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In a strange land: Mandaeans perform a baptism ceremony in the River Nepean, Sydney, Australia.

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FROM THE EDITOR HOLY MEN of the Yazidi, the religious minority suffering terrible persecution at the hands of Islamic State, are forbidden to eat lettuce. That may sound like a nugget from Monty Python’s Hackenthorpe Book of Lies, but it is actually just one of many extraordinary facts garnered from Gerard Russell’s brilliant history-cum-travelogue, Heirs to Forgotten Kingdoms: Journeys into the Disappearing Religions of the Middle East, published last November by Simon & Schuster. Russell, an Anglo-American diplomatscholar fluent in Arabic and Farsi, became fascinated by the minority religions of the Middle East when he was stationed in the Green Zone of occupied Baghdad. The rich ecology of religion, nourished in the region for millennia and rooted in the beliefs of ancient Mesopotamia, is now on the verge of extinction. Some communities have already been all but wiped out: Mandaeans, who once prospered in the southern marshes of Iraq, are now more likely to be found in Canada or Australia. Others, such as the pagan Kalasha of the Pakistan-Afghan border or the Druze and Alawites of the Levant, cling on precariously, their future barely more assured than that of the rhino. Russell, over four and a half years, travelled through eight different countries, all of which present considerable challenges, to preserve, in writing at least, the beliefs of these peoples, whose absence from the Middle East will leave it much diminished. His study is profound, moving and courageous. You can listen to Russell in conversation with Tom Holland at www.historytoday.com/podcast. Closer to home, but distant in time, is the work of another scholar deserving of a wider audience. Eleanor Parker’s blog, A Clerk of Oxford, is devoted to the study of England in the 11th and 12th century, the society forged by the Danish Conquest of 1016. Like the ancient Middle East it was a land of cross-cultural fertilisation and conflict and Parker, skilled like Russell in the necessary languages, surveys it brilliantly. This, too, is an esoteric, enchanted world of saints and warriors, evoked in their unexpectedly gentle hymns, carols and poems, which Parker translates. Parker takes as her inspiration Chaucer’s line ‘And gladly wolde he lerne and gladly teche’. It is we that should be glad that the likes of Parker and Russell share with us their work, born of a love for humanity across space and time.

Paul Lay

HistoryMatters

Islamic State • Richard Strauss • Jesse Tree • Cool Fashions

Women on the Frontline

The appalling treatment of women and girls by the soldiers of Islamic State and other jihadist groups raises troubling questions about the historical relationship between military conflict and sexual violence. Simon Barton A NEWS report in the Independent of September 11th, 2014 told of the case of a 14-year-old Yazidi girl who had been captured by Islamic State (ISIS) militants in Iraq, given as a gift to one of its commanders and threatened with rape and forced marriage. A video has also emerged, said to show ISIS fighters haggling over the price of captured Yazidi women during a ‘slave market day’. In Nigeria, meanwhile, hundreds of Christian women and girls in the north-east of the country have suffered a similar fate at the hands of the radical Islamist group Boko Haram. Such reports resonate strongly with powerful themes uncovered while undertaking my current historical research, which investigates the political and cultural significance of marriages and other sexual encounters between Christians and Muslims in the Iberian peninsula from the Islamic conquest in the early eighth century to the end of Muslim rule in 1492. Examining a wide range of sources, including legal documents, historical narratives, polemical and hagiographic works, poetry, music and visual art, it sheds light on the ways in which inter-faith couplings were perceived, tolerated or feared, depending upon the political and social contexts in

which they occurred. In early Islamic and even pre-Islamic culture it was considered honourable for a man to acquire a woman from another kin group by war or alliance. The institution of concubinage (that is, sexual cohabitation outside of marriage) was recognised by the Quran and enjoyed popularity throughout the Islamic world, with the acquisition of slave concubines regarded as an important status symbol. Islamic law laid down that a concubine who bore a child to her Muslim master could not be sold, would have the right to permanent residence in her master’s household and would be manumitted on his

Souls for sale: the slave market at Zabid, Yemen, by Yahya ibn Mahmud al-Wasiti, 1237.

death, if not sooner. Their child would be regarded as a legitimate heir, whose legal and social status was equal to that of any siblings born to their father’s free wives. In Iberia large numbers of Christian women and children fell into slavery in the aftermath of the regular military expeditions that were launched by Muslim armies against the Christian states of the north. In the poems that Ibn Darraj al-Qastalli composed to celebrate a string of Muslim military victories at the turn of the 11th century, he laid frequent emphasis on the capture of Christian women, whom he described as ‘herds of fat gazelles’. Women of high social status might be ransomed, but for the majority there was the prospect of a lifetime of servitude – be it in domestic service, agriculture or artisan workshops – either in Iberia or in other regions of the Islamic world. A smaller number were taken as concubines on account of their beauty, or their abilities as singers, dancers or reciters of poetry. Among the best known of these concubines was the Navarrese Christian known as Subh (d. 998). Recruited to the harem of al-Hakam II (r. 961-76), Subh bore the caliph two sons and it was through her influence that one of them later succeeded his father as Hisham II, for whom Subh initially acted as regent on account of her son’s young age. Although none of these women would necessarily have been obliged to renounce their faith, they were required to abide by Islamic social practices, such as those concerning JANUARY 2015 HISTORY TODAY 3

HISTORYMATTERS

ritual purity and dietary laws, and their children would have been brought up as Muslims. The social pressures to convert to Islam may have been considerable. The concubines who entered the harem of a caliph or another Muslim lord might live in some comfort, yet they could also suffer victimisation or even violence at the hands of their masters. For many, clearly, the experience must have been a deeply traumatic one. We should also be aware that this was by no means a one-way street: Muslims, too, were regularly enslaved in the course of Christian cross-border raids and forced concubinage was also commonplace in the northern kingdoms of Iberia. For the Muslim Umayyad rulers, who dominated the peninsula from the eighth until the early 11th centuries, the taking of concubines served an important political purpose. Marrying a Muslim woman necessitated paying a dowry, divorce might lead to a costly property settlement and there was even the risk that, through the dynastic link created, the wife’s family might eventually press its own claims to power. Procreating with concubines forestalled those concerns. It is striking that all the Umayyad rulers in Iberia between the eighth and 10th centuries were born to slave concubines rather than to Muslim married mothers. Similar patterns of reproductive politics can be glimpsed elsewhere in the Islamic world, for example among the Abbasid caliphs and the Ottoman sultans. The mass enslavement of Christian women and the recruitment of some of them as concubines to the harems of Muslim notables also constituted a tool of psychological warfare. The sexual use of female captives was aimed at destroying solidarity among Christian communities by inflicting shame on the women and on their male co-religionists who had failed to protect them. Moreover, the forcible uprooting of Christian women and children and their probable conversion to Islam in most cases was designed to encourage a process of assimilation and ensure a shift in cultural loyalties in the future. 4 HISTORY TODAY JANUARY 2015

Of course none of this was an exclusively medieval Iberian phenomenon. Organised sexual violence against women, with the intention of reinforcing a sense of humiliation among the vanquished, has been an integral aspect of military conduct throughout the ages. In a modern context, one need only recall the forcible recruitment of many thousands of ‘comfort women’ to Japanese-run brothels during the Second World War, or the mass rapes carried out during the Balkan and Rwandan conflicts of the 1990s, to list only some of the most shocking examples. In all such cases, sexual violence acts not only as a cruel outlet of violence for the aggressors, but also as a political metaphor, an emblem of military hegemony. The radical Islamist groups now active in Iraq, Syria and Nigeria are motivated by the same considerations, encouraged by the pronouncements of a handful of Islamic jurists for whom slavery remains an integral part of jihad. Sadly, as Ruth Seifert has observed: ‘In war zones women apparently always find themselves on the frontline.’

Organised sexual violence against women has been an integral part of military conduct through the ages

Simon Barton‘s Conquerors, Brides and Concubines: Interfaith Relations and Social Power in Medieval Iberia will be published by University of Pennsylvania Press in January 2015. Alternative Histories by Rob Murray

Music of Resignation

Richard Strauss trod carefully through a century of turbulence, trauma and transformation. Mark Ronan A TENOR rehearsing Richard Strauss’s opera Salome once astonished me by saying ‘Glorious music, but what an old Nazi!’. Are such objections reasonable? Born in Munich in 1864, his 150th anniversary was celebrated in the 2014 BBC Proms. From tone poems written in his twenties and early thirties to his 1945 Metamorphosen, they produced a bounty of orchestral and instrumental music. Tone poems, such as Don Juan and Tod und Verklärung (Death and Transfiguration) – both written in 1888-9 – were his first claim to fame but the major achievements are his operas. Salome (1905), set to his own abridgement of Oscar Wilde’s play, first propelled him to stardom, followed by Elektra (1909) and Der Rosenkavalier (1911), both collaborations with the poet Hugo von Hofmannstahl. By the outbreak of the First World War he was a wealthy man, wisely lodging part of his money in London, though it was sequestered when war broke out. If Strauss later exhibited a nervous attention to his income, who can blame him? Unlike the impecunious Wagner, a revolutionary who relied on the largesse of others, Strauss achieved financial independence relatively early, yet like Wagner he was no milquetoast. His tone poems made him the ‘arch fiend of modernism and cacophony’ and Salome caused an international scandal. The Dresden premiere elicited 38 curtain calls, though British reticence led to a five-year delay and even then its production was initially banned. Finally Thomas Beecham got it into the Covent Garden programme a year after Elektra, but the Lord Chamberlain was having none of it and the story of how Beecham succeeded in circumventing this is fascinating. He went to the prime minister

HISTORYMATTERS

‘Arch-fiend of Modernism’: Richard Strauss rehearsing in Weimar, Germany, 1890s.

Herbert Asquith’s country home, persuading him to intervene so that Britain could avoid looking foolish in the eyes of the world. The intervention was successful and in due course Beecham was called to the Lord Chamberlain’s office to strike a compromise. Nothing was cut, but the words were changed, bowdlerising the interactions between Salome and John the Baptist and banning the appearance of the latter’s severed head. Its replacement was a platter simply covered by a cloth. Salome’s line, ‘If you had looked at me you would have loved me’, was replaced by ‘… blessed me’. Beecham managed to talk the singers round to the new words, but when the performance got underway their restlessness got the better of Finnish soprano Aino Akté and she made a slip, lapsing into the eloquent viciousness of the original. The infection spread and, before long, the cast was restoring the original words. Beecham tried but failed to drown out the singers, aware that Covent Garden was under the direct control of the Lord Chamberlain’s office. When the curtain came down he saw the Lord Chamberlain’s party coming towards him from the wings. Resisting an urge to flee, he decided to stand his ground and was astonished to find they had all come to congratulate him. As he wrote later, he never knew ‘whether we owed this happy finishing touch to the imperfect diction of the singers, an ignorance of the language …

or their diplomatic decision to put the best possible face on a dénouement that was beyond either their or my power to foresee and control’. Salome and Elektra were brilliantly realised at last year’s Proms, as was the Mozartian charm of his next opera, Der Rosenkavalier, fresh from its controversial new staging at Glyndebourne. Had Strauss died after these, they would have secured his reputation: when US troops knocked on his door at the end of the Second World War, he greeted them with the words: ‘I am Richard Strauss, the composer of Rosenkavalier.’ Yet Strauss achieved far more, including his

The Nazis proclaimed him president of the Reichsmusikkammer without consultation next two operas, Ariadne auf Naxos and Die Frau ohne Schatten, great works both. The second of these, premiered in 1919, marked the start of a five-year stint as co-director of the Vienna State Opera, after which, aged 60, Strauss produced the delightful Intermezzo to his own libretto. Meanwhile, the collaboration with Hofmannsthal led to a new opera on the Greek myth about Helen spending the Trojan War in Egypt, but it failed and Strauss requested another Rosenkavalier. The result was Arabella, but Hofmannsthal died of a stroke during its composition and by the time it came to

stage in 1933, Hitler had come to power. This was a disaster for Strauss. His new collaborator, the Austrian author Stefan Zweig, was Jewish and Strauss only got Zweig’s name on the playbill for the new opera in 1935 by threatening to withdraw the whole thing. The Nazis, who had proclaimed him president of the new Reichsmusikkammer without consultation, eventually gave way but the opera was allowed only three performances and Strauss was instructed to resign his position. The loss of Hofmannsthal and Zweig was a great blow. He never again found a creative literary genius to work with and never recovered his operatic cutting edge. Yet fine works were still to come and in the late 1930s a Hofmannstahl scenario from 1920 was dusted off and amended for Strauss’s last threeact opera, Die Liebe der Danae, about Danae’s love for a human and rejection of Jupiter. Its premiere was originally intended to honour the composer’s 80th birthday in 1944 but, following the assassination attempt on Hitler, all theatres were closed and only a single dress rehearsal was allowed. It is now rarely staged, but in a concert performance this year in Frankfurt, the Act III orchestral interlude known as ‘Jupiter’s Resignation’ proved riveting. These final works – the posthumous Four Last Songs among them – give a representation of resignation and death arguably unmatched in music, but death was something Strauss understood early in his career and, as he said as he lay dying in 1949, it felt just as he had written it in Tod und Verklärung. As for Nazi sympathies, those who know the facts have at worst accused him of looking the other way; nearly 70 when Hitler came to power and, with a Jewish daughter-in-law and granddaughter whom he protected throughout, he had to tread carefully. As for age weakening his muse, the undeniably great Four Last Songs were written when he was 85. After the war, opera moved on, with composers such as Benjamin Britten, and though Strauss belongs to an earlier genre, he remains in his way utterly incomparable.

Mark Ronan is Honorary Professor of Mathematics at University College London. JANUARY 2015 HISTORY TODAY 5

HISTORYMATTERS

Jasper’s Jesse: the Tree of Jesse at St Mary’s Priory, Abergavenny.

The Tree of Jesse Who was responsible for one of the great surviving objects of the Middle Ages? Muriel Adams FOR the critic Andrew Graham-Dixon, the one ‘unarguably great wooden figure’ to survive the iconoclasm of the Reformation is the Jesse Tree at St Mary’s Priory Church, Abergavenny. The recumbent form, carved from an oak trunk in the late 15th century, is an arresting sight, but to imagine the complete Tree spreading upwards 25 feet or more from the shoot below Jesse’s breast, all brilliantly coloured, takes the breath away. The Tree was an illustration of the ancestry of Christ. We do not know who created or commissioned it, for none of St Mary’s records for this period have survived. They were probably destroyed when the town was fired in 1404 during Owain Glyndwr’s revolt. Fine alabaster tombs of members of the Hastings, de Braose and Herbert families tell of powerful patronage at an earlier period. That the latter connection extended into the late 15th century is evident from lions and wyverns, both associated with the Herberts, carved on the south choir stalls. Oak carvings of a similar date offer clues to more of St Mary’s patrons. A misericord carving shows a closed Tudor crown, a Tudor rose and Prince of Wales feathers. Tudor dragons appear on the 6 HISTORY TODAY JANUARY 2015

choir stalls, as does the pomegranate, fertility symbol and emblem of Katherine of Aragon. Her marriage to Prince Arthur in 1501 or, after his death, the betrothal of Katherine and Prince Henry in 1502, may have prompted such decoration. The victory of Henry VII at Bosworth in 1485, widely celebrated in Wales, may have been the stimulus for commissioning the Tree of Jesse, especially since supporters of the Tudor dynasty in North Wales were commissioning Jesse windows at the churches of St Bridget, Diserth, St Dyfnog, Llanrhaeadr and at All Saints, Gresford, where Thomas Stanley, Earl of Derby, stepfather to Henry VII, underwrote the creation of a magnificent east window, in place by 1498, on which the Tree of Jesse is represented. The motive for so doing was twofold: it was to emphasise the donor’s devotion and the importance of lineage. Stanley’s wife, Margaret Beaufort, was great-great-granddaughter of Edward III and granddaughter of John of Gaunt. The commissioners of the Tree of Jesse would have been wealthy members of the region’s nobility. Sir Charles Somerset and his wife, Elizabeth Herbert, whose marriage had been arranged by Henry VII, appear to have been well placed to finance the refurbishment and decoration of the choir stalls, but as they were not married until 1492 it is unlikely they were also patrons of the Jesse Tree, because of the length of time needed to create such a work. The half-trunk of oak would have been hollowed out and carved when still

green and would not have been passed to the painter until well seasoned. The carving on the Jesse is between six and eight inches thick and Carol Galvin, who undertook its conservation in 1993, suggests that it takes around one year to season one inch of oak. For the Tree to be installed at the end of the 15th century, around 1495, it would have had to be sculpted in 1487, two years after Bosworth and a year after Jasper Tudor was made Lord of Abergavenny. Jasper was the son of Owain Tudor, second husband of Henry V’s queen, Catherine, and half-brother to Henry VI, to whose Lancastrian cause he was devoted. He and his elder brother Edmund were created earls in 1453 and made senior to all others in the kingdom. Edmund died of the plague in Carmarthen Castle, leaving his young widow, Margaret Beaufort, expecting a child. Her son, the future Henry VII, was born at Pembroke three months after Edmund’s death. During the Wars of the Roses Jasper was steadfast in his commitment to Henry VI, Margaret Beaufort and her son. He was an experienced military leader but, faced by greater Yorkist forces during the wars, suffered many defeats. After the battle of Mortimer’s Cross in 1461, his father, Owain, was executed in the market place at Hereford. It was not until 1485 that Henry Tudor and his uncle Jasper sailed from exile in Normandy to Milford Haven and, gathering soldiers on their way, pressed forward to meet the army of Richard III at Bosworth on August 22nd. By December 1485, Jasper was entrusted with the task of establishing Henry’s rule in Wales. He died in 1495, having been a benefactor of St Mary’s. In 1493, as ‘Jasper, brother and uncle of kings, Duke of Bedford and Earl of Pembroke’, he granted the priory ‘the whole of our forest of Moile to pasture and water their cattle in’, but no evidence exists that he left a permanent memorial of his bounty within the church. Nevertheless, such was his influence, and such was the fondness of the Jesse Tree image among other supporters of Henry VII, it is difficult to think of anyone with a better claim to be commissioner of the great Jesse Tree at Abergavenny.

Muriel Adams was head of teacher education at the University of Newport.

HISTORYMATTERS

Northern Glam

The beginnings of fashion are often traced to the courts and cities of medieval southern Europe. Should we be looking further north? Michael Pye KALI sailed from Norway to Grimsby, as you did in the 12th century; the Orkneyinga Saga says so. There he met men from Scotland, the Hebrides and Orkney and, back in Norway, went round the inns to show off the fashions he had adopted on his travels: ‘He was stylishly dressed now that he was just back from England’, the saga says. His colleague Jon ‘was a great one for clothes’, too. The pair indulged in blood feuds and their status depended on brawling and killing, but they were something you might not expect: they were dandies. Since they came from the raw new port of Bergen, far from the fashions of the courts of southern Europe, and because they lived more than two centuries before most textbooks say that the idea of fashion began, their story is worth exploring. Kali lived in a town where ‘new fashions in dress made their appearance’ in the 12th century, according to the Saga of Olaf the Gentle. It was not just that men were choosing to wear tight breeches, ankle rings, ribboned gowns and high shoes with gold laces, not practical dress on ships or docks; a man could also be condemned for dressing out of date. The drab politician Erling ‘wore old-fashioned clothing’, the saga says, disapprovingly, and even worse: ‘He had the king wear similar clothes when he was young.’ Luckily the king, ‘when he became independent’, chose to dress finely. The sagas get the point of fashion: choice, change, a bit of social pressure and impractical style. They may also suggest something else: how and why fashion started. The archaeological evidence from

Bergen, from the 11th century onwards, includes shoes for women, children, men, a startling number of which are embroidered in silk. Silk was produced in the Tuscan city of Lucca from the 12th century and Parisian clerics were already denouncing ‘worm’s excrement’; silk on shoes was later a mark of rank in illuminated manuscripts and in the south it was a luxury. But in the north it was democratic; it seems everyone could have fashion. Silk was a product of a world in motion, of the trading routes that ran from Bergen, through the Baltic, down the great Russian rivers as far as Constantinople. Such trade allowed fantasies to flourish. Choice mattered even in the frigid colonies of Greenland, as the clothes laid out in cemeteries suggest. Settlers tailored clothes because they could not waste material: they were farmers with collars, with clothes that flared out from the shoulders. They liked materials such as the reddish diamond twill from England and rough weave from Ireland. Buttonholes came to Greenland while they were still a scandal further south. They had so little and there was hardly anybody to see them but they still made choices. This was alarming. Clothes symbolised your status, even your income, and such meanings were meant to last.

Glad hands: a pair of late 15thcentury knitted silk and goldthread gloves.

The sagas get the point of fashion: choice, change, a bit of social pressure and impractical style

The sumptuary laws of the England of Henry VIII states that ‘no man under the degree of a Baron [may] use in his Aparell of his body or of his horses any clothe of gold of tyssue’ and better cloth of gold was reserved for even higher ranks. You were what you wore. It was shocking that people could choose how to dress. Faker, a character in the 13th-century Roman de la Rose, claims he is so good at changing clothes that he can be ‘now a knight, now a monk, a bishop, a chaplain, now a clerk, now a priest ... a master or the owner of a proper castle or just a man who works in the forests’. Long robes once meant you were literate, a lawyer perhaps – only nobles let their buttocks show in the street – but by 1467 Jacques de Clerc could complain that ‘there wasn’t a journeyman, however minor, who didn’t have a long robe down to the ankle’. The issue was not excess or finery; it was class. In Scotland, brightly coloured clothes for working people were illegal after 1430. In England, nobody with less than £100 a year could wear fur. The law tried to ban clothing that suggested social fluidity. Jeanne of Navarre, 13th-century queen of France, was furious at the silks and jewels she saw in the Flemish trading towns of Bruges and Ghent: ‘I thought I was the only queen’, she snapped. She saw such splendour in towns where Venetian galleys called, where spices came west and north, in towns that traded overseas. Fashion seemed to come from somewhere else. Robert I of Naples blamed the French for the ‘bumfreezer’ styles of the 1330s, even though he was himself French. The first printed books of fashion, of the 16th century, are about what people wear in other countries – the enormous trousers of Scotland, the straw hats of Antwerp. Moralists worried about what these changes in clothing meant. Fashion was more than just the business of beautiful women or sumptuous courts. It begins with those, like Kali, who had seen things done differently.

Michael Pye is the author of The Edge of the World: How the North Sea Made Us What We Are (Viking, 2014). JANUARY 2015 HISTORY TODAY 7

MonthsPast

JANUARY

By Richard Cavendish

JANUARY 15th 1815

Emma, Lady Hamilton dies in Calais It was a wretched end to a vivid life. Emma Lyon was born in 1765 in the Wirral area south of Birkenhead. Her father, a blacksmith, died when she was a baby and she was brought up by her mother at Hawarden in the county of Flint (in North Wales). How much education she managed to get is uncertain and her spelling was never up to much, but she grew up to be ravishingly good looking and it was this combined with her vivacious personality and carefree attitude to sex that saw her soar like a rocket from the working-class earth into the sky of celebrity. In her teens Emma worked as a maid for families in Hawarden and later in London. There is no reliable evidence that she was ever exactly a prostitute, but what she called her ‘giddy ways’ attracted the attention of rich young aristocrats. She was said to have showed off by dancing naked on their diningroom tables and in 1782, when she was going on 17, she bore a daughter to one of them. She then moved in with a friend of his, Charles Francis Greville, who installed her in his London home and provided her with music and drawing lessons. Through him she met the artist George Romney, who was to paint many enchanting portraits of her (as would Joshua Reynolds and Thomas Lawrence). Greville unloaded Emma on his elderly widower uncle, Sir William Hamilton, in return for Hamilton making Greville his heir. Hamilton was ambassador to the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies and in 1786 Emma arrived in Naples for what she thought was a holiday with him. When she discovered the truth she was furious, but Hamilton adored her and won her over. Some English women sneered at her plebeian accent, but she and Hamilton moved in the highest 8 HISTORY TODAY JANUARY 2015

Neapolitan society and she grew very close to Queen Maria Carolina. Hamilton was master of ceremonies for her admired ‘Attitudes’, when she posed in sometimes flimsy costumes as figures from Graeco-Roman mythology. When he married her in 1791 he was 60 and she was 26. It was in Naples two years later that Emma first met Horatio Nelson, who was then the captain of HMS Agamemnon. He and the Hamiltons became close friends and Nelson fell utterly in love with her. When the three of them returned to England together a contemporary remarked that she led Nelson about like a keeper with a bear. He left his wife and he and the Hamiltons, describing themselves as ‘three joined in one’, lived together in a house in Piccadilly. She bore Nelson a daughter, Horatia, in January 1801. The three-in-one moved into Merton

Enchanting: portrait of Emma, Lady Hamilton by George Romney, c. 1782-84.

Place, a house near Wandsworth. They rebuilt it on a grand scale and Emma turned it into a temple of Nelson worship. His fame and the admiration in which he was held in the navy and in the nation at large rose to Mount Everest proportions. Emma basked in it and his death in action at Trafalgar in 1805 was a catastrophe. When the news was brought to her at Merton Place, she wrote some days later that she ‘screamed and fell back’ and could not speak for about ten hours. She did not know how she was to bear her future existence. At the end of November she wrote: ‘Life to me is not worth having. I lived for him. His glory I gloried in ... But I cannot go on. My heart and head are gone.’ The government, which lavished money and honours on Nelson’s family, ignored Emma. Hamilton had left her money when he died in 1803, as did Nelson, who also left her Merton Place, but his brother William, now an earl, avoided handing over all the money and by now Emma, accustomed to a life of champagne-swilling luxury, was addicted to alcohol. She had to sell Merton Place and in 1813 she was arrested for debt and sent to prison in Southwark, though she was allowed to live in rooms nearby with young Horatia. Friends eventually raised money that let Emma sneak away across the Channel to Calais with Horatia in July 1814. They lived in cramped, dismal lodgings and, according to Horatia, Emma spent her days lying in bed, drinking. It was probably cirrhosis of the liver that carried her off early the following year at the age of 49. She was buried in the graveyard of the church of St Pierre and it is said that her funeral was attended out of respect for Nelson by the captains of every English ship in Calais harbour. In 1994 a memorial to her was unveiled in what is now the Parc Richelieu in Calais.

JANUARY 10th 1840

The penny post is delivered The British postal system was the Royal Mail because it was originally used only for sending royal and government communications. In 1635 Charles I made the service available to the general public, but 200 years later the system was an archaic, expensive mess, from which it was rescued by Rowland Hill. A schoolmaster in Birmingham originally, Hill was later involved in the creation of the colony of South Australia. In 1837 he wrote a pamphlet on post office reform and sent it to Thomas Spring Rice, the

Alpha mail: an original Penny Red and Penny Black.

