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)
This article will explain the changing natures of the police forces, prisons, and law courts of Egypt and Sudan across their colonial and post-colonial histories. Although, for the sake of clarity, these three elements will be dealt with individually, it is important that the interconnected nature of these factors is not overlooked. It is also important to not only recognise the differences between the colonial and post-colonial systems, but the differences between how those systems operated in the distinctly separate environments of Egypt and Sudan. Firstly, however, I will give a concise synopsis of how the Egyptian and Sudanese legal institutions have broadly changed across their colonial and post-colonial existences.
In Sudan I identify a clear arc of progression for the three elements in question, which I group together to call the “legal institution”. In the colonial state, these elements of the legal institution function similarly in how they are used as forms of repression but are disguised as facets of goodwill. Although there is some variation from this central theme, particularly with the adversarial colonial police, I will demonstrate how they all served ultimately as a velvet glove for the British administration. In the post-colonial state, they continued to follow a similar pattern to one other. There was a brief period of attempt at liberal change and reform under Ismail al-Azhari before a return to colonial styles of practice with the rule of Gaafar Nimeiry, despite the superficially divergent style of Islamised rule he introduced. Omar al-Bashir has used the legal administration in much the same way as his predecessor.
Egypt has a very similar colonial story but a more complex post-colonial one. Due to the colonial system lacking any great nuance in the way it administered its various colonies, Egyptian legal institutions under the British were much the same as Sudan; the legal administration provided great promise of virtue, but granted very little in reality. Post-colonial Egypt is a more interesting case. There is a moment of excitement for change under Muhammad Naguib which amounts to little. This is followed by the takeover of Gamal Abdel Nasser who used the legal administration as an extension of his governance and returned Egypt to colonial-style rule, despite his socialist reforms in other areas. Anwar Sadat flipped the system once more and purged the Nasserians, instituting a more democratic legal system. Hosni Mubarak operated a considerably more restrictive, expanded, and corrupt legal institution but in an underhanded way which disguised its true nature. The 2011 revolution and the election of the Mohamed Morsi was started partly on the grounds of opposing the corrupt legal system, but was short lived and did not introduce radical reform. Abdel Fattaj el-Sisi now uses the legal administration in much the same way as Egypt’s prior dictators.
In regard to prisons, when the British first arrived in Egypt and Sudan they were vocal about the purpose of prisons as instruments of reform. Many criticised the Ottoman system which had formerly been in place, publicly denouncing it as a proponent of ‘cruelties inflicted upon the defenceless people by unprincipled rulers’. It was seen that Europe’s purpose was to better Egypt and Sudan by exporting “liberalism” to them. The prison system, and the wider legal system more generally, were obvious targets for reform, as these were the tools by which a state enforced its ideologies. However, these lofty ideals were held back by two main factors; lack of resources and lack of conviction. The first one of these is self-explanatory, the prisons were not provided with either enough staff or resource to run a reformative system. In fact, they were barely able to run a system at all, one which could ‘only be managed, rather than controlled’. The lack of conviction is the more interesting and more important of these two however, as it is this ennui which resulted in such poor practical support for the prison system. W.J Berridge describes this as an ‘ambivalent ideology’ which was partially reflective of the internal divides which existed within the legal administration between the prison officers and the colonial command. There was also a significant proportion of prison officials who thought it more reformative to leave some criminals out of prison; those from the countryside. The countryside and the notion of the “tribe” were seen through the colonial lens as areas of naïve innocence, peoples who could hardly commit a crime if they tried. On the other hand, the urban environment was seen as a corrupting force, one which created hard-line recidivists who could never be reformed. Thus, to throw someone from the countryside into the urban environment of the jail would do them more harm than good, and would corrupt them. Along similar lines, if urban criminals were not able to be reformed, the purpose of the prison system as an instrument of reform makes little sense. It was thus a lack of purpose which defined the prison systems in colonial Egypt and Sudan; a lack of purpose which left the original ideal of reform unfulfilled.
Post-colonial prisons in both Egypt and Sudan initially followed a similar path of progression; a brief period of purpose in attempting to genuinely fulfil the promises of the colonial system. In Egypt this was under the rule of Muhammad Naguib (in power from June 1953 to November 1954) and in Sudan this was under Ismail al-Azhari (in power from January 1956 to May 1969). This has been termed “defensive developmentalism”, a demonstration of capability from the new regime achieved by borrowing European developmentalist ideals. In Egypt this was a far shorter affair than it was in Sudan and so had less opportunity to produce results, however both countries ultimately failed to fulfil the purpose of their prison systems. In Sudan there was greater progress, with the establishment of “prison shows”, allowing prisoners the vote, and a placement of emphasis on prison education. This achievement was tactile but ultimately inadequate, due to physical restrictions such as prison capacity and ultimately a failing to repeal key aspects of the colonial system such as prison labour. Over time in both countries, starting with Nasser in 1956 in Egypt and with Nimiery in 1969 in Sudan, any steps made forward were reversed. These governments became more concerned with immediate security as supposed to long-term rehabilitation and both perpetuated a more retributive system than their predecessors. Interestingly, it was these governments that particularly espoused their unique Islamic form of Justice and their difference to the Christian colonial regime, yet it was these governments that returned the prisons to a colonial-style system. The defensive developmentalists, contrarily, actively followed European ideals yet created a system much divergent from the British one. The purpose of these prison systems was to contain and punish, both Nasser and Nimiery imprisoning thousands of political opponents over their time in power. In Sudan Omar al-Bashir continues to use prisons in much the same way. In Egypt prisons have also been used as a political tool, used by one regime to purge the previous one. Even Anwar Sadat, the most democratically orientated of Egypt’s rulers, imprisoned opponents such as Ali Sabri and Sharawy Gomaa. These post-Naguib/al-Azhari regimes also had the additional pressures of the 1973 and 1979 oil crises to deal with which contributed to economic and political instability and a lack of capital to be invested in the carceral system.
