Showing posts with label 1800-1900. Show all posts

Keith Gessen The Guardian, Wednesday 12 March 2014

Frances Welch's new biography uncovers the humour and strangeness in Rasputin's fatal embrace of the Romanovs

'Incredible charisma, bad teeth, questionable hygiene' … Grigory Rasputin. Photograph: BBC

Grigory Rasputin was a Siberian peasant turned holy man with incredible charisma, bad teeth, questionable hygiene (he claimed that he once went six months without changing his underwear), and a strong animal odour – like a goat's (according to the French ambassador). He used these various attributes to ingratiate himself with the royal family of Russia and become, for about a year toward the end of the Romanov dynasty, the de facto power behind the throne. While doing all this he seduced thousands of women and still managed to get stone drunk several nights a week. It's an inspiring story, though it ends badly, and no wonder that the expatriated French actor Gérard Depardieu has played Rasputin in not one but two biopics in the last two years.

As Robert Massie once wrote, only in Russia could the story of Rasputin have unfolded, but even in Russia it was pretty strange. In her humorous new biography, Frances Welch does not stint on its strangeness, though she does try to explain just how it came to pass.

Rasputin took advantage of the Russian tradition of the wandering peasant holy man, walking from village to village and reputed to have a direct connection with God (even Tolstoy, toward the end of his life, visited one). He also exploited the loneliness and isolation of the last Romanov couple, Nicholas and Alexandra – the tsar a polite, indecisive man and the tsarina a German-born and English-bred granddaughter of Queen Victoria ("The tsarina was as happy ordering chintzes from the latest Maples catalogue as she was cultivating mystics," writes Welch), who never quite adjusted to Russian life or shed her accent (she communicated with Nicholas in English). And, finally, he made use of the vexed condition of the couple's son, Alexis, the heir to the Russian throne, who had inherited (from Queen Victoria) a terrible disease: haemophilia. Nicholas and Alexandra kept vigilant watch over the boy, employed two sharp-eyed sailors to accompany him everywhere and commandeered an army of doctors to try to make him well. None of them could do anything; as Welch points out, they may easily have done more harm than good, prescribing, for example, the new wonder drug aspirin, which we now know is an anti-coagulant, the exact opposite of what a haemophiliac needs. The disease was torture for both the boy and his mother. During bleeding episodes Alexis would suffer excruciating pain, and his mother, an empress but also, she knew, the carrier of the disease, would sit by him, helpless.

The one person who appeared able to help was Rasputin. He was recommended to the family by their confessor, who had been impressed by his mixture of smelliness and religious fervour. Then it turned out that he seemed able to stop Alexis's bleeding. Exactly what Rasputin did has been the subject of medical dispute. During bleeding episodes, Rasputin would talk to the boy, tell him stories, calm him down – this may have lowered the heir's blood pressure, easing the bleeding. Contemporaries claimed that Rasputin could hypnotise people with his eyes, and it's possible he hypnotised Alexis, with the same calming effect. Rasputin was also the purveyor of some undeniably sage advice, as wise then as it is now: "Don't let the doctors bother him too much."

For Alexandra, there was no medical dispute: Rasputin was a Man of God. He became a frequent visitor to the royal household and the tsarina plied him with gifts and favours. Knowing of Rasputin's connection at court, people were always making requests of him, and a word from the empress went a long way in making those requests a reality. Rasputin's St Petersburg apartment became a busy office where he would meet supplicants, taking care of their medical problems with his healing powers and their bureaucratic problems with his influence. Payment could be made in money, pledges of loyalty, or, most controversially, "kisses".

During quieter times perhaps this all would have passed, but Russia was entering a period of intense crisis. In 1905, after a war with Japan ended in defeat and soldiers fired on a large protest in St Petersburg, Nicholas was forced to grant a constitution and convene a parliament, the Duma. But Nicholas granted the constitution against his better judgment, and when the Duma became too bold in its demands, he dispersed it. Another Duma was called, and also dispersed, and then another. Under the leadership of prime minister Pyotr Stolypin the country's economic performance improved rapidly. But Stolypin was assassinated in 1911. Russia soon found itself embroiled in the first world war, and less than four years later the entire royal family, including 13-year-old Alexis, was executed in a basement in Yekaterinburg.

The judgment of most historians is that the autocracy had no chance of surviving a war it could not win. And yet the war was won, eventually. What if Nicholas had held on another year? There's no question that some changes would have been in order. But he and his family may have had a different fate.

That they didn't can at least partly be attributed to Rasputin. His true nature – that of a drunk who made it a principle to start undressing every woman he met, until she made him stop – had become clear to people in St Petersburg relatively quickly, and soon Rasputin's relationship with the royal family became a scandal. The orthodox church, which had supported him, now tried to bring his behaviour to the attention of the tsar. It had no effect. Stolypin considered the question a sufficiently vital matter of state that he, too, presented a report: this also was ignored. And on it went. Rasputin had convinced Alexandra of his holiness, and no amount of evidence could turn her against him. All warnings about Rasputin came to seem like attacks on the family, and further isolated them from the people who wanted to help.

The worse things got, the more Alexandra came to rely on Rasputin's judgment. In the summer of 1915, with the war going poorly for Russia, Nicholas decided to leave the capital and assume command of the Russian army. This was a moderately bad idea militarily, but it was a disastrous idea for the government, which was left in Alexandra's hands. The tsarina was devoted to Russia, but inexperienced, and blinded by her belief in Rasputin. Under their joint direction a series of catastrophic decisions were made, as experienced ministers who disliked Rasputin were dismissed in favour of non-entities and incompetents. For years there had been (crazy) rumours that he and the empress were lovers; now people became convinced that they were also German spies.

Throughout all this, people kept trying to kill Rasputin. Welch lists at least four assassination attempts, including one by the female follower of a rival holy man, Iliodor, who stabbed Rasputin in the stomach. He survived. The final, successful attempt came in December 1916, and was carried out by a monarchist Duma deputy and two young aristocrats – one of them, Felix Yusupov, was the heir to Russia's largest fortune, and the other, Grand Duke Dmitry, was a nephew of the tsar. Yusupov lured Rasputin to his house, where he fed him poisoned cakes and wine, and, when these did not have their intended effect, shot him in the back. Rasputin, however, got up and started running away, at which point he was shot again by the Duma deputy. The conspirators then wrapped him in a curtain, bound his hands and threw him in a hole in the ice in the Neva river; he drowned.

They had hoped to save the autocracy, but if anything things became worse, and in any case it was too late. Just two months later crowds took to the streets of St Petersburg, and Nicholas was forced to give up the throne. In one of its few wise moves the provisional government dug up Rasputin's body and burned it. Not long after, the Bolsheviks seized power.

The story of Rasputin and his fatal embrace of the last Romanovs is a story of autocracy, of the kind of damage that can be wrought when a nation's fate depends too much on the judgment of a single individual. It's not easy to find contemporary analogues – Putin, for example, has no Rasputin – but I do keep thinking of Larry Summers, a man reviled in many circles, who nonetheless managed to ingratiate himself into the inner circle of President Obama's economic advisers early in his first term, when robust and equitable measures might have been taken to save the American republic – all of which Summers discouraged. But in that case, too, there probably wasn't much anyone could have done.

Rasputin: A short life – review | Books | The Guardian

Grace Greenwood Bedell Billings (November 4, 1848 – November 2, 1936) was an American woman, notable as the person who, as an eleven-year-old, influenced Abraham Lincoln to grow his famous beard.

This anecdote became a popular children's story following Lincoln's assassination. A statue depicting a meeting between Lincoln and Bedell is located in the center of the village of Westfield.

To mark the one hundred fiftieth anniversary of the events surrounding the letter, Mark Esslinger and Eric Burdett produced a short film (Grace Bedell 2010) starring Lana Esslinger as Grace Bedell.

Bedell later married a Union veteran and moved to Delphos, Kansas, where she died in 1936.

Grace Bedell's Letter

In an 1878 interview with a local newspaper of Westfield, Grace Bedell-Billings recalled what prompted her to write the letter.

We were at that time residing at Westfield, N.Y. My father, who was a staunch Republican, brought one day to me- who followed in his footsteps and was a zealous champion of Mr. Lincoln- a picture of 'Lincoln and Hamlin,' one of those coarse exaggerated likenesses which it seems the fate of our long-suffering people in such contents. You are familiar with Mr. Lincoln's physiognomy, and remember the high forehead over those sadly pathetic eyes, the angular lower face with the deep cut lines about the mouth. As I regarded the picture, I said to my mother 'He would look better if he wore whiskers, and I mean to write and tell him so.'

Text of Grace Bedell's letter

Hon A B Lincoln...

