History Today 2016-12

December 2016 Vol 66 Issue 12

The Tiger of Mysore

Why India still fights over the legacy of Tipu Sultan

Not Strictly Ballroom From heroic boy soldier to world champion dancer

Sunk.

Japan’s desperate battle for resources in the Second World War

Publisher Andy Patterson Editor Paul Lay Senior Editor Kate Wiles Assistant Editor Rhys Griffiths Digital Manager Dean Nicholas Picture Research Mel Haselden Reviews Editor Philippa Joseph Art Director Gary Cook Subscriptions Manager Cheryl Deflorimonte Subscriptions Assistant Ava Bushell Accounts Sharon Harris Board of Directors Simon Biltcliffe (Chairman), Tim Preston CONTACTS History Today is published monthly by History Today Ltd, 2nd Floor, 9/10 Staple Inn London WC1V 7QH. Tel: 020 3219 7810 [email protected] SUBSCRIPTIONS Tel: 020 3219 7813/4 [email protected]

Plausible parallels? Cicero Denouncing Catiline, engraving by Barloccini, 1849.

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FROM THE EDITOR

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EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD Dr Simon Adams University of Strathclyde Dr John Adamson Peterhouse, Cambridge Professor Richard Bessel University of York Professor Jeremy Black University of Exeter Professor Paul Dukes University of Aberdeen Professor Martin Evans University of Sussex Juliet Gardiner Historian and author Tom Holland Historian and author Gordon Marsden MP for Blackpool South Dr Roger Mettam Queen Mary, University of London Professor Geoffrey Parker Ohio State University Professor Paul Preston London School of Economics Professor M.C. Ricklefs The Australian National University Professor Ulinka Rublack St John’s College, Cambridge Professor Nigel Saul Royal Holloway, University of London Dr David Starkey Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge Professor T.P. Wiseman University of Exeter Professor Chris Wrigley University of Nottingham All written material, unless otherwise stated, is the copyright of History Today

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2 HISTORY TODAY DECEMBER 2016

THIS IS A GOLDEN AGE for connoisseurs of anachronism. The perfect storm of Brexit, a dysfunctional US presidential contest, murderous meltdown in the Middle East and the rise of autocrats around the globe has seen commentators scrambling around for often dubious historical parallels. Donald Trump has been compared with, in ascending order of plausibility, Hitler (inevitably, lazily), the Emperor Nero and Catiline, the Roman senator who conspired to overthrow the Republic. Worrying levels of historical illiteracy were revealed in October, on the anniversary of the Conquest of 1066, as people made bold by Brexit eulogised the paradisical delights of the Anglo-Saxon realm in contrast to the Norman ‘yoke’– preferring to omit mention of the fact that a substantial minority of the pre-Conquest population of England had no more rights than a beast of the field. Most bizarre of all, Nigel Farage, erstwhile leader of UKIP, compared one-time deputy prime minister Nick Clegg and Ed Miliband, former leader of the Labour Party, to Vidkun Quisling. It is vile to compare decent democratic politicians with the Norwegian Nazi puppet and it is absurd to liken the EU – for all its many faults – with the Third Reich and its satellites. Such anachronisms are not only stupid, they are also dangerous, as they feed a desire to make the past and, as a consequence, the present and the future, neat and tidy, black and white, free of the complexity, nuance and compromise that real historians reveal and long-term solutions demand. No one who engages seriously with the past can be party to such crude analogies. I am sorry to report that Richard Cavendish, author of ‘Months Past’ for many years, died on October 21st following a short illness. He was 86. Richard read History at Brasenose College, Oxford, before heading to New York, where he wrote three novels, and then to Los Angeles, where he turned his hand to screen-writing. Returning to the UK, he wrote on the occult and edited the best-selling partwork, Man, Myth and Magic. He was a pleasure to work with: always punctual with his copy, master of a graceful, easy style and unerringly accurate, though occasionally he thought us too profligate in our use of colons and semi-colons. A true gentleman, with a passion for jazz and Victorian architecture, he will be missed. The sympathies of everyone at History Today go out to his family and friends.

Paul Lay

HistoryMatters

Hinduphobia • Soil Depletion • Thomas More • Paleo-Celebrity

Churchill lied to Roosevelt that the majority of the Allies’ Indian soldiers were Muslim British rule. Nichols saw his mission as demolishing the Hindu cause. Hindu art and music, he wrote, was ‘to most Europeans … not only quite incomprehensible but actively repulsive’. Gandhi, then in a British jail, was featured in a chapter entitled ‘Heil Hindu’ and Hindus were described as worse than the Nazis: Congress is the only 100 per cent, full blooded, uncompromising example of undiluted Fascism in the modern world … Just as every Nazi is a superman, so every Brahmin is ‘Bhudeva’, which means ‘God on earth’. And Congress is, of course, a predominantly Brahmin organisation ... The resemblances between Gandhi and Hitler are, of course, legion.

A Hatred for Hindus

Long before the recent rise in Islamophobia, distrust of Hinduism was rife among Britain’s ruling class. Mihir Bose IN FEBRUARY 1945 Winston Churchill had dinner with his secretary John Colville and Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Harris. Colville’s diary records that: ‘The PM said the Hindus were a foul race ... and he wished Bert Harris could send some of his surplus bombers to destroy them.’ Churchill had expressed contempt for Hindus before. Three years earlier he had told Ivan Mikhailovich Maisky, the Soviet ambassador in London, that, should the British be forced to leave India: ‘Eventually, the Moslems will become master, because they are warriors, while the Hindus are windbags.’ Churchill opined that,

while Hindus were experts at building ‘castles in the air’, ‘when something must be decided on quickly, implemented, executed – here the Hindus say “pass”. Here they immediately reveal their internal flabbiness.’ In his youth Churchill had considered converting to Islam. He had always admired the Muslim faith and, during the war, lied to Roosevelt that the majority of the Allies’ Indian soldiers were Muslim. In fact, the majority were Hindu. Churchill’s views were influenced by Beverley Nichols’ 1944 book Verdict on India. Nichols, a Nazi sympathiser, wrote the book as propaganda to discredit the Indian National Congress, which was then agitating against

Down by the river: Hindu pilgrims wash in the Ganges, c.1940.

Churchill, recommending the book to his wife, wrote: ‘I think you would do well to read it ... It certainly shows the Hindu in his true character.’ Yet Churchill was not the first to want to destroy Hinduism. For more than 200 years, hatred of Hindus was the default position of many influential people in Britain. The man who set this agenda was James Mill, whose 1817 text book The History of British India, became the most important at Haileybury College, where the civil servants of the East India Company were taught. ‘The Hindus’, Mills wrote, ‘are full of dissimulation and falsehood, the universal concomitants of oppression. The vices of falsehood, indeed they carry to a height almost unexampled among the other races DECEMBER 2016 HISTORY TODAY 3

HISTORYMATTERS of men.’ As for religion, Mill wrote, ‘No people … have ever drawn a more gross and disgusting picture of the universe than what is presented in the writings of the Hindus.’ Mill had no such problem with Islam: ‘Very few words are required; because the superiority of the Mahomedans in respect of religion is beyond all dispute.’ Mill also felt that Muslims believed in the ‘natural equality of mankind’, whereas the Hindu performance of religious ceremonies was ‘to the last degree contemptible and absurd, very often tormenting and detestable’. For

‘In no part of the world has a religion existed more unfavourable to the health of our race’ Mill, the greatest contrast was in the behaviour of Hindus and Muslims. ‘In truth the Hindu, like the eunuch, excels in the qualities of a slave … the Mahomedan is more manly.’ Thomas Babington Macaulay, who made the decision that Indians should be taught in English rather than their native languages, described Mill’s history as ‘the greatest historical work which has appeared in our language since that of Gibbon’. Like Mill, Macaulay also fulminated against Hinduism saying: ‘In no part of the world has a religion ever existed more unfavourable to the moral and intellectual health of our race.’ The Hindus had ‘an absurd system of physics, an absurd geography, and absurd astronomy’. Nor were they any better at art. ‘Through the whole of the Hindoo pantheon you will look in vain for anything resembling those beautiful and majestic forms which stood in the shrines of ancient Greece. All is hideous, and grotesque and ignoble.’ In contrast Macaulay admired Islam, calling it a faith belonging to a ‘better family’, related as it was to Christianity. Until well into the 19th century the British continued to acquire territories but were, in effect, acting as leaseholders, accepting the Mughal Emperor as the freeholder of India. The various courts of British India basically followed Mughal law. A Muslim law officer delivered a fatwa, declaring whether the accused was guilty and what the punishment should be. 4 HISTORY TODAY DECEMBER 2016

The Englishman sitting next to him then passed sentence. As Sir George Campbell wrote in 1852: ‘The hidden substructure on which this [whole system] rests is this Mahommedan law; take which away, and we should have no definition of, or authority, for punishing many of the most common crimes.’ It was even common for robbers in British-run Bengal to have a foot chopped off. After the revolt of 1857 there were calls to eradicate Hinduism. The Baptist preacher Charles Spurgeon told a congregation of 25,000 at Crystal Palace that ‘such a religion as the religion of the Hindoo, the Indian government were bound, as in the sight of God, to put down with all the strength of their hand’. And even after the British had left India, Hinduphobia persisted. Francis Tuker, who spent 33 years in the Indian Army, retired as head of Eastern Command in 1950. Writing of independent India, he feared the advance of Communism there: ‘The Iron Curtain … clanks down between Hinduism and all other systems and religions.’ Hindu India was entering a precarious phase, when it might swap its gods for another. ‘Its religion, which is to a great extent superstition and formalism, is breaking down … Communism will fill the void left by the Hindu religion. It seemed to some of us very necessary to place Islam between Russian Communism and Hindusthan.’ Mihir Bose’s From Midnight to Glorious Morning? A Midnight Child’s Look at How India Has Changed will be published by Haus in 2017. Alternative Histories by Rob Murray

The Soil Depletion Crisis

A tragic episode from the 19th century reveals the danger of an environmental quick fix. Alex Richardson-Price THE SPECTRE OF irreversible climate change looms large on the horizon. If warming exceeds 2°C, the world will begin to hit ‘tipping points’, such as the permanent thawing of the Arctic permafrost, which is currently trapping more than double the total carbon in the earth’s atmosphere. If this happens, climate change is likely to escape human control and the response will have to switch from prevention to palliation. On current trends, we will reach this point within three decades. These futures are avoidable, but only if collective international action to reduce carbon emissions happens on a massive scale and starts now. And yet, from Copenhagen 2009 to Paris 2015, summit after summit fails to produce any decisive shift in direction. Such failures are familiar enough to us now that they may be considered business as usual and September 2016 will be remembered in history as the moment that humanity rolled with apparent inexorability past the 400 parts per million carbon milestone. Something is going wrong in an area where we cannot afford mistakes. If history can teach us anything about collective responses to environmental crises, then the Soil Depletion Crisis of the 19th century is a good place to start. The Soil Depletion Crisis was a major environmental problem for Europe and North America in the decades between 1830 and 1870. Intensive farming and rapid urbanisation fundamentally disrupted the previous pattern of nutrients returning to the soil as waste. In previous centuries the population was spread more or less evenly across the land, but a combination of land enclosure and rapid urbanisation meant that

HISTORYMATTERS

of the sea birds which had continued to add fresh guano to the islands, the importers destroyed the basis for replenishment. Within a few decades almost nothing was left. Alexander Duffield, an English mining engineer, was sent to measure what remained in 1877: When I first saw them twenty years ago, they were bold, brown heads, tall, and erect, standing out of the sea like living things, reflecting the light of heaven, or forming soft and tender shadows of the tropical sun on a blue sea. Now these same islands looked like creatures whose heads had been cut off, or like vast sarcophagi, like anything in short that reminds one of death and the grave.

many people were now packed tightly into urban centres. The excrement that had previously returned to the agricultural land as fertiliser was now trapped inside the cities. This threw up the twin problems of sewage buildup in urban areas and the exhaustion of the soil in the countryside, which meant a progressively weaker crop. The problem became an emergency. In 1859 the leading agricultural chemist Justus von Liebig summed up the grimness of the situation: ‘Truly, if this soil could cry out like a cow or a horse which was tormented to give the maximum quantity of milk or work with the smallest expenditure of fodder, the earth would become to these agriculturalists more intolerable than Dante’s infernal regions.’ The challenge, namely, how to create a sustainable agriculture under the new conditions of urbanisation, was a long-term one, requiring careful planning. The British state, however, did not react in this way. In its quest to maintain profits from agriculture, it could not afford to act in the interests of the long term. Instead it sought shortterm fixes, many of which were desperate, even barbaric. It raided Sicilian catacombs and the Napoleonic battlefields of Leipzig, Waterloo and Austerlitz for bones to use as fertiliser in a frantic bid to keep the wolf from the door.

Empire of excrement: sailors visiting a guano bed off the coast of Peru, 1880.

Liebig, horrified, described Britain as ‘a vampire on the breast of Europe, sucking its lifeblood without any real necessity or permanent gain for itself’. Britain’s chief strategy was not bones, however, but the importation of Peruvian guano. Over thousands of years, deposits of guano had collected like snow on islands off the coast of Peru, where

From 1841 onwards, Britain began to import hundreds of thousands of tons of guano every year to use as fertiliser it rarely rained. Because of this, the deposits were able to build up without being washed away, forming mountains hundreds of feet high. Indigenous peoples had always used these deposits, in a sustainable way, to fertilise their lands. From 1841 onwards, Britain began to import hundreds of thousands of tons of this guano every year, transporting it thousands of miles back to Britain for use as fertiliser. The US, which was suffering a similar crisis of soil depletion, did the same. Though the guano was a highly effective fertiliser, the result was the rapid depletion of the deposits, which had taken so long to form. Moreover, through the driving away or killing

As the supplies began to dwindle, the deposits became the cause of conflict, in the ugly phenomenon known as ‘guano imperialism’. The imperial powers fought proxy battles, which involved Peru, Bolivia, Chile, Britain and the United States, culminating in the Chincha Islands War of 1864-66. The forms of labour required to achieve this disaster were themselves brutal. Contemporary observers described them as worse than slavery. The Chinese labourers who largely carried out the work had to haul five tons of guano each, every day. If they failed, they would be flogged, whipped, or tied to buoys at sea as punishment. They died in droves from overwork, starvation, breathing guano dust and suicide. Newspapers in Britain called the work ‘a state of torment which we could hardly have conceived it possible for man to enact against his fellow man’. In the Soil Depletion Crisis, we had, as today, a major environmental crisis which required collective and long-term planning to solve. The response of the major global powers was to bury their heads in the sand and reach desperately for a quick fix. It did not solve the problem. Soil depletion, though offset by the advent of chemical fertilisers, remains with us today. In the 19th century this approach gave us the obliteration of a major natural resource, forms of labour worse than slavery and wars fought over excrement. In the 21st, it may endanger our survival.

Alex Richardson-Price is a writer with an interest in environmental history. DECEMBER 2016 HISTORY TODAY 5

HISTORYMATTERS

The More of A Man For All Seasons is the More of the mid-20th century, not the More of the 16th

A More for All Seasons Scholar or zealot, every generation gets the Thomas More it needs. Joanne Paul THIS IS THE YEAR OF UTOPIA, marking 500 years since the publication of Thomas More’s influential text. Central to the celebrations is a timely re-evaluation of the man who stands behind the enigmatic masterpiece. More’s reputation has ranged from saintly scholar to sex-crazed zealot, with Robert Bolt’s A Man for All Seasons and Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall bringing each of these visions to life, albeit almost 60 years apart. It is 500 years since the publication of Utopia, but it is also 50 years since the release of the Oscar-winning film based on Bolt’s play (first performed in London in 1950). Of course, neither Bolt nor Mantel is entirely accurate; that is what makes their work fiction. What is interesting is what the deviations from historical record in A Man for All Seasons tell us about Bolt’s time. This raises the 6 HISTORY TODAY DECEMBER 2016

Poster Boy: promotion for Fred Zinnemann’s A Man For All Seasons, 1966.

question: if Bolt’s 1950s needed More the defender of individual conscience, why do we need More the zealous persecutor of heretics? Bolt’s More is a champion for individual conscience. He is the ‘little guy’ fighting against the imposing state. This is made clear in the setting used. Unless called into court, More is usually at his family home in Chelsea, which is more of a cottage than a Tudor manor. This would appear to be a choice made by the filmmaker, Fred Zinnemann, rather than a nod to historical accuracy. Though Chelsea was certainly out of London in the 1520s, it was more of a suburb for those who served the court than it was the countryside. In a real letter, More reports that 100 people were fed in his home alone, a far cry from the small gathering of family and servants he assembles in the film. We know, too, that it had at least two courtyards, suggesting it was probably at least moderately grand. Hampton Court, on the other hand, is shot from below, so that the audience feels small in the face of its imposing grandeur. The contrast is clear: More represents idyllic private life, threatened by the state. This theme is clear in the actions of More himself. The issue for More throughout in the film is his ‘own private conscience’ – the fact that he believes that the pope is the head of the Church, not the king. This concern runs through his conversations with Tudor nobles and is the issue again at his trial, as he tells Norfolk: ‘What matters is that I believe it, or rather no, not that I believe it, but that I believe it.’ More’s right to hold an individual belief against the state is central. This is the More of the mid-20th century, not the More of the 16th. The actual More’s entire intellectual enterprise was aimed at opposing the concept of individual conscience, which he took to be a sign of pride. To

advance one’s own ideas against the Church, the community of Christian believers both alive and dead, threatened to rip Christendom apart. God spoke through consensus and this led to unity in the Church. For the historical More, what matters is not that he believes something, but that the Church does. In opposing Henry’s break with Rome, More saw himself not in the minority, but rather in a resounding majority; More and the entire body of the Church across time and space, against Henry’s little Parliament. More was the establishment, Henry the radical. So it is interesting to wonder why Bolt’s More is so drastically different from the historical one. What can this version of More tell us about the ‘season’ from which it comes? The 1950s and 1960s were periods in which there was a growing resistance to state demands. Bolt, had spent time as a member of the Communist Party and dallied with various forms of mysticism. He was arrested in 1961 for his involvement with an anti-nuclear weapons group during a demonstration in Trafalgar Square. Unlike More, Bolt signed a document in order to get himself out of prison, an agreement to keep the peace, an act which his friends and family said had a profound effect on him. A Man for All Seasons certainly spoke to the spirit of the age; Bolt was not the only one to find himself on the losing side of a conscience-driven fight against the state in the age of the Civil Rights movement and the Vietnam War. If this was the More born of the mid-20th century – a hero of individual conscience – what does our More say about our ‘season’? Certainly, we are aware of the dark side of zealous religious belief; Mantel herself has spoken of her childhood rejection of religion and the profoundly negative effect of religious policing. Of course, to know precisely how More reflects the concerns of our own time, we might need the hindsight of another 50 years, the sort of hindsight that helps us to understand Bolt’s More. It will be interesting to see what More becomes next.

