The Brunswick & Greenwich Academy Magazine of History 2015

The Brunswick & Greenwich Academy

Magazine of History 2015

Brunswick School 100 Maher Avenue Greenwich, CT 06830 (203) 625-5800 Brunswickschool.org

Greenwich Academy 200 North Maple Avenue Greenwich, CT 06830 (203) 625-8900 Greenwichacademy.org

Vol. 11

Cover Image: Udo J. Keppler, “His 128th Birthday,” Cartoon, Ottoman Lith Company, June 29,1904, From Library of Congress, accessed January 10, 2014, http://www.loc.gov/.

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The Brunswick & Greenwich Academy Magazine of History 2015 Editor

Dr. John R. Van Atta

Editorial Office

Department of History Humanities Wing The Brunswick School 100 Maher Avenue Greenwich, CT 06830 e-mail: john_van_atta@brunswickschool.org (Please submit manuscripts for review and any correspondence regarding editorial matters by e-mail to the editorial office)

Editorial Board Mrs. Margot Beattie

Mr. Steven Mandes

Ms. Kristine Brennan

Reed McMurchy

Katherine Du

Ms. Rachel Powers

Jordan Fischetti

Jordan Smith

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Contents

The Editor’s Page Articles Propaganda Targets: How Magazines Influenced Women and Domestic Ideology in Victorian England

by Ellie Garland ‘16 How Did the Role of Aviation Change During the First World War?

by Conner Wakeman ‘16 Borders without Boundary: American Exceptionalism and the Relentless Search for New Frontiers

by Reed McMurchy ‘15 The Evolution of Greenwich Avenue in Correspondence with National Trends, 1854-Present

by Caroline Zhao ‘15 Michael J. Daly: the Soldier and the Man

by Keith Radler ‘15 The Tianjin Eco-City: China’s Latest Effort to Tackle Pollution

by Katherine Du ‘17 The Crowning of a New Naval Power: How the English Defeated the Spanish Armada in 1588

by Nwanacho Nwana ‘16

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The Editor’s Page While Civil War historian Allen Guelzo was visiting Brunswick last month, some of the faculty asked him what he would suggest for the improvement of students’ writing. He replied that too often student papers he had read failed to “hook” the reader with a catchy first paragraph, one that sets the mood or creates some sense of drama in a way that the reader Dr. John Van Atta, Editor will want to know more. He added that the worst thing is when, after finishing the first paragraph of a student essay, he finds himself asking: “So what?” or “What’s the point?” or “Where is he/she going with this?”

For some good opening sentences, I went downstairs and checked out a copy of Guelzo’s latest book, Gettysburg: The Last Invasion. Here are a few examples: Prologue: “Anyone who took the trouble on one of the few fair days in late June of the year 1863 to climb the winding forest trail to the old Indian lookout on South Mountain would have enjoyed a sweet reward for his trouble.”

Part I: “The American Civil War had been raging for just a little more than two years when the armies came into the view of the Indian lookout.”

Part III: “The sun rose on July 3 behind a thin layer of ‘cumulo-stratus clouds’ which eventually burned off or blew away by noon.”

Epilogue: “The mind of the tall man in the White House had been weighing what the battle signified ever since the news of Gettysburg first came sparking over the telegraph wires to the War Department on July 4th.”

Maybe it is hard to tell when they are taken out of context this way, but these sentences are good mood-setters for Guelzo’s narrative that follows in each of these parts of the book.

I will not claim that every bit of student writing in this issue of the Magazine quite measures up to Guelzo’s well-practiced professional standard, but some of it comes pretty close. First off, Ellie Garland’s article on how women’s magazines of the latter half of the nineteenth century depicted women and prescribed styles and standards of behavior is, we thought, worthy of the lead position. Next, we hope readers will agree that Conner Wakeman’s essay showing how aerial warfare changed, on both sides, during the course of

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World War I offers some thought-provoking passages and some pretty cool photos, too. Reed McMurchy’s article on American imperialism of the 1890s provides some valuable clues as to why that kind of U.S. foreign policy developed when it did. Caroline Zhao, in her piece on changes in American culture as expressed in the evolution of Greenwich Avenue over more than 100 years’ time, takes us on a tour through the town as most of us would never imagine.

Keith Radler’s essay presents a unusual character study of a World War II hero, helping to explain what kinds of qualities it takes to win the Congressional Medal of Honor. By looking closely at the Tianjin Eco-City in China, Katherine Du takes us on a very different kind of journey, one that examines environmental consciousness half-way across the world. And finally, Nwanacho Nwana explores the reasons why the Spanish Armada failed against English naval forces in 1588.

Why not take advantage of the chance to get published in this magazine if you have an essay, written perhaps for a history class, that you think might be pretty good? We rely on anonymous refereeing, in keeping with common practice in the history profession. Each manuscript submitted is blindreviewed by at least two members of the editorial board. We normally receive more top essays than we have room to publish, and that makes the decisionmaking a little tough. But that is no reason for anyone not to try his or her luck.

Thanks again, as always, to school heads Tom Philip and Molly King, and also department chairs Kristine Brennan and Rachel Powers, for their steady support. Kristine also subjected the manuscript to a helpful round of proofreading. One might think by now that I have grown tired of crediting Margot Beattie for all she does to make this magazine possible. I haven’t. A special thanks goes to her; we couldn’t do this without Margot’s hard work.