JANUARY 14th 1615

John Biddle baptised

Unitarianism is a variety of Protestantism that rejects the doctrine of the Trinity and consequently the divinity of Jesus, though admiring his life and teachings. It does not accept hell or original sin, rejects all authority in matters religious and believes that only the individual can, in the end, determine what he or she believes about God. John Biddle, who has been called the father of Unitarianism in England, was a Gloucestershire tailor’s son, born at Wotton-underEdge. Outstandingly bright, he went to the local grammar school and then to

Religious reason: frontispiece of Biddle’s A Twofold Cathechism, 1654.

chancellor of the exchequer in Lord Melbourne’s government, who was impressed. At that time letters were paid for by the recipient and the price varied according to the distance travelled and the number of sheets of paper involved. It was costly and there is an engaging story that Hill’s interest in the postal system was inspired by seeing a young woman upset because she was too poor to pay for a letter from her fiancé. He suggested that each letter should be paid for by the sender and should cost the same to every town with a delivery office, regardless of how far it had travelled. Delivery to rural addresses would cost extra (as it would until 1897). The post office bureaucrats dug in against any change to their system and Hill’s plans were denounced as ‘wild and visionary schemes’, but there was considerable general support for them, the government insisted and Parliament agreed. Hill was put in charge

Magdalen Hall, Oxford (now Hertford College), where he took his degree. He was a tutor at the college for a time before being appointed headmaster of a school in Gloucester in 1641. He already believed in applying reason to religious questions, rather than accepting authority, and his unorthodox views on the Trinity got him into trouble. Biddle’s reservations about the divinity of both Christ and the Holy Spirit came to the disapproving attention of Parliament and he spent much of the rest of his life either in prison for his heretical opinions or out on bail awaiting interrogation and trial. Fully confident of his intellectual powers, he courted controversy by publishing

and the post office announced that sheets of adhesive stamps costing one penny each would be issued and letters would cost a penny per half ounce when posted or two pence if paid for on delivery. The first Penny Black stamps, with a profile of the young Queen Victoria’s head on them, were issued at the beginning of May. Later they were perforated to make them easier to detach from the sheet. Each sheet, containing 240 stamps, cost £1. Close to 70 million of the Penny Black stamps were produced before they were replaced a year later in 1841 by Penny Reds. They are now collectors’ items. Hill was dismissed by a Tory government in 1842 amid much cantankerous wrangling, but returned to the post office again from 1846 to 1864. His reforms made sending letters far cheaper. The poet William Wordsworth complained that he now had to cope with more time-wasting letters from strangers but, along with growing public literacy, Hill’s reforms caused a massive increase in use of the post. He was knighted in 1860 and when he died in 1874 at the age of 83 was buried in Westminster Abbey.

tracts and engaging in public discussions while scathingly dismissing his opponents, who he said deluded themselves and others with ‘brainsick notions that have neither sap nor sense in them’. Parliament’s actions against Biddle’s ideas actually drew attention to them. He was gathering some support and in 1655 Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell personally saved him from execution by banishing him to the Scilly Isles. Released in 1658, he presided over a small group of disciples who met regularly in London, but under Charles II’s regime he was sent to prison in Newgate in 1662 and died there in September that year. He was still only 47 years old, but his influence lived on long afterwards through his disciples and reprints of his writings. The first congregation in England to call itself Unitarian was founded in London in 1774. JANUARY 2015 HISTORY TODAY 9

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When

Alexander met

Thalestris The romantic liaison between the great Amazon warrior queen and the conqueror of the known world has been much mythologised. But did such a delicious pairing really happen? Adrienne Mayor investigates.

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LEXANDER OF MACEDON had conquered Persia. Now he was determined to expand his empire all the way to India. In 330 bc Alexander’s army of more than 30,000 began marching east from Ecbatana (Hamadan, Iran), through the high desert toward Rhaga (Tehran). Threading through the ‘Caspian Gates’, a narrow defile in the Elburz mountains, they reached Hyrcania on the southern shore of the Caspian Sea. Here Alexander made camp at a huge rock with a spring about 15 miles north-west of the ancient city of Hecatompylus. From this base Alexander rode out to subdue several Hyrcanian towns and skirmished with the Mardians, mounted nomads who stole Alexander’s horse Bucephalus and held him for ransom. Back in Hecatompylus, Alexander met with envoys from tribes near and far, who were curious to pledge allegiance to the young world conqueror. While at this camp Alexander received an extraordinary visitor: Thalestris, an imperious Amazon queen accompanied by 300 warrior women on horseback. Thalestris had a mission: to have

The Amazon Queen, Thalestris, in the Camp of Alexander the Great, by Johann Georg Platzer, c.1750.

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THALESTRIS Alexander’s baby. According to several ancient accounts, Alexander did his best to fulfill her desire. How believable is the tale of Alexander and Thalestris? In antiquity the story of Alexander’s romance with the Amazon immediately achieved legendary status. It sparked controversy: not surprising when a larger-than-life hero, later worshipped as a god, makes love with a woman identified as the ‘queen of the Amazons’. The historians of Alexander’s campaigns felt compelled to include this episode: it seemed plausible enough to merit preservation and serious discussion. Strabo, for example, was dubious, but he accepted that Amazons, identified as barbarian fighting women living with or without men, had existed in lands of the Black Sea-Caucasus-Caspian region. Yet Strabo was not entirely convinced that renegade bands of Amazons were still active in Alexander’s time or in Strabo’s own day 300 years later, even though he acknowledged that many writers asserted this. According to Plutarch, in his even-handed biography of Alexander, ‘most writers reported that the queen of the Amazons came to see him in Hyrcania’. He listed 14 sources for the story. Some accepted it, some doubted, others described different encounters with Amazons. Plutarch kept an open mind but believed that the most trustworthy authors were skeptical. Plutarch also repeated a by then well-known anecdote about a conversation that supposedly occurred between two old veterans of Alexander’s campaigns. Onesicritus wrote a first-hand account, now known only by fragments, that contained many valuable details, but he was sometimes accused of exaggeration. Plutarch’s story goes that Onesicritus was reading his narrative about the Amazon queen aloud to Lysimachus, who smiled and asked: ‘And where was I, then?’ Lysimachus was one of Alexander’s officers; it is unknown whether he was at the camp near Hecatompylus at the time or whether he had remained with another part of Alexander’s main army. His comment is enigmatic. Was Lysimachus bantering about having missed out on the action at the camp, or was he humorously denying the whole story? For such a sensational topic, the story of Thalestris as we have it seems straightforward, consistent and unadorned. Moreover, the Thalestris episode is embedded in a sequence of events whose historical authenticity is generally accepted by ancient and modern scholars. We can never prove or disprove the veracity of the meeting of Thalestris and Alexander that reportedly took place more than 2,300 years ago, but we can analyse the details of the surviving ancient narratives for authenticity and plausibility in terms of what was possible for that time and place, taking into account literary, historical, ethnographical and archaeological evidence.

in his achievements, and she was superior to all women in strength and courage … presumably the offspring of such superlative parents would surpass all other mortals in excellence.’ This belief was widespread in antiquity. Alexander, remarked Diodorus, was ‘delighted by her summons and eagerly granted her request’. The couple spent 13 days and nights together. At the end of their affair, Alexander honoured her with generous farewell gifts and Thalestris rode away with her entourage. Justin gives a few more details about the great stir that the Amazons’ arrival and their wondrous appearance caused in Alexander’s camp. Thalestris was ‘dressed strangely for a woman’, noted Justin, and ‘the purpose of her visit aroused general surprise: she came seeking sexual intercourse’. Alexander decided to linger for 13 days with his guest. ‘When she was sure she had conceived’, commented Justin, ‘Thalestris departed.’ Another early version of their encounter offers more vivid details. Curtius, in the first century ad, reported that Thalestris was ‘fired with a desire to visit the king’ and set out with a large escort from her land. As the Amazon queen approached his encampment, she sent messengers ahead to ‘give notice that the queen was eager to meet and become acquainted with him’. Alexander gave his permission at once. Thalestris then rode into the camp with her

In antiquity the story of Alexander’s romance with the Amazon immediately achieved legendary status

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HALESTRIS WAS SAID TO BE renowned for her courage and beauty among her own people. With a specific mission in mind, she set out from her land to meet the man who had defeated the great Persian king, Darius. According to the earliest surviving account, by Diodorus Siculus, Alexander ‘marvelled at the unexpected arrival and the dignified spectacle of the women warriors in armour’ and asked Thalestris the reason for her visit. She replied that word of his conquests had reached her and she had decided to have a child by him. Thalestris invited Alexander to have sex. As Diodorus explains: ‘He was the greatest of all men 12 HISTORY TODAY JANUARY 2015

Alexander the Great portrayed on an amphora from Magna Graecia, southern Italy, c.330 bc.

bodyguard of 300 women, ‘leaving the rest of her forces behind’. Curtius gives a general description of typical Amazon attire, like that known from Greek vase paintings, and remarks that Thalestris wore a garment ‘knotted just above the knee’ (perhaps a wide skirt hitched up for riding). If we assume that Thalestris was a real horsewoman-archer of a Saka-Scythian group, ancient artistic images of Amazons and Scythians and modern archaeological discoveries of the grave goods of armed women can help to fill out a picture of her appearance. The women wore pointed or soft hats and long-sleeved tunics glittering with golden appliqués of animals, belts with elaborate golden buckles, patterned leggings and/or riding skirts, soft leather boots and leopard skin capes. Thalestris would carry a dagger at her side, a pair of spears and a Scythian-style quiver and bow. Elaborately embroidered saddle blankets on a fine horse fitted with dazzling golden trappings complete the image. As soon as she spotted Alexander, continues Curtius, Thalestris leaped down from her horse, holding two spears in her right hand. Gazing brazenly at the king, she gave his physique the once over. Curtius tells us that Thalestris was surprised at Alexander’s slight stature and ordinary appearance; she had expected someone capable of such glorious deeds to have superb physical form and majestic charisma. Nevertheless, when Alexander asked if she had any requests, Thalestris boldly explained that she hoped to become pregnant with his child, pointing out that she was a superior woman worthy of giving him an heir for his kingdom. Then she made an interesting promise: if the baby born of their union was a girl, Thalestris would raise her, but a son would be returned to his father, Alex- A Baktrian ander. This curious detail in Curtius is often passed medallion showing a female over, but it carries a note of authenticity. Her offer archer, second reflects the traditional child-rearing practices of century bc. the nomadic barbarian women and the men who fathered their children, as reported by numerous ancient historians. The sons were returned to the fathers’ tribes and were adopted as the men’s rightful heirs. Similar fosterage arrangements, sending sons (and sometimes daughters) to be raised by allied clans or tribes, were customary until modern times among peoples of the Caucasus and other tribes Above left: Darius III in a detail from the Alexander Mosaic, first century bc. Above right: Greeks and Amazons on a marble sarcophagus, second century ad.

of Eurasia as a way of sealing alliances. Fosterage was also common in medieval Ireland, Scotland, Wales and other European societies. Curtius includes yet another significant detail. He states that Alexander invited Thalestris (and presumably her female entourage) to join his cavalry. Thalestris declined, saying she needed to defend her own country. She persisted in her wish to bear his child. Her enthusiasm was greater than Alexander’s, commented Curtius.

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F WE ASSUME THAT Thalestris really existed, where was she from? Diodorus stated that her home was between the rivers Thermodon and Phasis, in the region of Pontus and Colchis. Strabo also placed her somewhere in the Thermodon-Caucasus region. This territory corresponds to Caucasian Iberia, the foothills above the River Phasis valley and Caucasian Albania, between the eastern end of the Caucasus and the Caspian Sea. These were the traditional strongholds of the Amazons of Greek myth. According to Strabo, Amazons still ‘were said to live in the [Caucasus] mountains above Albania’. Notably, the Roman commander Pompey encountered enemy females fighting alongside the men here during the Third Mithradatic War of the first century bc. Justin also reported that Thalestris’ Amazons were ‘neighbours of the Albani’. He reminded readers that, after their defeat in the mythic Battle for Athens, the Amazons had lost their foothold in Pontus and withdrew into the Caucasus mountains and northern steppes. The next great warrior-queen of Pontus was Penthesilea, Justin noted, but her Amazon band was wiped out in the legendary Trojan War. Justin, like many other ancient writers, maintained that isolated populations of Amazons remained in the mountains around the south-eastern Black Sea, in Pontus, Colchis, Iberia and Albania (north-eastern Turkey, Georgia, Azerbaijan and Armenia). ‘They managed to survive down to the time of Alexander the Great’, says Justin. ‘One of these was Queen Thalestris.’ In antiquity, the Black Sea-Transcaucasus-Caspian Sea region was inhabited by Saka-Scythian and related nomadic and semi-nomadic groups of mounted archers, whose men and women rode horses, hunted, made war, traded and raided, forming mixed and same-sex groups according to circumstances. Thalestris could have belonged to a tribe that marshalled bands of men, men and women, or women only, for hunting, reconnaissance, negotiations, battle, plunder or adventure; both sexes participated in these options in steppe nomad cultures. JANUARY 2015 HISTORY TODAY 13

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Thalestris had distinguished herself in battle among her own people, noted Diodorus, and now she sought a worthy mate for sex and offspring All-women groups might form and disband on an ad hoc basis for various reasons: for example, when particularly strong women leaders arose or while most men were away or had been killed in battle. The Greek historians may have simply assumed that an ‘Amazon queen’ must have originated in Thermodon, Pontus or in Colchis, where ancient Greek mythographers had located them. Another possibility is that Thalestris was a member of a nomadic tribe west of the Caspian Sea, north-west of Hyrcania (southern Azerbaijan, northern Iran, Armenia). An Azerbaijani tradition tells of a meeting between Alexander and a Saka ‘queen’ from Caucasian Albania named Nushaba. The epic poem Iskandar-nameh (1194) by Nizami drew on this ancient legend. Scholars believe that Nushaba was modelled on a Saka-Scythian female leader from Sakasena (‘Saka-land’), near Barda, central Azerbaijan. In the legend, Nushaba developed a keen interest in Alexander during his conquests. When he visits Barda, they converse as equals, surrounded by her female soldiers. Impressed by her courage and wisdom, Alexander decides not to attack her land. This legend, told from Nushaba’s point of 14 HISTORY TODAY JANUARY 2015

A woman, possibly Thalestris, among a group of male warriors, by Nicolo dell’Abate, 16th century.

view, appears to be a non-Greek tradition about Alexander and a local warrior-queen from Thalestris’ homeland. Ancient and modern historians tend to imagine Thalestris as the leader of an all-female society. But, if Thalestris ‘left the bulk of her army at the border of Hyrcania’ as both Diodorus and Curtius reported, those soldiers might have been men. (Only Justin says her entire force consisted of the 300 women warriors.) Thalestris may have been one of the powerful female leaders who emerged from time to time among Saka-Scythian groups, like the historical warrior-queens Tomyris of the Massagetae, Tirgatao of the Maeotians, Zarina of the Saka and Amage of the Roxolani, who led armies of men and women. The news of Alexander’s epic victory over the Persian Empire resounded throughout the Persian-influenced lands between the Black and Caspian seas. Alexander’s chroniclers describe numerous tribes of Scythians and others dispatching emissaries with armed escorts to meet and greet the leader of the next superpower. Such a party might

be led by one of the tribe’s best warriors of the day and that champion could have been a woman. Thalestris was described as a ruler in all the sources: ‘princess’ and ‘queen’ were Greek and Latin labels. Could she have been the daughter of a Scythian chieftain and later promoted to an ‘Amazon queen’ in popular lore? Some scholars raise this possibility, citing a letter from Alexander to Antipater, his regent in Macedon, referring to an event in 328 bc. While in Sogdiana-Baktria, Alexander had received a message from a Scythian king who offered his daughter in marriage as a pledge of friendship; the king also hinted that he would send Alexander’s companions Scythian wives, too. According to Curtius, Alexander had sent a messenger to this king ‘beyond the Bosporus’, but Alexander declined the king’s offer, perhaps because Scythians had just defeated one of his officers in that region. Letters attributed to Alexander in antiquity are highly suspect, but Plutarch accepted its authenticity and thought it significant that it did not mention Thalestris. This was formal correspondence, however, conveying the political and military details of Alexander’s campaign and his justifications for pushing on to India, so a private sexual dalliance might have seemed irrelevant. THE SOURCES AGREE that Thalestris was an acclaimed warrior-leader in her own right. Whether such a formidable visitor came on her own or was dispatched as a representative of her people to propose a marriage alliance or to become pregnant by the great world conqueror, she would certainly arrive on horseback well armed, dressed in Alexander and distinctive nomad attire and accompanied Thalestris, by by an escort of warrior women. As the clasFrancesco Primaticcio, sicist Elizabeth Baynham has suggested, 16th century. the ‘most likely historical explanation’ is that Thalestris was a woman ‘of Saka stock accustomed to ride and shoot, who came with a mounted group of females also carrying weapons’. Thalestris had distinguished herself in battle among her own people, noted Diodorus, and now she sought a worthy mate for sex and offspring. Whether or not Thalestris really existed, this sequence also carries a ring of authenticity. From Herodotus on, Greco-Roman writers tell how Scythian women were expected to be worthy in battle before they formed unions with men of their own choosing, often males outside of their immediate tribe. The 300 women who accompanied Thalestris could have been proven warriors and they may well have intended to consort with Alexander’s soldiers. Might some of the Amazon leader’s companions have remained with the Macedonian soldiers, or did they all depart after 13 days? The usual Amazon way was to move on after mating, but some writers refer to lasting unions. For example, Herodotus described a settled Scythian community on the Sea of Azov that sought to revitalise their bloodlines by mating with a band of marauding horsewomen perceived to have excellent warrior characteristics. The result was said to be the Sarmatians. Even though it took the Greeks by surprise, there was nothing extraordinary about a party of Scythian women inviting a group of battle-hardened men to frolic with them for a couple of weeks with the aim of going home pregnant with robust offspring. The name ‘Thalestris’ poses a curious riddle. In a fragment of the earliest known account by Cleitarchus (who was with Alexander and is cited by Strabo), the Amazon’s name was ‘Thalestria’; Diodorus calls her ‘Thallestris’. Justin mentioned another name from an unknown source,

Minythyia. We cannot know her true name, of course, since both names are Greek. ‘Thallestris’ means ‘She Who Makes Bloom’, while ‘Minythyia’ means the opposite, ‘She Who Diminishes’. It is not impossible that Thalestris was a translation or Hellenisation of a real barbarian name. But the pairing of this name with its opposite is suggestive. Jocular names with double meanings abounded in antiquity. The opposition of Minythyia – ‘The Shrinker’ – and Thalestris – ‘The Grower’ – for an attractive but dangerous Amazon lover hints that there may have been a popular joke about Alexander and the Amazon queen, a double entendre playing on the erotic ambivalence aroused by strong women. The sexual innuendo could have alluded to Curtius’ claim that Thalestris was unimpressed by Alexander’s physique. SUPPOSING THAT Alexander did entertain a Saka-Scythian warrior woman at his camp, what route did she take to intercept him at Hecatompylus? The sources are unclear. Strabo preserved a scrap of information from Cleitarchus who was with Alexander at the time but whose work is lost. He said that Thalestris set out from ‘Thermodon’ and came by way of the ‘Caspian Gates’ to Hyrcania. ‘Amazons of Thermodon’ was a familiar trope from myth. Compounding the uncertainty, three different passes were known as the ‘Caspian Gates’ in antiquity. One was the narrow passage between the eastern cliffs of the Caucasus range and the Caspian Sea (Dagestan), also called the ‘Marpesian Rock’ after the Amazon queen, Marpesia. This pass was sometimes confused with the socalled Scythian Gates over the mid-Caucasus because Greek historians were unclear about their precise locations. Both were major migration routes for nomads. If we accept that Thalestris started out from the southern Black Sea region of ancient Colchis, then she would not cross either of these Caucasus passes. But she may well have travelled through the third pass by that name, the ‘Caspian Gates’ east of Ecbatana, the very same pass traversed by Alexander on the way to make camp in Hyrcania.

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F SHE SET OUT from the south-eastern Black Sea-southern Caucasus area, Thalestris’ path would follow the Phasis and Cyrus river valleys through Caucasian Iberia and Albania, eastward to the Caspian Sea (the same route taken by Pompey after his battle with the male and female warriors). She would turn south, traversing the luxuriant Nisaean horse pastures west of the Caspian Sea. Migrating nomads from the Black Sea, Caucasus and steppes routinely ranged over this territory west of the Caspian. (Archaeologists have discovered some armed women’s graves in this region.) Justin indicated that Thalestris had to avoid hostile tribes on her trek. Indeed, after Darius III’s defeat by Alexander, nomad raiders flocked to the Nisaean Plain to capture thousands of fine horses from the celebrated royal Persian herds. Because Thalestris knew only that Alexander was marching east on the main caravan route but was unaware of his exact location, she would not continue around the southern Caspian shore but would head south across the Elburz mountain range, Mardian territory, perhaps following the Mardos (Sefid Rud) river valley. At a point near Rhaga, her party would join the main caravan route. From here she could easily retrace the path of Alexander’s immense Macedonian army as it travelled east through the Caspian Gates (about 50 miles east of Rhaga). Now Thalestris would be passing through the lands recently subdued by Alexander, meeting people who could inform her on his progress. JANUARY 2015 HISTORY TODAY 15

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The paths of Thalestris and Alexander met in the Caspian region. Thalestris had ventured south from her base in the Caucasus.

Alexander dreamed of creating a vast empire, a fusing of cultures through marriage alliances and offspring of mixed parentages

Alexander’s soldiers, camp followers and suppliers were strung out along this trail. Following Alexander’s route made sense; sooner or later she would catch up with him. Learning the location of his headquarters at the spring north of Hecatompylus, she would overtake Alexander after he returned from his Mardian venture in late summer 330 bc. Justin provides another crucial detail: ‘Thalestris travelled 35 days through hostile territories in order to have a child by king Alexander.’ Strabo argued that such a long journey, ‘more than 6,000 stadia from the Thermodon to Hyrcania’, was impractical. The distance of the trek outlined above would be about 600-700 miles (1 mile = 8.7 stadia). Depending on the terrain, weather, water, pasture, weight of her supplies, number of spare horses, detours and hostile encounters, we can estimate that Thalestris and her cohort could ride an average of 20 to 30 miles a day. Mounted nomads could easily travel 700-1,000 miles in 35 days. This means that Strabo’s geographical doubts, at least, can be laid to rest.

WOULD ALEXANDER HAVE agreed to procreate with a barbarian warrior queen? Alexander (and his men) had known many Amazon-like women of intelligence, ambition and power in the Macedonian court. Alexander’s grandfather Philip I had Scythian wives and his father Philip II married Audata, daughter of the Dardanian king of Illyria, in 359 bc. Illyrian women were raised to be riders, hunters and warriors. While young Alexander was learning horsemanship, hunting and fighting, Audata was training her daughter, Alexander’s half-sister, Cynnane (b. 358 bc), in the same skills. Like Alexander, Cynnane became a military commander. Sometime around 343 bc young Cynnane led an army against an Illyrian force; she personally slew many Illyrians and killed their queen, Caeria. Alexander also met strong-willed women in the Persian court and 16 HISTORY TODAY JANUARY 2015

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along his route to India. We know that Alexander dreamed of creating a vast melting-pot empire, a fusing of cultures through marriage alliances and offspring of mixed parentage. In a speech recorded by Curtius, Alexander declared that he married Darius’ Persian daughter Stateira and the Baktrian princess Roxane expressly in order to beget children and ‘abolish all distinction between vanquished and victor’. We know from several sources that Alexander encouraged tens of thousands of his men to marry the barbarian women with whom they had children on the long campaign. These mixed families travelled with his army. Alexander anticipated training their Greek-barbarian sons as soldiers to be known as ‘The Descendants’. Thalestris, a beauty and proven warrior, could have been considered an ideal mother of Alexander’s heir.

OW WOULD THALESTRIS and Alexander have communicated? The sources agree that Thalestris made her intentions clear. It is amusing to picture the haughty queen conveying her desire with earthy gestures and Alexander’s reaction. But Diodorus emphasised the ‘dignity’ of the women. We do not know what language these Amazons spoke, but the queen’s request was likely spelled out through interpreters. Once alone in the royal tent, of course, there was no need for words. Alexander decided to ‘pause here for 13 days to fulfill Thalestris’ quest’, writes Justin, so we can guess that these late summer days in Hyrcania were spent in leisure and that the Macedonian soldiers were free to enjoy the company of the queen’s entourage. Alexander liked to relax by riding horses and chasing rabbits with his friends. Scythian women enjoyed the same pursuits, so Thalestris would have made a superb hunting companion. What happened after Thalestris departed the Macedonian camp? Curtius and others claimed that Alexander embraced barbarian attire

(nomad raiders had reduced the herds to a third of that). Here, reported the historian Arrian (second century ad): THEY SAY that Atropates, satrap of Media, sent 100 horsewomen that he called Amazons to Alexander. The women were armed with battle-axes and small shields and dressed in the traditional Amazon fashion. IT IS SAID that Alexander dismissed this female cavalry, fearing that their presence might incite his Greek and barbarian soldiers to molest them. THEY ALSO SAY that Alexander told the warrior women to inform their queen that he would later pay a visit to beget children by her. Curtius added that the horsewomen’s equipment ‘led SOME TO BELIEVE that they were survivors of the race of Amazons’. The capitalised phrases signal the legendary nature of the incident and Alexander’s promise to impregnate their queen suggests an alternate version of the Thalestris story. The location is not that far from Hyrcania. Was this story conflated with the account of Thalestris and her 300 Amazons in oral retellings? If a cavalry unit of armed females was in fact presented to Alexander, however, they could have been authentic women warriors from a nomadic tribe allied with the Median king.

Nushaba recognises Iskander by his portrait. Afghan, 15th century.

and luxuries after consorting with Thalestris. Following the interlude with his lover, Alexander outfitted his horses with barbarian ornaments and began to wear costly robes with gold borders and fancy belts over his short Greek chiton (although he drew the line at trousers). Some of Alexander’s luxurious trappings were spoils, others had been presented by ambassadors. Perhaps a few items were gifts from Thalestris. Alexander’s foreign style offended his Greek soldiers, but adapting some native customs in public appears to have been a deliberate strategy to win over Asian peoples. Other historians tell us that after meeting Thalestris, Alexander began to travel with a harem of concubines from native populations. He soon married Roxane, the 16-year-old Baktrian princess who bore his son soon after Alexander’s death in 323 bc. And Thalestris? Did she give birth to Alexander’s child, too? Of all the ancient historians, only Justin felt the need to wrap up the incomplete story of the Amazon queen Thalestris and he is terse: ‘Thalestris was granted her wish to sleep with Alexander in order to have a child by him. She then returned to her kingdom and died soon afterwards, and with her all trace of the Amazonian name.’ We do not hear of any child born of her union with Alexander, as one might expect if their affair was a purely fictional tale. THALESTRIS WAS NOT THE ONLY ‘Amazon’ linked with Alexander. Three years after their liaison, in 327 bc, Alexander encountered another warrior queen, Cleophis of the Ashvakas (Sanskrit for ‘Horse People’) in the Swat and Buner valleys of the Hindu Kush. She commanded an army of men and women (20,000 cavalry and 38,000 infantry) against the Macedonians at Massaga. The women fought as valiantly as the men. Alexander was wounded and Cleophis was captured. The ancient rumour that Cleophis (who was twice his age) bore Alexander’s son appears to have arisen because she named a grandson ‘Alexander’ in gratitude for his compassion after the battle. By the summer of 324 bc Alexander was back in Media after the arduous Indian campaigns. Alexander made a special trip to see the famous Nisaean Plain, where as many as 150,000 horses once grazed

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N THE ARCHAIC GREEK MYTHS, whenever great Greek heroes met Amazon queens, bloody combat ensued and the barbarian women were invariably killed. A different scenario marks the historical and legendary Greek accounts describing Alexander’s relationships with women identified as Amazons. Departing from the violent mythic script, Alexander meets warrior queens as equals, they engage in peaceable conversations, refrain from duelling to the death and part on amiable terms. Alexander and Thalestris negotiated about sharing a child and joining forces. Equality, harmony and mutual respect are the prominent themes. These same egalitarian features are hallmarks of the Persian-influenced legends about Alexander (Iskander) and a warrior-queen who resembles Thalestris (Nushaba). If the accounts of Alexander and Thalestris and other strong women rulers were simply mythic parallels casting Alexander in the role of a Greek hero who must overcome an Amazon queen, such an irenic course of events would be unthinkable. The striking difference between the Greek myths and the accounts of Alexander’s friendly parleys with barbarian war leaders who happen to be female is evidence of authenticity. Alexander’s encounters with Amazons were debated in antiquity and over time took on the aura of legend. The consistent realistic details in those stories suggest that the Thalestris episode could have some basis in fact. The continued lively discussions about the reality of Thalestris over several centuries in antiquity show how deeply fascinating the prickly, enticing idea of Amazon-like women was for the Greeks. That a bold, adventurous man might hope to find a companion in an equally strong woman of action was a thrilling prospect. And just maybe, for Alexander and his men, it became a reality, at least for 13 days and nights. Adrienne Mayor is Research Scholar in Classics and History and Philosophy of Science and Technology at Stanford University.

