry after a 1 5-hour transatlantic flight.
disaster was a major impetus in the search for a safer way of lighting coal mines and led both George Stephenson and H u mphry Davy to design safety lamps.
Hedingham. She had been an energetic supporter of her husband's cause during the war against the adherents of the Empress Matilda, his rival for the English throne.
Samuel Pepys noted in his dia ry. He described it as "an Italian puppet play... which is very pretty".
American aviatrix Amelia Earhart became the first woman to carry out the feat.
MAY 1812
Matilda of Boulogne, the wife of King Stephen, died in Castle
Mr Punch made his first recorded appearance in England, as
MAY 1932 On the fifth anniversary of Charles Lindbergh's first solo non-stop transatlantic flight,
Some 92 miners lost their lives in an explosion at the Felling Colliery near Gateshead. The
MAY 1152
MAY 1612 � Mughal emperor Shah Jahan married Persian princess Arjumand Banu Begum and gave her the title
21
25
3
9 �� .. 1 0
MAY 1912
company had evolved into Paramount Pictures.
MAY 1982 Some 323 lives were
2
6
MAY 1942
18
MAY 1412T Henry IV (pictured) and a group of French lords led by the Duke of Orleans signed the Treaty of
Bourges.ln exchange for the acceptance of his sovereignty over
the Duchy of Aquitaine, Henry agreed to aid Orleanists against the Burgundians, and sent an army to France under the command of his son, the Duke of Clarence. But when a temporary peace was made with the Burgundians, Clarence was left isolated in Normandy. He responded by leading his army on a chevauchee (raid] on English-held Bordeaux.
23
MAY 1162
Birth in London of Herbert C Brown, the
The election of Henry II's favourite Thomas Becket as
son of Ukrainian Jewish immigrants Charles and Pearl Brovarnik. In 1 979, with Georg Wittig, he was jointly awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work on reagents in organic synthesis.
archbishop of Canterburywas confirmed by a royal council of bishops and noblemen.
27
MAY 1942
British foreign secretary Anthony Eden and Soviet foreign ministerVyacheslav Molotov signed the Anglo Soviet Treaty, a mutual
SS General Reinhard Heydrich, the acting reich protector of Bohemia and Bohemia, was mortally wounded by Jan Kubis and
assistance agreement between the two countries.
Josef Gabcik, two British trained Czech agents who attacked his car in Prague.
28
MAY 1912 Playing for Australia against South Africa at Old Trafford, leg-spinner Jimmy Matthews became the only cricketer to take two hat-tricks in the same Test match.
29
MAY 1862
English historian and chess player Henry Thomas Buckle died of typhoid in Damascus. As a result only
two of the planned 1 4 volumes of his monu mental History of Civilisation in England were ever completed.
BBC History Magazine
Follow daily milestones on the home page of our website ::J www.historyextra.com
5MAY1862 6MAY1562
4MAY1912
American geneticist Nettie Maria Stevens died, aged 50.
Mexican forces defeated the French at the battle of Puebla. The French
She and fellow scientist Edmund Wilson had been the first people to develop the idea of chromosomal determination of sex.
immediately sent more troops to Mexico and conquered most of the country, installing the Habsburg archduke Maximilian as its ruler.
l1MAY18124
British prime minister Spencer Perceval was assassinated in the lobby of the House of
2 ��
Commons. He was shot by John Bellingham, a failed
Start of the second battle of Kharkov
businessman who harboured a grudge against the British government for what he considered to be its inexcusable failure to help him during and after his five-year imprisonment for debt in St Petersburg. Bellingham gave himself up, was tried for murder at the Old Bailey, found guilty and hanged on 18 May.
in which a major Soviet attempt to recapture the city from the Germans was encircled and smashed by a German counter-attack.
Birth in Tuscany of Italian baroque sculptor Pietro Bernini.
His best-known work is the Fontana della Barcaccia at the foot of the Spanish Steps in Rome.
7MAY1812
Poet Robert Browning was born in Camberwell. His
narrative poems, such as The Pied Piper of Hamelin,
earned him enormous popularity.
For more on poets, turn to our quiz on page 97
13 MAY1912 14 ��
The Royal Flyi ng Corps was officially formed as part of the British army. Its first
commander was Brigadier General Sir David Henderson.
Birth in Sheffield, Yorkshire of notorious cat burglar Charles Peace. Between 1872 and 1878 he performed
a series of daring burglaries but was eventually arrested and hanged for murder.
19 MAY1312 2 MAY1722 0 Read our feature on this subject on page 22
Piers Gaveston, the favourite of King Edward II, surrendered to a group of barons at Scarborough.
Despite their promises to guarantee his safety, Gaveston was taken to Warwick, condemned to death and executed near Kenilworth.
24MAY1612�
� Birth of inventor Sir William Congreve. He is best
known for the military rockets that bear his name and which were used in a nu mber of actions during the early 1 9th century. They are referred to in the American national anthem.
Administrator, politician and courtier Robert Cecil, 1st Earl of Salisbury, died of cancer,
124MAY1937
aged 48. The son of Elizabeth I's chief minister, Lord Burghley,
he gradually took over his ageing father's role in government, becoming Elizabeth's secretary of state in 1596. Cecil played a leading role in ensuring the peaceful succession of James VI and I to the English throne, and the new monarch rewarded him and retained his services. Cecil was an enthusiastic patron of the arts and a keen builder, notably at Hatfield in Hertfordshire, where he oversaw the construction of an immense new house.
The coronation of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth in 1937was the big
30 MAY1842 31MAY1962
Queen Victoria survived an assassination attempt when
John Francis attempted to shoot herwhile she was riding in her carriage along the Mall in London.
After being found guilty by an Israeli court of 15 charges, including crimes against humanity and war crimes,
Nazi Holocaust administrator Adolf Eichmann was hanged in a prison at Ramla.
A Congreve rocket from 1 81 7 against sheet music to The Star Spangled
event of the early television service and the first true outside broadcast, using a mobile control van. The television pictures of the king smiling, as his carriage passed by cameras, captured the imagination of the viewers and of the press, who declared it "the supreme triumph of television to date". The BBC deployed three cameras - half the total
number it owned at that point - each side of Apsley Gate. Frederick Grisewood provided commentary as the royal procession approached Hyde Park and passed through the gate. The control van was nearby, while a second van was on standby with a wireless link to Alexandra Palace in case any of the cables failed. The BBC later reported that the coronation of 1937 was watched by more than 10,000 people. Outside broadcasts continue to be used by the BBC.
For more great moments, see www. bbc.co.uklhistoryofthebbc
sse History Magazine
11
II
Hlstery
--
MAY
2012
The modem challenge to living history Changing so cial and economic conditions are placing the oldest functioning industrial complex on Earth in peril. David Keys explains why the artisans of Fes in Morocco face an uncertain future
O
NE OF THE WORLD'S greatest displays of 'living history' is under threat. The largest preserved medieval and early modern city on the planet, Fes in Morocco, is home to hundreds of artisans - many of whom still work in the world's oldest functioning industrial complex. But changing economic and social conditions are threatening to wipe out over a thousand years of historical tradition within the next decade. Today visitors can still admire 12
the extraordinary skill of carpet weavers, comb makers, leather workers, copper smiths, wood carvers and metal workers as they ply their trades in different quarters of the city - much as artisans in European towns did hundreds of years ago. But mass-produced competition from modern factories elsewhere in Morocco and abroad is rapidly eroding the economic viability of this age-old way of life. What's more, western countries - opposed to child
labour - put pressure on the Moroccan government to discourage children from working (and thereby learning craft skills) alongside their artisan parents during school holidays etc. According to statistics gathered from leading Fes artisans by El Janah Hassan, the secretary general of the Fes Tourist Guides Association, it's estimated that the number of carpet weavers in Fes has fallen from 1 ,500 some 30 years ago to around 200 today. Hundreds of old looms were
discarded in the 1 990s. In 1980, there were around 30 master copper smiths in Fes. Today there are just five. Three decades ago there were thousands of traditional embroiderers working in Fes. Today that has fallen to around 900. Silver jewellery-making has also declined from an estimated 1,000 artisans in 1 980 to around 200 today. Basket weaving has almost totally collapsed - from more than 1 00 artisans 30 years ago to just three today. Even BBe
History Magazine
leather tanning, with which Fes has been associated since its foundation in the eighth century, is under threat. Back in 1 980 there were some 200 master tanners. Today there are just 60. Established in the lOth century, the city's large open-air tannery is thought to be the oldest still functioning industrial complex in the world. The present tannery structures (consisting of dozens of brick and clay vats) were built in the 1 4th century, while the artisan families operating the vats can trace the transmission of father to-son skills back more than 15 generations. But at the present rate of decline, the next one or two generations of artisans could be the city's last traditional practitioners of this ancient craft. Wood carving and carpentry are relatively stable - still employing hundreds of artisans. But Fes comb-making (a special craft involving intricate bone working) will almost certainly soon be extinct. In 1 980 there were eight workshops employing 24 craftsmen. Today only two artisans are still continuing the tradition. Traditional clay mould-making has also died out. Thirty years ago there were some 100 mould makers. By 1990 there were around 30 - and the last one ceased working in 2006. The situation in Fes has ramifications far beyond Morocco's borders because it symbolises a similarly rapid collapse of ancient artisan skills across the globe. Heritage and history isn't
'3
�
� � �
� �
�
�
� �
ARCHAEOLOGY
Royals rise again in Sweden ARCHAEOLOGISTS have
equipment, a set of bone gaming
sheep, pigs and cattle, which
excavated one of the most
pieces, a bone comb and a
were probably eaten as part of
important burials ever
delicate light-blue glass vessel
a large funerary feast.
discovered in Scandinavia.
made in England or France. Other
The pre-Viking royal tomb,
grave goods discovered in the
found near the Swedish town of
four-year dig included pottery
techniques have been used to
Lidkoping, contained the
and a wooden chest (only the iron
investigate such a site.
cremated remains of two
n ails of which have survivedJ.
seventh-century AD high-status
In what was the first
This year, in vestigations into the excavated material
males. The men were
excavation of a large
will continue in a series
accompanied by around a dozen
Scandinavian royal tomb for more
of laboratories in local
other in dividuals, potentially
than 20 years, the archaeologists
museums and at Stockholm
retainers or prisoners
- from Lake Vanern Museum,
and Uppsala universities.
sacrificed during the funeral.
south-west Sweden - found
The two high-ranking men
evidence that horses and dogs
The archaeologists hope that analysis of the bones,
were buried with their shields,
had been ritually killed as part of
metal work and ceramics will
probable weapons, a gold ring,
the funerary procedure. They
shed further light on their
bronze horse-ridin g
also discovered the remains of
discoveries.
2009) caused by wealthy Moroccans and expat Europeans' growing interest in the city's historic ambience. Fes is undoubtedly one of the greatest historical treasures on Earth. It has 1 0,572 old buildings - mainly residential - which are
officially listed by UNESCO as being of special architectural and historical importance. The entire city - with its 9,400 tiny narrow medieval streets - is a UNESCO World Heritage site. The challenge now facing the Moroccan government is how to save the city's spectacular built heritage, and reduce overcrowding in some quarters, without destroying its equally remarkable ancient heritage of traditional skills and crafts - many of which are older than the fabric of the city itself. m
structures. The problem is that conserving the physical environment (ie the buildings) might actually help destroy the city's traditional handicraft economy. Fes symbolises a rapid Why? Well in collapse of ancient artisan order to repair and conserve the skills around the world buildings, the authorities must attract wealthier simply about old buildings and owners. Meanwhile, traditional ancient ruins, but also about the inhabitants such as craftsmen continuing survival of living and artisans are increasingly traditions and skills going back hundreds, and in some cases, being squeezed out by new rules that try to restrict the thousands of years. number of families per The situation in Fes is particularly complex, for not only house. Exacerbating the problem have been rapidly does the handicraft economy rising property values (up by the historic lifeblood of the city 300 per cent between 2004 and need protection, so do its physical sse History Magazine
This was the first time that truly modern archaeological
m
David Keys
13
News from the journals Nigel Tassell and Douglas Sloane bring you the best stories from academic periodicals A 19th-century diagram
114Wi;1
of the human body
Celebrity hennaphrodites
D
URING THE 1 860s and 1870s, Katharina (aka Karl) Hohmann was a celebrity, travelling around Europe and putting herself on display before a curious public. She claimed to have the sexual functions of women and men. She was a hermaphrodite on show. But the position of hermaphrodites during this
Knowing how financially beneficial the provision of medical certificates could be to the hermaphrodites, examining doctors did their utmost to smoke out any fakery, keeping their collective eye on gathering irrefutable scientific proof. The working of the sexual glands became the sole focus, their diagnoses ignoring less absolute matters, such as sexual attraction or sexual activity. As Mak indicates, "these are never discussed; they seem totally
irrelevant to their collective enterprise". Deemed unreliable to those in pursuit of the irrefutable, these were relocated to the study of psychology. A succession of doctors tested Hohmann's claims to be able to both menstruate and ejaculate. To determine the former, the physician N Friedrich kept her in his hospital for 30 days, after which he discounted any fraud or fakery through self-wounding. Several doctors tested Hohmann's virility (and her claims to have successfully impregnated a woman) by instructing her to perform, in the words of the gynaecologist Paul Munde, "the sexual act in the presence of the doubters, who furnished the necessary female for the purpose". Such practices would have been considered indecent under any other circumstances. This indecency was sidestepped by regarding Hohmann and her fellow hermaphrodites as separate from the rest of society, examining them on what Mak
"Tudor: What's in a name?" (History, vol 97, issue 1, Wiley Blackwell), the name 'Tudor' was virtually unknown during the 'Tudor' age. 'Tudor' was never used in official documents, nor does it appear in chroniclers' accounts of the period. The future HenryVII shunned the name and preferred to use his peerage title of 'Richmond' - he is even referred to as such in Shakespeare's Richard III. Henry VIII, too, eschewed it as he chose to play on the imagery of the unified houses of York and Lancaster. Why, though, was this the case? In answer, Davies points towards the lowly origins of the name -
Owen Tudor, who gave his name to the 'dynasty: was a relatively lowborn Welshman. His marriage to Queen Catherine, widow of HenryV, was "condemned as shameful" by chroniclers for much of the 1 5th and 16th centuries hardly a legacy Henry VII would have wanted to highlight. In fact, his opponents Richard III and Perkin Warbeck both referred to him as 'Tydder' in order to draw attention to his humble roots. In England, adds Davies, "the word 'Tudor' had little resonance in the 16th century, extraordinary as that may seem in retrospect, and only a subdued presence in the 17th". In fact, Davies argues, it only became widely used after David
Many hermaphrodites Hohmann among them were attracted to the idea of undergoing medical examinations by the allure of receiving "authenticating certificates which added credibility to their shows for the general public': As Mak notes, Hohmann carried around quite a collection of these medical certificates.
The doctors regarded Hohmann as separate from the rest of society period wasn't simply as figures of entertainment. As Geertje Mak reveals in "Hermaphrodites on Show: The Case of Katharina/Kari Hohmann and Its Use in 1 9th Century Medical Science" (Social History ofMedicine, vol 25, no 1 , OUP), an equal amount of interest came from scientific quarters. Accordingly, Hohmann was examined by doctors from across Europe, all of whom applied the laws of medicine to, in their eyes, her potentially subjective claims. THE 16TH CENTURY
The Tudors' tainted name ASK ANY student what the word 'Tudor' means to them and they'll probably have an answer. Ask the same question of an educated 16th-century noble, and you would likely be met with a blank stare. Why? Well according to CSL Davies in
describes as "a social and moral island" of scientific detachment. And the physicians' aloofness towards Hohmann was shown most clearly when they considered how best their quest could be met. This was through the evidence supplied by an autopsy which, one of their number sighed, "judging by the person's good health, will be unavailable for a long time yet': m NT Hume's History ofEngland Under the House of Tudor was published in 1 759, and since then has become a "historian's cliche: He sees this as the main fault with the term, giving rise to misleading expressions such as 'Tudor monarchy' and 'Tudor era', heavy with unconscious assumption. Unwittingly, these expressions imply a much greater degree of continuity and collective identity than was present in reality. While 'Tudor' may be appropriate in reference to certain concepts, it obscures others. In short, "the all-embracing 'Tudor' adjective erodes this fundamental distinction': m DS
This 19th-century painting shows Henry VIII in the royal nursery in 1538
BBe History Magazine
News roundup MAY 2012
The history news stories you might have missed... IN THE GALLERY
More news Stay up to date with the latest history news with our weekly news blog ::lI www.historyextra.com/ blogs
In the gallery You can view weekly picture galleries on a range of topics, including images from the Royal Collection and Egyptian mummies on our website ::lI www. historyextra.com/ feature/galleries An exhibition of treasures from the Royal Collection is now on display
girl buried with the cross
at The aueen's Gallery, Palace of
.111�
Holyroodhouse, Edinburgh. You can view some of the images at
� www.historyextra.com/
treasures
Anglo-Saxon Christian grave found in Cambridge The skeleton of a teenage girl found buried in Cambridge could be one of the earliest examples of Christianity taking over from paganism
IN NUMBERS
1,149
The length, in metres,
Neolithic pottery discovered in Invemess
Trumpington Meadows by the Cambridge Archaeological Unit. The skeleton was buried on a wooden bed held together by metal brackets,
recently celebrated its
Six Neolithic pots, and fragments
with a gold and garnet cross on the chest. The grave of the teenager,
of pottery dating from the early to
who is believed to have been about 16 years old, was one of four
80th birthday. Around
middle Neolithic and later
uncovered at the site, but was the only one to show indications of
Neolithic periods, have been
Christianity. Experts believe that the method of burial and quality of the
discovered at a site in the
jewellery could indicate the girl was from a noble or royal family.
Culduthel area of Inverness.
� www.historyextra. com/22-3
among Anglo-Saxons, according to archaeologists. The grave, which is thought to date from the mid-seventh century AD, was uncovered at
Experts from Ross and Cromarty
of Australia's Sydney Harbour Bridge, which
160,000 vehicles now travel over the structure every day. � www.historyextra.com/22-3
Archaeological Services have
half of a stone ball and a possible
Ancient footprints found at Borth beach
fragment of an anvil stone were
footprints that may date to
also uncovered.
the Bronze Age have been
� www.historyextra.com/22-3
discovered in an area of
been working at the site ahead of the con struction of the city's south-west flood relief channel. A piece of polished stone axe,
Human and animal fossilised
exposed peat at Borth beach in Ceredigion. A range of footprints have been identified at the site, including those thought to have belonged to a child aged around four. The area was covered with forest between 3000 and 2500 BC, which gradually became waterlogged with peat growth. A team of archaeologists is now racing against the changing tides to record and excavate the find. A line of post holes was also found alongside the footprints. Experts believe this could have once Grooved Neolithic pottery found at the flood relief site in Inverness
sse H i story Magazine
been a causeway.
� www.historyextra.com/22-3
Sydney Harbour Bridge took eight years to build and was officially opened on 19 March 1 932
17
1II1orid news in context
Mexico's bloody drug wat Thousands of Mexicans are dying every year as cartels vie for control over the country's £20bn drug trade with the USA. David Keys examines the history behind the violence
TO THE SOUTH of the United States' 2,000-mile-long border with Mexico, a terrible war
.
Mexicali
Tijuana
Sinaloa Federation
U.S.A
-.
Los Zetas
has been gathering pace over the past five years. So far, the
Gulf Cartel
conflict has claimed 50,000 lives,
Knights TemplarlLa Familia Michoacana
with countless others maimed,
Carrillo Fuentes Organisation
bereaved and impoverished.
Cartel de JaUsco Nueva Generacion
At least 1 2,000 children have lost one or both their parents and several hundred thousand people have been forced to flee their homes, creating a growing army of refugees. Mexico's drug war - an ultra violent multi-sided conflict over who controls the country's £20bn per year illicit drug trade with the USA - is currently costing at least 1,000 lives per month. But how did it begin? Mexico's drug smuggling tradition has its genesis 1 0,000 miles away, on the other side of the Pacific. For it was from China that Mexico's 'opium industry' was first imported in the 1 870s. China had, in turn, first been introduced to opium on a large scale by British merchants who shipped the drug in from India. Seeing the harm opium was doing to the population, the Chinese imperial government tried to ban it. But the British defeated China in two so-called opium wars and forced China to accept the trade and its serious social consequences. As a result the number of opium smokers in China rose 50-fold between 1 842 and 1 88 l . It was during this drug boom that, in the 1870s, Chinese migrants started to arrive in Mexico, many of them recruited as cheap labour to build the country's first railways. The migrants, many of whom were 18
Cartel Pacifico Sur
_
•
Disputed Territory
CuUacan.
Pacific Ocean Gulf of Mexico
R ...
_ _ _ _ _
500 1cm
0_ ... _ _ _ _ _ 3011 mllM
I N FORMATION SOURCE: STRATFOR
Territories under partial influence of different, and sometimes competing, drug cartels (named in key, abovel. early 2012
opium users, brought opium seeds with them, and started production when they reached Mexico. Soon opium dens were flourishing both in Mexico and north of the border.
Drug smuggling However, in 1 909, the US made opium importation and consumption illegal - and, as a result, Mexico's trans-border drug smuggling industry was born. But it was another US ban alcohol prohibition in the 1 920s - that was to transform Mexican opium smuggling.
Between 1 909 and 1 933 opium smuggling was mainly controlled by Chinese Mexicans. But during the US alcohol prohibition period ( 1920-33), indigenous/Hispanic Mexicans launched and controlled a substantial alcohol production and cross border smuggling operation. When prohibition ended, their lucrative smuggling operation became redundant but they quickly identified a replacement smuggling trade: the Chinese-controlled opium run. The Chinese were a wealthy and unpopular ethnic minority within Mexico - and the ex-
alcohol smugglers used popular anti-Chinese sentiment to help incite mass-violence against them. These attacks would drive them out and allow the indigenous/ Hispanic smugglers to take over the former Chinese-Mexican-run opium operations. The Mexican opium business continued to generate modest revenues, especially during the Second World War when the drug was required in large quantities as a pain killer by the US military. But it wasn't until the late 1 960s and 1 970s that it became truly massive. BBe
History Magazine
Mexico
Driven by the 'hippy' revolution in the US, marijuana and then heroin smuggling became big business. It was that social transformation of much of America's youth - a consequence of the baby boom, unparalleled prosperity and rapid higher education expansion - that first created the momentum towards Mexico's current horrific war. A greater contrast between cause (the hippy revolution and its love, peace and 'flower power' ideology) and consequence (the massacres and mass decapitations of the present war) is hard to imagine. In other ways too, developments north of the border
authorities chose to concentrate their efforts on preventing smuggling or intervening abroad to reduce production. In 1971, US president Richard Nixon pressurised the Turkish government into suppressing Turkish opium production, but this simply helped boost Mexican opium production. In 1 976 US planes sprayed poison on hundreds of square miles of marijuana fields. As a result, US drug dealers simply started importing marijuana from Colombia, thus helping to create massive Colombian drug cartels. Then in 1 982, President Ronald Reagan used the US
us gmt laws have facilitated the smuggling of tens of thousands of weapons to drug gangs in Mexico
have conditioned the nature and history of Mexico's drug industry. Firstly, domestic political and funding considerations made it impossible for the US government to substantially reduce the demand side of the drugs equation. Instead, the US BBC History Magazine
military to prevent Colombian drug smuggling into Florida. But the tactic backfired because the Colombians simply re-routed their drugs (by then mainly cocaine) through Mexico. And, as the US authorities were soon discovering, the 2,OOO-mile-long
Mexican border was much more difficult to police than the coast of Florida. The events of 1971, 1 976 and 1 982 demonstrated the 'displacement/expansion' problems inherent in trying to tackle the drug business at the supply end.
Gun laws A second US policy also helped expand the Mexican drug industry - namely the maintenance of liberal gun laws. The US constitution (amendments added to counter 'big government' as part of the 1791 US Bill of Rights) gives American citizens the right to carry guns - and this has in turn helped facilitate the smuggling of tens of thousands of weapons to drug gangs in Mexico. Arms-wise, the conflict has been partially fuelled courtesy of guns from America, though efforts are being made between Mexico and the US to address this. A third US-originating policy that contributed to the emergence of Mexico's ultra-violent current conflict was a particular aspect of America's pursuit of the Cold War in Mexico and central America. In order to combat leftists in Latin
Mexico's drug wars el840 British start i n c reasi n g o p i u m exports t o C h i na
18705 C h i nese bring o p i u m
to Mexico
1909 US outlaws opium smoking. Mexican drug s m u ggLing begins
19205 Mexicans s m u g g Le
aLco hoL into proh ibition America
19605/705 H uge expansion i n US demand for drugs
19705 First Mexican drug carteLs formed
1983 CoLombian cocaine now
routed through Mexico
1991 North American Free
Trade deaL u n i ntentionally heLps
drug smuggLing and money Laundering in Mexico
2000 Mexico·s traditionaL
governing party Loses power
2004 Mexican drug war starts 2007 US domestic cla m p down forces methamphetam i n e production i nto Mexico
2011 1 5 ,000 die i n drug war
19
Mexico
America, the CIA created and trained special military forces that fought a series of so-called 'dirty wars' against leftwing opponents in a variety of central and South American countries. However, after the Cold War was over, elements and former elements of at least two of the special forces - one from Mexico, another from Guatemala defected to the Mexican drug cartels. It is this militarisation of the drug conflict that has, over the past five years, turned it into a real and large-scale war.