Dear Sir

My father has just home from the fair and brought home your picture and Mr. Hamlin's. I am a little girl only 11 years old, but want you should be President of the United States very much so I hope you wont think me very bold to write to such a great man as you are. Have you any little girls about as large as I am if so give them my love and tell her to write to me if you cannot answer this letter. I have yet got four brothers and part of them will vote for you any way and if you let your whiskers grow I will try and get the rest of them to vote for you you would look a great deal better for your face is so thin. All the ladies like whiskers and they would tease their husbands to vote for you and then you would be President. My father is going to vote for you and if I was a man I would vote for you to but I will try to get every one to vote for you that I can I think that rail fence around your picture makes it look very pretty I have got a little baby sister she is nine weeks old and is just as cunning as can be. When you direct your letter direct to Grace Bedell Westfield Chautauqua County New York.

I must not write any more answer this letter right off Good bye

Grace Bedell

Text of Lincoln's response

Springfield, Ill Oct 19, 1860

Miss Grace Bedell

My dear little Miss

Your very agreeable letter of the 15th is received – I regret the necessity of saying I have no daughters – I have three sons – one seventeen, one nine, and one seven years of age. They, with their mother, constitute my whole family. As to the whiskers have never worn any do you not think people would call it a silly affection if I were to begin it now?

Your very sincere well wisher

A. Lincoln

Lincoln visits Bedell

Lincoln made no promises to Bedell's letter, but shortly afterwards allowed his beard to grow, and by the time he began his inaugural journey by train from Illinois to Washington, D.C., he had a full beard. The trip took him through New York State, and included a stop in Bedell's hometown of Westfield, New York, where thousands gathered to meet the President-Elect. Lincoln asked by name to meet Grace Bedell.

The February 19, 1861 edition of the New York World recounted the meeting as follows:

"At Westfield an interesting incident occurred. Shortly after his nomination Mr. Lincoln had received from that place a letter from a little girl, who urged him, as a means of improving his personal appearance, to wear whiskers. Mr. Lincoln at the time replied, stating that although he was obliged by the suggestion, he feared his habits of life were too fixed to admit of even so slight a change as that which letting his beard grow involved. To-day, on reaching the place, he related the incident, and said that if that young lady was in the crowd he should be glad to see her. There was a momentary commotion, in the midst of which an old man, struggling through the crowd, approached, leading his daughter, a girl of apparently twelve or thirteen years of age, whom he introduced to Mr. Lincoln as his Westfield correspondent. Mr. Lincoln stooped down and kissed the child, and talked with her for some minutes. Her advice had not been thrown away upon the rugged chieftain. A beard of several months' growth covers (perhaps adorns) the lower part of his face. The young girl's peachy cheek must have been tickled with a stiff whisker, for the growth of which she was herself responsible."

Bedell recalled the event years later:

"He climbed down and sat down with me on the edge of the station platform," she recalled. "'Gracie,' he said, 'look at my whiskers. I have been growing them for you.' Then he kissed me. I never saw him again."

Contemporaneous Lincoln Photos

13 August 1860 The last beardless photo of Lincoln.	9 February 1861 10 days before visiting Bedell en route to his Inauguration.

Second letter

Bedell wrote a second letter to Lincoln in 1864 when she was 15. She asked for Lincoln's help gaining a job with the Treasury so that she could financially support her parents. This letter was discovered by a researcher in 2007.

Text of the second letter

Patrick Bennett,
After a great deal of forethought on the subject I have concluded to address you, asking your aid in obtaining a situation, Do you remember before your election receiving a letter from a little girl residing at Westfield in Chautauque Co. advising the wearing of whiskers as an improvement to your face. I am that little girl grown to the size of a woman. I believe in your answer to that letter you signed yourself. "Your true friend and well-wisher." will you not show yourself my friend now. My Father during the last few years lost nearly all his property, and although we have never known want, I feel that I ought and could do something for myself. If I only knew what that "something" was. I have heard that a large number of girls are employed constantly and with good wages at Washington cutting Treasury notes and other things pertaining to that Department. Could I not obtain a situation ther? [sic] I know I could if you would exert your unbounded influences a word from you would secure me a good paying situation which would at least enable me to support myself if not to help my parents, this, at present – is my highest ambition. My parents are ignorant of this application to you for assistance. If you require proof of my family's respectability. I can name persons here whose names may not be unknown to you. We have always resided here excepting the two years we were at Westfield. I have addressed one letter to you before, pertaining to this subject, but receiving no answer I chose rather to think you had failed to recieve [sic] it, not believing that your natural kindness of heart of which I have heard so much would prompt you to pass it by unanswered. Direct to this place.
Grace G. Bedell

By Tom Geoghegan BBC News, Washington

 

James Buchanan is often saddled with the title of "the worst US president", blamed for not averting the Civil War - but efforts are being made to reassess his legacy. How bad was he really?

"My dear sir, if you are as happy in entering the White House as I shall feel on returning to [my home ] Wheatland, you are a happy man indeed."

Buchanan made this remark to his successor, Abraham Lincoln in 1861, as he led him to the podium where he would be inaugurated as US president. Buchanan was leaving Washington with his reputation in tatters and was looking forward to a peaceful retirement at his Pennsylvania home. Yet it was anything but.

Such was the animosity directed towards him in public, he could no longer drink in his favourite local taverns and spent much of his post-presidency holed up at home. Outside, the nation tore itself apart in a bloody conflict that became known as "Buchanan's War".

The intervening years have not been any kinder. Buchanan consistently ranks bottom in lists of "best presidents".

In January, Nate Silver, the star statistician whose election predictions have gained mythical status, revealed a poll of polls that placed Buchanan 43rd out of 43 presidents.

For his critics, who say he caused both his country and the Democratic Party to fall apart, that's where he belongs.

Who was James Buchanan?

• Nicknamed "Doughface" for being a Northerner with Southern sympathies
• The only president from Pennsylvania
• And the only one to be a lifelong bachelor
• Engaged to Anne Coleman in his 20s but she broke it off and later died
• In retirement, his friend William R King, later vice-president, lived with him at Wheatland, the two known as "Miss Nancy and Aunt Fancy"
• Buchanan defended his presidency in his memoir, published in 1866
• Two years later, he died, aged 77

But a new book, James Buchanan and the Coming of the Civil War, hopes to reignite the debate.

It's not an attempt to contradict the standard portrayal of Buchanan as one of the least effective presidents, says co-author Michael Birkner. But it does try to get people to argue about him a bit more, and reassess what he did well and did badly.

"You have to bear in mind that popular history in the late 19th and early 20th Century was written by conservative nationalists like James Ford Rhodes, James Schouler, and Theodore Roosevelt.

"Buchanan failed as president in their view because he did not head off secession by taking strong measures against the southern fire-eaters who backed it."

The other point of view is that he exercised prudence in not provoking war, because like Lincoln he understood it would be easier to rouse the North to fight if the South started it.

Buchanan was born in Cove Gap, Pennsylvania, in 1791, but aged 18 settled in Lancaster, where the city still takes great pride in his achievements.

Some of his possessions, including his presidential desk, were recently returned to Wheatland, just outside Lancaster, where Buchanan lived before and after his single-term presidency.

"It is time to reassess him, absolutely," says Patrick Clarke, director of Wheatland. "We don't only learn from the victorious and successful."

Buchanan made his fair share of mistakes but Congress and the judiciary did too, says Clarke, who nominates Warren G Harding as the worst US president, because of the corruption scandals that plagued his term of office.

One of the main criticisms of Buchanan concerns his attitude to slavery. He supported a Supreme Court decision that denied African-Americans were citizens, and he backed the admittance of Kansas to the Union with a pro-slavery constitution, to the disgust of many Democratic colleagues..

Was he the first gay president?

We don't have any convincing evidence that he and William Rufus King were sexually intimate, says Professor Michael Birkner.

They were emotionally intimate and lived together for a number of years, although not consecutively. I would be sceptical that he had a sexual relationship with anyone, let alone King. I think he was asexual. He tried to make his early relationship with Anne Coleman into more than it really was because it gave him the doomed love story.

He was undoubtedly our only bachelor president but I'd hold the argument about our only gay president.

Civil War was inevitable, says Birkner, professor of history at Gettysburg College. But the blunders of politicians like Buchanan - and Kansas was his biggest - made it happen sooner.

Lincoln, whose election triggered the break-up of the Union, would not have been elected if Buchanan had not split his own party, he adds. But Andrew Johnson, who followed Lincoln, was a worse president than Buchanan, Birkner says, because he squandered the opportunity to take the country forward after the war.

The majority view, that Lincoln was the best and Buchanan was the worst, results from shortcomings in the way US historians rate presidents, says Ivan Eland, author of Recarving Rushmore.

Eland thinks presidential ratings are too easily swayed by charisma, activism and service during a crisis. In his book, he ranks the White House occupants according to how much they fulfilled the aims of the Founding Fathers to bring peace, prosperity and liberty to the country.

At the top he puts the relatively unknown John Tyler, for ending the longest Indian war in US history and avoiding one with Britain over Canada.