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Propaganda Targets: How Magazines Influenced Women and Domestic Ideology in Victorian England

By Ellie Garland ‘16 Women’s magazines from the Victorian era give modern day historians insight into women’s roles in society and patterns of belief generally. Such magazines, whether intended to advise or entertain, provide an honest look into nineteenth-century female lives because the articles were either written by women with an understanding of female needs and desires or by men imposing certain ideals of their own on the opposite gender. Not only did the magazines address middle-class women’s interests and help with their daily routines but they also influenced them. Magazines enforced and expanded upon Victorian ideals of domesticity and sexual inequality. A form of propaganda, publications like The Lady and The Feminist Journal inculcated ideas and shaped readers’ values. They attempted to define the ideal woman, whether it be the “Angel in the House,” the “New Woman,” or something in between. They encouraged women to conform to certain standards. In many cases, this ideal woman was Queen Victoria herself, who was frequently featured in columns like the “Chit Chat of the Month” or “Her Majesty’s Courts.”1 Called the “Mother of the Nation,” she represented the traditional woman who cared for her family but at the same time a revolutionary woman with political power—both perspectives giving evidence of a complex, multifaceted Victorian structure of belief on women and society.2 The nineteenth century, entitled the Long Century for good reason, was a time of immense change in Great Britain from an agricultural society to an industrial one. Victorian belief changed along with politics, industry, and economics. The magazines influenced this ideological change; new ideas were either formed by women themselves and then reinforced by the press or formed by the press for impact on women readers. Throughout the Victorian era, the expansion of women’s rights was a slow-going process and affected only a limited range of the female population, which explains why feminist journals represented a small minority of total publications of the time. Overall, women’s magazines evidenced the wide variety of women who inhabited Victorian England. Although most of the publications reflected the traditional ideals of female domesticity, others addressed groups of women more directly impacted by industrial and political changes; we see a coexistence of the traditional housewife and the modern feminist more apt to push for gender equality.

Especially in the early nineteenth century, the majority of middle-class Victorian women aspired to be “Angels in the House,” a term coined by poet Conventry Patmore. Publishing the poem in 1864, he modeled it on his wife Emily, who apparently fit the stereotype. Patmore wrote, “Man must be pleased; but him to please/Is woman’s pleasure.”3 To be a household “angel,” a woman 5

entirely submitted herself to her husband and children, becoming their physical and emotional caretaker. Her responsibilities included educating the children and managing the household. She did the cooking and cleaning and did it on her own, perhaps with the help of a domestic servant. A proper Victorian woman was also responsible for displaying Christian ideals and correct moral behavior, keeping her husband and other male family members from committing sin.4 At the same time, however, women often came to be blamed for their husbands’ wrongdoings, such as their patronizing of prostitutes, viewed as a failure to guard their men from trouble. In an 1869 issue of the Saturday Review, a weekly London newspaper, one man judged that an “ideal” woman was “her husband’s friend and companion, but never his rival; one who would consider their interest identical… who would make his house his true home and place of rest… a tender mother, and industrious housekeeper.”5 This notion of separate spheres is clearly important. A woman could not be viewed as a “rival” to her man, suggesting no political or economic involvement, isolating her from the public sphere. The male author mentions “identical interest,” which really means that the wife must alter her own ideas and goals to conform to those of her husband. He especially highlights the importance of home maintenance, whether that be keeping things tidy or creating a happy atmosphere. Historian Mary Poovey rightly describes the Victorian ideal of separate gender spheres as the “domestic, welfaring woman” and the “public, warfaring man,” the woman being the one “who would tend to him when battle got too bloody.”6 Keeping a home in order was laborious and time-consuming, but it did give women a sense of power, the supreme rule of the private realm. Many issues

Ladies’ fashions and an advertisement page from a typical women’s magazine of the time.

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of the magazines focused on this “angel in the house” ideal, providing tips to facilitate housework or short stories appealing to women who focused on their families. Many articles addressed housekeeping and care of children. Others featured gossip about royalty or the rich and famous in British society; still others offered illustrated interviews, fashion news, chats about books, fiction pieces, and advice columns.7 For women not yet accustomed to a household identity, there were columns coaxing them toward that objective. The table of contents of an 1895 issue of The English Woman included titles such as “Some Famous Stage Lovers” by Mr. George Alexander, “In Fashionland” by a Mrs. Aria, and “A Day’s Shopping” by a Mrs. Humphrey.8 All of these articles and stories supposedly appealed to women’s primary interests: love, marriage, and the home. The Lady, a woman’s magazine still running today, recently offered a series of vintage tips regarding etiquette, fashion, and beauty from some of its antiquated issues.

The entertainment section of The Lady from August 1898 suggested that “[t]rue hospitality means the doing and giving—freely and heartily—the best you can, and of the best you have,” and a November 1909 number helpfully advised that “[s]oup must be served in cups to guests before they leave, a custom that is very much appreciated in cold weather.”9 According to the image conveyed here, the average Victorian mother and wife was focused on maintaining her family, and a large part of that was equipping her husband and children with the materials they needed to survive.

To provide for male family members, good mothers went shopping, whether for food, clothing, books, or any other items needed at home. Their duties concentrated on making the home comfortable and attractive. This they were to pursue with hard work thrifty spending. While the husband’s role demanded the earning of family income, women gained some financial control over that income through their shopping decisions, and for that reason, advertisers often targeted women as the consumers of products and services not only for home maintenance but also ladies’ fashions. Magazine advertisements grew more lengthy and elaborate after British lawmakers decreased taxes on advertising space in 1854.10 With improvements in print technology, familiar images started to accompany certain brand names. A common section in women’s magazines entitled the “Advertorial” contained articles that discussed the products, endorsing sponsored items, and thus provided the magazines with the money to pay for part of their operation.11 One example of an advertisement from The Lady’s Own Paper in 1872 shows idealized women in fancy dresses strolling beside a department store.

