February 2012

Steven Spielberg’s 2011 film adaptation of War Horse is expected to earn quite the collection of gold at this year’s Academy Awards (six nominations). The story has also enjoyed success as a Tony award winning play originally adapted for the stage by Nick Stafford and with performance runs that began in 2007 in London. Based on a novel by British author Michael Morpurgo, War Horse is the touching tale of a young British boy named Albert and his horse Joey. Both the stage and film adaptations of Morpurgo’s novel follow the close relationship formed between Albert and Joey as they conquer family economic struggles and endure the terrors of World War I.

It is expected that with any Hollywood film, especially one by Steven Spielberg, the special effects and actors would take Morpurgo’s text and, as accurately as possible, vividly bring the novel to life. Just as in the stage adaptations, the actors in War Horse did just that. Though the amazing horse puppets seen in the stage versions were not necessary for the film, the incredible and almost magical puppetry in the stage show (created by Handspring Puppet Company) was certainly missed in the film. Despite this loss, one other important element the film successfully brings to life, so to speak, is the visual representation of the war-torn landscape created by the violence of trench warfare. So far this article has acted only as a glowing review of War Horse (in all its forms) rather than offer any critical or scholarly insight into its multi-media adaptations; that is not the intent. Rather, the intent is to use imagery and ideas seen in the film War Horse as a starting point to understand a more important story – World War I.

Images of scorched, splintered, and decapitated trees; barricades mangled with rusted razor wire; puddles of rain mixed with gun shells, bodies, and blood; men screaming, the staccato rattling of gunfire, the sharp screech of bombs soaring through clouds of smoke and ash; even the mud-caked and anxiety-ridden trenches are all seen in Spielberg’s War Horse, and all portrayed so appropriately that as a scholar of British war-time art, I immediately recognized in the film similar elements to the paintings I study. Admittedly more dynamic in motion picture form, the actuality of these terrors is more fully realized in the silent and still eyewitness accounts painted by British World War I soldier-artists such as Paul and John Nash, Sir William Orpen, and C.R.W. Nevinson.

It is the paintings by these soldier-artists that have provided Britain with important, though often disturbing, permanent expressive images of World War I. In War Horse, the audience catches only a glimpse of the trees and muddy terrain Paul Nash explored in We are Making a New World (1918). Here, Nash shows the devastation of war and asks rather than explains, with the implications of his title, what kind of world is being created from such devastation? Spielberg’s film hints at the harsh conditions in the trenches, but it is in works like Over the Top (1918), by John Nash, that the modern viewer is allowed inside the trench where dead soldiers remain forever while others must carry on into the literal icy bleakness of uncertainty, which Nash reinforces with the imagery of haze and snow. The same access to the trench is granted by Sir William Orpen in his work Dead Germans in a Trench (1918). Here the vibrant blue Somme sky is juxtaposed with the bodies of two rotting German soldiers creating a surreal sense of discomfort; this produces a dichotomy of emotion: such deep and vibrant hope seen above while below in the trench is the rotten reality of World War I for all involved.

One of these rotten realities of war is the cost at home, away from active fighting – something the story of War Horse does include through the elder Frenchman and his young grand-daughter. The film certainly shows aggression towards civilians, but it shies away from the violent truth that often followed. This concept is also perhaps more clearly understood through images produced by Britain’s own World War I soldier-artists.  In 1917, C.R.W. Nevinson painted A Taube; this image is indeed anomalous simply because of the subject – a dead child, lain out and bleeding from the head. In this work, Nevinson deftly places the figure face down near broken brick and rubble, forcing the viewer to imagine the many possible ways the child could have met this terrible fate. Nevinson demands that the viewer question the work rather than provide the viewer with answers. Where are this child’s parents? What happened? Why? The character of Albert presented in War Horse is only one child’s story; Nevinson’s A Taube is another.

Harsh criticism against War Horse for lack of authenticity, in any of its manifestations, is not completely just. The story is meant to evoke a plethora of reactions and emotions: joy, laughter, sadness, and tears; all manipulated to create a somewhat romanticized story of war. In this sense, the story, play, and film are successful. If, however, a happy ending to the story is all that audiences take away from War Horse, rather than remembrance or reverence, then criticism is fair. Hopefully the film will inspire, as it did for me, audiences to go beyond the feel-good elements and seek out direct and relevant connections to World War I. Though this column has provided a logical transition inspired by a personal experience with British art, it is not the only one and there are certainly many other connections to be made for varied audiences. With the centennial of World War I so near, it is a bit serendipitous that the film and theatre adaptations are receiving so much global attention and extensive accolades. Instead of allowing the story of Albert and Joey slip into the Hollywood annals as simply another award-winning movie, let us take this opportunity to use the success of War Horse as an invitation to understanding. Let us, as British scholars, continue to act as the passing bells for Britain’s long passed doomed youth and remind audiences of the true war in War Horse.

Paul Nash, We are Making a New World. Oil on canvas. Imperial War Museum, London.

John Nash, Over the Top. Oil on Canvas. Imperial War Museum, London.

Sir William Orpen, Dead Germans in a Trench. Oil on Canvas. Imperial War Museum London

C.R.W. Nevinson, A Taube. Oil on Canvas. Imperial War Museum London.

Helene von Bismarck, Op-Ed Columnist

February 2012

The “West” has never been much of a geographical term. The days when it was located west of the Berlin wall have been over for more than twenty years, even though the meaning of the word was never limited to this exclusively geographical description. During the Cold War, the West was an alliance in which far eastern Japan was as much a part as the western United States. Since 1990, international relations have, in many ways, become more complicated and ambiguous, and so have the terms that are used to describe them. With the collapse of the Soviet bloc, the West lost its established antipode. Some people may still speak of the “East” today, but they rarely mean Russia or Eastern Europe. It is much more likely that they talk about China, India or Asia in general. While the “West” and the corresponding adjective “western” are omnipresent in media and public debate, no one seems to be quite sure anymore what these words actually mean, or if they really signify anything. Is the West a geopolitical entity? An economic system? A lifestyle? A philosophy? A set of values? What makes the West distinctively western?

These are the questions that two distinguished historians, Niall Ferguson and Heinrich August Winkler, have taken on in their latest books. The two authors come from dissimilar intellectual backgrounds. Ferguson, an Oxford-educated Harvard professor, is above all else an economic historian. Winkler, who is emeritus chair of contemporary history at Humboldt-University in Berlin and one of the most renowned historians in Germany, concentrates mainly on political developments and the discourses that inform them. While there are enormous differences between their books, Ferguson and Winkler have one important thing in common: they are both searching for the identity of the western world by looking into its history. However, their books represent two diverging ways of delineating an identity. Essentially, the first is outward- and the second inward-looking.

The title of Ferguson’s book, Civilization: The West and the Rest, not only looks catchy and somewhat provocative on the bookshelves, it is also indicative of the author’s methodology: to analyze the civilization of the western world by comparing it to others. His aim is an ambitious one. He seeks to answer the question of how, during the modern era, “did a few small polities on the western end of the Eurasian land mass come to dominate the rest of the world?” Imperialism, he argues, is not the answer. It was a symptom of, rather than the reason for, western supremacy over large parts of the world from the sixteenth to the twentieth century. Ferguson is not interested in narrating the historical process of western expansionism. Instead, he wants to analyze the western capabilities that made this process possible. In his opinion, the civilization of the western world distinguished itself from all the others by the development of six characteristics, or, in his very hip iDiction, “killer applications”, that the rest of the world failed to “download”: competition, science, property, medicine, the consumer society and the protestant work ethic. He dedicates a chapter of his book to each of these western characteristics, using a wealth of historical episodes to illustrate his argument that they were responsible for the “gradual subordination” of the world’s other civilizations to the West after the year 1500. The problematic result of this structure is that Ferguson’s book provides the reader with a long list of western histories, rather than a coherent history of the western world.