Joanne Paul is Lecturer in Early Modern History at the University of Sussex.

HISTORYMATTERS

Why We Still Love ‘Lucy’ A compelling mix of science, history and culture continues to draw the public to the world’s most famous hominin. Lydia Pyne IT IS HARD to find a fossil more famous than ‘Lucy’. Regardless of how much a person knows about the evolution of fossil human ancestors, the odds are that Lucy rings a bell. How does a fossil become famous, when many other scientifically significant examples do not? The story is one part science, one part history, another part culture: how Lucy became so renowned is pieced together through hundreds of small stories, each stacked inside another, like a Russian doll. The petite hominin was discovered during a routine fossil survey on November 30th, 1974 in the remote Afar region of northern Ethiopia by the paleoanthropologist Donald Johanson and student Tom Gray. The pair saw part of an arm-bone sticking out of the dusty sediments and, after recovering it, further excavations that day yielded almost half of an entire skeleton: part of the pelvis, some ribs, part of a right leg, the mandible, pieces of skull, as well as the other arm. For paleoanthropology, which builds the fossil record of human evolution scrap by scrap, the discovery of a 40 per cent complete skeleton was unprecedented. Christened after the Beatles song ‘Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds’, which was played at camp on the night of the discovery, Lucy was introduced to the rest of the world three weeks later at a press event in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, headlining the front page of the Ethiopian Herald. Johanson referred to the discovery as ‘Lucy’. From Addis Ababa, Lucy was taken to the Cleveland Museum of Natural History in the US for intensive study. In 1976 she was assigned to the new

They love Lucy: the original fossils and a model of the hominin, National Museum, Addis Ababa.

species of fossil hominin called Australopithecus afarensis, a name with a nod to the Afar region where she was found. In the ensuing decades, she has continued to be a driving force of research in paleoanthropology, with every new study about Lucy gaining scientific traction, while giving the public more minutiae about her life. Geologists put her age at 3.2 million years old. Paleoanthropologists analysed how she walked (bipedally – upright, on two legs) and what she ate (a plant-based diet). In August this year, scientists from the University of Texas claimed to have assessed how Lucy died – by falling out of a tree – thanks to extensive CT scans. As interesting and compelling as her evolutionary details are, Lucy’s science alone was not – is not – enough to make her a celebrity. Hundreds of other fossils before and after Lucy’s discovery have contributed to our understanding of human evolution. What makes her so different? First and foremost, Lucy functions as a symbol and ambassador for Ethiopia. Signs at Bole International Airport and billboards around the National Museum in Addis Ababa proclaim ‘Welcome to Lucy’s Home: Cradle of Humankind!’ She reminds us that national symbols have a lot of staying power and Lucy offers a way of legitimising the deep history of human evolution along with Ethiopia’s own past. To that end, she continues to resonate strongly within the country through a plethora of nicknames, each of which offer a more nuanced cultural provenance than just ‘Lucy’. In Amharic she is Dinkinesh (‘You are marvellous’). In Afar she is Heelomali (‘She is special’). Each time the fossil is named, another layer of meaning is mapped onto her and she becomes ever more connected to her audiences. In the world of popular science writing, Johanson published five best-selling books between 1981 and 2009, all with Lucy in their title. Hers is a

great, swashbuckling story of discovery with a media-savvy discoverer to leverage her celebrity into research funding and cultural acclaim. On a less exalted level, the Unemployed Philosopher’s Guild puts Lucy on one of their hipster T-shirts; the Lucille Ball-inspired ‘I Love Lucy’ logo silk-screened over a print of the fossil’s skeleton. This cultural connection between fossil and audience occurs when a fossil is no longer an ‘it’ – an object that is merely a museum catalogue number, a thing on display. When a fossil has become a ‘her’ – an anthropomorphised ancestor complete with a paleo-persona – the fossil can connect with audiences on any number of levels. AL 288-1 – Lucy’s catalogue number – has bridged that transition. She has become the public face of paleoanthropology. All new fossil discoveries mentioned in the media are compared with Lucy in some way, shape, or form: older than Lucy, younger than Lucy, larger than Lucy, walked like Lucy. She is the standard by which others are measured. It is as if the public uses Lucy to triangulate its own navigation of the hominin family tree and to assess its own species’ evolution and what it thinks about that. Thanks to the luck and context of her discovery, Lucy was, like any celebrity, in the right place at the right time, able to offer fossil evidence to answer evolutionary questions that the public are interested in (such as locomotion, diet, phylogeny) that were once thought of interest only to those who studied and practised paleoanthropology. Consequently, then, to talk about Lucy is to talk about her evolutionary significance, but it is to also to invoke everything that is cultural about her, from the Beatles legacy onward. It is instructive to remember that she was Lucy before she became Australopithecus afarensis. Lucy’s life as a paleo-celebrity is far from over. For fossils such as Lucy, their meaning has to come from science, of course, but it also must come from her stories and the way they capture the public’s imagination. Lucy’s celebrity is shaped and built by us – her audience – and it continues to unfold.

Lydia Pyne is a historian and writer and the author of Seven Skeletons: the Evolution of the World’s Most Famous Fossils (Viking, 2016). DECEMBER 2016 HISTORY TODAY 7

INDIA Portrait of Tipu Sultan, ruler of the kingdom of Mysore.

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HE RISE TO POWER of India’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has coincided with an unprecedented struggle for the country’s historical past between Hindu nationalists (represented by the BJP) and the secularists who oppose them. One of the most hotly contested reputations in these ‘history wars’ is that of the ‘Tiger of Mysore’, the 18th-century Muslim usurper who took on the might of the East India Company. It is ironic that the current Hindu nationalist view of Tipu as a sadistic, fanatical war criminal so closely echoes the narratives of the British officers who fought and defeated him more than two centuries ago. It is equally surprising to find this Muslim autocrat, who revelled in the forced conversion of many thousands of Christian and Hindu prisoners, being hailed as a tolerant, secular nationalist by the Indian left. More predictably, he is seen as a Muslim patriot in Pakistan, where a missile has been named after him. In November 2015, these rival views erupted onto the streets of Bangalore, now home to India’s silicon valley and once the second city of Tipu’s kingdom. When the Congress government of the state of Karnataka, keen to win Muslim support, designated his birthday a public holiday, BJP supporters took to the streets in protest. Two people died in the riots that followed. The dispute again made headlines when the prominent left-wing playwright Girish Karnad received death threats from Hindu extremists after he suggested that Bangalore’s airport be renamed after Tipu. The dispute illustrates the extent to which the Hindu nationalist psyche still feels the wound it perceives from seven centuries of rule by Muslim conquerors. It also epitomises the difficulty of arriving at a conclusive historical judgement on Tipu, despite the huge archive of contemporary records, including 2,000 of his own letters and the first-hand memoirs of the British prisoners he allegedly tortured and forcibly converted. Tipu’s apologists dismiss British accounts as being part of a ‘dodgy dossier’ aimed at justifying colonial wars against him. Even Tipu’s own memoirs and letters, they claim, were doctored by the British scholars who translated them. We know that Tipu was born in 1750 near Bangalore, the son of a Muslim warlord, Haidar Ali, who rose by the 1760s to effective control of the wealthy Hindu kingdom of Mysore in southern India. Even Tipu’s ancestral origins are disputed. His critics insist that his family were not (as they claimed) descendants of an aristocratic Arab from Baghdad, but low-caste Hindu converts to Islam. Also disputed is a British story of Haidar, ‘in a paroxysm of brutal drunken rage’, publicly flogging his teenaged son and heir in the middle of a humiliating military retreat. ‘I have conversed with persons’, claimed a British contemporary, ‘who

The TIGER of Mysore In the 18th century, the Muslim warlord Tipu Sultan terrorised Hindu southern India and clashed repeatedly with the British. Today, his legacy is contested, but he was far from the nationalist that some have claimed, writes Zareer Masani.

DECEMBER 2016 HISTORY TODAY 11

INDIA

saw his [Tipu’s] back in a shocking state upwards of a week afterwards.’ Many find such testimony unconvincing in view of Tipu’s ‘extreme personal modesty’, which made it highly unlikely that he ‘would have gone around displaying his disgraced and riven back to all and sundry’. Tipu succeeded his tyrannical father in 1782, in the midst of the Second Mysore War with the East India Company. During the course of the conflict, Haidar had nearly ousted the British from their provincial southern capital of Madras. Tipu consolidated his father’s territorial gains on the commercially important spice coast of Malabar and brought the war to a successful conclusion, signing the Treaty of Mangalore with the Madras government in 1784. To the fury of Governor-General Warren Hastings, based in Calcutta, the terms agreed by his Madras subordinates left Tipu’s kingdom of Mysore as the dominant power in southern India. Tipu now felt he could be magnanimous and offered the Company an alliance; but the offer was declined for fear of upsetting other Indian powers. For the next seven years, Tipu and the Company were at peace. It was a period when the sultan is credited with running the most efficient, modernising administration in 12 HISTORY TODAY DECEMBER 2016

Tipu’s Tiger, an automaton representing a tiger mauling a British soldier, c.1790.

pre-colonial India. His voluminous correspondence shows his often obsessive concern with detail and desire to micromanage his officials. He carried out sweeping, though often pointless, revisions of the official calendar and to weights and measures. For example, he changed the normal Indian distance of a kos from 2.5 miles to 2.75 miles and then decreed that state postmen would be flogged unless they covered that distance in exactly 33 minutes. On a more productive note, Tipu emphasised the need to expand trade, especially with the Muslim world in the Middle East. He introduced a new coinage, considered the finest in 18th century India, and is credited with founding Mysore’s now legendary silk industry by importing silkworms and planting mulberry trees. A typical minute sent to one of his district officers had 127 instructions, ranging from the promotion of farming to a ban on cannabis. Tipu, unlike his father, was strictly teetotal and enforced a state ban on alcohol, except for his small band of French mercenaries. He is reputed to have been a generous patron of learning and the arts, with a library of more than 2,000 books, beautifully bound and later captured by the British.

The sultan’s personal appearance made a favourable impression on at least one British official, who described him as ‘uncommonly well made, except in the neck, which was short and large; his leg, ankle and foot beautifully proportioned, his arms large and muscular … but his hands rather too fine and delicate for a soldier’. He was surrounded by elaborate pomp and pageantry and sat on a specially commissioned, octagonal gold throne with its jewelled tiger-head finials, in an impressive throne room, whose colossal stone pillars still stand. His court chroniclers claimed that the sultan breakfasted on ‘the brains of tame male sparrows’, had two wives and 68 concubines, but nevertheless lived simply with little revelry and read himself to sleep at night.

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S A MUSLIM RULER, Tipu generally respected the religious sensitivities of his predominantly Hindu subjects and spared them the ferocious persecution he visited on those in the territories he conquered. Tipu ruled through an almost exclusively Muslim officer corps, many of whom were his own kinsmen. It was as a military leader that he was most comfortable. He inherited from his father what was by far the largest and best trained professional army in the subcontinent, based on a system of compulsory service rather than feudal levies. His troops numbered around 100,000, compared with the East India Company’s meagre 12,000 Europeans and 20,000 Indian sepoys. They lived with their families in cantonments around the capital, known as Seringapatam, and were fiercely loyal to the sultan as their commander. They were smartly dressed in a livery bearing Tipu’s favourite tiger stripes and had excellent equipment, with muskets, rockets and artillery superior to the Company’s. Tipu declared that he would sooner live two days as a tiger than 200 years as a sheep. He kept half a dozen tigers chained on the veranda of his palace and was credited with having wrestled and killed a wild tiger with his bare hands. The most famous relic of his tiger-worship is ‘Tipu’s Tiger’, the life-size mechanical toy, now in the Victoria & Albert Museum, depicting a wooden tiger devouring a prone British soldier, while an organ in its bowels emits lifelike tiger roars and human screams. The temptation to use his superior military strength to swallow up weaker neighbours was one that the Tiger of Mysore was unable to resist and it brought him into inevitable collision with the East India Company. Britain’s

Tipu declared that he would sooner live two days as a tiger than 200 years as a sheep

India during the reign of Tipu Sultan.

traditional policy was to protect its interests by maintaining a balance of power between Indian states. Tipu threatened to upset this balance with his expansionist military campaigns and even more so by his overtures to France, Britain’s global rival. Throughout the late 1780s, Tipu waged a series of minor wars, seizing territories from his northern neighbours, the Nizam of Hyderabad and the Hindu Marathas. He then turned south, annexing the Hindu kingdom of Coorg and various other principalities in Kerala, eventually attacking the Hindu Raja of Travancore, a British ally. His conquests were accompanied by major waves of religious and ethnic cleansing, with many thousands of Hindus and Christians massacred, deported, enslaved, tortured, forcibly circumcised and converted to Islam. Many hundreds of temples and churches were despoiled and destroyed. Allowing for exaggeration by his enemies, Tipu’s own letters proudly claim credit for such atrocities as the hanging of thousands of ‘unbelievers’ in Malabar. He was particularly shocked by the freedoms enjoyed by the women of some Keralan sects. He told the people of Coorg: ‘It is the custom with you for the eldest of five brothers to marry, and for the wife of such brother to be common to all five: hence there cannot be the slightest doubt of your all being bastards.’ He promised, with characteristic grim humour, that he would make them legitimate by converting them to Islam. It was then common practice in southern India to punish enemies by cutting off their noses and upper lips, DECEMBER 2016 HISTORY TODAY 13

INDIA boiling them in oil, impaling them on stakes and chaining them to the feet of angry elephants. Tipu used such punishments freely and added his own innovations. His love of mechanical toys is said to have included a wooden horse with sharp steel spikes on its saddle, which condemned men had to ride. The spikes would impale them when the horse reared. One horseman, it was rumoured, won a pardon because he was skilful enough to avoid the spikes.

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Y COMPARISON, Tipu’s hundred or so British prisoners got off lightly, despite rumours that some were poisoned, garrotted or fed to his pet tigers. According to the memoirs of survivors, 52 British teenage boys were chosen for conversion to Islam in 1783. They were plied with bhang (hashish), held down by their arms and legs and circumcised by a barber. They were then plunged into scalding hot cauldrons of water to disinfect their wounds. Surprisingly, only one of them died. The rest were recruited into Tipu’s European brigades, while the youngest and prettiest became palace servants and dancing boys. Sadly, they were not released under subsequent peace treaties with the Company because Tipu maintained that they were willing converts and therefore his subjects. In 1791, an alliance of the British, the Nizam and the Marathas decided to teach the tyrant of Mysore a lesson. The new Governor-General, Lord Cornwallis, wrote: The daring and restless ambition of Tippoo, the superiority of his talents over the rest of the Princes of this country, the mischievous purposes to which these talents have been constantly applied, not only in oppressing his subjects and tributaries, but in disturbing the tranquillity of his neighbours, would undoubtedly render it desirable as well for our future peace as for the cause of humanity that he should be driven from that throne which his father so unjustly usurped.

It soon became clear that Tipu’s real agenda was to use French aid to expel the British, whom he now regarded as the main obstacle to his own imperial ambitions

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As allied troops closed in on his capital, Tipu sued for peace and Cornwallis decided to leave him on his throne, subjected to harsh terms which deprived him of half his kingdom and levied with a heavy financial indemnity to be paid to the victors. Tipu’s modern champions have made much of the fact that Cornwallis insisted on taking two of his sons as hostages, yet hostage-taking was a common practice between Indian states and the boys were treated with every possible comfort and courtesy. The princes and their large retinue lived in great style in Madras, where they became a big attraction on the social scene, attending banquets and balls, including performances of Handel’s oratorios Messiah and Judas Maccabaeus. When they were safely returned to Tipu in 1794, the British captain who escorted them reported that the grateful sultan spoke highly of Cornwallis, admired the excellence of the English constitution, condemned the French for murdering their king and said they deserved every misfortune that had befallen them. Yet it soon became clear that Tipu’s real agenda was to use French aid to expel the British, whom he now regarded as the main obstacle to his own imperial ambitions. Tipu had assumed the title of Padshah or Emperor, hitherto reserved for the Great Moghul in Delhi, and he now sent embassies to other Muslim rulers, like the Ottoman Sultan, the Shah of Iran and the Amir of Afghanistan, seeking their recognition and support in a jihad against the British infidels. He also, more surprisingly, embraced the new French

Tipu parades on an elephant, illustration from ‘The Battle of Polilur, 1780’, c.1784.