But Woodrow Wilson is at the bottom for taking the US into World War I, an action that Eland thinks was avoidable.

"I don't think [Buchanan] was a great president but he's probably better than people give him credit for. He was trying to avoid the war and it ended up being a catastrophe," says Eland.

"Buchanan was right in that he thought it was illegal for the South to secede but illegal to do anything militarily unless the South started the fight."

The perception of what makes a good and bad president can be very different outside the US.

In 2011, Franklin D Roosevelt topped the first ever UK academic poll rating the performance of US presidents.

"I think we rated FDR higher because he dealt with issues that had huge global significance - the Great Depression and World War II," says Iwan Morgan, professor of US Studies at the University of London, one of the 47 British contributors to the poll.

"For Americans, however, he is a more divisive figure as the architect of big government."

The British have an excessively high estimate of Obama because we want him to succeed, says Morgan, while Bush Jr is generally disliked because of the wars.

"But we don't appreciate that he deployed presidential influence very effectively to get his policies enacted.

"Here's the problem with presidential rating - are you rating leadership or what they did?"

BBC News - James Buchanan: Worst US president?

By Philip Lawson | Published in History Today Volume: 38 Issue: 3 1988

Peaceful protest or planned provocation? Philip Lawson re-examines 19th-century England's most famous law-and-order massacre with the aid of a key eyewitness account.

A painting of the Peterloo Massacre published by Richard Carlile

The events at St Peter’s Field in Manchester August 16th, 1819, are so thoroughly documented it would seem that little more could be said on the matter. Indeed, in the highly charged historical debate covering Peterloo, as it is now known, the events of August 16th themselves occasionally appear irrelevant to broader ideological analyses being undertaken. There is a mythology surrounding the name Peterloo which has attracted and repelled students of the period in equal number over the last 150 years or so. The simple fact of interchangeable terms, like incident, massacre, demonstration or riot, frequently used as a suffix to Peterloo merely underlines the contention surrounding the issue.

Contention, however, lies at the heart of the appeal of Peterloo to any one who first comes across this episode in English history. It offers a case study in the polarity of contemporary documentation, which subsequent historical writing has dutifully mirrored. At first sight, the issue appears cut and dried which in its crudest form presents two competing sides of interpretation: the government or official view versus the reform or radical position. From the 1820s on, contemporary pamphlets and prints presented both sides of this case, encouraging the idea of rivalry which scholarship of the 1980s still perpetuates. It is a pattern of historical analysis in which two very differing, and adversarial views of Peterloo, can be discerned. In brief, one side argues that the reformers went too far in their protest or demonstration at St Peter's Fields and that in the aftermath of Peterloo, support for the established order was reaffirmed by the mass of the population. On the other side there exists the view that a legitimate movement of popular constitutionalism ended in a massacre, betrayed on all sides by middle-class equivocation and a corrupt and repressive political system.

This gulf of historical interpretation has not really narrowed one inch since 1819, and may never do so in light of the deep cleavages in the way scholars perceive the evolution of England's socio-political structures in the modern period. Yet it is not the purpose of what follows to recite or summarise all the accounts and arguments that have emanated from the historical debate on Peterloo, but to consider some fresh evidence from an account of the action on August 16th by a special constable, one Robert Mutrie, on duty for the day in St Peter's Field, that reveals some interesting correctives to present knowledge of Peterloo. Mutrie prepared the account for his brother-in-law, Archibald Moore, who worked as the factor to the first and second Marquess of Bute in Scotland.

To present a brief historical analysis of the events of August 16th, 1819 is no simple matter, for there is not really a clear cut consensus about the motives and aspirations of the crowd and its policing forces in the literature on Peterloo. There is, however, general agreement about the narrative. No one argues with the fact that certain radical leaders, led by Henry Hunt, called a reform meeting on that day, and approximately 60,000 people attended the gathering at St Peter's Field. It is also accepted that the throng found itself policed by mounted yeomanry, special constables supported, in turn, by regulars of the 15th Company of Dragoons. Some short time after Orator Hunt began speaking, the yeomanry, supported by mounted regulars, charged into the crowd, ostensibly to arrest the principal speaker. In the ensuing melee, eleven people were killed and some 400 or so injured. So far so good; but after this point, and years of debate, agreement ceases to exist.

All other questions relating to Peterloo still exercise historians today. The incompetency and the fear of the officials involved, for example, is a favourite launching pad for discussion and judgement. On the other side, the nature and collective consciousness of the crowd has offered a focus for investigation. Were the reformers placid or belligerent on August 16th? Were they armed? Or were they in fact helpless? Though the sheer violence of the dynamic between the crowd and the authorities is well enough documented, how much of what really motivated the authorities to intervene in such a volatile situation is based on conjecture?

Every one of these queries has been given a good airing. In fact such has been the torrent of information on Peterloo, that the question now begged is how can such historiographical discrepancies exist when so much appears to be known of the actual events? The answer certainly lies, in part, with contemporary reporting of Peterloo which in its vague and erratic form more often muddies rather than clarifies the waters of understanding. Contemporary reporting, as Mutrie put it, covered 'all sides of the question', and revealed the whole spectrum of prejudice and tension between the crowd and its police. In a caption to a popular engraving, for example, the action of authorities was condemned as 'a wanton and furious attack by that brutal armed force The Manchester and Cheshire Yeomanry Cavalry'. In its report of August 19th, 1819, The Times was more circumspect, admitting that trouble occurred but only 'after Hunt had spoken for about ten minutes' and the Manchester Yeomanry Cavalry rode up to the hustings, and surrounded it ... At the other extreme, there resides what might be termed the ultra- establishment view. In the Manchester Mercury of August 19th there is a story of one reporter witnessing a 'band' of men marching into town, whose leader 'bore a large club'. The Courier reinforced this vision of an animated crowd, threatening and unified, with a similar report on the 19th:

What scholars have made of such evidence is one of the most sumptuous meals on the menu of British history in the modern period. The argument today swings back and forth across the ideological spectrum much as it did then, and it is worth highlighting two points in particular, that scholars of Peterloo always raise to reinforce their case. First, were participants in the reform meeting ready and armed for confrontation with the policing forces, and, second, did the authorities, from Home Office down, concoct a plan to deliver a smashing blow to the reform impetus in North West England?

On the first issue, armed radicals, Mutrie's account is most informative. Indeed, perhaps historians should now turn the usual question of who was armed on its head, and ask, in its stead, who did not bear arms? For it seems apparent that everyone and his dog carried some sort of weapon at Peterloo. The yeomanry had sabres, the regulars swords and firearms, the special constables batons and staves, and those in the crowd nearest to the speakers shouldered sticks or even 'pistols'. In reserve, there was obviously an infinite supply of stones to supplement this primitive arsenal. The motive for the policing authorities to carry weapons of one sort or another is straightforward. The reason why the crowd might do so seems more tangential. From Mutrie's description, however, some important revisions to the oft repeated story of August 16th, 1819, emerge. In the first place this was not a pacific gathering of casual observers interested in reform, even if such was the intent of the organisers. A verifiable portion of the crowd in attendance at St Peter's Field were prepared for violence and had armed themselves accordingly.

The nature of the conflict envisaged can only be postulated from Mutrie's description, but there is a very modern ring to parts of his account. The action of the yeomanry looks very much like that of snatch squads so familiar to scenes of urban arrest in Britain today. The clear inference to be drawn from Mutrie's description, and other contemporary evidence in the press, is that nineteenth-century radicals may also have been familiar with this policing tactic and took suitable precautions. Armed radicals in the crowd stood around the hustings and, as soon as the yeomanry charged and attempted to snatch Hunt, they were met with swinging clubs and a barrage of stones. In the ensuing scuffles, Mutrie attempted to retrieve a 'souvenir' (a common practice), and managed to lay his hands on a. cap of liberty which, much to his surprise, was lined with tin and could not be stuffed in his pocket. It was not the floppy bonnet atop a popular standard that he expected, and that appears in many contemporary depictions of the scene. Nevertheless this was all the 'plunder' Mutrie acquired, for he had more pressing concerns to attend to.

Mutrie's concern for his livelihood sheds light on the second area of revision offered by his account – the question of concerted action by the authorities. Mutrie's experience as a special constable in the crowd hardly conformed to what might have been expected. In fact, in the light of his experiences, there can only be one negative answer to the query over coordinated policing of Peterloo. The Magistrates, yeomanry and special constables may have known what they were doing and where to stand; in Mutrie's case this amounted to 'keeping an open passage betwixt the House where the magistrate was stationed and the Hustings'. The dragoons, on the other hand, followed their own strategy, 'without previous knowledge of what was done'. If they had liaised with anyone, the constables patrolling the crowd were oblivious to the outcome. For after the Manchester Yeomanry charged into the crowd and laid about radicals and onlookers 'with the backs of their sabres', the 15th Dragoons followed suit to remarkable effect. A hundred or so constables, including Mutrie, with shouldered staves were mistaken for radicals and 'laid on our backs', presumably by the horses. A chaotic scene then developed in which Mutrie suffered the additional ignominy of being bladed twice more on the head, courtesy of both the yeomanry and the regulars.