It is therefore very good news that Heinrich August Winkler intends to have his epic History of the West (Geschichte des Westens), which takes us from antiquity to the end of the Second World War, translated into English. While the most evident differences between this book and Ferguson’s Civilization may be its length and detail (it already consists of two volumes containing 1200 pages each and Winkler is now working on a third volume), they are not the most important ones. What really distinguishes Winkler’s work from Ferguson’s is the fact that he concentrates on the West itself instead of analyzing its relationship with other parts of the world. He argues that the most essential element of the western identity is a political culture that respects universal human rights, the rule of law, pluralism, representative democracy and the separation of powers. This set of values, which Winkler calls the “normative project” of the West, was, for the first time, made explicit during the American and the French revolutions of 1776 and 1789 respectively. Its origins, however, can, in his opinion, be traced back to the invention of monotheism by Echnaton in the 14^th century B.C. Winkler’s book has three major themes: the development of western political ideals, their fiercely contested implementation in Europe (the “old West”) and North America (the “new West”) and the huge contradiction between the “normative project” and the actual political praxis in large parts of the western world. Far from arguing that its history was a direct and un-interrupted march towards freedom and democracy, Winkler acknowledges that the West has spent at least as much time betraying its own ideals as formulating them. His book is a very readable and knowledgeable milestone of transatlantic history and especially relevant to those interested in Great Britain, France, Germany and the United States.

The search for a clearly-defined identity usually begins when this identity is no longer a matter of course. The discussion about who we really are and which characteristics distinguish us from others can be the expression of a crisis of confidence and a sense of uncertainty. During the last decade, the inner cohesion and solidarity of the western world has suffered more than one serious blow. The recent series of economic crises have given little occasion for optimism about the future and led many people to question their way of life. It can therefore be expected that the debate about the essence of being “western”, to which Ferguson and Winkler have made very different contributions, will continue for some time to come.

Michael Talbot, Op-Ed Columnist

February 2012

As with history books, there is no need for history television, or indeed radio, to be dull. There have been some absolute crackers of shows on British television in recent years. Some of the best are the ones that do not take themselves too seriously, such as the wonderful The Supersizers Go… (2008) and The Supersizers Eat… (2009) in which Giles Corran and Sue Perkins munched their way through historical cuisines from Roman feasts to 1980s piss-ups, exploring how food can shed light on historical cultures.

Tony Robinson – more famous perhaps as Baldrick in the comedy Blackadder – produced a very interesting and hands-on examination of the filthy and backbreaking labour the majority of historical actors had to endure in The Worst Jobs in History (2004-2007). This series was the exact antithesis of its contemporary, David Starkey’s nauseating Monarchy (2004-2006), so top-down and teleological that it would have seemed antiquated to even the most established of establishment nineteenth-century gentlemen.   

One of my favourite documentaries, however, has to be John Romer’s Byzantium: The Lost Empire (1997). Although it might sound at first like one of those horrific “exploration” type shows (the sort that ends up uncovering the “secrets” of this or that ancient people), it is one of the most atmospheric, beautiful, and compelling of the historical documentaries that I have seen. Romer’s passion and narrative skills, coupled with a clear direction towards the use of material evidence from the series’ historical consultant Prof Robin Cormack, put forward a ripping yarn. It used a whole variety of written and material evidence from across the former Byzantine realms, and Romer consistently tried to relate the pieces of imperial evidence to the experience of the ordinary subjects of that empire.

I enjoyed mainly the fact that Romer did not try to dumb down his material or fool his audience into thinking that we owe everything to the Byzantines. Romer’s closing words did not present Byzantium as some eternal culture, but placed it rather as ‘a flash of silver, a dream of jewels’ in a particular historical, and indeed historiographical context. Standing in the shell of the Blachernae Palace in Istanbul, Romer gave the following assessment of his subject:

‘Ruins are often melancholy, but they should seldom make you angry. The end of Byzantium wasn’t really brought about by the wicked West or the terrible Turk; things pass, as the poet said…Nonetheless, we should honour the past, and cherish it. It’s a memory, a solid memory of our beginnings.’

Although I do not entirely agree with his study and his conclusions, his constant attempts to examine the history of Byzantium from a variety of perspectives, and using a whole range of sources, together with the beauty of the production, makes the whole endeavour worth watching. Oh, but might the same be said for The Crusades, recently aired on BBC 2.

This is by no means the first foray into such territory on British television. The most notable so far is perhaps Terry Jones’s Crusades (1995). In his post-Python days, Jones has produced some truly entertaining and informative pieces of historical programming, notably his Medieval Lives (2004), which sought to challenge popular conceptions of medieval society, and more recently Barbarians (2006), which saw him travel around Europe and the Middle East reassessing the image of the Celts, Goths, Greeks, Parthians, Vandals, and Huns.

But Crusades was his first piece, and saw Jones wandering around Anatolia and the Syrian desert dressed in full armour, bartering for a horse in Turkish, and generally romping around the Near East. Visually it was entertaining, and included talking heads such as the late, great Sir Steven Runciman, whose idea of the crusaders forming the last wave of barbarian invasion into the civilized world had clearly influenced Jones.

I think to understand the overall tone of that show, one only has to read the parting narration:

‘Probably, most crusaders set out with the intention of doing good, and yet they ended up perpetrating one of the great crimes against humanity. What’s more, the entire enterprise was a total failure. The net result of all their efforts was the exact opposite of what they’d set out to achieve. Islam, far from being destroyed, learned to imitate Europe’s rage. Constantinople, far from being saved, never recovered. Today, of course, it is a Turkish city, Istanbul, and 900 years after it all began, the world still lives in the long shadow of the crusades.’

Some fifteen years after Jones made this assessment Dr Thomas Asbirdge, following basically the same plot from the “Holy War” of Urban II, to debunking the “myths” of Richard the Lionheart and Saladin, to the ultimate “shocking” defeat by Baybars, came to basically the same conclusions. This is a problem. And it is a problem for two main reasons.

The first is to do with sources. There was almost no engagement with any of the primary textual materials from the Muslim sides, some of which are easily accessible either in their original form in numerous archives including here in Britain, or in translation. Most descriptions of the Muslims were accompanied by Disney’s Aladdin-type bazaar scenes in one souq or other.

Very much linked to this one-sided approach is the second major reason, and one that another historian of the crusades here in the University of London made quite clear to me in a recent conversation: it is the basic misunderstanding of the political and economic structures of the Near East at the time of the crusades. ‘The documentary lacked,’ the historian confided ‘any sense of the political situation of the region in this period. “Islam” seemed to cover anything: Fatimid Egypt, Saljuq Iraq, Rum-Saljuqs, Syrian local Saljuq rulers, Abbasids. If you subsume all historical actors under a rather dubious culturalistic category, it is not too surprising that history develops along rather predictable “fault-lines”.’ It is a simplification that continues to plague European histories of the Islamic world and beyond.

The question I suppose a documentary like Crusades should be asking is, why should we still be making documentaries about the crusades for British television? Terry Jones pondered the same question in a lecture at The National Archives in 2008 on King Richard II:

‘I’m not talking about Richard I. The Lionheart hated England, despised England. I don’t think he lived here more than about six months. He wanted to sell London to the highest bidder if he could, and spent most of his life trying to kill Muslims. So, of course, he gets a statue outside the Houses of Parliament.’