It is aesthetically pleasing and not recognizable as a sales pitch except for the sign “Thomson’s Ladies’ Outfitters” on the store window.12 The fashion focus on female beauty made caring for one’s appearance more of a social necessity than in earlier times, driving some women to excessive lengths. As caretakers of a private sphere that emphasized morality, women often preferred styles that projected notions of propriety in attire, hairstyle, and

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makeup. Ladies’ magazines prescribed these stylistic requirements as well. The fashion plate, a separate insert that could be removed and kept, was a common feature of all women’s magazines. These inserts came with information on where women could purchase the featured fabrics and designs. One fashion plate in The Ladies’ Treasury in 1858 shows a colorful, ornate sketch of two women in gowns with a header “fashion for the season.”13 The background in the drawing shows a lavishly decorated living room, obviously linking fashion and the private women’s sphere. Magazines also used well-known respected women as fashion icons, including Queen Victoria herself. One example presents Queen Victoria and ladies of her court in sketches on the fashion page of an 1855 number of The Queen, highlighting a “velvet and faille costume,” “French hairdressing,” “ theatre shoulder cape,” and an “indoor costume.”14 Not only did fashions dictate female beauty and the need to look presentable but they also evoked a culture of conspicuous consumption, in which women modeled wealth and status. By sporting the latest fashions, a woman was displaying the affluence of her home, an impulse that also led to the development of department stores like the Army & Navy Store, opened in 1871, and Liberty in London, in 1875.15 As an occasion for intensive fashion consciousness, marriage was, according to most women, the highlight of their entire lives. The British media publicized Queen Victoria’s wedding as heavily as her coronation. In a culture that told girls to yearn for motherhood and domestic responsibility, finding a husband was a matter of high importance. In 1851, only 29 percent of British women over twenty remained unmarried.16 Although marriage was an event that

A ladies fashion plate (left) and a short story (right) of the late nineteenth century.

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young girls dreamed of their entire lives, it reduced most to social subservience, as all goods and funds legally passed to the husband after marriage. Laws prevented women from administering property until 1882.17 Additionally, they faced a disadvantage in divorce proceedings; it was much harder for a wife to prove her husband guilty of adultery or abuse than it was for a man to prove a woman of such offenses. Marriage also distanced the wife from her own family, as she became more a part of her husband’s.18 Despite its negatives, the institution of marriage remained the center of women’s lives and, therefore, the center of women’s magazines, especially as a topic in the advice columns. Readers wrote letters to magazines explaining their situation anonymously and receiving published advice in return. In a letter from an 1854 number of The English Woman’s Domestic Magazine, a subscriber identified as “Laura B.” asks whether she should marry a rich man who offers her all she could ever want or the poor man with a good heart who will work his hardest to provide for her. The magazine, one that catered to wealth and status, bluntly advises in favor of the rich man, suggesting that she prefer that over her own heart: “Laura’s letter is certainly very businesslike, and betrays little genuine love for either of her admirers. For the sake of the poor lover, however, who really may be silly enough to value affection, we would advise her by all means to marry his richer rival.”19 There were also special magazines that targeted younger readers, inculcating standards of Victorian propriety in more easily influenced minds. Especially among young girls, purity and prudery ranked highest among prized qualities, and it was a mother’s duty to shelter young daughters. The Girl’s Own Paper, a publication designed for younger middle-class readers of ages thirteen to twentyfive, featured romantic and sensationalist stories as a means of instructing.20 Alternatively, one short story in The Young Ladies’ Reader from 1881, entitled “Only a Flirtation,” discussed the importance of approaching a man without being too forward.21 For women wishing to work and be acknowledged for it, magazine encouragement became scarcer because such intentions opposed traditional belief.

“Respectable” jobs for women might include novel writing, poetry, and art because one might argue that these professions remained tied to the domestic sphere. In this respect, modern day historians prefer the concepts of “workless pay” and “payless work.” Though frequently denied authorship credit in the publishing process, women increasingly received pay for their writing. Even so, the British public tended to view women’s novel writing not as a profession but more of a passion, hence “workless pay.” On the contrary, all of their other duties in the private sphere, the maintenance of the family and the home, fell into the category of “payless work.”22 Even when women published their writing, often in the form of serialized novels and short stories, the results often had to be limited to love stories and romantic pieces. That women could publish at all represented a step beyond the private sphere, but the regular content of their