Republic, welcoming Jacobins to his court. A big ceremonial event at Seringapatam in May 1797 saw the French tricolour hoisted to a salute of 2,300 cannon and 500 rockets and the Sultan was welcomed as ‘Citoyen Tipou’, donning the cap of liberty and calling the new republic ‘my sister’. More ominously, Tipu sent emissaries to Napoleon, who had recently invaded Egypt, proposing that he should push on to India, which he and Tipu could then carve up between themselves. The threat of such an invasion was taken seriously in British government circles. In India, too, a new and more assertive Governor-General, Lord Wellesley, sent Tipu repeated protests demanding that he sever all relations with the French and accept a British resident at his court. When the sultan remained evasive and welcomed a small

The Marquis Cornwallis receiving the Hostage princes, sons of Tippoo Sultan by Mather Brown, c.1793.

force of French volunteers from Mauritius, Wellesley, in a minute of August 1798, condemned this as ‘a public, unqualified and unambiguous declaration of war’ aimed at ‘the total destruction of the British Government in India’. In the conflict that followed, Tipu turned out to be something of a paper tiger. A British invasion of Mysore met with little resistance, partly because most of Tipu’s leading generals and advisers defected to the British or were bought over. Rather than accept a humiliating surrender, the sultan himself died fighting in the siege of his capital on May 4th, 1799. His bravery was acknowledged by the British, who gave him an impressive public funeral, with a grenadier guard of honour, a gun salute and a crowd-lined procession to his family tomb. Tipu’s huge household, comprising 12 DECEMBER 2016 HISTORY TODAY 15

INDIA sons, eight daughters, a harem of 600 and several thousand dependents, was generously pensioned off and comfortably housed by the East India Company, first at Vellore, near Madras, and later at Calcutta. One of Tipu’s sons, Prince Ghulam Mohamed, eventually settled in London, where Queen Victoria took him under her wing, knighted him and made him a regular guest at Windsor.

H Finding the Body of Tipu, by Samuel William Reynolds, 1800.

IS FATHER’S exploits had by then become a popular theme for London exhibitions, re-enactments and Victorian adventure stories about the perils and rewards of empire. Meanwhile, Tipu’s tomb at Seringapatam, carefully maintained at British expense, became a revered meeting place for Muslims hostile to British rule, ‘a proof how readily crimes that cry to Heaven are condoned’, a British writer lamented, ‘when the perpetrator of them is supposed to have been animated by … the faith which he professed.’ Tipu continued to polarise Indian opinion on largely sectarian lines. The Hindu Wadiyar dynasty, whom Wellesley restored, reigned over Mysore until Indian independence in 1947, with a reputation as the most enlightened and modernising princely state in the subcontinent. Historians of the Mysore princely states have regarded Tipu as a fanatical Muslim dictator who left behind a trail of destroyed temples and churches and forced mass conversions. The

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sectarian nature of Tipu’s cruelty may be disputed, but there is certainly no evidence that he was motivated by the kind of nationalist patriotism with which some Indian liberals now imbue him. ‘This is a wrong view arrived at by projecting the present into the past’, admits Tipu’s most sympathetic biographer, the Muslim academic Professor Mohibbul Hasan. ‘In the age in which Tipu lived and ruled there was no sense of nationalism or an awareness among Indians that they were a subject people.’ Tipu, Hasan rightly concludes, fought the British ‘to preserve his own power and independence’, not for any higher ideal of national freedom. Zareer Masani is the author of Macaulay: Britain’s Liberal Imperialist (The Bodley Head, 2013). He is researching a biography of Warren Hastings.

FURTHER READING Denys Forrest, Tiger of Mysore: Life and Death of Tipu Sultan (Chatto & Windus, 1970). Mildred Archer, Tippoo’s Tiger (HMSO, 1959). Mohibbul Hasan, History of Tipu Sultan (Aakar Books, 2013). Girish Karnad, The Dreams of Tipu Sultan and Bali: The Sacrifice (Oxford University Press, 2003).

TheMap ‘Atlantis at its Prime’, 1896 WILLIAM SCOTT-ELLIOT (1849-1919) was an amateur anthropologist and member of the London Lodge of the Theosophical Society in its early days. Theosophists were interested in the origins of humanity and the ‘root races’ and believed the Atlanteans were the fourth ‘root race’, ultimately succeeded by the Aryans. Based on the clairvoyant ‘findings’ of fellow theosophist Charles Webster Leadbetter about Atlantis and Lemuria (another hypothetical land proposed in 1864), Scott-Elliot used science to solve their mysteries. He published his results in The Story of Atlantis (1896). This was an attempt to find a solution to the puzzle of fossils and plants, languages and peoples, common across continents now divided. By this time the bed of the Atlantic Ocean had been mapped, revealing the full extent of what is now called the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, but the understanding of continental drift to explain their previous meeting was not published until 1912, by Alfred Wegener. This map, taken from the French edition of Scott-Elliot’s work, shows the land surface of the earth as he believed it looked a million years ago, at the point when the Atlantean race was at its height and before internal warfare brought about the ‘first great submergence’ 800,000 years ago. The continent of Atlantis stretched from just east of Iceland to near what is now Rio de Janeiro. Lemuria is coloured green, as are the remnants of the Hyperborea, a northern land, first described by Herodotus. Kate Wiles

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SECOND WORLD WAR The torpedoed Japanese destroyer Yamakaze seen through the periscope of the submarine USS Nautilus, June 25th, 1942. Left: Vice-Admiral Charles Lockwood aboard a US submarine, May 1945.

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N THE PERIOD BETWEEN its initial swashbuckling attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941 to its final abject surrender in mid-August 1945, Japan lost an astonishing total of 8.4 million tons of merchant shipping: 2,259 vessels weighing over 500 tons were sunk in the Pacific War, with the loss of 116,000 merchant seamen. In addition, an unknown number of smaller boats, such as fishing trawlers, ketches, lighters, yachts and dinghies, along with their cargoes and crew perished in Japanese waters during these years. A loss of this magnitude contributed enormously to Japan’s defeat in the Second World War. A resource-starved island nation, it needed a strong merchant fleet to import the vast majority of its industrial and military supplies, raw materials and mineral ores. To compound matters, Japan only grew 80 per cent of what was needed to feed its civilian population. Before the war, the Japanese Central Planning Board had indicated that the domestic economy required three million tons of merchant shipping to continue functioning without any shortfall. It anticipated that coal supplies, mainly from Manchuria, which it had conquered by 1932, would take up 1.8 million tons of that shipping; agricultural products and supplies would comprise a further 450,000 tons; and the resource components that were crucial to the making of steel would require approximately 300,000 tons on an annual basis. Any reduction in commercial shipping below three million tons would have a disruptive effect: the larger the fall, the greater the impact. When Japan went to war in December 1941, the Imperial Japanese Army (IJA) had already requisitioned 519 private cargo and passenger vessels, while the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) took almost as many merchant ships. It would not be the last time that the services would dip into to the mercantile well; they were to do so nine times during the war. And once taken by the armed forces, the better ships were rarely returned for commercial purposes. 20 HISTORY TODAY DECEMBER 2016

The Sinking of JAPAN An island nation with few resources, Japan was in a precarious enough position when it declared war on the United States in December 1941. That its powerful navy failed to learn the lessons of previous conflicts made matters even worse, as Malcolm Murfett explains.

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SECOND WORLD WAR

THE IMPACT OF THE GERMAN U-BOAT IN THE FIRST WORLD WAR AND THE NECESSITY OF CONVOYS TO DEFEAT IT, PASSED THE JAPANESE BY These pressing demands from the military meant that the Japanese merchant fleet began the war below the three million ton ceiling for commercial shipping. In any case, it is a moot point whether the figure of three million tons for commercial freight haulage was truly sufficient for all economic purposes. According to two US studies published during the war, the amount of commercial shipping that Japan needed if it was to ensure that there was no disruption in its economic performance was between four and six million tons. If this was true, then the Japanese economy was compromised from the outset.

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IL WAS THE MOST IMPORTANT COMMODITY that the Japanese had to import to run their military machine. Although the Japanese had been stockpiling oil for years (they had run up a reserve of 3.5 million tons by 1936), domestic oil production was never sufficient for their needs. In 1937 the annual production of oil had reached about 397,000 tons, a figure way below the million plus tons needed by even the peacetime economy. Therefore, oil had to be imported. For years it had come largely from the US, but once that avenue was blocked by the passage of the Export Control Act of July 2nd, 1940 and the freezing of all Japanese assets in the US in July 1941, another source of oil was desperately needed. This was where the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere was meant to take up the slack. Ample oil supplies existed on the islands of Borneo and Sumatra, but war would be necessary to take them. How much oil would be needed by the Japanese military? Japanese planners estimated that a naval war with the US would consume 3.6 22 HISTORY TODAY DECEMBER 2016

million tons of fuel oil and 440,000 tons of aviation fuel annually. In September 1941 it was estimated that the nation’s oil reserves would last between 18 months to two years depending upon how widespread the war became. In reality, aviation fuel consumption for the armed forces averaged between 40-50,000 tons a month – around seven to nine shiploads – and the IJN used about 50 per cent more oil in war than had been forecast. Regardless of whether the prewar estimates were faulty or not, the fact remained that Japan needed to ensure that its merchant fleet remained as substantial as possible so that it could support its military excursions and sustain its domestic economy. It could not afford to allow it to be run down or decimated by enemy action and yet that is exactly what happened. Illustrating the degree of the problem affecting the merchant marine is the easy part. Working out why the Japanese were unable to rescue this hazardous situation is far more intriguing, since it reveals much about the Japanese mindset when it came to the business of war. The American naval strategist Alfred Thayer Mahan exerted an extraordinary influence on at least two generations of Japanese naval officers. His classic study, The Influence of Sea Power Upon History 16601783 (1890), was translated into Japanese and became the standard reference work for IJN officers when it came to naval strategy and war planning. They believed in the idea of ‘the decisive battle’ and pointed to their own experience against the Chinese at the River Yalu in 1894 and against the Russians at the Battle of Tsushima Strait in May 1905 as reasons why Mahan’s views remained relevant in the 20th century.

Above: a Japanese Type C kaibokan escort ship, c.1944. Below: the battleship Yamato, the heaviest ever constructed and the flagship of the Japanese Combined Fleet, during sea trials, October 1941.

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SECOND WORLD WAR

Cement

800000 700000

Non-ferrous metal

3000000

(Tons)

2500000

(Tons)

600000

2000000

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1500000

400000 300000

1000000

200000

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100000 0

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0

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Fertiliser

1200000

1942

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Paper pulp

800000

(Tons)

1000000

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700000

(Tons)

600000 800000

500000 400000

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200000 200000 0

100000 1941

1942

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Coal

25000000

(Tons)

20000000 15000000 10000000 5000000 0

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Iron ore

5000000

SUNK.

1945

0

JAPANESE IMPORTS 1941-45

1942

1943

(Tons)

30000

20000

10000

0

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2000000

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Sugar

600000

(Tons)

4000000

1945

40000

Lumber

(Tons)

1944

Raw rubber

50000

A graphic illustration of the precipitous annual decline of Japanese imports during the course of the Second World War.

2500000

1941

(Tons)

500000 400000 300000

0

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1944

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0

200000 100000 1941

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1945

A Japanese merchant vessel is sunk in a US submarine attack, c.1943.

The ‘drawn’ Battle of Jutland between the British and German fleets in 1916 could be regarded as an opportunity lost, but the impact of the German U-boat in the First World War and the belated necessity for convoys to defeat it somehow passed the Japanese by. This is curious, since selected IJN officers had been observers aboard Royal Navy warships in the latter years of the conflict and had seen how the German war on trade had been successfully contained. Despite the fact that official reports had been written on the U-boat war, senior Japanese naval officials were unable to appreciate its contemporary relevance. What caused them to avert FORTY PER CENT OF ALL SHIPPING SUNK IN 1943 their gaze in this way? TOOK PLACE OFF THE COAST OF JAPAN, WITH In addition to accepting Mahan’s views on sea power, IJN officers were GRIEVOUS EFFECTS ON IMPORTS imbued with the idea of taking offensive rather than defensive action. They appeared to be obsessed with the virtues of their Combined Fleet. It was COMBINATION OF increasing numbers of US submarines a powerful battle fleet and virtually everything was done to encourage in the Pacific and better weapons meant that 40 per cent of its progress and attain its objectives. Priority in naval construction was all shipping sunk in 1943 took place off the coast of Japan, always given for capital ship construction. As aircraft developed their with grievous effects on both imports and war production. potential during the interwar period, the carrier became a new – and In this situation the need for convoys should have been obvious, yet in expensive – type of capital ship for the Japanese. Consequently, given its prewar plans, the IJN had ignored the concept entirely. The Japanese the Combined Fleet’s demand for carriers, battleships and cruisers, preferred to try to make merchant ships go faster so that they could there were never enough destroyers, ocean defence vessels (kaibokan), outrun the submarine rather than to devise tactics that could protect their merchant shipping on all overseas routes. anti-submatine escorts and torpedo boats built to protect the merchant marine from enemy action. As a result of these deliberate choices, much It is true that in April 1942 a rudimentary experiment had been made of the Japanese merchant fleet that was not requisitioned by the military with convoys on the oil tanker route to Singapore and the important link went unescorted during the first year of the war. to Truk, Japan’s main base in the South Pacific, and Micronesia. While Part of the reason for this lies in a tendency to underestimate the each convoy would consist of between 10 and 20 tankers or merchant enemy. Few IJN officers ever expected that the US would send submaships (any more was considered to be unmanageable), only one of a rines into Japanese waters and, even if they did, they would do so in small number of rather dilapidated warships would be assigned to it such numbers that they would represent a major threat to Japanese as an escort. This shambolic situation said much about Japanese views on convoy. shipping. Moreover, IJN general staff officers had a low opinion of the Under a convoy formula which the Allies adopted at the Casablanca Americans, believing them to be soft, ill-disciplined and unlikely to make good submariners. Conference in early 1943, the number of escorts was in theory to be This belief was confirmed, in Japanese minds at least, by the halting three per convoy, plus one more for every ten ships involved. Thus an Atlantic convoy of 150 ships would be allocated 18 escorts. A Japanese performance of the US submarines in 1942, when they had major problems with their malfunctioning Mark XIV torpedoes (they ran 11-15 convoy of 20 ships – the largest number they would ever organise – metres deeper than set) and their unreliable Mark VI secret magneticwould require five escorts by this formula. The inefficiency of small influenced exploders (which often exploded prematurely). These issues convoys is plain to see. were resolved following the appointment of Admiral Charles Lockwood as Commander, Submarine Force, US Pacific Fleet (COMSUBPAC) in IRONICALLY, THE JAPANESE MILITARY used the convoy principle January 1943. The slower electric ‘wakeless’ Mark XVIII torpedo reto bring troops and supplies to and from the outposts of empire from the beginning of hostilities. These convoys were covered by significant placed the Mark VI (it ran at 30 knots as opposed to 45 knots) and the magnetic exploder was abandoned in favour of the contact exploder in numbers of warships as both close escorts and more distant protection. July 1943. The enemy now had the means of bringing the war home to They also knew they must establish a system of bringing much-needed the Japanese merchant marine and the IJN as well. commercial imports into the country and therefore, shortly after

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SECOND WORLD WAR A Japanese merchant ship is torpedoed and sunk by a US submarine, November 18th, 1943.

their military conquests had expanded their empire, they began using Maizuru, Muroran, Moji, Niigata, Osaka, Otaru and Yokohama as the principal home ports and linked them with overseas transhipment hubs, such as Davao, Manila, Palau, Singapore, Surabaya, Takoa and Truk. Goods were convoyed between these ports, but the degree of protection ranged from little to nothing in the first year of the war. Japan adopted convoys in a piecemeal and half-hearted fashion. Apart from the obvious lack of escorts, there was no optimum sailing pattern employed in any convoy and, to complicate the process still further, naval districts and land forces could dictate conflicting orders on these matters as the convoy steamed through their territorial waters. Merchant ship captains had led the opposition to convoy from the outset. They had resented the time it took to assemble one in the first place and the fact that it could only move at the rate of its slowest member. Many captains found it difficult to maintain their assigned station within a convoy, or to conform to blackout and radio silence restrictions, let alone to control their smoke emissions. Too many of them refused to zig-zag at night, even though weaving in this way made life much more difficult for submarines seeking to torpedo them. Not surprisingly, opposition to convoy began to disappear as the US submarines became more menacing from 1943. Merchant ships began to sail in groups even when there was no escort vessel assigned to them. In sum, this was what approximated to the mercantile convoy system that the Japanese had fashioned before the Grand Escort Headquarters was established in November 1943. Grand Escort HQ was a partial step in the right direction; its resources were more plentiful than those of the two escort units that had preceded it – hardly difficult – but even so they were of meagre quality. In essence, Grand Escort HQ began life with only 44 ships that were legitimate escort vessels. Its other ships were ill-suited for work on the high seas, 51 being deemed only capable of escort duties in ‘calm seas’, while 70 other assorted vessels could not go beyond coastal patrol duties. A growing number of kaibokan were equipped for convoy protection as the war proceeded. Originally developed to protect the fishing fleet in northern waters, these were rugged vessels of around 1,000 tons with an extensive cruising range of up to 8,000 nautical miles and a top speed of almost 20 knots (slightly slower than the surface speed of US submarines). Later versions of these craft had three 120mm guns and up to 12 depth charge throwers, with a total of at least 120 depth charges. A welcome addition though they were, they originally carried no underwater detection gear, but were fitted with minesweeping equipment. 26 HISTORY TODAY DECEMBER 2016

Later versions were equipped with rudimentary radar and sonar. Additionally, Grand Escort HQ also had the 901st Naval Air Unit attached to it. This consisted of 80 old ‘Betty’ twin-engine bombers and ‘Emily’ flying boats, with second rate air crew. These aircraft often could not maintain contact with the convoys they were supposedly guarding. Their voice radio sets often malfunctioned and only had a range of around five miles. Many pilots, frustrated by these limitations, were disinclined to use them.