Amusing, but tragically true. Ever since the translations of Torquato Tasso’s epic 1581 poem La Gerusalemme Liberata (Jerusalem Delivered) became popular amongst sections of the British political and intellectual elite in the dying days of the eighteenth century, the crusades have been a standard part of at least the English national narrative. But why? What is it about the most commonly presented narrative of the crusades that is deemed to be so appealing to the British public? Crusades does not even begin to engage with such questions. Whether one views the crusaders as valiant heroes or violent savages, the fact remains that, in the words of my esteemed colleague, the crusades are ‘a marginal footnote in Middle Eastern history.’ Why is there no engagement with that fact?

The point about Crusades that I think annoyed me sufficiently to rant about it was the fact that it was so patronizing. The idea that there should be “popular” history where we present a shiny and easily digestible version of history to the masses, and “academic” history, where historians write dull but largely insightful papers and books for other historians, is entirely counterproductive. In fact, if one thinks on it enough, it is completely counterintuitive. Television is a medium that has the potential to present recent findings in “academic” history to non-academics in an entertaining and informative manner. The way historians do history does not have to be dull; neither should they insult the intelligence of their viewing public by presenting hackneyed, cartoonish, and one-sided versions of their subject.

Dr Richard C. Allen, Reader in Early Modern Cultural History

1 March 2012

University of Wales, Newport. Performing Arts Lecture Theatre (Room A16) City Centre Campus

18.00 – 20.30

This lecture provides a fascinating insight into one of the oldest benevolent societies in America with a history that stretches back to their first meeting on St David’s day in 1729. It explores the Society’s earliest origins, membership, cultural activities, and the efforts of members to provide relief for the poor Welsh exile.

This lecture is aimed at anyone who has an interest in the cultural activities of Welsh-Americans or those working on emigration studies.
***
Charity, members of the Welsh Society of Philadelphia recognised, began at home but also needed to be dispensed to the ‘remotest parts of the Earth’. This was articulated in the preamble to a constitution they drew up on 4 February 1799. It stated that newly arrived emigrants should be taken by the hand ‘instructing him in what he is ignorant of and providing for his Immediate necessities’. Sixty-four Welshmen (or the descendants of Welsh emigrants) held the first meeting of the Society a year earlier on 1 March 1798 in Philadelphia with the aim of continuing the work of its predecessor (the Society of the Sons of Ancient Britons c.1729). As part of its remit, members were expected to provide moral support, financial assistance and practical relief for Welsh exiles who would struggle in a foreign land without help. It is a Society which has enjoyed an uninterrupted history to the present day and, naturally, a long-lasting association with Welsh-Americana, particularly its promotion of Welsh cultural activities and its annual St David’s day celebration. This organisation was one of many similar Welsh societies which sprang up in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in Britain and in America. The purpose of this paper is not, however, to record the complete history of this Philadelphian Welsh Society, but rather it will focus primarily on the development of this cultural body, its early membership and the significant position and experiences of members in Philadelphia – the spiritual home of the Welsh exile in America. Additionally, it will explore why this Society appealed to Welsh exiles and their wealthy descendants. Finally, it will consider the role of the Society as a provider of charitable assistance to the needy, who from the late-eighteenth century onwards saw America, especially Philadelphia, as an alternative to a life of hardship in Wales.

About Dr. Allen:

Dr. Richard C. Allen is a Reader in Early Modern Cultural History at the University of Wales, Newport. He was formerly (2006-7) the Fulbright-Robertson Visiting Professor at Westminster College, Fulton, Missouri, and the beneficiary of a Gest Fellowship at Haverford College. He has published widely on Welsh emigration and Quakerism, including Quaker Communities in Early Modern Wales: From Resistance to Respectability published in 2007 by the University of Wales Press. He is currently completing a follow-up volume entitled, Transatlantic Connections: Welsh Quaker Emigrants and Colonial Pennsylvania, 1650–1776 and a Manchester University Press joint-authored study on Quakers in the North East of England, 1650-1850: Identities, Networks and Discipline. He has edited three volumes: Irelands of the Mind: Memory and Identity in Modern Irish Culture (2008); Faith of Our Fathers: Popular Culture and Belief in Post-Reformation England, Ireland and Wales (2009), and The Religious History of Wales: A Survey of Religious Life and Practice from the Seventeenth Century to the Present Day (currently in-press).

Mark Doyle, Op-Ed Columnist

February 2012

As plans for a 2014 referendum on Scottish independence begin to take shape, people on all sides of the question will raid history to support their case. Unionists will point to the economic and cultural benefits that Scotland enjoyed in the wake of the 1707 Union with England, and nationalists will point with equal certainty to the economic and cultural costs of the Union. The gist of the unionist argument-from-history (if I may put it thus) is that the Union gave Scottish writers, businessmen, scientists, engineers, soldiers, and investors a larger stage on which to perform, a larger market from which to benefit, and an enormous empire to conquer and settle. The gist of the nationalist argument-from-history is that the Union led to economic policies that benefited England at Scotland’s expense, eviscerated Scotland’s unique Gaelic culture, and subjected Scotland to the whims of an indifferent, Anglocentric Parliament.

Both sides have a point, of course. Whether one thinks the Union was a good thing or a bad thing depends not so much on which side of the border one stands (although I reckon this does make a difference) but on precisely when and where one focuses. Postindustrial Clydeside? Score one for the nationalists. Enlightenment Edinburgh? Unionists, rise and take a bow (and please remain standing for the duration of this paragraph). Class and region also make a difference. The Scottish working classes have had a very different experience of the Union than the middle classes, and the experience of the Lowlands was not that of the Highlands, fortunately for the Lowlands.

To say that the Union has been a mixed blessing is to risk sounding trite; to say that, from the very moment of its birth, it never had much hope of being anything other than a mixed blessing is to sound a little bolder. Let me support the latter position by looking at the immediate context of the Act of Union and examining just what the Act did and didn’t do.

Scotland at the turn of the eighteenth century was in perilous financial straits: poor harvests had caused widespread famine, and great masses of Scottish capital had been gobbled up by a failed colonization scheme at Darien, on the coast of Panama, which was attacked by the Spanish and sabotaged by the English. At the same time, Scottish merchants were skirting England’s Navigation Acts by trading with the American colonies, puncturing England’s monopoly on colonial trade and violating the rules of mercantilism. Scotland, in short, needed an economic bailout, and England needed to rein in a nation of rogue traders.

Then there was the spat over the Hanoverian Succession. Queen Anne, sister of Mary and Protestant daughter of James VII and II, was almost certain to die without a direct heir. To forestall the claims of the ousted James and his Catholic children, the English Parliament decided to hand the crown to Sophia, Electress of Hanover, Anne’s second cousin and nearest Protestant relative (in the event it was Sophia’s son George who came to the throne after Anne’s death in 1714). The Scottish Parliament refused to go along with this plan, partly because many Scots supported James’s Catholic heirs, and partly as a protest against English unilateralism. In 1703-4, therefore, the Scots passed an Act of Security in which they reserved the right to choose their own monarch, thereby threatening to split a monarchy that had been unified for a century. England, worried that Scotland might become a back door to a French invasion, responded in 1705 with the Alien Act, which declared Scots to be foreign nationals and their English estates to be alien property. It also cut off most trade between the two countries. The idea was to bludgeon Scotland into negotiating a Union, and it worked.

The negotiations and debates of the next two years took place in an atmosphere of mutual suspicion and annoyance. While Scottish politicians negotiated favorable terms for themselves and their economic interests, England sent cash bribes to secure votes (the Earl of Glasgow received £20,000 to distribute to Union supporters) and ordinary Scots signed anti-Union petitions and started anti-Union riots. One unionist observer estimated that three quarters of the Scottish population were opposed to the Union. Nevertheless, on January 16, 1707, the Scottish Parliament voted itself out of existence by a comfortable margin (110 to 67). Scotland would now send 45 MPs to the House of Commons (where they would be swamped by 513 English and Welsh MPs), accept the Hanoverian succession, and enjoy free trade with England and its colonies. This was no simple merger, however, nor was it merely the subjugation of Scotland by its richer and more powerful neighbor. Scotland retained autonomy in the areas of law and education, and the Church of Scotland remained the established church and a vital repository of national identity.