The colonial law courts were created deliberately and purposefully to be a tangled mess of legislation. Their purpose was to be so confused and unreadable that the British could act as they liked and punish as they liked under the “law” and go unchallenged. In much the same way as Berridge describes the ‘ambiguous ideology’ of prison officials, Jeffrey Adam Sachs describes the ‘strategic ambiguity’ of the courts. The difference is that the prison system promised a purpose but delivered a purposelessness whereas the court system promised purposelessness but delivered a purpose. In Sudan, the establishment of tribal courts in 1920 moved the legal power base away from the more legally literate effendiyya to the inexperienced Sheiks. The same had been the case in Egypt in 1883 with the creation of native tribunals. These “Native Administrations” were given considerable power but it was a power that lay undefined and lay alongside the colonial administration. This plurality of control was yet another clouding factor of informality in the legal system. The reason for this was that legal rigour led to professionalisation, institutionalisation, and urbanisation. The British, just as with the prisons, found it more advantageous to “preserve” (or rather, create) an informal and less organised system, described by Abdallāh Alī Ibrāhīm as a ‘Manichean Delirium’.
Post-colonial law courts were left to deal with the incredibly confused legacy the British had left behind, and it took decades to dismantle the colonial apparatus. In Egypt, the mixed courts, which had been established to try civil cases involving Europeans in 1876 and which the British regarded as a total triumph, were abolished in 1949. Following that the religious courts were merged with the national courts in 1956 and the trend of a fairer, independent institution was set well on course until the turn of the 1970s. At this point, with Nasser’s political opposition growing, there came a harsher, more restricted court system which would continue to grow harsher into the 1980s with the establishment of “State Security Courts” under Mubarak. The defining point in this turn of attitude was the 1969 “Massacre of the judges” in which over 200 judges were dismissed and by Nasser and the Egyptian Judges Club was dissolved. In Sudan it was not until the more authoritarian rule of Nimiery that the colonial system began to be dismantled with the abolishment of the native administration in 1970 and the return to common law in 1973. This was not replaced with, as it had been initially in Egypt, with a more democratic institution, but with the September Laws and the introduction of Sharia law, as part of Nimiery’s wider program of “Islamisation” across the country, a move which led eventually to civil war. The law courts had different purposes in post-colonial Egypt and Sudan; in Sudan they were to help spread a program of Islamisation and in Egypt they were to, after a brief period of relative independence, enforce an increasingly dictatorial rule of law.
The British were as critical of the pre-colonial police force as they were of all the other legal institutions. They regarded the police as slaves to the Mudirs, one paper calling that Britain could ‘not tolerate for twenty-four hours longer the continuation of such a system’. In Egypt, one central purpose of the colonial police system was indeed to take power away from the Mudirs by instituting parallel inspectors which could undermine their control, just as with plurality of control involving the native administration and the colonial state with the law courts. The police were also split from the military with the introduction of “civil policing” with the purpose of dividing in order to rule. Despite this division however, the police, more so than the courts and the prisons, proved to be the most rebellious of the three legal institutions. The British were unable to stop the “professionalisation” of the police force, of which they had succeeded with the prisons and law courts, and this caused tensions to rise between the colonial administrators and the police. In Sudan the story was much the same; the defining point of tension being the 1951 Khartoum police strike which involved over 700 policemen, and which had to be quelled by the Sudan Defence Force (SDF). The fact that police were concentrated in urban areas was also a factor in leading to their more nationalistic and rebellious attitude. The purpose of the colonial police for the British was to institute control but without instituting professionalisation, which it was feared would lead to nationalism. Just as with the purpose of a reformative prison system, this purpose was not achieved. However, unlike the prison system, this was not unachieved for the want of trying, as the British were constantly attempting to wrest control away from any kind of independent police and into the hands of a few colonial administrators. The 1951 strike was a perfect pretext in Sudan for furthering this goal and was used to reverse the progress the police had made since 1945. However, ultimately the Police were not total radicals, as they were still inextricably tied to the state system. The nature of their profession made them in some sense loyal to the British, and they would have to give up their work to really institute rebellion. Their purpose from their perspective then, was as reformers rather than radicals.
For much the same reasons, the police forces across all of post-colonial Egypt and Sudan were never truly revolutionary. Indeed, it was under the colonial system that they had the most potential for insurrection, a potential that was not seen in the post-colonial context. In Egypt and Sudan, the police became far more agents of the state following independence, with new administrations purging and recreating the police force to suit their agendas. At this time the secret police, particularly the soviet secret police under Nasser, rose to prominence and were used as further agents of repression. Sadat was thus hailed for his ejection of the secret police in 1970. Under Mubarak Egypt found itself under a constant “state of emergency” which allowed him and his ever-expanding police force even more power that he could use to exercise control. Even under al-Azhari in Sudan, perhaps the most liberal of all the post-colonial leaders, the police’s purpose was as agents of repression alongside the military, particularly employed against southern Sudanese. In fact, as time progressed it was the police who became the target of revolution as supposed to the instigators; with the 2011 Egyptian revolutionaries focussing on police brutality and corruption and in which over 90 police stations were set alight in protest. Indeed, the revolution began by no coincidence on Egypt’s national police day, the 25th of January.