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EADED BY Admiral Oikawa Koshiro, a former Navy Minister who was senior in rank to the C-in-C of the Combined Fleet, Koga Mineichi, the Grand Escort HQ was bedevilled by personnel shortcomings. None of its staff was experienced in convoy duties or escort protection and few were enamoured of this un-dashing appointment as far as their future career was concerned. Grand Escort HQ lurched on in much the same manner as the military government, which was dubbed ‘the charcoal bus’ by more critical members of the Japanese public, because it could only make slow, intermittent progress towards its destination. The situation would have been bad enough without another major

problem, namely the wretched state of Japanese anti-submarine warfare (ASW). Ironically, for a modern technological giant, Japan’s ASW equipment in the Second World War was described by the Navy Ministry as yochi, or crude. Radar was not available to the IJN until 1943 and ASW patrol planes with radar were a rarity before July 1944. Even then, airborne radar was thought to be about four years behind that of the US in terms of quality. (Aerial radar could detect a surfaced submarine at a distance of ten miles, but many pilots preferred to use their own eyesight as they could see further than ten miles in good weather conditions.) Fewer planes had MAD (Magnetic Anomaly Detection) sets and those that did lacked the ordnance (such as the Americans’ rear-firing rockets) to deal with the submerged enemy contact they had discovered. Hydrophones were available to the escort vessels, but they only had an effective range of about 1,000 yards. As submarines usually attacked from beyond 1,000 yards, the use of hydrophones rarely prevented a torpedo attack. Sonar offered better prospects but was not of high standard. Models in common use in 1944 had a practical range of 2,200 yards, if the vessel was travelling at six knots or below. At 20 knots the turbulence from the escort’s own bow wave made sonar inoperable. If ASW detection was problematic, so were the anti-submarine weapons available to the Japanese escorts. Lacking the sophisticated mortars available to the Allies and the Germans, the Japanese relied on 230 lb depth charges. Their standard stock was 36, raised later to 50 and then, by 1944, to at least 120, whereas Allied escorts habitually had a stock of up to 120 per ship for each mission they undertook. A lack of depth charges meant that before 1944 the Japanese anti-submarine vessels could not engage in sustained attacks against their target.

WHEN US SUBMARINES CONGREGATED IN AREAS FAVOURED BY JAPANESE SHIPPING, THEY REAPED A DEADLY HARVEST To add to the general misery, for the early part of the Pacific War Japanese depth charges were set to explode at 50-60 feet and the US submarines learnt to evade them by crash-diving to below 300 feet. Eventually, the Japanese learnt from an indiscreet interview given by Congressman Andrew J. May that Japanese depth charges were set too shallow to cause problems. Using this information, the Japanese altered their depth charge settings to explode at 250 feet. Notwithstanding the improved kaibokan, the most reliable anti-submarine weapon in the Japanese armoury remained the Hertz Horn Type 93 moored contact mine. Thousands were deployed at the strategic narrows around Japan and in approaches to bays. They were effective in keeping US submarines from entering the Sea of Japan and the Inland Sea for much of the war until the Americans developed FM Sonar. Despite the ASW shortcomings and the fact that the IJN had spent little time in developing its own mine warfare programme during the interwar years, the Japanese estimates of their success against submarines are revealing. They claimed to have sunk hundreds of US submarines – roughly 15 a month – but in reality those claims were massively higher than the actual rate. Just 19 US submarines were lost in Japanese waters during the war; 29 more were sunk elsewhere in the Pacific. By December 1944 there were a total of 156 US submarines operating in the Pacific. Learning from the Germans, the Americans had adopted a ‘wolf pack’ strategy for attacking enemy shipping. They were called ‘Coordinated Attack Groups’ and when they congregated in areas favoured by Japanese shipping, they reaped a deadly harvest. Rotating patrols moved from one circuit to the next and yielded many benefits. These

profitable circuits were soon given nicknames, such as ‘Hit Parade’, ‘Convoy College’, ‘Dunker’s Derby’ and ‘The Speedway’. As US submarines began to inflict ever more destruction, the Japanese did not realise that this was due to Allied cryptanalysts breaking their signal codes. On the contrary, the Japanese believed that their codes were so sophisticated that no foreigners would be able to break them. It was hubris of the highest order and they paid for it. Lockwood estimated after the Pacific War had ended that information from SIGINT (Signals Intelligence) breakthroughs was responsible for about 50 per cent of all Japanese merchantmen losses claimed by his submarines.

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S THE WAR PROGRESSED, the US concentrated its attention on destroying Japan’s oil tanker fleet. In December 1943 the fleet had reached 834,000 tons and was still at 785,000 tons a year later. By the time the war ended it stood at just 248,000 tons. Oil imports reflected the situation: 1.5 million barrels a month were brought back to Japan in the first quarter of 1943. Those imports fell to 700,000 barrels in December 1944. Once the convoy routes to the south were cut off, the last tanker laden with oil from south-east Asia reached Japan in March 1945. So desperate was Japan for oil that pine roots were dug up and distilled into a low grade fuel for the armed services. Where was the Japanese submarine arm in this tale? Although they possessed better torpedoes than the Americans, they were badly led, woefully deployed and more often than not disregarded within the IJN. Why did the Japanese not do more to defend their trade links once the US submarines had got their act together in 1943? Why did they not devote more attention to the construction of coastal defence vessels like the kaibokan, which proved to be a determined adversary of the submarine? A prewar estimate indicated they would need 360 escort vessels. Although they had the means to reach that figure, they lavished their resources on capital ship construction and never even reached half that total by the end of the war in 1945. Why were they so poor technically? It is astonishing to think that the Japanese, who made such a name for themselves in the postwar world as masters of technology, should have performed so badly in this field during the Second World War. Why did they not spend more time, money and attention on research and development in the field of ASW, particularly towards improving their radar and sonar systems and in developing weaponry such as more sophisticated depth mortars and mines? Finally, why did they not do far more to make their codes safer and cut down on SIGINT coups by the Allies? These questions are legitimately posed but inadequately answered in most of the literature on the war in the Pacific. Nonetheless, what we know now seems to confirm that arrogance and complacency mixed with underestimation and hubris savagely undermined the Japanese cause at sea. Malcolm Murfett is Visiting Professor in the Department of War Studies at King’s College London and the author of Naval Warfare 1919-1945: A History of the War at Sea (Routledge, 2012).

FURTHER READING Mark P. Parillo, The Japanese Merchant Marine in World War II (Naval Institute Press, 1993). Nathaniel S. Patch, ‘Patrolling the Empire: The Politics, Geography, and Strategy of the US Submarine Patrols Against the Japanese Home Islands’ (Unpublished Paper, US National Archives, October 2011). Theodore Roscoe, US Submarine Operations in World War II (USNI Press, 1949). DECEMBER 2016 HISTORY TODAY 27

RADETZKY

Radetzky’s march into obscurity

Under the command of Josef Radetzky, the Habsburg army held its grip on Italy during a period of revolutionary unrest across Europe. Yet today his achievements are rarely celebrated. On the 250th anniversary of the field marshal’s birth, Graham Darby wonders why.

MANY READERS will be familiar with the tune of the ‘Radetzky March’, composed by Johann Strauss the Elder and first performed in 1848, or, perhaps, with the 1932 novel of the same name by Joseph Roth. That both works should now overshadow the man in whose honour the original piece was written is surprising. Field Marshal Josef Radetzky was probably the most significant Austrian military figure of the 19th century. His long and illustrious career spanned more than 70 years: he fought against the Turks in the 1780s, played a pivotal role against Napoleon in 1813 and crushed the 1848 risings in Italy. During the course of his career he was wounded seven times, had nine horses shot from under him, fathered a daughter at the age of 80 (not with his wife) and was 90 before he retired as governor of Lombardy and Venetia. 28 HISTORY TODAY DECEMBER 2016

Radetzky Before Milan, 1848 by Albrecht Adam.

Count Johann Josef Radetzky von Radetz was born in Bohemia on November 2nd, 1766, 250 years ago this year. He was, therefore, Czech but spent little time there and considered himself German. Orphaned at an early age – his mother died in childbirth and his father when he was 10 – he was brought up by a grandfather, who passed away when the count was just 15. Despite what must have been a traumatic childhood and a physician’s assessment that the young count was too frail ‘for the exertions of a soldier’s life’, Radetzky went on to become a successful commander. Countess Franziska Romana Strassoldo-Graffenberg became his wife in 1798. The marriage lasted a tempestuous 56 years: tempestuous because of her financial extravagance and his alleged liaison with a washerwoman, Giuditta Meregalli. The marriage produced eight children.

Unfortunately one of the drawbacks of his longevity is that Radetzky outlived both his wife and all but two of his children. The count had entered the Habsburg army as a cadet at 18 and remained on active duty until shortly before his death in 1858. He played an important part in the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, during which he became an advocate of offensive operations, in sharp contrast to the defensive mindset of his contemporaries. In 1805 he was made a major-general and from 1809 to 1817 was chief of staff of the Austrian army (with one brief intermission). Alan Sked, author of the count’s only English language biography, claims that Radetzky played the crucial role in Napoleon’s defeat. Triumph in Italy Yet Sked’s claims for Radetzky’s importance have not achieved universal acceptance. During his lifetime, Radetzky was hailed as a military genius in official despatches and his accomplishments were admired by soldiers and statesmen across Europe. He enjoyed the full confidence of Habsburg emperors Francis I, Ferdinand I and Franz Josef as well as their principal ministers, Klemens von Metternich and Prince Felix of Schwarzenberg. He was much admired by Tsar Alexander I and at the Congress of Vienna in 1814-15 he acted as an intermediary between the tsar and Metternich when – frequently – they were not on speaking terms. Yet during the succeeding years of peace, he disappeared from public view and his attempts at military reform were thwarted by finance ministers. Some of his ideas, such as a well-educated general staff and peacetime manoeuvres, were ahead of their time and were later adopted with success by the Prussian army. Unlike in Britain, where military heroes such as Marlborough, Nelson and Wellington were celebrated with enormous gratitude, little fuss was made in the Habsburg Empire. By the late 1820s there was talk of retiring Radetzky, but unrest in Italy led to his next – and longest – appointment as commander-in-chief of Habsburg forces in the peninsula. This was an important position within the multi-ethnic monarchy as, after 1815, Austria had been placed in control of Italy in order to thwart a revival of French ambitions there. Italy had been a patchwork of small states for more than a millennium and control was exercised in a variety of ways: directly in Lombardy and Venetia, indirectly by dynastic relatives in the duchies of Tuscany, Parma and Modena and by means of alliance in the Papal States and the kingdom of Naples. Only Piedmont-Sardinia had a measure of independence.

During his lifetime, Radetzky was hailed as a military genius and his accomplishments were admired by soldiers and statesmen across Europe

Austrian foreign policy was conservative. Its goal was to maintain the status quo and prevent another revolution. The Revolutions of 1848 broke out across Europe and aimed to remove old feudal structures through the creation of nation states. They were brought on by poor harvests, high prices and food shortages. In Italy the situation became serious: after the fall of Metternich in Vienna, a serious uprising in Milan forced Radetzky to withdraw his forces from the narrow streets to a series of forts. The situation was compounded by unrest in the duchies (whose rulers fled) and the declaration of a republic in Venice. Belatedly taking advantage of this situation, King Charles Albert of Piedmont declared war on Austria. Panic ensued in Vienna and Radetzky was advised to make concessions and give up Lombardy. At this point the field marshal (he had been promoted in 1836) showed his true mettle; he was resolute, ignored Vienna, reinforced his troops, smashed the Piedmontese at the Battle of Custoza and reoccupied Lombardy. It was this achievement that led Strauss to compose his march; however, the crisis was not over yet and in 1849, the pope having fled, a republic was declared in Rome and Charles Albert declared war again. Radetzky had anticipated this development and, before the Piedmontese could make any advance, he took the offensive and defeated them at the Battle of Novara. The war was over before it had begun. Charles Albert abdicated and Radetzky offered his heir, Victor Emmanuel, a reasonable armistice to maintain the monarchy and preserve order elsewhere. He went on to restore the Grand Duke in Tuscany and the rulers of Parma and Modena, as well as sending troops into the papal states (though it was in fact the French who restored the pope in Rome). Finally he retook Venice after some novel aerial bombardment by balloons. Radetzky’s triumph was complete; all the more remarkable when one considers that this octogenarian spent as many as ten hours a day in the saddle on campaign. Once again he was an international figure, credited with saving Europe from revolutionary excess. The Austrian Wellington At this point he was made Governor-General of LombardyVenetia, a position he held until 1857. He was a pragmatic ruler. He allowed local patriot leaders to slip away in 1849 and he allowed other opposition figures, such as the composer Giuseppe Verdi and the novelist Alessandro Manzoni, to live in peace. Despite this, Italy remained resentful of Austrian rule, which was oppressive in terms of taxation. While not bent on unification, independence was certainly the Italians’ main goal. All this made Radetzky’s task difficult, as did the necessity of having to defer to the emperor in Vienna for decision-making. By 1855 his health was failing and in 1857 he was persuaded to resign. Later that year he had a fall and broke his hip and in December he contracted pneumonia. He died on January 5th, 1858 aged 91. His body lay in state in Milan Cathedral before being transferred to Vienna and then to Heldenberg in Lower Austria, where he was buried. The Times wrote: Austria has lost her Wellington. Field-Marshal Count Radetsky is dead. Comparing Radetsky to Wellington and placing him on a similar national pedestal, we pay the highest tribute to the departed soldier that Englishmen can pay a foreigner. To write the life of Radetsky would be no less [than] to write the history of Europe for the last 70 years. DECEMBER 2016 HISTORY TODAY 29

RADETZKY

Perhaps the main reason that Radetzky has been neglected is that his achievements were ephemeral

Title page for Johann Strauss the Elder’s ‘Radetzky March’ for piano, with a portrait of Josef Radetzky, 1860.

Praise indeed. So why has the ‘Austrian Wellington’ been neglected, at least in the English-speaking world? The Habsburg monarchy did not serve his memory well, despite his record. The first statue commissioned within the Empire to honour him was not erected until 1892, following a concerted press campaign and public donations. The monarchy did not wish to upset the Italians, who were now allies. That does not explain, however, why the Kriegsarchiv in Vienna did not publish an official biography or even release his official correspondence. More important, perhaps, is the fact that for a long time Radetzky and the Austrian Empire he has come to symbolise have been seen to be on the ‘wrong side of history’. The empire, according to this argument, was an anachronism, a ‘worm-eaten galleon’ in terminal decline, a bastion of conservatism suppressing nationalist aspirations and thwarting progress, justifiably kicked out of both Italy and Germany and largely responsible for the outbreak of the First World War by virtue of its Balkan ambitions. ‘Bumps in the road’ This perception has begun to change. More recently the empire has been viewed in a more positive light. It kept the lid on what have turned out to be myriad divisive ethnic tensions. Nationalism itself is no longer seen as a liberal and progressive force. It could also be argued that Italians were better off under Austrian control than after reunification. In addition, Austria’s contribution to Napoleon’s defeat is now more fully appreciated. Despite defeats, bankruptcy and intermittent participation, the empire was, after Britain, the most resolute of Napoleon’s opponents. The campaign of 1809 is a case in point: Napoleon suffered his first defeat in Europe at Aspern and Austria’s decision to sue for peace has disguised the fact that the Battle of Wagram was largely a stalemate. In 1813 Austria not only provided the largest

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contingent of forces but also its political and military leadership. Perhaps the most important reason that Radetzky has been neglected is that his achievements were ephemeral. The Battle of Leipzig (or the Battle of the Nations, as it is also known) and the ensuing decisive campaign of 1813-14 orchestrated by Radetzky, which led to Napoleon’s abdication, were overshadowed by the Emperor’s return from exile and defeat at Waterloo a year later. Austria played no part in that campaign. It is Waterloo that is remembered, though many would argue that Napoleon defeated himself by means of his ill-fated Russian campaign of 1812. Similarly, Radetzky’s achievement in restoring Austrian control in Italy was undone just a year after his death, when Austria lost those lands to a reunified Italy. In the context of the myth of the Risorgimento, which saw Italian unification as a long-term inevitable process fuelled by the nationalist aspirations of Italians, Radetzky’s victories were simply bumps in the road, unable to stop the progress of the nationalist juggernaut. Gone and almost forgotten Leaving aside any philosophical objections to historical inevitability, it is clear that the reunification of Italy came about by accident: a fortuitous combination of war and diplomacy in which Napoleon III, Camillo Cavour and Giuseppe Garibaldi all sought something other than what actually occurred. Counterfactual speculation may have little validity but, had Radetzky been in charge of the Austrian army in 1859 rather than the cautious Ignaz Gyulai, he might have made a swift strike against the Piedmontese before the French arrived and history would have turned out rather differently. But it did not and it is a fact that Radetzky’s work was swiftly undone. It is not uncommon for people who were considered to be of great importance in their own lifetime to be forgotten, especially if their achievements did not have consequences thought significant by subsequent generations, just as many who were unrecognised in their lifetime are now important figures. The composers Salieri and Mozart are two such examples from the Austrian empire. Salieri, significant in his day, is now all but forgotten; Mozart has achieved immortality. It is ironic that Radetzky’s longevity in life should elude his reputation. This man, who was awarded the highest military honours his country could offer, along with those of Russia, Prussia and several other states, and who was revered by his soldiers as a ‘father’, remains best known for a famous tune that was given his name. Graham Darby is the author of a number of books and articles, including Europe At War 1939-45 (Hodder, 2003) and The Unification of Italy (CreateSpace, 2014).