The Union was a messy compromise that left both sides less than completely satisfied. An unlovely resolution to a set of arguments that neither side felt they could win in any other way, it was also rather a heavy tonic for a set of very specific, somewhat delicate maladies – a long-term solution to a number of short-term problems. Mostly it did what its designers meant it to do: it solved the succession question, brought Scottish merchants into the imperial fold, and, although it took a few decades, helped to grow the Scottish economy. But in the long run it had rather severe consequences, especially for ordinary Scots. The profits of empire helped fuel industrialization, which enriched a few but proletarianized many more – the first generation of Glasgow’s industrial workers, toiling away in unsafe mills and living in overcrowded slums, could hardly be considered beneficiaries of the Union. Nor, of course, could most Highlanders. Highland-led Jacobite rebellions in 1715 and 1745-6 invited fierce reprisals and helped to justify a brutal campaign of cultural annihilation: violent evictions, aggressive assaults on Highlanders’ religion and language, famine, and the occasional massacre all conspired to destroy Highland culture in the first century or so after the Union. This was not solely the fault of the Union, nor of the English – the destruction of the clans had begun well before 1707 and had been carried out by Lowland Scots as well as rival bands of Highlanders – but the Union undoubtedly accelerated the pace of the destruction, largely by strengthening the position of the Lowland elite, for whom the Highlands were an embarrassing feudal remnant that threatened Scotland’s prosperity and security.

Watching the independence debates today, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that a vote for Scottish independence would be a similarly long-term solution to a set of short-term problems. Unhappiness with the current coalition government, frustration with the British Labour party, economic and social malaise, and innumerable other grievances and ambitions, small and large, just may lead Scottish voters to vote for the Union’s repeal. As with the decision to enact the Union, a vote for independence may solve some immediate problems, but it will almost certainly create others whose exact dimensions won’t become clear for decades. Further devolution within the UK – the so-called “devo max” option – might be one way to avoid the worst of those consequences, but right now that option does not seem to be on offer. In any case, and whatever the outcome, in 2014 ordinary Scots will be able to have a direct say in what becomes of their country, and that is undoubtedly an improvement over the way things were done in 1707.

I.     Announcing the Inaugural Global Britain Lecture: Humboldt University Berlin, 10 May 2012
II.   Conference Accommodation Now Available
III. Conference Dinner Party at the National Gallery of Scotland
IV.  Conference Lectures Announcement
V.    Our January Op-Ed Columns
VI.  In Memory of David Atkinson MP (1940-2012)
VII. Book of the Month

 I.  Announcing the Inaugural Global Britain Lecture:  Humboldt University Berlin, 10 May 2012

Humboldt University Berlin

Professor Hew Strachan

Professor Hew Strachan will present The British Scholar Society’s inaugural Global Britain Lecture on 10 May 2012 at the Humboldt University in Berlin.  The idea behind the Global Britain Lecture is to better understand Britain’s interactions with the wider world by conducting lectures outside of the Anglophone world.  We hope to make this an annual tradition and we are pleased to announce our partnership with the Centre for British Studies at Humboldt for this exciting event.

Date:  Thursday, 10 May 2012

Time:  TBA

Title:  “Sea power vs. land power: the geopolitics of Germany’s defeat in the First World War”

Abstract:  In 1904 Halford Mackinder, in the lecture which established the study of geopolitics in the English-speaking world, divided the world into the heartland, which he also called Eurasia (the land mass which runs from the Atlantic and the Pacific), and the rimlands. He predicted that the latter would diminish in relative importance as the heartland industrialised and in particular as the railway made land mass an asset, rather than an obstacle, to communication.  Russia would be able to tap its manpower and its natural resources, and would become the dominant power of Eurasia, overshadowing the west European powers.

In the 1980s scholars like Paul Kennedy argued that Mackinder’s arguments spelled the end of sea power as a means of exercising geopolitical leverage, a historical process which contributed to the decline of Britain over the course of the 20th century.  But in 2012 the argument looks premature: the majority of the world’s goods are still carried by sea, the United States projects its global reach not least thanks to sea power, and both China and India see the acquisition of navies as vital components of their emerging economic status.

Mackinder’s lecture looks no better as a short-term prediction of his own times.  He confirmed the fears of Russia entertained by the other great powers of Europe before the First World War.  His lecture suggested that the sensible strategy for Germany was rapprochement with Russia, a policy favoured by Falkenhayn, the chief of the Prussian General Staff in 1914-16.  But Germany’s pre-war policy of Weltpolitik took it in a very different direction, recognising that maritime and overseas strength was the future for a rapidly industrialising economy, and that the greater markets lay to the west and south, rather than to the east.  Fritz Fischer was wrong: a German war aims programme built round Mitteleuropa was a second-rank option forced on Germany by the circumstances of the war’s outbreak not as the result of a long-term design.

Britain’s only effective strategy for waging continental war rested on the sea, but this did not prove to be the impediment that Mackinder suggested that it might.  Maritime power proved vital to victory, enabling Britain to be the arsenal and financier of its allies, and also enabling the United States to be a key player in the war’s outcome both before its formal entry and afterwards.

Germany’s geopolitical position was not weak because it was overshadowed by Russia but because it was blockaded by sea.  Its army’s decision to focus on the west more than the east reflected that reality, even if the decision was largely justified in operational terms.  Geopolitics were and are vital to understanding the war’s outcome, but not as Mackinder had anticipated.

About Hew Strachan

Hew Strachan was born in Edinburgh in 1949, has been Chichele Professor of the History of War and Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford since 2002.  He is also Director of the Oxford Programme on the Changing Character of War.  He was a Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge 1975-78 and 1979-92 (and is now a Life Fellow of the College); Senior Lecturer in War Studies at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst 1978-9; and Professor of Modern History at the University of Glasgow 1992-2001.  He is a member of the Chief of the Defence Staff’s Strategic Advisory Panel and of the Defence Academy Advisory Board, a Trustee of the Imperial War Museum and a Commonwealth War Graves Commissioner.  He has been joint editor of War in History since its establishment in 1994, and in 2010 was asked by the Prime Minister to chair a task force on the implementation of the military covenant.  He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.

II.  Conference Accommodation Now Available

The British Scholar Society’s Britain and the World Conference 2012 is happy to announce that Pollock Halls will provide accommodation options during the conference.  Pollock Halls is conveniently located right next to Arthur’s Seat and is a ten minute walk to the University of Edinburgh’s School of History, Classics and Archaeology where the conference will take place.  Bus service is also available just outside of Pollock Halls and it runs regularly throughout the day.

Our room block is for Wednesday 20 June through Saturday 23 June (leaving Sunday morning, 24 June).

Rooms may be booked by visiting:  http://www.book.accom.ed.ac.uk/.  Once you are on the website you will need to put in the number of days you want to stay, click on the starting date for your stay on the calendar, and then insert the Promotion Code in the last field.  The Promotion Code is BSS12.  This will provide you with the conference rates.  If you would like to arrive earlier or stay later you will need to book that separately.  Room availability outside of our designated block is subject to availability but if done in advance there should not be any problems.