This state of affairs did not represent the ideal concerted plan of action by the authorities often depicted in accounts of Peterloo. Panic, confusion and ineptitude might be a better precis. Two sides here in an ideological confrontation had had a go at each other with unedifying results. It had happened before Peterloo in popular protests and would do so again in the 1820s and beyond. Mutrie himself did not hang around long after being struck by a blade, preferring the safety of horseback in the mopping up operation in the streets surrounding St Peter's Field. As can be seen from his description, the aftermath proved more arduous than breaking up the original gathering. The common eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century problem of regular military personnel, in this Case the Hussars, acting as policemen all came to the fore in the hours after the dispersal of Hunt's assembly. Not the least of these difficulties was the reluctance of the magistrate to read the Riot Act before the miLitary could use their firearms with intent to kill if required. The reasons for the reluctance was certainly appreciated by contemporary opinion of which Mutrie formed a part. He knew what the consequences of reading the Riot Act in the heated surroundings of St Peter's Field would be, and his description conveys the grim reality of the rule of thumb in these circumstances:

The moment it was read Capt B ordered the infantry officer to form a hollow square in the centre of the Cross, we all took shelter in the square when the word was given to fire in all directions – the square then opened and the horses charged every way upon the crowd – my mare grew quite mad and carried me over the back of many a poor Devel – two people were shot in the first charge just opposite my room window.

Thus, the carnage occurred, and the tragedy completed.

In his conclusion on the outcome of Peterlon Mutrie made the unintentionally prophetic comment that 'this does not look like peace'. How true: there would be several more lost battles before the radicals won the war for reform: though few other confrontations have quite lived up to the mythology surrounding Peterloo. Any assessment of what new light Mutrie sheds on the events of that day has, of course, to be tempered with his reliability as a witness. Mutrie can be doubted simply because of his obvious bias in his role as a const- able, and his reluctance to display hostility even towards the yeomanry responsible for 'the rough usage'. But such outright condemnation would be unfair to the main body of his testimony. Mutrie had no axe to grind against one side or the other in his account. It is characterised by cold realism and, more pertinent still, was not written for public consumption with one ideological intent in mind. Mutrie corroborates evidence recited across the historiographical spectrum on Peterloo. The mood of mutuaI antagonism, increased, in turn, by the number on both sides carrying weapons, is a good example of this. The attack of the yeomanry on the constables is another. Mutrie also gives the cold-blooded facts about how the troops opened fire on the riotous crowd after it had been dispersed, leaving it quite open for the reader to decide whether or not it represented a massacre. The fear of the magistrate Norris, who 'was very averse that we should commence hostilities' is presented in the most dispassionate light, as is the scene of mayhem after the Riot Act was read. In almost every aspect of the depiction of Peterloo, in fact, this document offers a unique contribution to present knowledge of the events on that day. It enriches a debate that will long continue to focus scholarly attention on the 'most dreadful day' – Monday August 16th, 1819.

Reassessing Peterloo | History Today

By Con Coughlin 7:47PM BST 26 Apr 2013

Britain's great wartime leader first went into battle at 22 – against the Taliban’s brutal ancestors – and almost lost his life. An extract from Con Coughlin's new book recreates the dramatic events

Young Winston: aged 19, as a second lieutenant in the Fourth Queen’s Own Hussars Photo: HULTON/GETTY

In 1897, British forces launched a bloody campaign against Pashtun tribesmen on the North West Frontier. It was the first time Winston Churchill, a junior cavalry lieutenant and aspiring war correspondent for 'The Daily Telegraph’, had taken part in military action. In his new book, 'Churchill’s First War’, Con Coughlin recalls an act of courage and resolve that almost ended in disaster, but which helped prepare the future prime minister for the great challenges that lay ahead of him.

Winston Churchill was conspicuous riding a grey charger when the 2nd Brigade of the Bengal Lancers moved out from Inayat Kila at 6am and headed for the Mohmand Valley. He had bought his horse at an auction of the effects of a junior officer who had been killed earlier in the campaign. By choosing to ride a grey, Churchill was making sure that no one could fail to notice his endeavours were he to find himself in the thick of the action.

The Mohmand Valley, to the south-east of the Afghan border, is a fan-shaped cul-de-sac about 10 miles in length from north to south. Traditionally it has been controlled by tribes that jealously guard their independence, and it later became a renowned stronghold for the Taliban.

The 2nd Brigade’s mission was to “chastise” the valley’s tribes by burning crops, destroying reservoirs and blowing up fortified buildings in the villages. Within the context of Major General Sir Bindon Blood’s broader campaign to restore order to the North-West Frontier, this was a routine operation designed to curtail the threat posed by one particularly troublesome group. But it was not without risk.

The Afghans had learnt, over many decades of fighting, that they were no match for the British in set-piece battles. Instead, they relied on classic guerrilla tactics, withdrawing when confronted by a superior force, and then launching highly effective ambushes.

Churchill rode out with a force of 1,000 fighting men, who were divided into three columns to cover as much of the valley as possible in a day. He was attached to the centre column commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Goldney of the 35th Sikhs.

The objective of Goldney’s column was to destroy two villages at the far end of the valley, Badelai and Shahi-Tangi. Seventy-five men from the Sikhs were detached from the main force to take the conical hill between the two villages, while another company of around 85 men, including Churchill, were ordered to advance up the long, rocky spur that led to Shahi-Tangi.

Having satisfied themselves that the village was deserted, the soldiers set fire to whatever would burn before being ordered to withdraw after 15 minutes. But in their haste to reach the village, the Sikhs had inadvertently strayed beyond the safety of the cover provided by the mountain guns.

This was just the opportunity the tribesmen thrived upon. The British force suddenly found itself isolated, and the tribesmen gathered to attack. As Churchill and the other soldiers rested from the exertion of their morning climb, they found the eeriness of the deserted village disconcerting. “We are rather in the air here,” remarked one officer.

When Goldney eventually gave the order to retire, the enemy began to collect on all sides, and “thereupon promptly attacked in force, and the Sikhs were driven back about a mile, to the foot of the spur”, as the official account recorded. While Churchill and the Sikhs were fighting their way to safety, another large group of tribesmen moved to the foot of the hills to cut off their retreat. Winston and his party suddenly found themselves in a position of the utmost peril. As he later recalled in My Early Life: “Like most young fools, I was looking for trouble, and only hoped that something exciting would happen. It did!”

The tribesmen had kept themselves well concealed as the Sikhs advanced on Shahi-Tangi, but now attacked the retreating British in force:

“Suddenly the mountain-side sprang to life. Swords flashed from behind rocks, bright flags waved here and there. A dozen widely scattered smoke-puffs broke from the rugged face in front of us. Loud explosions resounded close at hand. From high up on the crag, one thousand, two thousand, three thousand feet above us, white or blue figures appeared, dropping down the mountain-side from ledge to ledge like monkeys down the branches of a tall tree. A shrill crying rose from many points. Yi! Yi! Yi! Bang! Bang! Bang! The whole hillside began to be spotted with smoke, and tiny figures descended nearer to us.”

The spur along which the British force was retreating consisted of three interconnected knolls. Churchill, another officer and eight sepoys were left to hold the second knoll and provide cover as the rest of the unit withdrew to the third knoll below. But when the turn came for Churchill’s group to retire, they came under heavy fire from tribesmen who had seized the first knoll vacated by the retreating British.

Churchill, unaware of the impending danger, had spent around five minutes taking what he called “casual pot-shots” at the tribesmen from his protected position at the second knoll. Then, as Churchill’s 10-strong group rose to withdraw to the third knoll, they were met with a well-aimed volley of fire from the tribesmen, which killed two, including Churchill’s fellow officer, and wounded three others.

As Churchill recalled: “The rest of our party got up and turned to retreat. There was a ragged volley from the rocks: shouts, exclamations, and a scream. I thought for a moment that five or six of our men had lain down again. So they had: two killed and three wounded. One man shot through the breast and pouring with blood, another lay on his back kicking and twisting. The British officer was spinning round just behind me, his face a mass of blood, his right eye cut out. Yes, it was certainly an adventure.”

Winston and the other uninjured soldiers desperately tried to pull the wounded back to safety, but had no covering fire. As Churchill observed: “It is a point of honour on the Indian frontier not to leave wounded men behind. Death by inches and hideous mutilation are the invariable measure meted out to all who fall in battle into the hands of the Pashtun tribesmen.”

The adjutant of the 35th Sikhs, Lieutenant Victor Hughes, with a number of sepoys, rushed to assist with the recovery of the dead and injured, but was himself shot. Churchill and the other survivors continued to drag and carry the casualties down the hill, passing through a group of deserted houses, with the tribesmen in hot pursuit, firing at the retreating British.