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material—marriage and duties of a wife and mother—usually reinforced traditional Victorian ideology.23 The pieces mostly consisted of sensational fiction and gothic tales, often with some kind of moral about a woman’s place being in the home. One example published in 1898 in Sweethearts Magazine is a story entitled “A Lover of High Degree: How Norah Flynn Became a Duchess,” which describes how a faithful, charming wife was rewarded with wealth and status.24 Another acceptable occupation for women, still considered more of a hobby than a profession, might be the entertainment business, as an actress or singer. Private parties or concerts often demanded female performers, but there remained a slight impropriety about women being on stage in public.25 Some forms of entertainment seemed to cross an invisible moral line, for example the view that female acrobatics compared to prostitution. In some ways, women’s magazines supported a wider public role for their readers. Most offered some kind of biography section that spotlighted respected women in society, sometimes those employed outside the home. The nineteenth century brought an increasing number of female nurses and occasionally even physicians. Though these women often lost the respect of the upper-class conservative element of society, ladies’ magazines honored their accomplishments just the same. The Lady’s Own Paper in 1866 published a biographical piece on Dr. Mary Walker, who attended medical school as the lone women in a class of men and worked later as a doctor. Even as a professional woman, however, the article notes, “[s]he therefore devoted herself to private practice among women and children, only attending husbands at the special request of their own wives, ... the true position of a woman to be a physician to her own sex.” 26 In nineteenth-century Britain, sports became a larger part of everyday life and a common leisure activity, but many still wondered whether it was proper to include women in athletics. Relaxed tennis games provided for female involvement in athletics, while also a way for young women to meet young men. In the 1880s, young women took up bicycle and tricycle riding for fun, despite criticism for “enjoying the intoxication that comes from unfettered liberty,” that is, the presumed impropriety for women to have something in between their legs.27 Additionally, they were hindered by their bulky skirts and petticoats, which led to a new clothing style brought to England from the United States: knickerbockers for cycling as a staple in women’s wardrobes. Many, however, found the new fashion unattractive and far too masculine, which shows that even when women were included in sports, traditional dress and general opposition to change still inhibited their participation.28 Athletics for women became a controversial topic in the women’s magazines. Even so, an 1888 article in Woman’s World, entitled “Pastimes for Ladies. On Three Wheels,” noted that “tricycling for women has won its way steadily, through prejudice and opposition, to its present acknowledged station among the favourite exercises of nineteenth-century maids and matrons.”29

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By the end of the nineteenth century, the “New Woman,” though a distinct minority, resulted from shifting Victorian ideals and found growing support in many magazines, especially in the feminist press. Though most women’s magazines aimed to advise on matters of the home under traditional ideas of domesticity, a select few went in the opposite direction. Feminist journalism meant to inspire change. The “New Woman,” the exact contradiction of the “Angel in the House,” dramatized the movement of women increasingly into the public sphere: changes in shopping habits, visiting galleries by themselves, eating out without a chaperone, athletic participation, and use of public transportation.30 The stereotypical new woman, as described in a humorous poem “The Fast Smoking Girl of the Period” in The Saturday Review in 1869, was one who debunks marriage and her duty to the children, focusing instead on personal pleasures and work. One line states: “Shut up, and don’t preach about marriage;/ Of spoons you well know I’ve a host;/ When I come to your old fogey age/ I shan’t have to mourn over time lost./ The neighbors may gossip, and welcome/ I don’t mind two pins what they say;/ I’ll hook a rich stupid old husband,/ And I’ll promise—but he shall obey!”31 Through such hyperbolic statement, starkly contrasting with traditional marital advice, feminist magazines often worked to emphasize women’s issues of property and suffrage. Some, however, advised moderation, such as Woman: for Up-to-Date Womankind, using as its slogan: “Forward! But not too Fast!”32 In all, despite a few specialized magazines that catered to the workingwoman or the feminist, most publications still enforced traditional Victorian domestic ideology and the concept of separate spheres. Only a minority transcended older gender barriers. While women’s magazines enforced the traditional ideas of women as housewives, providing domestic advice, fashion advice, and marital advice, they also addressed, and sometimes advocated, shifting ideals. As more women entered the workforce as artists, writers, and even doctors, women’s publications exhibited and discussed their work as well as noting changes in daily life like the tricycle craze. Magazines, as a primary source, are a great representation of the changing lives of Victorian women, the changing ideals that shaped their lives, and the wide variety of women who inhabited Victorian England. Sometimes such periodicals tried to impose on female readers a set of ideas and images of an ideal woman, just as some modern publications still do. The popular magazines of today may have replaced the old-time sketches of thin, fair, rosy-cheeked Victorian women with unnaturally enhanced images of supermodels, but they continue to show that women’s images of themselves and of their “proper” role in society are shaped by the media more than perhaps we realize.

Notes 1. Margaret Beetham and Kay Boardman, Victorian Women’s Magazines: an Anthology (Manchester, UK, 2001), 36.

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2. Suzanne Fagence Cooper, The Victorian Woman (London, 2001), 16-17.

3. “The Angel in the House,” The Angel in the House (2011): http:// academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/english/melani/novel_19c/thackeray/ angel.html 4. Joyce Salisbury and Andrew Kersten, “Women in Victorian England,” Daily Life through History, (2014), http://dailylife.abc-clio.com/Search/ Display/1426983?terms=Women+in+Victorian+England.

5. Cooper, Victorian Woman, 12.

6. Mary Poovey, Uneven Developments: the Ideological Work of Gender in MidVictorian England (Chicago, 1998), 4.

7. Beetham and Boardman, Victorian Women’s Magazines, 157.

8. Ibid., 44 (see image in Appendix).

9. Katy Pearson, “The Archive: Vintage Tips from the Lady magazine,”(2013), http://www.lady.co.uk/style/etiquette/222-etiquette-advicefrom-the-archive 10. Beetham and Boardman, Victorian Women’s Magazines, 157.

11. Ibid., 158.

12. Ibid., 161 (see image in appendix).

13. Ibid., 140.

14. Ibid., 142.

15. Ibid., 144.

16. Cooper, Victorian Woman, 18.

17. Ibid., 19.

18. Salisbury and Kersten, “Women in Victorian England.”

19. Beetham and Boardman, Victorian Women’s Magazines, 37.

20. Ibid., 71.

21. Ibid., 75.

22. Monica Cohen, Professional Domesticity in the Victorian Novel: Women, Work, and Home (Cambridge, UK, 1998), 11.

23. Ibid., 13.

24. Beetham and Boardman, Victorian Women’s Magazines, 133 (see appendix).

25. Cooper, Victorian Woman, 54.

26. Beetham and Boardman, Victorian Women’s Magazines, 204-206.

27. Cooper, Victorian Woman, 69.

28. Beetham and Boardman, Victorian Women’s Magazines, 244.

29. Ibid., 245.

30. Cooper, Victorian Woman, 66-67.

31. Beetham and Boardman, Victorian Women’s Magazines, 147.

32. Ibid., 88.

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How Did the Role of Aviation Change During the First World War? Conner Wakeman ‘16

Henri Farré, Breguet-Michelin Bomber, 1916.