Democratic reform More recent US political pressure also contributed to the outbreak of the Mexican conflict. A combination of internal Mexican political factors and largely post-Cold War US support for democratic reform led a decade ago to the departure from government of Mexico's traditional ruling party, the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). The PRI was in power for 70 years and, for most of that time, Mexico functioned as a virtual one-party state. Government was carried out at national and state level through a combination of patronage and corruption in which criminality was often accommodated in ways that avoided rivalry and conflict. With the emergence of a multi party system and democracy, that
the nature and extreme violence of the current war. To grasp that, one has to examine some specific aspects of Mexico's past. Mexico has a violent history. It was conquered by the Spanish in the 16th century and popular uprisings were ruthlessly suppressed in the 1 7th and 1 8th centuries. Since Mexico became independent in the early 1 9th century, the country as a whole (or parts of it) have been convulsed by more than 30 wars, military coups and massacres. Between 1910 and 1929, well over a million Mexicans were killed in two major civil conflicts - the Mexican revolution and the
Many of the poor regard the leaders of the drug gangs as anti-authority heroes relatively stable situation ended as new politicians sought to reduce the drug cartels' power. Not only did increased government military intervention raise the stakes, it also upset the delicate balance of power between competing cartels. The result was a rapid increase in inter-cartel violence. But the size of US drug demand, the nature of US anti drugs strategy over the decades, and the democratic revolution in Mexico itself do not fully explain 20
subsequent counter-revolutionary Cristero War. In the 1960s and 1 970s, hundreds were massacred or simply disappeared in the Mexican government's campaigns against the left. In 1 994 an armed Indian revolt broke out in the south of the country. Alongside this history of warfare has been a tradition of heroic banditry. Bandits are a staple of Mexican folklore and, as a direct result, today's 'bandits' - the leaders of the drug gangs
- are celebrated in vast numbers of popular ballads and films. To many, especially the poor and disadvantaged, they are seen as anti-authority heroes.
Endemic poverty In a country where poverty is endemic and where most land is controlled by a tiny minority, anti-authority challenges can attract substantial street level respect. What's more, the poor are overwhelmingly of mixed race (part Indian origin) who often do not identify with the ruling classes, who themselves are perceived as being of more Spanish origin. Another cultural phenomena contributing to the violent nature of the current war is Mexico's macho tradition, which reduces male willingness to compromise and encourages aggression. Recent data from social research company Global TGI has demonstrated that Mexican men are among the most macho-oriented in Latin America. The ideas of such machismo were introduced into Mexico by the Spanish Conquistadors and originated in the extreme patriarchal nature of much of medieval Spanish society. Complementing the 'bandit hero' and 'macho' traditions is a unique Mexican flirtation with concepts of death. This is seen in
the way that two popular saints help sustain often deeply religious drug gang members. The first was originally a north-west Mexican 'Robin Hood' -style bandit called Jesus Malverde (literally 'bad green' - the colour of marijuana and US dollar bills). This native Mexican Jesus attacked the rich and helped the poor, and is said to have been executed by firing squad by the authorities in 1909. The second popular saint beloved of many foot soldiers in the current war is Santa Muerte (St Death), a syncretic character, part Christian and part ancient Mexican in origin, 'descended' from the Aztec goddess of death. Death may wear a religious mask but on Mexico's streets, the conflict is very real. Last year, 1 5,000 died in the war - and much of Mexico is now partially controlled by seven drug cartels (see map page 18). m David Keys has worked on more than a dozen sse history and archaeology documentaries and is a specialist correspondent for The Independent
Books
� El Narco: The Bloody Rise of the Mexican Drug Cartels by loan Grillo (Bloomsbury, 20 7 7) � Mexico in Crisis (Stratfor/Create Space, 2009)
BBe
History Magazine
opular murder?
loading his goods onto the ship he had chartered and was instead detained for an alleged debt of 4,890 roubles. His detention in various Russian penal institutions was to last five years. Throughout, Bellingham maintaineCl that he was not liable for the debt, but had been fitted up by two Russian merchants as payback for what they thought was Bellingham's role in exposing a fraudulent insurance claim. When he was finally released in October 1 809, Bellingham had an The assassination of the prime minister overpowering sense of injustice. Not only had he been wrongfully Spencer Perceval 200 years ago this month imprisoned by the Russian authorities, but he had also been let down by his was greeted with celebration as well as own government and, in particular, by dismay. Gordon Pentland explains why Granville Leveson-Gower, the British ambassador in St Petersburg. On his return to England, his T WAS EARLY evening on instability created by Burdett's calls for attempts to secure a public discussion 1 1 May 1 8 1 2, and the prime political reform was compounded by of his case and to have it addressed in minister was running late. He the second movement, Luddism, which parliament became nearly a full-time was rushing to get to a session spread from Nottingham from job. He petitioned and was rebuffed by of evidence on a question that the spring of 1 8 1 l . The nearly everybranch of government had been disturbing his busy followers of the mythical that might possibly have some government: whether sanctions to 'Ned Ludd' engaged in a interest in the matter. counter Napoleon's Continental range of creative and Utterly frustrated, he began to System (a form of economic warfare often violent protests visit the gallery of the House of pursued through an embargo on aimed both at certain Commons. He also purchased a pair British trade with Europe) were doing types of machinery and of steel pistols from a gunsmith more harm than good. at individuals. The MP and political and visited a London tailor, who Perceval's mind was probably Less than two weeks radical Sir Francis made him a pocket designed to Burdett in c 1800 elsewhere when he was confronted in before Perceval's death, accommodate these weapons. the lobby by a well-built and well Luddites had murdered a dressed man, who raised a steel pistol to mill owner in West Yorkshire. There Securing airtime the prime minister's chest and shot him seemed to be plenty of reasons for Bellingham's murder of Perceval was his at near point-blank range through the jumpy parliamentarians to suspect that last desperate attempt to secure some heart. A Mayfair solicitor, Henry the killing of Perceval was part of some 'airtime' for his cause. He was clear in Burgess, witnessed the event: "I heard a wider conspiracy. writing to his business partner that hoarse cry of'murder, murder' - and he Perceval's assassin, however, quite "I could stand it no longer and resolved exclaimed 'Oh' & fell on his face." calmly gave himself up - "a mouse to finish the affair by an appeal to a Perceval was dead within minutes. might have secured him with a bit of criminal court whether government Panic was quick to spread around thread" according to Burgess - and can refuse justice or no", and spoke of parliament and searches were promptly handed over his pistols. his "tranquillity of mind" in knowing ordered to ascertain that the murder This demeanour of calm that his grievance would finally receive was not the start of a general onslaught. detachment and resignation was some discussion. Such a response was hardly marked in the assassin - John He was tried on 15 May, four days Bellingham - across the after the assassination. He refused any week that followed, as his idea that he might plead insanity and story was unfolded in stuck to his own reasoned defence of his newspapers, pamphlets, actions. He even came close to claiming and accounts of his trial. that the government had sanctioned the In many ways assassination: "I even had a carte Bellingham was utterly blanche from the British government to unremarkable: a middle surprising: not only was Britain at war, right myself in any way I might be able aged, middle-class man, with but the government had also been to discover. I have done so." a wife and two children. He was a man, coming under pressure from two The speed of the trial allowed for however, who carried with him a domestic movements. First, a revived no evidence to be brought to attest to long-simmering grievance. In the radicalism had coalesced over Bellingham's supposed insanity (his summer of 1804 Bellingham - a questions of corruption in high places father, for example, had been mentally commercial agent - had arrived at the and was increasingly rallying around ill and there was some suggestion he Russian port of Archangel on a business the leadership of the wealthy and had committed suicide) and trip. He was prevented by the charismatic radical MP, Sir Francis Bellingham was found guilty of authorities from either returning on or Burdett. The sense of political
I
Some suspected that the murder was part of a wider conspiracy
murder. He was executed on Monday 18 May, exactly one week after he murdered Perceval. Security was tight around both the trial and the execution, and with good reason. Even as Bellingham was being taken from the crime scene to Newgate there was evidence of support for the murder. A crowd had gathered to boo the soldiers and cried "Burdett for ever;' clearly believing the event to be an act of political radicalism. The poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge later came across men in a London pub drinking to the assassination and toasting Burdett. sse History Magazine
Evidence of other celebrations came from far and wide. The journalist William Cobbett witnessed the execution from his cell window at Newgate and offered a memorable account: "Demonstrations of joy, the most unequivocal, amongst the people in several of the most populous parts of England . . . at Nottingham the church bells were rung, at Leicester there was a supper and songs; at Sheffield there were sheep roasted whole:' Even if accounts such as those of Cobbett (who was in Newgate for seditious libel against Perceval's :> 23
government) were overdrawn, it is hard to ignore a certain level of sympathy for the assassin rather than the victim. For example, over the coming months the assassination was referred to time and again in anonymous threatening letters (a staple of Luddite activity) to the unpopular prince regent and others. Former ambassador Leveson-Gower, who Bellingham had identified as the real cause of his grievances and would rather have murdered, was one prclmlneIlt target of hate mail: "Dreadfully are you deceived in thinking Bellingham had no accomplice . . . before many days are passed you'll meet the fate poor Bellingham designed you." For many, however, this "savage joy" was profoundly shocking. Perceval's death was greeted with sincere lamentations (Viscount Castlereagh apparently broke down in the Commons when speaking about the
Spencer Perceval
means of settling political and personal grievances were adopted in Britain then something was very seriously wrong. This sense of national tragedy is best captured by the monument in Westminster Abbey, voted and paid for by Perceval's parliamentary colleagues shortly after his death. It depicts Perceval as the classical statesman, cruelly murdered in the senate in the midst of his public duties.
Hero or hypocrite?
PERCEVAL, Like most prime min isters, fiercely divided opinion. He had come to politics from a legal background i n the 1 790s, into the heat and Light generated by debates over the French revolution. Perceval was a convinced evang elical, a fam i ly man with a fai rly inflexible morality a n d one who embod ied the long transition to Victorian 'seriousness' by a lways d ressing i n black.
Family grief
To some people, he was ' C h ristianity perso n ified ' ,
A more personal and human sense of loss is communicated by the inscription below Francis Chantrey's monument at Perceval's burial place, in St Luke's church in Charlton: "But the hand of the assassin not only broke asunder the brilliant chains of duty which bind a Statesman to his native land and made a void in the high and eloquent councils of the nation. It severed ties more delicate, those of conjugal and parental affection, and turned a home of peace and love into a house of mourning and desolation." In spite of these monuments (and others like them in Northampton and Lincoln's Inn) the murder seems to have been quickly forgotten. There was no immediate or obvious change to the almost non-existent security provided for front-rank politicians. Six years later it was only luck and his habit of bounding up stairs that saved Palmerston from an attempted assassination by another disappointed petitioner. As for Perceval, he is probably only remembered now during pub quizzes for the dubious distinction of being the only prime minister to have been murdered in office. Bellingham seems barely to be remembered at all. m
a beacon of t r u e and vital religion i n a n age when conservatives were lamenting the spread of infidelity and i m morality. To others, such as Cobbett, he was ' O ld Hypocrisy Perso nified', a fervent anti-radical who had been i nvolved in some of the reactionary cause celebres of the age and i n the i m prisonment of a n u m ber of prominent radical leaders (i nclud i n g Cobbett h i mself). Perceval came to the premiership i n 1 809, at a challenging period marked by war and the political instability that had followed the deaths of two political giants, Pitt (Perceval's mentor! and Fox, i n
For many, this savage joy" was profoundly shocking 1#
murder), with numerous sermons and with reflections on what such a dreadful act said about the 'state of the nation'. For many, assassination was, as a former foreign secretary George Canning put it, "foreign to the character and abhorrent to the feelings of Englishmen". While it might be the kind of thing which was regrettably too common in other countries, if such a
1 806. Given t h a t the foreign secretary and the war secretary of the outgoing m i n i stry had fought a duel on Putney H eath, Perceval, equi pped with forensic debating skills and a sh rewd managerial style, can be credited with bringing some stability back to high politics. And while he perhaps lacked the breadth of vision to become a truly ' great' prime m i n ister, Perceval is increasi n g ly recog n ised as one of those hard-working but unsung architects of Britain's eventual victory over Napoleon.
Gordon Pentland is a senior lecturer in history at the U niversity of Edinburgh. He has published widely on the history of Britain since the French revolution
Books
� Assassination ofthe Prime Minister: The Shocking Death of Spencer Perceval
by Mollie Gillen (Sidgwick, 1972J � Spencer Perceval: The Evangelical Prime Minister 1 762- 1 8 1 2
by Denis Gray (MUP, 1 963J
Few Luddites (shown rioting in this 1 8 1 1 - 1 2 engraving! shed tears a t Perceval's killing
24
To read our Where History Happened feature on Luddites, turn to page 78
B B C H i s t Ory Magazin e �___-,_
_ _ _ _ .. _ -... _ __ _ _ _ _ _ _
�
akeSpE!are season
rn rn [!I
Shakespeare's Richard III
Paulina Kewes considers the sources that William Shakespeare used in his construction of the character of his arch-villain King Richard III
HYSICALLY DEFORMED and, by his own word, "subtle, false and treacherous", Richard III is one of Shakespeare's greatest villains. In the course of the play that bears his name, Richard plots and murders his way to the throne only to lose it to Richmond - the future King Henry VII. But, unlike some of Shakespeare's other dark characters (Jago, for instance, whose motives we never fully fathom or Macbeth whose tortured descent into evil lends affective force to his tragedy), Richard gleefully exults in his capacity for dissimulation. He shares his wicked machinations with the audience in a series of spirited monologues and asides: "And thus I clothe my naked villainy / With odd old ends, stol'n forth ofHoly Writ / And seem a saint when most I play the devil." The upshot is we cannot help but applaud his verbal dexterity, thespian flair and boundless energy, and become effectively complicit in his success. Meanwhile, Richard's ever more vicious actions prompt his victims and their kin to unleash a barrage of invective, curses and prophecies of divine vengeance. They denounce him as "fiend'; "devil", "homicide", "dissembler", "hell-hound'; and, rather more creatively, as "bottled spider", "lump of foul deformity", "defused infection of a man'; "elvish marked abortive rooting hog" and "poisonous bunch-backed toad". Ostensibly impervious to abuse no less than to pricks of conscience, Richard begins to crumble the moment he gains the crown. Instead of the consummate Machiavellian, we see a fearful and increasingly desperate tyrant who will stop at nothing to maintain his grip on power, be it murder of his nephews or poisoning of his wife. The ghostly visitation of those he has wronged graphically confirms Richard's ignominious defeat at Bosworth as the work of Providence. On the eve of battle, the ghosts appear to both Richard and Richmond, heaping opprobrium on the tyrant even as they predict the triumph of his "virtuous and holy" opponent. The play concludes with a rousing vision of peace and plenty under the descendants of the Lancastrian Richmond and Elizabeth ofYork whom the final lines hail as "the true succeeders of each royal house': Shakespeare's Richard III was first performed around 1 592/3, amid mounting religious tensions and widespread fears of civil war and foreign invasion fuelled by the unresolved succession to Queen Elizabeth I, then almost 60 years old, single, and childless. King James VI of Scotland followed her on the throne after Elizabeth died in 1603.
p
VILLAIN OF THE PIECE
Laurence Olivier plays Richard III
in the 1 955 film adaptation of Shakespeare's play. I n it, the controversial monarch is damned as everything from a "bottled spider" and "lump of foul deformity" to a "poisonous bunch-backed toad"
:> 27
The story of a tyrannical usurper whose apparently providential fall puts paid to long and bloody civil wars would have held a complex resonance for the original audience. Just what the Elizabethans might have made of the play's portrayal of Richard - and Richmond - will become clearer as we review competing versions and consider Shakespeare's intriguing departures from his sources. Modern scholars such as Rosemary Horrox have challenged the unremittingly negative view of Richard III that was largely the product of early Tudor propaganda. While hardly a paragon, the historical Richard was probably neither as physically misshapen nor as premeditated in his bid for the throne as he was later made out to be. Had he won at Bosworth, the tenor of the ensuing reports would, of course, have been very different.
Richard III was first performed amid mounting religious tensions and widespread fears of civil war
.... Title page of the first printed edition of Shakespeare's
Still, Shakespeare's anatomy of Richard's tyranny was not his own invention. He drew extensively on the second edition of Raphael Holinshed's Chronicles ofEngland, Scotland and Ireland ( 1 587), a monumental undertaking which was the first ever to provide a comprehensive coverage of the history and topography of the British Isles (see boxes on pages 29, 30 and 3 1 ) . Holinshed's book gave rise to more plays than any other work, old or new, in the early modern period. Among them were not only numerous histories such as Henry V, Richard II and King John, and tragedies such as Lear and Macbeth, but also romantic tragicomedies such as Cymbeline, as well as domestic tragedies. Most of these mingled chronicle lore with material from ballads, narrative poems or romances. There were also adaptations of prior plays based on the Chronicles which imported extra details from this and other sources. Shakespeare's Richard III is one of them. The Chronicles collected and reproduced, virtually word for word, the accounts of Richard III by earlier writers, among them Sir Thomas More, Edward Hall and Richard Grafton, powerfully reinforcing their hostile tone by means of judgmental commentaries and marginal notes (see box on page 30) . But Shakespeare's selection of material and his imaginative transformation of it made his portrait of the king even blacker than that found in prose historiography. For instance, unlike the chroniclers, who registered residual doubt about Richard's guilt, Shakespeare shows him directly responsible for the killing of the princes in the Tower. And he emphasises the growing public discontent with Richard's usurpation in a few r,"�-=-""�""",,, exchanges involving commoners. Aside from Holinshed, Shakespeare also drew on two earlier plays about Richard III. One was a three-part Latin academic drama, Richardus Tertius, > performed in Cambridge in 1 579 and thereafter 28
Richard 111. The play
was first performed to the backdrop of growing uncertainty over the future of the English crown ... An engraved likeness of Richard I I I taken fro m A Book, Containing the True Portraiture of the Countenances and Attires ofthe Kings of England, 1 597
BBe
History Magazine
Accompanies the BBe's Shakespeare season
rn rn [!I
Shakespeare's Richard III
Shakespeare's s9urce: Holinshed's Chronicles Fle m i n g , a C a m b ri d g e - e d u cated
Scotla n d . Pu blished ea rly in 1 587,
Protesta nt. Fle m i n g produced a
the massive new edition lacked
cont i n uation of the English
woodcut i llustrations but its
c h ron icle, and su pplied c h a pter
typeface was g reatly superior.
h e a d i n g s and marg i n a l notes which
voices: political, relig ious, national
cross-reference.
a n d social. Not o n ly d i d the authors
With t h e exception of H a rrison,
a n d revi sers come from d iverse
who revised a n d expa nded his
backgrounds, but they also used a
description of Brita i n , others were
h u g e variety of conflict i n g sources.
newcomers to the p roject. J o h n
In view of this d iversity, it is
Hooker, L i k e Fle m i n g a godly
s u rprising that the book attracted
Protesta nt, rewo rked a n d
so little offi c i a l d isa p p roval. I ndeed,
cont i n u e d the I rish chron icle, giving
the 1 587 edition was ch iefly
it a stro n g ly anti- Catholic flavour.
censored by the reg i m e not for
J o h n Stow, Londpn h i stori a n a n d
b e i n g oppositional, but, rather,
collaborators: William H a rrison,
collector of m a n u scripts,.
too gloating i n its acco u nt of the
and Ireland [ 1 577, 1 5871. p u b lished
a rad ical Protestant clergyma n ,
contributed to the c h ro n icle of
executions of Catholics involved in
under the name of Raphael
w h o wrote a description o f Brita i n ;
Engla n d . Fina lly, Fra n c i s Thyn ne
the re cent plot to topple Elizabeth
expanded a n d updated that of
i n favour of M a ry Stewart.
The Chronicles of England, Scotland
-
The Chronicles spoke with m a ny
m a d e the contents easier to
Holinshed, was the c row n i n g
a n d R i c h a rd Sta n i h u rst, a D u bL i n e r
a c h i eve ment of Tu d o r historical
a n d later convert to Catholicism,
writi n g . But these m o n u m e ntal
who s u p plied a description of
tomes - the seco n d edition
Ireland a n d rewo rkea a section of
n u m bered no fewer t h a n 3.5m
Irish h i story by his friend and future
words - were a fraction of
Jesuit m a rtyr E d m u n d C a m p i o n .
what they should have been.
These men relied extensively on
And H o li nshed was not their
the work of earli er c h roniclers and
sole begetter. The ori g i n a l plan
antiq uarians, from Geoffrey of
conceived i n the late 1 540s by
M o n m o u t h , Gerard of Wales a n d Hector Boece to
Raphael Holinshed's Chronicles was the crowning achievement of Tudor historical writing
Edward H a ll a n d J o h n Lela n d . A t a t i m e whe n th ere was no copyright as we know it, a n d wh en
"
R e g i n a ld Wolfe, a London- based
ideas of pla g i arism were o n ly j u st
boo kseller of Dutch extractio n ,
e m e rg i n g , wholesale a p propriation
had b e e n to provide a u n iversal
of earlie r materials was c o m m o n
c h ro n icle comprising
practice. But the contrib utors were
descriptions a n d h i stories
learned I}le n , a n d they typica lly
of every known natio n .
acknowledged t h e i r s o u rces.
Wolfe e mployed t h e then
The 1 5 77 edition had n u m e rous
20-so mething Holinshed to ca rry
woodcut illustrations - one
out this breathta k i n gty a m bitious
d e p i cted M acbeth a n d Ba n q u o 's
enterprise, but, followi ng Wolfe's
encounter with the wei rd sisters.
death, the consort i u m of p u blishers who took over t h e project scaled it
The book m ust have been a comm ercial success, for wit h i n
back to m i n i mise costs. This is why the book pri nted in 1 577
��..t\t"\\.."
focused exclusively .... on the B ritish Isles. In p reparing it, H o linshed, who
c o m m i ssio ned a revised a n d expa nded vers i o n . By now
c o m p i led the histories
Holinshed was
of England, Scotland
dead , a n d the task
and i n part I rela n d , had two
of co-ord in a t i n g the ven t u re fell to A b ra h a m
"A monumental tome": the frontis ieee t o the third volume o f Raphael Holinshed's Chronicles of England, Scotland an
The bookseller Reginald Wolfe, who set out to produce a history of every known nation
eland
J
29
A QUEEN IS CROWNED A drawing of Elizabeth's coronation procession. One of the
pageants mounted on the eve of the coronation was filled with references to the marriage of
her grandparents, Henry VII and Elizabeth, and the resulting union of Lancaster and York
Richard III at his blacke st T H E PORTRAIT o f Richard I I I in the second edition of Holinshe d's Chronicles is blacker than in any previous account. For the book brings together the notoriously negative treatments by More, Hall, Grafton and Holinshe d himself, and supplem ents them with the moralisin g commen ts by the new editor, Abraham Fleming. Here i s M ore's biting depiction of Richard's physical deformity and nasty character: he was "little of stature, ill-featured of limbs, crook-backed ... maliciou s, wrathful, envious" . After the murder of the princes, the tyrant's troubled conscience makes him anxious and fearful: "His eyes whirled about ... his hand ever upon his dagger, his countenance and manner like one always ready to strike again ... so was his restless heart continually tossed and tumbled with the tedious
impressi on and stormy rememb rance of his abomina ble deed," Fleming hailed as providential Richard's defeat at Bosworth, and, referring to his badge of the white boar, contemp tuously compared the fallen tyrant to a horned beast: "As for king Richard, better had it been for him to have contented his heart with the protectorship, than to have cast up his snout, or lifted up his horns of ambition so high ... as to hack and hew down by violent blows all likely impedim ents." It would be difficult to imagine a more damning verdict on Richard's reign than Fleming's : "Thus far Richard the usurper."
Richard Ill's badge invited unflattering references to snouts and
30
horned beasts
circulated widely in manuscript copies; the other an anonymous piece, The True Tragedy of Richard III, first staged around 1590/91 by a major professional company and printed in 1594. Neither play makes Richard the towering presence he assumes in Shakespeare, although both hint at the contemporary relevance of the story in the context of the unresolved succession to Elizabeth. Shakespeare's Richard additionally advertises his affinity with the "formal Vice, Iniquity': a character familiar from medieval morality drama and Tudor interludes. This device works to establish Richard's rapport with the audience and highlights his self consciousness as performer. By far the most significant fictive component of Shakespeare's play relates to the enhanced role of women, likely inspired by The True Tragedy's sympathetic treatment of another of Richard's targets, Jane Shore, the hapless mistress of King Edward IV and then of his chamberlain Hastings. In Richard III, Queen Elizabeth (wife of Edward IV), Queen Margaret (widow of Henry VI), Lady Anne (widow of Henry's son, and now wife of Richard III) and the Duchess of York (Richard's mother) take centre-stage in c., several unhistorical scenes that heighten the emotional intensity of the play and furnish a unique vantage point on the tyrant -in-the-making. Perhaps the most notorious and most memorable is Richard's wooing of Lady Anne (wholly Shakespeare's invention). Initially repulsed by his advances, Anne spits in disgust at the hideous killer of both her husband and father-in-law only to succumb to his sham professions of love and agree to marry the monster, who then gloatingly communicates his contempt for her to the audience. Here, again, we perceive a striking contrast between Shakespeare's narrative and dramatic sources, none of which attributed to Richard either such depths of depravity or such virtuoso acting skills. Politics and power
Richard III is magnificent theatre. It is also a searching study of the politics of power. In choosing to dramatise two contested royal transitions - from Edward IV to Richard III, and from Richard to Henry VII - Shakespeare engaged with one of the most controversial periods in the nation's history, memories of which were still very much alive. And while few of his audience would have dreamt of standing up for Richard, they would have approached the story with radically different preconceptions about religion's role, the proprieties of dynastic succession and the legitimacy of resistance. Shakespeare was once assumed to have composed his two grand historical cycles - the first comprising 1-3 Henry VI and Richard III, and the second Richard II, 1-2 Henry IV and Henry V - in order to illustrate the providential unfolding of the nation's history also implicit in chronicles such as Holinshed's. On this reading, the Wars of the Roses emerge as divine punishment for the original sin of the deposition of Richard II by Bolingbroke (the future Henry IV), and order is only restored with Richmond's defeat of Richard III at Bosworth and the arrival of the Tudors. We now know this was far from the case. Internally conflicted and multi-vocal, BBe
History Magazine
Accompanies the BBe's Shakespeare season
rn rn [!I
Shakespeare's Richard III
Nat�on�l identities : the big debate In Shakespeare's England MED I EVAL AND EAR LIER Tudo r chro nicles varie d in scop e and coverage . Whil e some deal t exclusively with the story of Engl and, othe rs were more expansive and inclu ded the stori es of other king dom s and natio ns ' nota bly Scot land and France.