MakingHistory The challenges of writing history for television are formidable. But if historians don’t get involved, they will cede ground to those less qualified, warns Suzannah Lipscomb.

On and Off Script IT IS SCRIPTING TIME again, the time of the year when, as well as my regular teaching and writing work, I am working on scripts for a new history documentary series: a collaborative endeavour involving me, my fellow historian-presenter, the director and executive producers, with occasional interventions from channel commissioners. The difficult process of constructing a workable script is made more so by the fact that it is a docudrama; the story is presented both through historians talking to camera and by a cinematic dramatisation of events. At the same time, I have historian friends working as consultants on big-budget dramas and, like everyone else, as winter draws in, I am a fan of the box set, often historical in scope. What I feel I have learnt from scripting, from chats with historical consultants and from what I view, is the fairly obvious lesson that drama – the dramatic needs of the viewer, such as urgency and pace, emotional empathy and storytelling – often pulls in different directions to history. The less obvious lesson is that to write a script for a history show, drama or documentary, is to be drawn into a philosophical discussion about what we can know of the past and how we can know it. Working on a script often involves the correction of historical detail: that although Katherine of Aragon was Spanish, her hair was auburn not black; that the Tudors did not wear off-the-shoulder numbers; and, often, that things happened in a different order historically to events in the script, however much the storytelling would work if it were otherwise. These are frustrating but remediable. It is more complex to know how to respond to other suggestions: for example, not to introduce too many characters, so that the public can

follow who everyone is, or to recreate a conversation that may not have happened, however much the sources imply it must have done, or to make word-based events visual. The signing of a treaty might be historically important but it is not great TV. There are only so many times an audience wants to watch a character write a letter, even if historians feel on firm ground with treaties and letters because they

The historian can be trampled underfoot by the elephantine weight of big money’s pursuit of compelling drama survive. Should dialogue lean more towards authenticity or intelligibility? How can one minimise cliché and hyperbole, while keeping people watching (in an age where everything is ‘iconic’ and ‘deadly’ and ‘never seen before’)? How does one reconcile the values of the past with our own, without falling into anachronism? Above all, there is the question of certainty. There is a limit to our knowledge of the past. Becoming a

Working on the script: Yvonne Furneaux in La Dolce Vita, 1959.

historian is all about learning what those limits are. It means knowing the sort of questions one can ask about the past and what the sources will not deliver. One colleague reports that he has been asked by scriptwriters – when objecting to an egregious departure from the historical record – ‘can you prove it didn’t happen?’ This is to take the historical method and invert it; the historian can be trampled underfoot by the elephantine weight of big money’s pursuit of compelling drama. In dramatisations, certainty is tricky. Much of the time the mystery of studying the past comes from not knowing why people acted as they did. We can accumulate evidence, we can compare accounts, we can speculate, but often we cannot actually know. Few people in the 16th century left accounts of why they acted as they did. Even when they did, people are often dishonest with themselves. We cannot necessarily say if two people were in love, or why a ruler showed mercy, or whether someone secretly harboured a deep hatred of an ostensible friend. We can only judge by a person’s actions. But actors playing historical characters can introduce certainty with a flash of their eyes – a look of lust or contempt or pity – and the case is suddenly all sewn up. It boils down to this: audiences and profit determine that these programmes will be made. If historians decide it is all too difficult and cede the territory to the people who ask if you can prove something did not happen, then all hope of historical drama and documentaries having even a hint of the historical about them becomes faint. So, once more, into the breach … hand me that script and let’s pull some teeth. Suzannah Lipscomb is Senior Lecturer in Early Modern History at New College of the Humanities. DECEMBER 2016 HISTORY TODAY 31

MIDDLE AGES

William the It was during the Tudor age that the first British antiquarians emerged, detailing as Nicholas Orme explains, William Worcester had laid the groundwork for

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HORSEMAN RODE INTO OXFORD from London on Saturday August 12th, 1480, turned into Cornmarket Street and dismounted at the Bull Inn, where he stayed for a week. He was 65 and would have been marked as a gentleman from his clothes, but a modest one who travelled without a servant. No portrait of him survives, except for a fanciful one in a window of Bristol Cathedral. We have only the sneer of a hostile witness that he was swarthy, one-eyed and born in Ireland. He knew Oxford well, having been a student there and, like other returning alumni, he sauntered about to see what had changed since his youth. As he did so, he acted in an unusual way. He walked alongside buildings placing one foot carefully in front of the other. He was measuring them: the Divinity School, two churches, three colleges, two monasteries, two friaries and the castle bridge. He took out a pen and inkhorn from his belt and paper from his pocket and wrote down the measurements, which we still possess. William Worcester was born in the year of Agincourt, 1415, not in Ireland but in Bristol. He went to grammar school in the city and then to Oxford, where he studied at Hart Hall, now Hertford College. After a few years there, he got a job with Sir John Fastolf, a wealthy Norfolk knight and the model for Shakespeare’s Falstaff, who had profited from the Hundred Years War. Worcester acted as Fastolf’s secretary and business partner. He married a young widow with a child and they had children together. Worcester was promised property by Fastolf on his death, which occurred in 1459, but trouble ensued. Fastolf had died childless and his wealth attracted the greed of others. He hoped that his money would endow a college, but one of his executors – John Paston – a relative of Fastolf, now best known for The Avon Gorge, looking over Clifton, his surviving letters – forged a will that left the by Francis Danby, entire estate to him. Worcester, as a competing c.1820. executor, toiled to get Fastolf’s wishes fulfilled in Right: William as the following years. Eventually, after considerable imagined in the window at Bristol efforts, hurts and even imprisonment, Worcester Cathedral. saw the Fastolf affair resolved with most of the estate reverting to William Waynflete, Bishop of Winchester, to help found Magdalen College, Oxford. Worcester ended up with a small estate outside Norwich. By the late 1470s Worcester was financially secure in a modest way. In modern terms he was retired and able to spend his time as he wished, which was to travel. In 1478 he rode, usually alone – Mrs Worcester stayed at home – from Norwich to Southampton, then to Bristol, down through south-west England to St Michael’s Mount in Cornwall. In 1479 he travelled only to London and to several places in Norfolk and

Wanderer

the nation’s history and geography – or so the traditional story goes. But, their advances and anticipated their interests a century before. DECEMBER 2016 HISTORY TODAY 33

MIDDLE AGES Suffolk, but the following year he set out on another long journey taking in London, Oxford, Bristol and Glastonbury, lodging at inns, in private houses or monasteries. Worcester made notes of all his journeys on paper sheets, the last note being made at Bristol in late September 1480, soon after which it is probable that he died suddenly in the city of a stroke or heart attack. We have no later notes from this most obsessive of note-takers. Where he was buried or commemorated is not known. Fortunately his writings survive. They passed to Corpus Christ College, Cambridge and were first published in the late 18th century. Yet Worcester still receives less than his due in English historiography: the study of England, its geography and antiquities, is still thought to have begun in the Tudor age. Worcester’s work is proof that it did not.

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Worcester’s notes, made on narrow sheets of paper that he could keep in his pocket while travelling.

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ORCESTER DID NOT just precede the Tudor scholars, he anticipated most of their interests. He was a geographer. Coming from Bristol, and later living near the great eastern ports of King’s Lynn and Great Yarmouth, he was highly aware of maritime routes. Northwards, he gathered information about Scotland, the Hebrides, Orkney and Iceland. Eastwards, he made notes about Scandinavia and the lands to the east of the Baltic, as far as the Russian trading city of Novgorod. With reference to the Mediterranean, he tells us how Robert Sturmey, a Bristol ship-owner, sailed to the Holy Land with pilgrims and was wrecked on the coast of Greece on his return voyage. He read a book that listed and described the Greek islands. Westwards, he knew something about the Isle of Man and more about Ireland: its highest point, its rivers and its harbours. At this dawn of the Age of Discovery, he was aware of the Portuguese explorations in the Atlantic and West Africa. He mentions Madeira, the Azores and Guinea and lists the Bissau and Cape Verde Islands. He shared the growing public interest in crossing the Atlantic. Worcester wrote that if you wish to sail to Brazil, which in 1480 meant a legendary island west of Europe, you must set your course from the south-west coast of Ireland. He reports that on July 15th, 1480 a ship belonging to his brother-inlaw, John Jay, sailed from Bristol in search of ‘Brazil’. The ship was out for nine weeks but failed to discover land and was driven back to Ireland by the autumn gales. This was 17 years before John Cabot sailed from Bristol to Newfoundland. Nearer home, Worcester mentions Welsh mountains and the Peak Cavern in Derbyshire, with its entrance into Hell. He made a personal visit to Wookey Hole cavern near Wells, even then a tourist attraction, where guides carried flaming torches of reeds and took visitors through caves where you could view what William calls ‘hanging stones’. He is forthcoming about rivers, no doubt because they were so crucial for travellers of the time. Islands attracted him, too, and he gathered data about them when he had the chance. He gives us the names of a great number around Cornwall, the Scilly Isles, Wales, Ireland, the Hebrides, Orkney and the east and south coasts of England. In some cases he records their measurements and states whether they were inhabited. He tells us about road travel. Then as now, when planning a journey, it was important to know how far you had to go and the stages into which the journey fell. This information was in the heads of people who travelled regularly or catered for travellers and in the early 14th century it underpinned the drawing of the Gough Map of Britain, now in the Bodleian Library, based on roads and mileages. When William

A map of Bristol from Civitates Orbis Terrarum, 1581. Worcester was born north-west of the city’s castle.

Even today the study of England, its geography and antiquities, is usually thought to have begun in the Tudor age. Worcester is proof it did not

travelled to Cornwall he followed an itinerary made by a previous pilgrim to St Michael’s Mount and he kept similar records of his own journeys: mileages, bridges and places to stay for the night. Churches account for another large part of his notes. He did not usually stop to see them as he passed on his journeys; those that feature were in places where he spent the night, especially cathedrals, monasteries and friaries. In many cases he measured their dimensions, sometimes by using a measuring stick but more often by recording his ‘paces’, the careful placing of his feet. He spotted architectural details such as the aisle windows of Exeter Cathedral, each of which has different tracery. He carefully sketched the profile of the columns around the west porch of St Stephen’s church, Bristol. He noted tombs in churches and copied inscriptions from display boards. DECEMBER 2016 HISTORY TODAY 35

MIDDLE AGES

The ruins of Caistor Castle, where Worcester worked for Sir John Fastolf. Engraving, 19th century. Opposite: Wookey Hole Caves, Somerset, 19th century.

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N THREE OCCASIONS he made systematic lists of castles: 34 in Cornwall, nine in Wiltshire and 18 in Herefordshire, including what we now know as hill forts. He learnt how Ralph, Lord Cromwell spent more than 4,000 marks building Tattershall Castle and how Lord Scales pulled down the beautiful manor house at Rey near Castle Rising to stop it falling into the hands of a rival claimant. The staffing of these buildings absorbed him, too. An esquire of Thomas Beaufort, Duke of Exeter, told him that the duke had 140 horsemen in his retinue, paid his grooms four marks a year in wages, fed 13 poor people every day and entertained travellers and old soldiers with food and money. Worcester’s most elaborate inventory of buildings is found in a section of the manuscript on Bristol. This is not a finished piece of work and he may not have decided on its final form. It begins with lists of streets and lanes, some of them with measured distances. Later there are descriptions of churches, often with measurements, too, and of the city gates, wall towers and cellars where merchants kept goods. One town house is described: that of William Canynges, a prominent merchant, which boasted a tower and a row of four bay windows, highly decorated as were the rooms inside. He also recorded details of life in Bristol. The local river, the Avon, was tidal, with a rise of seven or eight fathoms at the spring tides. When the tide was out and the Avon flowed freshly, women washed woollen clothes in the river: ‘Sometimes I have seen twelve women at a time washing.’ Ships moored on the river from Wales, Cornwall, Devon and Somerset, bringing tin and fish. A crane was provided to help load and unload them. The Bristol merchants themselves owned ships. Ten belonged to Canynges and their names and tonnages are given. We hear of a grammar school over the New Gate, regulated prostitutes outside the city in Barrs Street and gallows beyond the walls on St Michael’s Hill. How did William acquire this information? He had three kinds of sources. One came from his own travels, usually notes of distances and measurements. Next there were books, such as calendars and martyrologies of religious houses and parish churches, which he accessed when he could. These volumes listed saints’ days (William made a point of collecting the names of unusual saints) and the death dates of nobility, gentry, merchants, and clergy, in whom William was interested. He seized on chronicles when he could get hold of them, including those 36 HISTORY TODAY DECEMBER 2016

of Nennius, Geoffrey of Monmouth and Gerald of Wales. His historical interests were wide. They included Geoffrey’s invented history, British history through Roman and Anglo-Saxon times down to recent events and European history drawn from the chronicle of Marianus Scotus. He refers to Aristotle, Priscian, the Rule of St Benedict, the life of St Anselm and the writings of Robert Grosseteste. He was widely read, ahead of his time in reading Cicero, whose treatise Of Old Age he translated and presented to William Waynflete. Then there were his informants. John Smyth, Bishop of Llandaff, gave him a list of Welsh saints. Sir Roger Kynaston, a Shropshire knight, told him about the Severn and the rivers of Wales and an Orkneyman in London about the Orkneys. A hermit at Elsing in Norfolk, who had lived with the queen of Denmark, reminisced about Scandinavia. A young blacksmith told him the height of Clifton Gorge and the ferryman who took him across it turned out to be a mine of information about sea distances from Bristol to the Scillies. There is a slightly obsessive air about these enquiries and journeys. On William’s visit to Cornwall in 1478, for example, he travelled into and out of it almost continuously for about 155 miles, with only one day off, an average of well over 20 miles a day. When he reached St Michael’s Mount he spent a single morning there; a visit to a cousin near Fowey a couple of days later lasted for just one night. There was no need for haste as far as one can see; he was just hyperactive. And it must have been challenging to spend time in William’s company. His Cornish notes include not only lists of castles but of road distances, including roads that he did not cover and of many of the county’s rivers and bridges.

William made systematic lists of castles: 34 in Cornwall, nine in Wiltshire and 18 in Herefordshire, including what we now know as hill forts

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MIDDLE AGES These facts cannot have just slipped out in conversation. They were the result of grilling people. Go on, what more castles? What’s the next bridge called? How far away is that? One visualises two men with a flask of wine or a pot of ale between them, one racking his brains and the other scratching away with his quill.

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O WHAT WAS WORCESTER trying to achieve? In 1478 he was 63, a respectable age. If I am correct, he was to die two years later. He can hardly have aimed to write a description of England or Britain, for his recorded journeys are largely restricted to East Anglia, London, Bristol and the South West. But he clearly liked gathering information: practical data such as journey distances but also his ‘specialist topics’ of buildings, people, saints and sea routes. He built up his knowledge to a considerable extent. His information about the South West, although gathered casually over a mere fortnight, would have enabled him to draw a reasonably well-sized and scaled outline of the peninsula and its principal rivers. His description of Bristol could have led to a detailed city map, a descriptive inventory – a ‘Pevsner’, or a literary account. Was he an historian in the modern sense: did he judge and criticise his sources? It is difficult to be sure about this, because he was making notes rather than writing a finished and critical account. He certainly noted some tall stories. Thus when the local bishop forbade the people of Wells to fish in the nearby river, the fish all disappeared until he relaxed his ban. If a bird flew across one island off the Irish coast, it would die. On another, Skellig Michael, the inhabitants could not die and had to be taken to the mainland when they wished to do so. But William does not comment on these things: he only records them and we do not know how seriously he took them. He is punctilious in recording

his sources – the books and people from which he gained information. He tried to achieve accuracy in his measurements of buildings. At least once he discussed history with a monk of Glastonbury, who pointed out disparities in the different accounts of King Arthur. How unusual was he in having these interests? He could well have had numerous antiquarian contemporaries, because although he himself is well recorded in other sources such as the Paston Letters, we would not know of his interests but for the unlikely survival of his notes. He certainly had two such contemporaries. One was William Wey (d. 1476), a pioneer archaeologist who made a map of the Holy Land and wooden models of holy sites in that country. The other was John Rous of Warwick (d. 1492), who did historical drawings and realised that armour had a history from chain mail to full plated suits. He wrote a history of the kings of England into which he inserted a pioneering list of deserted villages in the Midlands – a Worcester-like collection. The interests of these three men overlapped: Wey and Worcester on buildings, Worcester and Rous on Oxford and local history, but there is no evidence that they met or knew of each other. They were not absolute pioneers, either. There had been writings about the geography of Britain since classical times. Bede’s first chapter of his Ecclesiastical History begins with the measurements of the island and describes its natural resources and languages. Later writers discussed Britain’s natural wonders, including Nennius, Henry of Huntingdon and Alfred of Beverley. Gerald of Wales wrote descriptions of Wales and Ireland in the late 12th century, Matthew Paris drew maps of Britain in the 13th and the 14th-century Gough Map has already been mentioned. So interests in British geography, history, communications, churches and castles are much older than our three 15th-century antiquaries.

William could well have had numerous antiquarian contemporaries … we would not know of his interests but for the unlikely survival of his notes St Mary the Virgin, Oxford, measured by Worcester in 1480. Opposite: Exeter Cathedral, visited by Worcester in 1478.