FURTHER READING Adrienne Mayor, The Amazons: Lives and Legends of Warrior Women Across the Ancient World (Princeton, 2014). Arrian, tr. Aubrey de Selincourt, The Campaigns of Alexander (Penguin Classics, 1971). Paul Cartledge, Alexander the Great: The Truth Behind the Myth (Pan Macmillan, 2013). Plutarch, tr Ian Scott-Kilvert, The Age of Alexander (Penguin Classics, 20012). JANUARY 2015 HISTORY TODAY 17

HOOVER AND BELGIUM

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URING THE FIRST WORLD WAR Herbert Hoover, later to become the 31st president of the United States, earned the title ‘the Great Humanitarian’ and created the greatest private philanthropic organisation in history, saving an entire nation. That memory has now dimmed, yet it set remarkable precedents. In 1914 Hoover, a young engineer born in Iowa and raised partly in Oregon, a graduate of Stanford University and one of the most successful mining engineers of his generation, happened to be in London. He had gone there

Hoover goes to Belgium Herbert Hoover is best known as the 31st president of the United States, a role in which he was much criticised. Glen S. Jeansonne reveals an earlier, more successful episode of extraordinary humanitarianism.

to solicit British participation in the planned PanamaPacific Exposition, designed to commemorate the opening of the Panama Canal. Hoover was stymied in his efforts by British politics and the outbreak of the First World War. The coming of war also stranded many Americans in Europe. They streamed into London and clogged the halls of the US embassy. Hotels, restaurants, railroad and steamship lines would not honour foreign credit. The US ambassador, Walter Hines Page, asked Hoover to assist. He and his friends created the American Relief Committee and used their own money to repatriate 160,000 travellers. When the Germans violated Belgian neutrality in August 1914 to strike at France, the British entered the conflict. The Belgians attempted to resist but were no match for the German war machine. The armies became bogged down, massed on both sides of a largely static line. The battles involved trench warfare, suicidal charges into barbed wire and machine guns, the ceaseless pounding of artillery, mutinies and amputations minus anaesthesia. But those who died in battle died more quickly than civilians, who starved. Belgium’s plight was desperate. Small but highly industrialised, it was the most densely populated country in Europe. Its 7.5 million people lived in a compact area. They produced only one sixth of their food, trading exports for sustenance. But the Royal Navy enforced a maritime blockade on Europe that isolated Belgium. The Belgians found themselves cut off from the outside world both by the German occupation and the British blockade.

Herbert Hoover as head of the Food Administration, 1918.

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HOOVER AND BELGIUM

Hoover’s trump card was that both sides worried about the public opinion of neutral nations and especially the most powerful neutral, the United States

He decided to take no salary and to pay his own expenses. Later, he was to refuse money for serving as the US food administrator under Woodrow Wilson and donated much of his salary to charity. Most of his assistants did likewise. The problems they faced were daunting. ‘We expected a major crisis once a month; a minor crisis once a week’, explained Hoover’s colleague, Vernon Kellogg. The effort lasted four and a half years. In early 1915 the Commission for Relief of Belgium (CRB) also took on the task of feeding the people of German-occupied northern France, about 2.5 million residents. It helped sustain a total of 10 million civilians speaking five languages. The CRB dealt in four currencies and two systems of weights and measures. It had more than 40,000 workers, all but 100 of them volunteers, including 25 Rhodes Scholars. Many of Hoover’s best volunteers were fellow engineers. Edward Eyre Hunt, a CRB delegate, wrote in 1917 that ‘there seems to be an unusual esprit de corps and a high level of professional honor and sensibility which marks mining engineers’. Their respect for Hoover was such that the Rocky Mountain Club, a group of mining engineers, which had collected $500,000 to build a new club house, instead donated the entire sum to the CRB. Problems descended upon Hoover like biblical plagues. He had to obtain food and transportation, organise distribution and recruit workers. But the most formidable obstacles were diplomatic. He had to persuade both the Allies and the Central Powers to permit his organisation to operate. Both blamed the other for Belgium’s plight and neither considered it their obligation to feed the Belgians. Each, concerned with winning the war, thought relief might aid their opponents. The British believed their blockade would starve the Germans into submission, even if it meant starving the Belgians in the process. They feared the Germans might seize the food for their army. The Germans feared the CRB would spy for the Allies.

H Belgium dispatched a committee to London to beg the British government to pry open the vice that locked food out and exports in. A committee of prominent Belgians and US businessmen residing in Brussels, including Millard Shaler, an American engineer, approached the US ambassador there, who suggested Hoover might help. Hoover agonised briefly. He controlled a mining empire, potentially made more valuable because of the raw materials demanded by conflict. Friends believed that he might have earned $30 million from managing his mining assets, but ‘To hell with the fortune!’, he exclaimed. Neither Hoover nor anyone else knew how long the war would last or what toll it would take. Most thought it might last a year or two. Accepting the challenge meant not only abandoning his career, but also separation from his family. 20 HISTORY TODAY JANUARY 2015

Top: a Belgian propaganda poster of 1914 with King Albert rallying his nation. Above: German soldiers search Belgian farmers, August 1914.

OOVER DEALT WITH KINGS, prime ministers, foreign ministers, generals and admirals. He had no diplomatic standing and represented no nation. His trump card was that both sides worried about the public opinion of neutral nations and especially the most powerful neutral, the United States. Each knew that alienating the US could drive it into the arms of the other. Neither the Germans nor the British trusted each other, but they both trusted Hoover. He was persistent and firm, a blunt but effective diplomat. He plied the British with humanitarian arguments: Britain had declared war when Germany violated Belgian neutrality. It would be hypocrisy to let Belgium starve. In the long run, humanitarian arguments carried less weight than American public opinion. The Germans knew the US would not enter the war on their side, but hoped to keep it neutral. The British realised the US might be enticed to enter the war on the Allied side, if German submarine warfare intensified. The relief operation required organisational genius and fund raising on an immense scale. The financial status of the CRB was one of near desperation. Hoover told a journalist in 1917 that there had never been a single time when the finances of the CRB were certain for even 60 days. He was on a treadmill of raising money to keep the food coming. Hoover patched together private donations and, more

importantly, subsidies from the British, French and Belgian governments and even, after America entered the war in 1917, from the US. Donations came from around the world, most generously from the British Empire. In the US, his wife, Lou Henry Hoover, played a major role in fundraising. Hoover also arranged contributions in kind. Governors of agricultural states donated non-perishable food. Iowa gave an entire shipload of corn, which the Belgians considered suitable only for cattle and chickens, though they learned to eat it. Hoover obtained reduced rates for railroad shipping, from stevedores who loaded the ships and from steamship companies.

Below: a Belgian priest serving with the Red Cross passes a group of German soldiers, 1915. Bottom: the SS Eburoon, a relief ship bound for Belgium, 1914.

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CONTINUOUS FLOW of commodities was delivered by rail to the East Coast, where they were loaded onto specially chartered ships. The CRB operated its own fleet of 75 ships, which traversed the Atlantic. They bore gigantic red-and-white banners with the initials ‘CRB’ and flew the organisation’s flag to deter submarines. Even so, during a single week in 1916 six of its ships were sunk in the English Channel. The point of rendezvous was the Dutch port of Rotterdam. There the cargoes were transferred to barges and navigated through Belgium’s maze of canals to district warehouses, smaller depots and finally to communal stores, where Belgians could purchase food. The CRB sold it at a small profit to make the supply go further, the wealthy subsidising the feeding of the poor. Hoover hired a reputable British accounting firm to audit the books scrupulously, pre-empting charges of corruption. Overheads amounted to less than one tenth of one per cent. Hoover’s organisational strategy was to centralise decision-making and decentralise implementation. He attracted highly motivated assistants and never micro-managed. Although he might fire incompetents, he never publicly criticised personnel and took responsibility for failures without embarrassing anyone. He challenged his staff to seek creative solutions, avoiding charts and diagrams. The key ingredient of the CRB was its people. One man, given the task of managing an entire port, asked what his job was. Hoover told him to keep the food moving, no more. The Belgian food supply was not fancy but it was balanced and reliable. Rations for one person for one day consisted of 7.5 ounces of lentils, canned or dried beans and peas, condensed milk, cocoa or butter. Also included, to provide fats, was one strip of bacon and one half ounce of lard or butter. Belgians could supplement this with

JANUARY 2015 HISTORY TODAY 21

HOOVER AND BELGIUM

vegetables from their gardens. Half a loaf of bread or its equivalent in flour was added. Belgians thrived on bread; it was more central to their diet than to that of Americans. The CRB controlled prices and largely stamped out a black market. As the war dragged on, increasing numbers of Belgians ran out of money and were fed free. By 1917 about 70 per cent of the population was destitute. Men who performed manual labour received extra rations, as did children and pregnant and nursing women. One of the decisive factors in Hoover’s decision to aid Belgium was his lifelong love of children. Adults were rationed, but children were fed generously. There were extra meals for them, with special attention to babies. Milk in any form was scarce, but he obtained it. Hoover believed Europe’s future lay in its children. The high survival rate of infants and children, higher than in normal times, was the most gratifying aspect of his work. Hoover was a sensitive, emotional man, yet he believed that public displays of 22 HISTORY TODAY JANUARY 2015

A vast warehouse contains stocks of wholeflour for distribution in Belgium.

emotion were a sign of weakness. A shy Quaker, he could be moved to weep by inspecting breadlines and soup kitchens, so he rarely did so. Only those close to him understood his sensitive personality.

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S THE WAR PERSISTED, the CRB increasingly furnished people with clothes and medicine. Most of the clothes were second-hand, donated by Americans and other nationalities. Belgian women altered the clothes to fit those who needed them. The CRB also made relief payments to families of soldiers as well as to school teachers and state employees, who by the end of the war had not worked for more than four years. By the spring of 1917 the CRB had become a state within a state, without any legal authority. Before the war, lace-making had been a major industry in Belgium, employing 40,000 women. The craft had been passed on from mother to daughter for generations. Hoover

Hoover realised that the Americans would be unable to remain in Belgium if the United States entered the war

Clockwise from right: sacks of flour resulting from a US and Canadian newspaper campaign in 1915; US citizens stranded in London seek help from the American Relief Committee; Belgian schoolchildren are fed by the CRB.

feared the skill might be lost, if he left the lace-makers idle because they could not obtain material nor export their product. The CRB imported thread, helped sell lace abroad and advanced money for the surplus, which was stored. Hoover realised that the Americans would be unable to remain in Belgium, if the United States entered the war. He made contingency plans for the CRB to be led by a staff of neutrals he trained. He would make policy himself. In fact, this is what happened. Hoover’s style was unorthodox and he was willing to take risks. ‘Very soberly and sincerely I believe no one else could have done what he has done for Belgium’, a journalist wrote in 1917: ‘I believe no one else could have dealt, as he has done, as a private citizen, without title and without pretensions, with Kitchener, Lloyd George, the Kaiser, Von Bethmann-Hollweg, Von Bissing, Briand, Poincaré and King Albert.’ ‘If a thing was really necessary we did it first and asked permission afterwards’, Hoover said. He told a British

Cabinet minister that he needed clearance papers promptly to ship food. The minister told him it was impossible. ‘There is no time, in the first place, and if there were there are no wagons to be spared by the railways, no dock hands, and no steamers.’ ‘I have managed to get all these things’, Hoover said quietly. The minister signed the papers, commenting: ‘There have been – there are men now – men in the Tower of London for less than you have done.’ One of his follow workers explained: ‘You must love Hoover as much for his humanness as you admire him for his quickness of mind.’ He added that ‘his adeptness in dealing with men has been scarcely less a factor in the success of our work than his genius for organisation’. Lloyd George, Britain’s Chancellor of the Exchequer, initially found one of Hoover’s requests impertinent. When he announced that he was rejecting a crucial concession, JANUARY 2015 HISTORY TODAY 23

HOOVER AND BELGIUM I know it never occurs to him to think of the seven million Belgians as if they were a bottomless inhuman pit into which tons of food must be dumped every day.’ Of his humility, he commented: ‘There is neither crown nor sceptre in his wardrobe.’

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ERHAPS THE HIGHEST tribute came from the US ambassador in London, who said life was ‘worth more … for knowing Hoover’:

But for him Belgium would now be starved. He’s a simple, modest, energetic little man who began his career in California and will end it in Heaven; and he doesn’t want anybody’s thanks.

Hoover interrupted. ‘For 15 minutes he spoke without a break’, said Lloyd George, ‘just about the clearest expository utterance I have ever heard on any subject. He used not a word too much nor yet a word too few.’ By the time he had finished, I had come to realise not only the importance of his contentions, but, what was more to the point, the practicality of granting his request. So I did the only thing possible under the circumstances. I told him that I had never understood the question before, thanked him for helping me to understand it, and saw to it that things were arranged as he wanted them. Hoover earned the respect, sometimes grudgingly, of those he encountered. ‘He is practically the only great figure evolved by the war whom every one trusts and no one fears,’ wrote Edward Eyre Hunt. ‘He wields power without force. He is a leader, not a driver.’ Also important to his co-workers was Hoover’s kindness. Although he could be forceful, he was by nature a gentle man. ‘I don’t think it ever occurs to him to appraise his helpers in the Belgian relief work as cogs in a great machine’, Hunt explained. ‘And 24 HISTORY TODAY JANUARY 2015

Top: distributing bread and milk to Belgian mothers and babies. Above: Lou Henry Hoover (fourth from right) at the Belgian fundraising fair, 1916.

Hoover’s work in Belgium, followed by the relief of Europe and the Soviet Union by his American Relief Administration (ARA), earned him universal acclaim. For his work in saving the Soviet Union, though he opposed Communism, Hoover was honoured by the Bolshevik government in 1923. Later, Hoover was written out of Soviet history books. Still later he appeared again, this time as a spy. Due to its scrupulous management of money, the CRB was left with a $35 million surplus at the war’s end. Hoover decided that the money should be devoted to Belgian education, wrecked by the war. More than $18 million was donated directly to the universities of Brussels, Ghent and Liege and an additional $1,600,000 for the subsequent rebuilding of the University of Louvain. The remainder went to a Belgian-American educational exchange programme. Hoover was offered many decorations abroad but refused all but one, the title ‘Friend of Belgium’, of which he was to be forever the sole recipient. Still, avenues, schools, and buildings in Europe and the US were named for him, including a school and a highway in his home town, West Branch, Iowa. At one time he had received more honorary degrees than any American. Hoover had become, in the words of an associate, ‘A Napoleon of mercy’. He is credited with saving more lives than any person in history. ‘The world has grown accustomed to American action to save lives and restore the fractured economies of far-off lands’, according to the historian George H. Nash. ‘Today, such involvement is almost universally taken for granted. One reason for this acceptance – although few know it today – is the institution created … by Herbert Hoover.’ Glen S. Jeansonne is Professor of History at the University of WiconsinMilwaukee and author of The Life of Herbert Hoover: Fighting Quaker, 1928-1933 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012).

FURTHER READING George H. Nash, The Life of Herbert Hoover, vol 2: The Humanitarian, 1914-1917 (W.W. Norton, 1988). Herbert Hoover, An American Epic: Relief of Belgium and Northern France, 1914-1930 (Macmillan, 1959). Norma Jane Langford, ‘Merci Amerique’, The Iowan, Fall 1969, pp. 12-12, 52. Edward Eyre Hunt, ‘Hoover of the ‘C.R.B.’, World’s Work, June 1917, pp. 165-168.

| WARBURG INSTITUTE

Warburg Postwar Having been moved to London from Nazi Germany, the esteemed library of Renaissance culture played a key role in restoring links between international scholars after the Second World War. By Tiziana Villani.

The Reading Room at the Warburg Institute, 1937.

AN ENTIRE VOLUME, published in 1947, of one of the most prestigious reviews in Britain for humanistic studies, the Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, was written completely by Italian scholars. It was a small but significant symbol that intellectuals could rebuild cultural relations between Italy and Britain following the trauma of the Second World War. As the Italian philosopher, writer and politician Guido Calogero wrote in its preface: Good learning has never known any national boundaries and many Italians will wish to join me in thanking the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes for so generously inviting the closest collaboration of their Italian colleagues. They have thus strengthened the ancient ties between our two countries and reaffirmed once again the consciousness we share of the bond that unites all who study man’s painful history and of the hope it gives for the future of human civilization. Calogero’s words open the ninth volume of the Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, dated 1946, but actually published the following year. It sums up vividly the history, motivations and results of a two-year 26 HISTORY TODAY JANUARY 2015

collaboration between Britain and Italy, which brought about the publication of the volume containing eight essays by leading Italian scholars. There were three principal agents behind this extraordinary venture: the staff of the Warburg Institute and, in particular, its then director Fritz Saxl; Edoardo Ruffini, responsible for cultural relations at the Italian Embassy in London; and Calogero. As is stated prominently in the preface to the volume, ‘English friends’ of the Warburg Institute played the central role in this international collaboration. Exiled to England The Warburg Institute is today a renowned research institute of the School of Advanced Studies of the University of London, concerned mainly with the classical tradition and its continuing influence and Renaissance cultural and art history. It was originally a private library founded in Hamburg by the German-Jewish scholar Aby Warburg. The library moved to London in 1933 following the Nazis’ seizure of power. Saxl, who had become director of the library after Warburg’s death in 1929, took care of the transfer and guided

the re-opening of the library in its new location in South Kensington under the name of the Warburg Institute. He promoted it through various means, including a series of open lectures and itinerant exhibitions. From 1937 onwards, the Warburg began to publish its new journal, in collaboration with the nearby Courtauld Institute of Art. Saxl’s promotion of the Warburg and the opportunities it provided for cultural cooperation did not cease even during the war and its immediate aftermath. Convinced that cultural cooperation could lead to a lasting peace and that the Warburg should play its part, Saxl worked tirelessly to renew international cultural relations. To this end he ensured that the scholars of the Warburg should spend research periods abroad. He also decided to publish the three ‘special’ volumes of the journal – VII (1944), VIII (1945) and IX (1946) – which were to carry essays written by US, French and Italian intellectuals, respectively. This ambition is all the more extraordinary when one considers the difficulty of communications during the war. It had been all but impossible to find foreign scholars’ publications in wartime Britain. Saxl and the staff of the Warburg were amply rewarded for their efforts. The three volumes are wonderful examples of cultural cooperation, which attracted some of the world’s leading intellectuals, including offerings from the great scholar of the ancient world, Arnaldo Momigliano, and the pre-Columbian art expert, George Kubler.

of public libraries and archives. In addition, Italian publishers were under pressure not to publish works by Jewish authors who had lived beyond 1850: the nation’s culture was effectively purged of the contribution of the last four generations of Jewish intellectuals. These laws caused the isolation of Italian intellectuals from the rest of the world. What happened between Albert Einstein and the Accademia dei Lincei in Rome was exemplary in this regard. The great physicist, having become aware of the introduction of racial laws in Italy, asked that his name be removed from the list of Italy’s ‘foreign partners’, to which he had belonged since 1921. It was natural that he no longer wanted to have any ties with a country that was going through a process of ‘Aryanisation’. The creation of an Italian volume of the Warburg’s journal was crucially important to those Italian intellectuals who had reacted with horror to the racial laws. Jewish scholars were now seeking to collaborate with Italy and, in the process, were taking Italian intellectuals out of their cultural isolation. Participating in the 1946 journal gave Italian intellectuals a further opportunity: finally to consider the study of the classical tradition and its influence over the centuries without political compromise. For two decades the study of the ancient world in Italy had been sponsored almost exclusively by the Fascist regime in order to spread a myth of Rome as being continuous between ancient Rome and its totalitarian present. On the orders of Mussolini, the city of Rome, Roman history and even the language of the Romans had been returned to their former splendour. Mussolini was aware of how inspiring the idea would be that Italians could be transformed into modern Romans, able to recapture an empire and make Rome the capital of the western world. In the creation of this Fascist Roman myth, intellectuals had a privileged role. Even those scholars who did not support Fascism were deeply influenced by the myth of ancient Rome and by the Fascist idea of the superiority of Roman culture over Greek culture. Such ideas were completely absent in the essays produced by the Italians who took their place in the 1946 journal. There is one last, but by no means least, important matter of interest about the journal. Reading the correspondence between the Italian intellectuals who participated in the volume and the scholars of the Warburg Institute demonstrates that in many cases this occasional co-operation turned into lasting and prolific collaborations. This fostered the spread in Italy of Warburgian ideas and methodologies well before the 1960s, the decade during which the first important Italian translations of the works published by the Warburg Institute were carried out and to which the beginning of Aby Warburg’s critical reassessment in Italy is commonly believed to be traced. Such Anglo-Italian collaborations continue to this day.

In many cases this occasional co-operation turned into lasting collaborations

Turbulent period For a number of historical reasons, the Italian volume is the most striking of the three. First, it was the only one to be a collaboration between scholars from two belligerent countries. The project phase of the volume (the idea of creating it, the choice of the editor, an invitation to attend and the first acceptances) took place during the first months of 1945. They were particularly turbulent months, during which the fate of the world was decided. Above all, Italy and Britain were still formally at war. Calogero, given the role of collecting the essays for the 1946 journal, expertly summarised the uniqueness and complexity of the situation: At the beginning of 1945, when Italy was still divided in two, and there was a co-belligerent Italy but also an enemy Italy (and at least officially Fascist), the Warburg Institute invited the Italian scholars to work together, reserving a volume of the journal entirely to them. This was not political indifference: it was indeed superior political sense, the sense of a higher and deeper unity that binds everyone who bolsters the love for a higher civilized world thanks to the study of the harsh history of the humankind. The invitation to collaborate came at a difficult enough moment. Furthermore the staff of the Warburg Institute were mostly Jewish and in many Italian regions racial laws were still in force. This made any collaboration between them and Italian scholars challenging, if not impossible. Italy’s racial laws were especially restrictive in the cultural sphere. Jews were excluded from Italy’s schools and universities, research institutes and even the reading rooms

Tiziana Villani is an Italian art historian based in Rome. JANUARY 2015 HISTORY TODAY 27

SAINT-JUST Saint-Just in a portrait by Pierre-Paul Prud’hon, 1793.

The embodiment of the youthful revolutionary, Louis-Antoine de SaintJust was devoured by the Terror he helped unleash. Marisa Linton looks beyond the myths to the reality of his remarkable, short life.

Saint-Just The French Revolution’s Angel of Death

JANUARY 2015 HISTORY TODAY 29

Saint-Just dressed as a ‘deputy on mission’, 1790s.

One biographer, the American Eugene Curtis, saw in Saint-Just a French incarnation of the romantic and radical poet Shelley. The English historian Norman Hampson took a more jaundiced view and, perhaps with Michelet’s metaphor of the fallen angel in mind, likened Saint-Just to Lucifer.

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Saint-Just had a lot to offer and he knew it: he was talented, forceful and fiercely clever, but he was a social nobody, without powerful connections

MONG THE LEADERS of the French Revolution none has a more mythical status than Louis-Antoine de Saint-Just. His brief political career encompassed the most radical moment of the 18th century: the Jacobin Republic of the Year Two (1793-4). The Jacobins tried to forge a better world, one in which democracy, liberty and equality would become a reality, but to achieve it they used state-sponsored coercion and violence, in what became known as the Terror. The experiment ended when SaintJust, along with Robespierre, succumbed to the guillotine in the bloodbath of Thermidor (July 1794). For many people, Saint-Just, even more than Robespierre, embodies the revolution itself: young, full of feverish energy, courage and idealism, but, like the revolutionary Terror, capable of sacrificing human lives, including his own, to make the ideal a reality. When Victor Hugo in his 1862 novel, Les Misérables, described the young student Enjolras, who leads the climatic fight on the barricade, as having ‘too much of Saint-Just’ about him, his readers knew what that meant. A few years earlier, Hugo’s contemporary and fellow countryman, the great republican historian Jules Michelet, described Saint-Just as ‘the archangel of death’, a phrase that encapsulated the legend of the unnaturally beautiful and cold-bloodedly terrible Saint-Just. People take extreme views about Saint-Just. He is still a controversial figure, even among Anglo-American historians who are usually more dispassionate about the French Revolution than the French themselves. 30 HISTORY TODAY JANUARY 2015

CAN WE GET PAST THIS controversy to find out how far the myth had a basis in reality? One way is to look at his early life, before the world of revolutionary politics claimed him. He was born on August 25th, 1767 in Decize, in Burgundy, the son of a retired cavalry officer and a notary’s daughter. When Saint-Just was nine his family moved to Blérancourt, a small town in his father’s native Picardy. The following year his father died, leaving the mother to bring up her children alone. As a teenager, Saint-Just fell in love with a local girl, Thérèse Gellé. They hoped to marry but her father wanted a wealthier son-in-law. While Saint-Just was away, she was married off in a wedding attended by all the worthies of Blérancourt. When Saint-Just discovered this he was furious, not least with his mother, who had kept the news from him. Several weeks later, in September 1786, he absconded from his home, taking with him some of the family’s silver, which he sold in a Paris café. At his mother’s insistence the adolescent was tracked down, interrogated by the police and imprisoned in a house of detention, where he spent six miserable months to reflect upon his misdeeds. He must have felt deeply humiliated by this experience: he never spoke about it and few people ever knew. It may have influenced him in other ways, too, for in later writings he attacked the oppression of women and children in patriarchal families and defended women’s freedom to choose whom they loved. The frustrations of his imprisonment inspired SaintJust to write Organt, an epic poem that recounted the misadventures of Antoine Organt, the 20-yearold illegitimate son of a bishop. Written in the satirical style inspired by Voltaire, it was the work of a young man, eager to make his mark in the world; full of impudence, fantastical imaginings and some pornographic passages that shocked several of his biographers, who were perhaps expecting something more spiritual from the future ‘archangel’ of the Jacobins. In a spirit of mischief Saint-Just dedicated his book to the Vatican. Yet when he surveyed his achievement he was dissatisfied with it and with himself. He added a one-line preface: ‘I am twenty; I have done badly; I could do better.’ Organt was published in 1789, the year the Revolution came: the year that transformed his life. From that moment on he gave himself body and soul to the Revolution. He had a lot to offer and he knew it: he was talented, forceful and fiercely clever, but he was a social nobody, without powerful connections, much wealth or a regular profession. He was also handicapped by his own youth: he was under 25, the age when he could legally participate in politics. In June 1791 Saint-Just published a treatise, The Spirit of the Revolution, which stressed the importance of peace and stability. The constitutional monarchy was the best form of government; France was not suited to be a republic. While the politics were relatively moderate, some strikingly radical passages dealt with individual relationships and

SAINT-JUST

Clockwise from right: A meeting of the Jacobin Club, engraving, 1792; Maximilien Robespierre, portrait attributed to Joseph Boze, 1790s; a caricature of Louis XVI in captivity after his arrest at Varennes, 1791.

personal freedom. He also stated his absolute opposition to the death penalty. But the political stability he praised was about to be shattered. News broke that Louis XVI had attempted to flee France. Many revolutionaries saw the king’s action as a betrayal of his people: they would never trust him again. Later that year Saint-Just managed to secure nomination to the new national representation, but his moment of triumph was short-lived; he was immediately denounced by the father of the girl he had once wanted to marry, who disclosed that Saint-Just was under the legal age. He was obliged to vegetate in Blérancourt for another year, restless, bored and frustrated.

