Tag: 20th Century

• Devoted Admirers and Bitter Enemies – Assessing our current understanding of T. Dan Smith Part 3: Sources

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  If you are unfamiliar with the history of T Dan Smith, it is advised that you read part 1 (‘Local Hero or Corrupt Councillor?’) and part 2 (‘Which Way to Utopia’) before reading this.

  Thomas Daniel Smith will always exist as a controversial figure, a polariser of public opinion. For the people of Newcastle-upon-Tyne his legacy is unavoidable, it is spread all over the city in the form of vast swathes of concrete, often ill-repaired and forgotten, which speak of a separate world from that of the Victorian terraces and Georgian streets. For some, his imprisonment on charges of corruption in 1974 was a justice well served to a politician who had taken advantage of the city to better himself and those close to him. For others, and for Smith himself, he had been pilloried by a political establishment who saw him as a threat to their own authority and made the scapegoat for higher ranking officials who were the truly corrupt forces at play. As he put it, he had to be disposed of because he ‘wasn’t one of them’. The three sources I investigate herein have been chosen to help me examine the character of T. Dan Smith in public life and understand how the public perception of him has been informed by the media that portrayed him. Primarily however I examine the man’s vision and assess whether his passionate talk of creating a ‘new Brasilia’ was merely a show to cover his untoward deeds or whether it did truly represent a devotion to positive change. Ultimately, I will conclude that these sources indicate that he did.

  The earliest of my three sources dates from 1969, before allegations of Smith’s involvement in corruption came to the fore. It is a booklet distributed by the Northern Economic Planning Council (NEPC) which sets out its vision for north-east development over the next 12 years up toward 1981. Smith was the chairman and head of the NEPC at this time and he wrote in the foreword to the document that it should be ‘given the widest possible circulation within the region’. It is a statement of desire for the future and I will be assessing it to determine exactly what Smith envisioned he could achieve in the region if his tenure had not been cut short by a jail sentence 6 years later. It also shows us what Smith though most important to communicate to the people of the region.

  The second of my three sources dates from 1971, three years before Smith would be convicted on charges of corruption, however it does still originate from a time when Smith was embroiled in allegations of corruption brought against him. The source itself is a correspondence between Smith and Henry Parris (Smith’s friend and a lecturer in politics at Durham university) and it follows straight after a 1971 corruption trial for which Smith was found not guilty. Parris’ letter to Smith also includes an attached newspaper article from the guardian which he explains is from where he learned about Smith’s trial. I will be using this source to assess public attitudes towards Smith before he pleaded guilty to corruption and to examine how he was depicted in the media during this tumultuous time.

  My final source dates from 1987, after Smith had been released from jail and somewhat receded from the public eye. It is a documentary film produced by Newcastle-based studio “Amber Films” which includes interviews with Smith and with several other persons from his history. From this source we get to assess Smith’s responses to the allegations made against him and how his legacy was remembered publicly after his spotlight had since faded.

  The NEPC booklet does not provide an optimistic view of the future for the north-east, indeed, it is resolved to a process of damage mitigation; using phrases such as ‘the region cannot hope to halt net outward migration’ and ‘heavy job loss… will almost certainly continue into the mid-1970s’. At initial observation this does not align well with T. Dan Smith’s notion that he could turn Newcastle into the ‘Venice of the north’, as he would sometimes claim. However, reading further into the NEPC’s policy proposals reveals that this is not the case. This is because the document outlines a strategy of concentrating all resources towards certain key areas of economic activity within the region at the expense of others; Newcastle being the foremost of these chosen areas. In astonishing brusqueness, as this document was made widely available to the general public, it pronounces that ‘There is no point in pretending that all the communities which now exist in the region will be capable of surviving’ and states that ‘this policy would accept… a gradual rundown of some of the less favourably placed communities’. The spines around which these ‘growth areas’ will be built were the proposed ‘growth corridors’; an idea based on the conclusion that roads are critical to the economy and that investing in road infrastructure will bring wealth to the area that surrounds them. This came to Smith through his city planner Wilfred Burns who took much inspiration from modern American cities. This is why most of the “new towns” built during this period, such as Washington and Meadowfield, were deliberately based around ‘motorway interchange points’. Comparing the map showing proposed ‘growth corridors’ against a concurrent plan for road extensions reveals how exactly these two plans align. Indeed, the ‘main growth corridor’ aligns exactly with the line of the A1 motorway.

  This document reveals the harsher side of Smith’s visionary rhetoric. Within this document genuine and practical belief is shown in the ability of Newcastle to foster ‘seeds of future growth and prosperity’ but this is acknowledged only at the expense of other areas in the region. What this does help us acknowledge however, is the practicality at the heart of Smith’s vision; he does not outline a perfect scenario and nor does he claim to hold all the answers, but he does want to attempt an ambitious strategy for turning the fortunes of the region around. This is not a document produced by a man who does not understand the realities of his situation and is a demonstration of Smith’s unreservedness in communicating to the people of the area what he intends to realistically achieve.

  It is interesting therefore to see in the newspaper article attached to the letter sent from Henry Parris to Smith how the media of the time portrayed this unreserved vision. What is immediately communicated through this source is the real respect and influence he had garnered for himself despite the allegations brought against him. He is described as the man who ‘virtually invented regionalism’ and the article plays up his “rags to riches” tale, a man ‘unfettered by formal education’. The context of this article within this correspondence via letter also enforces the conclusion that Smith was well thought after, a foreword stating that he had received ‘hundreds of messages’ of support. Smith’s determination to carry on with his work is also evident here, which he states very plainly in both his newspaper interview and his personal reply to Parris: ‘I am planning my diary again with confidence’. It is interesting and slightly sad to note this optimism in the knowledge of his imprisonment that would follow this correspondence only 3 years later.

  However, there is a clear subtext to pick up when assessing this source which does imply that Smith had his detractors at this time, which he certainly did. A fault of this source is that it does not fully represent the other side of the argument as it only includes comment from those predisposed towards Smith: his friend and a newspaper which broadly aligns with himself politically. Nonetheless when Parris writes that ‘I felt I could not remain silent’ or when the paper writes that Smith commanded over a ‘reluctant Newcastle-upon-Tyne’ it is made clear that Smith was not universally admired. Indeed, overall across all of the three primary sources I examine the picture developed of T. Dan Smith is a mixed one, a man who attracted ‘devoted admirers and bitter enemies’. 