38 HISTORY TODAY DECEMBER 2016

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EPUTATIONS benefit from the fact that, the more recent the history, the more has survived. If we could identify the books read and the notes made by Bede or Gerald of Wales, we might find more that is analogous to Worcester’s notes. The impulse to collect things and list them in writing is very old, but he had the advantage of a new kind of recording material. This was paper, which offered a quick, cheap and easy way to make notes. William could record conversations while they were happening, although in some cases he wrote them up later and got details wrong as a result. He was fortunate, too, that his notes survived in good hands. But if we should not exaggerate our praise for the 15th-century discoverers of England, we must also give them their due. They are not lonely figures as much as representative ones. Worcester gained much of his knowledge from other people who shared his curiosity. He gives the impression that not only was he interested in England’s past and its ruins, but that society was interested as well. This interest was to continue in the 16th century with collectors, writers, and map-makers like Leland, Saxton, and Stow. But William did most of what they did, a hundred years earlier. He is the first person to leave us a record of a scholar’s day-to-day researches, which are wide, valuable and still fascinating when you read them now. And he meant them not just for

himself, but for us. One day, when visiting a church in Cornwall, he wrote down a Latin couplet from a display board that evidently struck a chord with him. It reads, in translation, It pleases me to say, or to place in writing for passers by, The things [that I have] learnt, for people in the future. We can be grateful to William Worcester that he did this and preserved for us a huge body of information about medieval England that, without his care, would have disappeared without trace. Nicholas Orme is Emeritus Professor of History at Exeter University and the author of numerous books on English social and cultural history.

FURTHER READING There are two editions of William Worcester’s topographical notes: John H. Harvey (ed), Itineraries (Clarendon Press, 1969) and Frances Neale (ed), The Topography of Medieval Bristol (Bristol Record Society, 51, 2000).

DECEMBER 2016 HISTORY TODAY 39

GREAT WAR

BOOK BURNING

The War Before the Waltz Victor Silvester brought ballroom dancing to the masses and his enormous influence persists to this day in the TV show Strictly Come Dancing. Much less well known is his extraordinary career as a boy soldier in the Great War. Richard Hughes sets the record straight.

ON A SUMMER’S AFTERNOON in 1919 the young officer was attending his first tea dance. His initial curiosity at the spectacle of the elderly couples shuffling about wrapped in each other’s arms had turned to tedium. He sought escape. The Georgian restaurant at Harrods was no place for an active young man. Why had he allowed his cousin to bring him? He was wondering how to remove himself from this strange world when he was approached by a well-coiffeured, middle-aged lady, Belle Harding, who organised tea dances across London. She had noticed him on the dance floor and, while it was obvious he had little experience, he possessed 40 HISTORY TODAY DECEMBER 2016

Victor Silvester with his partner Phyllis Clarke, the Dancing Champions of the World, 1922.

a natural poise. She made him an offer. In return for partnering her ladies she would provide him with training and a small wage. As he had just begun officer training at Sandhurst, a little pocket-money would be useful. Three years later he was World Ballroom Dance Champion on the cusp of a career that would make him the most famous ballroom dancer in the world. His name was Victor Silvester. It was not the first time a trip to London had resulted in life-changing consequences for him. Five years earlier, in November 1914, just three months short of his 15th birthday, he had joined the queue outside the army recruitment

depot in Buckingham Palace Gardens and signed on with the London Scottish Territorial Regiment. It was the third month of the Great War. Victor, though four years below the minimum age for recruitment, was keen to be part of the adventure and recruiting officers were happy to oblige bold youngsters by turning a blind eye. He later claimed he was drawn to the London Scottish because of his ancestry. There was probably another reason. In November 1914 the London Scottish was the first territorial attachment to be sent to the Western Front to participate in actual fighting. It became a glamorous regiment, whose recruits included several actors who were to become famous after the war, including Ronald Colman, Claude Rains and Basil Rathbone. Wayward son Rebellion was a feature of Silvester’s adolescence. By the age of 14 he had run away from two boarding schools and one day school. His father, John Silvester, was the vicar of Wembley, who vacated his parish in 1914 to serve as an army chaplain. It would be hard for a parent, particularly one in Holy Orders who also served in the army, to share in the deceit perpetrated upon the authorities by his son, but the chance to drill some discipline into his wayward offspring appeared attractive. The London Scottish might succeed where three schools had failed. There was a general agreement that authorities would not send recruits to the front line until they were 19. In November 1914 the chance that a 14-year-old’s life was in jeopardy seemed remote. In any case John Silvester, with his military connections, could ensure that a protective arm was placed around his son. His father’s role as guardian angel proved effective. Victor’s military action consisted of little more than training manoeuvres on the Surrey Downs. It became apparent that the authorities were aware of his real age and there would be little chance of him seeing action. The solution was obvious: he must seek a new regiment, one far removed from the influence of his father. He filled in an application form for the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders and was summoned to Stirling Castle for training. It was September 1916 and Victor Silvester was 16 years old. Now he claimed that he was 20 and this time he had to write down his age, something he had not had to do in 1914. Two factors explain this: first, the confidence that his father’s influence would not stretch to Scotland; second, a determination to participate in action. After initial training, Victor was despatched to the Western Front, where his desire for action was satisfied with a vengeance. It was April 1917 and the Argyll and Sutherlanders were about to participate in the Battle of Arras, described by Jonathan Nicholls as ‘the most lethal of any offensive battle fought by the British Army in the Great War’. The experience was brief but memorable. While waiting to move forward in a frontline trench, a German shell exploded close by and a colleague in front of him collapsed:

summoned back to the base camp at Étaples and given a series of mundane duties. If he wanted further action he would again have to rethink his strategy. The suggestion was put to him that he might consider becoming a volunteer with the Red Cross Ambulance service. Victor acted on the suggestion and so, in the late summer of 1917, he took the long rail journey to north-east Italy and became a stretcher-bearer with the British Volunteer Red Cross Ambulance Unit. It was again fortuitous timing. He arrived for the prelude of one of the decisive battles of the First World War, Caporetto. Controversial activities In 1978, just before he died, Victor was interviewed on the BBC TV early evening magazine programme Nationwide, during which he mentioned that, while serving on the Western Front, he had been part of a firing squad that had the task of shooting deserters. His description was graphic, but there was no mention of this in his autobiography, which had been published at the height of his fame in 1958. The Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders have no record of any of their troops being shot for desertion in France and the tone of the regiment’s handling of Victor seems to have been one of protection of a clearly underage soldier with a father of influence; the idea that he would be pitched into a firing squad, a notorious and unpopular role, seems unlikely. But it is possible that he might have volunteered and been loaned to another unit by the Highlanders; members of a regiment were usually reluctant to shoot their own. It is also possible that the Victor Silvester of 1958 would not want his name to be associated with such controversial activities at a time when he was a major star. At the end of his life he could afford to be more honest. The mystery has never been resolved.

The change of role from infantryman to stretcherbearer injected Victor with a new sense of purpose

He was the first man I ever saw killed, with both his legs blown off and the whole of his face and body peppered with shrapnel. The sight turned my stomach. I was sick and terrified, but even more frightened of showing it. But this harrowing incident was to be his only moment of action. Word got out that Victor was underage. He was

Inglorious cause Victor was 17 when he reached Italy. The contrast between the arena of battle he had just left and the one where he arrived was stark. His warfare would now be conducted in the midst of majestic mountains, where shells might crash into the sides of rocks sending fragments flying into the bodies of desperate soldiers. The combatants in north-east Italy were also less certain of their commitment. The Italians had been seduced into war by the promise of land from a defeated Austria. It was not a glorious cause and resentment grew among Italian troops. Victor’s new experience was going to be even more demanding than his last. The change of role from infantryman to stretcher-bearer injected Victor with a new sense of purpose, but he was soon to realise that voluntary ambulance work was no easy option, particularly in the savage circumstances of the Isonzo Front. As well as the dangers of a revitalised Austrian army, strengthened by large numbers of well-trained Germans, there were outbreaks of cholera, appalling roads to manoeuvre and too few ambulances to serve the wounded, particularly after the devastating defeat at Caporetto, when 10,000 Italians were killed and more than 250,000 taken prisoner. Vast sections of the Italian front line threw away their weapons and fled. Victor was witness to the debacle and watched as instant punishment was carried out on hordes of deserters who were shot on DECEMBER 2016 HISTORY TODAY 41

GREAT WAR sight. During his period as a stretcher-bearer Victor experienced a horror even worse than that of seeing a colleague blown to pieces alongside him at Arras. One day Victor lost contact with his unit and had to seek shelter in a barn for the night. Awaking early the following morning Victor became aware of an appalling stench and the presence of pools of congealed blood on the floor around him. He arose to investigate and detected that the blood had been trickling from the wall of the barn. When he felt the wall, he realised that it was an artificial structure built entirely from the corpses of Italian soldiers, a construction made from the soles of pairs of boots still attached to the dead troops. Strange bedfellows Despite this traumatic experience Victor flourished in Italy and was particularly fortunate in his commanding officer, George Macaulay Trevelyan. The contingencies of war can bring together strange bedfellows, including this pairing of the future doyen of ballroom dancing with the last of the great Whig historians, the great-nephew of Thomas Macaulay. The eminent academic had been keen to involve himself in the war but in 1914 he was approaching 40 and suffered from poor eyesight. The British government was anxious to show support for Italy, an ally it had lured onto its side despite the fact that it was in no position to provide serious military support. A voluntary ambulance unit was a token gesture, but if it was led by the most respected historian of Italian unification then the statement of intent would be clear. Trevelyan’s complete absence of military skills was more than compensated for by his gift for leadership. Victor came to have a huge regard for him and the feeling was clearly reciprocated. Just weeks after his arrival in Italy, Victor was wounded in the leg by flying shrapnel. Victor Silvester in the uniform of the London Scottish, 1914.

Trevelyan wrote home to Victor’s mother explaining the circumstances of her son’s injury and reassuring her of his well-being. He concluded the letter: Allow me to take this opportunity of expressing to you the affection which your son has already won among all his English comrades … He is certainly one who will be deservedly loved wherever he goes in life and he is besides made of sterling stuff. Victor’s courageous service with the ambulance unit was recognised by the Italian government after the war and he was awarded the Italian Bronze Medal for military valour. Soon after his involvement in the catastrophe of Caporetto, and in order to recuperate from his injury, Victor was given a period of home leave. It was while he was back at Wembley, in February 1918, that he reached his 18th birthday. He saw this as his opportunity to rejoin the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, no longer needing to lie about his age. He journeyed north once more and was reunited with his former regiment. He was quickly despatched with the third battalion to Kinsale, in southern Ireland, to assist in the suppression of Republican unrest still manifest in the wake of the Easter Rebellion of 1916. As always he threw himself into action with little concern for his own safety. He spent three days in hospital after being bludgeoned with a hammer by a Republican, whom he was hoping to arrest. It was while in Ireland that he was encouraged to apply for a commission. The application was successful and Victor concluded his remarkable First World War as a newly commissioned army officer. His extraordinarily courageous and varied career and the high regard in which he was held by his seniors meant that he was fast-tracked to the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst with the guarantee of generous assistance with fees. On the fateful afternoon of the tea dance at Harrods his career as an officer seemed assured. Sandhurst, though, was not to his liking. It was too much like the boarding schools from which he had escaped as a youngster. Dancing, he soon realised, was more his thing. Within weeks of meeting Belle Harding at the Harrods tea dance, he walked out of Sandhurst to try his luck in professional ballroom dancing. His progress was spectacular. By 1922 he was, in partnership with Phyllis Clarke, the world ballroom dance champion and a year later he opened his first dance school. In 1928 he published his hugely successful book Modern Ballroom Dancing, which sold 100,000 copies in a year and became the key text on modern ballroom dancing for generations. When he became frustrated with the quality and variety of the orchestral music that accompanied ballroom dancing, he started his own orchestra, which went on to sell more than 75 million records. In 1941 he began to broadcast ballroom dancing on the radio, when he hosted BBC Dancing Club. This became Television Dancing Club in 1948 which, in turn, became Come Dancing in the 1950s, now revived with spectacular success as Strictly Come Dancing. Victor Silvester’s contribution to dance was incalculable and he has every right to be considered the inspiration behind its new found popularity. It would be a shame, though, if the fame which accompanied his later years was allowed to overshadow the courage of the boy soldier who was so determined to represent King and Country in the First World War. Richard Hughes is a former Head of History.

42 HISTORY TODAY DECEMBER 2016

BRITISH EMPIRE

The cover of a jingoistic annual with Britannia in a chariot drawn by the British lion.

In the popular imagination, the archetypal British imperialist is the kind of daring young adventurer portrayed in the stories of Rider Haggard and Rudyard Kipling. But, reveals Will Jackson, those who settled the Empire were far more diverse than stereotypes allow.

Empire’s O Other Whites

N 11 AUGUST 1923 I STARTED WALKING.’ So began a letter sent by a Mrs Winifred Caldwell to the Earl of Athlone, Governor General of South Africa, in July 1925. We do not know where Caldwell was born or when she migrated to South Africa, only that she was British. With her husband struggling to find work, 10 children to support and no means of making a living, Caldwell decided to leave her home in the village of MacLear, on the banks of the River Mooi in South Africa’s Eastern Cape, and walk. For two years Caldwell and her children walked across South Africa, giving ‘an entertainment’ to the locals at every town they reached in order to earn food and shelter. ‘We walked’, wrote Caldwell, ‘for 3,014 miles. We suffered hunger and misery. My feet were often soaked in blood.’ It was heartbreaking, she said, to see her little children living such a bitter life. Caldwell begged the government not to take her children from her. Instead she asked for land. DECEMBER 2016 HISTORY TODAY 43

BRITISH EMPIRE If she only had a small plot, a cottage and perhaps some poultry with which to make a start, she was sure she could make good. ‘My husband is a sober, honest and hardworking man’, she wrote. ‘I too am willing to work hard.’ In appealing for land and by stressing her industrious character and that of her husband, Caldwell called to mind the ideal British settler at the high tide of Empire. As waves of emigrants from the British Isles fanned out across the globe during the later 19th century – 25 million in just 55 years – they brought about what the historian James Belich has termed a ‘settler revolution’, transforming environments, populating new settlements and largely destroying indigenous peoples and cultures. In North America, Australasia and southern Africa, a new Anglo settler world was forged, based on technological prowess and gentlemanly capitalism but no less dependent upon a shared and fiercely felt wellspring of cultural conviction. This was ‘the British world’, as a number of recent historians have termed it, a place in the mind and a historical moment by which the spirit of the British people appeared to bring a frozen picture to life: when hubris and history animated the backward peoples and places of the earth. So much rested, ideologically speaking, on the idea of the white man or woman as engine of historical change or, to mix metaphors, one of the millions of particle units diffused as if by natural law to spread the spirit of imperial Britain abroad. But as steamships and railways carried forth British civilisation, they also carried the Empire’s ‘other whites’: those who did not assume an imperial mantle or emulate the much lionised figure of the British imperialist overseas. These were not just misfits or bad apples: they were everyone that the imperial ideal was not. Imperial failure was not about a minority: it was about the mainstream. It was the default.

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ALDWELL’S CLAIM to have walked 3,014 miles might seem incredible. Petitioners seeking help from the British government usually wrote in ways to make them appear deserving. But are we really to imagine a single woman shepherding 10 young children on foot thousands of miles across the southern African veldt? One document on her file suggests that we might. At every town the family visited, Caldwell made sure she obtained the local magistrate’s stamp. On a creased and dogeared page of paper, Caldwell collected the stamps, a record of her journey on foot and proof for anyone who needed it that she really was ‘a genuine case’. From that page we can begin to reconstruct the Caldwell family’s walk. Many of the magistrates’ stamps are too worn to be legible but we can still see the progress of Caldwell and her children across the Boer republics and the British colonies that had joined just ten years previously to become the Union of South Africa. In the summer of 1925, with temperatures above 30°C, the family walked the breadth of the Transvaal, from the old gold-mining town of Leydenburg in the north to the maize fields of the Orange Free State in the south. Caldwell’s home at MacLear was then 400 miles away. We tend to think of the great travellers of Empire as men: the heroic explorers, the pioneers. Here by contrast is a woman and her children; only the man is missing. Stories of itinerant households with a female at the head

44 HISTORY TODAY DECEMBER 2016

Winifred Caldwell and six of her children, c.1925. Right: local magistrates’ stamps accrued during the Caldwell’s journey.

Stories of itinerant households with a female at the head travelling though South Africa may appear at first unusual, but stories like these allow us to challenge expectations

travelling through South Africa may at first appear unusual, but stories like these allow us to challenge expectations as to who Britain’s imperial forebears were and the kinds of experiences they enjoyed. Certainly the Caldwells were not the only British people wandering around southern Africa at the British Empire’s height. Search the colonial archives and you find their records, lodged in local magistrates’ reports, in police transcripts and in the case files of charities, welfare organisations and benevolent societies. In each and every case, investigations were undertaken into the character and circumstances of individuals variously described as vagabonds, vagrants, paupers and tramps. As colonial administrations developed new techniques for patrolling their territorial and maritime borders, they generated new kinds of records, documenting the lives of thousands of repatriates, deportees and prohibited immigrants – or ‘undesirables’ as they were often known. As they worked to police their internal borders – the social boundary lines separating white from black, colonisers from colonised – they examined with new vigour and attention to detail the domestic arrangements and family lives of those they categorised as white.

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Top: Heidelberg railway station, Transvaal, South Africa, c.1902, which the Caldwell family passed though. Above: Family on the veranda at their South African farmstead, c.1900.