It is interesting to note that with all of these legal institutions; the prisons, the courts, and the police, there is a sense of the cyclical. All have ended up today as dictatorial tools of control, just has they were in the colonial state. Broadly they have all evolved and changed along similar paths, experiencing an initial promise of liberalism immediately post-independence, but soon falling back into repression. Both colonial and post-colonial regimes have made attempts to obfuscate and moralise their actions but ultimately have not been able to disguise the purpose of the prisons, police, and courts. This I do not find unsurprising. The people who serve in the legal institutions of a state are by their very profession loyal to that state, otherwise they would not serve in those institutions. Their purpose is to serve the state’s morals and policies, and ultimately they are resigned to place their faith in a power beyond themselves.
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.
For as long as there has been sea-faring trade, there have been people who seek to exploit its riches; pirates, the ‘enemies of all mankind’. To describe pirates, a group traditionally known as quintessentially villainous, as “social bandits” seems initially preposterous but the more we learn about their egalitarian societies the more plausible this description becomes. For this article I am using Eric Hobsbawm’s definition of social banditry, namely:
‘peasant outlaws whom the lord and state regard as criminals, but who remain within peasant society, and are considered by their people as heroes’
In this article I will be considering various aspects of piratical society and whether these aspects allow the pirate to fall into the category of “social bandit” described above or otherwise. Assessing whether pirates match the four main requirements stipulated above of being ‘peasant’, ‘criminals’, ‘within peasant society’, and ‘considered by their people as heroes’.
Firstly, can pirates be described as ‘peasant’? The answer to this is comprehensively that they can. Although there were some notable exceptions, such as with the case of Major Bonnet, the average pirate was both poor and of low social status, the very quintessence of peasant-hood. Marcus Rediker describes pirates as ‘dispossessed proletarians’, people who saw piracy as a chance to increase both their social and monetary wealth. As well as this piracy also represented a form of counterculture, a certain freedom and liberty outside of the existing social order. Many similarities can be drawn between becoming a pirate and moving to stay in the colonies, Paul Gilje explains that in both cases individuals were given ‘the chance to make many decisions of their own accord’. This ideal of rebellion against society is one central to the notion of the social bandit because it insights antagonism against the ruling elite and association with the “common people”. Pirates would generally have already held a maritime occupation of low social standing before their stint as outlaws; they may well have been fishermen, crews on merchant vessels, or privateers. As such, the difference in lifestyle between the two roles was often not very different and made it easy for those of pre-existing peasant status to convert to piracy. For those of high social status it would constitute a particularly exhaustive change in lifestyle to become a pirate and this is one prominent factor in deterring such classes.
Secondly, were they regarded as ‘criminals’ by officials and the state? This is also a definite positive. Pirates were agreed to be criminals not only domestically, but also on the international stage as they attacked all factions active in the Atlantic including the British, French, Dutch, and Spanish. This is because, as Kris Lane identifies, pirates did not pose against any individual nation, but against the very ideal of nationhood itself through an ‘almost universal rejection of national and religious authorities’. As Amedeo Policante states, piracy created the need for an international legal response, the Ius Publicum Europaeum (“European Public Law”). This meant the removal of amity lines between European states and the ‘collective appropriation of the oceans’. Phil Steinberg argues that with this framework in place any ship not attached to a nationality could thence be apprehended as an agent of the ‘anti-civilisation of the sea’. A 1696 case against Captain Avery’s crew led an English judge to rule that he had ‘jurisdiction over all people – anywhere on earth – who interfered with English commerce’, this was a direct criminalisation of piracy. Charles Johnson’s 1724 text on piracy shows us that pirates were actively punished and that the laws set against them were used in practice, not only in theory. He vividly describes the numerous public executions of the pirates he describes within his text and how their deaths were to be “without Benefit of Clergy, and forfeit Land and Goods.” This form of dishonourable execution is evidence of the authorities’ specific disdain for criminal piracy.
Thirdly, did pirates ‘remain within peasant society’? In other words, did piracy remove people from their “roots” or did pirates continue to care about the welfare of those still within the peasant society they left behind? This question is less clear-cut to answer as the previous two but on balance I do believe that this is also the case. Certainly, there was a universal community between pirates themselves, who were willing to cooperate with each other ‘even when the various crews were strangers to each other’. Indeed, in many ways pirates led more inclusive societies than their landlubbing adversaries; according to Richard Burg they promoted a ‘multicultural, multiracial, and multinational social order’. This meant pirates were able to not only remain within peasant society, but expand it to include people of varying backgrounds. Also, since it was highly unlikely any individual pirate would survive more than three years a-sea there was a constant influx of new peasants joining pirate crews and these kept pirates close to the peasant societies from which they came. However, this does not detract from the fact that pirates, in the end, held allegiance only to themselves and would not shy away from putting any peasant to the cutlass should they refuse to join their crew. This is likely why so many captured seamen “volunteered” to join pirate crews, which was favoured because it was thought this would create a better social cohesion between the sailors. Female pirates were also expressly banned on pirate vessels by the pirate code. This does not show express antagonism towards peasants however, because pirates were indiscriminatory in this sense, and would give the same treatment to any person who would defy them. Pirates were also far more inclusionary toward people with disabilities, which would be disproportionately those of the peasant classes; it is not coincidence the peg-leg and the eye-patch are engrained onto the modern perception of the pirate. Indeed, pirates were the authors of the worlds first workers compensation scheme whereby sailors could be paid for their injuries sustained. They also supported democracy aboard ship, a practice which clearly supports the majority over a ruling elite. The last words of William Fry during his extraordinary execution were ones of solidarity with peasant society; informing the crowd that ship captains could avoid their crews turning to piracy if they would only “treat them humanly”. Pirates also contributed to local economies in ways which the European states didn’t, Jason Acosta explains how pirates ‘didn’t bury their treasure, they spent it, helping colonies survive that couldn’t get the money and supplies they needed from Europe’. This is an exact definition of social banditry, robbing from the rich and giving to the poor.