  Certainly the 1987 Amber documentary brings the conflicting elements of Smith’s career to the fore, using its two narrators as points from which to argue the two sides of the story; one a detractor and the other a supporter. The film shows a society which finds it difficult to come to grips with Smith’s character, a man who cannot be simply labelled into the category of hero or villain. In particular its interviews with members of the general public of Newcastle prove enlightening; an ambivalent atmosphere flows through all of these conversations which seem to both condemn and praise at the same time. One man states: ‘He did a wonderful job for the town, but unfortunately he was found out’ and another: ‘to me he’s a criminal… but now he’s more or less hailed as a hero’. The interviews with Smith himself show a very different character to that seen in the newspaper and the NEPC document. These detail him as a bold and harsh character, not afraid to offend in order to get things done. Now, after his time in jail, the man set before us is defensive and calculating, carefully choosing his words to justify and explain his former selves. In regard to the public opinion of himself, he says that people seem to ‘reflect the society that was able to convince them of what ever they want to be convinced of’, in other words, he feels the public have been misled as to his role in the wider corruption scandal involving the architect John Poulson and the conservative home secretary Reginald Maudling. His view is now that he was made a scapegoat for ‘bigger fish’, and although he did plead guilty to charges of corruption he now claims to be innocent.

  Certainly, his decision to appear on such a program does lend a legitimacy to his assertions. We see him now, still living in Newcastle, in one of the very concrete towers he laid the foundations for. He lives no ‘life of luxury’, as one of the citizens claims, he appears as he proclaims himself, cast out. Overall the feature does portray Smith in a sympathetic light and does not take such a balanced view as it wishes you to believe it is taking. It is another example, as with the newspaper, the letter, and the NEPC booklet, of people being swept along in the wake of T. Dan Smith. Through all of the sources his personal drive and commitment appears infectious on those around him, a naturally likeable character.  

  What these sources all indicate is that T. Dan Smith did have a genuine vision and love for his home city. As to the extent of his involvement in the corruption scandal I do not believe these sources provide enough information to make an informed assessment of that. What they do show is that across time, from his heyday to his downfall to the present, he remains a man who can inspire passion in those around him.

  Author/Publisher: Louis Lorenzo

  First Published: 3rd of August 2018

  Last Modified: 3rd of August 2018

  2018.08.03

• Which Way to Utopia? Assessing Our Current Understanding T. Dan Smith Part 2: Historiography

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  If you are unfamiliar with the history of T Dan Smith, I recommend that you read part 1 (‘Local Hero or Corrupt Councillor?’) before reading this.

  For this article I have chosen eight pieces of historiography surrounding the life of T. Dan Smith to review. Due to the relatively small amount of published material on T. Dan Smith I believe these to be sufficient to fully cover the historiography.  Primarily, I will be assessing how attitudes towards Smith’s legacy have evolved over the years, relating to his charges of corruption and his personal vision for the city of Newcastle-upon-Tyne. I highlight a clear transition in the historiography, which progresses from the notably negative appraisals of the early 1980s towards the far more positive revisions of later years; all culminating in Chris Foote-Wood’s 2010 text which boldly proclaims Smith as ‘NOT GUILTY AS CHARGED’. I will finally evaluate whether the historiography overall has provided a conclusive narrative on the figure of T. Dan Smith, and decide that there are still many unanswered questions surrounding his character to be explored.

  The earliest major text to be released about T. Dan Smith is his own: “An Autobiography”, which was released in 1970 before any corruption charges were brought against him. In contrast to later sources Smith’s own text carries a far more nonchalant tone, not cast in the harsh light of criminality. Indeed, Smith gives the impression of a man stepping back from ‘my public life’; by its very nature an autobiography indicates a conclusion, a summary of one’s achievements in the assumption of the best being behind you. One consistency with later sources is the emphasis placed on Smith’s working-class youth and the impact of the Second World War (WW2) on Smith’s life (perhaps because the later sources had no other source material to work with apart from Smith’s recollections). What Smith emphasises is his love of the radical politics of the post-WW2 era which gave birth to the national health service, and his disappointment in how quickly after the fact politicians turned instead to ‘petty things’. Certainly Smith casts himself as somewhat of a visionary, someone who had brought us back to ‘those radical days of 1945’. He regards the brutalist architecture executed under his stewardship, a factor so often used against him in later evaluations, as a prime example of this future-facing attitude, describing the buildings as being of ‘the highest standard and best design’.

  In 1975 a small article was released from an Australian university interested in local government studies which discussed Smith’s political career. However, it makes no reference to the corruption trial that had taken place only one year hence. Furthermore, the article is particularly positive, saying that Smith ‘engendered an optimistic and dynamic attitude’ in the city council. If nothing else, this article shows the unusual impact Smith had on the political sphere in his time; few leaders of local councils are written extensively about at all, never mind from across the globe.

  After this point no major evaluations of T. Dan Smith are released until, in typical form, two come very close together in the early 1980s. These are by far the most condemnatory texts on Smith to be released. The first of these, “Nothing to Declare”, primarily focusses on John Poulson, but the text devotes an entire section to Smith. It casts him as a young visionary socialist with good intentions who lets himself get corrupted by Poulson and the system at large. It proclaims that ‘by the end the vision was gone, replaced with tawdry self-interest’. In the context of itself the text builds a strong case against Smith, using extracts from letters sent between Smith and various other figures as evidence. In the most damning of these correspondences Smith writes that a potential employee must ‘be unaware of any tie between J. G. L Poulson and me’. However, the provenance of these extracts is often unclear and always appears mixed in with passages of hearsay and speculation which somewhat degrades the argument. Smith is quoted as having said ‘I support the building of council houses, but that does not mean I want to live in one’ but no source is provided. Indeed, later in life Smith did live in a council house. There is a distinct sense that the main desire here is to neatly slot Smith in to the overall narrative on Poulson presented, describing Smith as Poulson’s ‘chief lieutenant’, Poulson of course being the ‘arch corruptor’.