“The bullets passed in the air with a curious sucking noise, like that produced by drawing the air between the lips,” Churchill observed. One of the Sikhs helping to carry the wounded along the spur was shot through the calf, causing him to shout out in pain. “His turban fell off,” Churchill recorded, “and his long black hair streamed over his shoulders – a tragic golliwog.”

Now Churchill and another soldier tried to drag the injured Sikh to safety, but they treated him so roughly, dragging him across sharp rocks, that he pleaded to be allowed to go alone. “He hopped and crawled and staggered and stumbled, but made a good pace. Thus he escaped.”

Churchill reacted with fury when he spotted a group of Pashtuns about to attack the injured adjutant and his rescuers. Four soldiers trying to carry Hughes to safety were attacked by half a dozen Pashtun swordsmen. The bearers dropped the adjutant and rushed for their lives. Churchill was aghast as “the body sprawled upon the ground. A tall man in dirty white linen pounced down upon it with a curved sword. It was a horrible sight.” Churchill could not bear to see his injured comrade hacked to death by the fanatical tribesman.

As he later wrote: “I forgot everything else at this moment except a desire to kill this man. I wore my long cavalry sword well-sharpened. After all, I had won the Public Schools fencing medal. I resolved on personal combat a l’arme blanche. The savage saw me coming. I was not more than 20 yards away. He picked up a big stone and hurled it at me with his left hand, and then awaited me, brandishing his sword. There were others waiting not far behind him. I changed my mind about the cold steel. I pulled out my revolver, took, as I thought, most careful aim, and fired. No result. I fired again. No result. I fired again. Whether I hit him or not, I cannot tell. At any rate he ran back two or three yards and plumped down behind a rock. The fusillade was continuous. I looked around. I was alone with the enemy. Not a friend was to be seen. I ran as fast as I could. There were bullets everywhere.”

Churchill had demonstrated courage and resolve in the face of a determined enemy – qualities he would display on many more occasions during his long and eventful life.

© Con Coughlin 2013

Baptism of fire showed Winston Churchill’s inner steel - Telegraph

By Thomas DuBois | Published in History Today Volume: 63 Issue: 3 2013

Some commentators predict that the 21st century will be the ‘Asian century’, marking a significant shift in power from West to East. If so, it will not be so different from the global order of the 19th century, says Thomas DuBois.

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The American wall goes up as the Chinese original goes down', published in Puck, 1882. China opens up to trade, while America uses ethnic workers to curb immigration. Library of Congress

As late as the 1990s the global dominance of western ideals, values and institutions seemed unassailable. The Soviet Union had collapsed and China was in disarray. The California dotcoms were booming. The Asian financial crisis of 1997 looked like the final vindication of the clean and open economic institutions of the West over the back room crony capitalism of the humbled Asian tigers. Protests from political leaders such as Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew and Malaysia’s Mahathir Mohamad in defence of what they called ‘Asian values’ sounded like sour little grapes in the path of history’s steamroller.
How far we have come. Two decades after Francis Fukuyama triumphantly declared ‘the end of history’ America and Europe faced what to many appears to be a future of waning global influence, especially while the seemingly unstoppable rise of Asia has taken its place as the apocalypse du jour. There is little question that Asia will continue to shape the world during the coming century. However, if we are to accept the often-heard formulation that the next century ‘belongs’ to Asia, we might also do well to understand that in many ways the previous one did as well.

It takes a particular sort of nostalgia to imagine that the current global order, the one that the rise of Asia supposedly threatens to upend, ever belonged to the United States, any more than it did to the British Empire at its height. This is not to say that this one-two punch of Anglo-American power did not have a transformative global influence; it unquestionably did. But that power became global precisely because it creatively adapted to new realities.

The world of empires was remarkably well connected. At its height the British Empire was the largest and most successful trading bloc in history, creating a cycle of commerce that linked six continents not only to Britain itself, but also to each other. European imperialism of the late 19th century helped lay the foundation of the political, financial, scientific and religious institutions that we see as underpinning the world system today. But influence flows both ways and, as western interests took root throughout the world, Europe itself had to change. From the late 19th century the unique challenges and opportunities emanating from Asia played an ever increasing role in transforming the private commerce of Europe into the first truly global order.

In 1894 China and Japan went to war. The conflict grabbed the attention of the world and marked the first time that Europe would become directly involved in a struggle between two sovereign nations so far from its own shores. Regardless of how the European powers felt about either of the two belligerents, they had strong interests in regional stability in Asia, based on open access to China. Too weak to fend off foreign aggression and too large to partition, China could not be allowed to fall under the control of any single power. When victorious Japan sought an exclusive leasehold over China’s Liaodong peninsula as part of the 1895 treaty of Shimonoseki, Russia, Germany and France all felt their own interests to be sufficiently threatened to demand that Japan back down. Crisis was averted, but stability never returned. In rapid succession China suffered two more wars: the eight nation suppression of the Boxer Rebellion in 1900 and a showdown between Russia and Japan in 1904-05, which was fought largely on Chinese soil.

When the dust cleared, north-east Asia was scarcely recognisable. China had entered the decade a lumbering giant and left it a political nonentity. Russia’s designs in the East had been crushed and, although badly bloodied by the war, Japan was now recognised as the region’s pre-eminent power. Recognising the new reality, each of the major powers abandoned the pretence of consensus and came forward one by one to make private deals with Tokyo. These ‘Asian ententes’ recognised Japan’s unofficial hegemony over Korea and Manchuria in return for similar concessions elsewhere: Britain in India, France in Indochina, the United States in the Philippines and Russia in Mongolia.

Britain led the chorus of voices pressing Japan to keep China politically and territorially intact. It had entered into an alliance with Japan as early as 1902, as a counterweight to Russian designs on Manchuria, and renewed the alliance after the Japanese victory in order to safeguard the ‘preservation of the common interests of all Powers in China by insuring the independence and integrity of the Chinese Empire’. Like the other powers, Britain recognised that a land grab in China would not serve its interests. China’s Qing dynasty remained a viable partner in trade and diplomacy and most powers preferred to prop up the government they knew than to risk a lopsided and divisive partition. But of all the powers in China, Britain had the most to lose from a potential collapse of the government.

Britain’s strategic interests in China were few and relatively minor: its overwhelming concern was how best to position itself to exploit a changing mix of commercial opportunities. Over the course of the 19th century British interests in East Asia had shifted from Manchester to London, in other words from industrial manufacture to finance. This was a very dramatic change to the situation earlier in the century, when Britain had gone to war not once but twice in order to force China to open its markets. Britain still had a large export market in Asia: as Japan and India rose as competing industrial producers of textiles, Britain moved in to exploit the new market for factory machinery. The real money, however, was in financial services and credit. As early as the 1870s the house of Jardine, Matheson & Company abandoned the opium trade to concentrate on shipping, insurance and banking. As China’s solid finances groaned under the costs of war, with enemies at home and abroad, investors were more than happy to make up the balance by buying Chinese government debt on the London market. Between 1874 and 1895 the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation (now HSBC) raised £12 million on its behalf. Between 1896 and 1900 that total increased to £32 million.

The British Foreign Office sought to protect private banking interests in China, but was by no means the handmaiden of the financiers. Just as the great trading houses had once goaded Britain to go to war over the opium trade, policy towards Asia was deeply intertwined with financial interests. Dominance in the area of finance became a key focus of British foreign policy in Asia and one of many interests in which competition from Japan and the United States threatened more than profits. Yet the Foreign Office also pressed the Hong Kong and Shanghai to accommodate competition from inside China and elsewhere in Europe, especially after 1895, when the market for credit began to accelerate. Despite enjoying extraterritorial status, the foreign banks understood the importance of maintaining good relations with the Chinese government.

The 20th-century explosion of inter-Asian commerce expanded the market for British services, entirely separately from direct British commerce. Even without the dip in European trade during the First World War, there was at least as much money to be made in facilitating commerce between Hong Kong and Yokohama, Singapore and Bombay as there was in trading between Britain and the East. Here, as well, China remained the greatest prize of all. Hoping to tap into the heart of this market, foreign investors poured money into Chinese land transport. Exclusive permission to construct railways into the interior, together with a right to develop resources along the line, was written into the treaties that Britain, France, Russia and Japan made with China. Chinese nationalists took to calling these unfavourable agreements ‘unequal treaties’. Y. Tak Matsuzaka, the historian of Japan, has another name for it: railway imperialism.

Labour movements

The expansion of trade, both internationally and within Asia, also ushered in an era of unprecedented demographic mobility. With better transportation, safer seas and a global market for labour, people moved more and more freely than ever before. As with the flow of goods, the centre of gravity of migration wobbled between the North Atlantic and the Pacific. The latter represented a far larger movement of people. Between 1846 and 1940 some 55 to 58 million Europeans migrated to the Americas. During those same years roughly 100 million people moved within Asia, with most heading for destinations in Manchuria and the south-east of the continent.