Fourthly, were pirates ‘considered by their people as heroes’? This somewhat depends on how you may define ‘their people’ but it is logical that Hobsbawm is referring to the “peasant society” that he previously mentioned herein. Were pirates generally supported amongst the common folk? Alas, it is here that the pirate falls at this final hurdle, as although many pirates perhaps saw themselves as activists for the people, and were admired by some, they were generally not well regarded by the public. Initially perhaps there was a moment in the late 17th century where pirates lay favourable in the public eye when states were hiring their own privateers to combat enemy states. In this context, Claire Jowitt argues that pirates could be portrayed as the ‘shrewd mercantile venturer’ or perhaps even the ‘heroic gentleman adventurer’, despite their violent occupation. For example, in 1694 a ballad titled “A Copy of Verses, Composed by Captain Henry Every [Avery]” argued strongly in favour of the pirate captain and for some period solidified him as a folk hero, making his trial a great difficulty. However, as Sarah Barringer points out, as the admiralty began to withdraw its support for privateers at the turn of the 18th century the public mood quickly began to change with it. She shows how this turn in official position coincided with the rise of the coffee house and a newly created ‘public sphere’ and how the state line ‘influenced the public sphere’. Before, the public had seen it a great hypocrisy to convict a pirate whilst supporting privateers but now this hypocrisy no longer existed, and the officials were efficient in defaming the pirate image from thence onward. The difference between Captain Avery’s trial of 1696 and Captain Kidd’s of 1701 is marked. During Kidd’s trial the prosecutor shifted the narrative away from that which had accused Captain Avery (which focussed on violence), and toward the economic detriment of piracy. Although the now infamous phrase “enemies of all mankind” was not used, the prosecutor did describe Kidd as ‘the common enemy of mankind’. The image of piracy was further weakened in 1714 with the end of the War of the Spanish Succession which allowed pirates to attack English ships more freely. Pirates progressed in the public consciousness from heroes to villains.
Pirates very almost fit the definition of the social bandit forwarded by Eric Hobsbawm, and for a brief moment in history, I argue, they did indeed hold that title. They were from ‘peasant’ society, were considered ‘criminals’ by authorities and states, and they remained ‘within peasant society’. However, despite their displaying many characteristics of “social bandits” from elsewhere, a real social bandit requires the support of the general populous to be legitimate, and pirates simply did not have that support. In many ways this was a support that was taken from them, a direct result of a concerted effort by the state to deface the pirate image, and in some ways, this seems an injustice. However, due to the bloody nature of their profession, I do not consider it a great wrong done to them.
Author/Publisher: Louis Lorenzo
First Published: 02nd of January 2018
Last Modified: 03rd of June 2018 (Grammar Corrections)
Our video presentation (above) gives a quick and accessible summary of our main arguments.
An important aspect of how a civilisation defines its own identity rests on how it perceives its own history. In this article, we are looking at one aspect of how a society can use the past as a resource to justify and explain present and future. Specifically, we investigate the Victorians’ well documented fascination with the ‘Middle Ages’, which often appears to consist of an ambivalent mixture of admiration and revulsion toward the period, through a specific local example, the reconstruction of the 13th century ‘Old Tyne Bridge’ in Newcastle for the ‘Jubilee Exhibition’ of 1887.
This exhibition, often mistaken for the better known 1929 ‘North-East Coast Exhibition’ was arranged by the ‘The North-East of England Institute of Mining and Mechanical Engineers’ and was designed to promote local enterprise and industry. The exhibition was due to open in 1886 but it was decided to defer the occasion for a year to allow it to coincide with queen Victoria’s golden jubilee. The name was therefore changed from the ‘Mining, Engineering and Industrial Exhibition’ to the ‘Jubilee Exhibition’. The exhibition opened on the 11th of May 1887 and through its 7-month lifespan attracted over two million visitors from home and abroad. The reconstructed medieval bridge, which had crossed the Tyne until it was washed away by ‘the flood’ of 1771, was one of the central attractions. The bridge might easily be mistaken for the famous old London bridge, with buildings across its span, but the rebuilt bridge became a symbol of pride for North-East England. It also symbolised an intriguing Victorian engagement with its pre-industrial past during a period of industrial modernity. This article offers an account of the bridge, and what it meant to the Victorian people.