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ITHIN TEN MONTHS the political situation spiralled into renewed crisis. The war with Austria and Prussia, brought about by the group known as the Girondins, was proceeding disastrously, with the French fighting a defensive war within their borders. Many revolutionaries blamed Louis and Marie-Antoinette, claiming that they were secretly in league with the foreign powers. On August 10th, 1792 the monarchy fell. This second revolution gave Saint-Just his chance. A few days past his 25th birthday he became the youngest of the 749 deputies elected to the National Convention, the new representative assembly. The Convention’s first act was to declare France a republic. Saint-Just gravitated towards the most radical revolutionaries, the Jacobins, a group that included Georges Danton, Camille Desmoulins and Maximilien Robespierre. Back in 1790 Saint-Just had written to Robespierre, declaring: ‘You whom I know only, as I know God, by his

miracles.’ Robespierre was flattered, as Saint-Just had intended, but there is no reason to think that Saint-Just was being insincere. The two men became close friends as well as like-minded colleagues and, until the last weeks of their lives, Saint-Just’s loyalty to the Incorruptible did not waver. Saint-Just made his maiden speech to the Convention on November 13th. It was on the fate of the king and whether he should be tried for crimes against his people. Making oneself heard by an audience of well over a thousand people (the deputies plus the many spectators in the public galleries) and convincing them that you had something original and important to say was not easy. Yet Saint-Just succeeded with that first speech in establishing himself as one of the most effective revolutionary orators. While others tried to demonstrate that the king had acted wrongly, Saint-Just argued that kingship itself was morally wrong. ‘No one can reign innocently’, he said. The king was not a citizen and not subject to the law. If he lived, he would continue to be a danger to the republic. Therefore he should be put to death, without going through the legal formalities of a trial. The deputies were struck by JANUARY 2015 HISTORY TODAY 31

SAINT-JUST Georges Danton, a rival of Saint-Just, is led to his execution, 1794. Chalk sketch by Pierre Wille.

the uncompromising logic of this argument; yet for most it was unthinkable that the king should simply be put to death. So Louis got his trial, though it ended, as Saint-Just had predicted, in a death sentence. SAINT-JUST WAS NEVER comfortable with the improvised interventions and frequent exchange of insults that often characterised debate in the Jacobin Club and occasionally the Convention. His forte was the set-piece speech, with its polished rhetoric, striking aphorisms and dramatic staging. Whenever he spoke in the Convention spectators pushed their way to the front of the galleries to hear him and said to their neighbours in expectant tones: ‘There he is!’ What kind of man did they see? Not the androgynous beauty of legend; that ‘angelic’ face was the invention of Michelet. Yet Saint-Just was undeniably good-looking. Portraits painted in his lifetime show him with a pale oval face, abundant chestnut hair, light eyes, high cheekbones and a decidedly long nose. The Jacobin leaders worked long hours and were often under considerable strain; over time, the effects of this exhausting lifestyle began to show in his face. Like Robespierre, Saint-Just was financially incorruptible and he managed on his modest pay as a deputy; yet he always dressed with care. Unlike many Jacobins, he did not adopt the rough clothes of the sans-culottes, the Parisian militants. He often wore a high cravat, conscious that this gave him dignity. His fellow Jacobin, Camille Desmoulins, mocked Saint-Just for his haughty appearance and especially for that cravat: ‘One sees in his bearing and his attitude that he considers his head the cornerstone of the republic.’ Despite Saint-Just’s egalitarian politics, his enemies (of whom he would acquire a fair number, including Desmoulins) said of him that he had the pride and hauteur of an aristocrat.

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Driven by fear, mutual suspicion and revolutionary fervour, leading revolutionaries turned on one another in a kill-orbe-killed scenario

N JUNE 1793 the Jacobins overthrew the Girondins and seized power. That same month Saint-Just helped draft a new ‘Jacobin’ constitution. It was the most liberal and egalitarian document of the entire Revolution, but it was shelved following a speech made by Saint-Just himself, arguing that the constitution could not be put in place while France was still at war and under threat. On July 10th, 1793 he was elected to the Committee of Public Safety. Made up of 12 members, it held extensive executive powers and took over the coordination of the war effort, becoming, in effect, a war cabinet, while the Committee of General Security was given responsibility for police, arrests and the prisons. Throughout the following year these two committees dominated the revolutionary government. The summer and autumn brought escalating crises. Britain, Spain and Holland had joined the war against France. Many regions experienced revolts against Paris; while a full-scale civil war raged in western France. A series of betrayals, including that of France’s leading general, Dumouriez, hardened the revolutionaries’ attitude. At the same time 32 HISTORY TODAY JANUARY 2015

the sans-culottes staged demonstrations to intimidate the deputies into passing more extreme measures. It was against this backdrop that the revolutionaries embarked on a policy that legalised the use of terror. Saint-Just played his part in this policy, but the Committee of Public Safety took collective decisions and shared responsibilities. The so-called ‘Jacobin Terror’ was not attributable to any one man, or even a group of men. It was in fact a series of laws, voted for by the deputies of the Convention. So why did SaintJust become so personally identified with the Terror? Partly because he was prepared to speak publicly to justify it: along with fellow Committee members, Robespierre, Barère and Billaud-Varenne, he was one of the Committee’s principal spokesmen. Above all, it was to Saint-Just that both committees entrusted the task of drafting and delivering several speeches used to destroy a series of revolutionary factions. This factional in-fighting was part of the ‘politicians’ terror’. According to revolutionary ideology anyone who was not totally committed to the public good might be a conspirator, bought by the royalists. The power of terror that the revolutionary leaders wielded, threatened them, too. Driven by fear, mutual suspicion and revolutionary fervour, leading revolutionaries turned on one another, in a ruthless kill-or-bekilled scenario. Saint-Just spent long periods away from the Committee, serving as a deputy on mission, during which time he took no part in the Committee’s decisions. During much of September to December 1793 he was in Alsace with the Army of the Rhine. Here his task was to ensure that the army was well supplied, keep a watchful eye on the generals and curb any

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Left: Camille Desmoulins with his wife, Lucille, and their son, Horace-Camille, c. 1792, by Jacques-Louis David. Below left: The night of the 8-9 Thermidor, Year Two, when Robespierre went to the Convention to denounce several Jacobins, by Jean-Joseph Weerts.

less scrupulous. There were relatively few arrests and most of these were concerned with army discipline and were dealt with by military courts. While Saint-Just was protective of the well-being of ordinary soldiers, some senior officers were arrested for incompetence, corruption or suspect loyalties.

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civil unrest against the Revolution. Like other deputies, he acted with a colleague; in this case Philippe Le Bas, who seems to have been chosen for his conciliatory skills in the hope that he would moderate Saint-Just’s autocratic manner. They made an effective team. Despite the fraught circumstances in this frontier region, where many of the locals did not speak French and much of the territory was occupied by Austrian armies, Saint-Just and Le Bas used their powers with restraint. There were no wholesale killings such as happened elsewhere, where deputies were

HE BUSINESS OF supplying an army was a way for private contractors to amass immense wealth through exclusive contracts, corruption and backhanders to state officials. SaintJust would have none of that. ‘Ten thousand men are barefoot in the army’, ran one of his decrees to the municipality of Strasbourg. ‘You must take the shoes of all the aristocrats of Strasbourg, and by tomorrow at ten in the morning ten thousand pairs of shoes must be on their way to headquarters.’ So effective was the implied threat that 17,000 pairs of shoes and 21,000 shirts were hastily donated. Saint-Just went further, demanding forced loans from the rich for the army and local poor. But there were limits to how much social equality the Jacobins could enforce. Their powers, their time and their resources were limited. Saint-Just’s greatest achievement in Alsace was the key role he played in supporting the army as it drove the Austrian invaders back across the Rhine. At critical moments in the battles, and despite their civilian status, Saint-Just and Le Bas fought alongside the soldiers. Baudot, a Jacobin deputy who was also in Alsace and clashed with Saint-Just, remembered his courage under fire: ‘I saw him with the armies and I never saw anything like it!’ JANUARY 2015 HISTORY TODAY 33

SAINT-JUST

Like Robespierre, Saint-Just feared that ambitious and corrupt individuals would pervert the Revolution

Left: The arrest of Robespierre on the night of 9-10 Thermidor, Year Two by Jean-Joseph Tessaert. Below: a contemporary sketch of leading French revolutionaries drawn on the same night, with Saint-Just (10) and Robespierre (8).

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ORE DIFFICULT THAN military battles, where the enemy was clearly visible, were the political battles taking place in Paris, where the enemies were fellow revolutionaries. Here, too, Saint-Just played his part. Over the winter of 1793-94 a political crisis was tearing the Jacobins apart. Two factions challenged the Committees’ authority. The Hébertists, led by self-proclaimed sans-culotte leader, Hébert, wanted to intensify the Terror; the Dantonists, led by Danton and Desmoulins, wanted to wind it down. The committees, fearing that the victory of either would bring down the revolutionary government, decided to eliminate both. Saint-Just broke this decision to the Convention. On March 13th, 1793 he delivered a speech against the Hébertists. They were arrested, sent before the Revolutionary Tribunal and executed. Their enemies, the Dantonists, rejoiced, thinking themselves secure, but 18 days later Saint-Just denounced them as conspirators. His speech was based on vague and unsubstantiated allegations, provided for him by Robespierre, who shrank from delivering the actual speech. Saint-Just fashioned the notes into a speech intended to kill and it did its job. As he put it: ‘Those who make revolutions by halves do but dig their own graves.’ WHILE SAINT-JUST was very guarded about what he said publicly, the scattered papers that he left behind in his rooms when he left for the last time and the notebook taken from him when he was arrested reveal some of what he was really thinking. They suggest that he was more shaken than he would admit about his part in the deaths of his fellow Jacobins. He also referred several times to his own death, which he felt to be imminent and which he pictured as a kind of sacrifice, an 34 HISTORY TODAY JANUARY 2015

atonement, perhaps, that would show that he had acted from pure motives, not for his own benefit: ‘I have attacked men whom no one dared attack … it is for the youngest to die and to prove his courage and his virtue.’ Like Robespierre, Saint-Just feared that ambitious and corrupt individuals would pervert the Revolution, using it as a means to secure personal power. He feared that he would die before the republic could be secured. He tried to imagine a time beyond the Terror, when the republic could be maintained by social institutions, rather than by coercion and violence. But he could not see a way to get there

The execution of Robespierre, July 28th, 1794, contemporary French print.

and many of his plans were visionary rather than practical projects. In the last weeks of his life he lost hope, unable to see a way out of the nightmare that the Revolution had become. ‘The Revolution is frozen’, he wrote in despair. ‘All its principles are grown weak. There remain only intriguers sporting the red cap of liberty.’ During the first half of 1794 Saint-Just went on several missions to the Army of the North, where he played a leading role preparing it for imminent conflict. On his final mission he held a mandate over the armies of the North and the East, ‘from the sea to the Rhine’. He was a driving force behind the decisive battle of Fleurus on June 26th, 1794, which finally forced the Austrians from northern France. Saint-Just’s achievements with the armies had increased his personal standing. Month by month he was becoming a more important political figure in his own right.

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FTER FLEURUS the French were no longer fighting a defensive war and the policy of terror was no longer necessary. But winding down the Terror would not be easy. The atmosphere in Paris was toxic and Robespierre seemed to be having some kind of breakdown. He had fallen out bitterly with several Jacobins whom he saw as extremists; some of them were members of the committees. Robespierre ceased to attend meetings. For the first time SaintJust wavered in his loyalty to Robespierre. Along with Barère, Saint-Just tried to broker a compromise between Robespierre and his opponents on the committees, which immediately fell apart, with Robespierre accusing his enemies of seeking his destruction. On 8 Thermidor (July 26th) Robespierre went to the Convention to denounce several Jacobins, yet refused to name them, thereby terrifying everybody and precipitating a fight to the death between himself and his opponents. Saint-Just had been charged by the committees with making a report to the Convention on the compromise. He must have heard Robespierre’s speech with a heavy heart. In the course of that night he took a fateful decision: to ditch his position as spokesman for the committees and give a personal speech in defence of Robespierre. While his speech criticised several members of the committees, it did not ask for their arrest but strove for reconciliation and he called for social institutions to be established that could maintain the republic and prevent power falling into the hands of any individual. It was an enormous risk to take. It did not come off. Moments after he started to speak he was interrupted by Jacobin deputies determined to bring

Robespierre down. Since Saint-Just was clearly prepared to defend Robespierre, they turned on him, too. There was turmoil as the plotters denounced Robespierre and those who stood with him. Paul Barras, who was party to the plot, described Saint-Just at the tribune as a ‘motionless, impassive, unconquerable, coolly defying them all’. The uproar climaxed with the arrest of Robespierre, Saint-Just and three other deputies (including Le Bas, who insisted on joining his friends), all accused of conspiracy against the republic. They were briefly set at liberty by jailers too frightened to receive them, before a final showdown ensued in the town hall that same night. Once news broke that the five had been outlawed, few sans-culottes were prepared to risk their lives for them. Forces of the Convention that broke into the town hall were unopposed. All around them terrified people tried to escape. Le Bas blew his brains out. They found Saint-Just ministering to Robespierre, who had been shot through the jaw. The next day, without trial, Robespierre and his followers were taken to the guillotine. By all accounts Saint-Just bore himself with quiet courage. He was not yet 27. His career as a revolutionary leader had lasted less than two years. THERMIDOR MARKED the beginning of the end of the legalised terror, but there would be plenty of violence still to come, not least on Napoleon’s battlefields, where many thousands would die, far more than in the Jacobin Terror. What might have happened had Saint-Just turned his back on Robespierre and survived Thermidor? Michelet lamented Saint-Just’s untimely end: ‘France will never console herself for the loss of such a hope.’ For Michelet, Saint-Just was the one man who might have stood up to Napoleon and made ‘the sword bow to the law’. But that was not to happen. Instead Saint-Just, like Robespierre, would take the rap for the Terror, for it suited all parties to forget that the choice to use terror had been a collective one. While surviving revolutionaries dwindled into old men, remembering the glory days of 1793, Saint-Just would never grow old and cynical, or disillusioned with the revolutionary cause. As his life ended, the myth began. He remains the archetype of the young and idealistic revolutionary. Yet the revolution to which he devoted his life ended by devouring him, as it did so many of its own children. Marisa Linton is Reader in History at Kingston University and the author of Choosing Terror: Virtue, Friendship and Authenticity in the French Revolution (OUP, 2013).

FURTHER READING Norman Hampson, Saint-Just (Blackwell, 1991). Eugene Newton Curtis, Saint-Just, Colleague of Robespierre (Columbia University Press, 1935). Bernard Vinot, Saint-Just (Fayard, 1985). Simon Schama, Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution (Viking, 1989). Ruth Scurr, Fatal Purity: Robespierre and the French Revolution (Chatto & Windus, 2006). JANUARY 2015 HISTORY TODAY 35

InFocus

Ypres Cloth Hall Bombarded

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UDGING BY THE amount of damage, this scene is from early 1915, between the first and second battles of Ypres. The roof of the medieval Cloth Hall has gone, burnt out after hits by incendiary shells, as has the Renaissance addition called the Nieuwerck on the right, while the belfry has been badly knocked about. The desperate defence of Ypres by the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) in October and November 1914 had been the culmination of the ‘Race to the Sea’ to stop the Germans from seizing the vital Channel ports. There was some slightly higher ground to the east of the town felt to be vital, so the frontline bulged to form a salient. This made the British in it vulnerable to shelling from front, left and right, but they were defending, not attacking, which was nearly always a decisive advantage in the First World War and the accurate, rapid rifle fire of the BEF regulars cut down the Germans in swathes. Even so, by November 22nd, when the weather brought the battle to a close, less than half the original 160,000 members of the BEF were left unscathed. The pattern for the rest of the war had been set: trench warfare and unimaginable casualties. Second Ypres began in April 1915, the only major German attack that year on the Western Front. Rather than capture the town the Germans decided to destroy it by artillery bombardment. The civilian population of 17,000 was evacuated and the Cloth Hall together with St Martin’s Cathedral

Churchill’s suggestion, that the rubble that was Ypres in 1919 should be left as it was as some sort of memorial, was ignored behind it were soon unrecognisable. The shelling served to divert attention from preparation for the first gas attack of the war, on April 22nd, on French troops to the south of the town. The chlorine killed 5,000 within ten minutes. The Germans were taken by surprise at their success, did not exploit it and were halted by a British counter-attack. The Canadians to the north of Ypres were attacked with gas on April 24th, but the Germans suffered big losses, too. The salient had to be shrunk in May and higher ground given up, but the line held. By the end there had been 59,000 British losses compared with 35,000 German. Third Ypres, or Passchendaele, starting on July 31st, 1917, came about because Field Marshal Haig wrongly thought the German army was near collapse, because he rightly feared Russian withdrawal from the war was imminent and would release German divisions from the East to reinforce the Western Front and because merchant shipping sinkings by U-boats based in north Belgian ports threatened Britain 36 HISTORY TODAY JANUARY 2015

with starvation. Haig’s enemy was as much the weather as the Germans, the worst rains for 30 years flooding the landscape and filling the craters left by the 4.5 million shells of the preliminary bombardment, which had destroyed the drainage system. It ended in November: 310,000 British casualties and 260,000 German for a few thousand yards. Churchill’s suggestion, that the rubble that was Ypres in 1919 should be left as it was as some sort of memorial, was

ignored, though the Cloth Hall’s restoration took until 1967 to complete. Built between 1200 and 1304, it probably owed its survival until 1914 to a rapid change in the pattern of trade around 1320, when exports of cheaper woollen cloths from Ghent and Ypres suddenly started to fall, as Italian weavers grew in numbers. Soon a quarter of the town had fallen into ruin and it never recovered its former prosperity, so there was no call for expanding or replacing it.

What it did become was an inspiration for Victorian architects when they wanted to erect secular buildings in the Gothic style. Echoes of it can be detected in the University Museum, Oxford, Waterhouse’s Assize Courts in Manchester, Gilbert Scott’s St Pancras Hotel, the High Court in Calcutta, even the Delaware and Albany Railway Building in Albany, New York.

ROGER HUDSON

JANUARY 2015 HISTORY TODAY 37

| SHARIF HUSAYN WHEN THE organisation known as Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) announced at the end of June 2014 that it was seeking to restore the Islamic caliphate, with its leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, as caliph, it set off a wave of debate both among jihadists and western analysts. The debate concerned the legitimacy of al-Baghdadi’s claim and the likelihood of ISIS securing the support of the Islamic world for its project. Some analysts declared it to be the first time since Mustafa Kemal Atatürk’s abolition of the Ottoman Empire in March 1924 that any group or individual had been bold enough to make such a claim. In fact, just days after Atatürk’s action, the Hashimite Sharif Husayn of Mecca, King of the Hijaz, proclaimed himself caliph, inititating a controversy similar to that which al-Baghdadi’s declaration provoked. It was a controversy in which the officials charged with formulating Britain’s postwar policy in the Near East were deeply implicated. Husayn’s claim was a decade in the making. Since the late 19th century, Arab intellectuals in Syria and Egypt had sought to reform the Ottoman Empire through a top-down process of Arabisation, with the Sharif of Mecca touted as a possible caliph. In the context of deteriorating Ottoman-British relations, these ideas were encouraged by orientalists such as Wilfrid Blunt, author of the anti-Ottoman tract, The Future of Islam, in which he argued that the revival of the Arabs was a historical inevitability in which Britain must play its part. Encouraging revolt It was the Consul General in Cairo, Lord Kitchener, who first broached the subject with the Sharif in the aftermath of the Ottoman entrance into the First World War, encouraging Husayn to revolt by speculating that: ‘[It] may be that an Arab of true race will assume Caliphate at Mecca or Medina and so good may come by the help of God out of all evil that is now occurring.’ The scheme was formalised in 1915 in the early exchanges of correspondence between Husayn and Sir Henry McMahon, Britain’s High Commissioner in Egypt, in which the Sharif’s territorial demands, amounting to the entirety of the Arab lands of West Asia with the exception of Britishoccupied Aden, were supplemented by a demand that Britain ‘approve the proclamation of an Arab Khalifate of Islam’. While McMahon’s initial response welcomed the prospect of ‘the resumption of the Khalifate by an Arab of true race’, his second letter omitted any mention of the matter, a tacit acknowledgement that Cairo’s enthusiasm for a Hashimite caliphate had waned. British scepticism towards Husayn’s ambitions reflected the growing understanding that the Sharif’s vision of the Arab caliphate involved independent Arab rule over the entire Arab Middle East, something that ran contrary to British plans for the region. McMahon had indicated that Britain was prepared to grant the Sharif his demands only after taking into account French interests and Britain’s existing treaties with the other chiefs in the Arabian Peninsula, including Husayn’s rival Ibn Sa’ud. The British plan for Husayn, then, resembled something close to an Islamic papacy – the other Arab chiefs in the 38 HISTORY TODAY JANUARY 2015

‘An Arab of true race’: Sharif Husayn of Mecca, 1922.

New Caliphate, Old Caliphate As the jihadists of ISIS continue their brutal campaign to restore the Islamic caliphate, Conor Meleady draws parallels with the ultimately futile efforts of another would-be caliph a century ago.

now governed the newly formed mandate states of Iraq and Transjordan respectively, seized the opportunity to claim the title of caliph, with farcical results. Through his sons, Husayn succeeded in having the khutba said in his name in a few mosques across Iraq and Transjordan, yet beyond there, opposition to the sharifian caliphate was strong. Husayn resorted to desperate measures. In mid-April he announced that a delegation of prominent Malaysians had arrived in the Hijaz in order officially to bestow the recognition of five million Malaysian Muslims upon him, a claim which was ridiculed as ‘absurd’ at the British Agency in Jeddah when it became apparent that the ‘delegation’ consisted of 30 students of Arabic, who had arrived in the Hijaz with the aim of receiving religious instruction and improving their language skills. A British report on an incident which occurred as Husayn made his way from Jeddah to Mecca serves to highlight the increasing disdain with which the Sharīf was regarded in the Islamic world:

region would acknowledge Husayn’s spiritual authority as caliph, while retaining sovereignty in their own realms. As Husayn knew and as the British were learning, such an arrangement was alien to Islamic tradition. It was not long before British authorities in India, concerned that its proOttoman Muslim population would view any encouragement of a Sharifian caliphate as a betrayal of wartime promises of non-interference in Islam’s holy lands, were scolding Cairo’s Arab Bureau for encouraging Husayn in the belief that he was owed an Arab kingdom. As a result, the caliphate issue was dropped from British-Hashimite negotiations. Custodian of the holy cities Having lost British support, Husayn sought that of the wider Islamic world, in particular Muslim India, believing that, with the umma on his side, Britain would be forced to recognise his claim. As the custodian of the Islamic holy cities of Mecca and Medina, Husayn’s administration of the hajj, the annual pilgrimage to Mecca, facilitated contact with Muslims from around the world. In addition, with his Qurayshi lineage and the prestige of his title, his credentials were impeccable. On declaring his revolt against the Ottomans in the summer of 1916, Husayn appealed to Islamic sensibilities concerning just and legitimate governance. Yet support from abroad was minimal. Husayn was seen as a British lackey, who was undermining the unity of the umma at a time when the future of the caliphate itself was cast into doubt by the performance of the Ottomans in the war. Opposition was strongest among the class of educated, reformist Indian Muslims, which would go on to form the nucleus of the Khilafat movement, agitating in favour of Ottoman demands during postwar negotiations. Even before the Sharif’s revolt, Indian activists had used the Hijaz as a base from which to organise an anti-British plot involving the Emir of Afghanistan, a conspiracy uncovered when British authorities in India intercepted a batch of silk scarves into which were woven the details of the plan. Husayn attempted to win the Indians over by inviting Muslim soldiers returning home from the European front to the Hijaz as his guests, with a view to having them propagandise on his behalf on their arrival in India. The task proved beyond him. With European troops occupying Istanbul, the British tried to find out if the Ottoman sultan-caliph still commanded the recognition of the Muslim world. They sought to ascertain if the khutba, the Friday prayer, was still being recited in the name of Sultan Mehmed VI. British consulates from Morocco to Indonesia reported back that, with few exceptions, the umma still attended prayers in the caliph’s name. The process was repeated in 1922 when Atatürk’s nationalist government abolished the sultanate and appointed a new caliph, Abdülmecid II, to a position shorn of any temporal significance. Still, Muslims remained steadfast in support of the Ottoman caliphate. In March 1924 Atatürk abolished the caliphate, sending Abdülmecid II into exile and leaving the umma without any recognised head. Husayn, whose sons Faisal and Abdullah

Some distance from the town the King transferred from his car to a carriage, whereupon … the horse at once fell dead, and the King, looking pale and anxious, had to have a riding horse brought on which to make his entry. This incident has given satisfaction to the Javanese Ulama, who had prophesied that for his impiety in seizing the Caliphate the King would drop dead on his return to Mecca; they, however, cannot help wishing that the thunderbolt had been better aimed.

Having lost British support, Husayn sought that of the wider Islamic world and in particular Muslim India

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By the summer of 1924, Husayn’s bid for the recognition of the Islamic world had failed. That August, Ibn Sa’ud launched a final offensive against the Hijaz and, following the fall of Mecca in October, Husayn was forced to abdicate in favour of his son, Ali, who, after renouncing all Hashimite claims to the caliphate, held on in Jeddah until December 1925, after which he joined his father in exile. Like Husayn, al-Baghdadi’s claim to the caliphate has been met with contempt by the Islamic world, with one Palestinian TV channel parodying fighters manning an Islamic State checkpoint and a number of online memes mocking the new caliph’s announcement. In contrast to the Sharif, however, al-Baghdadi is untainted by foreign involvement, while he enjoys the support of a fanatical online fan base ready to propagandise on his behalf. Unlike Husayn he has succeeded in capturing vast, resource-rich territories in the heart of the Arab Middle East. More problematic for the Islamic State is al-Baghdadi’s obscurity, lack of proven religious credentials and, most importantly, his organisation’s reputation for brutality, intolerance and sectarianism. These qualities ensure that the new caliphate’s constituency is limited to that element of the jihadi community already inclined to accept Islamic State’s agenda. It is this aspect of al-Baghdadi’s reign as caliph which guarantees that he will be no more successful in winning the support of the Muslim world than his predecessor, Sharif Husayn of Mecca.

Conor Meleady is a historian of the modern Middle East. JANUARY 2015 HISTORY TODAY 39

MakingHistory While we return again and again to the proto-historians of the classical world, we neglect those pioneering figures closer to us in space and time. Why is this, wonders Mathew Lyons?

England Through Camden's Eyes I HAVE RECENTLY been reading Tom Holland’s superb new translation of Herodotus’ Histories. I am by no means an authority on classical writers, but I have always enjoyed Herodotus. He is so irrepressibly inquisitive and, in every sense, a pleasure to read. Holland has always been a fine writer, both in the clarity and subtlety of his intellect and the spare, evocative lucidity of his style. Reading the two together, as it were, has made me more aware than ever before of the exquisite tension between writer and translator. I have also wondered why we still read Herodotus, aside from the gifts of the translators he attracts. It is partly a question of style, I think, partly of intellectual attitude and partly his distinctive collation of data. We are delighted when we believe him to be accurate; but accuracy is not a standard we demand of him. If we want a reliable account of the classical world, we read a modern historian. Herodotus we read for a first-hand sense of the world as it was understood and experienced by its people. We do not, though, apply the same standards to our own antique historians. I am not wholly sure why. Since I encountered him first at university, I have always been an admirer of William Camden, author of the Britannia, first published in 1586 in Latin and revised a number of times over his lifetime. He oversaw an English translation in 1610. It is a volume that lays claim to being the first truly great work of English history, but it is also so much more than that. It is a work of historiography, linguistics, chorography and numismatics, too. Its primary organising principle is the pre-Roman English tribes – the Belgae, Iceni, Trinobantes and so on – and, within those, the 40 HISTORY TODAY JANUARY 2015

county. Chapter by chapter, Camden pieces together landscape and language, history and archaeology, research and observation, always as aware of the deep and hidden history of the past as he is the visible innovations of the present. Camden has not only taught himself Anglo-Saxon and Welsh: he has studied a dauntingly vast range of archival In need of rescue: William Camden (1551-1623) in an engraving of c.1636.