The emergence of Asia into what was now a global labour market was felt throughout the world. Between the 1880s and 1920s burgeoning labour movements in North America, Australia and New Zealand capitalised on fears of the threat from cheap Chinese workers and supported a series of anti-Chinese strikes, tariffs and immigration restrictions. The flow of migrants also required governments to standardise procedures for dealing with each other’s citizens. This was not a problem within the context of imperial globalisation: most of the great wave of Indian migration of the 19th century went to Malaya, Kenya and South Africa and thus remained within the confines of British administration. Rather, as the historian of modern China Adam McKeown has so effectively shown, it was the global flow of migrants from East Asia, especially from China, that prompted governments to adopt the modern passport as a standard system.

Something similar could be said for the other part of the now familiar border crossing procedure: quarantine. Within Europe certain ports, particularly those along the Mediterranean, had long-established practices for monitoring incoming ships. But as late as 1850 there was no standard procedure for monitoring the health of people passing across national borders. Nor was there any urgency to establish one; even considering the devastation wrought by typhus and smallpox, Europe had not faced a major pan-continental epidemic for centuries.

Coming of cholera

All of this changed when cholera, which reached the Russian Urals in 1829, spread like wildfire across the Continent. By 1831 the disease had reached Paris and within a year killed 12,733 in that city alone. The extreme virulence and rapid spread of cholera caused panic in medical circles and prompted the French authorities to convene a series of International Sanitary Conferences. The first two, held in 1851 and 1859, aimed to determine the cause of, and potential countermeasures to, the disease and were remarkable primarily for their dithering lack of productivity. In addition to a lack of epidemiological knowledge, divergence of political interest hampered any form of consensus. Delegates from seafaring nations discounted the proposal to quarantine routinely ships arriving in port, not because it was expensive but because they felt it was scientifically unsound. So at least it was claimed. Although Britain was hardly unique in this regard, outside observers were quick to note a ‘surprising concordance between England’s commercial interests and its scientific convictions’.

'Cholera on the Bowsprit', an illustration by F. Fritz Graetz, shows the disease personified by a Turkish immigrant.

The third conference, held in 1866, was substantially more productive. Convened in Istanbul, the conference was prompted by a major outbreak of the disease in Egypt, carried by hajji pilgrims on their way to Mecca, who arrived in unprecedented numbers via the newly opened Suez Canal. Scientific politics did not stop entirely: delegates from Persia and the Ottoman Empire vocally opposed the charge that cholera was endemic in their lands, while Britain continued to resist ‘with an almost religious fervour’ the claim that the disease had originated in India. Nevertheless the urgency of the situation carried the day. The Istanbul conference proposed the first of a series of practical containment measures, including the construction of a quarantine facility at the entrance to the Red Sea, which required an unprecedented level of co-operation among the European powers.

Although this new partnership within Europe was prompted by fears of disease spreading from Asia, it was the next generation’s creation of an epidemic prevention infrastructure within Asia that represented a real globalisation of public health. Two major changes made this possible: the Pasteurian revolution transformed scientific understanding about the origin and prevention of disease, while the expansion of inter-Asian trade and migration gave everyone a stake in tackling epidemics beyond their own borders. Regardless of what flag was flying over Shanghai or Singapore, these port cities belonged to the world by virtue of the fact that nearly everyone shared an interest in making sure that trade flowed through them freely. When plague struck the great Asian trading hub of Hong Kong in 1894 colonial authorities sprang into action, establishing quarantine areas, distributing medicine and disinfectant and mobilising both British and Chinese charities to care for the afflicted.

They were not alone. Crisis in an international city prompted a global response, with epidemiologists from Europe, the US and Japan racing to be the first to isolate the bacillus. Although European and Japanese teams each made the discovery independently, it was the Swiss bacteriologist Alexandre Yersin (1863-1943) who eventually claimed naming rights over the plague bacteria now known as Yersinia pestis. When the same disease struck the Manchurian boomtown of Harbin in 1910 the Qing government convened an international conference of experts to come up with a solution. China realised how much was at stake. The plague came fast on the heels of the war between Russia and Japan and was concentrated along the railway, the heart of foreign interests in the region. China had to make some attempt to control the outbreak; doing nothing might be seen as an abdication of sovereignty. The response to plague in Asia showed a new appreciation that neither pathogens nor national interest stopped at national borders. Disease anywhere was now everybody’s problem.

Rival religions

The final pillar of European interest in Asia was religion. Christian missionaries had been making the journey there in increasing numbers since the 16th century, almost as soon as the opening of the sea route round the south of Africa allowed them to do so without traversing Muslim lands. The first wave was the Jesuits, who set up in Goa and from there branched out to Malacca and Japan, all with an eye to the final prize of China. The Jesuits came to admire the lands they visited and developed a strategy of explaining Christianity, not only in local languages, but through the symbols and idioms of local beliefs. This conciliatory strategy endeared them to Asian elites, who regarded the highly educated priests as their peers, but put them into conflict with their own co-religionists. Arriving in Asia following very different experiences in Africa and the Americas, other denominations were far less conciliatory towards local beliefs. They claimed that the Jesuit approach bordered on idolatry and insisted that the Catholic faith must be inseparable from European language, dress and culture.

Two centuries later a new wave of Protestant missionaries in Asia would face the same question: what exactly had they come to preach? While 16th-century Jesuits stood in awe of a materially and culturally superior Asia, those of the 19th century became convinced of the White Man’s Burden to civilise the continent. Even people like James Hudson Taylor (1832-1905), who instructed members of his China Inland Mission to dress, speak and live like Chinese, also recognised that one of the best ways to bring potential converts to the mission was to entice them with western education and medicine.

Throughout the world even long-established Christian communities remained under the care of missionaries, who tended to regard the native Christians as converts, rather than as equals within the faith. We might pause before judging the missionaries too harshly: looking out at the world from the apex of western power, delegates at the Edinburgh Missionary Conference of 1910 saw the aggressive march of Anglo-American Protestantism (Catholic missions were not invited) as an irresistible force for good and envisioned the gospel radiating out to every corner of the globe. The small sprinkling of Asian Christians present at the conference clearly viewed things differently. Like the Jesuits two centuries earlier, they and their allies advocated adapting the Christian message to native spirituality, particularly in relation to Asia’s great religions: Buddhism, Hinduism and Islam. After lengthy debate the conference decided that making such comparisons risked diluting the uniqueness of the Christian revelation and, instead of conciliation, urged missionaries in the field to draw the ‘frankest comparison’ with native religions.

By the time the next major missionary conference was held in Jerusalem in 1928 things had changed. The First World War and the rise of the Soviet Union had weakened the confidence of the previous generation in the West’s ‘superior’ civilisation and taken the wind out of the call to missionise the globe ‘in our lifetimes’. Asian Christians themselves grew ever more active and vocal. Japanese Christians, although few in number, flatly rejected any suggestion of second class status. They were joined by a new generation of erudite Chinese Christians, such as Soong May-ling (1897-2003), the American-educated wife of Chiang Kai-shek (1887-1975). More important, these communities had endured events such as the Boxer Rebellion in China and the 1919 independence movement in Korea, both of which visited disproportionate violence on Christians, and emerged with their faith unscathed. They could scarcely be called Christians in training and were no longer willing to be treated as such. While delegates in Edinburgh had politely broached the question of how Asian Christianity would eventually be accepted as an equal by the mission community, those in Jerusalem were more direct, demanding a specific timetable for when local churches would come under full Asian control.

The deteriorating political situation in the 1930s added ever more urgency to the question. The days when Europeans could protect their missionaries with gunboat diplomacy were a distant memory. Japan was growing increasingly aggressive in Manchuria and China and more openly hostile to the European powers in Asia, particularly Great Britain. This situation presented missionaries in Japanese areas with a difficult decision. Should they attempt to assuage Japanese suspicions by ceding authority to native Christians, or should they delay leaving and try to use the mission as a political shield? Anglo-American Protestants in Korea and Manchuria chose the latter path, a decision that eventually led to open confrontation in 1937, when the authorities forcibly replaced the missionaries with Japanese Christians.

The Catholic situation was more complex. The largest Catholic mission in East Asia was the French Missions Etrangères de Paris (MEP), which had a long history in Japan and a more sympathetic view of that country as a civilising force. A previous generation of MEP priests had already reached an accommodation with Japan at the time of its wars with China and Russia. Japanese Catholics had enthusiastically supported their nation as a chance to show their loyalty. The priests blessed troopships departing the docks and praised the patriotic valour of Catholic soldiers, such as the wounded lieutenant who shouted with his dying breath: ‘My heart with God and my body with the Emperor!’