The Victorian narrative of the Middle Ages was not cohesive, but highlighted several contrasting aspects and viewpoints of it. On the one hand, the medieval period was sometimes portrayed as ‘dark’ and primitive; a time of regression and backwardness brought about by the fall of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century; a period whose problems were remedied with the arrival of the renaissance in the 14th century.[1] However, based on our research on the recreation of the 13th century Tyne Bridge for the 1887 Jubilee exhibition, we add to the literature that argues that the more influential perspective was one of a positive and engaged attitude toward the period. This attitude constructed the medieval period as an era of racial vigour, natural beauty and purity, and also of industry; a foreshadowing of the Victorian’s vision of themselves.[2]
Our case study of the Old Tyne Bridge will not attempt to cover all aspects of the wide-ranging nature of medieval revivalism but focus, instead, on one particular aspect; that is, the physical reconstruction of a place.[3] This is a separate pursuit from looking at Victorian literature that sought to romantically conjure the Middle Ages. Creating a physical replica is not merely an attempt to reflect on the past, but a bold claim to be able to emulate and reconstruct it. Discovering exactly in what manner and why this past was emulated and re-built will help us deepen our knowledge of the nature and range of Victorian ‘medievalism’.
However, before we turn to our case study we need first to understand the two periods which we are discussing to discern exactly why the Victorians would want to build this bridge. What links, and what divides, the 13th and 19th centuries? On face value, it seems logical that the Victorians would be as dismissive of the medieval period as their Georgian predecessors were, who saw themselves living in total juxtaposition to the people of the ‘dark ages’.[4] For the Georgians, they lived in an ‘age of reason’ which needed to draw no lessons from the ‘age of faith’, terms coined by Thomas Paine ninety-three years prior to the 1887 exhibition.[5] Such notions were propounded by many forefront Georgian intellectuals, establishing an image of an advanced and sophisticated society which defined itself against the ‘Dark’ and Middles Ages. [6]
However, many Victorians did not take this view of their pre-enlightenment past and they increasingly portrayed the Middle Ages as a period which contained many echoes of their own predicaments and possibilities. This was not just romantic nostalgia; it reflected the existence of real parallels. For example, both periods were ones of change and large-scale migration and exploration, the best Dark Age and early medieval examples being those of the migration of Vikings into Northern Europe and the Normans into England,[7] as well wider movements across Europe such as the movement of German peoples into eastern Europe.[8] The Victorian period saw migration of colonising Europeans into Africa, America, and Asia. The Victorians found in the Middle Ages a historical rationale and pretext for their own imperialism and saw a reflection of their own militaristic tendencies in the campaigns, conquests and crusades of both the early Middle Ages and the 12th and 13th centuries. Indeed, it was largely during the Victorian period that military figures such as Richard the Lionheart and ‘Alfred the Great’ were venerated, and fashioned as popular and patriotic figures. These were heroes to be placed alongside contemporary characters such as the Generals Gordon and Kitchener.[9] In both societies, the nobility was heavily involved in military expansion and although Victorian society was post-feudal, members of the landed aristocracy often imagined themselves as heirs to ancient tradition and were heavily involved in local and national government as well as imperial policy. Thus, many Victorians venerated their medieval ancestors, both because the two societies appeared to contain certain similarities but also because the Victorians found the medieval past a useful place to construct origin narratives; narratives that explained their own pre-eminence.[10]
Many Victorian historians propagated a nostalgic relationship to the medieval period. History Professors Charles Kingsley and J R Seeley, both of Cambridge University, wrote and talked about the ‘Dark Ages’ and ‘Middle Ages’ as a period of valour, achievement and of inspiration. Kingsley spoke about the need to revert back to “Teutonic traditions”, and Seeley, in his 1883 text, ‘The Expansion of England’ claimed that the British empire was grounded in and bound by ancient bonds of blood and religion.[11] Furthermore, politicians in the Victorian period often evoked these earlier periods in order to shape and excite the popular mood. For example, Sir Charles Adderley who made use of the increasingly popular notion of an ‘Anglo-Saxon race’ to argue in a speech given in Warwickshire; that “The Anglo-Saxon race are the best breed in the world, the absence of a too elevating climate, too unclouded skies and a too luxurious nature, has produced so vigorous a race of people, and had rendered us so superior to all the world”.[12] [13] Here we see the past being mobilised to serve the present. Joseph Chamberlain, a leading liberal imperialist politician by the late Victorian period, also emphasised the superiority of the “Anglo-Saxon Race”.[14] Partly then, it can be argued that the reconstruction and civic use of medieval architecture, culture, and design, such as with the old Tyne bridge, was a visible and tangible reflection of the Victorians’ historical claims upon the supposed accomplishments and vigour of the ‘Anglo-Saxons’.