There are a few different options for rooms.  They are:

Holland House:  Single en-suite room:  £45 per night including VAT

This includes:
Full Scottish Breakfast
Guest pantry
Chargeable internet access in room
Tea and coffee-making facilities
All linen and towels provided
Bedrooms serviced daily

John Burnett House:  Twin en-suite room for single occupancy:  £63 per night including VAT

This room includes:
Full Scottish Breakfast
Guest pantry
Chargeable internet access in room
Tea and coffee-making facilities
All linen and towels provided
Bedrooms serviced daily
Televisions in room

John Burnett House:  Twin en-suite room for double occupancy:  £85 per night including VAT

*Please note that if you are planning to share a twin en-suite room with a friend to save money you must provide the names of both lodgers at the time of booking.  You will not be able to book the room and then provide the second person’s name at a later date.

This room includes:
Full Scottish Breakfast
Guest pantry
Chargeable internet access in room
Tea and coffee-making facilities
All linen and towels provided
Bedrooms serviced daily
Televisions in room

Masson House: Double en-suite room for double occupancy:  £89 per night including VAT

This room includes:
Full Scottish Breakfast
Television including Freeview and DVD
Guest pantry
Chargeable WiFi & wired internet access
Tea and coffee-making facilities
In-room safe
Hairdryer
Complimentary toiletries

Once again, you may book rooms from our room block by visiting http://www.book.accom.ed.ac.uk/.  Our room block is limited so don’t wait until the last minute to book your rooms.  Summer is busy in Edinburgh and accommodation fills up fast.

III.  Conference Dinner Party at the National Gallery of Scotland

The British Scholar Society is pleased to announce that the Dinner Party will take place at The Scottish Cafe and Restaurant, which is nestled inside the gorgeous National Gallery of Scotland, on the Mound, right in the heart of Edinburgh.  We hope that the neoclassical National Gallery, designed by the famed nineteenth-century architect William Playfair, serves to inspire our guests.  The Dinner Party will take place on Friday night, 22 June from 8 pm until 1 am.  The Dinner Party is an optional event and will cost £50 per person.  The price includes coffee, water, wine, and a three course meal.  Further details about the menu and how to reserve your space at the Dinner Party will be forthcoming in the February Newsletter.

IV.  Conference Lectures Announcement

We are putting the final touches on the Conference Programme but we wanted to provide you with some insight into the vast array of lectures on offer at Britain and the World 2012.  The Conference boasts a total of seven lectures.  The four named lectures for the Conference are:

Gale, Cengage Learning Lecture

Professor Alvin Jackson, University of Edinburgh:  “The Two Unions:  Ireland, Scotland and the Survival of the United Kingdom, 1707-2007”

Turner Memorial Lecture

Professor James Belich, University of Oxford:  “Beyond Empire: expanding the histories of expansion”

Keynote Address

TBA

Britain and the World Lecture

Professor Brian Levack, University of Texas at Austin:  “Britain’s First Global Century: England, Scotland, and Empire, 1603-1707”

After our Call for Papers went out we decided to add three additional lectures to the Programme.  These three lectures will all occur on Friday, 22 June from 2:15 to 3:45 pm and share the theme of empire, although they come at the topic from vastly different angles.  They are:

Professor Martin J. Wiener, Rice University:  “The Three Faces of English Liberalism in the Empire”

Professor Stephanie Barczewski, Clemson University:  “British Country Houses and Discourses of Empire, 1750-1850”

Professor Benjamin Grob-Fitzgibbon, University of Arkansas:  “In Search of a Postimperial History”

With so many interesting lectures to complement 48 intriguing panels we know that there will be something for everyone who attends Britain and the World 2012.  Remember to check the Conference website often (http://britishscholar.org/conference/conference-2012/) and follow us on Twitter @britishscholar for all of the latest updates.

V.  Our January Op-Ed Columns:

Our Op-Ed Columnists debuted throughout the month of January and we are thrilled with the results.  The British Scholar Society announces the publication of each column when it appears on our Twitter feed and on our homepage at http://britishscholar.org under “News from the Society”.  In case you missed any of these fascinating articles, or simply want to read them again, they are all available by clicking on the individual links below or by visiting our Op-Ed page at http://britishscholar.org/publications/op-ed/.  There you can click on an individual columnist and their personal pages, which include the columns, will appear.

a.      Rebecka Black:  A “Pixilation” of Curatorial Tradition and the Power of Banksy

b.      Dr. Jodi Burkett:  Publications and the Historian

c.       Professor Mark Doyle:  Making the News

d.      Allegra Geller:  Women and Empire – Aphra Behn

e.       Leslie Rogne Schumacher:  Wikileaks and the Problem of Public Secrecy

f.       Michael Talbot:  The World’s Forgotten Influence on Britain?

g.      Dr. des. Helene von Bismarck:  The United Arab Emirates – A Product of British Imperialism?

VI.  In Memory of David Atkinson MP (1940-2012)

David Atkinson MP

A stalwart supporter of The British Scholar Society passed away on Sunday, 22 January 2012 after battling cancer.  David Atkinson was a former Member of Parliament for the Bournemouth East constituency between 1977 and 2005.  During his time in Parliament David served on the Council of Europe where he took an active role in promoting human rights around the world.  In an age of caustic, partisan politics, David always believed in doing what was right.  But following your conscience will not put you in power and David stayed on the backbenches his entire career.  David did, however, enjoy great success abroad as the Council of Europe’s special rapporteur for the Soviet Union and the Russian Federation.  He was also the very first British backbench MP to address the United Nations General Assembly.  At home, David’s compassion extended to all creatures with his vote to ban fox hunting and his ongoing concerns for the environment, which included securing a £4.5 million grant to help save Hengistbury Head.

At The British Scholar Society we will remember David fondly for his kindness in providing us with our very first “Witness to History” feature.  The September 2008 issue of our journal included his article entitled “UN Reform: A Regional Approach Towards World Peace”.  In this article, David argued that the United Nations could be successful at implementing world peace by emulating the work of the Council of Europe.  In the wake of his passing, the Society is making the article available to read for free on our website by clicking here.

They certainly do not make many MPs like David Atkinson.  Here’s hoping that his incorruptible spirit becomes the model for future politicians to follow.  If, or as David would say when, that happens the world will be a much better place.

Rest in peace, David.

VII.  Book of the Month – January 2012

10 May 2012, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin

Co-sponsored by the Centre for British Studies (http://www.gbz.hu-berlin.de/the-centre)

Professor Hew Strachan
MA, PhD, FRSE, FRHistS, Hon D.Univ (Paisley)
Chichele Professor of the History of War, University of Oxford

In 1904 Halford Mackinder, in the lecture which established the study of geopolitics in the English-speaking world, divided the world into the heartland, which he also called Eurasia (the land mass which runs from the Atlantic and the Pacific), and the rimlands. He predicted that the latter would diminish in relative importance as the heartland industrialised and in particular as the railway made land mass an asset, rather than an obstacle, to communication.  Russia would be able to tap its manpower and its natural resources, and would become the dominant power of Eurasia, overshadowing the west European powers.

In the 1980s scholars like Paul Kennedy argued that Mackinder’s arguments spelled the end of sea power as a means of exercising geopolitical leverage, a historical process which contributed to the decline of Britain over the course of the 20^th century.  But in 2012 the argument looks premature: the majority of the world’s goods are still carried by sea, the United States projects its global reach not least thanks to sea power, and both China and India see the acquisition of navies as vital components of their emerging economic status.

Mackinder’s lecture looks no better as a short-term prediction of his own times.  He confirmed the fears of Russia entertained by the other great powers of Europe before the First World War.  His lecture suggested that the sensible strategy for Germany was rapprochement with Russia, a policy favoured by Falkenhayn, the chief of the Prussian General Staff in 1914-16.  But Germany’s pre-war policy of Weltpolitik took it in a very different direction, recognising that maritime and overseas strength was the future for a rapidly industrialising economy, and that the greater markets lay to the west and south, rather than to the east.  Fritz Fischer was wrong: a German war aims programme built round Mitteleuropa was a second-rank option forced on Germany by the circumstances of the war’s outbreak not as the result of a long-term design.