Britannia lays claim to being

the first truly great work of English history, but it is also so much more than that material; he has read every authority; he has talked or corresponded with every expert; and, importantly, he has travelled to every part of the country. We see England through his eyes as we understand it through his learning; the flux of both history and historiography becomes startlingly present. He is everywhere in his work, sifting, evaluating, commenting, observing, weaving

together what we would now regard as wildly disparate disciplines. It is a mighty testament to the historian’s greatest asset: a restless curiosity. This is not to say Camden is always right, but, as with Herodotus, he is usually wrong in thought-provoking, revealing and entertaining ways. In the age of the Internet and the car, his industry is exhausting. For the 1570s and 80s it is almost unbelievable and it is a sobering thought that he did all this and saw the Britannia into print by the age of 35. It is even more so, perhaps, when you consider that the study of Britain’s antiquity was by no means highly regarded as an intellectual pursuit. ‘Some there are’, he admits, ‘which wholly condemn and avile this study of antiquity as a back-looking curiosity.’ But part of Camden’s achievement was simply to make the study of history intellectually credible in England and this rebuke to his critics is magnificent: ‘If any there be which are desirous to be strangers in their own soil and foreigners in their own city, they may so continue and therein flatter themselves.’ I plan to memorise that and repeat it next time someone questions me about the value of history. We could do with some of his scholarly defiance. Yet who reads him today? We read classical historians, flawed though they are; but we disdain the great historians of our own culture and tradition. This is a loss to us culturally as a nation and a loss to us professionally as historians. The study of antiquity ‘hath a certain resemblance with eternity’, Camden wrote. It is time we rescued him from it. Mathew Lyons is author of The Favourite: Ralegh and His Queen (Constable & Robinson, 2011).

BIRTH OF FICTION Arthur confronts a giant, from Wace’s translation of the History of the Kings of Britain, 12th century.

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ICTION WAS INVENTED in England in the 12th century; we might pinpoint a few years around the 1150s as the crucial moment. At the middle of the century England had a multilingual literary culture, three languages in constant, fruitful contact and a hybrid national culture in the making. It had just emerged from a long and bitter civil war; the Conqueror’s son, Henry I, had died in 1135 leaving a daughter, Matilda, as his only legitimate heir and her cousin, Stephen of Blois, had seized the throne. When in 1153 King Stephen finally made peace with Matilda’s son, Henry of Anjou, who came to the throne as Henry II the following year, he was accompanied by Eleanor of Aquitaine. She brought with her one further addition: the culture of the troubadours, the celebratory lyric poetry and music of courtly life and love, which originated in southern France. This was the world into which fiction would make its entrance. Anglo-Saxon literature had been uniquely precocious. While the rest of Western Europe wrote almost exclusively in Latin, English authors developed and sustained a flourishing vernacular literature alongside Latin and in dialogue with it. They translated scripture, the Church Fathers, classical and contemporary Latin works into English. More than this, they composed with freedom and originality: histories, including the unparalleled achievement of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles; theology and philosophy; saints’ lives in great volume; sermons and homilies; epic poetry of heroes and monsters; elegiac poetry of loss and transience; legal texts and administrative documents; manuals of practical instruction on matters as diverse as medicine, appropriate penances for sins, weather prediction and grammar and language learning. But none of this is fiction. Fiction is a particular mode of literature and, because it is now ubiquitous, its absence is hard to imagine. Nevertheless, for hundreds of years England had a thriving literary culture which apparently felt no need for fiction. Understanding why that is (and why it then emerged in the 12th century and has been with us ever since) reveals some of the ways in which literary culture can give access to the inner structures of a society. It will be apparent that I am using ‘fiction’ in a precise, technical sense. Fiction is a mode of writing in which both author and reader are aware – and know that the other is aware – that the events described cannot be known to have happened. That is not to say that they or something very like them might not have happened: fiction may be set in the author’s own world and obey all the rules of that world. But fiction gives an account of something unverifiable and which does not ask to be believed, only to be thought about; it is a contract between author and reader. This qualification differentiates fiction from the pre-existing forms of ‘untrue’ literature, epic and lyric poetry, both of which demand a very

1155 and the beginnings of

fiction

The idea of writing about what we can never know – the interior lives of people other than ourselves – was born within the fertile hybrid culture of 12th-century England, argues Laura Ashe.

JANUARY 2015 HISTORY TODAY 41

BIRTH OF FICTION On the eve of fiction. Left: bees fly down to their hives, from the Aberdeen Bestiary. Below: Eve is created from Adam’s rib, Souvigny Bible. Both 12th century.

The lyric is potentially true; the author knows whether he is describing a real experience and so it is not fiction. Fiction is concerned with what is unknowable Visions dreamt by Henry I in Normandy, 1130, an illustration from the Worcester Chronicle, 12th century.

42 HISTORY TODAY JANUARY 2015

imagine what cannot be known, or can only be known by God – was neither needed, nor missed. What changed in England to bring about the emergence of fiction? What conditions are necessary for this mode to be written? The latter question may be broken down more easily. Necessary, but not sufficient, is a level of economic development consistent with the existence of a literary culture, a group of people in society with a sufficient supply of education and leisure to demand and to fund literary production, or to produce it themselves. The development of such an audience leads to experimentation, as authorial invention and high-status patronage encourage one another. The England of the 12th century saw uniquely favourable conditions for this kind of literary culture to develop, for besides participating in the general increase in economic prosperity across Europe (most relevant in the increasingly conspicuous consumption of wealthy aristocratic elites) England had a French-speaking aristocracy, functioning in a bi- and often tri-lingual world. These first, second and third generation immigrants freely intermarried with the English of Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Danish descent and enthusiastically adopted the English past and its literature. As literary patrons they followed the model of Old English vernacular writing by requesting translations into French. The earliest French literature was written in England, drawing on English sources; writings were composed in all languages and translated in every direction, between French and Latin and English (this last only sparsely in the 12th and 13th centuries, but then explosively and overwhelmingly in the 14th century and beyond). All of these were the languages of England and they form the foundations of English literature.

different response from the reader. Epic poetry offers up a mythical history for the present time, with an insistence on the essential truths it contains about the nature of the past and its legacy. Like Virgil’s Aeneid, Beowulf is invented, but neither work is fiction: each functions as history and as ideology. Correspondingly, lyric poetry – the Old English elegies of love, loyalty, and loss – is not fiction. The lone, speaking voice of the poem demands acceptance of the truth of its lament: the author may only be imagining the emotions expressed, but, if the reader decides to disbelieve them, then there is nothing left in the poem of value. The lyric is potentially true; the author knows whether or not he is describing a real experience and so it is not fiction. Fiction is concerned with what is unknowable.

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NE THING ABOVE ALL is genuinely unknowable and it is the supreme matter of fiction. That is, what is going on in anyone else’s mind? What is it like to see through anyone else’s eyes? It is this entirely imagined experience which fiction offers us: access to the unknowable reality of other people’s inner lives. In the present day, the notion that this is a motivation for reading and, indeed, a moral justification of fiction is so well accepted that it is almost a cliche. This being so, how is it that a culture such as that of Anglo-Saxon England should feel no need of fiction? The answer lies in that society’s profoundly different approach to the individual. The writing of fiction depends upon the idea that individuals’ emotional, inner lives, not just their actions, are important for their own sake. This is not an idea which has currency in all places and times; it is contingent on particular social conditions. Anglo-Saxon literature reflects a society in which the individual was subordinated to more important ideals, in both practical and abstract ways: the warrior in the shield-wall, who gives his life in the service of his lord and the defence of his people; the martyr’s self-sacrifice for his faith, or the saint’s self-denial for his; the hero’s selfless bravery against the monstrous incursions which threaten his lord’s hall. In Old English poetry, to be an individual, cut off from these collective bonds, is to be lost. More than this, there is no attention to an inner life that can be meaningfully distinguished from exterior action. Will the warrior make good on his boasts in the mead hall? Only in action is a man’s value known; intention is nothing. I am not suggesting that people have undergone some dramatic change in psychological make-up. We can only assume that people have thought and felt in similar ways, in all places and times. What literature reveals, in contrast, is the difference between cultures in what is valued and what is celebrated. Anglo-Saxon culture valorised active self-sacrifice in the service of a greater good: the people, the nation, the Christian faith. As such, Anglo-Saxon literature did not attend to the inner lives of individuals; in life and in history, individuals were not valuable for their own sake and their thoughts and emotions were significant only in as much as they resulted in action. This omission, the silent absence of any attempt to represent the inner life of others, is an entirely rational response to the impossibility of knowing the truth of anyone else’s mind. Ultimately, however, God sees all and His judgements are perfect. Fiction – an attempt to

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An illuminated knight from the Hunterian Psalter, c.1170.

OWEVER, if literary culture was flourishing, that would not alone be sufficient to produce fiction. The alchemy involved is intimately associated with contemporary cultural changes of a profound nature, which embraced the whole of Europe and the western Church. The crusading movement had originated as a great demonstration of the Church’s power over secular elites, but one of its most lasting cultural effects was entirely unintended: the martial aristocracy’s new sense that a secular, glorious and violent life as a knight could nevertheless be crowned with salvation. This opened the way to the literary celebration of aristocratic lives for their own sake and the valorisation not only of those heroes who sacrifice themselves to an ideal, but also, in a dramatic transformation, of those who succeed most gloriously in embodying this new ideal of knighthood. Meanwhile, in the schools of Paris, Peter Abelard and his followers were elaborating new philosophies of interiorised morality. For Abelard, sin lay in the mind of the sinner, enacted in the moment at which the will gives way to temptation and reaches the determination to commit the sin. The performance of the act itself was then irrelevant; a man physically prevented from committing violence was not thereby free of the sin of fully intending to do so. Correspondingly, the experience of temptation is not itself sinful, only the determination of the will to act on JANUARY 2015 HISTORY TODAY 43

BIRTH OF FICTION

temptation. The implications of this are profound. Action is no longer paramount in the judgment of an individual: what matters is their inner life, the motion of the will. This encouraged a kind of self-examination, formalised in the rising practice of regular confession, which elaborated a new interiority of selfhood, the exploration of the inner life. Simultaneously, contemporary spiritual practices of prayer and meditation were turning their focus toward Christ; the Crucifixion was no longer understood primarily as the father’s gift of His only son, but rather Christ’s own expression of infinite love in his self-sacrifice. With this came deep, meditative and empathic attention to Christ’s suffering, his human feeling, and to the pains and the joys felt by his mother, Mary. A new emotional discourse was developed, a vocabulary of empathy, which would feed secular as much as religious writing.

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HE CHURCH THEREBY ENCOURAGED a new focus on interiority and selfhood, an engagement with emotional experience that mediated the soul’s relationship with God. However, selfhood is not the same as individuality. To say that one’s inner life is important and worthy of exploration is not to say that one person is importantly different from any other, or that there is any need to try to examine the inner lives of others. Individuality is not just unnecessary, but dangerous, theologically speaking: Lucifer’s sin was that of asserting his own unique specialness; to be an individual is to rebel. For that reason, before fiction could take hold, with its valorisation of the inner lives of multiple individuals, one more step was required. The final piece of the puzzle came as the answer to a profound question: what makes an individual valuable in their own right, for their own sake? If they are not in the service of a higher good, such as their people, lord or faith, or subordinating their own immediate 44 HISTORY TODAY JANUARY 2015

desires to a greater goal, such as sanctity, or salvation, if they are only in pursuit of their own self-fulfilment, how is that to be justified? What endows it with meaning? A Norman clerk called Wace presented a long poem to Eleanor of Aquitaine, we are told, around 1155. This poem was a French translation of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the Kings of Britain (c. 1136), a long work of Latin prose that purports to recount the history of Britain, from its foundation by the Trojan Brutus to the ultimate victory of the Anglo-Saxon peoples over the British. Its

A new emotional discourse was developed, a vocabulary of empathy, which would feed secular as much as religious writing greatest hero is King Arthur, whose court is the pinnacle of sophistication. Arthur is the conqueror of most of Europe, before treachery at home forces him to return to a bloody civil war and the ultimate downfall of his people. When Wace translated Geoffrey’s Latin into French verse, he took the opportunity to elaborate on the description of Arthur’s glittering court, transforming its importance and effects. In both works, the court’s celebrations are brought to an abrupt end by a declaration of war from the Roman empire. In Geoffrey’s History a knight named Cador welcomes this as an opportunity for the British to recover their reputation for martial valour; peacetime has made them idle, he says, and idleness breeds cowardice. This response captures the underlying assumptions of earlier English literature: that

the highest goal for an individual is to fight (literally or spiritually) in a greater cause and, if necessary, to sacrifice oneself to that cause. But, when Wace translated this episode, he put a reply in the mouth of another knight, later the hero of many romances, Gawain, who tells Cador that he is wrong: peacetime is good and the land is the better for it. He goes on: ‘Pleasant pastimes are good, and so are love affairs. It’s for love, and for lovers, that knights do knightly deeds.’ This assertion embodies the transformative moment in literature, when fiction is made possible. The key is a new place – and a new value – for the idea of love.

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OVE – AN EMOTIONAL and sexual attachment to another individual – has always had a place in literature, as in life. However, for long periods and in many cultures the representation of love is ambivalent at best. In classical tragedy love is an uncontrollable, destructive force; in lyric poetry it is a sickness, a suffering. In the epic poem love is irrelevant – as in Beowulf – or a distraction which must be overcome, as in the Aeneid, where Dido must be abandoned so that Rome can be founded. Love may be sublimated, or redirected to the love of one’s lord or loyalty to one’s peers for, if it is not, it draws the (invariably) male protagonist away from his duty to the higher cause that is his purpose. In the abstract, love can be a reward for proper heroic action, such as the lord’s daughter’s hand in marriage. The love said to be felt for the daughter is no more than a sign of the knight’s success and of the bonds between men. Here, however, in Wace’s few lines, everything has changed. He asserts that love is the purpose of heroic action. What this means is that selffulfilment, self-realisation, is the purpose of heroic action: for romantic love is a good only to those who are enjoying it. It involves no sacrifice of the self to a higher cause; the

Left: Lancelot and Guinevere in bed, from the Book of Lancelot of the Lake, French, 1316. Middle: The needy raised up to the throne of Christ, Eadwine Psalter, c.1150. Right: Troubadours from the Hunterian Psalter, c.1170.

highest cause now is one’s own happiness. Yet the reason that love can perform this function is precisely because of its association with suffering and with service of, or submission to, the beloved. Love takes the place of the higher cause which the hero serves and yet simultaneously represents his own self-fulfilment as the ultimate goal of the narrative. Now and only now is fiction made possible, for now the individual is justified for his own sake; his achievement of self-fulfilment is enough in itself to feed narrative representation. The love-plot is essentially fictional, for it requires attention to the inner lives of at least two distinguishable individuals and asserts that their emotional experience, in the author’s imagination, is valuable for its own sake. This is the literary paradigm which gives us the novel: access to the unknowable inner lives of others, moving through a world in which their interior experience is as significant as their exterior action. It need hardly be said that the society which believes such things, which accedes to – and celebrates – the notion that the inner lives of others are a matter of significance, is a profoundly different society from one that does not. There is an immediately ethical dimension to these developments: once literature is engaged in the (necessarily fictional) representation of interior, individuated selves, who interact with other interior, individuated selves, then moral agency appears in a new light. It is only in the extension of narrative into the unknowable – the minds of others – that a culture engages with the moral responsibility of one individual toward another, rather than with each individual’s separate (and identical) responsibilities to God, or to a king. Fiction’s ethical reach is deep and nuanced; it is the prime arena for thought experiments, for speculative empathy and the critical judgement of competing subjectivities. Fiction declines objectivity, as it declines a JANUARY 2015 HISTORY TODAY 45

BIRTH OF FICTION Below: Yseut plays the harp, from the Thomas’ Tristan, 12th century. Bottom: Lancelot and Guinevere kiss in the presence of Galahad and the Lady of Malohaut, Book of Lancelot, 1316.

truth-claim, and in both of these aspects it is closest to our experience of reality. What are the implications of the emergence of fiction for medieval society? Fiction is not magic; it does not transform the world. But fiction participates in the world’s transformation, reflects it and influences it. If the 12th and 13th centuries saw a new valorisation of the individual, it was taken up by fiction in a great array of new possibilities. Tragedy began to be written again, for if an individual’s self-fulfilment is a high goal in itself, then an individual’s destruction has a new, considerably greater, value. So emerges the narrative representation of desperate love and tragic death, the figures of Tristan and Yseut (Wagner’s Isolde). But tragedy is inherently a matter of this world; it separates itself from the eternal justice of God, implicitly or explicitly denying the force of that justice. In a society where tragedy can be written, something has shifted in the understanding of reality.

Fiction is not magic; it does not transform the world; but fiction participates in the world’s transformation, reflects and influences it Similarly, it was in fiction that the aristocratic ideology of chivalry could make its greatest claims for the secular life: in the repeated spectacle of worldly knights being rewarded with heavenly favour, the romance embodied the new spiritual self-assertion of the elite. More than this, in exploring individuality fiction was participating in one of the greatest shifts in English society. A new value given to the individual involves a different understanding of the nation at large: not a rigidly structured whole, embodied by the single figure of the king, but rather a gathering of competing voices, each with their own value. This simple idea is the foundation of the concept of a parliament and a public sphere. Fiction provides the infinite imaginative space in which reality can be thought of differently. It does not transform the world; nevertheless, it is difficult to imagine a world in the process of transformation which could manage without fiction. Laura Ashe is Associate Professor and Tutorial Fellow in English at Worcester College, Oxford. Her book, Early Fiction in England: From Geoffrey of Monmouth to Chaucer, will be published by Penguin in July 2015.

FURTHER READING Erich Auerbach, Mimesis: the Representation of Reality in Western Literature (Princeton, 1953). William Calin, The French Tradition and the Literature of Medieval England (Toronto, 1994). D.H. Green, The Beginnings of Medieval Romance: Fact and Fiction, 1150-1220 (Cambridge, 2002). Wace, trans, Judith Weiss, Roman de Brut: A History of the British, Text and Translation (Exeter, 2003).

46 HISTORY TODAY JANUARY 2015

| BOTTOMLEY John Bull personified: Horatio Bottomley, c.1900.

John Bull Spirit The rise of UKIP has spread panic among Britain’s political establishment. But there is nothing new about populist political movements, as David Nash reveals in this profile of the newspaper proprietor Horatio Bottomley.

The recent rise of UKIP, with its claim to break the mould of British politics, is a reminder of those occasions when a self-proclaimed challenge to the traditional political system has taken centre stage, usually in the wake of the conventional arrangement suffering strain and distortion. These challenges have only been able to make an impact because they tap into populist feelings and sentiments. Such interventions depend on ‘instinctive’ values and enter political rhetoric because they appeal to not entirely rational sentiments, which are ‘felt’ more readily than they are understood. The skill to evoke these feelings relies upon the power of charismatic personalities, who serve to embody such feelings and provoke intense public sympathy through their compelling media presence. In our own time Nigel Farage, the UKIP leader, has captured the public mood by appealing to the range of feelings we call ‘popular’. As Farage is quoted as saying: ‘If an idea is indeed sensible, it will eventually become just part of the accepted wisdom.’ Common sense UKIP and Nigel Farage are hardly the first modern manifestations of unashamed populism, with its appeal above traditional politics to ideas of common sense. A century ago the public was enthralled by the remarkably similar ideas and personality of Horatio Bottomley, celebrity, newspaper proprietor, demagogue and politician. Bottomley realised the power of the popular and set about shaping all elements of his personality and media profile to publicise this end. Bottomley was born in 1860 into a radical family and had the secularist leader G.J. Holyoake as an uncle. He would regularly claim that he was the illegitimate son of Charles Bradlaugh, the secular movement’s greatest leader and the first openly atheist MP. This parentage was plausible since Bottomley bore an uncanny physical resemblance to Bradlaugh, but this was equally indicative of how Bottomley used every opportunity he could to inherit authority and gain people’s support and sympathy. In his written self-portraits (of which there were many) Bottomley claimed to have read in detail the writings of every major thinker of the late 19th century. But, with an eye to his audience, he declared them dry and of little virtue compared to the wider public, with its more straightforward ‘common sense’, a message which went down well. With a further astute eye on public distrust for authority, he likewise declared himself to believe in some of the basics of Christianity, while having no time for organised religion and the established Church. Bottomley managed to construct for himself a cross-class appeal, which portrayed him as an ambitious individual who had made good in the expansive atmosphere of the ‘naughty nineties’, Voice of the people? An edition of John Bull from November 1917.

JANUARY 2015 HISTORY TODAY 47

where fortunes were to be made. He further appealed to populist adulation through his patronage of the turf and legendary taste for champagne. This made him an aspirational fantasy figure for many of his (particularly working-class) readers and he perhaps carried echoes of the larger than life music hall turns Champagne Charlie and Burgundy Benjamin. However, his business dealings were frequently on the wrong side of the law and public knowledge of this dogged him throughout his business career. Local Parliaments Bottomley’s interest in politics had been nurtured in a number of London debating societies, known as Local Parliaments. Not only did he take part in these, but he also organised their own version of Hansard. At some point in the early years of the 20th century Bottomley hit upon the idea of launching a newspaper, which he entitled John Bull. This tapped into a vast reservoir of popular ideas about the personification of national character, which readers flocked to identify with. The pugnacious, well-fed and ample figure of John Bull graced the cover of every edition. He was frequently to be seen in cartoons pointing out the right course of action to hapless politicians, civil servants and military men, or pricking the consciences of those who had damaged the country in some way. However, in Bottomley’s hands the John Bull character moved on from being a trustworthy caricature to become a full-scale brand, exuding the kind of hearty characteristics the person in the street could trust. Thus the newspaper began by staging ‘catchphrase’ guessing, lotteries and football pool competitions and it even became possible to purchase John Bull writing instruments, take advantage of other special offers and buy sets of John Bull encyclopedias. A particular feature of John Bull was that its journalism regularly identified those who it claimed were enemies of England, which the character of John Bull disapproved of. Benevolent and beneficial national characteristics were lauded and celebrated often in self-conscious language that would borrow quotes and ideas from the canon of great English poets, from Shakespeare and from the Book of Common Prayer, all calculated to have multiple resonances with the paper’s readership. This Englishness, by default, set these cultural ideas above those of the other nations of Europe and interestingly managed to blot out or overwrite Scottish, Welsh and Irish identities – in John Bull’s hands English quickly became British and stayed that way – much in the manner of the Sun’s recent delivery of a free version of its paper to 22 million homes declaring on its cover ‘This is our England’. Bottomley, however, had loftier ambitions beyond offering his opinions in his newspaper and set his sights upon a political career. Although he stood as a candi-

Once in Parliament Bottomley adopted a range of causes, which addressed his twin concerns of promoting common sense and opposing vested interests

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date in the 1902 ‘khaki election’, he eventually served as a Liberal MP after being elected in 1906. Again, like his mentor Charles Bradlaugh, once in Parliament Bottomley adopted a range of causes, which addressed his twin concerns of promoting ‘common sense’ and helping the man in the street oppose vested interests. Bottomley’s bankruptcy drove him out of Parliament and eventually led to the formation of the John Bull League, which was launched at a meeting from which thousands were turned away. This organisation declared itself opposed to cant and self-righteousness and set itself to enable ‘the introduction of common sense business methods into the government of the country’. This organisation even had its own song, which encapsulated its populist message: If you would to Parliament businessmen of grit to be sent join the John Bull League. Men and women who despise Party tactics, party lies, foolish fake election cries Join the League The outbreak of the First World War gave Bottomley his chance to become an important figure, one that he grasped. Gushing excitedly to his private secretary he declared: ‘Houston, this war is my opportunity. Whatever I have been in the past, and whatever my faults, I am going to draw a line at August 4th, 1914 and start afresh.’ John Bull and its cartoon persona rapidly responded to the call to arms with a particularly abrasive approach towards the enemy that resulted in them being referred to as ‘Germhuns’ at every conceivable opportunity. This was also evident in a wider scepticism of all things European, extending to outright disgust at the neutrality of a number of Continental countries, which the paper argued could not be trusted. Some Scandinavian countries were targeted in articles but it was the Netherlands that was singled out for particular vitriol. The apparent cowardice of the Dutch in failing to confront Germany inspired angry articles and scathing cartoons. John Bull further protected its readers from Europe when Bottomley offered them free insurance against bomb damage, provided they completed a coupon each week available within the paper. But John Bull (and Bottomley) did not simply target enemies abroad. The former conceived of its mission as a quest to unravel all the poor institutions, inept structures and red tape that stood in the way of ‘England’ fighting an effective modern war. It railed angrily against party government and its failures to organise munitions and food supplies adequately. By the issue of January 1st, 1916 the paper had clearly had enough when it described the previous year’s war effort as ‘a ghastly record of Bungle and Blunder’. This same issue carried a cartoon that portrayed party government as a tired and worn out old age pensioner above the caption ‘Nearing the End’. By this stage of the war Bottomley hit upon the bright idea of carrying a column of soldiers’ anonymous complaints under the heading ‘Tommie and Jack’. This simultaneously carried the fight against red tape, corruption and profiteering still further, while dramatically extending Bottomley’s populist appeal. The latter phenomenon was so

| BOTTOMLEY actively assist any parliamentary candidates who pledged their support for this stance. As with so many John Bull schemes the paper craved committed membership and active subscription from its readership.

successful that he was widely regarded as the greatest advocate of serving troops and their grievances, so much so that John Bull was nicknamed ‘Trench Weekly’. The grievances tackled by John Bull ranged from the seemingly arbitrary way some regiments were awarded leave while others were not; popinjay officers demanding salutes from wounded men who were unable to comply; and the maintenance of clear distinctions in employment between those unfit for war service and despised conscientious objectors. Throughout, John Bull created an imagined community of a nation at war trying to use common sense to muddle through and battle with both the enemy, ‘slackers’, conscientious objectors and shortsighted, dangerous self-interest at home. However John Bull was also proactive, setting agendas, again with an eye to the populist impulse. In May 1915 the paper proclaimed an ‘anti-German’ pledge that tried to clamp down on any outlets that provided a favourable opportunity for the trading of German goods and patents. Instead it promoted companies that were willing to produce substitutes for German goods and offered to

Independent newspaper: an advert for John Bull, 1920s.

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Hard-won freedoms Similarly, in the manner of Nigel Farage’s attack upon the ‘nanny state’s’ smoking ban in pubs, Bottomley was aware of similar assaults upon the hard-won freedoms of people in 1914. He used John Bull to oppose loudly what he saw as attempts to over-regulate licensing laws and licenced premises in the name of industrial production for the war effort. This was portrayed as an assault upon the freedoms of Englishmen and the tyranny associated with a government obviously out of touch with the will of the people. Government became fully aware of Bottomley’s populist power and he was frequently called upon to conduct recruitment meetings and, on one occasion, talk Glasgow workers out of taking strike action damaging to the war effort. This appreciation of his talents led Bottomley to believe he was perpetually on the verge of being drafted into the wartime Cabinet. Nonetheless, the possibility of promotion did not stop Bottomley from being critical of coalition government, every bit as much as he had criticised the earlier failure of party government to deliver a significant and credible war effort. Dissatisfaction with the coalition allowed Bottomley to gain a seat at the 1918 election, when he became an important member of the Independent Parliamentary group, which again displayed policies distrustful of Europe and European politics. It took a strong line on the payment of war indemnities and reparations, treatment of undesirable aliens and the perils of an unregulated open market in goods, demanding that Britain’s place in the world be ‘unfettered by Leagues of Nations’. This last organisation was a particular bugbear of Bottomley’s. Nonetheless the Independent Parliamentary group never became remotely large enough to cause the existing government significant discomfort. Although Bottomley got to the stage of running his own parliamentary candidates, he soon disappeared from the political scene as he was pulled under by financial impropriety and eventually a successful prosecution for fraud leading to a prison sentence. The example of Horatio Bottomley and the remarkable appeal of his message indicates the power of populism when conventional forms of politics are challenged by crises. The comparison between Bottomley and Nigel Farage’s UKIP shows how an appeal to national, local and perhaps even imagined values can seem a comfortable alternative to the uncertainties and contingencies of mainstream politics. Whether it offers serious solutions now, or offered them then, is another question.