But the bridge was not a singularity of this ‘reconstructive nostalgia’ for the Middle Ages. Across Britain, Victorian architecture reflected medieval influences. The ‘neo-gothic’ and gothic revival movements stamped themselves on almost every city. Inspired by the architecture and decorative art of the period 1000-1600CE, such neo-medieval forms became a significant alternative to classical styles. Indeed, the word ‘gothic’ itself was an invention of the late 18th century, its more thrillingly macabre connotations being popularised in the 19th century through texts such as ‘Frankenstein’ (1818), ‘The Fall of the House of Usher’ (1839), and ‘Dracula’ (1897).[15] [16] Britain embraced the gothic, more than any other European country, because of its desire to reclaim a shared and lost past of vigour, beauty and industry but also because of its fears of ethical and racial degeneration. Strawberry Hill, home of Horace Walpole, a major participant in the medieval revival, as well as Fonthill Abbey are two of the most influential examples of this style.[17] Windsor Castle also provides a good example of how late medieval and early Gothic architecture influenced the Victorian period. Between 1824 and 1840 Sir Jeffrey Wyattville transformed Windsor: adding turrets, towers, battlements, and raising the height of its round tower in order to emulate the medieval. The Gothic was the cultural zeitgeist of the time and the rebuilding of the old Tyne bridge for the 1887 exhibition was an attempt to capture that public mood, as had been done in other cities across the country beforehand such as with the ‘Old London’ exhibition of 1885 and ‘Old Edinburgh’ of 1886.[18] There was a sense that the exhibition, which opened on the 11th of May 1887, was an opportunity for Newcastle to advertise itself to the rest of the country and assert its cultural and economic prestige.[19] [20] The neo-gothic bridge was, in part, an attempt to show visitors that Newcastle had an interesting and rich history that stood alongside cities like London and Edinburgh. The Victorians clearly made a connection between the bridge and the gothic as they were particularly interested in how the bridge was used to display severed heads, and, famously, the right arm of William Wallace in 1305.[21]
Taken at first glance, the placement of the recreated Tyne bridge at the centre of the Jubilee Exhibition seems incongruous.[22] Its old-fashioned style clashes with the overall theme of the exhibition that was designed to showcase the modern engineering and technological wonders of the North-East. Local inventors such as William George Armstrong and Joseph Wilson Swan were placed prominently, as well as names associated with George Stephenson.[23] [24] Indeed, the Exhibition had originally been planned to be called the “Royal Mining Engineering and Technological Exhibition”, only changing its name to coincide with Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee.[25] Ostensibly, it had nothing to do with medievalism or history. Yet, in the midst of the technological and engineering wonders, such as Armstrong’s 111ton Elswick gun, the rebuilt 13th century Tyne Bridge was centre-stage, a 600-year-old mock relic. We have already identified some of the motives behind the reconstruction; an attempt to appropriate the gothic zeitgeist, to recapture an idealised lost past, and to exhibit the accomplishments of Newcastle and the North-East to the rest of the country, and indeed, the world.
Additionally, the bridge could have represented an entrepreneurial work ethic which the Victorians held in high esteem. Newcastle is built around its river, and to the Victorians the medieval bridge represented a practical, business-friendly crossing, factors which they saw as absent from the much plainer Georgian design which replaced it. The 13th century bridge had high arches which allowed cargo ships to pass whereas the Georgian bridge was too flat and low for that purpose.[26] The medieval bridge also served for commercial use by having shops and houses built directly upon it. This appealed to Victorian entrepreneurialism and sentimentality and were aspects keenly replicated for the duplicate version. Perhaps the Victorians’ demolition, in 1868, of the Georgian bridge in favour of the swing bridge (which, as the name suggests, could turn on its axis to enable ships to pass) felt like a return to a time when the Tyne was a ‘working river’. If we look at how accurately they reconstructed the old bridge and how strictly rules were enforced to maintain authenticity it is logical to conclude that the Victorians were attempting (whether they were successful or not) a faithful recreation, not a caricature, of the medieval style.[27]
The chief architect of the reproduction was Mr. Philip John Messent who was completing the design for ‘The North-East of England Institute of Mining and Mechanical Engineers’.[28] Messent used multiple sources as reference to his design including maps, etchings, and engineer’s reports in order to keep his replica as close to his available source material as possible.[29] The only prepared difference was the making of the bridge one third shorter (but keeping all other dimensions, including width, the same). This is in stark contrast to the bridge built in the same location for the 1929 ‘North-East Coast Exhibition’, which followed a distinctly modern art-deco form and, hence, was fully in-keeping with the overall style of the exhibition. That bridge simply crossed the pond at the narrowest point whereas the 1887 bridge ran diagonally across the water to give the bridge a greater size and stature.[30] The function of these two crossings was clearly very different, the 1887 bridge was not built simply ‘to get to the other side’ but was instead engineered to be a source of excitement and inspiration.
The Victorians utilised their medieval past to act as a reflection of their own identity and achievements. The reconstructed Tyne bridge is a unique example of how they achieved that. The context in which it was built, of an industrial exhibition, reveals the relation the Victorians drew between their past and future. However, although this link could have easily been a fabricated one, as it is in many cases, for this instance the connection is wholly appropriate. The Victorians did not need to raise the arches or populate the structure with businesses of the old Tyne bridge because, for them, history had manufactured a historical precedent all for itself.
Authors: Joshua Howlett and Louis Lorenzo
Publisher: Louis Lorenzo
First Published: 28th of September 2017
Last Modified: 28th of September 2017
References
To see any of the ‘primary source material’ mentioned below, please download the article.
[1] This view first expressed by Petrarch in the 1330s who was particularly concerned with the loss and corruption of language which had occurred since the 5th century. For more see: Theodore Mommsen, Petrarch’s Conception of the ‘Dark Ages’ (Cambridge: Speculum, 1942).
[2] Some sources date the medieval bridges’ construction as early 13th century whilst others date it as late 12th century (c. 1190). There is no fully trustworthy record on this so it cannot be said for sure which century it was built in. However, what is clear is that the bridge was burned down in 1248 and then rebuilt by 1250. So as to avoid confusion we have decided to use the 13th century date which is more verifiable than attempting to date the original construction.