  The second of these texts, “Web of Corruption”, places Poulson and Smith in the exact same relationship, even using the term ‘lieutenant’ in just the same context. However, the differences between these two texts are more pronounced than may initially appear, because although they hold similar sentiments towards Smith, they are marketed towards different audiences. Web of Corruption is a text aimed toward a far wider audience than Nothing to Declare, the large red font over the bright yellow cover immediately catching the eye. Its attacks on Smith are a viscious spectacle, describing him as a ‘con’ who was nothing more than a ‘moderately gifted amateur’. It paints a vivid image of a ‘socialist hero’ who has fallen from grace to become ‘unemployed but almost friendless, isolated but not ignored’. This text more than any other demonstrates the public appeal of Smith’s character and case, a man who had lived such a public life now finding his fame turned against him. Rather hypocritically the text goes on to criticise Nothing to Declare for sensationalism, describing it as looking for ‘another Watergate conspiracy’. Contrarily I believe Web of Corruption to be a far more sensationalist piece, looking to attack anyone associated with the Poulson scandal. No references are provided and in all the text is more interested in human tragedy over hard evidence.

  In contrast to these highly critical texts, the later 1980s saw a selection of material which did not cast Smith in as much of a devilish tone. Two documentaries produced at similar times both seek to somewhat revaluate his character. They do not claim that he was innocent of corruption but do begin to frame this affair as a case not so firmly closed. The first of these, a 1986 British broadcasting corporation (BBC) production entitled “T. Dan Smith”, describes him as a good man manipulated by private business into doing bad things. The key difference here is that it does not describe him as being “corrupted”, he himself has not turned onto a dark path; instead others have manipulated him. The film also gives more time to his achievements, casting him as the ‘pioneer and prophet’ of local government and giving him the title of ‘a modern crusader’. This together with the second of these documentaries from Amber Films gives the impression that, after enough time had passed, the public were willing to reassess Smith’s character.

  The 1987 Amber Films production, “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Utopia”, takes a similar position to the BBC film; although where the BBC film takes a more neutral stance, A Funny Thing is quite sympathetic towards Smith. The style of the production as half documentary half drama points, in the same fashion as Web of Corruption, to the popular appeal of T. Dan Smith. His story is exciting and his personal involvement as both a character and an interviewee highlights his own desire to be fictionalised. A Funny Thing takes great interest in the conspiracy surrounding the idea that Smith was made a scapegoat for higher powers, such as Reginald Maudling and the privy council, an idea that Smith is happy to engage with in proclaiming that he had been ‘fitted out’ because he ‘wasn’t one of them’. There is talk of a ‘power above parliament’, a dark underworld which still remains uncovered. What strongly comes across in the interviews with Smith is how incredulous he feels in how he has been treated by the media, angry at an injustice done against him. Overall the film does not acquit Smith of guilt but makes no compromise in eulogising his vision for the city as a ‘new Brasilia’, although concluding that the result of his work did not match his ambition.

  In 1993 a thesis entitled “The New Brasilia?” takes a further step toward favouring Smith. The thesis does not tackle the allegations of corruption but does seek to assess whether Smith’s vision for the city was ‘harmful or beneficial’, and then to conclude if he did ‘realise [his] goals’. It also goes somewhat into the state of Tyneside before Smith took over in 1965, noting that unemployment at that time was twice the national average, a statistic which Smith helped reverse. In its conclusion the thesis is surprisingly positive, describing Smith’s assessment of the issues that Newcastle faced as ‘basically correct’ and his solution as a ‘relative success’. The New Brasilia decides that, in the context in which it was carried out, Smith’s redevelopment was good for the city in its ability to stimulate the local economy and deal with traffic problems, and that his vision was sound.

  Ultimately, we are brought to the 2010 text “Voice of the North”, which inverts all assessments of Smith thus far. The text frames itself as a “myth buster”, carefully going through all the allegations made against Smith and rebuffing them. It seeks to reinstate Smith as the proud figure of north-eastern regionalism he once was before the 1970s. The text goes through many of Smith’s achievements which are not discussed in any of the previous sources, such as his opposition to modern developments on the picturesque Grey street and to the bulldozing of the holy Jesus hospital which was shockingly described by the northern architectural association (NAA) as ‘not of the first importance’. It also goes to lengths to disassociate Smith from many of the concrete edifices so often linked to his name, pointing out how many of these were built after his tenure. Most strikingly of course, the text absolves Smith of his crimes entirely, favouring the view that he was ‘ground down’ into confessing his guilt by the press, the public, and other politicians. In regards to the specific case for which Smith was charged I find the argument convincing that he was indeed not guilty but overall I do not find myself persuaded as to his innocence in other matters, and indeed upon the book’s release there was resistance to this notion. Although I would regard this as the most historiographically sound of the sources I have reviewed I do believe it’s take on T. Dan Smith to be slightly too reverential. It is understandable why this may happen as a reaction to the previously overly-negative material, but a more balanced view would be appropriate.

  Across these eight pieces of historiography a clear progression is visible surrounding our appraisals of T. Dan Smith. In entirety this has been a trend towards the positive, both in terms of his vision and his charge of corruption. In all it is clear however that no conclusive narrative has been produced on the figure of T. Dan Smith, and questions over his innocence and his intentions still remain.

  Part 3 will look at the primary source material we have available about Smith and will ask whether it is substantial enough to come to some judgements about his case and character.

  Author/Publisher: Louis Lorenzo

  First Published: 21st of May 2018

  Last Modified: 1st of June 2018 (Grammar Corrections)

  2018.05.21

• Local Hero or Corrupt Councillor? Assessing Our Current Understanding T. Dan Smith Part 1: Introduction

  This article will initially seek to introduce you to T. Dan Smith and the debates that exist surrounding his political and personal careers. It is deliberately short and omits much fine detail however this is in service of its central aim: to peak your interest in this topic and spark some enthusiasm for the mysteries presented herein.

  To summarise: Smith was born in 1915 to a working-class family in the city of Newcastle-upon-Tyne in the north of England. His parents were communists, and in his youth, Smith joined the revolutionary communist party himself. He was a conscientious objector to the second world war and honed his skill for oration during this time whilst making impassioned speeches which criticised the British state. At the back of all his speeches he would always spot the same man, whom he would later discover was an MI5 operative tasked with watching him.

  After the war he moved away from communism toward the labour party and rising through the ranks eventually found himself elected as leader of the city council in 1959. His time in office is controversial. As such I will present to you here the two narratives you will generally encounter when looking at Smith, the positive and the negative.