David Nash is Professor of History at Oxford Brookes University and the author of Christian Ideals in British Culture: Stories of Belief in the Twentieth Century (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013). JANUARY 2015 HISTORY TODAY 49

PUTNEY

The arguments that took place in the village of Putney among the officers and soldiers of the New Model Army revealed fundamental divisions within the parliamentarian cause, as Sarah Mortimer explains.

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N THE AUTUMN of 1647 the small, Thames-side village of Putney witnessed the most famous and dramatic debates of the English Civil Wars. The headquarters of the parliamentarian New Model Army was situated there and for a few days the officers and soldiers argued passionately over the nature of a new constitutional settlement for postwar England. Their ideas seem, in some cases, strikingly modern; one officer, Colonel Thomas Rainborowe, went so far as to call for universal manhood suffrage, to the outrage of more senior commanders. Historians have long been dazzled by Rainborowe’s rhetoric, seeing in his concern for ‘the poorest hee’ the first glimmerings of modern democracy. But there was more at stake in these debates than simply the extent of the franchise. The soldiers and officers were divided in their visions of the kind of settlement they wanted for the kingdom and their exchanges at Putney reveal, perhaps more than any other contemporary source, the fundamental tensions at the heart of the parliamentarian cause. The Putney Debates have been known to historians ever since a transcript made by a military clerk was found in Worcester College, Oxford in 1890. No one who reads the debates can fail to be moved by the eloquence and force with which Rainborowe defended manhood suffrage. Yet historians have generally been quicker to sympathise with him than to explain the rationale behind his position. His chief adversary was Oliver Cromwell’s son-in-law Colonel Henry Ireton, whose fierce resistance to Rainborowe’s demands tends to be seen in equally narrow terms: as the knee-jerk reaction of a propertied gentleman with much to lose from any radical challenge to the established order.

Above: Thomas Rainborowe, or Rainsborough, champion of ‘the poorest hee’, in a contemporary engraving.

Right: Henry Ireton, who sought to control the language of natural rights. Portrait attributed to Robert Walker, c.1650.

What was at stake in 50 HISTORY TODAY JANUARY 2015

The debates are at the heart of a contemporary argument over the intellectual foundations of the parliamentarian cause

Historians have often wondered why Ireton and Rainborowe made such an issue of the franchise, given that it polarised debate so sharply. Rainborowe had the sympathy of many of the soldiers, but few wanted to go as far as he did and open up elections to all adult men. On the other hand, Ireton made few friends for himself with his strident denunciations of Rainborowe’s arguments. Rather than find common ground with his fellow officer, he went out of his way to show that Rainborowe’s ideas would lead to anarchy, disorder and chaos. Ireton’s position can seem wilfully self-defeating, because he was open to extending the franchise, at least to some extent. In these tense moments of 1647, when settlement was still so elusive, we might expect him to be striving for consensus. Yet we find the very opposite. To understand the determination with which both men held their ground, we need to place the debates at the heart of a contemporary argument over the intellectual foundations of the parliamentarian cause.

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HEN PARLIAMENT-MEN took up arms against the king in 1642, they had to find ways to justify their actions that would be convincing to themselves and the public. One of the most successful propagandists, Henry Parker, had appealed to the concept of natural law in many of his writings, arguing that this law underpinned all human laws and that it commanded all people to defend themselves when in danger. One of his favourite illustrations was that of a general who turns his cannon against his own soldiers. In this situation, he argued, the soldiers have a duty to disobey their commanding officer and protect themselves. For Parker the case of Parliament was no different. Natural law demanded that Parliament-men defend the kingdom and people against a monarch seemingly determined to destroy them. By 1647 the New Model Army thought that the danger came not only from the king, whom they had recently defeated, but also from Parliament itself, or at least from the corrupt members within it. When Parliament sought to disband the army and send the soldiers to Ireland, therefore, many of the officers and soldiers united together in resisting these commands. They defended their action in a Representation, written by Henry Ireton and published on June 14th,

the Putney Debates? JANUARY 2015 HISTORY TODAY 51

PUTNEY 1647. In this highly influential manifesto, Ireton consciously echoed the language of Parker and the earlier parliamentarian cause in his appeal to the law of nature. In the Representation Ireton insisted that the New Model was ‘not a mere mercenary army’, but called by Parliament ‘to the defence of our own and the people’s just rights and liberties’. The soldiers had a cause to fight for: it had been endorsed by Parliament and Ireton insisted that they must not abandon it. Moreover, even their current rejection of parliamentary commands was, he thought, in line with the true principles of the parliamentarian cause. For, Ireton explained, ‘Parliament hath declared it no resistance of magistracy to side with the just principles of law, nature, and nations’ and these principles allow for self-defence when destruction is threatened. Here he included the aforementioned example of a general whose cannons face his own soldiers. For Ireton, then, the Representation was a clear assertion that the army could resist its own destruction and defend its own legitimate rights and those of all Englishmen. Ireton had not meant the Representation to be an especially radical document and in 1647 he still envisaged a settlement that would include the king and would salvage as much of the traditional constitution as possible. Indeed, in the summer of 1647 he was involved in extensive negotiations with Charles I, as the army officers and their parliamentarian allies tried to reach a deal with him. The centrepiece of these negotiations was a document known as the Heads of the Proposals, according to which the king would be restored, but with his powers circumscribed. The Heads also called for social and economic reform and for some rationalisation of the electoral system, currently a patchwork of local rules and customs. It was a sensible, potentially workable document, but Charles would not accept it, even with extensive concessions from Ireton and his allies.

New interpretations of the parliamentarian cause began to emerge, especially among a group of civilian radicals in London

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HILE THE ARMY leaders were negotiating with Charles, new interpretations of the parliamentarian cause began to emerge, especially among a group of civilian radicals in London. In their publications they had begun to invest the language of natural law with new political meaning and had even linked it to a concept of inherent, individual rights and liberties. One pamphleteer, Richard Overton, called for a settlement based upon ‘right reason’, equity and the spirit of God in his Appeal from the Degenerate Representative Body, published in July 1647. Significantly, he specifically referred to the army’s Representation of June 14th, suggesting that the army had committed itself in that document to upholding all rights and liberties based in reason and equality. In Overton’s hands the Representation had become a much more extensive manifesto for change and reform, a call for the remodelling of the English state in accordance with right reason. He hoped that by invoking the Representation he could gain the support of the soldiers for his position. Overton was not an isolated figure in 1647. He was part of a broader network of civilian radicals that would soon 52 HISTORY TODAY JANUARY 2015

A broadsheet of 1647 with images of the tradesmen who formed the core of radical support for the parliamentarian cause.

become known as the Levellers. Historians have spent much time and effort establishing the dynamics of the Leveller movement, but it is clear that by the autumn of 1647 there was a group of civilians committed to a programme of reform based upon concepts of equity and natural right. Moreover, many of the soldiers were frustrated by the long process of negotiation with the king and feared that their own rights and interests would not be properly safeguarded in any settlement with Charles. By the autumn, therefore, the soldiers were receptive to this language of rights and liberties and they had even begun to see the parliamentarian cause in these terms. Nowhere is this fusion of army statements and Leveller principles clearer than in a pamphlet entitled The Case of the Army Truly Stated, printed in October 1647. Historians have debated whether this pamphlet was written by soldiers or Levellers, but what is most interesting is the way in which the authors, whoever they were, re-interpret army documents along Leveller lines. In fact, much of the

Case is a gloss upon the Representation. The authors echo that document when they insist that the army had taken up arms ‘for the people’s just rights and liberties, and not as mercenary Souldiers’ and that they proceeded ‘upon the principles of right and freedom, and upon the law of nature and Nations’. On June 14th, claim the authors, the army had engaged to protect the people’s rights as individual soldiers and Englishmen, though now senior officers had apparently abandoned this cause. Indeed, they lamented that ‘the law of nature and nations [is] now refused by many to be the rule by which their proceedings should be regulated’. This was a sharp attack on Ireton and Cromwell for forsaking the perceived commitments they had made just four months earlier. The Case was not only an exercise in creative textual interpretation. In the context of the autumn of 1647 it was far more serious than this, for it contained a scathing critique of the policy of settlement with the king. To negotiate with Charles was, the authors suggested, to violate the principles to which the army had engaged itself. Ireton and Cromwell were troubled by the appearance of the Case, especially as they were encountering opposition from some radical MPs with strong connections to the army. One of these was Colonel Rainborowe, who had recently been elected to Parliament for Droitwich in Worcestershire, where he had taken electoral advantage both of his position as military governor and the town’s highly restricted franchise (no universal male suffrage here!). Through the summer of 1647 he had become increasingly hostile to any negotiations with the king, preferring instead to start the process of settlement afresh, a stance that played well with many of the soldiers. Rainborowe had no known connections with Overton or other future Levellers before the end of October, but they were all united by their frustration with the army leaders’ plans for settlement. Moreover, the possibility for fruitful

Putney, with St Mary’s Church on the left, by Joseph Nichols, early 18th century.

A page of the Putney Debate Record Book of 1647, discovered at Worcester College in 1890.

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cooperation must have been obvious: the civilian Levellers lacked a power base, while Rainborowe seems to have lacked a coherent intellectual agenda. The civilians had been arguing for natural, common rights and freedom that were independent not only of the king but also of Parliament; and these common rights could provide the intellectual justification for the kind of radical action desired by Rainborowe, action which circumvented traditional constitutional arrangements and began the process of settlement afresh. If the ideas within the Case spread through the army, then the call for immediate and disruptive action could become unstoppable: the treaty with the king would be abandoned and the constitution would have to be fashioned anew.

T WAS IN THIS EXPLOSIVE political and intellectual context that the debates at Putney were called and the issue of the franchise became the flashpoint. Cromwell and Ireton needed to respond to the charges in the Case and they hoped they could preserve the unity of the army, despite the efforts of the Levellers and others to drive a wedge between soldiers and officers. To achieve this, Ireton was aware that he needed to wrest the intellectual initiative from the radicals and reassert his own interpretation of the army’s central documents. He wanted to defend the Representation and to show that the ongoing negotiations with Charles were not a violation of its spirit. Unfortunately for him, his task became a lot tougher with the dramatic entry upon the stage of the Levellers. Not long after the debates had opened, a new document, known as The Agreement of the People, was read out to those present. It was an inspired piece of political opportunism written by Levellers. It called for a new settlement, based upon a written constitution, which would define the powers of a new sovereign representative. Its novelty was much commented upon – at the time and since – but the authors of the Agreement insisted that this proposal was the constitutional counterpart to the army’s Representation. It was this notion that the Agreement was compatible with – even inseparable from – the army’s own platform that Ireton was so anxious to deny. He would seize upon the issue of the franchise to demonstrate his point in forceful fashion. The connection between the Agreement and the Representation has rarely been acknowledged by historians, although the authors of the Agreement went out of their way to highlight it. They even claimed that it was drawn up ‘in order to the fulfilling of our Declaration of June the 14’. The Leveller John Wildman, who was probably involved in writing at least parts of the Case, was particularly keen JANUARY 2015 HISTORY TODAY 53

PUTNEY to draw these connections at Putney. He insisted that the chief aim of the Agreement was the same as that of the Representation: both were designed ‘to secure the Rights of the people in their Parliaments’; both were undergirded by ‘principles of right and freedom, and the lawes of nature and nations’ and the army ought therefore to accept the programme outlined in the Agreement. Ireton was livid at this hijacking of the Representation to radical ends and he lost no time in countering such an interpretation. In one of his sharpest speeches of the entire period he denounced the ‘venome and poyson’ in Wildman’s words. He was absolutely adamant that this was not the meaning of the Representation. The army was not committed to a programme based in natural law, but to the maintenance of agreements and engagements. He accepted that all humans had a natural right to protect their own person and to stay alive, but for him natural right ended there. In his view, the army had only resisted Parliament when it was absolutely necessary, when the soldiers had been faced with destruction and, even then, they had done so on grounds already sanctioned by Parliament itself: this was his view of the Representation. He agreed with Wildman that no one could be obliged to suffer their

Ireton was livid at this hijacking of the Representation to radical ends and he lost no time in countering such an interpretation own destruction; this had, after all, been the lynchpin of the parliamentarian case since 1642. But Ireton did not believe it was legitimate to appeal to the law of nature in all circumstances, or to claim that Parliament went to war to extend the rights of Englishmen or reform the constitution. He thought that, if it were permissible to plead the law of nature against constitutions and against Parliament whenever a person was discontented, then anarchy would soon result. For him, it was only if our destruction were at hand that the law of nature came into play. Ireton knew that the law of nature was a dangerous weapon and he was desperate to ensure that it was used sparingly. All the points which Ireton made against Wildman were repeated and expanded later in the debates, when the franchise and the right to vote were discussed. These issues came up after the first clause of the Agreement had been read out, for here it was suggested that parliamentary seats should be distributed according to the number of people living in a particular district. At first glance this was hardly a revolutionary statement and those at Putney, like subsequent historians, were taken aback by the bitter clashes that followed. But Ireton and Rainborowe saw immediately what was at stake and they were determined to seize the moment for their own purposes. Ireton began by questioning the meaning of the clause and Rainborowe lost no time in insisting that it meant universal manhood suffrage. He even claimed that the right to vote was a natural right, that it belonged to all men because 54 HISTORY TODAY JANUARY 2015

A petition of 1647 outlining the grievances of parliamentary soldiers who had served in Ireland.

A royalist pamphlet of 1648 documenting atrocities alleged to have been committed by the parliamentarian forces.

all should give their consent to the government that ruled over them. Ireton had not, perhaps, expected Rainborowe to adopt the language of natural right with such alacrity, but Rainborowe had his reasons. He was eager to shift the intellectual ground away from the old constitution, for he was thinking instead of a new settlement, based on natural rights and liberties. How sincere he was is impossible to say – after all, he had been elected to Parliament by fewer than 30 voters – but he could see the difficulties in Ireton’s argument and he was determined to exploit them for maximum political effect. Ireton had conjured the spectre of natural law and natural right with the Representation and Rainborowe was now taking advantage. If the soldiers could be brought to adopt a platform of natural rights, with the right to vote at its heart, then the army could be mobilised against any settlement agreed by the existing, unreformed Parliament.

John Wildman, probably one of the authors of The Case of the Army Truly Stated, in a contemporary miniature by Thomas Flatman.

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RETON RECOGNISED immediately what Rainborowe was trying to do. The authors of the Case had begun to turn Parliament’s ideals against it, but now Rainborowe was threatening to destroy the parliamentarian cause itself (at least as Ireton understood it) and with weapons which Ireton had helped to sharpen. When Parliament had challenged the king and then when the army had challenged Parliament, both had appealed to natural law and natural right. Ireton thought these concepts were now being used to undermine all existing authority and even all property. For, as Ireton never tired of insisting, if a person could claim a natural right to vote and to share in the government then he might just as easily claim a natural right to property and to anything else that took his fancy. But Ireton was adamant that we have only a natural right to preserve ourselves when our absolute and certain destruction is imminent. We have a natural right to life itself, but not to the things which we think will make our life better. This was not simply an abstract debate. By the end of October 1647 a settlement between the army and the king was looking increasingly unlikely and rumours were circulating that the king might do a deal with the Scots. If the army were to prevent that alliance and to impose a settlement themselves, then they would need to justify and explain their principles once more. Natural law and natural right would be central to any claims for legitimacy and both Ireton and Rainborowe wanted to take control of these crucial concepts. At Putney, Rainborowe saw his chance to win the soldiers over to his radical position of a new settlement without the king and without a powerful House of Lords. Ireton was desperate to neutralise this possibility. In the end, neither man won outright at Putney. Rainborowe clearly had substantial support within the army, but most of the soldiers shied away from his more extreme proposals. Many of the soldiers were more concerned with their own rights as men who had risked their lives for the parliamentarian cause, rather than with the abstract rights

of ‘all Englishmen’. Ireton eventually made clear that he also sought an extension of the franchise, but that he wanted to secure the rights that existed (or should exist) under the constitution; it was the thought that such rights might be ‘natural’ that had raised his hackles. Compromise was possible over the franchise, but on November 5th the meeting voted to write to Parliament, criticising any further negotiations with the king. That was a step too far for Cromwell and Ireton and at that point the debates were brought to a hasty conclusion. Meanwhile, Charles was drawing closer to the Scots and the fruit of their secret negotiations would be a second civil war in 1648. At Putney, the logic of the parliamentarian cause was tested almost to breaking point. The Agreement of the People raised, in its sharpest form, the dilemma that had haunted the king’s adversaries since the early 1640s. From the moment they decided to take up arms against the king, they had accepted that it was legitimate to invoke the laws and rights of nature when the existing constitution had become insufferable. But to appeal to the law of nature was to unleash a powerful force with the potential to dissolve all constitutional arrangements. The royalists had been saying this from the start of the war, but at Putney the parliamentarians finally had to deal with the radical potential of their own ideas. It was over the issue of the franchise that Ireton chose to confront this problem head on, in a brave effort to bring the language of natural rights back under his control. What was at stake in the Putney Debates was not only, or even primarily, the scope of the franchise. Ireton and Rainborowe clashed over the very foundations of the parliamentarian cause, as they tried to work out a settlement for England in which the centrality of the king was no longer taken for granted. A new political order needed to be created and it needed to have the soldiers’ backing. At Putney, Rainborowe offered the soldiers a stark alternative to Ireton and his powerful rhetoric clearly won him supporters. Ultimately, however, it was Ireton’s limited reading of natural law that would prevail. When he came to justify the army’s actions against Parliament and the king in 1648 and 1649, his careful, cautious references to natural law are proof of the profound impact of the Putney Debates on the course of the English Revolution. Sarah Mortimer is Student and Tutor in Modern History at Christ Church, University of Oxford.

FURTHER READING A.S.P. Woodhouse, Puritanism and Liberty, Being the Army Debates, 1647-49 (Univesrity of Chicago, 1975). M. Mendle, The Putney Debates: The Army, the Levellers and the English State (Cambridge, 2001).

From the Archive

P. Baker and E. Vernon, ‘What was the First Agreement of the People?’, Historical Journal (2010).

www.historytoday.com/ civilwars

P. Baker and E. Vernon (eds), The Agreements of the People, the Levellers, and the Constitutional Crisis of the English Revolution (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012).

More on the Civil Wars

JANUARY 2015 HISTORY TODAY 55

REVIEWS

Janet Ravenscroft assesses Elizabeth I’s bedfellows • Giles MacDonogh praises a German view of a formidable foe • Giulia Miller on Jewish peddlers Man of the century: Winston Churchill, c.1900.

FIFTY YEARS AGO, on January 24th, 1965, Sir Winston Churchill died. Much of the nation watched television six days later, when his state funeral was held in St Paul’s Cathedral. Just over 112 years earlier, in November 1852, a state funeral had been held there for another Conservative prime minister and soldier, the Duke of Wellington. Wellington was buried in a tomb beside Lord Nelson in St Paul’s, but Churchill was buried beside his parents and his brother at St Martin’s Church, Bladon, Oxfordshire. His funeral seemed to mark the end of an era, almost the last wheeze of Empire. Churchill was a soldier in the late Victorian British Empire. His experiences fighting on the North-West Frontier of India coloured his understanding of India thereafter. He displayed great bravery when fighting in India, with Kitchener’s forces at Omdurman in 1898 and as a war correspondent in South Africa in 1899-1900. The importance of his military career has been discussed often, not least in the official biography by Randolph Churchill and Martin Gilbert. This career is surveyed well by Douglas S. Russell in Winston Churchill – Soldier: Life of a Gentleman at War (2008). The important theme of Empire has been reappraised by Lawrence James in Churchill and Empire: Portrait of an Imperialist (2013). James is notable for reiterating Churchill’s dismay that his rearguard defence of the 56 HISTORY TODAY JANUARY 2015

SIGNPOSTS

Of Words and Deeds

Fifty years on from Winston Churchill’s death, Chris Wrigley surveys the literature available, highlighting key works and lesser-known titles. British Empire was undercut by US hostility to it and by the American desire for imperial markets to be freely open to US business. Recently, Churchill’s imperial role has been indicted for his failure to prioritise the supply of grain to starving people

in Bengal in 1943. Madhusree Mukerjee’s Churchill’s Secret War: The British Empire and the Ravaging of India During World War II (2010) makes the case that Churchill blocked supplies of Australian wheat that could have been moved to Bengal in 1943.

Her arguments have been contested, but, in my view, not convincingly on her central argument, by several historians, including James and Arthur Herman, author of Gandhi and Churchill (2008). While James and Mukerjee rightly comment that Churchill held many of the contemporary views that saw African and Asian people as in some way inferior to the British (views not unknown now), Churchill was often enlightened with regard to Muslims, especially in the Middle East, and Churchill’s often complex relations here are fruitfully explored by Warren Dockter in Winston Churchill and the Islamic World: Orientalism, Empire and Diplomacy in the Middle East (2015). Churchill also respected the Jewish people, a theme explored by Martin Gilbert in Churchill and the Jews: A Lifelong Friendship (2007). In later life, as the Empire crumbled, Churchill drew solace from his warm feelings for the US, which derived in part from his American mother, the former Jennie Jerome. The influence of the US politician Bourke Cochran on Churchill has been explored by Michael McMenamin and Curt J. Zoller in Becoming Winston Churchill (2007). Gilbert revisited the Anglo-American theme in Churchill and America (2005), while David Dilks wrote The Great Dominion: Winston Churchill in Canada, 1900-1954 (2005). For much of his career, Churchill also made his mark by writing for the press. He was

always well paid, including when writing about the campaigns he participated in as a young man, and his early journalism constitutes a form of ‘contemporary history’. He later wrote multi-volume histories of the First and Second World Wars. Jonathan Rose focuses on the significance of his writing and the literary influences on his career in The Literary Churchill: Author, Reader, Actor (2014). Rose proclaims that he has written ‘political history as literary history’ and takes a fresh view of Churchill’s career, often providing new insights, but occasionally pushing his arguments too far. He identifies such influences on Churchill’s writing as George Bernard Shaw and H.G. Wells and argues that Churchill was much influenced by Victorian melodrama at the theatre.

Winston Churchill’s funeral ... seemed to mark the end of an era, almost the last wheeze of Empire Churchill’s early career as a writer is also explored very ably by Richard Toye in Churchill’s Empire: The World that Made Him and the World He Made (2010), while in Mr Churchill’s Profession: Statesman, Orator, Writer (2012) Peter Clarke reviews his whole career as a writer and in so doing makes a case for according greater respect for Churchill’s A History of the English-Speaking Peoples, deeming it ‘the seedbed of much of his memorable wartime oratory’. The oratory and its impact have been reassessed by Toye in The Roar of the Lion: The Untold Story of Churchill’s World War II Speeches (2013). Some of the best books on Churchill have analysed the links between his actions and his historical writings. Robin Prior shrewdly assessed Churchill’s ‘World Crisis’ as History (1983). With Churchill, Strategy and

History (1992), Tuvia Ben-Moshe provided a very good but notably critical study of Churchill’s strategic policies in both world wars, with the focus heavily on the Second. David Reynolds’ In Command of History: Churchill Fighting and Writing the Second World War (2004) is an outstanding study of Churchill’s writing and rewriting his account of the Second World War, in which he took care to present most of his actions in the best light and was careful not to offend those still in power, such as President Eisenhower. Churchill’s domestic policy has been superbly dealt with by Paul Addison’s Churchill on the Home Front 1900-55 (1992). Michael Shelden provides fresh detail on Churchill’s early career in Churchill: Young Titan (2013), which depicts him again as a giant among political pygmies. Churchill’s anti-Bolshevik crusade after the First World War is ably examined in detail in Martin Kettle’s Churchill and the Archangel Fiasco (1992) and further discussed by Douglas Kinvig in Churchill’s Crusade: The British Invasion of Russia 1918-20 (2007). Churchill’s concentration on the Cold War in his postwar government is dealt with authoritatively by John Young’s Winston Churchill’s Last Campaign: Britain and the Cold War 1951-55 (1996) and added to by Uri Bar-Noi in The Cold War and Soviet Distrust of Churchill’s Pursuit of Détente 1951-55 (2007), drawing on the now available Soviet archives. One of the more innovative books on Churchill is Man of the Century: Winston Churchill and His Legend Since 1945 (2002) by the late John Ramsden. This study of the Churchill legend is hard-headed, examining how the Churchillian myth was carefully constructed, not least by Churchill himself as he resurrected a career which had faltered badly in the 1930s. Ramsden’s book might well be read as a balance to Boris Johnson’s The Churchill Factor: How One Man Made History (2014), reviewed in this section. Chris Wrigley

Winston Churchill Der späte Held Thomas Kielinger C.H. Beck 400pp €24.95

GOOD GERMANS should like Churchill, because the British prime minister was the most dogged opponent of Hitler and only a few, very bad, Germans like Hitler these days. However, there are one or two grey areas where even the most penitential German might have problems explaining away the British statesman’s actions, particularly where Germany was concerned. The first of these occurs in July 1914, when Churchill was the biggest warmonger in Asquith’s Cabinet, but the others belong between 1940 and 1945, when Churchill was Hitler’s nemesis. It might be difficult to accept that Churchill commanded the bombers that destroyed German cities and killed thousands of civilians, using tactics Churchill himself had elaborated in Iraq in the 1920s. The morality of the bombing is disputed in Britain, too, as it resulted in the death of 55,000 RAF pilots and crew, well in excess of the 40,000 or so killed during the destruction of British cities by the Germans. Churchill had made it clear that he did not approve of the dreadful revenge that was inflicted on the Germans after May 1945 and yet he was quite powerless to prevent it. Before he was replaced by Clement Attlee, at Potsdam he made a brave but futile stab at rescuing a bit of German territory across the Oder, but there was no chance that Stalin would back

down over that, or even the colonisation of Britain’s casus belli, Poland. Yalta, suggests Kielinger, was Churchill’s Munich. The agreement with Stalin meant handing over thousands of Stalin’s enemies, who were promptly shot. Churchill also gave scant heed to the German opposition before 1939 and refused to listen to them after 1940. He encouraged advisers, such as John Wheeler-Bennett, who exulted in the massacre of Hitler’s opponents after the failed Plot of July 20th, 1944. But Kielinger is right to see Churchill as the only feasible successor to Chamberlain in May 1940. Like Bismarck, he was summoned to deal with a crisis, in this case one that began with Dunkirk and ended with the Fall of France. Had Halifax taken the job, he would have accepted Hitler’s peace overtures in July. This is a fine, lively account and mercifully concise. Kielinger is aware of Churchill’s failings. He won the war, but lost the peace. Britain was bankrupt in 1945. The British Empire, which Churchill put before all else, was doomed and his American and Soviet allies licked their lips at its passing. There were his many volte faces: the man who said ‘kill the Bolshie, kiss the Hun’ fought Germany then seriously considered attacking the Soviet Union in 1945. The man who weakened the British armed forces as chancellor called for rearmament at the rise of Hitler. Churchill was at first in favour of building a ‘kind of United States of Europe’ but then stood aside from it. He wanted to maintain the Empire and the special relationship with the US: Europe was fine, but not for Britain. Kielinger is Anglophile enough to admire the eccentric Churchill, his bons mots and his ability to paint sunsets in Casablanca while the German Sixth Army bled to death on the battlefield of Stalingrad. Misguided sometimes, dull Churchill was not. Giles MacDonogh JANUARY 2015 HISTORY TODAY 57

REVIEWS

The Churchill Factor

How One Man Made History Boris Johnson Hodder & Stoughton 408pp £25

BORIS JOHNSON states that his intention in writing this book was two-fold: to bring knowledge of Churchill to a younger generation that knows little about him and to show that one person can change the course of history. Cynics may regard the book as an attempt by Johnson to clothe himself in Churchill’s mantle and thus advance his own chance of becoming prime minister. Although Johnson discounts any personal comparison with Churchill, clearly he feels an