There were also the so-called u niversal chro nicles whic h told the histo"ry of the world from the Creation to the present day. Yet none of Raph ael Holin shed's predecessors had given the comp lete history and topograp hy of Engl and, Scotland and Irela nd. In placing emphasis squa rely on the Briti sh Isles, Holinshed's Chronicles did som ethin g entirely u nprecedented. The origi nal title page touted the book as offering descriptions and chro nicles in turn of Engl and, Scot land and Irela nd. Thus , in addi tion to tellin g the story of each coun try from its myth ic ori ins roughly to the present, Holmshed provided detailed accounts of the topography, . natural resources, governme nt, relig ion, lang uage , laws , cOina ge and even faun a across the three king dom s as well as the natio nal traits and cust oms of the vario us
peoples inhab iting the Atlantic arch ipela go. Just like the natio nal h istories they acco mpa nied, however, these descriptions emb odie d fund ame ntal tens ions and cont radic tions that exis ted in Shakespeare's time . On the one hand , they gave the impressio n that the Engl ish, Scots, Irish (and Welsh) shared a comm on Briti sh ident ity that set them apart from other nations. On the other, they drew a stark contrast between 'us' (the Engli sh) and 'them ' (the treacherous Scots, the wild Irish ) whic h was vividly unde rline d by
Whichever perspective one adop ted, Engla nd 's supremacy was a ma tter ofcou rse
�
the division of the book into thre e separate storylines. Whic hever perspective one adopted, Engl and's suprema cy was a matter of course. Given the chro niclers' repeated insistenc e on English supe riority, it is no sma ll irony that the unio n of crowns and crea tion of Great Brita in woul d be realised in 1 603 by the accession to the Engl ish throne of Jam es VI of Scotland .
Holinshed's Chronicles and other historical writings hardly promoted so uniform an interpretation of England's past. Moreover, in the wake of the Reformation and rapid changes of regime and religion from Henry VIII to Edward VI to Mary I to Elizabeth, the contest over the meaning and application of history became hotter than ever. Small wonder, then, that historical drama by Shakespeare and his fellow playwrights evoked a range of complex and ambivalent perspectives on kingship and power. The treatment of Richard III's downfall and the subsequent union of Lancaster and York is a case in point. At Elizabeth's accession, the union, which took place once Henry VII had seized the crown from Richard III, furnished an auspicious precedent. The first pageant of her coronation progress through the City of London in January 1 559 depicted the new queen in the company of two royal couples, her grandparents Henry VII and Elizabeth ofYork and her parents Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, and surrounded by a mass of white and red roses. This display, and the verses which went with it, served to confirm Elizabeth's right to the throne, reminded her of the responsibilities of kingship, and g urged her to perpetuate the royal line. In the early Elizabethan parliaments, exhortations for the
W
BBe
H istory Magazine
queen to marry and name a successor routinely admonished her to ponder the misery into which England had been plunged by the protracted dynastic wars between the Lancastrians and the Yorkists. However, as the ageing queen stayed unmarried, it became plain that the Tudor line would die with her. This prompted fresh applications oflate 15th-century history, which was now summoned to express anxiety about the uncertain future. Even as it cited "the happy uniting of both houses, of whom the Queen's majesty came, and is undoubted heir", Richardus Tertius less than tactfully emphasised that the Virgin Queen on whom the security of the country rests is waxing old. The epilogue to the anonymous The True Tragedy of Richard III likewise alluded to England's precarious situation without a definite successor: "For ifher Grace's days be brought to end, / Your hope is gone, on whom did peace depend." And how seriously are we to take the prediction enunciated
The frontispiece to the second volume of Raphael Holinshed's Chronicles, "conteining
the description, conquest, inhabitation, and troblesome estate of Ireland"
Anne spits in disgust at the hideous killer of both her husband and father-in-law only to succumb to his sham professions of love 31
towards the end of Shakespeare's Richard III that Richmond will beget "a happy race of kings"? Certainly, according to contemporary Catholic polemicists, the Tudors had incurred divine punishment which is why the offspring of the chief culprit, Henry VIII, were dying childless one after another. What to make of Richmond's self-fashioning as the minister and scourge of God? Granted that Shakespeare's blackening of Richard's character lends credibility to those who rise against him, anyone familiar with Holinshed would have known that arguments in favour of resistance as divinely justified were often specious, self-serving, and made well after the fact. Then again, the presentation of Richmond as the agent of Providence would have appealed to those hopeful of the accession of James VI of Scotland, his great-great-grandson. Already in the 1 590s - while Elizabeth still reigned - we encounter burgeoning re-readings of the union of Lancaster and York as a foreshadowing of the union of crowns in the person of James Stewart, a latter-day Henry VII. We shall never know for sure what its original audiences thought of Shakespeare's play other than that they enjoyed it, and that it was widely quoted and parodied. In the 1 590s, there were no newspapers or periodicals to carry reviews, and no one wrote down their impressions in a diary or a letter. But it is clear that at least some people took exception to the relentlessly negative view of Richard embedded in Holinshed and Shakespeare. For instance, John Stow, one of the contributors to the second edition of the Chronicles, reportedly heard from "old and grave men who had often seen King Richard . . . that he was not deformed, but of person and bodily shape comely enough': though Stow omitted to mention this titbit in his own historical writings. By the second decade of the 1 7th century, Sir George Buck, a descendant of one of Richard's allies executed on Henry VII's orders after Bosworth, produced a lengthy and detailed defence of Richard. Published in a mangled form in the mid- 17th century, Buck's revisionist tract did little to counter the prevailing chorus of disapproval.
Books
CORRUPTED BY POWER
Kevin Spacey plays Richard III at London's
Old Vic in June 201 1 , As in many modern productions of the play, Spacey's Richard was cast as a latter-day autocrat - complete with metal leg-brace and walking stick
It is clear that at least some people took exception to the relentlessly negative view of Richard III embedded in Shakespeare
� King Richard III by William Shakespeare James R Siemon ledl (Arden, 2009/ � Richard III: A Study of Service by Rosemary Horrox (Cambridge University Press, 1 989, repr 1 999/ � Bosworth 1485: Psychology of a Battle by Michael K Jones (Tempus, 2002/ � The Oxford Handbook of Holinshed's Chronicles ledl Paulina Kewes, Ian Archer and Felicity Heal (Oxford University Press, forthcoming in October 2012/
Website � Holinshed's Chronicles:
www.english .ox.ac.uk!holinshed
Modern productions of Richard III routinely court topicality, using costume, set, and special effects to underscore parallels with latter-day despots - Mussolini, Hitler, Stalin, or the various Middle Eastern dictators. What makes the play especially congenial to such adaptations is Shakespeare's acute preoccupation, which he shares with his chronicle sources, about strategies of manipulating and winning public opinion. With spin and propaganda at the very centre of political life, Richard's campaign of misinformation - and indeed Richmond's battlefield oration staking out the legitimacy of his actions - could not be more timely or relevant. m 32
TV � Look out for the BBG's Shakespeare Season, which is showing on BBe One, Two and Four this April, May and June
On the podcast Paulina Kewes teaches English literature at Jesus College, Oxford. She is a fellow of the Royal Historical Society and co-editor of
The Oxford Handbook of Holinshed's Chronicles, to be published in October
Paulina Kewes discusses Shakespeare and Richard "' on our weekly podcast
:lI www.historyextra.com! podcast-page
sse
History Magazine
Uniting the national narratives ((
ALL the constituent pa rts of the U K have very d ifferent histories.
And we·re q u ite aware that we·re m a k i n g these fiLms at a time when Scottish independence is being wideLy mooted. The persistence of nationaL a n d reg ionaL identities is one of the things t h a t interests us a Lot i n t h i s series, s o no body is trying to i m pose a faLse constructi on. A L L w e are saying is t h a t o u r destinies have been intertwi ned b y history. We·re teasing t h e threads between the different na rratives and showing how these things Link u p. ))
• •
•
The rulers writing history ((
History has aLways been toLd from the side of the
ruLers. You've onLy got to Look at the officiaL
historiogra p hy of the Peasants· RevoLt to see this. It wasn·t the system that was wrong - it was a b u n ch of motiveLess troubLemakers who rioted and m u rdered. But when you penetrate behind the rhetoric of the ruLing class historiography, you see of course that the rebeLs did have a progra m m e and that many of the things they fought for did come to pass over the next few decades.
_ Tuming the map around _ (( As a student I •
read Fernand BraudeL"s book on the Med iterra nean. He had a
The same a p pLies to historicaL writing on the 1 6th century. I was brought u p believing the Protestant Reformation was consensuaL a nd that
g reat map where the Med iterranean was turned u pside down so the Sahara buLked
CathoLicism was just m u m bo-j u m b o su perstition.
over the top and the strip with ItaLy, Greece and Spain was at the bottom . From that
But g reat modern historians such as Eamon Duffy,
you u nderstood that the climate of the Sahara is what has d o m i nated the
Patrick Collinson and Susan Brigden have, in the past
Med iterra nean a nd its Life.
30 years, made us totally ret h i n k this. When you read
For Brita in you can aLso gain a h u g e a m ount by standing outside the south-east
Duffy"s The Stripping of the A ltars it makes you better
and turning the map around. You can rotate the map of the I rish Sea, putting
understand what the EngLish peopLe actually went
LiverpooL at the top and Du bLin at the bottom , and from that you can see that the
through over that period of about 70 years when the
I rish Sea throughout history has been a kind of free trade zone and zone of com m u n ication for the peopLe of Du bli n, liverpooL, BeLfast, north WaLes and south Scotland. These a re peopLe who had more i n common with each other than any of them did with Lond on. I n the f i rst episode we've Looked at the transformations that happened i n the I rish Sea zone during the Dark Ages. We·ve Looked at how Latin cuLtu re and C h ristian ity survived i n that g reat beLt from GLasgow to northern I reLand, WaLes and CornwaLL. At the same t i m e the a ncestors of the EngLish - if I dare put it that way - the AngLo-Saxons were im poverished i m m i g rants on the fringe of the collapsed eastern provi nces of Roman Britain. ))
estabLishment fought itseLf over the way things were
going to be. ))
DOt<
TWO
The Great British Story
A medieval labourer sowing. Many ordinary people of this period would have been literate
Underestimating our ancestors "
The areas where historians are radica lly revising ' ord i n a ry'
Getting communities involved
people's history are in questions of education and participation,
(' In o u r fi rst episode there is a h u g e c o m m u n ity dig in Long
There's a wonderful website fo r the Henry III Fine Rolls p roject [which anybody who is interested i n our medieval past should look at
Melford. There was also a big involvement of volunteers in
because it is i n c redi ble stuff). It contains amazing co urt cases from
Caerleon, plus a commun ity dig i n Elg i n and a fantastic d i g by
the 1 3th centu ry, where you see our ordinary a ncestors not as
i n ner-city kids at Borough H i ll. Leicestershire. I n the series we
d u llard peasants plo u g h i n g the fields but as people with aspirations
see the people engaging with their history in all sorts of ways. The Govan R e m i n iscence Group a re recovering the oral and
and ideas, M a ny of them were literate as well. I n the Peasants'
docum ented history of the rise of Gova n as a shipyard i n the
Revolt the peasant leadership used letters to commun icate.
1 9th century, even tracing their a n cestors back to Gaelic
The u nd e restimation of our ordinary a ncestors is one of the biggest problems we face. Yo u've only got to look at the thousands of
speakers i n the Isle of S kye and the Western Isles, who came
court rolls that survive from the 1 3th and 1 4th centuries to see how
to the area for work.
our a n cestors were constantly in negotiation agai nst the conditions i n which their lords held them. That sense of the o rd i n a ry people's c reativity and i n itiative is a g rowing perce ption.
))
These p rojects a re all very inspiring. People who partici pate in the com m u n ity d i gs get a real sense of empowerment from followi ng the p rojects thro u g h . They're not being talked down to by the experts; they're lea rning the basics, getting advice, b u t doing it themselves. There is a lady i n Halesowen who was a teacher and then learned Latin a n d Tudor palaeography to produce a n edition of the 1 6th-century wills of Cradley Heath. All over the cou ntry
The value of TV history
"
people a re doing things like this. It's rea lly terrific. ))
O u r job is to be enterta i n i n g , accurate and i nformative a n d to make
people think. People can look elsewhere if they want to know more about these subjects, but o u r duty as a pri metime history series is to excite people, to add that element of 'Gosh, I never knew that ! ' You do always hope that you will i ns p i re people. I 've been making progra m mes for 30 years and I still get letters from people who say they started d o i n g h istory from watc h i n g them. It's g reat if people a re enterta ined a n d informed sufficie ntly for it to m a ke them want to study the
s u bject o r to take part i n the life of their c o m m unity in this way. ))
Making sense of the present "
The past gives mea n i ng and value to the present. That is the
crucial t h i n g . Britain has gone t h ro u g h tough times s i n ce the 1 950s, with the decline of our ind ustries. We've been filming i n Co rby, Gova n, the Black Cou ntry and the Potteries, wh ich are iconic areas i n our h istory, which helped m a ke us the workshop of the world. They've all been badly h it and they're now having to rebuild. And this also involves looking again at their history. It is remarka ble when you look at, say, the Govan R e m i n iscence Group and see how powerfu lly history can contribute towards a renewed sense of va lue and ident ity in the c o m m u n ity.
))
Matthew Hughes considers why British col onial forces could n't cope with a Jewish revolt in the 1 940s, prior to the foundation of the State of Israel sse History Magazine
N BRITISH-RUN PALESTINE in May 1947, Alexander Rubowitz, a young Jewish man, disappeared. Witnesses saw him being taken away in a car, after which he was never seen again. His body was never found. Rubowitz was a Jewish activist of the Zionist terrorist group, the Stern gang, which was fighting to rid Palestine of British colonial rule.
(Britain had governed the former Ottoman territory of Palestine as a mandate since 1 920 as a result of the peace settlements in the aftermath of the First World War. ) Rubowitz had been spirited away by a squad of British soldiers led by a former British SAS officer, Major Roy Farran, a much-decorated veteran of the Second World War. Rubowitz died, 39
British paratrooper, patrol lel Aviv atftt r O lle o f their officers, Major Brett, was captured and flogged by Jewish insurgents, 4 January 1 947
A soldier escorts two Jewish prisoners, arrested for carrying arms, through Jaffa in December 1 947
it seems, while being interrogated by Farran and his men. Under suspicion of murder, Farran was forced to flee to Syria. A Jewish revenge bomb sent to his family's UK address killed his brother. Yet Farran was not alone. He was part of a murky group of British soldiers in Palestine that used unorthodox methods - a 'dirty war' - against Jewish terrorists fighting for a Jewish state in Palestine. The Jewish insurgency in Palestine marked the start of a series of anti colonial revolts (or insurgencies) across Africa and Asia that European colonial powers resisted with military force, employing what became known as counter-insurgency operations. The Jewish campaign was successful and by late 1 947 Britain had decided to leave the country. The following year, in May 1 948, Israel was formed. Why were Jewish irregulars so successful against the might of the 40
British empire? One reason was the fact that the British army fought the Jews using dated counter-rebel military methods that simply weren't suitable in Palestine in the 1940s. The military tradition of the British army when it came to countering colonial rebellions was to fight the rebels in the field while exacting punishment on the civilians on which the rebels relied for support - so-called punitive measures. This is well expressed in the book written by Colonel CE Callwell in 1 896 entitled Small Wars: Their Principles and Practice which
Jewish emigrants disembark at Haifa, 1 947
describes counter-insurgency methods from places such as the north-west frontier of India, methods that the army would later attempt to employ in Palestine. As Callwell wrote, the "adoption of guerrilla methods by the enemy almost necessarily forces the regular troops to resort to punitive measures directed against the possessions of their antagonists. It must be remembered that one way to get the enemy to fight is to make raids on his property - only the most cowardly of savages and irregulars will allow their cattle to be carried off or their houses to be destroyed without making some show of resistance." Collective punitive measures such BBe
History Magazine
British-Zionist connict
that mattered little - after which they would "wipe out all who are foolish enough to wait for us': These nasty, extreme methods contradict the notion that British forces employed minimum force when fighting irregular troops. When British forces in Palestine after 1 944 faced Jewish resistance they tried (and failed) with a punitive
Fa rra n was pa rt of a murky group
of British sold iers in Palestine
that used unorthodox methods method called 'cordon and search', used in Jewish neighbourhoods. This was harsh enough to earn global opprobrium but not harsh enough to defeat Jewish insurgents. Propaganda, global politics, lack of information and poor intelligence conspired to defeat the army. Role of race
WANTED !
. ..
::""'" """... .:,-
E"E:.:-
:::==- ==-=
- -
as destroying villages and trampling down crops, already well established in irregular 'small' wars against guerrillas by the time that Callwell wrote his book, were used in the South African War ( 1 899- 1 902), during the Egyptian and Iraqi revolts ( 1 9 1 9-20), and in India and during the Irish war of independence ( 1 9 19-2 1 ) . Captain Phillipps o f Rimington's Guides in South Africa noted how he had to go, "at the general's bidding, to burn a farm near the line of march. We got to the place and I gave the inmates, three women and some children, ten minutes to clear their clothes and things out of the house, and my men fetched bundles of straw and we proceeded to burn it down . . . sse History Magazine
"The women cried and the children stood by holding on to them and looking with large frightened eyes at the burning house. They won't forget that sight, I'll bet a sovereign, not even when they grow up. We rode away and left them, a forlorn little group, standing among their household goods." In Iraq in 1 9 1 6 a British soldier operating against an Arab village on a punitive raid remembered how he and his comrades would "strafe" a village with guns - if it was the wrong village
A British poster showing ten ofthe most wanted men in Palestine in 1 947. Among them was future Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin (top left)
The nature of the opposition was crucial, as was the campaign being fought by them. The Jews in Palestine were articulate and vocal, had an excellent intelligence service known as the Shai, which would become Mossad after 1 948. The Shai had infiltrated the British police and government, had support in the US, was largely European (namely, 'white') in origin, and was well organised. Race had a part to play, not least as harsh actions outside of Europe against non-white peoples with no lobbying power or presence in Britain's decision making structure were bound to be treated differently when compared to, say, European Ashkenazi Jews in British Mandate Palestine in the 1 940s. The Jews could not easily be treated as 'wogs' were across the empire - to use the contemporary racist British phrase. Jewish fighters were a match for the British. Jewish military forces were divided into three groups: the Irgun, the Stern Gang and the Haganah. As the largest force, the Haganah offered a home for mainstream Jewish forces which could benefit from the more extreme terrorist shock actions 41
British-Zionist conftict
employed by the Irgun and Stern forces, while morally distancing themselves from such things. The Jews targeted British intelligence officers who, for instance, spoke Hebrew, knowing these were the key link people for the British. The Jews were also attacking at a time when Britain was reassembling its Middle East strategy and considering whether it needed a base in Palestine or could make do with a base elsewhere, such as in Egypt or east Africa. The Jewish fighters combined terrorist attacks of the spectacular sort - such as blowing up the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, and executing captured British soldiers and booby-trapping their dead bodies - to giving help to Jews trying to get to Palestine from Europe. British intelligence gathering on their Jewish opponents was poor. Headed by the Shai, the Jews built up an alternative intelligence network. Information was the key to success or failure, something that the Jews knew from early on in their struggle. Near mutiny
In Britain's previous campaign against rebels elsewhere, the army had employed considerable force and had been successful. The same methods didn't work against the Jews. Thus, when in April 1 946 the Stern Gang killed seven soldiers from the Parachute Regiment, provoking a near mutiny among the troops, the senior officer of the 6th Airborne Division went to the British Palestine High Commissioner to demand a collective punishment of a f l m fine, requisitioning and destruction of Jewish buildings, and closure of restaurants and businesses. The High Commissioner agreed only to the closure of restaurants. Why was the punishment so mild? In the 1 930s, the Palestinian Arabs had
fought the British, and Britain's response to any Arab terror attacks involved destruction, fining and imprisonment for the rebel forces and Arab civilians. But in Palestine after 1945 when fighting the Jews, the
A vi brant Jewish democracy and
the presence of the world's press
made Britain's position u ntenable
British had an overriding political aim of maintaining good relations with America, which was giving support to the Jews. This, combined with a vibrant local Jewish democracy and the presence of the world's press, made Britain's position untenable. There were also practical problems with cordon and search. When Operation Elephant Hippo imposed British military rule on Tel Aviv in 1 947, it lasted for just two weeks because the army could not maintain the troop numbers required to contain a large urban area.
The last British troops in Palestine leave Haifa in 1 948. Britain's dated counter-rebel measures were no match for a well-organised and highly motivated Jewish insurgency
Cordon and search in Palestine found little and contained even less. It simply antagonised moderate Jews and provided good propaganda for the enemy. The response to cordon and search could also be swift. During Operation Shark, British paratroopers sealed off Tel Aviv, deploying 17,000 troops for four days to deal with an urban area of 1 70,000 Jewish inhabitants. During this operation, Police CID Sergeant TG Martin recognised a key terrorist suspect dressed as a rabbi. Two months later Martin was shot dead playing tennis. By late 1 947, the British had had enough and passed the problem of Palestine to the United Nations, pulling out the last of their troops in June 1 948. The British army entered the Palestine campaign ill-prepared intellectually and organisationally. The Jewish insurgency was exceptional and could not be dealt with using dated prewar methods. After Palestine, the British learned from their mistakes and fought with some success against insurgents, right up to the Northern Ireland Good Friday Agreement of 1 998, and in Afghanistan today. m Matthew Hughes is reader in the
Department of Politics and History. Brunel University
Books � Major Farran's Hat: Murder, Scandal and Britain's War Against Jewish Terrorism, 1 945-48 by David Cesarani {Heinemann. 2009/ � The British Army and Jewish Insurgency in Palestine, 1 945-47 by David Charters {Macmillan, 1 989/
Changing times by Chris Bowlby
Is the 'modern dad' really that modern? ILLUSTRATION BY FEMKE DE JONG
'
DISCUSSIONS ON modern parenting are full of the idea of revolutionary change. The increasing opportunity to combine parenting with work outside the home has clearly made a huge difference to women. As for men, the assumption is that the emotionally distant, work absorbed fathers of the past have been succeeded today by the much more parentally focused 'modern dad' . But is this right? Dr Laura King of the University of Warwick has researched intensively the role and perception of fathers. She is currently running a project called 'Hiding in the Pub to Cutting the Cord?' about fatherhood and childbirth (www.go. warwick.ac. uk!chmfatherhood). And what she has found is that fathers have often been more engaged than stereotypes suggest. "By recognising the long history of active fatherhood;' she argues, "it is clear that men have not suddenly started engaging with their children in meaningful ways." The first point ofengagement is birth itself. The number of fathers attending the birth of their children has gone up markedly in the last few decades. But some upper-class fathers were present long before. Queen Victoria's husband, Prince Albert, for example, was noted for attending the births of several of his children. The history of paternity leave is more revealing. It is widely regarded these days as an innovation that enables fathers to be involved in their children's earliest months. But Dr King has discovered that informal paternity leave goes back a long way. In working-class households, men would often take time off after a birth, even if it was unpaid or seen as sickness absence rather than specific provision for paternity. "Throughout the 20th century'; she concludes, "fathers found a variety of ways to help their wives during the important period around and just after a baby's birth:' Emotional engagement with children also has a more complex history than stereotypes of, say, the tyrannical Victorian paterfamilias might suggest. Discussions addressing 'tenderness' in father-child relationships go back to the 18th century. There was, however, always a strand in some fathers' thinking that saw commitment to work, to 'putting bread on the table' for the family, as a superior form of parental commitment to spending time with children. Chris Bowlby is a Fathers' roles developed further, Laura King argues, postpresenter on BBC 1945 as "a family-oriented masculinity emerged after the war': radio, specialising in history There was a new emphasis on parenting and its contribution to "moving back to normality", in which parents shaped children's psychological as well as material well-being. Look out for previous Changing Whatever the psychological support Times columns on our website they offered, the practical contribution :::J www.historyextra.com/feature men have made to looking after children
Prince Albert attended the birth of his children
BBC
History Magazine
did not always change as rapidly. One research study based in Nottingham compared men's contribution in the 1960s to that of the 1980s. While men in the 80s were more willing to look after children waking at night, around 40 per cent in both studies rarely changed nappies. Perceptions of different male and female parental roles not only influenced public policy in areas such as parental leave and childcare. Perhaps most contentiously, they have shaped the fraught debate about the custody or residence of children when relationships break down. Laura King notes a long shift from the beginning of the 20th century when legal control over children was given to fathers "because of long held attitudes about the inherent authority of the father" to modern legal norms that reflect more "society's belief in the superior innate parental instincts and abilities of mothers". Courts or social workers assumed mothers were always primary or exclusive carers of children, just as policy makers assumed limited male interest in paternity leave. So it is necessary, concludes Dr King "to move on from the notion that fathers are inferior as parents in comparison to mothers, and that they have only recently become fully involved in their children's lives': There is certainly some truth in the image of the nappy-averse father, hiding in the pub while his wife looks after their baby. But that has been far from the full story of British fatherhood. m
,
This series is p rod �ced with History & Polley.
You can find out more
(.tV H I STORY & PO LICY
(P)
� _ � ancl lIII _
about them and read their papers at www. historyandpolicy.org
45
TRIUMPHANT Ahead o f June's pageant on the Thames to mark the Queen's diamond jubilee, Robert J Blyth reveals why the royal family has long loved to
�:�9.�(\. . throw lavish parties on "London's grandest street" ..
�� ��/ .