  The Positive

  T Dan Smith had a vision for Newcastle as a city reborn, the ‘Venice of the north’, and he hired planners and architects from around the world to build his new utopia. Newcastle became the first city in the UK to clear all its slums, and in their place tall towers were erected alongside modern blocks of offices and flats. Many of these were efforts of much-needed social housing, including the famous Byker wall. The whole road network was redesigned in tandem with the pedestrian footways; the entire structure planned to completely separate pedestrians and cars through an intricate network of tunnels and “sky walkways”. Smith also oversaw huge investment into local arts institutions, as well as the creation of the city’s first university and a profitable shopping centre. Few cities in the modern day see such investment. He is known as ‘the inventor of regionalism’ for his refusal to move to a better paid job in Westminster in favour of standing up for his home region, little wonder he was known as ‘the voice of the north’.  He was wrongfully accused of corruption, taken advantage of by the truly corrupt forces above him in higher government who didn’t like that he was a strong independent voice for the north that didn’t play nice with the political establishment.

  The Negative

  T Dan Smith almost ruined the city of Newcastle. The elegant Georgian streets were demolished in favour of monstrous grey blocks of concrete. The skyline was now dominated by towers which gave no effort to integrate themselves with the existing landscape and walkways which lead to nowhere. The greatest insult of all being that all this was done for his own personal gain. By hiring his own firms and those of his friends with government contracts, Smith made money hand-over-fist through underhand deals and unethical accounting. His contact with the notoriously corrupt architect John Poulson only implicates him further. He lied to the people of Newcastle for his own gain and his 1974 jail sentence of only 6 years was criminally short. He may have claimed he was a socialist, but when the money was in front of him he preferred to line his own pockets.

  Guilty or Not Guilty?

  So which narrative is correct? At this current stage, this is an unsolved mystery. You know as well as I. At the time the general opinion in the public and the media was that he was guilty. Having previously been a media darling, Smith found his popularity turned against him. However, over time that opinion has slowly began to change, and recently a book was published which proclaimed smith ‘not guilty as charged’. The case is far from closed. Is it not fanciful to believe that smith was framed by MI5 as he claims? But is it not also naïve to dismiss this claim, given we known this was a scandal which went deep into the heart of government?

  His guilt is not the only question however. How about his legacy? Built corruptly or not, were Smith’s modernisations the right thing to do for the city? It’s hard to argue that the grey blocks as they stand today are particularly aesthetic, but it wasn’t Smith that dictated the architectural style of the time, these buildings were built everywhere. It’s also true that Smith never got to finish his vision for the city, would the whole network have worked better if it had been completed?

  There are so many more questions to answer and mysteries to unravel. For example: why did Smith plead guilty in court but protest before and after that he was innocent? Answers are intended to be found! Part 2 will be my assessment of all the material produced about Smith thus far, and my argument for why there’s still more to be done.

  Author/Publisher: Louis Lorenzo

  First Published: 21st of May 2018

  Last Modified: 22nd of May 2018 (Grammar Corrections)

  If you’re interested in learning more you can watch this fascinating documentary from Amber Films.

  2018.05.21

• Imperialism Personified: A Brief Evaluation of Evelyn Baring’s “Modern Egypt”

  Even in 1908 it was apparent to many people that Modern Egypt was written with an agenda. Indeed, critics within Britain and Egypt accused Lord Cromer of peddling ‘half-truths’ and using his text as a ‘velvet glove [to hide] the iron hand of his own jealous autocracy’. It was felt by many that the whole text was, ostensibly, lying to the British public who were almost entirely ignorant of Egyptian and Sudanese history. In this extract, the way Baring casts aspersion across the entirety of Egyptian history is extraordinary; he has no qualms in simply stating that Egypt has been misgoverned ‘from Pharaohs to Pashas’. Edward Said identified this as a central facet of imperial “orientalism”, the notion of a “timeless orient”, somewhere that, unless there is outside intervention, will never change. It is an idea that therefore justifies a British presence in Egypt.

  In Egypt’s case this is especially relevant as Britain often saw the country as not only unchanging, but childlike. Alfred Milner, one of Baring’s contemporaries, was most influential in bringing this idea to the fore, claiming that Egypt had ‘dwindled to insignificance’. Said also comments on this, explaining that infantilising Egypt was important to the paternal role that Britain wished to play in its relationship with the country, in control but also in favour, offering a ‘hand of fellowship and encouragement’ to its guileless subject. In this text, Baring is considering Egypt as infantile in two areas, ‘morally and materially’. On a material level he is referring to infrastructure and capital, and on a moral level he refers to “work ethic”. In both of these cases he is arguing that British intervention is solely for the benefit of the native people, as one faithful reviewer commented at the time; Britain is ‘animated at no time by the slightest influence of personal greed’. However, it is evident today through the work of historians such as A. G. Hopkins, that Egypt was a great source of income for many British bondholders who held as much as 50% of the country’s wealth, and whose interests were a large factor behind the original occupation of the country. 

  Religion is another key area that Baring picks out as underdeveloped within Egyptian society. Interestingly however, throughout Modern Egypt Baring is careful not to completely discredit Islam, but instead proselytise the greater benefits of ‘Christian civilisation’. Here also the notion of a childlike state comes into play in that Islam is good for ‘a primitive society’ but that only Christianity will bring you a fully adult state. There are two main reasons why Baring would criticise Islam so heavily yet not fully condemn it. The first is that he knows it would be an impossible task to attempt to convert ‘ten million native Egyptians’, both on a spiritual and logistical level. Secondly, as Said also comments, another central idea in creating an image of “the orient” is to keep it distanced from yourself. By supporting the continuation of Islam, Baring is allowing Egyptian society to continue acting as a “constitutive other” to the western world. Because Britain defines its superiority via the differences it holds between itself and the “the orient”, it is crucial that those differences remain pronounced. However, some scholars such as Humayun Ansari and Kenan Malik have argued against this notion, saying that the creation of such as “constitutive other” was not a consideration of Baring or other colonial officials and that Said conflates western thought with western imperialism. Ansari points out that there was no one idea between states, groups, or individuals of what “the other” was, and thus the idea could never take effect. Malik argues that Said’s view reinforces east/west divisions by placing all agency on the west in creating an “other”; the east therefore appears passive in not being able to change either itself or western opinion of itself.