Britain’s only effective strategy for waging continental war rested on the sea, but this did not prove to be the impediment that Mackinder suggested that it might.  Maritime power proved vital to victory, enabling Britain to be the arsenal and financier of its allies, and also enabling the United States to be a key player in the war’s outcome both before its formal entry and afterwards.

Germany’s geopolitical position was not weak because it was overshadowed by Russia but because it was blockaded by sea.  Its army’s decision to focus on the west more than the east reflected that reality, even if the decision was largely justified in operational terms.  Geopolitics were and are vital to understanding the war’s outcome, but not as Mackinder had anticipated.

Curriculum Vitae

Hew Strachan was born in Edinburgh in 1949, has been Chichele Professor of the History of War and Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford since 2002.  He is also Director of the Oxford Programme on the Changing Character of War.  He was a Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge 1975-78 and 1979-92 (and is now a Life Fellow of the College); Senior Lecturer in War Studies at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst 1978-9; and Professor of Modern History at the University of Glasgow 1992-2001.  He is a member of the Chief of the Defence Staff’s Strategic Advisory Panel and of the Defence Academy Advisory Board, a Trustee of the Imperial War Museum and a Commonwealth War Graves Commissioner.  He has been joint editor of War in History since its establishment in 1994, and in 2010 was asked by the Prime Minister to chair a task force on the implementation of the military covenant.  He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.

Short bibliography

European Armies and the Conduct of War (1983)

 The Politics of the British Army (1997)

The First World War: Volume 1: To Arms (2001)

The First World War: a New Illustrated History (2003)

Clausewitz’s On War: a biography (2007)

Allegra Geller, Op-Ed Columnist

January 2012

I tend to shy from the present, preferring to focus on the past.  I am inclined to examine history for and within itself. It has been said that ‘History should be studied because it is essential to individuals and to society, and because it harbors beauty”[i] which I hold to be true.  Much like art, I view history as something once created in which great beauty can be found. Although my studies thus far have remained within the Tudor and Stuart periods, over the past year I have enjoyed studying British literature with a focus on Empire (I am indebted to Dr. George S. Christian for introducing me to numerous great works). With that in mind, in this column I will strive to provide interesting glimpses into British imperial history, albeit liberally strewn with literary themes and references whenever possible.

At present, I aim to spend some time with imperial women of distinction: travelers and explorers, doctors and nurses, missionaries and women of ill repute.  From India and Africa to my own country of Canada, Englishwomen have influenced the history of the British Empire through a veritable cornucopia of contributions, including literature, exploration, the healing arts and entertainment. I shall begin my look at these illustrious women with one of the first professional female writers in British history…

*  *  *

A spy for King Charles II, one-time prisoner in debtor’s jail, controversial political writer and Restoration dramatist, Aphra Behn (1640-1689) secured her place in history with the writing and publication of her prose narrative novel Oroonoko, or The Royal Slave, in 1688.  Although relatively little is known of her personal life, through Oroonoko -considered by many to be a landmark of fiction and one of the greatest contributions to British literature-, we are nevertheless able to view Behn reflected in her literary mirror of the early colonial Empire.

Of Aphra Behn’s early life and education, almost nothing is known definitively.  Though from her poetry and prose it can be deduced she was a woman of some learning.  It is possible that she was briefly married in 1664, though she may have simply styled herself as Mrs. Behn for the sake of decorum.  She was most likely raised Catholic, as evinced by her great devotion to James II (1633-1701), the last English Catholic monarch.  In 1663, Behn travelled to the British colony of Surinam, where she would have undoubtedly witnessed various aspects of colonialism first hand.  During her residence in the West Indies, Behn claimed to have encountered the illustrious African slave Oroonoko and is said to have kept a detailed journal of her experiences which she would later use to immortalize him in prose.

After returning to England in 1664 Behn joined the court of Charles II, where as a supporter of the Tory party she adamantly believed in the divine right of kings and was fiercely loyal to the restored monarch.  She entered his employ as a spy in Antwerp, though due to lack of payment from the King she eventually landed in debtor’s jail.  Leaving espionage behind in 1669, Behn dedicated herself to professional writing, and in 1685 to the new King, James II.

The rise of James II caused widespread discontent.  He faced two rebellions shortly after ascending the throne which resulted in his establishment of a large standing army.  This caused further resentment among his subjects who believed that the King was subverting the Church of England through his Catholic ‘Policy of Romanization’. The Anglican political nation, gripped by shock and fear, conspired with the Dutch Prince William of Orange to overthrow James.  It was during this time of great political turmoil, in 1688, that Aphra Behn wrote Oroonoko.

A multilayered work with manifold historical significance, Oroonoko serves as a semi-autobiography of Behn by way of the novel’s narrator being almost indistinguishable from the author.  The first English novel to realistically depict the horrors of slavery, Oroonoko brought awareness of the reality of the African slave trade home to England. With its descriptions of far off people, places and products, the novel vividly portrayed early colonial pursuits and also functioned as a royalist treatise and discourse on the political issues of the late 17th century.

The British colonies in the Caribbean were lucrative, requiring  the import of large numbers of African slaves to harvest sugarcane, cotton and tobacco.  Oroonoko tells the tale of an African prince captured and brought as a slave to a sugarcane plantation in Surinam.  The novel’s ‘enticing catalogues of exotic commodities’[ii] both glorified the colony as a ‘tropical heaven’[iii] and exemplified imperial commerce, with an emphasis on New World products  indicating Behn’s support for the overseas ventures of James II (who held the Royal African Company’s slaving monopoly).  The name of both the book and its hero is in itself a reference to colonial commerce, as the tobacco cultivated in Surinam was called orinoco (also spelled oronocco or oronoko).[iv]

Behn’s royalist ideology and belief in the divine right of kings is apparent in the emphasis placed on the royal lineage of her hero.  ‘Belov’d like a Deity,’[v] Oroonoko is depicted as having inherent regal qualities and of being ‘invested with something akin to divine power’[vi] while his being forced into slavery despite being a legitimate prince foreshadowed the deposition of James II and the Glorious Revolution of 1688.  With the theme of slavery, Behn also effectively communicated her belief that James II’s overthrow by William and Mary of Orange would constitute a type of slavery, or ‘an imposition on the English constitution, the king’s prerogatives and on the nation at large.’[vii]  Her depiction of the colonial administrators in the novel who ‘wantonly exceeded the limits of their power’[viii] served to accuse those who threatened the throne.

Oroonoko has been lauded as an early abolitionist tract due to the nobility and heroism of its African protagonist.  It has also been condemned as having perpetuated negativity towards Africans by way of its narrator never opposing slavery.  Despite these conflicting arguments, Behn’s work significantly contributed to the development of antislavery literature and influenced the evolution of the English novel.

But who was Aphra Behn?  Her voyage to the West Indies and sojourn in the Netherlands as a spy proclaims her to be adventurous and brave. Arising out of the political events of the mid-17^th century, Oroonoko is a testament to her royalist ideology and confirms her as a writer of ‘considerable political intelligence’.[ix]  A woman of deep conviction, she unabashedly proclaimed her loyalty to the deposed Stuart monarchy by refusing to write of the April 1689 accession of William and Mary of Orange.  Aphra Behn died on April 16, 1689, having made her mark as one of the first women to write for a living. Her legacy paved the way for future women writers, including Virginia Woolf who honoured Behn in her 1929 essay A Room of One’s Own:

All women together, ought to let flowers fall upon the grave of Aphra Behn…

for it was she who earned them the right to speak their minds.[x]

(Note: Many thanks to Dr. Brian Levack for his excellent lectures on Stuart History which I consulted frequently while writing this, and to Cole Wehrle, whose lecture on Aphra Behn inspired this article)

Ross McKibbin. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. 224 pp. £20 (hardback).