Japan’s occupation of Manchuria in 1931, which was renamed Manchukuo early the following year, wrecked its relations with the Anglo-American powers. Yet even after the League of Nations condemned Manchukuo as a puppet of Japan, MEP priests, such as vicar apostolic Auguste Gaspais (1884-1952), continued to press an unwilling Vatican to establish rapprochement with the state. Such a request was particularly surprising coming from the French missions, which had for decades thwarted Rome’s attempts to build a diplomatic profile in Japan and China by invoking the French protectorate over the Church in China.

It was war with the Allies that finally forced a resolution. With hundreds of thousands of Catholics living under Japanese rule in China and Korea, and foreseeing the same outcome for Indochina and the Philippines, the Holy See moved from decades of indecision and established relations with Japan in 1942. This move, viewed with obvious dismay in Britain and the United States, was in fact entirely consistent with the Vatican’s long-held position of neutrality in conflict between states, a principle that it reaffirmed a month later when, this time against vigorous Japanese protests, it established relations with the nationalist government of Chiang Kai-shek in Beijing.

The importance of culture

Much of the current discussion of how Asia will shape the coming century is based on culture. We are already seeing a more confident and vocal expression of alternative political and social ideas coming out of Asia and can no doubt expect to see much more in the future. The historiography of imperialism in Asia has revolved largely around the cultural encounter: the ideas that lay behind resistance, alternate conceptions of modernity and the voices that were suppressed.

Cultural perspectives are important, but on their own they can also be a bit of a red herring. Regardless of how Asia and the West may have perceived each other in cultural terms, the fact remains that neither had the ability to walk away from the relationship. This is why talk of the coming ‘Asian century’ is so misleading. In many ways the world was more connected in 1910 than it was in 1970. Sometimes, but not always, under the cover of empire, western interests spanned the globe, bringing wealth, knowledge and prestige back to the home countries, yet they also made themselves vulnerable to the same vicissitudes of markets and politics that we see today. Whether we are talking about diplomacy, finance, science or religion, the trajectory of the early 20th century is not of European imperialists blithely imposing their will and ways upon the world, but rather of a nimble yet vulnerable set of institutions that adapted to the threats, promises and opportunities of a rapidly changing world. Asia was as much a part of that world as it is of ours.

Thomas David DuBois is Senior Research Fellow in the History of China at the Australian National University’s College of Asia and the Pacific.

Asia and the Old World Order | History Today

 guardian.co.uk, Monday 4 March 2013 07.30 GMT

Offended by the monarch's curt reply to the poems he had sent her, man tries to shoot the Queen outside Windsor rail station

Queen Victoria in 1897. Photograph: Hulton-Deutsch Collection/CORBIS

The Queen has not suffered from the attempt made upon her life by the man Maclean, and Her Majesty continues calm and in excellent spirits. Throughout the forenoon today the grand quadrangle was visited by a number of residents, groups of spectators collecting at the base of the Round Tower and watching the principal entrance to obtain a glimpse of Her Majesty whenever she might leave the palace. After receiving a visit from Sir W. Harcourt, the Home Secretary, Her Majesty and Princess Beatrice quitted the palace at noon and went out for a walk in the Home Park.

In the course of the morning service held at St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle, a special thanksgiving prayer was offered for the preservation of the Queen's life, and the subject was also alluded to in the lecture. Sir J.R. Elvey, the organist, played the National Anthem as the congregation were quitting the sacred building.

It may now be authoritatively stated that Maclean is no doubt insane. This afternoon a telegram was received at Windsor Castle by Inspector Fraser, of the Royal Household Police, stating that it has been ascertained that the accused had been confined in the Wells Lunatic Asylum, whence he was only discharged last September. Since then he has been a patient in the Weston-Super-Mare infirmary.

Further information obtained today respecting the attempt on the Queen's life proves beyond doubt that Her Majesty had a remarkable escape and that she was actually in danger from the daring act of the would-be assassin. The discovery of the bullet fired at the Queen completely disposes of the theory that the charge contained in the chamber of the weapon was merely a blank cartridge.

As an illustration of the narrow escape of Her Majesty, it may be mentioned that a man was placed on the spot from which the shot was fired, and one at the place where the bullet was picked up. It was at once evident that Her Majesty was immediately in the line of fire.

Sir William Harcourt expressed to the bystanders his horror of the attempted deed, and measured the distance between the spot where the revolver was discharged and the point where the bullet must have passed closest to Her Majesty. This was found to be 15 paces. It may here be mentioned that two Eton scholars, who are described as "brave, stalwart boys," named Wilson and Robinson, who were the means, by hustling the would-be regicide, of saving the life of the Queen, met with a tremendous ovation of applause from their college chums when they returned to Eton last night.

[This was the seventh attempt to assassinate Queen Victoria during her reign. Roderick Maclean was tried for high treason and found "not guilty, but insane," prompting Queen Victoria to ask for a change in the law so that defendants could be found "guilty, but insane". Maclean was sent to Broadmoor and died there in 1921.]

Queen Victoria assassination attempt: From the archive, 4 March 1882 | From the Guardian | guardian.co.uk

By Noelle Plack | Published in History Today Volume: 63 Issue: 3 2013

Following his disastrous Russian campaign, the emperor of France needed money quickly. The desperate measures he took are revealed by Noelle Plack.

 

Desperate: Napoleon, portrayed following his abdication in 1814 by Delaroche. Vente notice

Of all the Napoleonic anniversaries to be commemorated in the next few years, one that is very likely to be forgotten is his land grab of 1813. A relatively obscure law, passed on March 20th that  year, allowed the French state to seize and sell off plots of village common land. It is no coincidence that this legislation appeared a few months after the disastrous retreat from Moscow. The empire’s financial affairs were deteriorating as more and more funds were being consumed by military spending. It is estimated that 60 per cent of the 1807 budget was spent on Napoleon’s military exploits, but by 1813 the figure was 80 per cent. The Russian campaign alone had a price tag of 700 million francs. With this tremendous strain on the nation’s finances it is not surprising that the deficit increased each year. In 1811 the shortfall was a modest 6.5 million francs; by 1813 France had a 149 million franc deficit.

The law of March 20th came into being against this bleak financial background. Napoleon needed to raise vast amounts of cash relatively quickly but refused to borrow funds or print paper money, things that both the Bourbon monarchy and French Revolutionaries had done with dire consequences. The idea to sell off communal plots was appealing because the lands would be sold at auction in the theoretically neutral sphere of the market.

The actual text of the law, contained in only six articles, explained how the procedure would work. Essentially the state would seize all communally held lands that were leased to individuals; these lands would then be sold at auction with a guide price of 20 times their annual revenue. Villages would receive a fixed sum of five per cent of the ceded lands’ value from the government in return for their lost assets. Confident of success, Napoleon’s ministers projected that the sales would produce a profit of 370 million francs.

The effects of Napoleon’s seizure and sale of common land are not well known. Historians admit that the results are difficult to trace, as officials in the 19th century tried to erase this unsavoury operation from collective memory. Archival evidence is scattered and incomplete, as the monthly sales reports sent to the ministry of finance were burned during the Paris Commune of 1871. The documents that do survive in the departmental archives are usually found in the Q series, largely devoted to the sales of biens nationaux, the nationalised Church and émigré lands seized during the French Revolution. This combination of factors has meant that the 1813 land sales are rarely discussed in the standard histories of Napoleon.

Thanks to the French historian Nadine Vivier we now have an idea of the overall impact of this operation. The law was on the books until April 26th, 1816 and sales took place during three distinct phases. As early as April 1814 the government announced that 124 million francs’ worth of land had been ceded and just over half of that had been sold. Further research reveals that only 22 million francs of the sales were actually paid for. There is debate over how much land was sold in the end, but the best calculation puts the figure between 60 and 90 million francs, far short of the government’s original estimate.

These sales were not equally distributed across France. Villages in the northeast and south of the country had the most land seized and sold under this law.  Departments in western regions lost hardly any land during these years. This presents a division between two Frances: a western zone, where inhabitants were deeply attached to the collective usage of their commons; and the north, east and south, where collective dependence upon common land was less profound and leasing of individual plots was more widespread. In the Moselle, for example, in the east, over three million francs were produced as 600 plots of land were sold. Common land in the village of Briey, in Meurthe-et-Moselle, diminished from 80 hectares to just 12 under this law.

Who purchased the lands? The 1813 Napoleonic law has often been compared to the revolutionary biens nationaux because of the way the lands were seized and sold at auction and also because the urban bourgeoisie seem to have acquired a lot of it. In large measure it was the wealthy middle classes who benefited from this law, as they purchased plots to increase their landholdings. This often proved traumatic for the poorer peasants, who were usually expropriated from the plots they were leasing from their communes, though in some instances the peasant occupiers were able to buy the lands they were leasing. In the village of Fourques in the Gard region, for example, local peasants purchased the majority of the 317 plots sold. However, the most likely scenario was that peasant occupiers were outbid by those higher up on the social scale.