  For all historians it is generally difficult to assess Baring’s true motives within this text, this is because the internal logic of Modern Egypt is constantly in flux. Just within this section Baring indicates that Britain both accidentally and intentionally conquered the country. In the first paragraph he suggests that Britain simply “found” Egypt and decided to help, yet in the next it appears he has been ‘guided… by his forefathers’ to his current position. This confusion at least reveals the one clear motive behind Modern Egypt; Baring’s attempts to desperately try and clear his name. He was facing criticism in the press for his handling of Egypt and Sudan, and was often blamed for the death of General Gordon, who was now solidified as a national hero. He was also associated with the infamous ‘Denshawai Incident’, in which several villagers were wrongly imprisoned and hanged for the death of a British officer, for which one critic pronounced, ‘the blood of the innocent rises up against us’. It is easy to see Baring as imperialism personified; controlling, powerful, and paradoxically senseless.

  Author/Publisher: Louis Lorenzo

  First Published: 1st of February 2018

  Last Modified: 1st of February 2018

  2018.02.01

• The Effect of The Civil Rights Movement on United States Foreign Policy

  On the 17th of May 1954, the United States Supreme Court concluded a landmark case that would bring to the fore a national movement which would last for nearly 15 years. The case, known as ‘Brown v. Board of Education’ ruled for desegregation in schools nationwide, calling on the 14th Amendment in espousing “separate but equal”. Yet, we must question how it is that this specifically national movement had such great international consequence, defining the way the United States (US) conducted itself on the world stage. I argue that the civil rights movement affected US policy towards the newly independent nations within Africa and Asia, and towards the rest of the world positively, in the context of cold war propaganda. I also point to the idea of an internationalist policy resulting from World War 2 which created an internationalist environment for change. However, overall, I identify that it was the nationalist civil rights movement and subsequent backlash which was the greater driver of US foreign policy in this period.

  The internationalist approach to civil rights was influential within the movement itself, within public perception, and on domestic policy, but was not as influential on US foreign policy as the nationalist approach. Martin Luther King placed the civil rights movement squarely in a global context. In texts such as ‘The Ethical Demands for Integration’ it becomes clear that King’s philosophy centred around the concept of a peaceful international understanding that all humans have intrinsic worth, and that changing policy will have negligible effect if you cannot change ‘hearts and minds’. King linked this internationalism with American patriotism when he alluded to Abraham Lincoln’s ‘Gettysburg’ Speech in his ‘I have a dream’ speech of 1963.

  Indeed, King was ultimately successful in changing those hearts and minds, as his peaceful protest endeared the freedom struggle to the American public. However, leaders such as King, Robert Moses, and Marcus Garvey were not influential in changing US foreign policy, although you can say they were instrumental in assisting it. In the context of the cold war, where the US and the Soviet Union (USSR) were vying for world influence, both countries wanted to be seen as internationalist. Therefore, the internationalists in the civil rights movement were useful in promoting the US image, especially in newly independent nations such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo), and in existing nations such as Ethiopia, which were receptive to the idea of a pan-African movement. However, the promotion of figures such as Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington as ‘Jazz Ambassadors’ by the United States Information Agency (USIA), is exemplary of both the country’s desire to be perceived as internationalist and the superficial way it conducted foreign policy to achieve that goal. The assassination of Patrice Lumumba in 1961 has since revealed to historians the validity of claims that the US was not practising its preaching’s in terms of global freedoms. The internationalist civil rights activists were helping the US government maintain a veneer of an internationalist foreign policy without having to implement much change.

  Conversely the nationalist civil rights activists did cause meaningful change in US foreign policy. The reason for this was that, in this movement, the nationalists were a more militant group than the internationalists. Whereas King sought inspiration from those such as Gandhi and the Indian civil rights movement, figures like Malcolm X drew guidance from more violent protests. Malcolm X, as laid out in his 1963 speech ‘Message to the Grassroots’, believed that if change was needed, they would have to take it, using the French (1789), Russian (1917), and American (1776) revolutions as examples. Despite these international influences Malcolm X and others like Elijah Muhammad and the Black Panther Party (BPP) still led a nationalist approach, not seeking cooperation with those other countries, but attempting to mimic them in ethnocentricity. This was intensified by their movement being conflated with communism. Because Soviet propaganda focussed on America not having complete civil rights, some Americans’ response was to say that civil rights were anti-American. Thus, with accusations of being unpatriotic, and their militancy associating themselves with revolution, the militant nationalists had to ensure that they were seen to be patriots. Physical acts of rebellion, such as the 1964 Harlem riots or the 1965 Watts riots, were so influential on US foreign policy because they produced images which would be spun around the world and affect global opinion, all eyes were watching a country in turmoil. Thomas Jackson has shown particularly that the Kennedy administration was very concerned with this image, trying to get protestors “into the courts and out of the streets”. Indeed, it was the case privately, despite the public message, that the administration thought the whole affair “bad for the country”.

  Michael Klarman has discussed the notion that in fact it was not even the nationalist civil rights movement that had the greatest impact on US foreign policy, but was instead the nationalist backlash towards it. This is because this backlash was tied into several other issues including abortion, the death penalty, and same-sex marriages. This gave the impression of more than just rebellion, it was beginning to look like a repeat of the civil war. It was the “everyday racism of any white person”, as Thomas Borstelmann explains, which was the most problematic. Borstelmann explores the legacy of the Jim Crow laws that hung over American life and were called its “Achilles’ heel before the world” by senator Henry Lodge. He highlights also how America’s opposition to European colonisation, justified partially on racial grounds, forced its hand in adopting a more interventionist foreign policy. Feeling it must now enforce that vision of post-war anti-colonialism around the world, America then intervened in areas of proxy war, such as Vietnam, Iran, South Africa, and Guatemala. Additionally, America’s words of equality stated during World War 2 rendered any endorsement, nationally or internationally, of discrimination, contradictory, as Mary L. Dudziak explains in her preeminent work in this field. She also talks, along with Brenda Gayle Plummer in her text, about the key role of the media in foreign policy. Dudziak particularly notes the role of the foreign media, in that civil rights activists may have “manipulated” such sources, knowing the US government would be reading, to be particularly critical of discriminatory practice.

  It is interesting to observe that in many ways the nationalist and internationalist branches of the civil rights movement had the opposite effects on US foreign policy than what they intended. The internationalists were the ones who achieved domestic change by winning over the American public, whereas, the nationalists, by tarnishing the American image, incited a foreign policy that promoted an internationalist agenda.

  Author/Publisher: Louis Lorenzo

  First Published: 09th of September 2017

  Last Modified: 09th of September 2017

  2017.09.09

• History in the making: How the Past is Made

  This article has been created deliberately in tandem with another entitled ‘The Soft Underbelly of Winston Churchill’. Please read that one before you read this one.