't···$·... M�. ····
46
N SUNDAY 3 JUNE 2012, the celebrations of the Queen's diamond jubilee will culminate in a spectacular pageant on the Thames. Hundreds of vessels will take part in a massive procession, journeying down the river from Hammersmith to Greenwich. Ranging from a new royal barge and the little ships of Dunkirk to steamboats and a host of pleasure craft, the pageant is designed to embody symbols of nation and Commonwealth to mark this most historic occasion. Only once before in British history has a monarch achieved such an anniversary and that was Queen Victoria 1 1 5 years ago. But why will Britain celebrate the jubilee with a flotilla on the river rather than the more familiar marching bands, horse-drawn carriages and parade along the Mall?
The answer lies, in part, with the long royal association with, and use of, the Thames. By the Tudor period, the Thames was the most convenient means of communication between a series of major riverside residences: Windsor, Hampton Court, Richmond, Westminster, Whitehall and Greenwich. It was also London's grandest 'street', providing a majestic processional route for great royal, state and civic occasions. This was a role that none of the capital's narrow, crowded and rather mean highways could fulfil. During the reign of Henry VIII, the river witnessed a series of highly symbolic river processions. Three days before her coronation on 1 June 1 533, Anne Boleyn left Greenwich Palace by barge in a fantastical river procession with an accompanying theatrical pageant organised around the theme of St George. A small barge led the parade carrying a mechanical dragon, which "pranced about furiously, twisting its
tail and belching out wildfire". Henry commanded the lord mayor and the livery companies of the City of London to attend. Thomas Cramner, archbishop of Canterbury, reported that their barges were "decked after the most gorgeous and sumptuous manner", flying colourful flags and pennants. Guns saluted and musicians played as the heavily pregnant Anne, dressed in virginal white, was conveyed to the Tower of London in her "rich barge among her nobles". At the Tower she was met by Henry, who, in a very public display of affection, kissed his new bride. Anne later travelled to Westminster Abbey by road, while Henry went by river through his capital. Divisive issue
These processions were, of course, stage-managed events allowing the public to demonstrate its loyalty to the king. But the coronation was not a straightforward affair. The annulment of Henry's marriage to Catherine of Aragon was a highly divisive issue and Anne was far from popular. The pageantry was, therefore, designed to lend legitimacy to the king's controversial new wife. The use of the broad and open expanse of the river allowed the maximum number of people to witness the event, and the involvement of the City of London and the nobility added
BBe
History Magazine
The diamond jubilee
Dirck Stoop's contemporary print depicts Catherine of Braganza's grand entry into London down a Thames packed with barges, following her marriage to Charles II in 1 662
further authority. Controversial marriages also posed difficulties for the Stuart monarchs. Once more, river processions provided an answer. Catherine of Braganza, queen consort to Charles II, had twin 'disadvantages': she was foreign and a Roman Catholic. After her marriage to Charles in Portsmouth, she too made a grand state entry into London. Her 'Aqua Triumphalis', a truly monumental pageant, was held on the Thames between Hampton Court and Whitehall on 23 August 1662. The writer John Evelyn was on the river: "I was spectator of the most magnificent triumph that ever floated on the Thames, considering the innumerable boates and vessells, dress'd and adorn'd with all imaginable pomp, but above all the thrones, arches, pageants, and other representations, stately barges of the Lord Maior and Companies, with various inventions, musiq and peales of ordnance from both ye vessells and the shore going to meete and conduct the Queene from Hampton Court to White-hall, at the first time of her coming to towne:' Samuel Pepys, who could not get a boat despite offering eight shillings,
London's four great sewage pumping stations were named after members of the royal family
BBe H istory Magazine
watched from the Banqueting House at Whitehall. He recorded in his diary that "the King and Queene [were 1 in a barge under a Canopy with 10,000 barges and boats 1 think, for we could see no water for them': But the real focus of Pepys's attention appears to have been Lady Castlemayne: "I glutted myself with looking on her." Perhaps one of the strangest royal river processions took place on 4 April 1 865, when the Prince of Wales, later Edward VII, travelled down the Thames from Westminster to Crossness, then in north Kent. His purpose was the opening of the Crossness sewage pumping station, a major component of Joseph Bazalgette's massive scheme to improve London's sanitation. The event was attended by numerous influential guests, including the archbishop of Canterbury and the bishop of London. The Prince ofWales officially switched on the four great sewage pumping engines, each of which was named after a member of the royal family: Victoria, Prince Consort, Albert Edward and Alexandra. Having declared open this "perfect shrine of machinery", the prince and the assembled dignitaries sat down to lunch in one of the outbuildings. The Victorian Thames was, however, very different from the pleasant river that played host to earlier spectacles.
It was now urban, industrial, polluted and much altered by new bridges and the embankments. Consequently, its ceremonial use ebbed away. But one constant connecting late medieval London to the mid-Victorian metropolis was the Lord Mayor's Day procession, which took place on the Thames from 1453 until 1 856. Each autumn, the newly elected mayor travelled, in a gilded barge accompanied by the great livery companies, from the City of London to be sworn in at the Exchequer Court in Westminster. This annual pageant was a symbolic display of the city's allegiance to the crown. It was also a boisterous demonstration of wealth and commercial power. This piece of theatre was captured most famously by Canaletto, whose paintings of the occasion show that it was both a solemn affair and a popular celebration. And it is Canaletto's extraordinary depictions that have inspired this year's royal river pageant. This summer, the Thames will return triumphantly to the centre of national life as the stage for the climax of the diamond jubilee, regaining once more its rightful and historic place as London's grandest street. m Dr Robert J Blyth is curator of imperial and maritime history at the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich
Book � Royal River: Power, Pageantry and the Thames by Susan Doran and Robert J Blyth ledsJ {Scala, 2012/
Exhibition � Royal River: Power, Pageantry and the Thames will be held at the National
Maritime Museum from 27 April. For more details, turn to page 84
On the podcast Robert J Blyth discusses Thames �geantry on our weekly pod cast
;;JI
www.historyextra.com/ pod cast-page
In the gallery You can view weekly picture galleries on a range of topics,
including images from the Royal River exhibition, on o u r website
::J www.historyextra.com/featurel galleries
47
American historians have long claimed victory for their country over Britain in the War of 1812. However, as the 200th anniversary comes around, Andrew Lambert argues that it was the British w�o had greater reason to rejoice >
ATE IN THE afternoon on 1 June I S 1 3, some 20 miles outside Boston harbour, two fifth-rate frigates met in single combat. On board HMS Shannon Captain Philip Broke led a well-drilled veteran crew. He had been preparing them for this moment for seven long years, anxiously seeking a suitable occasion to secure honour and glory. His opponent, Captain James Lawrence of the USS Chesapeake, had earned his promotion in battle only months before. While Lawrence's crew was significantly larger than Broke's, he had only been in command for a few weeks. Lawrence had orders to destroy the troopships and transports supplying the British army in Canada. The previous day Broke had sent a written challenge to Boston, offering Lawrence the chance of glory in eq ual combat, and implying a stain on his honour if he refused. Lawrence never received the challenge; he needed no prompting. When the Americans put to sea Broke skilfully led them out of sight of land before backing his sails. Then he spoke to the crew, urging them to do their duty in silence, relying on discipline and training. There was not a hint of bravado, or bombast: "Don't try to dismast her. Fire into her quarters: main deck to main deck; quarter deck into quarter deck. Kill the men and the ship is yours. Don't hit them about the head, for they have steel caps on, but give it them through the body. Don't cheer. Go quietly to your quarters. I feel sure you will all do your duty; and remember you have the blood of hundreds of your countrymen to avenge."
L
HMS Shannon engages the American frigate Chesapeake in single combat outside Boston harbour on 1 June 1 8 1 3
The tiny American navy won a series of single-ship actions that stWlned the Royal Navy and startled the naval world. Even the French navy took heart
Honour and glory
It was an auspicious day to fight - the anniversary of the 'Glorious First of June', Lord Howe's great victory over the French fleet in 1794. Broke's themes of honour and glory, heritage and hurt, pride and, above all, professionalism provided a potent stimulus. Broke manoeuvred skilfully to deny Lawrence the opportunity for long range action, drawing him into the close 52
Captain Sir Philip Bowes Vere de Broke. His skilful leadership ofthe Shannon in its clash with the Chesapeake helped make h i m a national hero
quarters killing zone, where fast, accurate gunnery would win the day. As the American ship ranged alongside from astern, Broke ordered his gun crews to fire directly into each successive enemy gun-port. His I S-pounder cannon were loaded with two round shot, or a single shot and canister, a tin case full of musket balls. Each gun was fired with precision: within a minute the British had killed or wounded half the American gun crews and put several guns out of action. On the upper deck Broke's 32-pounder carronades repeated the tactics, while smaller 9-pounder guns carefully targeted the Chesapeake's
wheel, her officers and helmsman. After just one broadside, as thick acrid smoke began to shroud the two ships, it became clear that the Americans had lost the battle. Lawrence was the only officer left standing on the quarter deck, known as the 'slaughter pen' in the United States navy. Below decks more officers were down, along with key personnel. After two broadsides, the American gunnery teams had been devastated. Worse still for the Chesapeake, Broke's men had shot away the American wheel, and cut key parts of her rigging. As the Royal Marines picked off any Americans remaining on the upper BBe
History Magazine
deck, Lawrence was hit in the groin by a one-ounce musket ball, severing the femoral artery. He was carried below in agony. Leaderless and out of control, Chesapeake drifted up into the wind, exposing her flimsy stern galleries to British guns that inflicted further losses. Minutes later the ships collided. Broke immediately led 50 men onto the Chesapeake and drove the shattered remnants of her crew off the upper deck. The fighting was all over in 1 1 minutes - timed by the gunner in the Shannon's powder magazine. He may have won the greatest frigate battle of all time, but Philip Broke had no time to celebrate. In fact, soon after ending the Chesapeake's resistance, he was attacked by three American sailors. He killed one with his sword, but the second hit him on the head with a musket, while the third smashed a cutlass blade into his skull, BBe H istory Magazine
A portrait of Captain James Lawrence. He was one of at Least 48 Americans to Lose their Lives when the Chesapeake feLL prey to HMS Shannon
splitting the cranium open to the brains. Within seconds, enraged British tars were hacking the assailants to pieces. All three men were later identified as British deserters. Despite his horrific wound Broke survived to become a national hero and the father of professional naval gunnery. Lawrence was not so lucky. He died six days later, just as the British brought his ship into Halifax, Nova Scotia in triumph. The casualties of this action were extraordinary: Shannon lost 23 killed and 58 wounded from a crew of 320; Chesapeake suffered at least 48 killed and 99 wounded from 370. Many of the wounded men were beyond help. Such unprecedented losses demonstrated the skill and determination of both crews. What had they been fighting for? In June 1 8 1 2 the United States declared war on Britain, invaded what is now Canada, and launched a massive attack on British merchant shipping in the Caribbean and North Atlantic. Britain was at the time engaged in a European war with Napoleon Bonarparte's France. President James Madison saw Napoleon's seemingly inevitable defeat of
A segment of USS Chesapeake's navaL ensign
Russia as an opportunity to seize Britain's North American territory, and the Spanish province of Florida for good measure. While Madison's Republican party, supported by land-hungry southern and western states, saw an opportunity, the commercial, seafaring north and east voted federalist, and preferred to carry on peaceful trading. That said the Americans did have a grievance: Britain's total war against France was largely conducted by economic blockade and, as a result, the Royal Navy frequently arrested American ships for breaking the blockade. 53
This c 1 8 1 5 cartoon shows the British setting light to the White House while encouraging slaves to escape to British ships
ALTHOUGH THE War of 1 8 1 2 was fought between Britain and America, the war masked a deeper sectional conflict within the United States. The decision to declare war exposed a profound, existential struggle to define the culture of a new nation, one that divided the north from the south. While the north remained a maritime, commercial region linked to Europe, another America had emerged in the years that followed the revolution of 1 776. This new, dynamic America of the south and west was continental, expansionist and land hungry, anxious to push the frontiers west at the expense of Native Americans, Spaniards
and Britons. These Americans did not share European cultural values, or the commercial impulse of New England. A new America of populist de mocracy, individualism and expansion was taking shape. This was the America that declared war, and it wanted more territory. Two 1 8 1 2 heroes reached the presidency, Andrew Jackson and William Henry Harrison. Both were western expansionists who spent most of the war killing Indians. If Native Americans lost the war, slavery won, as the amount of land under plantation agriculture doubled. This explains the hysteria that followed the failed British invasion of
The Americans were also enraged by the British practice of impressing seamen from these ships, considering any skilled seafarer who spoke English likely to be a subject of the king. In fact most were, although many had bought bogus certificates of'naturalisation' which British law did not recognise. In 1 8 1 2 the British repealed the economic sanctions, but refused point blank to end impressment, because it was essential to national survival. The American invasion of Canada was a fiasco. The army at Detroit surrendered without a fight, an invasion 54
New Orleans. After the battle Andrew Jackson·s victorious army rounded up fug itive slaves, rather than pursue the defeated British. After 1 8 1 5 American politics were paralysed by the same profound cultural division that had been apparent in 1 8 1 2. These very different visions of the American future finally came to blows in 1 86 1 . Yet even in 1 861 secretary of state William H Seward advised Abraham Lincoln to invade Canada, to unify the country and avert civil war. However, Britain still maintained the crushing naval superiority that decided the earlier conflict, and Abraham Lincoln chose another option.
across the Niagara river was thrown back in confusion when the New York Militia refused to leave the state. Madison had gone to war without an army fit to fight. At sea, Britain's natural element, the situation was equally strange. The tiny American navy, starved of resources for a decade by successive Republican A portrait of Sir George Cockburn. He and General Ross dined at the White House before ordering it to be burned down
governments, won three single-ship actions in 1 8 1 2 that stunned the Royal Navy and startled the naval world. Even the French navy took heart; the heirs of Nelson could be beaten. American propaganda exploited these victories to create a sense of moral superiority, arguing that beating the British made them ocean. Meanwhile a swarm of American privateers, licensed predators, surged out of Baltimore, New York and Charleston inflicting heavy losses on merchant shipping. With the future of Europe on hold, as Napoleon drove ever deeper into Russia, Madison expected Britain to abandon Canada, and lose the European war. In reality the American successes were far less worrying. The three frigate battles of 1 8 1 2 were unequal combats. The American frigates were one third larger, and more heavily armed and manned than the standard British BBe
History Magazine
The British ate the dinner that the president had laid on at the White House to celebrate a US victory. Then they burned the mansion
frigates. Little wonder that the United States and Constitution defeated British ships. These battles were hardly a ringing endorsement of naval prowess. Equally significantly, North America had been a backwater of the global war for the past five years, with old ships and inferior officers. Broke was only sent to America in late 1 8 1 1 , as the threat of war increased. British war aims
Despite public alarm the British government remained calm, moving extra troops to Canada from the West Indies, but not from Spain, while reinforcing the fleet with newer ships and better officers. British war aims were simple: to make the Americans leave Canada alone. This would allow them to get on with the conflict that really mattered: the one with Napoleon. British strategy was to defend the Canadian frontier, secure merchant shipping and then impose a devastating economic blockade, the strategy already being used against France. Having sent reinforcements over the winter of 1 8 1 2-13 the British focus shifted back to Europe. As Napoleon retreated from Russia, Britain created new alliances to destroy his empire. The war at sea turned decisively in BBe H istory Magazine
Alonzo Chappel's painting shows General Ross being killed at the battle of Baltimore on 1 2 September 1 81 4. The Americans beat the British back i n this clash
Britain's favour on 1 June 1 8 1 3, when Broke took the Chesapeake and two more frigates were driven into New London, Connecticut and blockaded for the rest of the war. Tighter convoy discipline, stronger naval escorts, and better intelligence of enemy movements reduced merchant shipping losses to a tolerable level, while blockading the key privateer ports kept many American ships from getting to sea. Initially the Royal Navy's economic blockade targeted the southern states that had voted for war. Indeed, until 1 8 1 3 New England grain was feeding Wellington's army in Spain. Licensed trade kept American ships and sailors usefully employed, supporting Britain, rather than cruising as privateers. American traders fed British troops in Canada. By the time Napoleon abdicated in April 1 8 1 4 the blockade covered the entire American coast, crippling the federal government funding, which largely depended on customs revenue, and crushing domestic economic activity. America ran out of money; by October 1 8 14 it was bankrupt. This was the price to be paid for challenging a global maritime power without a professional army, and a minute navy. Republican zeal was no substitute for trained troops and a fleet, and without cash neither could be created in wartime. The war on land, where Madison and his government expected to win, was a stalemate. British regulars, Canadian militia and Native Americans repelled American invasions for three consecutive years. These successes were countered by American victories on Lake Erie in 1813 and Lake Champlain in 1 8 1 4, denying the British an opportunity to push south. Instead the British used amphibious raids on the Atlantic coast. In 1 8 1 3 the Royal Navy took control of Chesapeake Bay, raiding coastal towns, blockading key ports and offering freedom to fugitive slaves. Enlisting former slaves in the Colonial Marines terrified an American tidewater community that lived in
perpetual fear of servile revolt. After the war many former slaves settled in Trinidad or Canada. Despite the downfall of Napoleon the British government decided against sending a major military force to North America. It was more concerned with settling the future of Europe than prosecuting what it regarded as an annoying sideshow, and so despatched a mere 6,000 troops. In August, 4,000 men led by Rear Admiral George Cockburn and General Sir Robert Ross landed on the Patuxent river in Maryland, marched on Washington, dispersed a larger American army at Bladensburg and occupied the fledgling American capital. The Americans had already burned the navy yard, leaving the British commanders to eat the dinner President Madison had laid on at the White House to celebrate a victory, before burning the mansion, and every other public building, apart from the patent office. They then returned up the Patuxent river without let or hindrance. Three weeks later the same force landed outside Baltimore to see if the enemy would run away again. Instead the locals tuned out in large numbers to defend their property, putting five times as many men into the field as the »
John Rubens Smith's Peace, an allegory of the Treaty of Ghent, which ended the War of 1 8 1 2
55
The American privateer General Armstrong repulses a British attack in Fayal harbour, the Azores on 26 October 1 8 1 4 in a lithograph by Nathaniel Currier
British, and after a brief skirmish, in which Ross was killed, the army re-embarked. At the same time a smaller army occupied northern Maine. By this time most American investors had switched their money into British government bonds. The peace, signed at Ghent in Belgium on Christmas Eve 1 8 14, returned the parties to the status quo before hostilities began - the very terms the British had been seeking since war broke out. Not one American war aim was even considered. Before the news could reach America, a British attack on New Orleans was beaten off with heavy losses, and then the American flagship, the USS President, was captured while attempting to escape from New York. The American flagship returned to Britain as the ultimate war trophy - her name is still used on the Royal Navy's London headquarters, in honour of a great victory. Despite the facts, American historians have spent the past 200 years claiming to have won the 56
Andrew Lambert is Laughton professor of
naval history at King's College London. His latest book, The Challenge: Britain Against America in the Naval Waraf 1812, was published by Faber and Faber in April
Who do you think won the War of 1812? Let us know at :J historymagazinera
h istoryextra.com
Books
A badge in the shape of a shepherd's crook commemorating the capture of USS President
War of 1 8 1 2. Canadians, with better cause, celebrate their success in defending their country. But the British quickly forgot the war. For them 1 8 1 2 means Napoleon, Russia and the battle of Borodino. In 20 12 it may be time to reconsider who really won the War of l 8 12. m
� The Challenge: Britain Against America in the Naval War of 1 8 1 2 by Andrew Lambert {Faber and Faber, 20 12} � How Britain Won the War of 1 8 1 2 b y Brian Arthur {Baydell and Brewer, 201 I}
On the podcast Andrew Lambert discusses the War of 1812 on our weekly podcast :J www.historyextra.com/ podcast-page
BBe
History Magazine
The seventh-century Muslim warlord A bd al-Malik created the Dome of the Rock and p layed a crucial role in establishing the faith in the Middle East. So why, asks Tom Holland, has he been neglected by history? HE MOST famous building in Jerusalem, the city claimed today by Israel as her eternal capital, is Muslim. Standing on the mighty rectangular esplanade where the Jewish Temple once rose, its gilded cupola, its marble mosaics and the perfectly proportioned octagon of its walls make for an incomparable beauty. Aesthetics, however, are hardly the limit of its significance. 'The Dome of the Rock', as it is known, bears witness to a key moment in the evolution of Islam. Adorning the Dome's walls, fashioned out of cubes of gold, inscriptions proclaim for the first time on any monument the prophethood of Muhammad. Not only that, but much of what is written on it consists of excerpts patched together from the Prophet's own revelations: the earliest surviving examples anywhere of phrases from the Qur'an. The Dome of the Rock, centred as it was on the very site of the Jewish Holy of Holies, and built to dimensions that replicated the great Christian shrine of the Holy Sepulchre, where Jesus was supposed to have been buried, delivered an unmistakable message: a whole new religion had arrived in triumph. Commander of the faithful
A crusade-era seal showing
Jerusalem's three major landmarks, including the Dome of the Rock (right).
LEFT: The border shows
An inscription on the outer wall gives us a very precise date for the monument's construction. "AI-Ma'mun, commander of the faithful, built this dome, may God accept it from him and be pleased by him, in the year 72." This, by the Christian calendar, dates it to AD 69 1 or 692. Yet there is a puzzle. Al-Ma'mun lived in Baghdad over a century after the date was inscribed on the Dome of the Rock - and belonged to a dynasty, the Abassids, that had never shown any great interest in Jerusalem. Back in the 690s, however, the Arab empire had been ruled by a warlord named Abd ai-Malik, a man whose power base had lain, not in distant Baghdad, but in Syria and Palestine. Clearly at some point in the reign of Al-Ma'mun, his name had been excised from the Dome of the Rock, and replaced with Al-Ma'mun's own. The Dome itself still stood resplendent, but the memory of the man responsible for it had been cast into oblivion. This erasure of Abd ai-Malik's name from his own masterpiece offers an intriguing glimpse into the process by which the entire history of the first Muslim century may well have been rewritten. "Islam:' so it was claimed by the
distinguished 1 9th-century Arabist Ernest Renan, "was born, not amid the mystery which cradles the origins of other religions, but rather in the full light of history:' Increasingly, however, historians have come to suspect that there is much about the beginnings of Islam lost to perpetual darkness. The fact that it is Abd ai-Malik, almost 60 years after the death of Muhammad, who provides the first mention of him in any public inscription hints at a gap in our sources. It was only a century after the building of the Dome of the Rock that biographies of Muhammad and accounts of what followed his death, written by practising Muslims, came to be preserved by the faithful. The model of Islam's beginnings articulated by these writings was one so potent that it fast established itself as definitive. Experience of the perfect society, so it was taught, had been granted to one single place,
The Umayyads are a dynasty as influential as ever existed and to one single period of history: Medina, in the lifetime of the Prophet. No wellspring for Islam existed other than Muhammad. All that followed him had been decline and fall. Compared to this seductive vision of a primal and unspotted Islamic state, the rule of Abd al-Malik and his family, the Umayyads, could hardly help but appear a tyranny. Just as Al-Ma'mun had Abd ai-Malik's name removed from the Dome of the Rock, so did generations of Muslim scholars come to cast the Umayyads as deviants and usurpers, blotting the purity of Muhammad's legacy. Yet this presumption - that the law, culture and entire moral universe of Islam might have been brought into existence through the agency of a single prophet - seems closer to a theological fantasy than plausible history. Great civilisations do not emerge fully formed, like Athena from the forehead of Zeus. The Umayyads, far from stunting and retarding Islam, were in truth its midwives: a dynasty as influential as has ever existed. And of them all, it was Abd ai-Malik who was the most innovative and brilliant. The measure of his achievement is not only that he redeemed a tottering empire from implosion, but that he set it on foundations so solid that his very role in constructing them would end up forgotten. Over the course of the previous half century, the Arabs had reaped sensational >
Abd aI-Malik : the man Abd al-Malik was a dan gerous person to cross. Ambition, i ntelligence and visi o n were seamlessly fused i n h i m with brutality. H e was said to have leashed a rival warlord, led h i m around like a dog, and then straddled his chest to cut off his head. Even passing insects m i g ht be i n d a n g e r from the C a l i p h . So b a d was his halitosis, we a re told, that he could kill flies with a single breath. Yet there can be no d o ubting the sincerity of Abd al-Ma lik's beliefs. He had a reputation for austere god liness that even his enemies acknowledged. The title of 'Caliph' - introduced to the pu blic gaze for the fi rst time by his agents i n the i m perial m i nts - i m plied a dom inance over realms that were n o less
success, conquering a vast swathe of provinces from the Maghreb to Turkmenistan. By the 680s, though, they were turning on themselves. Rival factions, rival dynasts, rival prophets all fought over the winnings. That it was Abd al-Malik who emerged triumphant from a near decade of civil war owed much to his genius as a general. "The tribesmen saw clearly the error of their ways," as a court poet put it exultantly, "and he straightened out the smirk upon their faces." Military victory alone, however, was not enough. Abd ai-Malik's genius was to recognise that no empire, in an age that took the existence of a single, all-powerful god for granted, could possibly stand solid without the favour of the heavens - and that the basis of that favour had to be made rock solid. Hence the value of the Prophet. Not only had Muhammad claimed to be a medium for divine revelation, but he was also safely dead. Ram home the point that he had authentically been a Messenger of God, and anything that could be attributed to him would have to be accepted by the faithful as a truth descended from heaven. And ram it home is precisely what Abd al-Malik did. Over the 20-year course of his reign, he stamped the Arab empire in the same way that he stamped Jerusalem: as hallowed by
supernatural than earthly. If it was u pon the command of Abd al-Malik that roads were b u i lt, then it was also through his person that people m i g ht ' pray for ra in'.