On the eve of the First World War, airplanes had only been flying for eleven years. The technology was extremely primitive, and when entering the war, nations did not possess air forces; they solely used army balloons to observe enemy troop movements. The four years that followed brought a more rapid development in aviation than any other period in history. Airplanes debuted as reconnaissance contraptions built of wood, fabric, and string, operating in a peaceful airspace. Slowly they evolved into fighter planes that could shoot down enemy aircraft or strafe enemy trenches, killing hundreds of men within seconds.

The creation of the long-range bomber ended Great Britain’s feeling of isolation, and the German Zeppelins caused widespread civilian terror. By the end of the war, these revolutionary machines were flying at over 140 miles per hour, and designers could foresee their potential to destroy entire cities within just a few decades to come.

Despite this massive development in airborne technology that initiated a golden era of aviation after the Great War, the science of flying stood far from perfected. From 1914 to 1918, 14,000 pilots died, 8,000 of these in training,1 indicating the still-primitive reliability and quality of early military aircraft. The specifications and role of aircraft had to be adapted to previously unknown conditions in hostile airspace, parts and weapons added and removed in order to increase the pilot’s chance of survival.2 Lacking the perspective that modern historians now have, Arthur Gould Lee, a World War I pilot, believed aviation barely changed during the war, predominantly due to a failure in high command.3 He explains that instead of the proudly advertised, new machines with improved characteristics and equipment, the majority of pilots were equipped with nonairworthy planes that remained the same for the entire duration of the war.

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There is validity in Lee’s point, as pilots’ equipment did prove insufficient for their task. Until the last two years of the war, pilots did not even carry parachutes. Still, the preponderance of contemporary accounts, including letters, diary entries, speeches, and scientific reports, point to the substantial and positive progress that occurred in the field of aviation during the Great War. Due to the pressure of war, where only the fittest machines and the best pilots could survive, the role of aircraft significantly changed from generic, defenseless reconnaissance airplanes to aggressive, specialized fighter and bomber planes designed to kill with maximum efficiency.

When the Austro-Hungarians declared war on Serbia on July 28, 1914, lighter-than-air balloons and kites were the extent that aviation played in military affairs. Military officers at that time believed that airplanes could not work much to the advantage of armies in the overall war effort. British general Sir Douglas Haig during an address in 1914 said, “I hope none of you gentlemen is so foolish as to think that aeroplanes will be usefully employed for reconnaissance from the air.”4 The shortsightedness of that statement stands in drastic contrast with the common understanding at the end of the war when battles were won and lost in the air. Different nations and military forces had their own views on the role and future of aviation in war. Leaders on both sides at first regarded lighter-than-air dirigibles likely to be the innovations of the future. Construction of the massive German Zeppelins produced widespread fear in 1915 on the part of the Allies, especially France and Great Britain. The Zeppelin Terror was the first instance in history of civilian populations living under threat of frequent, random bombings from the air.

A German Zeppelin during World War I

Even so, military innovators and scientists moved slowly to improve aircraft as effective countermeasures against bombing, mostly because of the prevailing view that early airplanes were extremely unreliable and dangerous, leaving the future of aviation uncertain at best. More often, pilots and enthusiasts began experimenting with flying machines on their own accord and at their own risk.

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Both the general public and the armed forces suspected such pilots of insanity.

Accidental crashes occurred commonly; 57 percent of all pilot casualties during the war period resulted from reasons other than enemy confrontation.5 British mechanic James McCudden, after witnessing a crash during training in 1915, wondered “if war was going to be like this always” with airplanes.6 In an attempt to improve reliability, allied engineers experimented with new designs like the pusher propeller, front elevator, and varying undercarriages. Along with French aviator Henri Fabre, American experimental pilot Glenn Curtiss tried to expand the range of aeronautical operations by making aircraft water-compatible. In 1914, hydroaeroplane factories prevented future casualties by inventing machines that could take off and land virtually anywhere. In 1918, the HMS Argon became the first functional aircraft carrier, changing the way military strategists organized operations because naval and aerial superiority could now be achieved simultaneously. Historian Richard Hallion believes that most of the pre-war aircraft development was the work of curious intellects and that military warfare could occur only when the technology had reached a significant standard and reliability.7 Nevertheless, as military commanders adopted the use of aircraft in war operations, a significant number of improvements resulted after contact with enemy flyers, with each side constantly racing to catch up with new enemy technologies, often simply by imitating design configurations on the other side.

By September 1914, less than two months into the war, the pressure of intense fighting had brought aircraft into a more active role than first expected.