Although Johnson discounts any personal comparison with Churchill, clearly he feels an affinity affinity with that other maverick Tory, but what may be termed ‘the Johnson factor’ is more evident in the way the book is written than in what it tells us about his political ambitions. The Churchill Factor has a lively, journalistic style, replete with amusing, if puerile, analogies. Boris claims that Churchill was a uniquely gifted and largely benevolent political leader. He certainly had exceptional gifts and an extraordinary career but he was very much a product both of his era and his upbringing. However, that heritage receives little attention here. Johnson accepts that Churchill made some serious mis58 HISTORY TODAY JANUARY 2015

takes and he briefly assesses them, from Antwerp and Gallipoli in the First World War to the Abdication Crisis in 1936. But he also stresses Winston’s positive contributions to the welfare of Britain and the world before and after, as well as during, the Second World War. His account is based on a factual matrix provided by his informed researcher, Warren Dockter. Johnson adds little fresh insight to a wellknown story and rarely provides a contemporary perspective, except when writing about Churchill’s views on Europe. Johnson identifies two key characteristics of Churchill: his courage – both personal and political – and his industry. In the political sphere it was his self-confidence and resilience, rather than his courage, which was most evident. His industry was certainly prodigious and Boris is particularly struck by the fact that Churchill wrote more words than Shakespeare and Dickens combined. But he lived much longer than either of them and his journalism was often repetitive. Much of his later writing, moreover, was researched and drafted by his many assistants. Boris also accepts that Churchill exhibited some negative qualities, though he rightly questions the extent to which Winston suffered from ‘black dog’ or depression. He asserts that Winston was ‘magnificently and unrepentantly disloyal’ to the political parties that he served. But Churchill’s two changes of party – to the Liberals in 1904 and back to the Tories in 1924 – were largely occasioned by important policy shifts in the Conservative party. Likewise the claim that it was a fluke that Churchill became prime minister in 1940 underestimates the key position that he had already secured in the running of the war. The shortcomings of The Churchill Factor are transparent: hero worship and a reliance on levity and anecdotes at the expense of serious analysis. In that respect, it falls short of Churchill’s standard. Nevertheless the book provides, at best, a balanced and, at worst, an entertaining assessment of a man whose shadow still looms large. Roland Quinault

A State of Play

British Politics on Screen, Stage and Page, from Anthony Trollope to The Thick of It Steven Fielding Bloomsbury 312 pp £18.99

LIKE SPORT, politics is a form of theatre. It has elements of soap opera, melodrama, comedy and tragedy. It encompasses the interplay of ideas and personalities. It foregrounds clashes between heroes and villains. Revealingly, the only prime ministers to have had television series devoted to their lives have been our most theatrically flamboyant premiers: Benjamin Disraeli, David Lloyd George and Winston Churchill, incarnated respectively by Ian McShane, Philip Madoc and Robert Hardy. In this richly detailed and rewarding book, Steven Fielding analyses the dramatisation of British politics on stage, screen and printed page since the novels of Anthony Trollope. Although most people claim that their opinions have been principally informed by the news media, Fielding plausibly argues that fiction has also played an important part in shaping popular perceptions of politics and politicians, ‘framing’, as he puts it, issues and institutions and ‘priming’ audience response. Fielding casts his net wide, mining such diverse cultural phenomena as Just William, P.G. Wodehouse, Agatha Christie, Quatermass, The Clangers and Steptoe and Son for their political content. He wisely opts for a chronological approach because political and cultural contexts

are vital for understanding political fiction. So in the 19th century, Trollope with his Palliser novels sought to educate his middle-class readership, enfranchised by the 1832 and 1867 Reform Acts, in the workings of parliamentary democracy. While novelists were relatively free to write what they liked, the stage and the cinema were straitjacketed by censorship. Films, the new mass medium of the 20th century, were forbidden to criticise the Establishment and, on the contrary, provided celluloid support for the status quo. In the 1930s Victoria the Great and Sixty Glorious Years celebrated the soundness of the monarchy after it had been rocked by the Abdication Crisis. The populist spirit, encouraged during the Second World War, prevailed for several years after it, reflected in films

In this richly detailed and rewarding book, Steven Fielding analyses the dramatisation of British politics on stage, screen and printed page since the novels of Anthony Trollope about communities or families standing up to oppression by Whitehall mandarins (Passport to Pimlico, The Happy Family, The Winslow Boy). But the 1950s saw a revival of the parliamentary novel, in which books by the likes of Maurice Edelman and C.P. Snow tended to glamorise the system and to sympathise with its denizens. This reflected a situation in which a large majority of the population willingly participated in the democratic process. The cultural revolution of the 1960s, however, saw the end of deference and prompted

REVIEWS the satire boom and the growth of cynicism about politics. It is salutary to be reminded how left wing mainstream television drama was in the troubled 1970s. There were no fewer than three television series involving Labour MPs on ITV: The Challengers, The Nearly Man and Bill Brand. The BBC ran Jim Allen’s Days of Hope, a dramatisation of Labour politics between 1914 and 1926, described by the Daily Telegraph as ‘an unashamed party political broadcast for the Communist Party’ and Shoulder to Shoulder, an account of the struggle for women’s suffrage. While the reaction to the Labour 1970s was serious drama, the cultural reaction to the Thatcherite 1980s ranged from biting satire to paranoid conspiracy thrillers. The highlights of the new satirical mood were Yes, Minister, which, Fielding says, ‘presents British democracy as a racket run by the political class for its own benefit’; Spitting Image, depicting all politicians as ‘stupid, venal and mad’; and The New Statesman, with its archetypally corrupt Thatcherite backbencher. The dark-toned thrillers (Defence of the Realm, Edge of Darkness, A Very British Coup) focused on government abuse of power and the excesses of ‘the secret state’. Fielding concludes his analysis with the disillusionment about and rejection of politicians characterising the 1990s and 2000s, a mood fed by the brilliantly subversive House of Cards trilogy, the plays of David Hare, the various docudramas depicting Tony Blair as scheming and smarmy and The Thick of It, laying bare the operation of spin. The book ends with a paradox in which the rejection of elected politicians has been accompanied by a celebration of the hereditary monarchy as the embodiment of duty, service and selflessness in a series of plays and films that have seen George VI and Elizabeth II winning Oscars. Jeffrey Richards

EXHIBITION the portrait of Giovanni Gerolamo Grumelli, DESPITE ITS small size, the Royal Academy’s the so-called Man in Pink (inset). Grumelli’s exhibition on the Italian Renaissance artist Giosalmon pink, elaborately trimmed, costume vanni Battista Moroni (c.1520/24-79) is a blockdominates the room in which his portrait hangs. buster in the proper sense of the word. Moroni, At the same time the cryptic motto of the sitter who was born in Albino, near Bergamo, is an in the bottom right corner of the painting is artist who was tremendously popular in Victorinot written in his native Italian, but in Spanish: an England, as the National Gallery’s collection Mas el çaguero que el primero (‘Better the latter of the largest number of his works outside Italy than the former’). It is the dramatic realism of testifies. Since then Moroni has been largely such portraits that struck forgotten, but this stunningly the Victorians and that still presented show should go a impresses us today, as does long way to reviving both his Moroni’s ability to depict critical and popular appeal, fabrics and textures. This giving the viewer the full becomes yet more evident gamut of Moroni’s art. with the famous Portrait of a Moroni excelled above Tailor. Here Moroni depicts all as a portrait painter and for perhaps the first time in the psychologically acute the history of art an ordinary works on display at the Royal craftsmen at work, who is Academy should cement shown with the same degree his reputation, although, of psychological acuteness arguably, the few religious as that normally reserved for works shown here are quala member of the social elite. itatively on a par with the This change is probably tied portraits. The exhibition takes in to his decision around the us chronologically through mid-1560s to withdraw from Moroni’s career and illustrates the high society of Bergamo clearly how his artistic traback to its hinterland, from jectory developed. Particular where he originated. attention has been paid to the Giovanni Battista Another of the many background and hang, which Moroni strengths of this exhibition is superbly set off the paintings Royal Academy, London the loan of some rarely seen displayed. The first room paintings from the artist’s demonstrates the influence until January 11th, 2015 late period, a side to Moroni’s of Moroni’s teacher, the little practice that is less well known and often less known Moretto da Brescia, but also how rapidly well regarded. He was no longer working for an he became an autonomous master. Then Mourban elite but was now producing altarpieces roni’s early work is showcased and reveals how for a provincial clientele, paintings steeped in much he was caught up in the contemporary the new religious climate. This he had experclimate of the Counter-Reformation. But ienced for himself when, as a young man, he it is the third room that truly takes the breath worked at Trent during the early sessions of the away. Moroni’s native Bergamo was not the Council there in the late 1540s and early 1550s. For example, a striking Last Supper (c. 1566-69) shows Moroni looking back to the example of his master Moretto, but which includes a typically Moronian portrait bust. The labels accompanying the paintings are not ideal but the exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue with a comprehensive text and high-quality illustrations. This reviewer’s only quibble is that the exhibition shows us no more than the highlights Renaissance city as it is conventionally imof Moroni’s career. He produced a far greater agined. A liminal territory on the boundaries body of work than is on display here and he could between Spanish-ruled Milan and the terrafirma perhaps have deserved a more expansive venue. of the Venetian Republic, the loyalties of the The catalogue serves to show us how many other native aristocracy were torn between these two paintings could have been included and leaves conflicting forces. Moroni’s large-scale portraits the viewer hungry for more. reflect not only the self assurance of this ruling Piers Baker-Bates elite but also its dual loyalties. For example, take

It is the dramatic realism of Moroni’s portraits that still impresses us today ... as does his ability to depict textures and fabrics

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REVIEWS

Print and Public Politics in the English Revolution Jason Peacey

Cambridge University Press 448pp £70

EARLY MODERN parliaments used to be left to the constitutional historians, who would debate for any given period whether it was on the rise or in seemingly terminal decline, and to high political historians, who scrutinised the day-to-day intrigues of a handful of highly educated political superstars.

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But over the last decade or so, a new breed of political-cultural historians – in particular, Mark Knights, Chris Kyle and Jason Peacey – have drawn attention to how parliaments, far from being rarefied, serious and closed-off debating clubs in which Burkean senators talked urgently and earnestly about the burning issues of the day, were chaotic, noisy spaces, in which the strongly expressed views of those outside were among the most telling pressures brought to bear on those who sat inside. Jason Peacey’s important new book is the latest instance of a movement that is redefining the role and significance of parliaments in the 17th century. Its overall purpose is to show how in the 1640s popular understanding of and engagement with Parliament and parliamentary proceedings developed rapidly through the greater availability of material in print. Peacey, who has worked extensively on 17th-century print culture, suggests that it

made possible a new parliamentary culture. Printed political pamphlets and newspapers were sold cheaply and in enough numbers to have been read by a surprisingly large section of the population. As a result people became much better informed about politics and politicians and used that information to make remarkably effective interventions in national political life. Individuals also used print – short printed flyers or broadsheets or longer pamphlets – for their own campaigns, either personally distributing them to members of Parliament, or presenting their grievances directly to the public. Peacey makes his argument with a staggering array of sources and helps to evolve new ways of understanding the complexities in the interaction between what we used to call ‘high’ and ‘low’ politics. With a better appreciation of what was going on at Westminster, interventions by those outside the political elite could be well targeted and effective. Peacey

suggestively argues that the ubiquity of printed commentary on politics drove new approaches to the idea of representative politics, encouraging electors to hold the elected directly to account in ways that Mark Knights, too, has identified for the later 17th century. Though Peacey is keen to point out that print was equally useful in reducing public interventions though lobbying individual members of Parliament. These changes in politics were the result of much more complex forces than simply the printing revolution. Yet as Peacey shows, once an information technology offering cheap and rapid ways of mobilising and influencing large numbers of people became widely deployed to foster (or to counter) revolution in the English spring of 1641, it would quickly spread to radicalise and empower many of them to challenge entrenched elites and their cherished institutions. Paul Seaward

REVIEWS

Elizabeth

Renaissance Prince Lisa Hilton Weidenfeld and Nicolson 370pp £25

ANOTHER year, another biography of Elizabeth I. Even the most ardent admirer of Gloriana might be forgiven for thinking that just a little breathing space is required. One wonders what more there is to be said. Enter Lisa Hilton with what she believes is a riposte to such cynicism: a new approach to writing Elizabeth’s life, one which places her firmly in the context of the European Renaissance and beyond. This is an interesting idea, as most biographies look at Elizabeth’s life and reign from an overwhelmingly English perspective, an extension of our enduring obsession with the Tudors. It is unusual to find much mention of Elizabeth’s dealings with Ivan the Terrible and the Ottoman Empire. Hilton is also to be applauded for reminding us that Philip II of Spain, Elizabeth’s brother-in-law for four years, was one of the most important men in her life and not just because of the jingoism surrounding the defeat of his ill-fated Armada in 1588. Philip had been instrumental in ensuring that Elizabeth’s status as heir of her half-sister, Mary I, his then wife, was safeguarded at a time when Elizabeth’s entire future seemed in jeopardy. Of course, he also seriously, if unenthusiastically, offered her his hand on Mary’s demise, so crucial to him was England’s support on the wider European scene. Elizabeth rejected his suit and while not publicly acknowledging that she needed Spain on her side, probably knew

better in reality. The later hostility between England and Spain was by no means inevitable during the difficult early years of the reign. However, the overall weakness of this study is not the concept but the execution. Hilton has written on a variety of subjects, but this appears to be her first foray into the 16th century. Her interests are very much in the literary and cultural aspects of the period (there are some excellent quotations throughout the text) but this is not necessarily sufficient to sustain her argument. It is fine to hold strong opinions, but these need to be firmly grounded in an appreciation of the complex politics of the time. Her view of Mary Tudor, as a nasty half-sister who hated Elizabeth from birth, is straight out of the 19th century, whereas the character assassination of Katherine Parr, for what Hilton describes as ‘colluding in the sexual abuse’ of the teenage Elizabeth, is entirely of our time. While Thomas Seymour’s

It is unusual to find mention of Elizabeth’s dealings with Ivan the Terrible and the Ottoman Empire behaviour would no doubt be characterised as abuse today, it would not have been seen that way in mid-16th century England. Elizabeth’s support for the Parr family and Seymour’s faithful servants during the rest of her lifetime speaks for itself. Hilton has read widely among recent European journals on the cultural aspects of her study but she shows little familiarity with recent work on Mary Queen of Scots (whose upbringing at the back-stabbing French court was by no means the idyll she describes) or on Francis Walsingham, a key figure in Elizabethan politics. These are curious omissions. What the reader will make of Hilton’s portrayal of Elizabeth is hard to say. I was left with a sense of a missed opportunity. Linda Porter

Elizabeth’s Bedfellows An Intimate History of the Queen’s Court Anna Whitelock Bloomsbury 480pp £9.99

ANNA WHITELOCK’s lively and engaging history begins when Elizabeth is a 13-year-old princess and ends with a brief survey of films and books that indicate our perennial fascination with the public and private body of the queen. An elite band of women was responsible for the maintenance of this body, making the toxic cosmetics on which Elizabeth increasingly relied, preparing sweetmeats and tending the monarch during periods of illness. These women played an essential role in Elizabeth’s presentation of herself as healthy and fertile, even when her youth was long gone, her hair was wispy and grey and her teeth black and rotten. The period of Elizabeth’s reign was characterised by religious strife between Protestant England and Catholic Europe and threats to the queen were many. Alongside their function as friends and companions, the women also acted as bodyguards, screening food for poison and checking for would-be assassins under the bed. Barred from the queen’s bedchamber, her male counsellors were dependent on the attendants for news of Elizabeth’s attitudes towards a stream of potential suitors. That the queen was unmarried – and therefore unable to produce an heir to guarantee a secure suc-

cession – was a matter of huge concern for the nation in general and for Elizabeth’s ministers in particular. Thus, there was a political imperative in keeping up a fiction of youth. Whitelock makes it plain that the image of the ‘Virgin Queen’ grew out of necessity when the post-menopausal queen was no longer an attractive catch to foreign princes. As the royal body aged and weakened, the bejewelled carapace constructed around it became ever more elaborate, a trend reflected by artists who were forbidden from portraying the less glamorous truth. The author does an excellent job of evoking Elizabeth’s quixotic nature: she could show great kindness and generosity to her ladies, from whom she expected total dedication. They were expected to serve her throughout their pregnancies and to return to court immediately after giving birth. Those women who married in secret and without the queen’s permission endured harsh words, occasional beatings and exile before Elizabeth relented and let them rejoin her chambers. Whitelock introduces us to many of Elizabeth’s long-serving and long-suffering companions, chief among whom was Kat Ashley, a former governess, and Blanche Parry, the latter dying after 57 years of service, which began when the queen was an infant. The accounts of Elizabeth’s rollercoaster relationships with her favourites Robert Dudley (the Earl of Leicester) and Robert Devereux (2nd Earl of Essex) are as gripping as any soap opera and the descriptions of the furnishings, scents and sounds of the royal palaces bring the households vividly to life. The author handles the mass of primary sources with skill, giving the reader the impression of seeing the great events of Elizabethan history from the inside. In short, Whitelock manages the tricky business of writing a book that is both scholarly and a cracking read. Janet Ravenscroft JANUARY 2015 HISTORY TODAY 61

REVIEWS

Placing Faces

The Portrait and the English Country House in the Long Eighteenth Century Edited by Gill Perry, Kate Retford and Jordan Vibert, with Hannah Lyons Manchester University Press 320pp £70

THIS collaborative volume is meant for the country house tourist, who seeks armchair time to deepen their knowledge of Georgian culture and its meanings. The contributors are working at a crossroads between the study of portraiture, family history and social relationships, taking in houses well distributed across England. The editors, in a fine introduction, explain why contributors in their case studies are encouraged to particularise. The chapter structure helps the reader to think about the uses and intentions of spaces, such as the saloon, the library, the sculpture gallery and the objectives of individuals, such as George IV in the Waterloo Chamber at Windsor Castle or the Spencers in presenting Georgiana at Althorp. Browsing the book, the reader can turn to and fro between the text, 19 colour plates and 53 figures placed through its pages. Thus, the sumptuously presented volume is best taken by forays into thoughtful page turning. There are so many themes which jostle for attention: in the editors’ summary the collection ‘explores the diverse ways in which ideas of lineage, kinship, power and gender relations’ were represented by the ‘content and positioning of portraits in the country house’. Who went on the walls, where and why? The book is best seen as 62 HISTORY TODAY JANUARY 2015

a guide to questions tourists should ask themselves and their stationary guides room by room, not the answers they may find in particular cases, which are often complicated. The male command of the country house is exemplified by Gill Perry, in a brilliantly conceived account of what she calls ‘the performance of “public intimacy’’’. She is writing about Giovanna Baccelli, a dancer who was resident mistress of the 3rd Duke of Dorset and effectively chatelaine of Knowle from 1779 to 1789. In 1781 John Baptiste Locatelli made a life-size plaster image of Baccelli, which, at the foot of the grand staircase, was ‘a kind of sexual trophy which his male visitors could admire and even touch’. When Baccelli left Knowle and Arabella Cope became chatelaine in 1790, the Baccelli figure was sent upstairs, listed thereafter as ‘naked Venus, whole length’. This perfectly exemplifies the book as a study both of placing faces and of moving them. We discuss country house life nowadays in the context of a huge bibliography. For example, Amanda Vickery has written entrancingly

Contributors are working at a crossroads between the study of portraiture, family history and social relationships of how life was lived at home in Georgian England; by contrast, Karen Harvey has brought the lens of masculinity to the study of domestic authority. Interestingly, about half of the colour portraits in Placing Faces are of women. The planning and collecting skills of elite women such as Teresa Parker are well established. In her case the commissioning of portraits of herself and her husband by Sir Joshua Reynolds was at the heart of her scheme. So while this volume makes much of how portraits were acquired to display lineage and dynasty – very male issues – at the same time it

argues that women were often key figures and active agents in creating displays of portraiture . Ruth Kenny discusses pastel portraits, which illustrate female self-fashioning and the central importance of the dressing room. Here women pursued their own self-conscious decorative schemes, furnishing the room as their venue both for craft work and for receiving guests, with a stress on portraits of children and close relations. Pastel portraiture was a fledgling medium, suited to women’s configuration of this space as they intended it to look. Kate Retford, who is writing a full-length study of the 18thcentury conversation piece, here offers a discussion of its ‘topography’, which takes us to the ballroom, the saloon and out into the garden at Wanstead. Her account of The Tylney Family by Joseph Nollekens shows his engagement with the material culture of the time, producing, unusually, a setting for his carefully observed sitters of remarkable verisimilitude. So the conversation piece here records what tourists actually saw at Wanstead. Discussing another Wanstead portrait, Mr and Mrs Hill by Arthur Devis, Retford notes how codes of conduct and ‘imminent hospitality’ in this case are stressed by a constructed but fictitious setting. Susie West’s close study of the library created by Sir Andrew Fountaine at Narford explores its iconographical meanings. Of the readings of Fountaine’s intentions that are possible, she favours a celebration of English national identity through a crowd of over 30 historical notables. She sees a very personal scheme here, which relates strongly to adult male friendships, creating an intricate scheme on his library walls, which she has disentangled with great dexterity. Overall the book’s achievement is to pursue many trails that will enhance country house tourism by informatively putting some well known and lesser homes on the map. It displays throughout a high level of scholarship and impeccable editing. Anthony Fletcher

The Crisis of Genocide Volume I, Devastation: The European Rimlands 1912-1938 Volume II, Annihilation: The European Rimlands 1939-1953 Mark Levene

Oxford University Press 545pp and 535pp £85 each

AMONG THE many ways in which the First World War influenced the Second, genocide has received comparatively little mention. This vast, comprehensive two-volume work more than makes up for any deficiency, setting out in painstaking detail an account of this aspect of 20th-century barbarism among many others. For example, in 1915 the German Chief of Staff in East Prussia, Erich Ludendorff, already foresaw military occupation as a prelude to a radical peacetime reorganisation, which would rid the region of unwanted elements and make room for German settlers. ‘Who still talks nowadays of the extermination of the Armenians?’, Hitler was reported to have asked in 1939, but these books make sure that they and their successors from 1912 to 1953 are not forgotten. The author, Mark Levene, a committed scholar who has also written on subjects ranging from Jewish history to the impact of climate change, aims at more than commemoration. Indeed, he aims to show that the Holocaust and other crimes were not an aberration but conformed to a pattern. Taking as a point of departure the observation of Sir Halford Mackinder that to rule in Eastern Europe means

REVIEWS to command the Heartland, the Eurasian ‘World-Island’ and ultimately the world itself, Levene develops the idea of ‘rimlands’ emerging from the collapse of the Romanov, Habsburg, Hohenzollern and Ottoman empires, in which nation states, created like Czechoslovakia, reborn like Poland and reformed like Hungary, failed to accommodate minorities. Raphael Lemkin, a young Jewish lawyer from the rimlands working for the League of Nations in the early 1930s, was perhaps the first to argue that all cultures should be given the protection of international law, whatever their circumstances and racial, religious or ethnic form. Pushed back from the rimlands as a consequence of war and revolution, Soviet Russia under Stalin sought to consolidate its power through draconian policies in Ukraine in particular, while attempting to eliminate prosperous peasant kulaks in general. Meanwhile, Hitler and his henchmen were preparing plans for the elimination of what they saw as inferior races as an integral part of Nazi revenge for Imperial Germany’s defeat. The Second World War made a mockery of international law,

Mark Levene ... aims at showing that the Holocaust and other crimes were not an aberration but conformed to a pattern as the struggle between Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany for mastery of the Heartland led to the direst of consequences. Levene indicates that the place and time of the Holocaust, as well as accompanying outrages such as the extermination of Roma, are a significant part of the explanation. For example, the Holocaust intensified as Blitzkrieg turned into a war of

EXHIBITION features in four canvases, Composing, Posing, THEY’RE WATCHING. They’re waiting. Still, Reposing (inset) and Decomposing, which hang silent presences, standing in shop windows, in a side room facing the surviving figure, posed lurking in storerooms, in the studios of artists in an installation mimicking Beeton’s painting, and photographers. Composing. Mannequins have taken over the Fitzwilliam Close cousin of the lay figure, the fashion Museum. An exhibition has woken the artist’s mannequin also features, from 18th-century exlay figure from shadowy repose, together with amples (a male figure with a wardrobe of outfits his kinswoman, the fashion mannequin. The and a chic female) to a life-size female mannewhole museum is involved, with figures cropquin wearing the last word in fashion. The long ping up on the staircase and other spaces. Jane heyday of the display mannequin began with the Munro, curator of this imaginative show, has creation of the department store. The large plate united surviving mannequins with paintings, glass windows of the ‘paradise for ladies’ providsculpture and photographs, all of which betray ed space for the mise en scène of window dressing. their use. Concentrating particularly on the Victor-Napoleon Siégel and Pierre Imans brought 19th and 20th centuries, Munro demonstrates the wax mannequin to a high pitch of expresthat the lay figure was an essential tool of the sive quality in the 1920s, with fashion models figurative painter. of all shapes and sizes, from toddlers to portly Visitors are greeted by a dramatically-lit gentlemen of middle years. One might wish for wooden figure displayed high on a plinth. He a more thorough exploration lacks only a head to seem of Imans’ work, as some of his more liable to move at any creations were modelled on moment, such is the vigour famous Parisians of the day, of his pose. Borrowed from Antoine de Saint Exupéry, the École des Beaux-Arts, this Josephine Baker and Foujita late 18th-century design is by among them. Wax manneFrançois-Pierre Guillois, the quins fell into disfavour; they only known survivor from his were simultaneously imworkshop. So precisely did mensely heavy and extremely Guillois mimic the human fragile and tended to melt in musculo-skeletal structure the glare of hot lights, with that his figures were ruinously disagreeable results. costly. If Guillois’ figure is so Another once-celebrated flexible as to seem imbued From Silent Partners Frenchman gets the heat with life, a dictionary definiArtist and Mannequin from turned on him; Dr Jeantion of ‘wooden’ is provided by Function to Fetish Martin Charcot, doyen of a nearby manichino from the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, psychiatric medicine, takes a Accademia Carrara di Belli Arti until January 25th, 2015 retrospective beating. Charcot at Bergamo. Reclining on a investigated hysteria, then a chair, the full-size neoclassical fashionable disorder. Two of his followers made Italian figure strikes a camp note; a Grecian fillet Charcot famous through the Iconographie de la adorns his pretty brow. Nearby, as if fallen from Salpêtrière, a copiously illustrated documentation his hand, lies a copy of Jerome K. Jerome’s Idle of the methods of the great man. Certain similarThoughts of an Idle Fellow. Disconcertingly, his left foot is missing, marring the perfection of his ities between the deportment of the hysterical patients and mannequins drew comment at classical form. A plaster cast of the Diadoumenous of Polycletus shows the distant inspiration the time. Charcot and his followers employed from ancient Greece. medical hypnotism, treatment that quickly fell The exhibition moves briskly through the from favour. early history of mannequins, pausing briefly at The exhibition is accompanied by a wellRenaissance artists’ manuals featuring illustrareferenced and copiously illustrated catalogue tions of composition or perspective, made with from Yale University Press, with much material posed lay figures. A preparatory drawing by Luca not in the show. However, what the exhibition Cambiaso shows his reliance on jointed wooden provides that the book cannot is the shiver of figures to work up a dramatic composition. Freudian unheimliche; that is, the mannequins’ Eventually, defrocked lay figures became the unbekannt physical presence. subject of painters such as Giorgio de Chirico and After the Fitzwilliam, on April 1st the show photographers such as Herbert List, Man Ray and opens at the Musée Bourdelle, Paris. Visit if you Hans Bellmer. A major rediscovery of the exhican; otherwise the mannequins may visit you. bition is the work of Alan Beeton. His lay figure David Brady JANUARY 2015 HISTORY TODAY 63

REVIEWS attrition. On the other hand, retreat meant that the plans for Lebensraum foreshadowed in 1915 came to nothing by 1945. The mass killing in the European rimlands obliged the newly-formed United Nations to consider how to avoid any repetition in the future. Again, Raphael Lemkin was to the fore in the framing of the resolution adopted by the General Assembly in December 1946. Beginning with the definition ‘Genocide is the denial of the right of existence of entire human groups’, the resolution went on to note that it had been carried out deliberately and systematically on ‘Jews, Poles and Gypsies’ in a manner ‘undreamt of in history’. Tragically, throughout the world, the nightmare has continued down to the present day, compounded by the even more appalling prospect of ‘omnicide’ opened up by the dropping of atomic bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Some readers will disagree