"He straightened out the smirk upon their faces," said one poet
A 'beater of skulls', he was also the u ltimate 'imam of g u idance'.
the authority of his new religion. Coins, which for centuries had carried the heads of Christian or Zoroastrian emperors, were replaced in 696 with a radically new design, one that featured no images at all, but only writing - and Arabic writing at that. The language of the Qur' an, henceforward, was to be the language of bureaucracy as well. Nor were coins the only expression of this new dispensation. So too were passports, and tax returns, and contracts, and laws, and receipts: everything, in short, that made for the running of a global empire. The age of the prophets might have ended - but that did not mean, in the opinion of Abd al-Malik, that God had no further need of a chosen agent on Earth. Deploying his favourite medium of coinage, he made sure to broadcast to the world precisely how he saw his role: as the Khalifat Allah, or 'Deputy of God'. Subsequent generations of Muslims would regard this as arrogant pretension. The memory of the Umayyads would end up comprehensively blackened. And yet, without Abd al-Malik, it is most unlikely that Islam as we recognise it today would exist at all. m Tom Holland's latest book, In the Shadow of the Sword: The Battle for Global Empire and the End of the Ancient World [Little, Brown, 20121.
narrates the fall of the Roman and Sasanian empires, and the rise of the Caliphate. Tom is co-presenter of Radio 4's Making History
Books This gold dinar, dated AD 695-96, is thought to show Abd aI-Malik on one side and a design modified from the image of a Byzantine cross on the other
� Abd aI-Malik by Chase F Robinson {Oneworld, 2007} � The Dome ofthe Rock by Oleg Grabar {Harvard, 2006} � The First Dynasty of Islam: The Umayyad Caliphate AD 661 -750 by GR Hawting {Routledge, 2000} � God's Caliph: Religious Authority in the First Centuries of Islam by Patricia Crone and Martin Hinds {Cambridge, 1 986}
Reader book club Would you like to join the BBC History Magazine reader book club?
Visit our website to find out more
:::J www.historyextra.com/reader
Eleven new history books to look out for, reviewed by experts in the field
England falls
Nick Higham reviews a stimulating popular history of the 1066 Norman invasion
The Norman Conquest by Marc Morris H utchinson, 464 pages. £20
M
ARC MORRIS'S new book is an exciting arrival. A large and handsome volume, the text is supported by endnotes and a reasonably full bibliography, and illustrated with maps, black and white sse History Magazine
photographs and two sections of fine colour photographs. The subject is the conquest of England (so excluding Norman takeovers in Sicily, southern Italy and the Holy Land which were broadly contemporary) . It focuses on both sides of the Channel across the l Ith century, showing how two very different entities became ever more closely entwined, how and why the conquest occurred and
what that meant in practice. Events in England and Normandy are covered in alternate chapters. The approach is to stay close to the literary/documentary evidence, assessing each source and then attempting to offer as strong and convincing a story as possible, which centres on dynastic and political events, bringing in economic and social histories only really as an aside. This offers a strong and often gripping story, developed with enormous verve, a clear sense of direction and considerable confidence. Although there is occasional mention of such luminaries as the Victorian EA Freeman, Morris doesn't recognise modern scholarship by name, beyond the occasional "some modern historians". The reader will need to use the endnotes and bibliography if they wish to ascribe particular views to individuals. This is, therefore, offered less as a contribution to current debate among academics than as a free standing popular narrative history. Within these bounds the book carries the reader on a spirited ride across the subject. It is comparatively inclusive in terms of the literary evidence used, including English, Norman, French and Scandinavian sources, and is comfortable in following where the evidence leads. Owing to the strong bias in the sources for the conquest itself, the result is a rather 'Norman' view of the lead-up to 1 066, broadly favouring the position championed by historian Eric John that Edward saw himself as a member of the Norman ducal family and did offer the English throne to William in 105l. Preference for the account of Harold's death offered by the contemporary source the Carmen over the Bayeux Tapestry and Norman chronicler William of Poitiers contests the popular 'arrow-in-the-eye' version in favour of decapitation by a hit squad headed by William himself. Similarly, Morris challenges recent scholars' scepticism > over the long delay which kept the 61
Books MAY 2012 Norman fleet holed up in Ponthieu in 1066, arguing that the weather could easily have been responsible, just as claimed. Morris discusses such choices at length in the context of each source cited and his judgements are generally sensible, producing a stimulating history which has both some new dimensions and internal coherence. Overall Morris highlights the single-mindedness and savage brutality of William and the men he led. The result was not his succession to distant relative Edward as king of the English, but the extinction of the entire governing class of late Anglo-Saxon England and their
Fighting for life Clive Emsley welcomes a pioneering study of 19th-century death penalty abolitionists
VICTORIANS
GALLOws
........__• • <0- ... . .... ....... _... --
._
_
.
Victorians Against the GaUows by James Gregory I B Tauris, 372 pages, £65
B
Morris highlights the single-mindedness and savage brutality of William replacement with Normans, laity and churchmen alike. An analysis of Domesday Book provides the central interest of the later sections, showing as it does the extent of this process by the time of the final great challenge to William's kingship posed by the threat of a Danish armada in 1 086-87, : and the ways in which William had by then imposed new demands on England's landholders in terms of military service. The emphasis on conquest throughout means that there are breaks in the narrative, between 1 070 and 1082 for example, and there is some hesitancy as to where to end, taking the story initially up to the loss of Normandy, and Magna Carta, then ultimately the coronation of Edward I. This is an attractive volume which offers a good, detailed introduction to the subject. Morris is committed to teasing out what he thinks the evidence is saying and he writes well. I identified no significant errors of fact, though there are of course many areas where a very different interpretation of the evidence is possible. There are, though, moments when Morris's narrative drive does rather take over: the notion that the notoriously celibate King .tEthelstan's blood flowed in the veins of Edgar the .tEtheling should surely be read as a figure of speech. m •
A 1 9th-century
engraving of a
•
hangman and his
•
noose. Some Victorians sought to end the death penalty
•
•
•
y
THE early Victorian years the ferocious 'Bloody Code' of punishments of the Hanoverians had been largely dismantled. The death penalty remained for only a few offences, principally murder. The reforming 1 830s and the 'hungry forties' witnessed a range of groups pressing for new economic, social and political reforms - such as the abolition of slavery, an end to the Corn Laws and the adoption of the People's Charter. Among these groups, and often drawing from the others' memberships, was a small, but highly committed cluster of penal reformers seeking the total abolition of the death penalty in the British Isles. These reformers and their Society for the Abolition of Capital Punishment are the subject matter for James Gregory's highly informative book. The society had influence across Britain and links with international reformers. But, as Gregory warns, a historian's assessment of such a body, its campaign and its links can suggest a greater unity and sustained effort than actually existed. The society was strongest in London.
Particular incidents - a condemnation, a botched or especially agonising (for watchers as well as victim) execution, or a parliamentary debate - could also spark abolitionist activity in a locality. Quakers and clergy, both Anglican and Nonconformist, were significant among the society's leadership; but religious arguments and biblical quotation were employed equally by retentionists, and even a few Quakers supported the continuance of the death penalty. In addition to the clergy, individuals from all classes and both genders participated in the movement. The society, however, was never large.
Individuals from aU classes and both genders participated Its financial base was small and slender compared with those calling for an end to slavery and the Corn Laws, and many claimed that this led to its failure. To date, most historical research on 1 9th-century penal reform has focussed on the initial campaigns to remove the capital sanction from categories of theft or to improve the prison environment. Such work as has been done on the campaigns to abolish capital punishment has tended to focus on the parliamentary debates. Gregory's book is therefore to be greatly welcomed as a significant addition to our knowledge about early Victorian attitudes to the death penalty and to some of the rituals that surrounded it. The various assessments of the membership and geographical spread of the society, its publications, its activities and its legacy also contribute significantly to a wider understanding ofVictorian pressure groups. The book is densely packed with detail and hence not always an easy read, but it is an important and fine work of scholarship. m
Nick Higham, professor emeritus,
Clive Emsley is the author of Crime and Society in England 7 750- 7 900 (4th edition,
U niversity of Manchester
Longman/Pearson, 201 0)
62
BBe , 'I
History Magazine
Bloody peace Nigel Jones is shocked by the ongoing violence after the Second World War
Savage Continent: Europe in the Aftennath of World War II by Keith Lowe
IUAOI'I III lM! Allt lM.lTH Of WOILI N I ,
,
�
Viking, 480 pages, £25
'
-' \ i�� ' '' � ,i;.�,�� , �
I
W
ARS END messily. Recent books by Max Hastings, Ian Kershaw, David Stafford and Richard Bessel on the complete collapse of Germany in 1 945 may have encouraged the impression that mass violence in Europe came to a sudden halt with Hitler's suicide in the Berlin bunker. As Keith Lowe remorselessly documents in this searingly superb study, nothing could be further from the truth. In the months and even years after Germany's capitulation, for Europe's battered and exhausted inhabitants, 'peace' was difficult to distinguish from war. Of none was this more true than the Germans themselves. Their country literally lay in ruins, its cities almost obliterated by Anglo-American bombing; its starving, homeless population denuded of younger men, who were either dead or in captivity; and its territory occupied by four hostile powers. The task that lay ahead in Stunde null (Zero Revenge, as hour) of simply surviving, let Francis Bacon alone rebuilding their shattered and dismembered country, obselVed, a looked impossible. Their dire situation was made "kind of wild even worse by the migration into justice" their brutally truncated living space of millions of their fellow Germans - either fleeing the tender mercies of Soviet occupation, or forcibly expelled by those states recently liberated from Nazi oppression, principally Poland and Czechoslovakia. Around a quarter of Lowe's book is dedicated to the fate of these German civilians who desperately trekked westwards, carrying what they could salvage of their lost lives, and prey to rape, robbery or worse, as those who had just escaped German rule took savage vengeance.
is
BBe History Magazine
German refugees flee Poland during the mass exodus at the end of the Second World War
But revenge, as Francis Bacon observed, is "a kind ofwild justice", and Lowe underlines that it was the Nazi doctrine of racial differentiation, so pitilessly put into practice, that now allowed this mass ethnic cleansing, as centuries-old German communities in distant Hungary and Rumania were brutally uprooted and vomited forth like a deadly toxin. Nor were the Germans the only victims. The ethnic map of Europe changed almost overnight as Slovaks turned on Hungarians and Serbs on Croats in horrific communal slaughters. These atrocities, repeated so dispassionately, numb the mind. Once, reading of yet another massacre, I had to flip back two paragraphs to remind myself of whether Poles were kiUing Ukrainians or vice versa. Following his debut Inferno - a masterly reconstruction of the terrible firestorm raids on Hamburg - with this telling of a still greater tragedy, Lowe has amply confirmed that a major new historical talent has arrived. The book is so good that I reluctantly raise its one major flaw. In the substantial section 'Civil War', dealing with France, Italy, and especially Greece, he seriously misunderstands the nature of Communist parties, wrongly if romantically regarding them as resistance heroes and a socially
progressive force (risibly, he even calls them 'democratic'), rather than the murderous Stalinist stooges they were. This is p uzzling, since his own pages are replete with the lethal violence visited on collaborators, 'class enemies: and random ordinary folk alike as the Communists strove to substitute one overthrown totalitarian tyranny with their own. Despite this blemish, overall this is a brilliantly organised and scrupulously objective survey of a continent on the floor. Lowe has trawled through unfamiliar sources and sifted the evidence to present a story that, although grim reading (I shall not easily forget the image of the Croat soldier flayed alive then hanged with his own skin) needed to be told to understand how far Europe has travelled since. However difficult the current climate, it is unlikely to get as bad as this again. But we should never be complacent. Lowe concludes his chronicle by airily remarking that to today's young Poles and Germans all this hatred and bloodshed seems like "ancient history': But even ancient history, if ignored, has a nasty habit of rising from the dead and biting back. m Nigel Jones is the author of Tower: An Epic History of the Tower of London [Hutchinson,
201 1 ) 63
Books MAY 2012
A new empire? John MacKenzie on the consequences of American independence
Remaking the British Atlantic: 1be United States and the British Empire after American Independence by Pl Marshall
Oxford Un iversity Press, 335 pages, £35
T
HE TITLE offers an important clue to the content of this book. At first sight, it is apparent that American independence 'remade' the British Atlantic in the sense of confining it to British North America (Canada) and the British Caribbean possessions. But Marshall's thesis is that this is not the whole story. The Declaration of Independence and the 1 783 peace at the end of the war represented a significant
Cultural, intellectual and religious connections largely stayed on their old footing political rupture, but many other aspects of the 'British Atlantic' remained in place. The economic relationship continued almost as before. Migration
to the newly created United States remained predominantly from Britain and Ireland. Cultural, intellectual and religious connections largely stayed on their old footing. Although the British and the Americans were to find the restoration of political and diplomatic relations difficult, even going to war again in 1 8 1 2, the essentially British Atlantic underwent fewer changes than might have been imagined. Peter Marshall is the doyen of historians of 1 8th-century British India, but this is far from being his first excursion out of India into the Atlantic world. His 2005 book The Making and Unmaking afEmpires was explicitly a comparison between the two regions, pursuing his argument that the British empire was far from being as autocratic and powerful as might be thought. In
some respects, its rule depended on the consent of the ruled. Its power was limited by the restraints of distance, of numbers of personnel, and the nature of its methods. In this book, he examines in considerable detail the ten years or so surrounding American independence. Among much else, there are chapters on the end of the war, the making of the peace, the challenges presented by two empires, British and American, confronting each other, the continuities of trade, and on Ireland. Marshall also addresses attitudes towards native Americans and slaves, as well as on 'the swing to the south', that is the renewed concentration of the British on the Caribbean (as opposed to the long standing thesis of a swing towards the east and the Indian Ocean). There are
. . . • . . . . . • . . . . • . . . . . . . . . . . . . . • • . . . • . . • . . . . • . • . . . . . • . • . . • . • . . • . . . • • . . . . . . • . • • . . • . • . . . . . . . • . • . . . . . . • . . • . . . . • . . . . • • . • .
Workhouse life Peter Higginbotham discovers the background to Oliver Twist
Dickens and the Workhouse by Ruth Richardson Oxford University Press, 370 pages, £ 1 6.99
Dic kens 'M '\VT workliouse
64
N
o
LESS than 25 sites in London bear blue plaques marking their association with Charles Dickens. Strangely unadorned, however, is 1 0 Norfolk Street (now 22 Cleveland Street) in Fitzrovia, the Dickens family
home in 1 8 1 5-16 and 1829-3 1 . It was here that Dickens not only began working as a cub reporter, but also found himself living just nine doors away from the large parish workhouse of St Paul, Covent Garden. Although Dickens's biographers have occasionally made passing reference to this juxtaposition, its full significance has never been appreciated - something that Ruth Richardson's volume seeks to remedy. The Cleveland Street workhouse was recently listed following a campaign in which Richardson played a key part, especially in her uncovering of persuasive evidence for its being the inspiration for the institution portrayed in Oliver Twist. The arguments she presents for this are compelling.
Although Dickens was notoriously secretive about his private life, it often resurfaced thinly disguised in his writings, often by a simple change of location. Typically, he sets Oliver's 'Mudfog' workhouse some 70 miles from London, despite the institution's system of farming out pauper children being peculiar to the metropolis. Richardson also places Oliver's adventures firmly in the parish workhouse era, prior to implementation of the 1 834 Poor Law Amendment Act. The irony of this, of course, is that when its publication began in 1837, Oliver Twist was seen as an attack on the new system of poor relief administration rather than on the old parish-based organisation it replaced. BBe History Magazine
chapters on migration, on British communities in North America (receiving a fresh injection from the loyalists who left the rebelling colonies) , on the survival of customs in common, and a particularly useful one on the relationships of'transatlantic Protestants'. It was brave of Marshall to take on such a study, particularly given the vast quantity of research done on the period by American historians and others. But the result is an elegant study, in some ways usefully revisionist, that will be of great value to students and scholars. It should, however, be taken together with the work that has revised the 'freedom myths' of American independence - the recognition that the high -sounding phrases of the Declaration of Independence had very little application to women, to native Americans who were to be bloodily conquered in the great era of expansionism to come, and to the slaves whose emancipation was to be delayed by 30 years beyond that of the British empire and whose post-emancipation history was to be such a tragic one. There may have been many continuities to American independence, but the political rupture it represented was a double-edged sword. m
Caught on camera Roger Moorhouse commends an investigation into a disturbing film that highlights 55 atrocities
The Nazi, the Painter and the Forgotten Story of the SS Road by GH Bennett Reaktion. 240 pages. £20
I
N 2005 A CURIOUS collection of old films was discovered in the cupboard of a church at Cullompton in Devon. Donated to a local film archive, one of the films would garner headlines worldwide and pique the interest of historian GH Bennett. The film in question was of SS men supervising their civilian and military prisoners in the building of a road in
It was to serve as an ingenious method of killing the local Jewish population
John MacKenzie is co-editor of Scotland and the British Empire roup, 201 1 ]
From a multitude of contemporary sources including maps, legal records, street directories, newspaper reports, artefacts and images (many illustrated here), Richardson brings to Life the Norfolk Street neighbourhood where the IS-year-old Dickens lived. Apart from the sights and sounds of the street, and the comings and goings at the workhouse, Dickens's writings are evoked by local residents' names, especially an oil merchant going by the name of William Sykes. Richardson's enthusiasm for her subject shines throughout this hugely engaging and informative book. m Peter Higginbotham is the author of The Workhouse Encyclopedia [History Press. 201 2]
BBe History Magazine
Walter Gieseke (pointing) was the
senior SS man in the mysterious film
the occupied Soviet Union, and Bennett turned sleuth to discover the circumstances behind it. The story he uncovered is an unusual one. The film showed Jewish and Ukrainian labourers building a road (named DGIV by the Nazis) which was intended to connect the 700 or so miles between Lviv and Donetsk across the breadth of Ukraine. Interestingly, the road was to serve a dual purpose. Firstly it was to have a logistical function, assisting occupation troops and, literally, paving the way for the planned German colonisation of Russia's traditional 'bread basket'. The second function was rather more sinister. As foreseen at the Wannsee Conference, the road-building programme was to serve as an ingenious method of killing
the local Jewish population: poor conditions and heavy labour would weaken even the strongest among them, and when they could no longer work they would simply be shot by the side of the road. It was known in Nazi parlance as "extermination through labour", and tens of thousands would die in this way on the 'ss Road'. Bennett has performed a salient service in uncovering this tale. He succeeds in naming the senior SS man in the film, Walter Gieseke, who was in charge of the nefarious project, and benefits hugely from the discovery of a Romanian survivor - the 'painter' Arnold Daghani - who left a memoir of his experiences in the camps ofDGIV. The result is an illuminating and intriguing account. If there is a criticism to be aired, it is that the book feels as though it has been padded. Bennett writes very well and the book is interesting, but there is the nagging suspicion that he has worked hard to bolster a story that was perhaps a little too thin in its original form. His decision to incorporate the process of research into his account, for example, will doubtless be of interest to some, but it is really not dramatic or enlightening enough to earn a place in the narrative as of right. Also, he is rather heavy-handed in his attempts to breathe life into Gieseke, posing too many unanswered and unanswerable questions about what his villain might have thought about what he did. For all Bennett's efforts, Gieseke remains stubbornly one-dimensional. Despite such quibbles, this is an engaging book, which should be welcomed for shedding light on a little-known chapter of the wider Holocaust. m Roger Moorhouse is the author of Berlin at War [Vintage, 201 1 ]
:>
More reviews You can read expert reviews of hundreds of recent history books on our online archive
:J www.historyextra.com/books
65
Books MAY 2012
Trials of faith Jonathan Wright believes that a new study of medieval heresy takes the right approach to a tricky subject
The War on Heresy: Faith and Power in Medieval Europe by RI Moore Profile, 4 1 6 pages, £25
T
HERE SEEMS to have been an explosion of Christian heresy in medieval Europe, but studying the phenomenon has always been devilishly tricky. Challenging questions confront historians. Was there really more heresy, or were the ecclesiastical and secular authorities simply more alert - or paranoid? Were there coherent heretical 'movements' or did those aforementioned authorities impose an artificial unity on their religious foes to make them appear more menacing? Finally, and this is perhaps the greatest hurdle, how is the historian to approach the scant and usually biased sources? Almost all the important accounts were penned by hostile witnesses and often at some chronological distance from the heretical events in question. It is an interpretative minefield but Robert Moore has been treading carefully through it for many decades. His latest book is as good, and as provocative, as anything he has produced. The crucial message is that we should not take anything for granted. When
There were at least as many dreamed-up bogeymen as genuine heresiarchs analysing a medieval heresy we should look closely at the surviving textual evidence. When was it written? Why was it written? Such painstaking examination reveals a befuddling historical landscape. The identification and condemnation of heresy was primarily a theological pursuit but it was frequently influenced by political and intellectual rivalries. The difference between acceptable and disruptive 66
ufrf ll A group of Knights Templar burn at the stake in a 1 4th-century depiction. Heresy was one ofthe
charges levelled against the organisation
religious behaviour was often in the eye of the beholder or defined by historical happenstance. Most importantly of all, we should be sceptical of neat and tidy terms and definitions. Everyone, for instance, has heard of the Cathars but we should recognise that the individuals involved had divergent views. There is a huge risk of replacing the historical reality with a convenient construct. This made good strategic sense to medieval inquisitors but 21 st-century historians should be wary of following suit. There is a clear and admirable historiographical agenda at the heart of this book. Moore wants historians to improve their methodology and, winningly, he does not exempt his own earlier writings from criticism. The book is much more than a sermon, however. It is also one of the finest accounts of medieval heresy that you are likely to encounter. All of the famous (and not so famous) heretical figures are here, the emergence of inquisitorial tribunals is neatly explained, and the broader socio-economic context is explored. Many of the riddles of medieval heresy will never be solved because we lack sufficient evidence but Moore's book brings us closer to an unachievable goal: explaining why something very odd happened in Christendom between the 12th and 14th centuries. We can dismiss many of the contemporary
conspiracy theories about an organised, continent-wide heretical threat. There were at least as many dreamed-up bogeymen as genuine heresiarchs. But, with all caveats considered, we still have to recognise that religious dissent spiralled during this period. What were the causes? The contenders include anxiety in a rapidly changing world, a genuine quest to return to apostolic purity, grumblings about stalled efforts at church reform, and a high incidence of unique religious odysseys. There were brutish heretical demagogues who took advantage of the situation and well-intentioned spiritual seekers who were tarred with the heretical brush. If we add the difference between actual heresy and the self serving fantasies of lofty medieval heresy-bashers to the mix, the result is quite a muddle. Overarching interpretations are very tempting. Moore has not always resisted the temptation but here he encourages us to pull the texts apart and ask specific questions beginning with words like what, why and when. That's a very good idea and one that serves to enhance Moore's status as one of the finest historians of medieval heresy. m Jonathan Wright is the author of Heretics: The Creation of Christianity from the Gnostics to the Modern Church IHoughton M ifflin
Harcourt, 201 1 J BBe H istory Magazine
""
.<:<,
/�0� ·
.
.
�
READER BOOK CLUB
. . .
(;afUst erl ) L e g e nda ry p h a rao h � .
•
•
...� ... .�. /)�
�
. . . --R 80O .
.
. . • . . . . . .
¢'.:
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
We asked a g ro u p of BBC History Magazine readers to rea d Tutankhamen s
Curse a n d put their q u estions to its a u t h o r, Joyce Tyldesley [pict u red below! '
H e re's what they had to say" ,
-<> Why did the sinister side of
Tutankhamen's legend (his
murder, the curse) take such a hold on the public's imagination? G illia n J a c k, E d i n b urgh
Tutankhamen's CW'Se: The Developing HistolY of an Egyptian King by Joyce Tyldesley P rof ile, 336 pages, £1 8.99 N i netyyears after Howard Carter a n d his team uncovered the opulent grave of Tuta nkhamen, Joyce Tyldesley explores the story of the
Joyce says: The development of the Tutankhamen myth, with all its sinister aspects, has a great deal to do with the time the tomb was discovered. In 1922 the world had been devastated by war and influenza. There was naturally an interest in the occult, and it seemed almost inconceivable that a young man could simply die: surely there had to be a reason? Once these theories had taken root, they became associated with conspiracy theories, and grew and grew, fed by the media attention that focused on the tomb, its contents and its excavators.
that surround h i m . She reveaLs what we know about his short
-<> How many pharaohs' tombs
occur on a regular basis so, while it was a hazard, it was not a serious enough threat to stop the early 18th-dynasty kings from using the valley for their burials Apart from the flooding, the valley suited their purpose well: it was remote (therefore less likely to attract robbers), it was relatively close to the great state temple of Amen, and the Theban mountain formed a natural peak or pyramid above the tombs. Once the valley had become established as the royal cemetery, subsequent kings wished to be buried near their revered ancestors, and so were prepared to overlook the risk of flooding.
a c u Lt u ra L icon.
Kingdom pharaohs - the kings who were buried in the Valley of the Kings - either have a known tomb or mummy. But there are other kings who have not been discovered, such as some later kings whom we know were buried in the temples of northern Egypt. And we still have a number of fairly prominent queens missing, too. I think it is possible that we may find some of
trouble to bury their dead. So how can they, in all consciousness, have robbed the tombs?
Josee BeLang er, Que bec
Joyce says: The Egyptians
had differing education and experiences, just as we do today. It would be wrong to imagine they all had the same understanding of, and respect for, their society and its official religion. There were those who were pious and those who were not; those who were law abiding and those who were not. Those who robbed elite graves either did not understand the theology underpinning the funerary traditions, or were too poor or too greedy to care. -<> Did any of the early Egyptian . excavators' get near to modern
requirements? Joyce says: Flooding does not
Joyce says: Most of the New
research fellow at the University of Liverpool
bury their kings there?
are undiscovered, and why is this?