Scout planes started to accompany battle strategy, providing valuable reconnaissance information to officers doing the planning. A postcard created by Royal Flying Corps pilots in 1914 read: “They call us ‘The Eyes of the Army’ for we scout foe far and wide. And with information worth having we keep the powers fully supplied.”8 This role indicates how pilots at first primarily served in the function that cavalry forces had in previous wars without the combat dimension: scouting enemy troop movements and making reconnaissance reports for later analysis on the ground. British commander Sir John French explained the importance of air reconnaissance in devising battle strategies: “They have furnished me with the most complete and accurate information which has been of incalculable value in the conduct of operations.”9 Reconnaissance mattered in the outcome of battles. By 1915, airplanes had replaced cavalry in the role of artillery spotting as well. In one instance, Allied troops were trying to destroy a German ship Königsberg. Cannon crews had targeted it for three days, but heavy camouflage had prevented the ship from being hit. Two spotting planes then went up to find the ship from the air, and once its actual position could be relayed to artillery forces, the Königsberg sank in flames within thirty minutes.10 War in the air, however, still constituted a very different realm from its counterpart on the ground. Historian Phil Carridace states that while opposing infantry eagerly destroyed one another, it was at first very different in the air.11 In a strange way, the skies represented friendly territory in the early days of the war. Observation

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fliers often politely waved to foreign aircraft when completing reconnaissance sorties—a very different story from the latter part of the Great War, when enemy

An Armstrong-Whitworth FK 8 Scout plane, used by the Allies during World War I

planes would even try to shoot down unarmed trainee pilots over opposing territory.

The early success of scout airplanes in aid of ground operations led to efforts to counter them. To bring down the scouts, pilots started carrying hand pistols and rifles onboard with them. A painting of a French airplane with a crew member lying on the wing, shooting at a German reconnaissance plane behind it with a standard rifle, portrays the makeshift measures that pilots and crew would use.12 Soon enough, aircraft began to feature permanent rear facing machine guns for the purpose, a case of temporary makeshift solutions in the sky being converted into permanent fixtures where only the most skilled and best prepared aviators would survive. Fighter planes quickly became more specialized for aerial combat, featuring interrupter and synchronizer gears that allowed machine guns to fire through the propeller. This change allowed guns to be mounted directly in front of the pilot, enabling him to fire forward without shooting off his own propeller. Still, the main idea of aircraft on both sides remained the aiding of ground operations. As French military theorist Marshal Ferdinand Foch stated in 1915, “The first duty of fighting aeroplanes is to assist the troops on the 16

ground by incessant attacking with bombs and machines guns on columns, concentrations or bivouacs.”13 As Carradice explains regarding this role of the airplane in the war: “All its other uses were a consequence of this central purpose and were forced on it by the hard logic of events.”14 In 1918, in order to aid troop operations, ground commanders instructed pilots to perform dangerous low-flying strafing runs against enemy trenches, resulting in many airplanes being shot down by infantry forces below. To counter this, mechanics added armor on the bottom of airplane fuselages. Thus, with the development of anti-aircraft guns on the ground, planes once again had to be adapted for the sake of survival.

Aerial combat. Allied and German fighters in action during World War I

Other advancements, however, occurred by accident, as if by Charles Darwin’s theory of biological mutations. German manufacturers, for example, had to start using metal for their aircraft because of a shortage of quality wood and skilled carpenters. Ironically, the metal design proved superior and has dominated aircraft building to this day.

After infantry strategies ground to a massive stalemate in 1915, both sides looked for ways to destroy enemy resources and troops without sending waves of soldiers recklessly across “no man’s land.” One option was for pilots to 17

hand-drop grenades or flechettes out of their aircraft on trenches below. The explosive clout of such bombs became more complex and effective as the war evolved. British pilot Donald Bremner recalled in 1915: “We used to make our own bombs by filling cocoa tins with TNT, … melting the high explosive on a primus stove.”15 Because of the extremely low hit rate of naked eye bomb drops, designers came up with more accurate bombsights, enabling pilots to carry larger explosives of up to 10 pounds attached to their wings or fuselages. Early on, both sides had been reluctant to use this method, as it breached Article 25 of the 1907 Hague Convention prohibiting aerial attacks. By the winter of 1915, however, both sides regularly bombed the opposition, leading to creation of the “bomber” plane, a larger, slower and longer-ranged aircraft capable of hefty bomb loads. By the end of the war, bombers weighing over 26,000 pounds were delivering 1,000-pound bombs capable of killing dozens on the ground within seconds. Aircraft became vital in the results of battles, influencing the events that unfolded thousands of feet below them. German general Heinz Guderian described why air superiority was crucial to territorial victory: “Aircraft became an offensive weapon of the first order, distinguished by their great speed, range and effect on target.”16 A further reason would be that under pressure of necessity airpower had been adapted directly to the environment in which it performed, as opposed to laboratory testing without first hand input from fighting pilots.

The Gotha G.V., a German heavy bomber used in World War I

While the creative imagination of certain officers enhanced the role of aircraft during the First World War, changes in technology also allowed key changes to take place. Fighter planes, for example, could not be effective until the technology to fire through the propeller arc became available. Bombers would never have been produced if engine power had not increased enough to allow heavier payloads during flight. And yet, all of the wartime advancements 18

resulted directly from adjustments made from the experience of pilots in the air and the need to improve their chances of survival in that combat environment.

Flight became revolutionized. By 1918, the pivotal role of aircraft in war had been established. As French general Pierre Auguste Roques concluded, “airplanes are also as indispensible to armies as the cannons and rifles.”17 Formation squadrons replaced solo sorties, metal was used instead of wood, speed doubled, and reliability greatly increased. The British augmented their number of airplanes from 100 to 20,000 in the four-year period of fighting.18 Wartime aircraft evolved from defenseless scout planes into death machines that not only marauded through the air but also inspired widespread fear in the minds of men on the ground.

Notes 1. Phil Carradice, First World War in the Air (Gloucestershire, UK, 2012), 51.