  People often express the opinion that they are viewing, or are party to, ‘history in the making’. That they are bearing witness to some momentous occurrence which is inherently ‘history’. Surely though, isn’t everything history? When are we not party to ‘history in the making’? Just because something is significant to you does not make it more history than anything else.

  This is certainly true, but somewhat of a contrarian statement to make, because I am blurring the line between history – as in the sequence of events that happened in the past – and history as in the study of the past and its significance in the present and future. This indistinction in terms is why it is easier to refer instead to the study as historiography and the timeline as history. Therefore, a more accurate statement would be: ‘historiography in the making’.

  Even given this distinction, how do we determine what is worthy enough to be deemed suitable for historiography? What is it that makes something a historical event? Is everything that happened in the past ‘history’? The question here really is whether certain events have an inherent value which makes them ‘history’, or whether it is the witnessing of such an occurrence that makes it history. In other terms, is it the recording of the event which is the history, or the event itself?

  If you say it is in the recording, then, is everything which is recorded history? Thousands of innocuous things are recorded every day; bus ticket sales, facebook feeds, lecture attendance… are these ‘history’? Have they the potential to become it? And if so, when?

  If you say it is an inherent quality to the event itself then you must ask. What if nobody is there to record it? History is only important to humans, it is a humanity after all. If no humans are affected, aware of, or record something, then surely it cannot be history.

  The point of this preamble is to highlight the malleable nature of history and why it can often be all too easy to twist the past into something it was not.

  I wrote the article ‘The Soft Underbelly of Winston Churchill’ with no doubt in my mind that what I was saying was true, that the events I described really happened and that my conclusions were reasonable based on the evidence I provided. I would hope that many people would read that article and agree with me on many points. However, that article is not good historiography, in fact, it is bad historiography. I avoided discussing opposing views, mentioning only the ones I knew I could counter. I was selective in choosing my evidence, and did not provide the reader with any reference to where I took my figures from. Most importantly, though, I set a tone through my language (one that aimed to be sarcastic, derisive, and haughty) which was employed specifically to get the reader to side with me against Churchill. It starts right from the first line where I write ‘Winston Churchill is often cited as one of the ‘great persons’ of history’. Putting ‘great persons’ in quotes already seems dismissive of the concept. Now, this is not a lesson in English literature, but it is incredible to note how only small details implemented by a historian can drastically change a historiography, and thus, history itself.

  ‘History’ as people know it is a construct, and not in a metaphorical sense, in a very real sense. Historians construct history, they choose what to include and how to include it. This is a necessity as otherwise every historiography book would be an exact copy of all others, each including all of history and all drawing the same conclusions from it. The construction process is as essential to historiography as the discovery and recording of the events of the past. Without construction, we can derive no use from our past, we need it to focus on what we deem important and to convey the lessons we want to express.

  An article about Churchill was especially suitable to my point because he is, perhaps, the ultimate constructor, having written the most influential text on the most influential event in history (to contemporary western audiences). There are some events in history that the historians don’t get to first. Events that are so self-evidently important that those involved feel the need to produce their own histories, oftentimes with the intention of attempting to cast themselves in the best light possible. Because after all, a villain in history is a villain for eternity. In the aftermath of the second world war the scramble for history began; leaders, generals, soldiers, everyone knew that if they were to be remembered unfavourably by history in relation to the blood-bath that was the second world war they would surely become such villains. Churchill was keenly aware of this.

  The evident problem with these histories however, is that they are produced by persons who have vested interests in the material and, on top of this, they tend to be mixed in with ideas of nationalism, defensive self-legitimisation, and accusatory spite. What you end up with is a particularly polarizing result. Winston Churchill is clearly not someone who’s history of the second world war should be taken seriously for many of the reasons listed above, and yet, it still is. Published only 3 years after the end of the war, his book is one of the longest works of history ever written, spanning 6 volumes and over 2 million words. It has gone some way to solidifying him as a national hero, and to some extent, a global hero. He is after all the ‘Greatest Briton Ever’. 

  Thus, against his self-aggrandisement I produced an opposite. I hope that this highlights the importance of an historian who understands how to produce an article which is constructed but is not misleading. It is a fine line to walk. Certainly, I myself am not qualified to venture out across it. But at the very least I can see the line and know the consequences of falling from it.

  Author / Publisher: Louis Lorenzo

  First Published: 09th of September 2017

  Last Modified: 22nd of May 2018 (Grammar Corrections)

  2017.09.09

• Churchill’s Soft Underbelly

  This article has been written in tandem with another, entitled: ‘History in the Making: How the Past is Made’. Please read that one after you have read this one.

  Winston Churchill is often cited as one of the ‘great persons’ of history. In 2002, a BBC poll had him voted the ‘Greatest Briton Ever’.  He is remembered colloquially as the man who turned Britain’s darkest hour into its finest; a people’s hero, leading the allied forces to victory with bold and eloquent speeches accompanied by his sharp strategic mind. He is, undoubtedly, placed at the very heart of British patriotism.

  But as many have observed, this is a rather maudlin view of the man. In the general populous there is little inclination towards seeking objectivity when looking at this character. Rather unsurprisingly, the real Winston Churchill would prove quite averse to the character solidified into public consciousness. What is being focussed on in this article will be almost exclusively Churchill’s flaws, hopefully in order to produce some balance toward the history of the man.

  Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill was born on the 30th of November 1874 in Blenheim palace, Oxfordshire. As you will have already surmised by the nature of his birthplace, Winston was born into a life of excess privilege. This wealth came mostly from the ‘Spencer’ section of Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill, the Spencer family being one of Britain’s most affluent families of the time. Even today, though it has fallen in stature somewhat since then, it is still worth around £111 million pounds.

  Churchill’s parents; Lady Jeanette Randolph Churchill and Lord Randolph Henry Spencer-Churchill were introduced to each other on the Isle of Wight by King Edward the seventh and within three days were engaged to be married. He was a tory politician and the son of the 7th Duke of Marlborough and she was an American millionaire.

  Now, being wealthy is not an inherently negative trait, however it does tend to result in a world view somewhat distorted by a lack of, shall we say, difficulty. This can be especially true when you are born to wealth. I would not mention this were not clearly apparent that Winston suffered some of these biases, of which traits will be revealed herein.