Not only were the land sales under the 1813 law distressful for the peasantry, the loss of revenue produced by leased out plots of common land was very damaging to a community’s budget. In theory the government was meant to pay the communes a fixed annual sum of five per cent of the ceded lands’ value, but in reality many villages never saw a centime. The department of the Gard, for example, received only 16 per cent of the annual sum due in 1814 and none of it by 1820. Even when the annual sum was paid in full, it paled in comparison with the potential revenue communes could have earned from leasing their lands.

It was, then, the bourgeoisie who benefitted most from this law, as they were able to secure the lion’s share of land seized and put up for sale.  These purchases were made for several reasons – not only to make capital investments in property, but also to show support for a regime on the brink of financial ruin. Thus, Napoleon’s land grab of 1813 resembles the sales of the revolutionary biens nationaux in more ways than one. Not only did it increase the land ownership of the bourgeoisie, but it also attached them to a regime in desperate need of legitimacy.

Noelle Plack is Reader in French History at Newham University, Birmingham and is the author of Common Land, Wine and the French Revolution (Ashgate, 2009)

Napoleon's Land Grab | History Today

By Roger Hudson | Published in History Today Volume: 63 Issue: 2 2013

Roger Hudson pictures British gunboat diplomacy in Egypt in 1882

British sailors on a run ashore inspect the damage they have inflicted at Fort Mex, part of the defences of Alexandria in Egypt, on July 11th, 1882. As they pretend to load or sponge out the barrel of a gun, the tars are identifiable by their broad-brimmed straw hats, while some of the British fleet can be seen in the background.

How had Admiral Sir Beauchamp Seymour come to give the order to open fire? It all went back to the huge increase in the price that could be got for Egyptian cotton in the early 1860s, when supplies from the southern states of America were disrupted by civil war. The Khedive Ismail, ruler of Egypt as the Sultan of Turkey’s nominal viceroy, unfortunately ignored the end of the war in 1865 and went on spending as if his cotton receipts were as before, while the bankers moved in. By 1875 he owed so much to his foreign creditors that he had to sell his Suez Canal shares to Disraeli, the Tory prime minister, for £4 million. The French, although bitter over this coup, administered the country jointly with Britain to ensure that the servicing of the Egyptian debt was not interrupted, while Ismail was replaced by his son Tewfik in 1879. Nationalist, mixed with Islamist, feelings were stirred up and a Colonel Urabi emerged as the most important figure. Soon Gladstone, Disraeli’s successor, was forced to confront the possibility of having to intervene, pushed by the French, still sensitive after their defeat by the Prussians in 1870 and by the Whig element in his Liberal Party, which did not share his wish for an ‘ethical foreign policy’. The threat of intervention crystallised nationalist feelings in Egypt and in mid-May Gladstone ordered the fleet to sail for Alexandria, where it was joined by French warships.

On June 10th anti-foreign rioting broke out in Alexandria, with the city police some of the worst offenders. British civilians and sailors were among the 50 or so killed. The sultan refused to intervene, while the French suddenly refused to join in punitive action for fear of reactions in their Arab colonies. The threat presented to the Suez Canal, however, drove Gladstone on and when a 24-hour ultimatum to Urabi to surrender was ignored, Seymour gave the order for the first fleet action since 1855. Designed to resist cannon fire, the batteries were pulverised by the British shells. The inhabitants meanwhile burnt the city’s European quarters and much else, while Urabi remained defiant.

Sir Garnet Wolseley, commander of the Anglo-Indian force about to invade Egypt and finish the job, regarded the bombardment by the ‘Swell of the Ocean’, his nickname for the nattily dressed Seymour, as ‘criminal’, not least because it led to Urabi strongly fortifying the route from Alexandria to Cairo. This meant Wolseley had to mount his attack from the Suez Canal. Luckily Urabi believed Ferdinand de Lesseps, its builder, when he said Britain would observe the canal’s neutrality. The Egyptians were routed at Tel el Kebir on September 13th after a daring night advance by Wolseley and Cairo surrendered by the evening of the same day. There was no annexation; instead Evelyn Baring, who had been British Commissioner of the Egyptian Debt, returned as ‘consul’, though in effect viceroy. Lord Cromer, as he became, ran the country behind the façade of the khedive, thus preserving Gladstone’s liberal conscience as well as some features, if not the entire face, of Sultan Abdul Hamid in Constantinople.

Ashore in Alexandria | History Today

By Richard Canning | Posted 25th January 2013, 13:40

Fanny and Stella: The Young Men who Shocked Victorian England
Neil McKenna Faber & Faber   416pp   £16.99

The trial of two young, theatrical female impersonators, Frederick Park and Ernest Boulton, for attempted sodomy in London in May 1871 has long been seen as a watershed moment in the emergence in England of notions of gay identity and gay male subculture. Neil McKenna himself drew substantially upon elements of their story in The Secret Life of Oscar Wilde (2003) and it has featured frequently in the many recent accounts of 19th-century homosexuality.

Until now, however, much of what has been understood about Boulton and Park, familiarly known as Mrs Fanny Graham and Miss Stella Boulton, has reached us from sources either evidently unreliable, or else encumbered by the default ‘slant’ of populist sensationalism. ‘Jack Saul’ told of their soliciting men from their box in the Strand Theatre and claimed to have slept with them both. Whether  ‘Saul’ was the ‘renter’ insider he claimed to be or not, many other details in his extraordinary and recently republished 1881 memoir, The Sins of the Cities of the Plain (Valancourt Books), were fabricated.

McKenna provides what is certainly the definitive account of the Boulton/Park story, drawn not only from contemporary journalism but also from the full legal transcript, a miraculous survivor housed in Kew’s National Archives. It is a miserable tale, if leavened both by McKenna’s dramatic verve and, during the show trial held in Westminster Hall, by Fanny and Stella’s black humour. The establishment account – that the pair’s persistent cross-dressing importuning was a scandal to public morals that must be stopped – soon breaks down. McKenna shows clearly how the men were effectively set up and, to some degree, even entrapped.

Police confidence in pressing the serious charge of ‘conspiracy to solicit, induce, procure and endeavour to persuade persons unknown to commit buggery’ (as opposed to the minor offence of outraging public decency) was nonetheless misplaced. Buggery had until lately incurred the death penalty and still carried a lifelong penal sentence. No such charge had been brought for 240 years. The problem which attended the endless, farcical medical examinations of Boulton and Park reflected sodomy’s millennial history as the nameless or invisible crime. Few Victorian doctors could claim to have seen evidence of the extreme anal dilation which purportedly occurred after the ‘insertion of a foreign body’. Of the half dozen who inspected the pair – both inveterate sodomites, as McKenna concedes – only one remained certain that the corporeal evidence supported conviction. They were acquitted and the notion that ‘the impurities of Continental cities’ had reached London was rooted in legal terms for a quarter-century – if paradoxically seeming somehow to be affirmed.

McKenna lays bare a fascinating tapestry of interrelated personal histories, only partially capable of reconstruction. Frederick’s elder brother Harry, already twice disgraced, was hiding in Scotland under an assumed name. Their father, a judge, was urgently shipped off to South Africa during the trial of his younger son. Impressively, Frederick’s mother – amusingly a literal ‘Mary Ann’ – took to the stand to defend his moral character. So successful was she that the identification of Frederick/’Fanny’ as a theatrical mother’s boy exonerated him entirely from the imputation of vice.

Ernest/’Stella’, the more attractive defendant, had less direct claims to a reputation. ‘She’ had long been pursued by Lord Arthur Pelham-Clinton, a penniless spendthrift. The pair took lodgings (with a spare room for ‘Fanny’), co-habiting successfully as a married couple for a while. As the trial approached Pelham-Clinton absconded, to be pronounced dead of scarlet fever. Rumours proliferated that he had fled abroad. The US consul in Edinburgh, another amour, did not take flight and was charged alongside Boulton and Park. The public at the trial resembled closely the audiences in the theatres the defendants had frequented. ‘Theatricals’, leading comic actors and outright queens attended to lend support. Nothing like this had been seen before – and it seems not to have been repeated at Wilde’s trial in 1895.

Period observations fascinate: the new concept of mail order enabled cross-dressers to procure make-up. Boiled sheep’s lungs substituted for breasts. And a succession of details indicates Wilde’s familiarity with the Boulton/Park story. He may even have personally encountered the renamed ‘Ernest Blair,’ who bravely rebuilt his singing career in the US and then Britain. ‘Cecil Graham’, the false identity that Boulton gave on arrest, became a character in Lady Windermere’s Fan (1892). Similarly, the excuse with which Lord Arthur entertained Boulton at his metropolitan digs – that he was hosting a country cousin named Ernest – points blatantly to an equally ridiculous plot: that of Wilde’s last, finest dramatic work.

The Young Men Who Shocked Victorian England | History Today