O CONTEMPORARIES, these ‘other whites’ were a problem. They tarnished white prestige, they cohabited with Africans, they ‘went native’. Contemporary writing is replete with disdainful references to ‘poor whites’ and ‘degenerates’, ‘bad characters’ and ‘loose women’. It is precisely because these people were problematic, however, that we can reconstruct their lives. In attempting to control social and racial boundaries, the authorities could not help but describe the people who transgressed them. Until the later 19th century, the principal means for doing so was conferred by the Distressed British Seaman Acts. Dating back to the Napoleonic Wars, these laws enabled British consuls to repatriate stranded mariners washed up in foreign ports. Through the 19th century, as the British Empire expanded and the numbers of British emigrants increased, Distressed British Seamen morphed into Distressed British Subjects. Getting these people home, it was argued, was necessary not just for humanitarian reasons but to uphold British honour overseas. ‘Putting the question of humanity aside’, as one official noted, ‘there is the expediency of avoiding a public scandal.’ ‘It would be discreditable to the English name’, wrote another, ‘that such persons should be allowed to wander about in a denuded and half-starved condition.’ By the turn of the 20th century the numbers of impoverished Britons discovered across southern and central Africa had risen considerably. In January 1909, G.B. Beak, the British Vice Consul in Katanga, southern Congo, reported that the appearance of indigent whites was becoming an event of increasing frequency. Beak was writing from DECEMBER 2016 HISTORY TODAY 45

BRITISH EMPIRE Kambove, a ramshackle settlement amid the copper and tin mines then attracting itinerant whites from around the world. Kambove was 350 miles, or 15 days by foot, from both railway and telegraph. Distance made distress much harder to relieve. And yet, as Beak went on, ‘a White man cannot be allowed in the wilds to beg of the natives … It is for the sake of White prestige that his destitution should be concealed and that he should be returned to civilisation without delay’. Where the imperial presence was weak, where colonial power was attenuated, the problem of white distress proved especially dangerous. Those who knew Central Africa well, Beak concluded, understand ‘how essential it is in the midst of the black peril to give the impression, even if it be unreal, of the solidarity of race’.

basic imperative to siphon the genuine from the fraudulent cases endured but the grounds on which fraudulence and authenticity were detected grew infinitely more complex. At base was the endeavour to know the person: to discern their character and judge the significance of their family background for shaping their future life as a member of the ‘British race’. Case work gives us the means to reconstruct this history. In 1926, for example, the case of 10-year-old Arthur House and his six-year-old sister, Mabel, was taken up by the Cape Town police. The children’s father, who had migrated to South Africa from his home town in Kent, said that he had no control over his son; detectives found the boy ‘hanging around’ with ‘low class coloured companions’. Mabel, it was reported, was staying with her older sister, who was married to a Greek shopkeeper: hardly a healthy environment for a British girl. In July 1923, a CID detective was sent to the parents’ home. ‘Mrs House was up and dressed’, he reported, ‘but I will swear she had never washed her face.’ He continued:

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HE SOLIDARITY OF race was even more important in the British settler colonies, where British subjects did not intend merely to prospect, mine or travel through. Britons in Kenya, Rhodesia, Natal and the Cape were settling for good. They could hardly be stranded in a place to which they attempted to belong. As more and more British people came to identify the colonies as their home, it could no longer be assumed that Distressed British Subjects should be sent back to Britain. Poverty, distress and failure became colonial problems in ways they had never been before. What developed was a remarkable human traffic. Across and between cities, colonies, continents and seas, the failures of Empire were moved. Just as people sleeping rough today get moved on, so Empire’s great vagrant class were perpetually sent away, put on ships and trains to rid the colony in which they were apprehended of the financial and ideological burden that their presence entailed. But repatriation meant only a postponement of the problem: sending failures away did not work when immigration restrictions offered the surest means of fixing the problem at source. A far better solution was to investigate each case on its merits. Passage back to Britain (or to Cape Town in the case of British subjects born in South Africa) should only be provided if the applicant could show that he had family at home willing to support him or a good chance of a job. Deportation worked best in the case of undesirables and frauds. The deserving poor should rightly be rehabilitated in country, transforming paupers into upstanding British settlers, converting failure to success. In the wake of the First World War that project had spawned a complex web of systems and structures designed to discipline the recalcitrant and rehabilitate the deserving. In South Africa laws were implemented as sanction against interracial sex and ‘mixed marriage’. Vagrancy legislation enabled the imprisonment of destitute settlers. ‘Those judged ‘of unsound mind’ were confined to one of a string of psychiatric institutions. Across the settler colonies reformatories, industrial schools and labour camps worked to discipline the degenerate and the workshy. Homes for fallen women and friendless girls controlled female sexuality. Nursing homes, sanatoriums and Salvation Army hostels provided down-and-outs with temporary shelter. This all entailed a far more elaborate operation than did shipping home the destitute and the undesirable. The

46 HISTORY TODAY DECEMBER 2016

British magazine advertisement, c.1900.

She appeared to me to be in a dirty condition in general. All the Bed Clothing was in a dirty filthy condition. The room appeared to me as if it had not been swept for a week. … The whole of the family as I saw them struck me as being a dirty lazy lot, in fact too lazy to assist themselves.

Service in the colonial administration or indeed emigration itself allowed British men the chance to escape the obligations and constraints of their families back at home

measuring colour. Whites who failed to behave as whites should quickly discover their racial status to be not a given but a claim. Widows and women deserted by their husbands occupied an especially difficult position. Responsible for keeping a respectable home and for the raising of children, women carried a disproportionate burden in the work of maintaining white prestige. But empire also served as – to use John Tosh’s words – a ‘flight from domesticity’. Service in the colonial administration or indeed emigration itself allowed British men the chance to escape the obligations and constraints of their families back at home. Colonial governments circulated enquiries from women from across the Empire seeking the whereabouts of their missing men-folk. Whereas family networks, for some historians, served as the ‘sinews of empire’, in another light Empire appears as the enemy of family life. Women were both revered and demonised for their reproductive potential – a necessary asset but a ‘danger’, too, in settler colonies where blacks outnumbered whites by 50-1.

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In the colonies, unlike in Britain itself, the making of the deserving and undeserving poor was racialised. In lowerclass parts of town, from the copper-belts of Central Africa to the slum yards of Cape Town, British people were found living in close proximity to black and ‘coloured’ people. ‘My daughter is European’, said Alfred Fisher, ‘my first wife is European, my second wife is Coloured.’ Why he felt the need to make this explanation is not immediately clear, though neighbours reported Fisher himself to be a ‘slightly coloured man’. Marrying and having children ‘across the colour line’ not only degraded a settler’s social standing but raised doubts over his very whiteness. The charge of being ‘slightly coloured’ was effective in this regard because it was so open to suggestion. There was no objective way of

Illustration from the British series of posters, ‘Summer’s Oranges from South Africa’, c.1910.

E SEE THIS most clearly in the case records of child welfare societies. In 1908 South Africa’s first child welfare organisation was formed, Cape Town’s Society for the Protection of Child Life. Over the ensuing 30 years the society compiled many thousands of records, documenting in great detail the family lives of impoverished British migrants. While the society was concerned only with the upholding of a certain social and moral order in the impoverished quarters of Cape Town, its case histories yield a kaleidoscope of imperial history ‘from below’, routed through the complex, often haphazard journeys of those would-be settlers who pitched up in southern Africa in some degree of social, financial or emotional distress. Dozens of stories of poor white women emerge from these files. Women such as London-born Louisa Marshall, who sailed to South Africa in the wake of the South African War, or Boer War, with her husband but was deserted by him after the birth of their two children. After her husband was later discovered living in Canada, both Louisa’s children were taken into care. Or Dublin-born Ursula Rolfe, who travelled out to Cape Town with her husband in 1912 but found herself struggling to survive after he caught a ship back to England. Police reports disclosed that Ursula was ‘said to drink and have frequent visitors’. Her children were also taken into care. In the absence of men-folk, female character began to degrade. Poor white women were always more problematic than poor white men, precisely because they lacked the opportunities to disappear unencumbered. When their menfolk failed them, most often through their absence, women built relationships of friendship and support that paid little heed to dictates of race or respectability. The family, the ideal social unit for replicating British imperial culture DECEMBER 2016 HISTORY TODAY 47

BRITISH EMPIRE

overseas, was confounded by the necessity of Britons to forge intimate connections with people outside their biological kin: neighbours, colleagues, lovers and friends. Increasingly, therefore, attempts to rectify colonial failure focused on women and children and the relations that shaped the modern settler home. As imperial cities expanded, the image of the disorientated white man lost in the African ‘wilds’ became out of date. Yet colonial authorities increasingly encountered another kind of colonial failure, perhaps the most difficult to resolve of all. These were the old men of Empire: the hunters, soldiers, prospectors and pioneers of the high imperial, late Victorian years, who in their youth had typified the heroism of that moment and, with it, the assertive self-confidence of an ascendant British world, but who, by the 1910s and 1920s, had become anachronistic: human relics of a bygone age. Men like Herbert Goodridge, ‘an old British soldier down to the bone’ in the words of one official, who had gone to South Africa to fight in the Zulu Wars of the 1870s and had subsequently fought through eight campaigns against 48 HISTORY TODAY DECEMBER 2016

A Land of Sunshine, a British poster celebrating the Victoria Falls, 1926.

the Zulu, the Basutu, the Matabele and the Boers. Or John Winter, who served 13 years on India’s North-West Frontier before travelling to fight in the South African War of 18991902. By 1919 he was socially isolated, his health failing, lacking any family connections in South Africa. ‘My home is wrecked and I am dependent on others for food’, he wrote. ‘I think sometimes that perhaps I have earned a little more than this from my country.’

M

OST TROUBLING about southern Africa’s old white men was not the practical problem of how they were to be supported but the ideological one of what they seemed to represent. Like women deserted by their husbands, or children neglected by their parents, old white men were vulnerable. But the form that vulnerability took seemed to parody the hero myths of the imperial frontier. John Bowyer, admitted to the Valkenberg asylum in Cape Town in 1915, told staff that since 1877 there was not a campaign in South Africa in which he had not taken part. ‘He evidently has had a

John Lee, the ‘elephant hunter of Matabeleland’, Northern Transvaal, 1912.

Most troubling about southern Africa’s old white men was not the practical problem of how they were to be supported but the ideological one of what they seemed to represent chequered and adventurous existence’, noted one doctor. ‘I suspect a certain amount of fabrication’, recorded another. Harold Ward, 57 years old and a self-described traveller, told stories to anyone who would listen of shooting lions up country. John Lee, 85, who scraped a living by hawking copies of his typed out autobiography, remembered days hunting elephants in Matabeleland. ‘Once all powerful with the Matabele nation’, his pamphlet read, ‘Lee holds the world record for having shot 13 elephants in a single day.’ Stephen Hall, a shipwright from Dundee, claimed his house was ‘full of diamonds’. So did another Scot, 50-year-old Roger Merriman. ‘He expresses fantastic grandiose ideas’, Brownlee’s doctor recorded, ‘that his house is full of diamonds … that he built the Beira-Bulawayo railway … that he has vast sums invested in the Rhodesia mines.’ Belief in their fantastic wealth marked these men out as disturbed but echoed the iconography of Rider Haggard, Cecil Rhodes and the mineral revolution then transforming the subcontinent. At the colonial asylums, doctors struggled to ascertain how long an individual had been in southern Africa. Charles Lorimer remembered a previous life as a fruit farmer in Australia but did not know why or when he had left for the Cape. Nor did he know whether he was married or if he had any children; only that he had to get back to Rhodesia, where he had been prospecting for gold. Of Frank Harris, brought to the Wynberg jail outside Cape Town in 1893, almost nothing at all was known. Staff guessed him to be English and ‘about sixty years old’; Freyer himself insisted only that he had to ‘get out to fight the rebels’. Within weeks, he was transferred to the Robben Island asylum. We do not know what happened to him after that, though other mental patients spent 10, 20 or 30 years in southern African asylums, their families’ absence meaning they were

all but forgotten. On other occasions, family members back in Britain wrote letters for many years enquiring after their relatives’ health. It was rare for patients without family in the colony ever to be released. The records touched on here were found largely in South African archives and tell stories with South Africa at their heart. Perhaps the most pervasive imperial failure of all was the failure to be so neatly bounded. From the small towns of the Eastern Cape to the gold fields of California, from Durban to Dundee, British settlers were seldom settled. We discover them in moments when their movement was arrested: when they crossed borders, broke laws or contravened social norms. Yet failure might not be the most fitting way to describe these people’s lives after all. The story of Winifred Caldwell and her children is a sad one but it is no less striking for the resilience and the ingenuity it reveals. Caldwell’s ‘failure’ was only really an inability to conform to contemporary understandings of what colonial life should entail and to our own historical preconceptions of what might be encompassed by an imagined British world. Will Jackson is Associate Professor in imperial history at the University of Leeds and author of Madness and Marginality: The Lives of Kenya’s White Insane (Manchester University Press, 2013).

FURTHER READING Robert Bickers (ed), Settlers and Expatriates: Oxford History of the British Empire Companion Series (OUP, 2014). Bill Schwarz, The White Man’s World: Memories of Empire, Vol 1 (Oxford University Press, 2013). Ann Laura Stoler, Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power: Race and the Intimate in Colonial Rule (University of California, 2010). DECEMBER 2016 HISTORY TODAY 49

ANIMALS

Man’s Best Fiend

European power in the New World was established with the help of aggressive and intimidating dogs, specially bred for the purpose. And, as Tyler D. Parry reveals, the long history of canine violence against minority groups is still being written.

Such violence is ingrained in the very fabric of European and Euro-American colonial settler mentality Protestors against the Dakota Access oil pipeline are attacked by dogs, September 3rd, 2016.

50 HISTORY TODAY DECEMBER 2016

A Civil Rights activist is attacked by police dogs in Birmingham, Alabama, May 3rd, 1963.

I

NDIGENOUS PEOPLES gathered at the confluence of the Missouri and Cannonball rivers, near the Standing Rock Sioux reservation in North Dakota, on September 3rd, 2016 to protest against the threat that the Dakota Access Pipeline posed to the area’s water source. If the pipeline leaks, it will poison the water supply on which thousands of people depend. Amy Goodman covered the protest for the US televison programme Democracy Now!, recording video evidence that showed protestors peacefully gathered to obstruct the machinery. As they chanted, employees of a private security company, with dogs and armed with pepper spray, advanced against them, instigating a conflict hauntingly familiar to students of American history. The security team unleashed dogs against the crowd. One dog’s mouth showed traces of blood, suggesting a laceration deep enough to cut a victim’s skin. One woman revealed a bite mark on her chest and told a reporter: ‘I stood there unarmed yelling at them and they smugly looked at us and they smiled every time the dog lunged at us.’ The psychological damage inflicted by controlled animal violence is

considerable. For historians, a troubling aspect of the events in North Dakota concerns the targeted group and the imagery it conjures up. Some activists on social media noticed the similarities between the photos of Civil Rights protestors in Birmingham, Alabama in 1963 and those at the Dakota Access pipeline. They argued that both Native Americans and African Americans had been subjected to a similar degrading ritual of violence that debased humans below animals. Some even noted the haunting legacy of the Spanish conquistadors, who used dogs against the Taino Indians of the Caribbean. The use of dogs in this way is ingrained in the fabric of European and Euro-American colonial settler mentality, revealing a method of land appropriation that recalls the United States’ moves to acquire territories from native peoples. Until this is recognised in both the United States and elsewhere, most citizens will continue to believe such events are unfortunate mistakes, rather than systemic problems with a long history. Yet examining the history of canine violence in European and DECEMBER 2016 HISTORY TODAY 51

ANIMALS

Blood Hounds attacking a black family, from An Historical Account of the Black Empire of Haiti by Marcus Rainsford, early 19th century.