[3] Just to give one example of one other facet of study into Victorian medievalism just within the sphere physical reconstruction: Helene E Roberts, “Victorian Medievalism: Revival or Masquerade?,” Browning Institute Studies 8 (1980): 11-44. Roberts explore how the Victorians dealt with reconstruction of medieval clothing, concluding that although they were not the derisory of the past, the Victorians still “missed the unique and inimitable style of the Middle Ages”.
[4] Robert Bartlett, “Introduction: Perspectives on the Medieval World,” Medieval Panorama, 2001. Bartlett says that for the enlightenment thinkers “the Middle Ages epitomized the barbaric, priest-ridden world they were attempting to transform.”.
[5] It is important to note that Paine’s 1794 release of ‘The Age of Reason; Being an Investigation of True and Fabulous Theology’ was not initially received well in Britain, at least by the establishment. Its disrupting message striking panic into an order already fearing for its own perpetuation in the wake of the French revolution. This resulted in the pamphlet’s banning. However, it was still printed and its affordability meant Paine’s ideas spread widely.
[6] Acclaimed thinkers such as Voltaire and Immanuel Kant expressed this opinion alongside Edward Gibbon who wrote of “the rubbish of the dark ages” in his famous text: Edward Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (London: Strahan & Cadell, 1776-1789).
[7] As detailed in: Heinrich Härke, “Anglo-Saxon Immigration and Ethnogenesis,” Medieval Archaeology 55, (2011).
[8] A process which slowed in the 14th century as a result of the spread of the black death.
[9] Stephanie L Barczewski, Myth and National Identity in Nineteenth Century Britain: The Legends of King Arthur and Robin Hood (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2000). Barczewski also argues that it was during this period that the notions of British and English identity began to be intertwined as the Victorians began to increasingly define ‘Britishness’ as ‘Englishness’.
[10] Indeed, the construction of the swing bridge and demolition of the Georgian Tyne bridge seems an apt metaphor for how the Victorians and Georgians so differed in their mindsets. The Georgian bridge was flat and low, not allowing ships to pass, whereas the swing bridge (which, as the name suggests, could turn on its axis to enable ships to pass) allowed the Tyne to exist as a working river again, just as it had been with the medieval bridge.
[11] John Robert Seeley, The Expansion of England: Two Courses of Lectures (Adamant Media Corporation, 28th September 2001) 1-156.
[13] Nicholas J. Higham and Martin J. Ryan, The Anglo-Saxon World (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2nd Oct. 2015).
[14] Richard Evans, “The Victorians: Empire and Race” (Lecture presented at Gresham College, London, 11th April 2011).
[15] Christopher Frayling. Vampyres: Lord Byron to Count Dracula (London: Faber, 1991).
[16] However, the notion of gothic which had been termed in the 18th century had taken on new meaning by the 19th century because of the rise of the historical romance popularised by Sir Walter Scott with texts such as ‘Ivanhoe’. This had led to the popularisation of a sub-genre of the gothic called the ‘romantic gothic’. The romantic gothic did not see the gothic as a thing of horror but more a thing of beauty and its influence can be seen upon the recreated old Tyne bridge which celebrates its gothic nature.
[18] See Source A of the primary source material. This newspaper article clearly shows that the 1887 jubilee exhibition was not occurring independently, but more as a response to the wider movement from across the country.
[19] See Source B for a newspaper article which expresses this local distress as being seen to be a poor place to live.
[20] We discovered the date of the opening of the exhibition from a diary entry which mentions attending the opening ceremony. See Source J of the primary source material.
[21] See Source A of the primary source material, an extract from the ‘Newcastle Daily Journal’ from the 13th of November 1886. Also see Source F where the bridge is explicitly described as ‘gothic’.
[22] It’s prominent position within the North gardens we found laid out on a plan designed for visitors to the exhibition. See Source C of the primary source material.
[23] This discovered in the official catalogue for the exhibition which listed all those who would supported, ran, and held stalls at the exhibition. See Source D of the primary source material for a list of patrons including Stephenson’s, Armstrong’s, and Swan’s companies. See Source E for an example of how they gave specific descriptions of what each exhibit held. In this case that exhibit of Swan.
[24] Armstrong being the inventor of modern artillery and the hydraulic accumulator. Swan that of a successful incandescent lightbulb and Stephenson the pioneer of rail transport and inventor of the ‘Stephenson Rocket’.
[25] Indeed, it was still called that on many documents produced at the time.
[26] As outlined in an informational article from the time which was available at the exhibition. Almost the entire article is dedicated to the medieval bridge with only 1 and a half pages dedicated to the Georgian bridge. See Source I of the primary source material.
[27] See Source G of the primary source material for a list of the rules placed on shopkeepers on the bridge and Source H for the specifications to which the bridge was built.
[28] The institute, who initiated the whole exhibition, managed to obtain £20,000 to fund the exhibition which was soon taken up by the council as an opportunity for an exciting attraction in Newcastle. See Source K of the primary source material.
[29] See Source H of the primary source material.
[30] See Source C of the primary source material for how the 1887 bridge ran over the water and Source L for an image of the 1929 bridge.