Life and examines the reasons
-<> Egyptians went through great
Valley of the Kings, why did they
ZeLda C u lley, WiLts h i re
why Tutankhamen became
Joyce Tyldesley is an honorary
-<> If the ancient Egyptians knew
about the flash flooding of the
Josee BeLanger, Qu ebec
worLd's best-known pharaoh, Looking beyond the myths
the missing queens in or near the Valley of the Kings. It is less likely that we will find the kings who were buried in the north, as these sites are prone to damp and this affects the archaeology badly. Our approach to discovering tombs is different to that of a century ago. Egyptologists now question the ethics of seeking out, opening and destroying graves. Rather than focusing on death, we are interested in the life of the ancient Egyptians. Excavations at dwelling sites, temples and fortresses are providing much needed, and previously overlooked, information.
" I t see med a lmost i n con ceiva b le that a yo u n g m a n co u ld s i m p ly d i e"
I a n Wise m a n , Port u g a L
Joyce says: It is an evolving
science: today excavators recognise this by leaving patches of sites unexcavated, for the investigators of the future. None of the earlier 20th-century excavators came close to our standards - they did not have the training nor access to the tools and methodologies we use today. Carter was far better than many of his contemporaries, so we have to be grateful that he discovered Tutankhamen and not someone else. Because of his recognition that he needed to assemble the best excavation team available, and his determination not to be hurried in his work, I admire Howard Carter. m
Book club Read more from this and other book club interviews on our online archive
::J
www.historyextra.com/book-club
69
Books MAY 2012
Digital revolutions Patricia Fara reads a personality-driven account of the mid-20th-century computer revolution
Turing's Cathedral: The Origins of the Digital Universe By George Dyson Allen Lane, 402 pages, £25
T
HE CHAMPION of George Dyson's melodramatic history is not Alan Turing but the Hungarian mathematician John von Neumann, portrayed here as a lovable eccentric genius who founded the digital age by building the world's first computer with high-speed random-access storage (and if that leaves you gasping, you could do no better than turn to Turing's Cathedral for a lucid explanation). On arriving at Los Alamos to work on the atomic bomb, von Neumann reported to his wife that "computers are, as you suspected, quite in demand here". He was referring not to cupboards full of wiring, but to physicists' wives, recruited for their deft handling of desk calculators. By 1 953, ten years later and in Princeton, he had engineered MANIAC (Dyson provides a full translation), the programmable Turing himseU computer whose first is allocated only task was a 60-day calculation of 20 pages thermonuclear reactions. Depending on your point of view, von Neumann was either the villain responsible for the hydrogen bomb or the hero who helped the United States win the Cold War. Packed with anecdotes and character sketches, Turing's Cathedral provides a fascinating and unusual perspective on computer development in the United States. Rather than discussing the introduction of stored-program computers in isolation, Dyson explores how their history is intertwined with those of two other postwar innovations: 70
John von Neumann !right! stands with J Robert Oppenheimer in front of the latest example of computer technology. 1 952
thermonuclear weapons and the double helix structure of DNA. Turing himself is allocated only 20 pages, but he has made it to the front cover because 2012 is the centenary of his birth. In Dyson's curious religious imagery, Turing was the key intermediary between 'Old Testament' binary prophets (such as Gottfried Leibniz) and those of the 'New Testament: whose leader was von Neumann. The book ends with the discovery of Dyson's 'Dead Sea Scrolls' -handwritten sheets of numerical code specifYing the behaviour of self-propagating digital organisms, the ancestors of computer viruses. In contrast, Turing himself turned away from Christianity after his closest friend died as a teenager. Later on, his theoretical constructions of a machine that can think paralleled attempts by materialist biologists to create life from inanimate chemicals. Although well-concealed, perhaps the true subject of this book is its author, who is the son of the Princeton mathematician Freeman Dyson. The title of the first chapter is ' 1953', which happens to be the year of George Dyson's birth. At the age of
16, he fled from New Jersey's academic hothouse to dwell in a Canadian tree-house and indulge his passion for kayaking, but as a child, he presumably met or at least heard about many of the characters featured here. Their personal stories, often going back to immigrations a couple of generations earlier, feature prominently in Dyson's account. His father materialises towards the end, publicly fulminating in 1970 against the vengeful 'snobs' who dismantled his computer group after von Neumann died - perhaps a leitmotif that had long accompanied family meals in the Dyson household. Turing predicted that by the end of the 20th century, the notion that computers think would be commonplace. But rather than computers becoming like humans, we have adapted ourselves to suit them, obediently waiting while they update their settings, priding ourselves on circumventing their restrictions, and retreating into virtual realms when reality becomes too hard to cope with. m Dr Patricia Fara is the author of Science: A Four Thousand Year History [OUP, 2009)
BBe History Magazine
Paperbacks The Fighting Irish: The Story of the Extraordinary Irish Soldier by Tim Newark Constable, 288 pages, £1 4.99
THE STORY of the Irish soldier overseas has seldom received the attention it merits. The new Irish state was uncomfortable with the notion of its citizens fighting (as they so frequently did) under a British flag; and this particular historical neglect is only now being remedied. For this reason, Tim Newark's Th e Fighting Irish is to be welcomed, exploring as it does frequently overlooked - and often truly startling and dramatic personal narratives. To the tales of the regi ments of 'Wild Geese' (Irish mercenaries) who fought for Catholic Europe and of Queen Victoria's 'invisible army' ofIrish soldiers, Newark adds other stories. Among these are the Irish fighters whose 1828 mutiny threatened the security of
the infant Brazilian state; the San Patricios who in 1847 fought for Mexico against the United States; and other intriguing vignettes from Canada to Congo to contemporary Afghanistan. Newark has highlighted a giddying range of historical experience, to impressive effect. Neil Hegarty is the author of Story of Ireland (BBC Books, 201 1 )
Hero: The Life and Legend of Lawrence of Arabia by Michael Korda Aurum Press, 784 pages, £1 2.99
THIS BOOK is monumental in every sense, the hardback weighing so much that you risk straining your wrist when reading it. Now out in paperback, however, it should be read by anyone interested in TE Lawrence, the Middle East, British imperialism, confusion over sexual identity, the lure and perils of fame, and that sometimes elusive persona the 'English eccentric'. The book has many virtues. Among the chief of these are its clarity and readability, its determination to leave no investigative stone unturned and the extraordinarily thorough research that has gone into its writing. Although such predictions are inevitably a hostage to fortune, it seems to me to richly deserve the description of 'definitive'. The paradoxes and confusions of Lawrence's character are manifold: the fearless military leader who achieved
international fame and the shy, retiring, private person behind the headlines; the sexual puritan and the man for whom masochism sometimes brought sexual pleasure; the brilliant writer, diplomat and media personality who reinvented himself as the apparently mundane Aircraftman Shaw. Korda also reminds us of how the Middle East might have developed had Lawrence's proposals won favour with Churchill, colonial secretary in 192 1. Briefly, they included a greatly enlarged Syria stretching from the Mediterranean to the Persian Gulf, independent Kurdish and Armenian states, a smaller Lebanon and a carefully ring-fenced Palestine. For better or worse? Alas, there are no answers to that. DenisJudd's Empire: The British Imperial Experience from 7 765 to the Present has just been published in a
revised paperback by IB Tauris
Power Games: Ritual and Rivalry at the Ancient Greek Olympics by David Stuttard British Museum, 240 pages, £9,99
remainder of the fifth century, as well as a chapter on the changing nature of the games through to the sanctuary's destruction in the fifth century AD. Stuttard's writing is immensely readable and engaging. Empathetic descriptions of the - often rather unpleasant - conditions for spectators and competitors are interspersed with clear factual descriptions of the site and the events, as well as interludes of telescoped history from before and after 416 BC which help to contextualise and explain the events themselves. However, Stuttard misses a trick not to describe in more detail the victory statues that were there, and seems to shy away from issues such as athletes tying up their penises 'infibulation' - before races. Running through this narrative is the key point that the Olympic Games, while centred around athletic competition, actually spent much time on other things (religious sacrifice and banqueting), as well as providing occasion for a whole host of trades and political manoeuvring. The book comes also with a decent timeline, glossary, who's who and maps. It is definitely worth a read as an introduction to the ancient games. Michael C Scott, Darwin College, Cambridge. www. michaelcscottcom
IT HAS become fashionable in this Olympic year to highlight not so much the similarities between the ancient and modern Olympic games, but rather the vast differences. Stuttard's book seeks also to underline those differences. Yet the approach he takes here is enjoyably different. The book focuses on a single Olympics - 4 16 BC - and takes the reader on a vibrant re-creation of the lead-up to the games, followed by an account of the events, celebrations and banquets on each day of the festival. It finishes with a shorter look at the political situation in Greece in the
mstoryextra.com Reader book dub Would you like to join the BBC History Magazine reader
book clu b? Find out more details on our website
:l
www.historyextra.com/ book-club
More Reviews You can read book reviews from previous issues on our website, going back as far as May 2009 this service is free. Reviews a re organised by topic so you can browse all the latest books in �ur favourite subject or period
;J
www.historyextra.com/ books
71
Books MAY 2012 HISTORICAL FICTION
Majesty on show Nick Rennison enjoys a fictional account of the Russian imperial court as Catherine the Great rises to prominence
The Winter Palace by Eva Stachniak Doubleday, 464 pages, £ 1 2,99
IN 1 743, a young girl named Varvara begins work in the imperial household in St Petersburg. Recruited by the devious grand chancellor of the Russian empire, she becomes one of his spies at court. Still only in her teens, she learns early that, in the Winter Palace, life is a game in which all are cheating. Everyone watches everyone else. No one is ever truly alone in a place where hidden passages run behind We see the the walls of every room, humiliations and no secret can be permanently kept. of her dismal The next year, another teenager, even younger than marriage Varvara, arrives in court. She is a princess from a German principality who has been chosen by the formidable Empress Elizabeth to wed her nephew and heir. She is the girl who will grow up to become Catherine the Great. Through Varvara's eyes, we witness the next 1 8, difficult years of
Catherine's life. We see the humiliations of her dismal marriage to Peter, a fool and a drunkard who does little to hide his contempt for the wife forced upon him, and openly favours his mistress. Catherine, in her turn, takes lovers. Handsome guardsmen share her bed, their existence ignored publicly but tacitly acknowledged in private. Her children by them are taken from her and passed off as legitimate additions to the imperial family. Meanwhile, the relentless scheming and jostling for position in St Petersburg continues. War, or the prospect of it, with Frederick the Great's Prussia heightens the tensions in the city. In and out of
Adventures at 18th-century courts Ingenious Pain by Andrew Miller (1997)
IN ANDREW M I LLER'S memorable and prize-winning novel, James Dyer is a man born with a freakish inabi lity to feel pain and love, While travelling to Russia to treat Catherine the Great, Dyer encounters a witch-woman with supernatural powers whose g ift of a 'heart' finally i ntroduces him to the difficult realities of human emotions and the world of feeling,
72
favour with the capricious Elizabeth, Catherine must steer her path through the endless dangers and temptations of the court and, when Elizabeth dies and Peter succeeds her, she has to face her greatest challenge of all. Stachniak's novel provides a riveting reconstruction of a crucial era in Russian history. The Win ter Palace shows iconic figures of the period as real people, struggling for the fleeting pleasures of love and power in a perilous world of smoke and mirrors where nothing and no one can be fully trusted. m Nick Rennison is author of 1 00 Must-Read Historical Novels [A&C Black, 2009J
The Visit of the Royal Physician Per Olov Enquist
Dancing with Kings by Eva Stachniak
(2001)
(2006)
AT THE COURT of Ch ristian VII, the mad king of Denmark, two worlds collide in the clash between the enlightened court physician Johann Friedrich Struensee, and his g reat enemy, the reactionary Guld berg, When Struensee becomes the lover of Christian's neglected queen, Guldberg sees an opportun ity to destroy both his opponent and the reforms he has championed,
THE FLAWED but compelling heroine of Eva Stachniak's earlier novel is the 1 8th-century courtesan known as La Belle Phanariote, Sophie Glavini beg ins her life in a small town near Mount Olympus and ends it as the Cou ntess Potocka in a palace in Berlin, Her journey from fallen woman to mistress to the king of Poland is recreated in vivid detail.
BBC
H i story Magazine
MAY 2012
Jonathan Wright previews what's coming u p on your TVs and radios
Our Secret Streets
II
BBC Two
I
N 1886, PHILANTHROPIST Charles Booth began a project that would take until 1 903 to complete, a survey of social conditions in London. Published as Life and Labour of the People in London, it now provides us with a fascinating, if rather overwhelming, picture of life in the capital on the cusp of the 1 9th and 20th centuries. To illustrate the conditions in different areas, Booth used a system of'poverty maps', with individual streets colour-coded to show conditions in the locale. Unlucky was any honest citizen who lived in a street marked in black, where the "vicious, semi-criminal" classes resided. Fast forward more than a century and how much has changed? While it's clear few if any Londoners live in such abject conditions as some of their Victorian predecessors, are streets that were once poor now gentrified? Have some areas gone into decline? These are the kinds of questions tackled by Our Secret Streets, a series that grapples with the enormous amount of information that Booth and his researchers generated by looking at six streets. According to Joseph Bullman, who came up with the idea for the series, this isn't the narrow approach it might at first appear. "What you realise is that as you [drill down] , the story gets more detailed and more specific and more individual, but great big social forces are clearly intruding on what happens to the street, to people," he says. While Bullman says the production team had few preconceptions about what they SSG
History Magazine
COMFORTABLE
POOR & COMFORTABLE \ MIXEDj
POOR
V E RY P O O R
SEMI- CRIMINA� L�u. � _ ". _ "
Capital changes Joseph Bullman tells us about a series looking at how London has changed over the past century might find when they started out, stories and themes began to emerge through their research. Explaining how this worked, Bullman cites the show on Deptford High Street, a location chosen simply because the team wanted to investigate "a trading street that wasn't wealthy". This developed into a far wider story about the effect of post Second World War slum clearances on London's working classes. It was an era when whole terraces running off Deptford High Street were demolished. In their place, modernist tower blocks sprang up. Despite the grand dreams of planners who thought of the city as a vast machine that needed to
be made more efficient, the effect was to destroy local communities. Extended families that once lived next door to each other were "thrust out" to London's periphery, places such as the Medway towns of Kent.
IIPeople did live in commwlities and they were genuinely happy" 'Tm not saying these communities were beautiful, I'm not saying they were wealthy, I'm not saying there wasn't an amount of abuse and drink;' says Bullman, "but people did live in
�����
1----', .u.:.... ao.._........ ....-J.II ... ""'
communities and they were genuinely happy." Our Secret Streets is part of a London Season on the BBC. Other highlights include A Picture of London (BBC Two), which draws on visual records of the capital to show how it's changed down the years. The three-part Punk Britannia (BBC Four) heads back to the middle of the 1 970s, when the amphetamine-fuelled rock of the Sex Pistols, the Clash and the Damned transformed Britain's cultural landscape. Jools on London Songs
(BBC Two) finds Jools Holland tracing the capital's history through music associated with the city. In Tale of Two Cities (BBC Four), Dan Cruickshank looks at London's history through the tumultuous years of the 1 7th century. In This Is London (BBC Two) Julien Temple focuses on the 20th century in a documentary described as a "love-letter" to the city the director calls home. > � Scheduledfor May 75
TV&Radio
The Bard's world Shakespeare takes centre stage in a season celebrating his genius for capturing the human condition
Shakespeare Season BBC
W
Shakespeare Special (BBC One) finds Fiona Bruce and the crew welcoming visitors to Charlecote Park near Stratford-upon-Avon, an estate where it's reputed Shakespeare was once caught poaching deer. Expect fine Elizabethan furniture. For QI: Immortal Bard (BBC Two), Stephen Fry pits such questions as, "When David Tennant played Hamlet at the RSC, what did Tchaikovsky play?" to Sue Perkins, Bill Bailey, David Mitchell and Alan Davies.
HEN SHAKESPEARE needed inspiration, he didn't just cast around in Britain for ideas. As Francesco da Mosto explores in Shakespeare in Italy (BBC Two), the Bard often looked south for stories and settings. Think of Juliet's balcony in Verona, Desdemona's bedchamber The King and the Playwright: A Jacobean in Venice or Caesar in all his pomp walking the History (BBC Four), previewed last issue, streets of Rome. continues into May. His influence As part of the BBe's Shakespeare also makes plenty of appearances on radio continuing Shakespeare Season, can be fOWld - most notably the 20-part which has the theme of how one man captured all it is to be in Italy's cities Shakespeare's Restless human, da Mosto explores how World (Radio 4), which continues into May. The series, briefly Shakespeare often used Italian settings previewed last issue, finds the British as a cover for making politically charged Museum's director, Neil MacGregor, focusing observations about Elizabethan London. on objects from Shakespeare's time, and In the two-part series, da Mosto also looks asking what they tell us about the era. at how Italy's theatrical tradition influenced Radio 3, meantime, explores the theme of Shakespeare and how, in turn, the Bard's influence can still be found in Italy today. Shakespeare and love, with Drama on 3 performances of TweUth Night and Similarly looking at Shakespeare's influence Romeo and Juliet. For The Essay : abroad, Shakespeare, India and Me (BBC Two) finds Felicity Kendal revisiting her Shakespeare and Love, five writers own past. As the daughter of parents who ran a reflect on Shakespeare's depictions theatre company, Shakespeareana, Kendal of love. There's a new production of The Tempest too. toured India following the Second World War. In the 21st century, Kendal returns to the � Scheduled for late April and May, with subcontinent to trace the story of India's more programmes, including Simon Schama's abiding fascination with the work of the Bard. Shakespeare and Us (BBe Two), to follow Closer to home, the Antiques Roadshow in June
76
Everyman's Britain Great British Story : A People's History BBC Two
HISTORIAN MICHAEL WOOD explores the history of the nation without focusing on ruling elites. The eight-part Great British Story, which draws heavily on material in local archives and museums, looks at how great events affected ordinary people down the centuries. The series also makes a virtue of getting away from the capital as it seeks to create "a communal 'national' project" that involves communities from all over the UK. Accordingly, Wood looks for the roots of British identity in locations such as the Cornish coast and the Scottish Highlands. � Scheduled for May Read o u r feature on page 34
Happy and glorious ... Trevor McDonald's Queen and Country
II
History
LEST IT'S ESCAPED your attention, it's diamond jubilee year. Marking Elizabeth II's six decades on the throne, Sir Trevor McDonald looks back at a reign that began when Britain was only just beginning to emerge from post-Second World War austerity. It's in great part the story of how the Queen has updated a key institution so that, in McDonald's words, she "has made the monarchy a much more solid institution than we ever thought it could be". The series also promises 3D footage, available via the Sky 3D channel, for those who have the necessary TV technology. � Scheduled for Sunday 1 3 May
of Buckingham Palace
ALSO LOOK OUT FOR ... New York {PBS, weeknights from Monday 21 Mayl tells the remarkable story of a city founded i n the 1 7th century as a trading post. Also on PBS, look out for a Wild West Week. This includes Remember the Alamo {Friday 18 Mayl, which i n part tells the story of the 4,000 'Tejanos', o r Mexican-Texa ns, who chose to stand with their Anglo n e i g h bours at a time when Texas was disputed ground ruled by Mexico.
Houdini {PBS, Wednesday 9 Mayl
profiles a man still regarded as the
Mob stories Mafia's Greatest Hits
II
Yesterday
T
HE TITLE may be tasteless, but here's a 13-part series that explores the history of organised crime in the USA. In part, it's the tale of how five families based in New York - the Gambino, Lucchese, Genovese, Bonanno and Columbo clans - spread their influence. This occurred right under the noses of the American authorities, which were late to pick up on the danger the families posed. How to combat such secretive organisations? One answer lay in the
world's greatest
undercover work of men such as FBI agent Joe Pistone, whose story was immortalised in the movie Donnie Braseo. Pistone spent six years undercover as a jewel thief, working his way up through the ranks of the Bonanno family. His testimony helped the police to make 235 convictions and even today he lives under police protection. Other episodes explore how the Mafia insinuated itself into Hollywood's hierarchy and even the White House. Frank Sinatra, the series contends, acted as a middle man between the Mob and the Kennedys. The series also profiles Mafia leaders, ruthless men such as Charlie 'Lucky' Luciano, who knew AI Capone and is generally considered the father of modern organised crime in the USA. � Scheduled for Friday 18 May
escape artist. Does the Mona Lisa contain a secret message from Leonardo da Vinci? H m m . Anyway
Ancient X-Files {National Geographic, Tuesday 1 Mayl investigates historical mysteries. Over on M i litary History, there's a welcome re-run for the BBC drama Hitler on Trial {Sunday 20 May/. Yesterday also has a strong li n e - u p of shows that have p reviously been shown on the B BC . For Filthy Cities {Tuesday 1 Mayl, Dan Snow gets h is hands d i rty i n u npleasant ways as he looks at how Londoners, Parisians and
Plane remains
New Yo rkers have contended with disposing of waste and kee p i n g the streets clean.
War Digs with Harry Harris
In The Queen's Palaces {Monday 14 Mayl,
Discovery History
Fiona Bruce gets the run of the official roya l resi dences, Buckingham Palace, Windsor
B
OTH BRITAIN and continental Europe are dotted with aeroplane crash sites that date from the Second World War. While some of these locations have been excavated, many others have inevitably remained unexplored. What relics might still be found? It's often amateurs that explore such sites, enthusiasts such as the quintet featured in this new series presented by former London cabbie Harry Harris (Wartime Secrets and Wartime London). Each of the programmes follows the five men as they hunt for the remains of downed aeroplanes to add to the Spitfires, Hurricanes, Messerschmitts and Junkers they've already rediscovered. In the first episode, Harris meets 89-year old RAP veteran Dennis Brown, who had to
B B C History Magazine
Castle and the Palace of H o lyroodhouse.
Operation Mincemeat {Wednesday 16 Mayl is the wonderfully i m probable tale of how British intelligence set out to fool the Nazis over where the Allies planned to land i n southern E u rope. As Ben Maci ntyre reveals,
jump from his stricken bomber 67 years ago. He was the only member of his crew not to be killed or taken prisoner, evading capture with the help of the French resistance. All these years later, can the team find the spot where Brown's aeroplane hit the ground? The programme also features an interview with Irma Caldow (96), who fought the Nazis as part of the Belgian resistance, and whose dangerous work included helping downed airmen make it back to Britain. � Scheduledfor Sunday 13 May
it was a scheme that relied on ingenuity, daring and the corpse of a tramp.
TV and radio highlights
Keep up to date with all the latest history
program mes on TV and radio by signing up
now for our weekly newsletter, We'll send you news of the best history shows direct to your inbox every Friday.
:J www. historyextra.com/newsletter 77
UDDISM, A PROTEST movement that arose from the textile trade in Britain 200 years ago, first emerged during 1 8 1 1, in the Midlands, as a reaction to the replacement of skilled craftsmen with new labour-saving technology. A pattern of public petitioning quickly emerged, which was followed by machine breaking and violence across Britain's main textile areas Yorkshire, Nottinghamshire and Lancashire as discontented craftsmen attacked the men and the factories that they deemed to be 'illegally' stealing their livelihoods. Richard Jones, a research student in economic and financial history at the University of Cambridge, says: "The word Luddite has now entered everyday usage to describe those who dislike technology, oppose innovation or who are generally resistant to change. In my opinion, however, this is a misreading of the original Luddite motivation.