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with Levene’s overall argument, insisting on the unique nature of the appalling events that he describes. They might also note that, while he provides a formidable list of ‘Major Incidents of Genocide and Sub-Genocidal Violence: Rimlands and Near-Regions, 1912-53’, he does not include estimates of the numbers of victims. Yet this would have proved extremely difficult while exciting more controversy and nobody could deny the scale of Levene’s achievement, a forceful thesis argued in an engaging conversational style on the basis of an incisive reading of a wide range of published sources. Oxford University Press deserves praise for its publication of an epic work that will provoke debate, while catching the attention of all those prepared to consider in a serious manner the most disturbing questions posed concerning European ‘civilisation’ during the 20th century. Paul Dukes

Shtetl: The Golden Age A New History of Jewish Life in East Europe Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern Princeton University Press 448pp £19.95

THIS HIGHLY entertaining and often surprising volume recasts our understanding of the contexts of Jewish life in Eastern Europe. The author looks at three Russian provinces created in territories annexed from Poland-Lithuania in the first partition of Poland (1772), namely, Podolia, Volhynia and Kiev. Why would this period represent

a ‘golden age’ of life in the shtetl, the quintessential space of eastern European Jewry? Many years of painstaking archival research allow the author, a native from former Soviet Ukraine, to present his evidence. Jews in these three provinces were able to take advantage of the rather slow process of establishing Russian control over local administrations, trade and the population. This process took longer in small towns than in the provincial capitals, allowing Jewish life to unfold here with less control from the central government. Also, the landlords, mostly Polish nobles, were now targeted by Russian administrators and thus could exert less power. In consequence, for two generations, Jewish life would thrive as never before, argues the author. The story is told in a bottom-up perspective, each chapter starting with a case study of an impressive range of real-life Jews: smugglers, inn-keepers, leaseholders, rabbis, husbands and wives. The author challenges wellestablished narratives. For

REVIEWS example, he suggests that the Jewish economy thrived because local Jews and their non-Jewish trading partners knew hidden paths across borders much better than the recently established Russian customs and used their knowledge to smuggle goods from Western Europe. Thus, the core argument of this beautiful book is that during this almost anarchic transitional period, Jews could realise their potential and did not shy away from doing so. The author does not glorify this ‘golden age’, discussing how Jews would be part and parcel of a culture of violence in small town life: ‘Before the pogroms [at the end of the 19th century] radically changed the balance of power, shtetl violence belonged to everybody and to nobody ... The adaptation of Slavic obscenities for Jewish usage testifies to the Jewish share in East European verbal violence.’ The Jews in this volume are loud, sometimes violent,

This highly entertaining volume recasts our understanding of Jewish life in Eastern Europe successful, sometimes ruthless, they enjoy life and are ardent believers. Some readers may disagree with this definition of a ‘golden age’. However Petrovsky-Shtern’s analysis of how deeply political change can affect the existence of a religious community – and in many urban centres Jews were not a minority but a majority – is compelling. And, yes, the current situation in Ukraine resonates with what the author describes for the early 19th century. Today, Jews of Ukraine are again confronted with a profound change in the political ways of the commonwealth they live in and, as in the ‘golden age shtetl’, they will try to make the best of it. The volume comes with numerous illustrations, including photographs taken around a century after the purported ‘golden age’, bearing witness to the transient character of all golden ages. François Guesnet

Roads Taken The Great Jewish Migrations to the New World and the Peddlers Who Forged the Way Hasia R. Diner Yale University Press 280pp £22.50

THE MOST striking thing about Hasia Diner’s most recent book is that it is uplifting and upbeat, a rare thing in accounts of European Jewish history. Diner, a scholar and prolific author, whose works include Hungering for America: Italian, Irish and Jewish Foodways in the Age of Migration (2002) and The Jews of the United States, 1654-2000 (2007), has mined thousands of archives and documents to tell the story of the eponymous Jewish peddler and it is mostly a happy tale. Roads Taken focuses on the period between the late 18th and early 20th century, when nearly five million Jews left Eastern Europe in search of a better life elsewhere. Unlike many historians, who insist that Jews migrated in order to flee persecution, Diner offers an alternative version: ‘But the Jewish migration cannot be explained purely in terms of the horror of harrowing scenes of slaughter ... rather the Jewish migrations of the nineteenth century resembled those of other peoples.’ Namely, it was mainly driven by a lack of opportunities back home and a desire to improve one’s situation. Also, wherever the Jews went –North and South America, the Caribbean, Australia, Britain – they enjoyed a largely positive reception. Roads Taken is bursting with

surprising stories, such as how the peddlers’ non-Jewish customers would let them stay the night, or regularly prepare a special pot of kosher food for them, or even invite them to discuss the Old Testament with the family. These acts of kindness took place everywhere. There is also, Diner points out, almost no mention of Christian customers trying to convert their Jewish guests. Much of Roads Taken describes the peddlers in terms of their contribution to modernity. They transformed their own lives and also the lives of the people with whom they came into contact. When the peddlers first arrived at a new destination, penniless and scruffy, they endured years of hardship on the road, lugging their wares in all weathers. Many were robbed or attacked en route by bandits and some even murdered. Eventually they would save enough to buy a horse and cart; finally, they would have enough to settle down and buy a little shop. Once this happened, they could help newly arrived peddlers, lend them money, provide them with items to sell and teach them the ways of the host society. This system led to an intricate and solid Jewish economy, which allowed businesses to flourish. Indeed, stores such as Macy’s in New York and brands like Levi’s were started by Jewish peddlers. Diner gives an absorbing account of how Jewish peddling modernised the lives of non-Jewish customers, such as housewives with nominally little power, who could choose what to buy from the peddler: a brooch to wear or new bed linen for the home. They saw that material goods changed the way they felt about themselves. This was true of all non-Jewish female customers, including African-Americans, who weren’t allowed to shop in regular stores. Ultimately, Jewish peddlers not only encouraged consumption (for better or worse), but they actively subverted assumptions about race and gender. Giulia Miller

CONTRIBUTORS Piers Baker-Bates is Visiting Research Associate in Art History at the Open University. David Brady is working on a book about William Gilpin and his idea of the picturesque. Paul Dukes is the author of Minutes to Midnight: History and the Anthropocene Era from 1763 (Anthem, 2011). His history of the Urals will be published by Bloomsbury in 2015. Anthony Fletcher is a historian and writer. His book, Life, Death, and Growing Up on the Western Front was published by Yale University Press in 2013. François Guesnet is Reader in Modern Jewish History at University College London. Giles MacDonogh is a freelance historian and author of several books about German history. He is currently finishing a social history of the Third Reich. Giulia Miller is Affiliated Lecturer in Modern Hebrew at the University of Cambridge. Linda Porter’s Crown of Thistles: the Fatal Inheritance of Mary Queen of Scots is published by Macmillan. Roland Quinault is the author of British Prime Ministers and Democracy (Bloomsbury, 2012). Janet Ravenscroft is a Fellow of Queen Mary College, University of London. Jeffrey Richards is Emeritus Professor of Cultural History at Lancaster University. His latest book is The Golden Age of Pantomime: Slapstick, Spectacle, and Subversion in Victorian England (I.B. Tauris, 2014). Paul Seaward is Director of the History of Parliament Trust. Chris Wrigley is Emeritus Professor of History at the University of Nottingham.

JANUARY 2015 HISTORY TODAY 65

HAVE YOUR SAY

Letters

Email [email protected] Post to History Today, 2nd Floor, 9 Staple Inn, London WC1V 7QH

Measures and Methods Duncan McLean’s review of 600 years of the use of quarantine as a measure to control infectious disease was most interesting (‘Gold, Fire and Gallows: Quarantine in History’, December 2014). However, the use of quarantine in conjunction with other public health measures can lead to the eradication of an infectious disease such as smallpox. As McLean states, the turning point in the application of quarantine came in the late 19th century. In 1877 the borough of Leicester established a system of notification of smallpox cases (and other diseases), followed by isolation of all cases of smallpox in a hospital and the quarantine of all contacts of the case in separate wards in that hospital. This arrangement, the Leicester Method, worked well until the epidemic of 1892-4, when some further modifications were made to the system. The details and reasons for Dr William Johnston devising this method are not really understood as we know little of his background and training. Had he learnt of the movement to enforce quarantine in the US to control yellow fever in 1878? At first Leicester was alone in using the system and smallpox continued to be endemic throughout the UK. Eventually the method was adopted as the way to control and limit the spread of smallpox throughout the UK and continued to be used to control and limit the spread of smallpox cases into the 1960s. It became the basis for the system used by the WHO to contain and eradicate naturally occurring smallpox from the world by 1977. Quarantine and isolation can be most effective and must surely be the key to the Ebola outbreak in West Africa.

Complex Narrative I was disappointed that Gareth Pritchard and Desislava Gancheva’s article ‘Collaborator: No Longer a Dirty Word?’ (December) amounted to little more than a lament for the old Soviet view of the Second World War. It is true that the nations of Eastern and Central Europe have, since 1989/91, been reassessing their own wartime pasts and have been seeking to forge a usable national narrative of the war. This process is a messy, organic one in which wartime complexities are thrown into relief, conflicting sometimes with the simplistic narrative that still prevails in the West. However, rather than addressing that complexity, acknowledging how Baltic suffering at Soviet hands in 1939-41 spurred the later collaboration of some of their citizens with the Nazis, the authors opted instead to sidestep any serious engagement and instead merely pointed the finger and made vague insinuations of resurgent ‘fascism’. This is a fascinating subject, worthy of objective assessment in History Today. This article failed to do it justice.

Stuart Fraser Stoughton, Leicestershire

Richard L M Newell Exeter

66 HISTORY TODAY JANUARY 2015

Roger Moorhouse via email

Forbidden Colours Is there a particular reason for the choice of the illustration which accompanies Richard Cavendish’s article on Vesalius in December’s Months Past? Perhaps the most important and best-known feature of the De Humani Corporis Fabrica (1543) is the technical magnificence of the woodcuts, which, as Cavendish acknowledges, probably originated in the workshop of Titian. Why use an apparently modern garish and carelessly coloured version?

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Outside View Bill Shackleton’s very negative portrayal of the Scottish referendum on independence (Letters, December) is an example of how some of the most committed pro-Union campaigners have become peculiarly defensive and acerbic in the aftermath of the vote, despite having prevailed. Shackleton displays a continuing anti-independence refrain, which seeks to depict the campaign as divisive, rancorous and even violent. This is decidedly not the view of foreign commentators, who have almost universally written of a marvellously civilised episode and of the exemplary democratic behaviour of both sides, who raised the participation level to one rarely seen in the western world. Dr David White Galashiels, Selkirkshire

Rapt in an Enigma The article by Charles Freeman (‘The Origins of the Shroud of Turin’, November) was helpful and cast fresh light on the subject. He is right that a wide variety of disciplines need to be involved and have not always been. However, Freeman focuses too narrowly on the STURP investigations of the 1970s, when other tests and experts have been involved since. This is particularly pertinent to the weave of the cloth, as examples are known from the Middle East prior to the Middle Ages and a particular style of seam is evident on cloth at Masada and on the Shroud. The subject of a gesso coating also needs further study and some point out that such a coating would have made the cloth hard to fold and the image would then have been damaged. The decay of the surface fibres forming the image still seems to be a mystery and a matter of debate. Looking at biblical interpretation of the Passion and images

contemporary with a medieval Shroud is illuminating, but needs to be cross-referenced to microscopic and photographic analysis of the cloth, as well as the type of wounds caused in Roman punishment and torture (Jesus is struck with reeds by the mocking guards in the Gospel narrative, for example). Then again, there is the wealth of material postSTURP that shows Roman coin images, the placing of flowers and pollen that only derives from the Middle East. Whatever we make of the samples that were carbon dated, there is still a great deal of enigma. Kevin O’Donnell Rottingdean, East Sussex

Exhilarating or Disastrous? In his review of Michael Jago’s new biography of Clement Attlee (November), Keith Laybourn describes the years 1945 to 1951 as ‘exhilarating’. I conclude from that that he is too young to have real personal memories of that period, which I would prefer to describe as excruciatingly miserable. The Attlee government was one which believed in restriction, rationing, rent control and punitive rates of taxation. Of course, we all know that it faced massive financial and economic problems in governing a country that was effectively bankrupt after the war. However their big failure was in not seeing the need to create a climate in which enterprise could flourish and the economy have a chance to recover. I still remember the feeling that a great weight had been lifted off the country when the new government from 1951 onwards started to lift some of the restrictions under which we had suffered until then. But even so it took a long while to recover from those disastrous years under Attlee. Roy Colbran Croydon

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Reassuringly intelligent. Comfortingly rational.

Coming Next Month Lady Bankes Defends Corfe Castle

When, following the onset of the Civil War, the Royalist Sir John Bankes was commanded to join Charles I at Oxford in January 1643, he left his estate at Corfe Castle, Dorset in the safekeeping of his wife, Mary. The castle was subjected to a shambolic and then serious Parliamentarian siege, romantic accounts of which have stressed Lady Bankes’ unyielding resolve; but was ‘Brave Dame Mary’ even in Dorset during the final, successful siege? Patrick Little investigates.

Monet in Algeria

Drawn by the allure of the ‘crackling of gunpowder, the sabre thrusts, the nights in the desert under the sun’, Claude Monet refused his father’s ultimatum to give up art and was drafted into the French army and sent to Algiers in 1861. Though overlooked in many biographies, the artist’s year in Algeria constitutes a major turning point in which his artistic ambitions were confirmed, says Jeffrey Meyers.

Russia’s Smuta: Yesterday and Today

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www.historytoday.com/subscribe November’s Prize Crossword

Translated as ‘time of troubles’ and embodying disorder and doom, the Russian word smuta dates from the early 17th century when civil wars, uprisings and mass famine threatened the country’s existence. Yet, says Greg Carleton, the turbulent early 1600s forged a distinct national identity – still intact today – built on unity, faith and the threat of western aggression, an understanding of which explains both the imperialistic actions and domestic popularity of President Putin.

Plus Months Past, Making History, Signposts, Reviews, In Focus, From the Archive, Pastimes and much more.

The February issue of History Today will be on sale throughout the UK on January 22nd. Ask your newsagent to reserve you a copy.

PICTURE ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The winner for November is Sophie Simpson, Grayrigg, Cumbria.

EDITOR’S LETTER: 2 Getty Images/Mark Kolbe HISTORY MATTERS: 3 © Bridgeman Images; 5 © Bettmann/Corbis; 6 Courtesy St Mary’s Priory, Abergavenny; 7 © Warden and Scholars of New College, Oxford/Bridgeman Images. MONTHS PAST: 8 Photo © Philip Mould/Bridgeman Images; 9 top © Archives Charmet/Bridgeman Images; 9 bottom © The British Library Board. WHEN ALEXANDER MET THALESTRIS: 10-11 Oil on copper by Johann Georg Platzer/Wikimedia Commons; 12 © De Agostini Picture Library/Bridgeman Images; 13 top left © Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Naples/Bridgeman Images; 13 top right © De Agostini Picture Library/Bridgeman Images; 13 bottom Photo by Vladimir Terebenin, Leonard Kheifets and Yuri Molodkovets for The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg; 14 © Musée du Louvre/RMN-Grand Palais/Marc Jeanneteau; 15 © Musée du Louvre/RMN-Grand Palais/Michèle Bellot; 16 Tim Aspden, after original artwork by Michele Angel; 17 © akg-images/Erich Lessing. HOOVER GOES TO BELGIUM: 19 © Everett Collection/Alamy; 20 top © Popperfoto/Getty Images; 20 bottom © Bridgeman Images; 21 top © Getty Images; 21 bottom & 22-24 All photographs courtesy the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library-Museum, Iowa. WARBURG: 26 The Warburg Institute. SAINT-JUST: 29 © Musée des Beaux-Arts, Lyon/Bridgeman Images; 30 © Leemage/Bridgeman Images; 31 top © Bibliothèque Nationale/Bridgeman Images; 31 left © Bibliothèque Nationale/ Bridgeman Images; 31 right © Château de Versailles/Bridgeman Images; 32 Musée Carnavalet/Bridgeman Images; 33 top Château de Versailles/Bridgeman Images; 33 bottom © Bridgeman Images; 34 top Musée Carnavalet/Bridgeman Images; 34 bottom & 35 © French Revolution Digital Archive. INFOCUS: 36-37 © Hulton Archive/Getty Images. CALIPHATE: 38 © Alamy. MAKING HISTORY: 40 © Bridgeman Images. 1155 AND THE BEGINNINGS OF FICTION: 41 Illustration from Wace’s Brut, BL Egerton Ms 3028; 42 top left Ms 24 f.63 © Aberdeen University Library/Bridgeman Images; 42 top right De Agostini Picture Library/Bridgeman Images; 42 bottom © Corpus Christi College, Oxford/ Bridgeman Images; 43 Ms Hunter 229 f.54v © Glasgow University Library/Bridgeman Images; 44 Add.10293, f.312v © The British Library Board; 44-45 Ms R.17.1 f.202 © Trinity College Cambridge/Bridgeman Images; 45 Ms Hunter 229 f.21v © Glasgow University Library/Bridgeman Images; 46 top Ms Fr d 16 Bodleian Library; 46 bottom Add.10293,f.78 © British Library Board. JOHN BULL SPIRIT: 47 top © Hulton-Deutsch/Corbis; 49 © Mary Evans Picture Library. WHAT WAS AT STAKE IN THE PUTNEY DEBATES: 50 left © Alamy; 50 right © Ashmolean Museum/Art Archive; 51 © National Portrait Gallery, London; 52 © Bridgeman Images; 53 top © Rafael Valls/Bridgeman Images; 53 bottom Ms 65 fol.35r courtesy The Provost and Fellows of Worcester College, Oxford; 54 top © Bridgeman Images; 54 bottom Bridgeman Images; 55 Ashmolean Museum/Bridgeman Images. SIGNPOSTS: 56 © Hilary Morgan/Alamy. REVIEWS: 59 Gian Gerolamo Grumelli, c.1560 by Giovanni Battista Moroni. Photo © Fondazione Museo di Palazzo Moroni, Lucretia Moroni Collection, Bergamo; 63 Reposing c.1929 by Alan Beeton © Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. COMING NEXT MONTH: 69 Lady Bankes by Henry Bone © National Trust Images/Derrick E.Witty. PASTIMES: 70 top Varusschlacht by Otto Albert Koch, 1909; 70 bottom Library of Congress. SIX DEGREES: 71 Portrait (detail) by F.G.Gainsford © National Portrait Gallery, London. We have made every effort to contact all copyright holders but if in any case we have been unsuccessful, please get in touch with us directly.

JANUARY 2015 HISTORY TODAY 69

Pastimes Amusement & Enlightenment

The Quiz

10 Completed in 1681, which canal links the Bay of Biscay to the Mediterranean?

2 How much money was exchanged between the US and Mexico in the Gadsden Purchase of Arizona and New Mexico in 1853? 3 Which battle of 1240 saw Russian forces under Prince Alexander of Novgorod defeat the Swedish under the cover of fog?

4 The attempts of French priest Jean-Baptiste Lamy to establish a diocese in New Mexico inspired which 20th-century novel? 5 ‘Socialism with a human face’ refers to the reform communism identified with which political figure in Czechoslovakia in 1968? 6 The pre-revolutionary Russian peasant commune mir was also known by which name? 7 Which Spanish Holocaust survivor wrote a fictionalised memoir published under the title The Cattle Truck? 70 HISTORY TODAY JANUARY 2015

11 Kazimir Malevich (1879-1935) was the founder of which major 20th-century abstract art movement? 8 Where was the explorer and journalist Sir Henry Morton Stanley (1841-1904) born?

12 Which island in the western Pacific Ocean did the US return to Japan in 1972?

ANSWERS

9 J.F. Vonck (1743-92) gave his name to which late 18th-century Dutch progressive political faction?

1. Arminius (18/17 bc-ad 21). 2. $10 million. 3. Battle of the Neva. 4. Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather, 1927. 5. Alexander Dubček (1921-92). 6. Obshchina. 7. Jorge Semprún (1923-2011). 8. Denbigh, Wales. 9. The Vonckists. 10. The Canal du Midi (originally Canal royal en Languedoc). 11. Suprematism. 12. Okinawa.

1 Under which chieftain did the Germanic Cherusci defeat the Roman army at the Battle of the Teutoberg Forest in ad 9?

Prize Crossword

Set by Richard Smyth

ACROSS 6 Mr ___, lawyer in Dickens’ Great Expectations (1861) (7) 7 Peter ___ (1079-1142), French philosopher and poet (7) 9 Cecil ___ (1859-1924), historian of English folk song and dance (5) 10 1953 film about the early life of Elizabeth I (5,4) 11 Ancient city of Campania, destroyed in ad 79 (7) 13 Ned ___ (d.1776), actor, celebrated for his portrayals of Falstaff (6) 15 Nevada Air Force Base designated in 1951, later re-named after General Wilbur L. Creech (6,7) 19 Baron ___, title held by army officer James Henry Fitzroy Somerset (1788-1855) (6) 20 ‘All men would be ___ if they durst’ – Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, 1679 (7) 23 Region of NW Australia, named after a British Secretary of State for the Colonies (9) 24 1732 tragedy by Voltaire (5) 26 Lucy ___, historian, broadcaster and author of Elegance and Decadence: The Age of the Regency (2011) (7) 27 A.P. ___ (1890-1971), English humourist and independent MP (7)

Palmerston (1784-1865) (6) 3 People of the Middle East supposedly descended from Abraham’s grandson Dedan (9) 4 Ancient Chinese architectural philosophy (4,4) 5 Term used by Mao Zedong to describe the threat of US imperialism (5,5) 6 ___ of Arimathea, rich man of Jerusalem and secret disciple of Jesus (6) 7 Sir Ove Nyquist ___ (1895-1988), Newcastle-born civil engineer (4) 8 Royal burgh and historic trading port in Fife, Scotland (6) 12 US city, scene of a major civil rights protest in 1955 (10) 14 Works excluded from the Biblical canon, such as the books of Tobit and Judith (9) 16 Queen of Spain and wife of Ferdinand II (8) 17 City on the Vistula, capital of Poland 1320-1611 (6) 18 ___ de Bayeux, 12th-century archdeacon and suspected murderer (6) 21 ‘The Welsh ___’, byname of David Lloyd George (1863-1945) (6) 22 Welsh village, briefly home to the UK’s deepest coal mine (4) 25 ‘One of the greatest pains to human nature is the pain of a new ___’ – Walter Bagehot, 1872 (4)

DOWN 1 City and former Mughal capital in Uttar Pradesh (4) 2 Henry John ___, 3rd Viscount

The winner of this month’s prize crossword will receive a selection of recent history books Entries to: Crossword, History Today, 2nd Floor, 9 Staple Inn, London WC1V 7QH by January 31st or www.historytoday.com/crossword

Six degrees of Separation John William Polodori (1795-1821)

John William Polidori

English writer and Byron’s personal physician was one of the first pupils at Ampleforth College, whose alumni include …

mistress of Edward VII, whose palatial villa in Florence had previously belonged to …

Charles Eliot Norton (1827-1908)

David Stirling (1915-90)

American author, social critic and professor of art, whose wife was one of the first reviewers of the debut book of verse by the English poet ….

founder of the SAS, who was imprisoned in Colditz during the Second World War with …

Michael ‘Micky’ Burn (1912-2010) English journalist and commando who stayed in Italy in the 1930s with …

Alice Keppel (1868-1947)

Christina Rossetti (1830-94) By Stephanie Pollard and Justin Pollard

who was the niece of …

JANUARY 2015 HISTORY TODAY 71

KING JOHN

FromtheArchive Attempts to rehabilitate ‘Bad’ King John, such as W.L. Warren’s essay of 1957, always come up against a major stumbling block: the verdicts of his contemporaries, as Sean McGlynn explains.

Damned by his Peers THERE WILL be no getting away from King John in 2015, the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta. Huge celebrations are planned, not only in the UK but across the globe as the Great Charter is lauded as the foundation document of liberties and rights. While there are debates about Magna Carta’s importance, these are nothing compared with the historical disputes over the monarch himself: bad King John or misunderstood, unfairly maligned King John? A revisionist movement to rehabilitate John gained pace in 1949 with the publication in the US of The Reign of King John by Sidney Painter. On this side of the Atlantic, W.L. Warren spearheaded the revisionism, as exemplified in his 1957 History Today article ‘What was wrong with King John? This was no crude attempt to create a stir: Warren was far too consummate an historian for that. Much as I disagree with many of his arguments mitigating the worst criticisms of John, I still urge my students to read his biography of the king as their starting point. The lucid elegance of his prose remains a joy. Warren’s article was an attempt to get to the truth behind ‘the monarch who has left a reputation for evil second only to Richard III’s’. Warren apportions much blame to John’s contemporary monastic chroniclers and their stories of his ‘disgusting duplicity, merciless inhumanity, paralysing extortion and licentious indulgence’. He attributes John’s shocking reputation to one source in particular: ‘All the really memorable stories of John’s perfidy, ingratitude, bestial cruelty and hysterical recklessness can be traced back to the chronicle of Roger Wendover, a 13th-century monk of St Albans’. Warren built on V.H. Galbraith’s earlier study of Wendover to warn other historians against his 72 HISTORY TODAY JANUARY 2015

inherent unreliability. Warren cites examples of where Wendover gets things horribly wrong, such as the completely erroneous report of Geoffrey, Archdeacon of Norwich’s death at the hands of John in 1209. In fact, Geoffrey’s career was resurrected and he became Bishop of Ely in 1225. Warren tells us that Wendover is the only chronicler to list the frightful litany of John’s dark side (in fact some French ones did, too, unsurprisingly) and that we should dismiss such stories ‘as the forcible extraction of Jews’ teeth, his threat to

Warren was no apologist for John, roundly condemning the man more than the king slit the noses of Papal servants, his interview with Arthur of Brittany before the latter’s murder, his rejoicing at the death of his Chancellor Hubert Walter, and his fits of depression alternating with periods of hysterical activity’. With the exception of the dental procedure, these descriptions do not seem that fanciful at all. But Warren urges his readers to ‘relegate such tales to the realms of fiction’. His judgment has proven hugely influential in the decades since. Warren was no apologist for John, roundly condemning the man more than the king. However, in believing that Wendover was ‘an unreliable witness but for the wrong reasons he had the right idea’, he is a little unfair on the chronicler, who was nowhere near as untrustworthy as Warren makes out. Warren, like many medievalists, omits Galbraith’s crucial comment that, if Wendover’s chronicle is somewhat blighted by errata, ‘how could it be otherwise in so large an undertaking? And what large

medieval chronicle is not?’ Furthermore, as I have discovered, between his geographical situation and the first-hand knowledge of his patron, William d’Albini, Wendover was superbly positioned to be well informed on John’s reign, especially its later stages. Some of his precise details on the Magna Carta war can be closely corroborated with other sources, such as the History of William Marshal. Furthermore, Warren joins in with the familiar chorus that, given John’s treatment of the church, Wendover was bound to contribute to monastic condemnation of the king. But he and subsequent historians who seek to offer a less damning verdict of John tend to overlook the comments of lay writers whose masters fought on John’s side: these clearly reinforce the accurate monastic views of John. One writes of John’s ‘disgrace’, ‘arrogance’ and ‘cruelty’; another that he was ‘a very wicked man’, ‘he was cruel to all men’, ‘he was much hated’ and, quite simply, ‘he had too many bad qualities’. John’s contemporaries were better placed than modern historians to pass judgment on him. Sean McGlynn is author of Blood Cries Afar: The Forgotten Invasion of England 1216 (History Press, 2011)..

VOLUME 7 ISSUE 12 DEC 1957 Read the original piece at historytoday.com/fta