Some twelve years later this book seeks to explore how the social changes examined in McKibbin’s Classes and Culture: England 1918–1951 impacted in the political sphere. There were certainly substantial political upheavals between 1914 and 1951: the effect of the First World War and the subsequent franchise reform and implosion of the Liberals; the electoral dominance of the Conservatives in the inter-war years; and the advent of the first majority Labour government in 1945. These developments can broadly be explored through four principal and inter-related prisms. One is high politics, focusing upon the role of the parties in structuring the political marketplace and the resulting forced choice offered voters in a political culture which, as the Royal Commission on Electoral Systems pointed out in 1910, treats general elections ‘as practically a referendum on the question which of two Governments shall be returned to power’.[i] Then there is electoral geography, analysing how local characteristics and boundaries can both have broader effects and embed distinctive voting cultures. McKibbin’s conclusions, however, particularly emphasise the final two factors, which are contingent events such as war or the 1931 budget crisis and electoral sociology, reflecting influences such as generational change or social class.

Issues such as foreign policy, which might have been expected to play a role in voter choice in such a difficult period internationally, are seen as marginal (p. 192). This was a problem for the Liberals who, as Richard Grayson has persuasively argued,[ii] were increasingly distinguished by the 1930s primarily by their approach to this field as other distinctive policy positions, such as Free Trade or Irish Home Rule, passed out of the realm of practical politics. Even before 1914 Protectionism had a cross-class appeal that enabled the Tories to make inroads in northern cities like Sheffield. It made a contribution to the location of the Conservatives within a broad set of patriotic values that a Labour party, often successfully portrayed in the 1920s and 1930s as both sectional and disloyal, could not reach. Yet this did not prevent Labour seizing and retaining power in Sheffield during the inter-war years.

This coup, and similar examples elsewhere, drove middle-class Liberals into subordinate alliances with Conservatives that led inexorably to the atrophy of their party as a local electoral machine. For McKibbin similar shifts noticeable by the 1924 general election reflect the way in which class was becoming increasingly important. However, he is careful not to overemphasise this. The continuing appeal of anti-Catholicism in Liverpool and the pro-Liberal pull of nonconformity are acknowledged. Class-based voting is characterised as ‘a weak determinant which became weaker as we descend the social scale’ (p. 182). Around thirty per cent of the middle class voted Labour, though this phenomenon is perfunctorily explained away largely and unsatisfactorily by reference to marginalised, often state-employed, white-collar workers. More attention is given to the fifty per cent of the working class who voted Tory in 1931 and 1935. To explain this McKibbin offers a range of factors from Anglicanism to a brief reference to the press. Particular stress is placed upon the differential tendency of working class women to vote Tory, though only implicitly is the point made that this reflected a contrast between the consumerist appeal of a Conservative led national coalition trying to right the nation’s finances and a producerist Labour party seemingly more concerned about employment issues. Housing, which was both a major item of the working-class budget and in dire shortage throughout much of this period, is completely ignored.[iii] This is despite the fact that it is an issue that might be calculated to appeal differentially to women, and was certainly the subject of a calculated Conservative appeal both in the 1930s and in the run-up to their regaining power in 1951.

Before then McKibbin detects a shift of women towards Labour, which he attributes to the appeal of the welfare state. This is persuasive, but it poses a problem for his overall hypothesis. After all, this explanation rests upon the salience of political issues, but these are downplayed generally by McKibbin. His argument instead is that class-based voting was gradually becoming more important, aided by the seismic effect of particular events, especially 1931 and 1940. Whereas it was once argued that there was a more rapid shift in this direction coincident with the collapse of the Liberals after 1916, McKibbin’s explanation here of the politics of the 1920s prioritises much more high politics. The First World War is seen as breaking up the Liberal led Edwardian progressive alliance, but not as replacing it with a new electoral order (pp. 67–8). It is, McKibbin argues, the Conservatives successful capitalisation on what they portrayed as the incompetence of the second Labour government of 1929–31 that enabled them to structure a stunning electoral dominance thereafter. This hegemony was, however, broken during the Second World War. McKibbin convincingly debunks some long popular explanations for this shift and suggests the limited application, such as the generational shift between 1935 and 1945 (p. 110), of others. Instead, the crisis of confidence in Conservative management of 1940 is seen as leading inexorably to the debacle of 1945. This explanation might need to be tempered by more fully considering Andrew Thorpe’s recent work on wartime party management,[iv] but it certainly seems to have much support from the nascent contemporary opinion polling. Labour, however, failed to capitalise on this success. Various explanations for its loss of power in 1951 are discussed, but the one emphasised here is that Labour was over-reliant upon ideas such as nationalisation that had relatively little appeal for the bulk of the electorate. There may be something in this: Harold Macmillan noted in 1960 that if Labour could turn itself into a social democratic party in the Scandinavian style, stressing the distribution of social goods rather than producerist interests, it might win as continually as its Swedish counterparts did.[v] The broad-based citizen democracy many on the Left had sought during 1939–45 failed to flourish under the paternalistic socialism of a Labour government that did not, as one minister put it, believe in ‘experiments in freedom’.[vi]

McKibbin sees the narrowness of Labour’s vision of its role contributing to a lack of revision to the nature of British democracy. He also sees, less persuasively, the 1945 defeat preventing the Conservatives from ushering in a rather different American style democracy based upon ‘middle-class associationalism’ rather than the institutions of the welfare state. The evidence offered here that this was the trajectory the Tories were in fact pursuing is very limited, though some support for this hypothesis might be adduced from their 1945 health white paper. If McKibbin had, however, continued his analysis forward he might have concluded that in light of the shifts in Conservative attitudes towards global political economy (from Protectionism towards Free Trade), towards Unionism and the British state, and towards welfare in the 1980s, his argument holds more water than at first meets the eye. It is just that, to me at least, evidence for Tory shifts in that direction is more apparent after rather than before 1945.

McKibbin might argue that this reflects the solidifying of class-based voting during the 1930s and its consolidation after 1945. After all, one of the key themes of this book is that class becomes a major determinant of voting behaviour. It is just that, whereas Peter Clarke and McKibbin himself placed that development around the time of the First World War in earlier work of the 1970s it is here located more at the time of the Second. There is, however, a risk of confusing cause and effect. McKibbin persuasively offers a series of issues to explain why working-class women were more likely to vote Labour in 1940–50: so was the determining factor their class or these issues? This raises the issue of whether voting behaviour is determined more by identity or instrumentality. This is, of course, to a large extent a false dichotomy. Class can easily be simply a (often unconscious) rationalisation of instrumental attitudes. But, despite the many virtues of this short work in helping to conceptualise the nature of political discourse in Britain 1914–51, it is hard to avoid the suspicion that McKibbin has still tended to give it undue weight amongst the four factors mentioned at the start of this review.

January 2012

As a senior in college I wrote a column for my university newspaper.  Eventually I decided to withdraw it voluntarily as the editors kept making small changes that I nevertheless felt were significant at the time.  As the years have passed I’ve decided that I was probably being too much of an egoist about the whole thing, and my editors undoubtedly had the right of it.  As the beneficiary of many years of hard-hitting executive critique from my professors (i.e. what I must do, not what I might) on my work, I’ve learned to look forward to and indeed depend on such commentary.  I write this first column with the hope that my readers take this anecdote to mean that I will do my best to convey my thoughts about the subjects I plan to explore in a way that opens the door for discussion rather than closes it.  With this in mind, my column will primarily be concerned with issues of British international and diplomatic history, especially those which relate to the Victorian period.  The lessons and legacies of this history as they present themselves in the present day will also be of interest, as will the theoretical and disciplinary concerns of The British Scholar Society members’ shared field of interest.  I look forward to the debates that will hopefully ensue from my humble contribution to the discourse.