L
78
"Luddites were motivated by a desire to protect the status quo of their established skilled trades and their positions within those trades. These workers served an arduous and demanding seven-year apprenticeship at the start of their careers. They saw their part of the industry, requiring their specific skills, as their livelihood, and one which they would expect to hold for the rest of their lives. When machinery displaced them, they naturally reacted very strongly." The movement took its name from the mythical figure of General Ned Ludd. Ludd's name was used in conjunction with many of the attacks on factories and machinery, particularly in the Midlands, and he emerged as a figurehead for the entire movement. "Ned Ludd is key to understanding the cultural longevity of the movement;' says Jones. "He was also at the centre of Luddite attempts to claim the legal high ground by drafting lawsuits and petitions - signed by
General Ludd or his 'solicitors' - and then presenting them to factory owners. This practice distinguished the uprising from other types of industrial unrest during the period:' The Luddite movement (such as it was a single movement) was neither large nor widespread. In fact, Jones believes that less than 2,000 people were involved nationwide, with probably only around 200 committed Luddites active in each of the three regions. The government's response to the threat, therefore, is all the more surprising. It deployed huge numbers of troops to put down the movement, and empowered local magistrates to recruit and retain large numbers of special constables, together with the militia. Says Jones: "The authorities greatly feared the Luddite uprisings. The government took various steps in London to try and quell the unrest, with one particularly important provision, the Frame Breaking Act of February 18 1 2, making a specific criminal offence BBe
History Magazine
out of attacking textile technology. In fact, evidence shows that more troops were deployed to these industrial areas than were given to Wellington to fight the Peninsular campaign against Napoleon!" Worried that more people might join them, but also anxious that the Luddites' desire to preserve their own status quo by committing acts of violence could threaten the existing status quo, the government set up a number of special commissions across the country to try those involved with the violence. "Punishment, however, was rather piecemeal," claims Jones, "and, considering the initial government response, was at times a damp squib." In Nottinghamshire, for example, at a trial in the assizes of March 1812, only nine Luddites were convicted - specifically for charges of frame breaking. Their punishment was transportation. In other areas, the special commissions were also used to clear a backlog of more general crimes. BBe
H i story Magazine
a lack of sympathy among the wider public. The Luddites were always destined to fail, argues Jones, who believes the uprisings had Despite this, concludes Jones, Luddism does ceased to be a major issue as early as May 1 8 1 2 have a legacy. "Although the Luddites may have - months before trials at York Castle in January ultimately failed;' he says, "the movement was, 1 8 1 3 after which 17 Luddites were executed. in my opinion, a precursor to the trade union "The distances between the various Luddite movements. It should not be seen simply as part of the sweep of English radical history groups - who, incidentally, never joined forces - something that others have come - together with a lack of overall leadership and dangerously close to suggesting. an influx of government troops to the areas affected, all contributed to the failure of the "The movement was ferociously movement to achieve its objectives. conservative in its desire to protect the customs and established practice of the textile industry, "What's more, the Luddites did not appear to have the backing of the people. Government as well as the social and economic position of acts making attacks on machinery a criminal textile workers." offence would no doubt have dissuaded many from actively supporting the movement, while Words: Charlotte Hodgman. Historical advisor: a fall in prices for industrially produced textiles Richard Jones, research student on municipal : finance and government in 19th-century Britain at would have made products cheaper for the . everyday worker. Technology had its benefits." the University ofCambridge New technology had already replaced many unskilled workers in the decades leading up to � Turn the page to discover eight places the Luddite uprisings. This may also have led to associated with Luddism 79
Out
About Where history happened LUDDITES
1 Sherwood Forest
NOTTINGHAMSHIRE
Where the mythical General Ludd had his headquarters SHERWOOD FOREST provided the Luddites with a place from which individuals and groups of Luddites could send letters to factory owners and authorities, and issue public petitions and addresses. These docu ments, which were usually signed by, or on behalf of the mythical General Ludd, adopted a legal persona that can be traced back to the various legal protections trades had p reviously enjoyed. ·What this seemed to be,"· says Jones, ··was a
constitutional attempt on behalf of the Luddites to resolve their issues without resorting to violence. When this failed, attacks on factories and local industrialists became more common. One of the most famous documents issued by the Luddites was the Declaration of the Framework Knitters, dated 1 January 1 8 1 2 and signed by General Ludd, Sherwood Forest. Says Jones: ··It is unclear how well known a figure Robin Hood was at the time, but it is hard not
to draw comparisons: the connotation that these were victims of changing circumstances standing u p for what they thought was right is defi nitely there. Given the proximity of Sherwood Forest to Nottingham, we can be confident that some Luddites, at some stage at least, moved through the area:· Sherwood Forest Country Park is open 364 days a year. m
08449 808080
� www3.nottinghamshire.gov.uk
1 Sherwood Forest,
Nottinghamshire
2 Dumb Steeple, Mirfield, West Yorkshire
3 Middleton, Rochdale, Greater Manchester
4 Higher Hillgate Street, Stockport
5 Milnsbridge House,
Huddersfield, West Yorkshire
6 Palace of Westminster, London 7 Chester Castle, Cheshire 8 York Castle, York
80
"
>
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
2 Dumb Steeple, Mirfield WEST YORKSHIRE Where a group of Luddites gathered before an attack on Rawfolds Mill TH E ATIACK on Rawfolds M i ll on 1 2 April 1 8 1 2 was the most serious example o f violence against industrialists in Yorkshire during the period. Interestingly the attack was not specifically directed at machinery, but instead at a water mill that provided the power to drive the machines that had replaced the skilled craftsmen. The mill and factory were owned by William Cartwright, widely thought of among local craftsmen as a contemptuous and dangerous individual who was infamous for his lack of empathy with the plight of the workers his machines had replaced. Anticipating an attack on his factory, Cartwright fortified the building, reinforcing the door and employing armed guards. On the night of the attack, five members of the Cumberland
militia were also present. Faced with such defences, the 1 00 or so Luddites who launched an assault on the factory were unable to even break down the door, let alone destroy any machinery inside. Some 1 40 shots were fired at the invading party, killing two and injuring others. ··The Luddites· failure at Rawfolds M i ll led to the almost immediate failure of Luddism in Yorkshire,"· says Jones. Nothing now remains of Rawfolds Mill, but the Dumb Steeple, a local landmark where the Luddite forces congregated before their attack on the mill, still stands. � www visityorkshire. co.uk
BBe
History Magazine
:l
<{
4 Higher Hillgate Street, Stockport GREATER MANCHESTER
Where Radcliffe's Mill was once a hive of industrialisation
3 Middleton, Rochdale
GREATER MANCHESTER
Where Lancashire experienced its most significant Luddite attack LANCASH I RE, KNOWN for its thriving cotton i ndustry during the period, experienced its most serious Luddite attack over two days in April 1 8 1 2 after a raucous public meeting at Middleton market resulted in five people being shot. Although the mob soon dispersed, the following day saw around 200 people return to the site a nd set fire to the nearby Burton M i ll and the adjacent house. " Rumours in the county at the time whispered that an agent provocateur had been used by the local magistrate to stir the mob up in order to justify harsh responses to the
Luddite uprisings," says Jones. "However, the exact circu mstances remain unclear." Middleton was also home to the radical writer Samuel Bamford, who published much about industrial change during the 1 9th century, d rawing on his own life in the town. A memorial obelisk to Samuel Bamford was unveiled at Middleton cemetery in October 1 877, where he is buried, and a garden and plaque mark the site of his former house. m
0871 222 8223 � WVM'.visitrochdale.com
Frame breakers smashing a loom, 1 8 1 2
ON 2 0 MARCH 1 81 2 the Luddites launched an attack on the warehouse of weaver William Radcliffe, one of the first manufacturers to use the power-loom - a machine that reduced the need for skilled handweavers. Around 500 people are said to have gathered outside Radcliffe's factory, sited on H igher Hillgate Street, smash ing windows and attempting to burn the building down. A letter addressed to Radcliffe from the "solicitor to General Ludd" and sent prior to the attack warned the factory owner that he "may Expect General Ludd, and his well organised Army to Levy it [his property] with all Destruction possible". Like many other factory owners of the day, Radcliffe held little sympathy for the workers, as a letter he wrote after the attack shows: " Every proper attention has been paid to the d istresses of the weavers and measures taken for their alleviation - I did not expect gratitude neither could I anticipate violence." Higher H i llgate Street stretches about three-quarters of a mile south from Stockport town centre and was once the main road through the town. The road is still there, although Radcliffe's Mill no longer stands. � WVM'. visit stockport. com
A period drawing of William Cartwright's Rawfolds Mill,
SSG
History Magazine
which faced a Luddite attack in April 1 8 1 2
Out
About Where history happened LUDDITES
5 Milnsbridge House, Huddersfield WEST YORKSHIRE
Where anti-Luddite magistrate Joseph Radcliffe lived BELOW: The 1 8th-century Milnsbridge House, former home of anti-Luddite magistrate Joseph Radcliffe, in 1 829
ANOTH ER I N D USTRIALIST well known for being unsympathetic to unemployed textile workers was William Horsfall. Jones believes that Luddites targeted him for this very reason. Horsfall was riding home from Huddersfield's Warren House I nn, where he had stopped for a drink, when four men dressed in dark clothing attacked him. Horsfall was shot, but remained alive long enough to be taken back to the Warren House I n n for treatment, before succumbing to his wound two days later. George Mellor, Thomas Smith and William Thorpe were hanged on 8 January 1 81 3 at York Castle after being found guilty of Horsfall's murder. Benjamin Walker gave evidence against them and escaped punishment. Visitors to Huddersfield today can still see Milnsbridge House, which was once home to the notoriously anti-Luddite magistrate Sir Joseph Radcliffe who helped track down many of those accused of Luddism in Yorkshire. m
RIGHT: Milnsbridge House today
0 1 646 651 782 � www visithuddersfield.org
6 Palace of Westminster
The Palace of Westminster is one of London's most famous landmarks
LONDON
Where Spencer Perceval was assassinated "THE ATMOSPHERE in Britain during the early 1 9th century was highly charged," says Jones, "a mood not helped by the war with Napoleon and, in the aftermath of the French revolution, fears of an insurrectionary threat that, it was thought, could rear its head at any moment." It is therefore not surprising that Luddism was viewed with a certain amount of hyperbole and hysteria, and that the movement was blamed for a number of incidents during the period, not least the assassination of Spencer Perceval on 1 1 May 1 8 1 2. Perceval's murder, which took place as he made his way into the House of Commons, was in fact carried out by a man with no connections to Luddism at all. However, far from trying to play down any links to the incident, Luddites in Nottinghamshire actua lly tried to claim credit for the assassination. A nu mber of pamphlets from 1 8 1 2, signed by General Ludd, warned that if factory owners did not change their behaviour, theywould face a similar fate. You can arrange tours of the Palace of Westminster, including the lobby in which Perceval was shot, via the parliament website. You'll find a memorial to Perceval in the nave of Westminster Abbey. � www parliament.uk
Read our feature on Spencer Perceval on page 22
82
BBC
History Magazine
8 York Castle, York
NORTH YORKSHIRE
Where 17 Luddites hanged in January 1813
THE MOST high-profile trial of the Luddite uprising took place at York Castle in January 1 8 13, where those accused of the murder of William Horsfall [see box 5J went before the judge and jury. The case was treated as a conventional murder trial - something that would have been recognised at the time. Although it was clear that George Mellor had fired the shot that killed Horsfall, it was deemed that two of the group were accessories to the same crime and should be tried as such. The jury needed 20 minutes to find the men guilty, and the executions took place just 36 hours later, outside what is now the entrance to the castle museum. The special commission continued for a week or so after the executions and a further 1 4 men were hanged on 1 6 January. Witnesses reported that some of the men, who were executed in two batches of seven , went to the ga llows singing
" As in Chester, the special commission tried a number of cases not related to Luddism" , says Jones, " implying that the occasion was used to clear a backlog of other, more general, criminal cases."' One such case was that of John Swallow, John Bateley, Joseph Fisher and John Lumb, who were accused of " burgariously entering the house of Samuel Moxon of U pper Whitley and stealing therefrom several promissory notes, 1 2 shillings in silver and a quantity of butter on fourth J u ly las!"'. Luddism in Yorkshire had, in fact, died out months before the crime took place and there was no mach ine-breaking involved at all. York Castle prison, where the condemned Ludd ites were held, and the castle museum a re open to the public.
Behold the Saviour of Mankind.
� www.yorkcastlemuseum.org.uk
e 01 904 687687
7 Chester Castle CHESHIRE
Where 14 Luddites were sentenced to death
IN MAY 1 81 2, a special commission was convened at Chester Castle to try 44 people accused of Luddism, of whom only 28 stood trial. Fourteen were sentenced to death but only two were actua lly hanged. Says Jones: " Despite being convened specifically to address crimes associated with Luddism, the special commission at Chester was used for general criminal proceedings. The two men who were hanged were found guilty of theft, and not machine breaking at all. Luddism, it would seem, could be rather a porous judicial concept.·· Benjamin Walker, one of the four men involved in William Horsfall's assassination, was held at Chester Castle before serving as a witness in the special commission at York in January 1 8 13 [see box 81. The castle is still open to the public. e 0870 333 1 1 81 � www. english heritage. org. uk
Aviewof the countryside from an arrow slit in Chester Castle
More from the series Read more from our Where His tory Happened series - including the Titanic and Roman Britain ::J www . historyextra.com/feature
83
Out
About Ten things to do
Charlotte Hodgman previews some of the latest events and exhibitions
The Noble Art of the Sword Fashion and Fencing in Renaissance Europe The Wallace Collection, London 17 May- 1 6 September 2012
m 0207 563 9500 wwwwallacecollection. org
DAGGERS ARE d rawn at the Wallace Collection in London with the opening of a major exhibition examining the historical and social development of the ancient art of sword fighting d u ring the 1 6th century.
the art of killing someone in an aesthetically pleasing way, in times of peace. It is this rise of the sword in civilian life that forms the main focus of the exhibition."' The rich culture of the sword during the "Skilful swordsmanship was seen Renaissance is also demonstrated as the art of killing someone in through some 20 beautifully an aesthetically pleasing way" illustrated fencing manuals, while The exhibition, which displays portraits, design books, clothing and some of the fi nest swords in the documents help place the rapier in museum's collection, together with its social and artistic context. " Many of the rapiers on display international loans, also features objects that have never been seen were actually never designed to be used," says Capwell, " a development before in Britain, such as the solid that allowed 1 6th-century artists gold and enamel rapier of Emperor Maximillian I I . and metalworkers to create Tobias Capwell, curator of arms extraordinarily beautiful, and costly, works of art. and armour at the Wallace Collection, says: "As well as exploring the functional aspects of these weapons, the exhibition examines the d ifferent aesthetic levels of the sword and its use during the period. " In the 1 6th century, rapiers in particular began to be worn as status symbols and fashion accessories, and skilful swordsmanship was seen as
Wartime Refugee National Waterfront Museum, Swansea Until 1 July 2 0 1 2
m 01 792 638950 � www museumwales.ac. uk/en/ swansea
An exhibition exploring the lives of the Jewish children from Nazi-occupied Europe who came to Britain on the Kindertransport trains in 1 938-39. 84
" Many of the weapons on show boast hilts of solid silver and gold, covered with diamonds, rubies and pearls, and were regarded as pieces of jewellery rather than as weapons." The exhibition also examines the art of swordsmanship in scientific terms - a concept popular during the Renaissance - as well as differing attitudes to swordsmanship as a whole.
••
Tobias talks more about the art of the a rmourer in a new BBC Four series, Handmade i n Britain, scheduled for May
Search for I m mortality: To mb Treasures of Han China
Masterpieces from Mount Stuart: The Bute Collection
Writing Britain: Wastelands to Wonderlands
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge 5 May-1 1 November 201 2
Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh 19 May-2 December 2012
British Library, London 1 1 May-25 September 201 2
m 01 223 332900
m 0 1 3 1 624 6200
m 0 1 937 546060
� wwwfitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk
Discover the secrets of ancient China's 2,000-year-old royal tombs through more than 350 treasures in jade, gold, silver, bronze and ceramics.
� www.nationalgalleries.org
A selection of old master paintings from the famous Bute Collection at Mount Stuart goes on display in Scotland for the first time in more than 60 years.
� www.bl.uk
An exhibition of more than 1 50 literary works from the past 1 ,000 years that have been inspired by, and helped to shape, the nation's understanding of landscape and place. sse
H i story Magazine
Royal River: Power Pageantry and the Thames National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London 27 April-9 September 201 2
m 020 8858 4422 � www.rmg.co.uk
Guest curated by historian David Starkey, this exhibition brings together nearly 400 objects that demonstrate the various roles that the river Thames has played over the past 500 years. From British royal and city events and London·s famous watermen, to the river·s transformation after the notorious ·Great Stink·, this exhibition presents the historic Thames in all its glory.
Read our feature on pageantry and the river Thames on page 46
The Boleyn Literary Festival Blickling Estate, Norwich, Norfolk 1 7-20 May 2012
m 01 263 738 030 � www.boleynfestival.co.uk
H istorians, novelists, costumiers and musicians will gather at Blickling Estate this month for a four-day event of all things Anne Boleyn. Among the confirmed speakers are author Alison Weir, who will take a closer look at Anne·s last days, incarcerated in the Tower of London, and Suzannah Lipscomb, who will explore the physical, political and personal failures that faced Henry Vll1 in 1 536. Eric Ives, emeritus professor of English history at the University of Birmingham, will deliver the festival"s keynote address.
Royalty and Renishaw Renishaw Hall and Gardens, Renishaw, Sheffield 12 May-30 September 2012
m 01 246 432 31 0 � www.sitwell.co.uk
M useums at N ight 20 1 2
The Queen: Art & I mage
m 01 273 623266
m 020 7306 0055
Nationwide, UK 1 8-20 May 20 1 2
� www.culture24.org.uk
Hundreds of museums, galleries, libraries a nd heritage sites across the UK will unlock their doors for special evening events.
BBe History Magazine
To mark the Queen·s diamond jubilee, Renishaw Hall and Gardens is staging an exhibition that celebrates more than 400 years of extraordinary and varied links between the estate·s owners, the Sitwell family, and royalty. I mages, objects, books, documents and costumes from Renishaw Hall·s collections will be on display, including souvenirs from the coronation of Tsar Alexander III and mementoes once belonging to A bust of Princess Charlotte James II and VII, William I I I , Queen Victoria. and of Wales by sculptor Princess Charlotte. Francis Chantrey
National Portrait Gallery, London 17 May-21 October 201 2
� www.npg.org. uk
Over 60 of the most remarkable and resonant portraits of the Queen made during her 60-year reign are brought together to mark this year·s diamond jubilee.
To find out what else is going on i n your a rea in May, take a look at our online listings webpage at::J www.historyextra.com/may201 2 Look out for online slideshows o f museum exhibitions and more at ::J www.historyextra.com/feature/galleries
85
Ab�
Ye olde travel guide
H ISTORICAL HOLIDAYS: GUIDEBOOKS FROM THE PAST
G
PARIS 1802 Julian Humphrys guides visitors around the French capital,
still bathed in the hue of revolution ILLUSTRATION BY JONTY CLARK
WHEN TO GO
COSTS AND MONEY
The recent peace treaty with Revolutionary France means that for the first time in a decade we Brits can visit Paris in safety. But those in the know are predicting that the peace may not last for long, so seize the moment and start packing!
Prices in the capital are generally higher than elsewhere in France but if you can afford to stay in London, Paris shouldn't present too much of a problem. However there's a bewildering variety of coins in circulation and the old monarchical coins have been supplemented by a number of new republican ones. It's well worth getting to know their values to ensure you're not short -changed.
WHAT TO TAKE
Get a passport. You'll need to show it at the Prefecture of Police in Paris to get a two-month pass which permits you to stay and travel round the city. Make sure you carry this at all times - you'll be constantly asked for it. It's easy to get lost in the maze of medieval streets that make up much of central Paris so a detailed map is a must. You should try to buy as modern a map as possible many street names have changed since the revolution.
SIGHTS AND ACTIVrnES
The Louvre is a must for all art enthusiasts. Its extensive French collections have been augmented by hundreds of paintings brought back from Italy by Bonaparte's armies. Raphael and Titian are particularly well represented and no connoisseur should leave the city without taking a look at that masterpiece of classical sculpture, the Apollo Belvedere. While you're in the Louvre take the time to visit the studio of Monsieur David, Bonaparte's favourite painter. David's role during the Terror means he has few friends in Paris but there's no denying
the popularity of his work. His monumental painting of the Sabine women has been valued at a staggering £5,000. Church lovers may find Paris something of a disappointment: many religious buildings were badly damaged during the revolution and even the great cathedral of Notre Dame is a shadow of its former self. Nevertheless the Museum of Monuments in the Rue des Petits Augustins is a treasure trove of medieval religious and decorative art. Don't miss the royal tombs rescued from the abbey of St Denis by Monsieur Lenoir, the museum's remarkable curator. Why not hire a fiacre (see Getting Around) and take a tour of the sites associated with the dramatic events of the last few years? Start in the Place de la Concorde where the late king was guillotined and move on to the Eglise Saint Roch where Napoleon dispersed a royalist uprising with his famous "whiff of grapeshot". Then drive down the Rue Saint-Nicaise and inspect the damage caused by the recent bomb plot to kill him. However if you're hoping to see the Bastille,
wire �
so famously stormed in 1 789, you'll be disappointed. It was demolished within months of its capture. DANGERS AND ANNOYANCES
Considering that we have spent the last ten years trying to kill them, the French seem to bear us remarkably little animosity. Most Parisians seem genuinely pleased to have us (and our money) in their midst. Unfortunately their streets are rather less welcoming - very poorly lit, lacking pavements and with an open gutter down the middle. On rainy days they become seas of filth and you
Paris today
Fifteen million tourists visit Paris every year, and at times it feels like every single one of them is queuing to get into the Louvre. Paris has felt a lot closer to the UK since the completion of the high-speed Eurostar link between London and the French capital in 2007, and the days where the train-boat-train service via Calais M a ritime transplanted British travellers into an alien environment feel long gone. The French capital, beyond its world-famous sights, still has the ability to surprise, from the unique feel to eve ry neighbourhood
may need to hire a plank of wood just to cross the road. ACCOMMODATION
Many Parisians take in paying guests, there's a wide variety of hotels and a number of former aristocratic town houses are available for rent. The Hotel Coq Heron is popular with English visitors, while those with a sense of history might consider staying in the Hotel Morigny where Bonaparte lodged as a young man. EATING AND ENTERTAINMENT
When it comes to eating you're spoilt for choice. There are hundreds of restaurants in
Paris, many run by the former chefs of executed or exiled aristocrats. Monsieur Beauvilliers' Grande Taverne de Londres on the Rue de Richelieu is the oldest and still one of the best. Make the most of Paris's open spaces. You can admire the statues in the gardens of the Tuileries or watch a firework display or balloon ascent in the Tivoli Gardens. Tivoli is also a popular location for balls but, be warned, the newfangled waltz, all the rage in Paris, involves a degree of physical contact that some might find shocking. For shopping, gambling and other worldly pleasures, visit
the galleries of the Palais Royal. GETI1NG AROUND
For anything but the shortest journey, unless you want to arrive at your destination covered in filth, hire a fiacre. These four-wheeled, threehorse vehicles are specially designed for the muddy Parisian streets. There are more than a thousand in the city so you should have no trouble finding one. m Julian Humphrys is a regular contributor to BBC History Magazine. His Parisian
grandmother lived in the Rue Faubourg Saint-Honore
ensuring no two visits are the same to the colourful multicultural influence echoing France's colonial adventures. Those of a historical bent have much to enjoy, from the city's history museum in the Marais to the wonderful Musee du Moyen Age across the Seine in the Latin Quarter covering medieval history. The churches have been patched up pretty well, too. You could, of course, play at being a post-revolutionary gadabout by strolling the Tuileries. If you don't get to do any of this, there's no need to despair. Paris is close enough to Britain that getting here is easy and good value. That means repeat visits a re a must: when are you next going? If you like this Lyon is a lovely French city with a •••
fraction of Paris's visitors. Another place that wears its revolutionary heart on its sleeve is Havana. CUba.
1+1
Tom Hall, editor, ioneiypianet.com.
You can read more of Tom's articles at the website
'
"
•
Hlstery Collection Complete your BBe History Magazine co llection with our back issues and handy binders
Binders
Back issues
UK Subscriber (7 each
UK Subscriber £3.68 each
EUROPE Subscriber (S each
EUROPE Subscriber (4.48 each
Non-subscriber (4.60 each
Non-subscriber (9 each
Non-subscriber ( 1 0 each
Non-subscriber (5.60 each
ROW Subscriber (9.40 each
ROW Subscriber (5.28 each
Non-subscriber ( 1 1 .S0 each
Non-subscriber (6.60 each
Each binder holds 1 3 Issues and ensures
To find out whafs
your collection of BBC History Magazine
in each back Issue. go to
www.historyextra.com - Magazine - Past issues
remains In perfect
April 201 2
March 201 2
December 201 1
November 201 1
condition fori uture reference. Plus, as a SUbscriber
you·U SAVE 20% on the non subscriber price.
Christmas 2011
October 201 1
To order binders and back issues call us on 0844 844 0250
IMMEDIATE MEDIAC� Vol 13 No 5 - May 2 0 1 2
BBC History Magazine is published by Immediate Media Company Bristol Limited under Licence from BBC Worldwide
BBC History Magazine was established to publish authoritative history, written by leading experts, in an accessible and attractive format. We seek to maintain the high journaListic standards traditionally associated with the BBC.
EDITORIAL
ADVISORV PANEL
Editor David Musgrove
Dr Padma Anagot Cardiff University
davidmusgroverahistoryextra.com Deputy editor Rob Attar robertattarrahistoryextra.com Section editor Charlotte Hodgman cha rlottehodgmanrahistoryextra.com Production editor Spencer Mizen Picture editor Samantha Nott samn ottrahistoryextra.com Art editor Susanne Frank Deputy art editors Sarah Lambert and RacheL Dickens Picture researcher Katherine HalLett
ADVERTISING & MARKETING Advertising director CaroLine Herbert Senior advertising manager Laura Gibbs Advertising manager Richard Gibson 0 1 1 7 3 1 4 8752 Account manager Sam Jones 0 1 1 7 3 1 4 8847 Sales executive Felicity Groves 0 1 1 7 933 8093 Group Direct Marketing Manager
CONTACT US PHONE
Editorial 0 1 1 7 3 1 4 7377 Subscriptions & back issues
0844 8440250 Those with impaired
hearing can call Minicom 0 1 7954 1456 1
EMAIL
Laurence Robertson 0787 2 1 7 7971 Head of Subscriptions Marie Spicer Marketing co�ordinator Gemma Burns Online Co�ordinator Craig Coles US representative Kate Buckley buckleylabuckleypell.com
PRESS AND PUBLIC RELATIONS Press officer Carolyn Wray 0 1 1 7 3 1 4 8 8 1 2
carolyn.wrayraimmediate.co.uk
Editorial historymagazinera
historyextra.com
SYNDICATION
bbchistorymagraservicehelpLi ne .co.u k
Magazine syndication executive Simon Goodman
Head of licensing & syndication Joanna Marshall
Subscriptions & back issues
Prof Richard Carwardine Oxford U niversity Dominic Crossley�HoUand Executive Producer,
Factual. BBC' Martin Davidson Commissioning Editor, History, BBC* Prof Clive Emsley Open Un iversity Prof Richard Evans Cambridge U niversity Prof Sarah Foot Sheffield U n iversity Prof Rab Houston St Andrews U n iversity Prof John Hudson St Andrews U niversity Prof Lisa Jardine Queen Mary, London Dr Peter Jones formerly Newcastle University Prof Denis Judd London Metropolitan U niversity Prof Ian Kershaw Sheffield University Robert Ketteridge Head of Documentaries,
Factual. BBC' Christopher Lee formerly Cambridge U n iversity Prof John Morrill Cambridge U n iversity
Greg Neale Founding editor, BBC History Magazine Prof Kenneth 0 Morgan Oxford U niversity
Prof Martin Pugh formerly Newcastle U n iversity Julian Richards archaeologist and broadcaster Prof Simon Schama CoLumbia Un iversity Prof Mark Stoyle U niversity of Southampton Dr Miles Taylor Institute of Historical Research* Dr Simon Thurley chief executive, English Heritage Prof Helen Weinstein Director of IPUP, Institute for
the PubLic Understanding of the Past* Michael Wood historian and broadcaster member of BBC Editorial Advisory Board
PRODUCTION
•
Production director Sarah Powell
Immed iate Media Company Bristol Limited, Tower House, Fairfax Street, Bristol BS 1 3 B N
Production manager Louisa Molter
CROSSWORD COMPETITION TERMS & CONDITIONS
Subscriptions & back issues
BBC History Magazine. PO Box 279. Sittingbourne, Kent ME9 8 D F Basic annual subscription rates:
U K , £51 .35. Eire/Europe, £52.35, ROW, £55.70
Ad co�ordinator Derrick Andrews Ad designer Lisa Burridge Reprographics manager Tony Hunt Reprographics assistant Chris Sutch
Jul-Dec 20 1 1
72,271
...... Apri1 20 1 0 .. , ... , .... . . March 20 1 1
281,000
BBC WORLDWIDE MAGAZINES UNIT Managing director Nicholas Brett Publishing director James Hewes Editorial director Jenny Potter Unit coordinator Eva Abra m i k
Limited's decision is final and no corres ponde nce relating to the co mpetition will be entered into. The winners will be notified within 20 days of the close of the
com petition by post. The name and county of residence of the winners will be pu blished in the magazine within two months of the closi n g date. If the winner is u nable to be contacted within one month of the closing date,
Im mediate Media C ompany Bristol Limited reserves the right to offer the prize to a runner up
• Im m edia te Media C o m pa ny Bristol Limited reserves the right to amend these terms a nd conditions or to cancel, alter or amend the prom otion at any stage, if deemed necessary in its opinion, or if circumstances arise outside of its control. The p romotion is subject to th e laws of England
© Immediate Media Company Bristol Limited - 15SN: 1469 8552 Not for resaLe. All rig h ts reserved. U n a u thorised re p roduct i on in whoLe or part i s p ro h ibited
without written p er mi ss i o n . Every effort has been made to secure perm iss i o n for c o pyri g h t material. In the event of any material being used
i nadve rt ently, or where it proved i mpossi ble to t race t he co pyri g ht owner, a c k n owledgement will be made i n a future issue
MSS, p ho to gra p h s and a rtwork are acce p ted on t h e basis t h a t BBC History Magazine and its
those o f t h e pu b li s h e ,
or their direct fam ily members. By entering parti ci pa nts
their name and county may be released if they win. Only
Chairman Stephen Alexa nder
page. There is no cash alternat ive a n d the prize will not
I mmediate Media C ompa ny Bristo l Limi ted emp loyees or
the UK [ inc. Cha nnel lslandsl . aged 1 8 or over, except
contractors, and anyone connected with the competition
Publishing director Andy Healy
Deputy Chairman Peter Phippen
n u m ber of winners will be as shown on the Crossword be transferable. I m mediate Media Company Bristol
a g e nt s do no t accept li a b i li ty for loss or d a m a g e
agree to be bound by these terms and conditions and that
CEO Tom Bureau
drawn at random after the closi n g time. The prize and
• The crosswo rd competition is open to aLL residents of
IMMEDIATE MEDIA COMPANY Managing director Andy Marshall
• The winning entrants will be the first correct entries
Prof Cormac 6 Gnida U n iversity College. Dublin
POST
Editorial BBC History Magazine.