  You might expect, that with so many resources behind him the young Winston would excel in his academic studies. Churchill, however, failed miserably at school. Or rather, schools, as he had to be sent to 3 separate private institutions during his youth: St. Georges Ascot, Stoke Brunswick, and Harrow. He carried a very poor academic record at all of them. When Winston entered Harrow, he was the lowest achieving pupil, in the lowest class, in the entire school. He never even made it into the upper school.

  It was a miraculous stroke of luck he even got in at all considering his entrance exam. It is rather long, but here is how he described it:

  “I wrote my name at the top of the page. I wrote down the number of the question ” I.” After much reflection I put a bracket round it thus “(I).” But thereafter I could not think of anything connected with it that was either relevant or true. Incidentally there arrived from nowhere in particular a blot and several smudges. I gazed for two whole hours at this sad spectacle: and then merciful ushers collected my piece of foolscap with all the others and carried it up to the Headmaster’s table. It was from these slender indications of scholarship that Mr. Welldon drew the conclusion that I was worthy to pass into Harrow. It is very much to his credit. It showed that he was a man capable of looking beneath the surface of things.”

  I wonder whether Mr. Welldon really was as discerning as Churchill claims him to have been. He seems to me to show a complete lack of discernment; admitting a pupil in on no merit whatsoever. I wonder if “capable of looking beneath the surface of things” is perhaps code for Welldon’s ability to understand that Churchill came from such a very respectable and wealthy family that it simply would not do to have someone of that stature not attend Harrow.

  Once into Harrow Winston wasted no time in joining the Harrow rifle corps and, halfway through his studies he left school entirely in 1893 so he could focus on joining the Royal Military College, Sandhurst which he eventually succeeded in after three tries on their entrance exam. He applied to the cavalry rather than the infantry because the required grade was lower and there was no mathematics involved. It is clear to see by this point that Churchill’s interests lay in war, not peace.

  He left Sandhurst in 1894 as a cavalry officer with a payroll of, in today’s equivalent terms, around £36,000 pounds’ annual income. However, he insisted that he needed at least an extra £60,000 a year equivalent income if he was to live a lifestyle ‘appropriate to his position’, which, in the end, his mother mostly paid for.

  In October 1896 Churchill was transferred to British colonial India. Churchill was a fervent imperialist and never supported any of the freedom movements against the British empire, especially in India. He was quite happy to take part in what he described as: “A lot of jolly little wars against barbarous peoples” in defence of king and country. In 1937, when the secretary of state for India put to Churchill that Britain: “might have some compunction is she felt she was downing the Arabs year after year when they wanted to remain in their own country” Churchill replied thusly:

  “I do not admit that the dog in the manger has the final right to the manger even though he may have lain there for a very long time. I do not admit that right. I do not admit for instance, that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America or the black people of Australia. I do not admit that a wrong has been done by these people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher-grade race, a more worldly wise race to put it that way, has come in and taken their place.”

  He described Mahatma Gandhi as “a seditious middle temple lawyer” and “nauseating to see”. Someone who: “ought to be lain bound hand and foot at the gates of Delhi, and then trampled on by an enormous elephant with the new Viceroy seated on its back”.

  Clearly, Churchill was racist and took pleasure involving himself with colonial atrocities in India. Afterwards he moved to what today we would call Pakistan and then Sudan, getting in his fair share of the murdering of indigenous peoples along the way. He bragged that he had personally killed three “savages”.

  In 1899, he took time off from the army for his first foray into politics with the conservative party, following in his father’s footsteps. He stood twice and lost both of the former conservative seats in Oldham, then deciding to leave politics and heading for South Africa to get involved with the second Boer war. It was of course in south Africa that the British devised the concept of the concentration camp, something more synonymous with Nazi Germany. 32,000 men, women, and children died in these camps and I will let you discover for yourself the horrific conditions within. Needless to say, Churchill described the camps as producing “the minimum of suffering”.

  So, after a job well done, Winston retired from active service in 1900 and went back into politics. But he did not temper his outspoken opinions simply because he was going to be doing work which had national security at stake, if anything they became more pronounced. In 1902, he talked of how as “civilised nations become more powerful they will get more ruthless” and that eventually “the Aryan stock is bound to triumph” over the “barbaric nations”. These are deeply unsettling words today, but they bring you closer to understanding how Hitler was able to get as far as he did unchallenged, when other politicians of the time talked in this manner.

  Now, you might assume that Winston’s opinions are just indicative of the times, that ‘everybody thought that way back then’. This is unfortunately not true, he was seen at the time as the most brutish of the imperialists and particularly right wing. Stanley Baldwin was warned not to appoint him to the cabinet because of his archaic views. His doctor lamented that “Winston thinks only of the colour of their skin” when speaking of other races.

  So, Winston went into the Conservative party in 1900, then decided he preferred the liberal party in 1904. After the liberals came to power in 1905 Churchill was made ‘Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies’. Which effectively meant he was now in charge of those “barbaric peoples” which he displayed such open hate for.

  In 1910, now as home secretary, Winston sent armed soldiers to quell a worker’s protest over wages in the Welsh town of TonyPandy. He also became the very first man to instigate police force against the suffragettes, a day which has become known to gender historians as ‘Black Friday’. In 1911, his police killed 2 civilians in Liverpool who were also on worker’s strike. Another highlight was his attempt in 1911 to pass into legislature the sterilisation of people with “illnesses or deficiencies of the mind”, trying to pass into law his ongoing struggle against the “feeble minded and insane”, who he saw as deteriorating the ‘British stock’.

  Much controversy has been had over Churchill’s direct involvement with the police, which are supposed to be independent of the Government to avoid corruption. In 1911 Churchill ordered rescue workers to deliberately not douse a building that was ablaze, the three criminals the police were after died inside. Churchill of course took the opportunity to have his photographer take pictures of him in front of the inferno. Lord Robert Cecil summed up the prevailing opinion of the times nicely with this: “I do believe that Winston takes no interest in political affairs unless they involve the chance of bloodshed”.

  When the first world war started, Churchill was ‘First Lord of the Admiralty’ and was in command of the infamous seaborne invasion of Gallipoli. You may have heard of this event before as it was one of the most disastrous events of the war for the allies. Over 100,000 volunteers were slaughtered for a pointless cause on the beaches of Gallipoli and it caused a major scandal which eventually forced Churchill to resign and sent him into the political backwaters.