***

The nicest rejection letter I’ve ever received was from Princeton University, who gracefully told me they had no doubt that I was wonderful but there were 400 other wonderful people who applied and they could only take 14.  I felt no lasting disappointment about this and I still have the letter in a file somewhere.  The second nicest rejection I received was from Foreign Policy for a commentary I sent to them early in 2011 on the Wikileaks diplomatic cables release.  Though comparable to the letter from Princeton, unlike my obsolete Ivy League ambitions I still feel that the issue needs to be better addressed.  Indeed, it never seems to have been given a fair and comprehensive review—something that undoubtedly has to do with the fact that, at least in the American scene in which I travel, we can only keep one foreign policy-related issue in our heads at a time, and this was just as the crowds in Tahrir Square had begun to build to a truly significant level.

So, out the window went the matter of a quarter-million confidential US State Department cables made public for anyone’s perusal.  The tawdry details of the warrant for Julian Assange’s arrest issued by Sweden in relation to rape charges and the spectacle of his extradition proceedings in Britain somehow did more to cover up the release of the cables than expose it to further scrutiny.  Thus go the whims of the tabloid sensationalism that still grips Anglo-American media, which soldiers on even if it might be argued that the public could be taught to care more about the core issues of any subject rather than the bits deemed most juicy.  Even a venerable source of sober commentary like BBC News was not immune to the passions of Assange, as I learned from watching the story doggedly loop around again and again on the cafeteria television at the UK National Archives at Kew.

The question I had at the time and I still have is: what precisely is the matter with confidentiality in democratic society and what do we know about the history of this issue in the modern era?  Can one be a firm supporter of the principle of governmental openness and still leave room for denying public access to certain kinds of data?  My interest in so-called “public secrecy” in the age of enfranchisement and political news media in the mid to late Victorian period in part arises out of this apparent paradox of values and practices.  What makes the Wikileaks cables release so fascinating is it posits a solution to this problem by way of imploding the whole mess, come what may and for better or for worse.  That Assange, as an Australian, is a Commonwealth citizen, and moreover that his quest for radical anti-secrecy extends far beyond America, leads me to question how the subject of public secrecy figures in the British context and how the genesis of state secrecy measures may have helped inspire the destructive approach that the bleached-haired anti-hero Assange champions.

At the last conference of The British Scholar Society I gave a paper on the 1878 “Globe scandal,” in which a low-level clerk in the Translation Department of the Foreign Office, Charles Marvin, memorized a secret treaty between Britain and Russia and sold it to the Globe newspaper.  This revelation was problematic for the Tory government, as it had leveraged Britain’s Russophobia to get support for Conservative foreign and imperial policies.  Upon being found out, Marvin was arrested, tried, and in the end acquitted for the crime of stealing government documents.  English law had no provision for the carrying away of state secrets in one’s mind rather than on one’s person, so Marvin got off free and enjoyed a fine career as an author on topics related to the Great Game.  The notion that English law could not convict on the informational contents of documents whose theft constituted a crime seems absolutely ridiculous by today’s standards, but this was the first time it had come up.

The fact is, however, that the market for such information was fueled by the growth of Britain’s literacy rate, media saturation, and voting rights.  Before the middle of the nineteenth century, “those who knew” information about Britain’s conduct in the international sphere constituted the bulk of those who cared.  As time went on, though, the British people, newly-empowered with their letters and votes, increasingly saw detailed coverage of British foreign affairs as a quotidian expectation to be consumed alongside the train wrecks, murders, and other goings-on that were packed into the pages of the era’s enormous broadsheets.  The higher-ups might say that the danger of secret data made public was all about avoiding international tension and confrontation, but there is no doubt that attendant with the rise of interest in the guild-like mysteries of foreign policy and diplomacy was the birth of a fear that domestic society would learn of actions on the government’s part which might be considered untoward or even unethical.

Thus emerged the difficult question of how one could get a voting, informed public on the side of a policy of keeping secrets from the same voting, informed public.  We certainly can comprehend under present circumstances how this might happen; the US’s Patriot Act comes to mind, as do the detention provisions of the UK’s Prevention of Terrorism Act.  Indeed, democratically produced limitations of the freedoms enjoyed under a democracy are as old as democracy itself, from the Alien and Sedition Acts on.  In the 1880s it was the 1889 Official Secrets Act that fit this description.  That it had been Salisbury, as Benjamin Disraeli’s Foreign Secretary, who had signed the secret Anglo-Russian treaty in 1878 and a decade later, still in possession of the Foreign Secretary’s portfolio, championed the cause of a comprehensive law making actions such as Marvin’s illegal is no coincidence.  Salisbury, like Joseph Chamberlain, understood that populism had become a necessity of British politics.  So, if restrictions on public access to government information were to be passed, people had to be convinced that it was either for their own good or for the purpose of checkmating nebulous machinations emanating from the shady foreign sector of the British worldview.

Such pro-public secrecy forces were successful, and the general model of the original Official Secrets Act has been sustained in four subsequent revisions and expansions, in 1911, 1920, 1939, and 1989.  Public secrecy is a vital aspect of British culture, probably accounting in some way for Britain’s obsession with spy stories or tales of government corruption kept from the eye of the public by some shady politico who knows all the rules, like Michael Dobbs’ Francis Urquhart.  Yet how could such a culture of suspicion and intrigue—not just in Britain’s perfidious foreign maneuvers but in blessed Albion itself—possibly be tenable in the long term?  Democratic society can fool itself for a very long time that its government has the people’s best interests at heart, but there is a breaking point.  Certainly the omission of the public interest defense, from the 1989 Official Secrets Act—which allows a person to disclose confidential information if it can prove to be in the best interest of the public—increased the chance that a radical reaction, like that of Wikileaks, would appear just around the corner.

There is perhaps a line one crosses in the guarding of state secrets: on one side it is considered logical to keep information safe from possibly nefarious prying eyes, while on the other people begin to question if political elites are attempting to do the business of democratic governance without interference from the pesky voters who put them there.  At the same time, secrecy laws exist for a reason: to allow government officials who are tasked with solving difficult problems to talk over the issue, make observations, and float ideas.  Many of the details of these conversations are embarrassing, such as a prominent example from the Wikileaks cable release in which an American diplomat characterized then-Prime Minister of Italy Silvio Berlusconi as “feckless” and “vain.”  Of course this statement is a basic truth, but it was embarrassing to Italy to have it known that American officials had not shown restraint in discussing the Italian leader’s foibles.

Should all the thoughts of actors in international relations be made known to the global populace?  Is it undemocratic to bar people from knowing the full scope of policy formulation? If we are to be truly thoughtful about it we cannot be sure, but I would assert that comments like those on Berlusconi’s vanity tell us nothing about the shape of American hegemony as posited by Assange & Co., let alone the broader “Western” hegemony his group invokes in their larger anti-secrecy goals.  To me it’s simple talk, no more and no less.  Of course, when the state can be proved to be acting privately in direct opposition to what they profess publicly, this is another matter entirely.  It is thus uncomfortable to consider that the genesis of state secrecy laws in Britain begins with Charles Marvin, whose revelation of the secret 1878 Anglo-Russian treaty actually did reveal evidence that the government had misled the public.  How can we reconcile this with the fact that laws regarding state secrecy, generally thought acceptable in principle, were motivated by an inauspicious attempt by the government to cover up their malfeasance?  As in much of history, perhaps there is no reconciliation.