2. G. R. Grant, Flight: 100 Years of Aviation (New York, 2002), 121.

3. Arthur Gould Lee, No Parachute (London, 2013), 220.

4. Earl Douglas Haig, “Speech to British Army Staff College”, 1914, in Carradice, 78.

5. Carradice, 51.

6. Carradice, 65.

7. Richard P. Hallion, Taking Flight: Inventing the Aerial Age from Antiquity through the First World War (New York, 2003), 137.

8. Carradice, 24.

9. Carradice, 81.

10. Carradice, 83.

11. Carradice, 9.

12. Henri Farré, Breguet-Michelin Bomber, 1916.

13. Carradice, 117.

14. Carradice, 78.

15. Greig Watson, “World War One: Orford Ness and Boffins, Bombs and Biplanes,” BBC News, www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-25145170, 24 February 2014, 4 May 2014.

16. Ron Dick and Dan Patterson, Aviation Century: The Early Years (Erin, Ontario, 2003), 133.

17. Dick and Patterson, 167.

18. Carradice, 29.

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Borders without Boundary: American Exceptionalism and the Relentless Search for New Frontiers Reed McMurchy ‘15 The announced closing of the American frontier in 1890 signaled the end of an era, concluding an time of westward continental expansion and ending a seminal period that had shaped so much of the nation’s experience. The cultural identity of the United States, grounded in idealism and the ability to create a better life, had largely been forged while taming the “wild” continent in the feverish drive towards the Pacific. The disappearance of the physical frontier left Americans for the first time without a tangible, unifying purpose. Fortunately, however, new qualities of ingenuity and extraordinary leadership offered a cure for the sense of loss. Within little more than twenty years, the nation’s political and business leaders sought to transform the largely agricultural nation into an industrial giant operating on a global scale. Although the physical frontier had faded, some Americans imagined for the first time that the nation’s destiny lay not just within its own continent but overseas. Between 1890 and 1915, imperialism not only offered the sense of “challenge” sought by each new generation but also, and more importantly, strengthened Americans’ vision of themselves.

Although the term “Manifest Destiny” did not appear until 1845, the American desire for exploration and expansion had existed long before John Louis O’Sullivan first popularized the phrase.1 American identity traditionally had been forged on the frontier, on the pretext of civilizing “savage” peoples.

The challenge of conquering a mysterious world largely different from Europe predated any conception of the United States, growing from the earliest colonial desires for new land. While colonial expansion began as only a means of ensuring a common defense against the American Indian tribes, it quickly fostered a sense of unity among the former European colonists, as well as a general consensus to expand the frontier. The various disputes and wars that erupted along the frontier during the colonial era culminated in the British victory during the French and Indian War. From this victory developed a belief among white settlers that all obstacles (including the American Indians) could be defeated in the seemingly never-ending quest to expand the “Frontier.” Over the following decades, Americans would continue to push west, further stimulated by the Louisiana Purchase of 1803.2 They settled the Great Plains and rushed towards the fertile California and Oregon valleys. By then, the task of pushing the frontier to the Pacific rim no longer seemed an “abstract vision” as much as it did a government-encouraged endeavor. So consuming was the desire to control the western limits of the continent that it would occupy the thoughts, politics, motivations, and history of the nation throughout the nineteenth century.

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The folklore and epic stories that mythologized the West pervaded the American consciousness through much of the nineteenth century and the early twentieth century. As the nation grew, U.S. history became crucially linked to the frontier, and the challenge of conquering the West more clearly defined a uniquely American character. When the U.S. Census Bureau officially declared the frontier to be “closed” in 1890, it seemed that something essential in American life had finally come to an end. Now that the West had been successfully “conquered,” the country’s most distinctive feature had suddenly vanished.3 The disappearance of the frontier—in part, a romantic ideal characterized by deep forests, endless plains, and majestic mountain ranges—had a significant

Frederick Jackson Turner, 1890s

damaging effect upon Americans’ sense of identity, leaving them for the first time without an immediate challenge of territorial expansion. At an 1893 meeting of the American Historical Association in Chicago, coinciding with the World’s Columbian Exposition of that year, historian Frederick Jackson Turner articulated the sense of loss perhaps better than anyone. There, he presented what would become his famous “frontier thesis” on the historical impact of the West for the sustaining of democracy in the United States: “American democracy was born of no theorist’s dream; it was not carried in the Sarah Constant to Virginia, nor in the Mayflower to Plymouth. It came out of the American forest, and it gained new strength each time it touched a new frontier.”4 According to Turner the frontier had served as the great democratizer, offering the potential of suc-

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cess to all Americans who ventured west, as “nature reduced men to equality by dimming the importance of wealth or hereditary privilege.”5 The disappearance of the frontier only painted a picture of uncertainty as to the future of the nation.

While Turner’s thesis became an object of admiration for many writers in the early twentieth century and is occasionally cited even today as an argument for American exceptionalism, it is no longer widely accepted among serious scholars who see it now as being racist and far too narrow in scope. Yet despite its having been discredited, says historian Andro Linklater, “the thesis refuses to die because the distinctive, utterly American spirit did indeed arise from the expansion into the West.”6 Still, Turner’s views addressed a pressing issue of his own time: the fate of American identity without the presence of the frontier.

While nowadays the thesis comes across as “essentially a story of white men conquering Indian men,” oblivious to the plight of both African-Americans and women, Turner’s purposes had been otherwise. He specifically meant, instead, to provide insight into America’s character and the role that white leaders of the nation had played in it. If in doing only this, the thesis broke new ground for its time.