  So, Winston went back to the army in 1915 where he did what most rich people in the army did at the time and took up a command job as a Lieutenant Colonel, nicely away from the front line. The first world war is of course, infamous for the terrible leadership that lead to such an excess in loss of life, and brought about the popular expression of ‘lions led by donkeys’. Of course, the claims that he went in to no man’s land 36 times are true, but only in the area of Ploegsteert Wood, which was an area where units would be sent to retrain and recuperate as there was very little fighting that took place there after 1914.

  By 1919 Churchill was back in government as secretary of state for war and air when the Irish made their bid for home rule. In response, he deployed the ever-controversial ‘Black and Tans’, known for their use of excessive violence. Despite calls to stand them down Churchill repeatedly refused to do so and even advocated use of the air force to quell the Irish rebellion.

  In 1924, he went back to the conservatives as the chancellor of the exchequer and oversaw Britain’s return to the ‘gold standard’. This resulted in deflation, unemployment and led eventually to the general strike of 1926, the only general strike in British history. It was soon repealed.

  It is at this point that we get back to India, which we have discussed somewhat already. Churchill was the founder of the ‘India Defence League’ (IDL) and expressed unrivalled hate towards the Indian people and particularly Mahatma Gandhi. He raged that: “I hate Indians. They are a beastly people with a beastly religion.” This hatred killed, the Bengal Famine broke out in 1943 and Churchill not only refused to direct food supplies to the region he forced them to continue exporting rice for the war effort. He even had 170,000 tons of spare wheat lying around that he could have used for the purpose. Australian wheat was sent past the shores of India to Europe where it was left in storage for use after the war. Furthermore, Churchill even blamed the locals for the famine, saying the problem was that they “breed like rabbits”. When the secretary of state for India requested food to combat the famine Churchill replied: “if food is scarce, why isn’t Gandhi dead yet?” At least 3 million people died during the Bengal famine.

  In Kenya, Churchill approved the clearing out of the ‘blackamoors’, claiming that the land should be only for white people. 150,000 were forced at gunpoint into detention camps where horrific torture took place. Including electrocution, whipping, shooting, burning and mutilation. Those who survived never truly recovered. One of the survivors was Hussein Onyango Obama, whose grandson went on to become the president of the United States of America.

  When the second world war began, Winston was appointed the first lord of the admiralty again and set about organizing the Norwegian campaign in which Britain was defeated resoundingly by German forces. A move which, bizarrely, ended up forcing Neville Chamberlain to resign as prime minister despite him not being responsible for the debacle and put Winston into the job of Prime Minister in his place.

  So, Churchill became Prime Minister. There is quite a lot of the war that we could go through but in an effort to retain brevity we will cover just some of the noteworthy actions of the war.

  Throughout the war, Churchill was constantly aware of maintaining the empire which he held so dearly. It can easily be argued that Churchill was fighting on imperialist grounds rather than for any moral reasoning. He was dogged in his want to hold and control the Empire, especially key areas such as the Suez Canal. This is partly why he constantly pushed for the idea of an invasion into Italy through North Africa, claiming it was the ‘soft underbelly’ of the axis. This was on the face of it a not too terrible idea as it was thought that Hitler would not fight over Italy, but when it became clear that he would, and make the allies pay for every inch of ground gained, the Mediterranean theatre quickly became a grinding bloodbath. The soft underbelly, was, in fact, a ‘tough old gut’. Still though, Churchill obsessed over Italy, even though it was clear that it was not working as intended. And he brought the Americans with him, delaying the D-day landings by as much as 3 years, and thus, extending the war.

  He is also held at least partly responsible for the horrific blanket bombing campaigns on German cities, specifically Dresden, these campaigns aimed simply to cripple the people’s morale by destroying and killing as much as possible. There were no targeted strikes and more civilians killed than by the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

  Immediately after the war Churchill instigated a policy to round up thousands of war orphans and children from deprived families and forcibly ship them to Australia, even, in some cases, if they had relatives willing to look after them. He was voted out of power at the first election, having never actually been voted in in the first place.

  Author / Publisher: Louis Lorenzo

  First Published: 23rd of April 2017

  Last Modified: 19th of September 2017 (Grammar Corrections)

  2017.04.23

• When the Subaltern Spoke

  In the mid-20th century, social history, by which we mean social historiography, saw a major alteration in its focus. It shiftedaway from 19th century Marxist interpretations of a form that concentrated on ‘society’ and the lives of workers who had been underrepresented in favour of a small elite. Its new focus looked instead toward specific historically underrepresented minorities. This approach has been termed neo-Marxism.

  But what caused this shift in focus? I argue, it was the influence of ‘history from below’ which forced social historians to focus on minorities. This is because history from below gave a stage to real individual ‘commoners’, they were no longer one hegemonic group as theorized by academics. This revealed the hypocrisy at the heart of 19th century Marxist historiography, being that it was the top-down, dictatorial version of history it claimed to rebuke, generalising what ‘the people’ believed in.

  Post-imperial subjects were one of the most influential historical minorities to facilitate the rise of ‘history from below’ and thus the wider shift in social history in the mid-20th century. Their sheer numbers being partly why; 145 countries gained independence in the 20th century. Additionally, their collective influence was added to by the proximity of their releases from imperial historiography (a few decades). They spoke loudly and together.

  The popularisation of the term ‘subaltern’ amongst social historians is a testament to the relationship between post-imperial history, history from below, and social history.The term was first coined by Italian Marxist, Antonio Gramsci, in 1926, but only became significant to the world of ‘history from below’ in 1988 when the post-imperialist historian, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak revived the term. She defined the subaltern as “persons who are socially, politically and geographically outside the hegemonic power structure”.

  In Spivak’s essay, ‘Can the subaltern speak?’ and in her subsequent text; ‘Towards a Critique of Post-Colonial Reason’ she explains that, although the metaphor used is one of minorities ‘without a voice’, a more accurate appraisal would be of ‘a deafened hegemonic ear’. Meaning that minorities had always been expressing their views, they just weren’t being listened to. The importance here is that subalterns have agency in these new histories, they do not simply act at the behest of their oppressors and fade away when not doing so. They are autonomous and can act independently of elites. This is a form inherent to ‘history from below’.

  We can see from this how history from below led to a focus on historical minorities within social history, and Post-imperial history shows us one of the reasons why history from below affected social history in this way.

  Author / Publisher: Louis Lorenzo

  First Published: 05th of April 2017

  Last Modified: 05th of April 2017

  2017.04.05