92
Prof Mick Aston Bristol Un iversity Prof Joanna Bourke Birkbeck College. London
perm iss ion . Read more about the Immediate Privacy
Policy a t \l'v'VVvY. immediatemedia.co.uk/privacy-policy/
one entry permitted per person. • The clos in g date and time is as shown on page 104
to same. Views expressed are not necessarily Immediate M e d i a C o m pa ny is wo rki n g t o
e n s u re that a l l of i t s p a p e r i s so u rced f ro m we ll- m a n a g e d forests. This magazine can be recycled, for use in newspapers and packaging. Please remove any g ifts, samples o r wra pp i n g a n d d ispose of it at your local collection p o i nt
Entries received afterthat will not be considered Entries cannot be returned. Entrants must su p ply full name, address and da ytime phone number.
Immediate Media C ompa ny [pu blis hers of BBC History
Magazine] will onLy ever use personaL details for the
recyc
pu rposes of adm in i steri n g this com peti ti on , and will
not publi sh them or p rovid e them to anyo ne wi thou t
BBe
History Magazine
Miscellany
Q&A
If you have any queries write to BBe History Magazin e, Tower House, Fairfax Street, Bristol BSl 3BN, email : [email protected] or submit via our website : www.historyextra.com ILLUSTRATION BY GLEN MCBETH
QUICK QUERY
Q. Who was
'Walking' Stewa rt?
A.
l n t h e l 770s, J o h n
Stewart was wo r k i n g fo r the East I nd i a C o m pa n y i n M a d ras.
W i s h i n g to ret u rn to E n g la n d . h e d e c i d e d t h a t the best way t o d o s o was to walk t h e re. Over the next few years. he m a d e his way back to L o n d o n o n f o o t . travelli n g a lo n e t h ro u g h central As i a , R u ssia a n d much of E u ro p e . N i c k n a m e d Wa l k i n g ' Stewart. h e w a s soon a fa m i li a r f i g u re i n L o n d o n , k n own for h i s eccentric d ress a n d t h e offbeat p h i losophical i d e a s that he e x p ressed in a series of books and p a m p h lets with titles like The Apocalypse of Nature a n d The Sophiometer. T h e writer Thomas De Q u i ncey k n ew h i m well a n d , after Stewart's death i n 1 822, described him i n a b i o g ra p h i ca l essay as " a s u b l i m e visi o n a ry" . Nick Rennison
Q. What a re t h e o ri g i ns of the · m utes' that atte n d ed Victo ri a n fu n e ra ls? Wh e n d i d t h ey fi rst a p pea r a n d when d i d t h e i r att e n d a nce d i e o u t ? Claude R Hart, S h rewsbury
A.
An early 1 9th-century portrait of John Stewart, after an engraving by JEH Robinson
The mute's job was to stand vigil outside the door of the deceased, then accompany the coffin, wearing dark clothes, looking solemn and usually carrying a long stick (called a wand) covered in black crape. Charles Dickens's best-known mute is Oliver Twist, employed by the undertaker Sowerberry for children's funerals. Most, though, were adult males, and were common in several European countries from the 17th century onwards, as ceremonial 'protectors' of the deceased. The fashion was probably inspired by the ancient Roman practice of assigning lictors (bodyguards of
civic officials) to escort the funerals of prominent citizens. There are plenty of accounts of mutes in Britain by the 1700s, and by Dickens's time their attendance at even relatively modest funerals was almost mandatory. They were a key part of the Victorians' extravagant mourning rituals, which Dickens often savaged as pointlessly, and often ruinously, expensive. In Martin Ch uzzlewit, for instance: "Two mutes were at the house-door, looking as mournful as could reasonably be expected of men with such a thriving job in hand." Mutes died out in the 1880s/90s and were a memory
by 1914. Dickens played his part in their demise, as did fashion. Victorian funeral etiquette was complex and constantly changing, as befitted a huge industry, which partly depended on status anxiety for the huge profits Dickens criticised. What did for them most of all, though, was becoming figures of fun mournful and sober at the funeral, but often drunk shortly afterwards. In Britain, most mutes were day-labourers, paid for each individual job. In one of the many yarns told about them, a mute doubled up as a waiter at the meal after one funeral. The deceased's brother asked him to approach a gentleman at the head of the table to say he wished to take a glass of wine with him. So he instantly changed his demeanour from friendly waiter to mournful mute, went up to the man and quietly said: "Please, sir, the corpse's brother would like to take a glass o'wine wi' ye:' Eugene Byrne, author and journalist 93
Miscellany
Q&A
o. Wh e n we re t h e t e rms · leftwi n g ' a n d · ri g htwi n g ' f i rst used p o litically. a n d by wh o m ? John Burrows, Leicester
A.
The terms date back to the early days of the French revolution, when the National Assembly was created to move control of key issues such as taxation from the king to the citizens. Inside the chamber, deputies of the Third Estate sat to the left of the speaker while members of the First Estate sat to his right. So the revolutionaries occupied the left of the room and the conservatives had the right. As one deputy, the Baron de Gauville, explained: "We began to recognise each other: those who were loyal to religion and the king took up positions to the right of the chair so as to avoid the shouts,
oaths and indecencies that enjoyed free rein in the opposing camp."According to French historian Marcel Gauchet, the contemporary press also used the terms 'left' and 'right' to refer to the opposing sides. Similar seating arrangements continued in subsequent revolutionary assemblies and then again when political parties came back after the restoration in 1 8 1 5. At this point the terms 'left' and 'right' were an established part of the parliamentary lexicon. But it was not until the Third Republic, established in 1871, that the terms came to be adopted by the political parties themselves. And only in the early 20th century
did they come to describe specific ideologies and the political beliefs of citizens. Dan Cossins, freela nce journalist
O. What was ' Pigeon Photography'?
A. 0. 1 rea d t h a t Alec D o u g las- H o m e was t he last p ri m e m i n ister t o be a p p o i n ted by t h e m o na rc h i nstead of bei n g e lecte d . H ow a n d why d i d t h i s h a p p e n ? o Adamberry, G i b ra ltar
A.
Alec Douglas-Home got the royal nod ahead of Rab Butler and Quintin Hogg
The constitutional position relating to the appointment of prime ministers has not changed for centuries. Since the early 1 8th century it has been accepted that the monarch should appoint a person who can command a majority in parliament to ensure that government business gets passed on a reliable basis. This meant that after an election, or if a prime minister stood down, the monarch had to take soundings from leading parliamentarians as to who would best command a majority. When Conservative Harold Macmillan
B o rn i n 1 85 2 ,
J u li u s N e u b ro n n e r w a s a n
resigned in October 1 963 it was not at once obvious who enjoyed most support among Tory MPs. Queen Elizabeth, therefore, informally consulted a number of MPs. In the end she chose Alec Douglas-Home rather than Rab Butler or Quintin Hogg, the other two being suggested. Since then all political parties have adopted set rules to govern how their leader should be chosen. It has become conventional for the monarch to choose whoever is leader of the political party that has a majority in the House of Commons. The recent appointment of David Cameron was unique in that no party had an overall majority after the 20lO general election, so the monarch waited until the politicians had done a deal before inviting anyone to be prime minister. Rupert Matthews.
h istorian and author
e n t h usi astic G e r m a n a m a t e u r photogra p h e r who patented a new tec h n i q u e for aerial p h ot o g ra p hy i n 1 908. N e u b ro n ne r's method i nvolved st ra p p i n g s m a ll ca m e ras to t h e breasts of h o m i n g p i g e o n s .
A t i m e r e n s u red t h a t p i ctu res were o n ly taken when the b i rd was in fli g h t . P i g e o n photo g ra p hy was d e m o n strated at i nternatio n a l e x h i b i t i o n s i n the next few years a n d thousands of people b o u g h t postcards of the a e ri a l views. U nfortu nately. no body took a p ro p e r com m e rc i a l i n t e rest i n N e u b ro n n e r's inve n t i o n a n d he a ba n d o n ed p i g e o n p h otogra p h y in 1 9 20.
A pigeon with a camera strapped to its breast, c 1 9 1 4- 1 8
A design for an aerial steam carriage, 1843, an idea patented by William Henson in 1842
Did you know . . . ?
In the 1840s, a London chapel
Great misconceptions
HThe Wright brothers invented the aeroplane"
was the venue for public balls at which visitors could "dance on
in 1 848. Sadly t h is was just a model
fou r months before the Wright
the dead". Enon Chapel, sited
a n d flew u n ma n n e d .
brothers' fa mous flig ht. It fell to the Wright brothers
S o , d i d t h e Wright brothers
near the Strand, was built in The real father o f aviati o n i s George
a c h i eve the f i rst powered, m a n ned
decades, its cellars became the
Cayley, a n e n g i neer who u n d e rtook
flight? Not that either. There a re
not on the a e ro d ro m e , but i n the
burial place for thousands of
some of the first research i nto
m a ny people who have claimed this
solic ito rs office. When the Wright
bodies, many uncoffined. When
aerodynamics, having spent years
laurel, alt h o u g h few of these had
Flyer was beq ueathed to the
it closed as a religious meeting
studying the properties of b i rds'
the necessary witnesses or
Smithso n i a n i n 1 948 the contract
1823 and, for the next two
themselves to clear u p the issue,
place, its new owners laid a
wings. His f i rst d rawings of flyi ng
a c h i eved what m i g h t be called
with the brothers' executors stated
wooden floor over the cellars
m a c h i nes a p pear a s doodles i n his
'control'. In April o r May 1 899
firmly that " N either the
and turned it into a dance hall.
schoolbooks from 1 793; by 1 804 he
G u stave
Their advertisin g invited people
had developed model gliders with
Whitehead
to enjoy the macabre pleasure
fixed a e rofoil wings. J ust five years
cla i m e d an
of "Dancing on the Dead -
later Cayley had made a full-scale,
u nverified,
Admission Threepence - No
p i lotless version, and in 1 853 he
lady or gentleman admitted
finally managed to get a m a n aloft
;,.� -9;�����;�;;:2� ���
Smithso n i a n
....
I nstitution o r its
su ccesso rs . . .
s h a l l pu blish o r
permit t o b e
unless wearing shoes and
in a g lider across B rom pton Dale.
stockings". After the chapel
There re m a i n s some confusion
statem e nt or label in con nection
closed in 1848, most of the
over who that fi rst p i lot was,
with ... any a i rcraft model o r design
human remains were removed
sources cla i m i n g it to be h i s
of earli e r date than the Wright
from beneath the floorboards
coa c h m a n or butler or even
a e roplane of 1 903, c l a i m i n g i n
and reburied at West Norwood
his g randson.
effect that s u c h a i rc raft was
cemetery. Nick Rennison
displayed a
capa ble of carrying a man u n d e r its
What Cayley couldn't d o , i n a n age of steam locomotion, was f i n d a l i g h t e n o u g h power s o u rce f o r his
Aviation pioneer George Cayley's models of a glider
own power in controlled flight." And i n that way history was m a d e .
aeropla n e . So d i d the Wri g ht A scene from a London dance hall, c1 850
BBe
History Magazine
brothers actua lly a c h i eve the first powered flight? No, that was an E n g lish b o b b i n - m a ker, J o h n Stringfellow, wh o created a stea m-d riven m o nopla n e with a
""f 1 O-foot wingspan, which fi rst flew
two - m a n , half-mile powered flig ht, a n d German Karl Jatho's 1 O - h o rsepower motor glider certa i n ly hopped for 60 metres down a course, reac h i n g a n altitude of t h ree metres on 18 Aug ust 1 903,
Justin Pollard's la tes t b o o k is
•
Boffinology: The Real Stories Behind Our Greatest Scientific Discoveries [John M u rray, 201 OJ. He is •
•
a question writer for the
panel show Q/ on BBC One
95
Miscellany Prize crossword
ACROSS 4. A fabulous Greek
writer of [possibly! the sixth-century BCI [5! 6. First Nazi concentration camp in Germany, established in March 1 933, within weeks of Hitler becoming chancellor [6! 1 0. Ancient region of north-east Africa, in which the Kushite Kingdoms were located [5! 1 1 . Queen of Egypt in the 1 4th century BC, the chief wife of Akhenaton [9! 1 2. Term, in its broadest sense, for a descendant of the Jewish patriarch, Jacob [9! 14. Joe, anarchic writer of black comedies, battered to death by his lover in 1 967 [5! 1 6. Nickname of president of Haiti who succeeded his ' Papa' in 1 971 and was overthrown in 1 986 [4, 3! 1 8. The pope who, in 1 095, launched the First Crusade [5, 2! 1 9. That of Dort, 1 61 8- 1 9, upheld strict Calvinism against Arminianism [5! 20. British peer who mysteriously disappeared in 1 974, after his child ren's nanny had been mu rdered [4, 5! 22. Term applied to the final period of the Stone Age [9! 24. William Henry who established a magazine and book-selling chain in the 1 9th century [5! 26. Presumed author of the two major epics of ancient Greece [5! 27./2. A social order of pre revolutionary France, representing the common people [the others being clergy and nobles! [5,6! _,
96
Crossword prize A H istory of Food in 1 00 Recipes by Willi a m Sitwe ll Celebrating the great dishes, techniques and cooks who have, over the centuries, created the culinary landscape we now enjoy, A History of Food in
100 Recipes tells the fasci nating story of food through h i sto ry.
From the earliest recipe for bread, sourced from the ancient Egyptians, to the poetic roots of the roast d i nner and the
DOWN 1 . The great 1 9th-century English
essayist, Charles, who wrote under the pseudonym of 'Elia' [4! 2. See 27. across 3. Mata , Dutch courtesan, executed as a First World War spy by the French in 1 9 1 7 [4! 5. Eighteenth-century native American chief of the Ottawa people who led a powerful resistance against British rule [7! 6. Daniel, a celebrated 1 7th/18th century British author, who took an active part in Monmouth's rebellion [5! 7. Device that killed the then shadow Northern Ireland secretary, Airey Neave, in 1 979 [3, 4! 8. British theosophist, Fabian, early advocate of birth control [a pamphlet on which led to her prosecution! [5, 6! 9. Major defeat for the French here in 1 954, leading to the division of Vietnam into two countries [4, 4, 3! 1 3. Two-term Israeli prime minister, a signatory to the peace accord with the PLO in 1 993 [5! 1 5. Garment commonlyworn by both sexes in ancient Rome, that of a senator having a purple stripe [5! 1 7. Early 20th-century nihilistic art movement originating in Zurich, spreading to Paris and New York
[where Man Ray was its champion! [7! 1 8. The Peace of , a serres of treaties in 1 7 1 3- 1 4 which ended the War of the Spanish Succession [7! 20. City which, after the partition of 1 947, was made the capital of Punjab province [6! 21. Harold, political scientist who became chairman of the British Labour pa rty in 1 945 [5! 23. His three-month reign as Roman emperor ended with his suicide in AD 69 [4! 25. Popular name for the USA's major motor car race inaugurated in 1 9 1 1 [4!
forgotten genius who invented the pressure cooker, author William Sitwell shines a light on the origins of the methods and recipes we now take for granted. The book also features contributions from current stars of British food, including Jamie Oliver, Nigella Lawson and Delia Smith. Published by Collins, £20. Available to buy from all good bookstores and online
HOW TO ENTER Open to residents of the UK, line. Channel lslandsl. Post entries to
BBC HistoryHagazine, May 2012 Crossword, PO Box 501, leicester, lE94 OAA or email
them to may2012!a historycomps.co.uk by
Compiled by Eddie James SOLUTION TO OUR MARCH CROSSWORD Across: 8/14 League of Nations 9 Rowntree 1 1 Vespasian 12 Anzio 1 3 Ranke 16 Whites 18 Xanadu 22 Ramillies 25 Drake 26 Rabin 28 Wenceslas 29 Montcalm 30 Lloyds Down: 1 Slavery 2 Walsingham 3 Budapest 4 John Knox 5 Anhalt 6 Bnoz 7 Heloise 10 Tito 1 5 Old Bailey 17 Stilwell 19 Ned Kelly 20 Trireme 21 Census 23 Lu nacy 24 Song 27 Byng SIX WINNERS OF A TIME TO REMEMBER DVD SET: S Kent, Herefordshire; K Ferguson,
Ayrshire; S Graves, South Yorkshire;
D B i rkmyre, Perthshire; B Finch, South
Yorkshire; J Leighfield, Staffordshire
5pm on 21 May 2012. Entrants must sup ply name, address and phone number. The winners will be the first correct entries drawn at random after the closing time. Winners' names wiUappear in the July 2 0 1 2 issue. By entering, participants agree to be bound by the terms & conditions shown in full on page 92. Immediate Media Company Limited, publishers of BBC History Magazine, would love to keep you informed by post or telephone of special offers and promotions from the Immediate Media Company Group. Please write 'Do Not Contact Magazines' or 'Do Not Contact IMC' if you prefer not to receive such information by post, email or phone. PLease write your email address and mobile number on your entry so that BBC History Magazine can keep you informed of newsletters, special offers and promotions via email or free text messages. You may unsubscribe from receiving these messages at any time. For more about the BBe Privacy Policy see page 92.
BBe History Magazine
Miscellany Puzzles
HIDDEN HISTORICALS
��©
by 0
Historian and author
Which famous person does this pictogram represent? Answer at foot of the page
���
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Quiz Poets To mark the 200th anniversary of the birth of Robert Browning, a quiz on poets
o Which poet. ..
a . . ..
accepted a job as bookkeeper on a Jamaican slave plantation?
e Which poem was written as a
bitter riposte to the patriotic First World War verse of Jessie Pope?
e Where did royalist poet
b . .. enlisted in the 1 5th Light Dragoons as Silas Tomkyn Comberbatch?
Richard Lovelace write to Althea from in 1642?
c. . . . was sent down from
associate this church?
.
Oxford after publishing a pamphlet promoting atheism?
o With which poetwould you
d . . . . escaped execution for killing a man i n a duel by claiming benefit of clergy? e. . . . married a fellow poet six years her junior?
I was born in 1809, the grandson of a famous china
manufacturer. I travelled extensively during my lifetime and published what is probably my best-known work in 1859 - a book particularly unpalatable to creationists. Who am I?
Answer at foot of the page
f. ... was described by Queen Victoria in 1 862 as "very peculiar looking"?
f)
"This place is wretched enough - a villainous chaos of din and drunkenness..... What was the poet Lord Byron writing about?
Com piLed by Julian Humphrys
Answers at foot ofpage
Try our online quiz Which two countries in the Commonwealth were not h i storically parts of the British empire? Which h i storical figure g ave a memorable St Crispi n's Day speech in a Shakespeare play? Test your history knowledge with our weekly quiz, published every Friday at -::lI www.historyextra.com/quiz B B C History Magazine
·fi.qJeau paA!l 04M lune S ! 4 6 U !l !S !A al!4M Jf6a}3 snOW!?j S ! 4 U aWJM aAe4 Ol paAallaq 51 pue aJa4 paunq 5 1 AeJ9 'sa50d a�olS 'sal'9 1S 5,11 'AeJ9 sewo4l 'S
uosud '., 153 wnJOJaO la aJ/no s,uaMQ paJJl 'M '£ SG8l UI paUlor a4 4)14M 'a5puqweJ 'a5allOJ Alluul 'Z uOSAuual PJOl ' paJJlV '!L 5UIUMOJ8 naJJe8 41aqezI13 'aL uosuor ua 8 'PL Aall a4S a4SSA8 A)Jad " L a5pualOJ JOIAel lanwes ' Q L sUJn8 alqqo CJ 'eL 'SlI3MSNVZlnO
97
My history hero John Loudon (1783-1843) Chosen by Mark Easton, BBC News home editor
L
andscape gardener, architect and writer John Loudon was born in Lanarkshire and
developed an interest in horticulture at a young age. In 1803 he moved to London where he became a successful
planners and designers of all time. But it was not his development of agricultural methods in the Scottish lowlands or the layout of grand estates such as Tew Park in Oxfordshire that makes him such a hero in my eyes.
garden designer. He also wrote several books on various aspects of gardening,
What made him a hero?
as well as founding the Gardener's
As Loudon was marking out the lawns and drives of the Tew Park estate, his thoughts were of soot and smoke. He looked beyond the rural Cotswolds to the industrial age, which lay just beyond the horizon. Loudon was among the first to realise the importance of what we would now call 'green space' in urban Britain. His pamphlet Hints on Breathing Placesfor the Metropolis proposed that rapidly expanding London should be constructed around concentric rings of turf and gravel so that "there could never be an inhabitant who would be farther than half a mile from an open airy situation': This was more than a century before the capital was given its much-beloved green belt.
Magazine. Loudon's ideas about gardens and green spaces were highly
influential and were enthusiastically adopted throughout the Victorian era.
When did you first hear about John Loudon?
It was not until I was researching my book Britain etc. that I took a close interest in John Loudon. I was interested in the relationship between the British and grass: we occupy a land still adorned with countless garden lawns, cricket squares, bowling greens, football pitches and public parks. From the days of the village green, and despite, or because of, centuries of enclosure and development, we Brits retain a special place for immaculate turf. Loudon was a key figure in helping develop that profound love affair. What kind of person was he?
A farmer's son, Loudon had an extraordinary understanding of the relationship between man and land. His knowledge of plants and agriculture, combined with an instinctive grasp of the psychological and emotional effect of natural scenery, produced one of the most
What was his finest hour?
Loudon was one of the principal architects of what we now think of as the public park. Indeed, his finest hour must have been on 16 September 1840 when the gates of England's first municipal park, the Derby Arboretum, swung open. Based on Loudon's original design, the park's completion was marked by the biggest party in the town's history. Loudon believed passionately that such facilities should be open to all classes and his egalitarian principles were influential throughout the 19th century. Is there anything you don't particularly admire about him?
I fear I am a complete sucker for Mr Loudon. A man crippled by rheumatism and arthritis, he controlled the pain with opium and later weaned himself off his addiction. His right arm was amputated after a botched
An 1 840-41 portrait of John loudon.
"I just wish 1 had a
fraction of his vision,"
says Mark Easton of one of the first people to champion green space in Britain's cities
operation in 1826 but self-pity never entered his thoughts. Instead, he taught himself to write and draw with his left hand and that same year founded the first horticultural periodical, the Gardener's Magazine. His 'Gardenesque' style of planting, in which specimens are located where they are most likely to thrive, inspired a generation of horticulturalists and designers. Can you see any parallels between his life and your own?
Very few! My garden recoils when I walk out of the back door and I just wish I had a fraction of his vision and grand ambition. If you could meet Loudon what would you ask him?
Loudon understood the critical importance of shared public space for the welfare of communities. Contemporary Britain has, I fear, forgotten what shared public space means. Much of it has either been privatised or allowed to fall into unloved disrepair. Loudon, I am sure, would have something important to say about how we might reoccupy and expand the public domain, recognise it as a communal resource and the space where social glue is manufactured. m Mark Easton is an experienced journalist who currently works as
home editor for BBC News on radio and television. He is also the author of Britain etc. The Way We Live and How We Got There, which has recently been published by Simon & Schuster. You can read Mark's blogs at www.bbc.co.uk/markeaston
BBe
History Magazine