Euro-American colonialism is not an easy task. Dogs do not write their own history and few have written it for them. Only in the past two decades or so have scholars in the field of animal studies aimed to uncover the historical experiences of creatures that hold no verbal or literary commonalities with humans. Given the close relationship between humans and dogs, historians can examine how human-canine relations are expressed through episodes of camaraderie, domination and violent subjugation. Because of their propensity to be fiercely loyal, certain dogs have been bred and trained with the specific intention of racially subjugating those non-white populations that resisted imperial expansion. Conquistadors devastated indigenous communities with this method. Dogs sailed with Iberian colonists and were used to track, subdue and sometimes kill indigenous peoples. According to Bartolomé de las Casas, a Spanish priest who was an early proponent of universal human rights, known as the ‘Protector of 52 HISTORY TODAY DECEMBER 2016

the Indians’ and author of A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies (1542), Spanish colonisers in the early 16th century even left infants ‘to be devoured by their dogs’. The violence was ritualised and even earned the nickname aperreamiento (‘a dogging’), a process in which a person was literally thrown to the dogs. Where sources are available they show that indigenous peoples associated Spanish mastiffs in particular with the brutality of colonisation. Though omitted from many histories, European canines bolstered colonial ambitions by intimidating and attacking indigenous populations. Bloodhound Blues When people of African descent began to populate slave societies throughout the New World, canine violence was used to subjugate black slaves in a variety of humiliating ways. In reference to the United States’ troubled racial history, African Americans share a particularly complex history with dogs. The use of ‘slave hounds’ is one of the earliest

examples linking dogs to racial violence. Slaves fleeing the oppressive conditions of plantation slavery often had to evade the ‘bloodhounds’ trained by professional slave hunters to prevent their escape. Fugitive slaves agreed that these canines were formidable adversaries and saw them as the epitomy of the degradations of chattel slavery. In 1858 the ex-slave Tom Wilson showed evidence of his encounter with a pack of dogs used by a Louisiana slave hunter named Burke. When Wilson first fled New Orleans, Burke’s dogs overtook him, tearing his legs and body with their teeth. As with the woman at the Dakota Access protests, he showed evidence of his lacerated skin to an interviewer who, surprised by the noticeable marks, noted his scars were ‘formidable seams, extending up the calf and the above the knee joint’. These marks surely reminded Wilson of his tenuous existence in the United States, the bloodhounds symbolising the curtailment of true liberty for black Americans. According to an 1845 report in the National Anti-Slavery Standard, a slave was only free when they were ‘out of the reach of the bloodhounds’ and safely outside the grasp of the slave hunters. Even after the abolition of slavery in the United States in 1865, dogs continued to symbolise the violent oppression of African Americans. The dog attacks witnessed in Birmingham, Alabama in 1963 are just a small piece of this history. Convicts and prisoners sang of the ‘Bloodhound Blues’ as they fought to survive in the Jim Crow South. In 1963, the radical black nationalist Malcolm X explained to a moderator at the University of California, Berkeley how African Americans should respond to non-human policing: ‘If a dog is biting a black man, the black man should kill the dog, whether the dog is a police dog, a hound dog, or any kind of dog.’ Such memories resonate in contemporary memory, as dog units patrol America’s inner cities and disproportionately inflict damage against young black men. Track and discover The indigenous communities in North America share a similar history of systemic, interspecies violence, though compared with the African-American experience, the record for native peoples is far less robust. There are, however, a few clues. Historian Wendy Warren’s book, New England Bound: Slavery and Colonization in Early America (2016), describes the gruesome death of an indigenous man who was punished for his participation in King Philip’s War, a conflict between Native American inhabitants of New England and English colonists between 1675 and 1678. As he was deemed too old and ‘decreped’ for forced labour, many colonists called ‘to have him devoured by the dogs, but the tenderness of some prevailed’. By ‘tenderness’ they meant decapitation, believing it was a less violent, swifter death. Commenting on the morality that considered decapitation as a form of mercy, Warren suggests that ‘when the spectrum of treatment includes being eaten by savage dogs, usual standards seem less applicable’. English colonists’ desires to even consider this type of violence suggests it gained some regularity in the colonial period. In 1708 the Connecticut Assembly allotted 50 pounds ‘for the bringing and maintaining of dogs in the northern frontier towns in that colony, to hunt after the Indian enemy’. The United States government engaged in a conflict with the Seminole Indians in Florida in 1835, usually referred to as the Second Seminole War. Refusing to relocate from their traditional lands in Florida, the Seminoles resisted federal incursions and forced relocation. Seeking to use new tactics, the Florida territorial government imported Cuban bloodhounds in 1840 to track and subdue the rebellious population. These bloodhounds had already proved effective for the French and the British in dealing with black rebels in Haiti and Jamaica in the late 18th and early 19th centuries and the authorities in Florida expected them to have a similar effect on the Seminoles. Due to the Cuban bloodhound’s violent reputation, some citizens

protested, believing that no positive outcome was possible if such a strategy was used. The US military promised that the bloodhounds were only ‘employed to track and discover the Indians, not to worry or destroy them’. Observers in Florida described the animal as an imposing beast, feeding ‘liberally on bloody meat’. Ultimately, though, the hounds proved ineffective, as they were largely unaccustomed to tracking in the dense swampland of the Florida Everglades. The Seminoles, who had an intimate knowledge of their homelands, confused the bloodhounds’ olfactory senses by using the natural waterways of the region and easily evaded them. The US government and the authorities in Florida were embarrassed by their tactical blunder, believing it brought ‘odium upon the administration, and ridicule to the officers who proposed the employment of blood-hounds to act as allies of the American army’. Though humiliated by this failure, the United States did not abandon its use of dogs in response to indigenous resistance. During the Dakota War of 1862 the Governor of Minnesota, Stephen Miller, purchased dogs from southern breeders. The South had an appalling reputation for breeding dogs that tracked humans, particularly slaves. Though he was wary of employing bloodhounds, Miller was willing to try ‘any experiment that gives the least promise of sweeping these miscreants from the face of the earth’. Soldiers were sent to Tennessee to purchase dogs ‘trained to follow the scent of a negro everywhere to his death’, but soon found they were hoplessly ineffective at scenting the trail of the Sioux. According to Theodore Potter, a soldier who observed the hounds in action, the animals ‘would stick their tails between their legs and make a cowardly sneak in the opposite direction’. It was a repeat of the failures of the Second Seminole War and the dogs were retired and spread throughout Minnesota. Same method, different target These similarities between the experiences of Native Americans and African Americans are striking. Imperial expansion created a thirst for land acquisition, which required the submission of non-white populations. European dogs were first used by the Spanish against the indigenous peoples of the western hemisphere and British and French colonists attempted to replicate this system by importing dogs to hunt their own indigenous adversaries. As Native Americans were forcibly relocated to open lands so that slave plantations could expand, specific breeds of dog were systematically conditioned to confine Africans and African Americans to those same plantations. These events follow the same historical process: acquire land through forced removal and forced labour. The imperialists used the same methods, but simply switched the target when they needed to. The dogs used against the Seminoles in Florida and the Sioux in Dakota were selected because of the ability they had displayed in subduing black populations, leading some to assume that they would be highly effective in crushing indigenous revolts in the United States. As specially trained canines proliferated in Atlantic slave societies, so Euro-Americans tried to redirect their attention toward indigenous people. In each narrative of oppression the use of dogs against people of colour is a constant. Both indigenous groups and peoples of African descent resisted efforts to annihilate them. Both groups creatively evaded their pursuers by making use of their acute knowledge of the natural environment. And both groups share the scars of canine violence. The Dakota Access protests should encourage discussions about indigenous rights and the history of suppressing minority voices. The sort of violence experienced by Civil Rights protestors at Birmingham, Alabama in 1963 is not confined to history, but a living reality. Tyler D. Parry is Assistant Professor of African American Studies at California State University, Fullerton. He is currently researching the legal, political, intellectual, social, and cultural history of slave marriages among the African diaspora.. DECEMBER 2016 HISTORY TODAY 53

Portrait of the Author as a Historian The son of a country whose history had been written by outsiders, Chinua Achebe recognised the need for African literature with a Nigerian voice, writes Alexander Lee.

Educating America: Chinua Achebe at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, 1970s.

No.6 Chinua Achebe Born: November 16th, 1930, Ogidi, Nigeria. Died: March 21st, 2013, Boston, USA.

54 HISTORY TODAY DECEMBER 2016

WHEN University College, Ibadan opened its doors for the new academic year in the autumn of 1951, Nigeria was in the grip of political ferment. Since its earliest days as a British colony, it had been governed through a clumsy and unpopular system of indirect rule. Now, in the aftermath of the Second World War, its people were agitating for greater self-government. Earlier that year, the Governor-General, Sir John Macpherson, had introduced a new constitution granting limited powers to a House of Representatives. In the elections held over the following months, nationalist parties won victories in each of the colony’s three regions and demanded further reforms, which they hoped would pave the way for full independence. Then entering the third year of his studies, Chinua Achebe found himself swept along by a new Nigerian cultural consciousness. No longer willing to be bound by British colonial attitudes, writers, artists and musicians were beginning to articulate a distinct vision of Nigerian identity; and, like them, Achebe came to believe that, as an aspiring author, it was his duty to help foster this sense of Nigerian selfhood. Reclaiming the past Achebe had a clear sense of what this entailed. As part of his arts course, he had read not only Shakespeare, Milton and Wordsworth, but also modern writers, such as Joseph Conrad, Joyce Cary and Graham Greene. Although they were thought to be relevant to colonial life, he had been appalled by the ‘superficial picture’ of Africa they presented. In their different ways, they all articulated unmistakable racial prejudices. As Achebe pointed out many years later, Conrad’s novella Heart of Darkness (1899/1902) portrayed Africa as ‘the antithesis of Europe, and therefore of civilisation, a place where man’s … intelligence and refinement are … mocked by triumphant bestiality’. Africans themselves were denied any semblance of humanity and reduced to the level of mere animals. Such depersonalisation was, of course, dreadful enough. But what made this ‘obvious racism’ even more shocking was the fact that it also deprived the African peoples of their history as well. Set in pre-war Nigeria, Cary’s Mister Johnson (1939) assumed that theirs was a primitive and unchanging culture, which, lacking any sense of justice, devoid of political structures and dominated by crude superstitions, had

remained immune to wider historical developments. Only after they had been exposed to the ‘civilising’ influence of Christian missionaries and European colonists, Cary implied, had Africans begun to participate in the drama of world history. Achebe realised that, if Nigeria was to develop a sense of its own identity, its literature would not only have to be written from a Nigerian perspective, but would also have to reclaim the country’s past. It was to this task that he turned over the coming years in writing his first novel, Things Fall Apart (1958). Taken from W.B. Yeats’ 1920 poem ‘The Second Coming’, its title testified to Achebe’s determination to turn colonialist interpretations of history on their head. Whereas Yeats had believed that the political chaos of the early 20th century foreshadowed the end of Christianity, Achebe suggested that it was the coming of Christianity that had destroyed the rich culture of the Igbo people. Set in the 1890s, the novel traces the story of Okonkwo, an Igbo warrior, renowned as a skilled wrestler. After a woman is killed by a man from a neighbouring village, the murderer’s son, Ikemefuna, is taken as a peace offering and placed in Okonkwo’s care until his fate is decided. With time, Okonkwo grows fond of the boy; but, when the village oracle declares that Ikemefuna must die, he insists on participating in the killing lest he appear weak. From that moment, Okonkwo’s life begins to unravel. At a village elder’s funeral, he accidentally shoots the dead man’s son. To placate the gods, he must go into exile for seven years. He bears this stoically. Bu while he is away, the first Christian missionaries appear in the village and, after building a simple church, soon begin to win converts, including his son. Dismayed by this threat to their way of life, the elders are initially uncertain how to respond. When Okonkwo returns, however, he convinces them to defend themselves like warriors. Along with several others, he burns the church to the ground. Soon afterwards, they are arrested by colonial officials, who refuse to release them until a humiliating ransom is paid. This only infuriates Okonkwo further. At a meeting, he urges the village to wage war against the white man. But before a decision can be taken, colonial messengers appear and order the gathering to disperse. Snatching up his machete, Okonkwo cuts one of their heads off. The rest of the village is appalled by his

actions and unwilling to fight what they now regard as an unjust war. Realising that they will abandon him to the white man, he despairs. When the district commissioner arrives to arrest him soon afterwards, he finds that Okonkwo has hanged himself. New gods, old ways After Nigeria achieved independence in 1960, Achebe continued his reappropriation of its history. In Arrow of God (1964) he challenged the view that the spread of Christianity could be explained by its inherent superiority to traditional customs and instead suggested that, paradoxically, Christianity had been able to assume some of the Igbo religion’s social functions as a result of the enduring strength of traditional beliefs in a non-hierarchical society Based on a true story, the novel tells of Ezeulu, an Igbo priest who is imprisoned for refusing to serve as a warrant chief in the 1920s. While in

Achebe realised that history did not offer Nigerians any easy solutions. It was not a guide jail, he is prevented from observing the new moon and is therefore unable to announce the Feast of the New Yam when he is released. Given that the villagers cannot gather in their harvest until he does so, they beg him not to wait another month, as tradition demands. But he refuses. Locked in a struggle with the priest of a rival deity, he believes himself to be an ‘arrow in the bow of his god’ – and even suspects that the divinity was using the white man as a weapon of war as well. In the face of starvation, the villagers eventually ask the Christian god for help; and, as they do so, Ezeulu is driven to madness by the unexpected death of his son. Divide and be conquered But Achebe was no romantic. While he may have wished to rescue Nigeria’s history from colonialist attitudes, he did not want it to define itself by its past. Nigeria was, after all, a somewhat artificial entity, created by the British.

It comprised more than 500 ethnic groups, of which the Igbo, the Yoruba and the Hausa were merely the largest. Although they had shared many of the same experiences since the advent of colonialism, each had their own history. If they were each to define themselves by their own pre-colonial past, they would only be divided further – with devastating consequences for Nigeria. Already, tribal loyalties had begun to creep into the practice of government, bringing corruption in their wake. Achebe first warned of this in No Longer at Ease (1960). After receiving a British education, Obi Okonkwo – the grandson of the protagonist in Things Fall Apart – joins the civil service, determined to be honest. Finding himself unable to reconcile the Igbo’s traditional ways with his ‘modern’ outlook, he falls into debt and eventually accepts a bribe. This trend only pointed in one direction. In A Man of the People (1966), Achebe predicted that, if tribal loyalties continued to crowd out Nigerian patriotism, then corruption would eventually become so endemic that civil unrest would erupt, or there would be a coup. He was all too right. Soon after the novel was published, Major-General Johnson Aguiyi-Ironsi and then General Yabuku Gowon seized power. The following year, the Igbo-dominated Eastern Province seceded and the Republic of Biafra was declared, catalysing almost three years of bloody civil war. Achebe recognised that history did not offer Nigerians any easy solutions. It was not a guide. It did not prescribe any course of action, nor teach any lessons. It emphatically did not offer support for divisive tribal identities. Rather, it was a mirror. When divested of colonialist distortions, it could shatter the myth of European cultural ‘superiority’ and reveal the inherent value of traditional customs. It could – as Achebe argued in The Trouble with Nigeria (1983) – shed light on the nature and origins of the ‘problem of national integration’. And it could illustrate the need for a sense of national identity transcending all tribal loyalties. But most of all, it showed Nigerians that, instead of being slaves to their ancestors, they now had to make a new history – a new Nigerian history – for their children. Alexander Lee is a fellow in the Centre for the Study of the Renaissance at the University of Warwick. His book The Ugly Renaissance is published by Arrow.

Key works Things Fall Apart (1958) In his 1977 essay ‘An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness’, Chinua Achebe recalled an encounter with an American student in the 1970s. Learning that Achebe taught a class on African literature, the student said he had ‘never had thought of Africa as having that kind of stuff’. Achebe was not surprised: ‘For did not that erudite historian […] Hugh Trevor Roper, also pronounce that African history did not exist?’ Achebe resisted the ‘father of African literature’ epiphet often ascribed to him, though his best known work, Things Fall Apart, was among the first English language African novels to achieve worldwide acclaim. There were widespread calls to award Achebe a posthumous Nobel Prize after his death in 2013. DECEMBER 2016 HISTORY TODAY 55

REAGAN

FromtheArchive As new material becomes available to researchers, our picture of Ronald Reagan continues to evolve. Iwan Morgan shows how opinions of the 40th President of the United States have changed.

Bold Enough to Compromise IN AUGUST 2004 Glen Jeansonne wrote a nuanced appreciation of the recently deceased Ronald Reagan. At the time, non-scholarly hagiographies and hatchet jobs competed to shape popular understanding of the 40th president’s legacy. Academic historians had not yet gained extensive access to Reagan’s presidential archives, his presidential diary or his voluminous personal correspondence (he probably wrote more letters than any president since Thomas Jefferson). Over the next dozen years, however, new research enabled better understanding of Reagan’s leadership and legacy. Jeansonne assessed Reagan as neither a great president nor a mediocre one, a rather broad judgment but one that defied the prevailing scholarly tendency to underrate him. Today, many historians, whether favourable to Reagan or not, regard him as the most consequential president of the second half of the 20th century. He demonstrated that remarkable individuals can influence the course of history. Reagan was instrumental in halting the 50-year growth of federal government programmes, establishing low taxes as a fundamental element of America’s political culture, restoring the Republican party to parity with the Democrats, giving impetus to a fledgling conservative movement and bringing near to conclusion the 40-year Cold War with the Soviet Union on terms favourable to the US. While many 21st-century conservatives think he engineered a Reagan Revolution, this catchy alliteration claims too much. He moved America rightward without making it a conservative nation, but this was still a significant transformation following the prolonged liberal ascendancy of the mid-20th century. 72 HISTORY TODAY DECEMBER 2016

Somewhat underplayed in Jeansonne’s review is Reagan’s success in revitalising the presidency after the Vietnam war and the Watergate scandal had diminished its authority. On assuming office, Reagan acted swiftly to cut taxes, shrink discretionary domestic spending and expand defence outlays, a focused agenda that he largely achieved during his first year as president. Reagan took substantial political risks to achieve his objectives. The

Reagan showed that some individuals can influence the course of history blitzkrieg of 1981 could have ended in failure had the Democratic majority in the House of Representatives maintained unity. The 1983 authorisation to begin research and development of the Strategic Defense Initiative was a presidential move that aroused opposition within his own administration and Congress but ultimately helped break the Cold War deadlock. Reagan’s willingness to engage in second-term nuclear-arms reduction negotiations with Soviet premier Mikhail Gorbachev encountered dissent from Pentagon hawks, members of the foreign policy establishment and hard-line conservatives (who disdained accommodation with godless communism). Reagan’s unstinting optimism helped restore widespread popular confidence in America’s future after the turmoil of the 1960s and the misery of the 1970s. Yet this outlook inhibited acknowledgement that there were many Americans who still needed the government’s help to get. He was slow to support AIDS sufferers

and never used his bully pulpit to inspire popular understanding of their plight. He failed to appreciate that African-Americans needed a benevolent state to protect them from racial discrimination. Though not himself a bigot, he misunderstood how deeply embedded racial problems were in the United States. Whatever his flaws, Reagan demonstrated the capacity of the American presidency for effective leadership at home and abroad. Whether the changes he promoted made the US a better country or not is an ongoing debate. But his capacity to combine conviction with pragmatism offers lessons for politicians of all hues. Reagan usually demonstrated a finetuned instinct for when boldness would be rewarded and when compromise was necessary – and when compromise was itself bold, as he showed in negotiating arms reduction with Gorbachev, arguably still the greatest single achievement of any US president since 1945. Iwan Morgan is Professor of US Studies at University College London and the author of Reagan: American Icon (I.B. Tauris, 2016).

VOLUME 54 ISSUE 8 AUG 2004 Read the original piece at historytoday.com/fta