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)
Castle Howard is not actually a castle, but rather a stately home, situated in the Yorkshire countryside. It was designed by the famous Sir John Vanburgh, who is often referred to as the father of the ‘English Baroque’ style. The estate still remains in the possession of the Howard family today and has done so for over 300 years. Work began on building the ‘castle’ in 1699 and it was not to be completed for another 100 years, and in doing so, an entire village was destroyed in the process. This is one element of ‘classic’ architecture that people tend to forget when they complain that we have regressed in our architectural form. It may very well be nice to build your new library in the same way Castle Howard was built, but you’ll have to wait a hundred years, not even to mention the inordinate costs. By the by, when it was completed, the estate contained 13,000 acres of land and had its own railway station to service it, which ran from 1845 to 1950.
The reason I am discussing castle howard is because it is as an example of Baroque architecture, which is the real focus of this article. If you are not quite sure what we mean by Baroque architecture, think of any of the great European cities and those buildings which are most visually impactful. Buildings like St. Peter’s Basilica in Vatican City, or the Palace of Versailles in France, or St. Paul’s Cathedral in England. This is because Baroque buildings are characterised by grandeur and high contrast, they are built to be flamboyant and purposefully designed to impress to such a degree that they can intimidate. The origins of Baroque architecture date back to the counter-reformation within Catholicism in the 16th century, and thus the form is inseparably linked to the church, you will find a great deal of religious imagery within baroque architecture, It seeks to be a visible statement of the power of the church. The first Baroque building was erected in France in 1642, it was the ‘Château de Maisons’. From there it then spread across Europe and adopted different styles with the borders it traversed, a trained eye may very well be able to identify which European country they are in simply by looking at its Baroque architecture.
The grandiose nature of Baroque is very much theatrical, it is attempting to surprise and impress, to generate an emotional reaction from the viewer. But where did this desire for theatrics originate? What is it that gave us these inspiring designs? It has been put, by historians such as Peter Burke, that the Baroque’s grandiose and theatrical design reflects a 17th century “crisis of representation”. The idea being that the economic, political, social, and spiritual crises of the time are fracturing a previously held world-view, an innocent, and perhaps naive, Christian view of everything having a purpose and being linked by its very nature to everything else. That things are done for a reason. Events such as the thirty years’ war, the great 1620s trade depression, the reformation, and others from this time run counterfactual to that belief.
This is why people may turn to the idea, to predictably quote Shakespeare, that “all the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players” (As You Like It: 1623). People feel disconnected from reality, and so present it as theatre.
Author / Publisher: Louis Lorenzo
First Published: 05th of April 2017
Last Modified: 14th of May 2017(Grammar Corrections)
The term ‘Powder Monkey’ first came into use in the British Royal Navy in the early period of the 17th century (c. 1620), a time you may have heard referred to as ‘the age of sail’. As sailing ships, and their capacity for munitions, grew larger it soon became apparent that gunpowder was an extremely volatile cargo for a vessel to carry. It was important to keep the substance dry otherwise it would be of no use, but it was also key to keep it away from any source of ignition, otherwise you would be of no use.
The answer to these problems was the ‘magazine’. Still used as a term for where ammunition is stored today, the magazine was a purpose-built room at the base of the ship where gunpowder could rest (relatively) safe from both water and fire. This led to a further issue however, now all of your gunpowder is several decks away from where your guns are, and there could often be over 100 cannons to constantly resupply. How are you going to sustain any reasonable form of rate-of-fire if you have to keep rushing up and down the ship to fuel your cannons and muskets?
In steps the powder monkey. Your typical powder monkey was a boy around the age 12 whose job it was to supply the weaponry of the sailors with gunpowder. This meant dashing back and forth, up and down the vessel from the magazine to the upper decks and back again. This was extremely strenuous work; these were heavy bags of explosive material that you were running and scrambling and climbing with, as the ship lurches from side to side with the impact of waves and cannons, as chunks of splintered wood and shrapnel are hurled through the air, and as people die around you. Why is it that you are scrambling with such haste? Because the speed at which you can run up and down the ship directly correlates to the speed at which the ship can fire its cannons. The faster you go, the more likely you are to survive.
The reason they used boys was because of their size, they were small enough to hide behind the gunwale of the ship and agile enough to fit through tight spaces, enabling them to reach the cannons in the shortest amount of time. Evidently, girls could just have easily been used for the same purpose, but I suspect that this was one element of patriarchal society they weren’t so concerned about at the time.
Despite their important and horrific job, the boys were at the bottom of the naval hierarchy and never got official recognition as members of the crew on board. Their name isn’t comedic by chance, it’s because they were an easy punchline for the rest of the crew, who were much older and stronger. When ships docked in port it was very common for wandering boys to be kidnapped, either by those of the Royal Navy themselves, or from any other group of passing sailors. Once within the grip of the Royal Navy, powder monkeys were unlikely to see their homes again.
They are somewhat the unsung heroes of the British navy, without them the guns would have simply stopped firing. Especially in a time where many guns would just… not work… it was crucial that the ones that did had a better rate-of-fire than your opponent. Perhaps this is mere polemics, but it could be argued that Powder Monkeys were one of the most important innovations of the Royal Navy. Britain’s empire was always wholly maritime at its core and it’s clear that Powder Monkeys were essential to naval warfare. They were never respected then and continue to exist as mere trivia today, but Britannia would surely have never ‘ruled the waves’ without them.
Auhor / Publisher: Louis Lorenzo
First Published: 05th of April 2017
Last Modified: 15th of May 2017 (Grammar Corrections)
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.
Dr Louis Lorenzo 