Whatever the shortcomings of the Turner thesis, there remained the widespread belief in the late 1800s that the frontier had been critical to America’s history and vision. It made sense in Turner’s time that while, “the American energy will continually demand a wider field for its exercise, … never again will such gifts of free land offer themselves.”7 If Turner’s message was pessimistic,

Theodore Roosevelt, 1890s

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what others had started to realize was that the frontier had not vanished but simply moved. The further destiny of the United States lay overseas in new frontiers across the globe.

In the years following the loss of the traditional frontier, America made significant territorial, diplomatic, and political strides around the world. Instead of confining the nation to the North American continent and following a policy of relative isolationism, some of the nation’s leaders looked outward, taking significant steps to expand the role of the United States abroad. Prominent political leaders at the time, such as President William McKinley, President Theodore Roosevelt, Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, and Captain Alfred T. Mahan believed that expansion overseas not only provided the challenge needed for a new generation of Americans but also offered the prospect of increased economic prosperity and strategic military positioning, along with renewed cultural identity.

Among these people, Roosevelt, a historian himself, was particularly familiar with Turner’s writing. The “Frontier Thesis” so captivated him that in 1895 he wrote in a personal letter to the young University of Wisconsin professor: “I don’t think after all that our views as to the fundamental unity of the Westerners differ widely… we more lay emphasis on different points.”8 Roosevelt, not only a politician and writer of history but also an ardent outdoorsmen, world traveler, and, for a time, Dakota Territory cattle rancher,9 felt the sting of the frontier’s loss even more than most Americans. In the years immediately following the publication of Turner’s 1893 work, American foreign policy began heavily to reflect those like Roosevelt who desired to replace the lost frontier with newer imperialistic challenges.

By the late 1890s, growing American popular support for overseas expansion also was driven largely by the desire to recreate the frontier, spread American ideals and values, and increase economic influence. Reflecting that popular impulse, Henry Cabot Lodge, a Massachusetts Senator, personal friend of Theodore Roosevelt, and proponent of American imperialism, stressed that the course of the American people lay in continuing expansion when he wrote: “Our true line of advance was to the west. He (Washington) never for an instant thought that we were to remain stationary and cease to move forward. He (Washington) saw, with prophetic vision, as did no other man of his time, the true course for the American people.”10 Lodge firmly believed that if the nation did not push overseas, not only would the frontier be lost, but also a critical piece of the American sense of identity would vanish with it. It was vital that new frontiers be discovered.

The political push for the creation of an overseas frontier manifested itself in the form of United States intervention within just several years in Hawaii, Cuba, and the Philippines. Some southern expansionists in the Democratic Party, looking to extend slavery, had called for the annexation of Cuba with the Os-

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tend Manifesto in 1854. The Manifesto’s ultimate failure prevented the United States from challenging Spanish jurisdiction.11 Now, following the Turner thesis, the United States once again proactively sought to gain control of foreign lands.

As segments of the populace continued to voice their desire for a new frontier, the outcry to take Cuba was renewed. Eventually this resulted in political leaders, particularly in the Republican Party, searching for justification to push the Spanish out of Cuba. When the battleship USS Maine was dispatched to Cuba and, in February 1898, destroyed in an explosion (the origins of which remain disputed), American cries of “Remember the Maine”12 not only called for retribution against Spain but pleaded also for the government to create a new frontier by taking over Spanish possessions. The subsequent Spanish-American War of 1898, lasting just ten-weeks, gave the United States not only temporary control of Cuba but also key island holdings in the Pacific, including the Philippines. Meanwhile, American landowners had seized Hawaii from its ruler, Queen Liliuokalani, for its sugarcane and strategic importance.13 The success of the Spanish-American War resulted not only in a recreated frontier but also reaffirmed a sense of pride among the American people not seen since the age of Manifest Destiny. The result was the creation of a new American Empire that spanned half the globe, with a newfound sense of mission to spread American ideals of democracy as far as they might now apply: “The Philippines are ours forever,” exclaimed Senator Albert J. Beveridge of Indiana.

“We will not renounce our part in the mission of our race, trustee, under God, of the civilization of the world. And we will move forward to our work…to lead in the regeneration of the world.”14

Alfred T. Mahan, circa 1900

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The new overseas frontier so craved by the American expansionists (and lamented by anti-imperialists like William Jennings Bryan, Andrew Carnegie, and Mark Twain) finally had come into being. President McKinley’s willingness to annex the new lands gained in war resulted not only in economic growth and strategic advantages but also, more importantly, had compensated for the “lost” frontier. Before McKinley’s presidency ended suddenly by an assassin’s bullet, he affirmed that the “United States (could take) its place as a great power on the world stage.… [It had] accepted the imperial mission.”15 Although the new American frontier now stretched halfway across the globe, the nation needed a way to maintain its foothold in the regions and ensure that continued American influence would last into the future. President Theodore Roosevelt, following McKinley into office in 1901, actively fought to expand trade, grow the American navy, and build a “path between the seas”—a canal through Panama.16 Heavily influenced by Mahan, the esteemed author of The Influence of Sea Power upon History (1890), and by voices at the United States Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island, Roosevelt understood, “the important role of sea power in making a nation great and strong.”17 Concerned about imperial Japan’s growing power and influence in the Pacific, Roosevelt sought a way to ensure American naval dominance. In building the Panama Canal, Roosevelt’s imperial ambitions overcame the challenge that for more than four centuries had barred men from traveling across the vast American continent; effectively creating the long sought Northwest Passage.18 Upon the completion of the canal in 1914, the U. S. Naval Fleet was no longer confined to the Atlantic Ocean but freer to roam both the Atlantic and the Pacific, unopposed by any other nations. Roosevelt’s accomplishment lay not only in “(making) the world smaller,” in a sense, but also, more importantly, in finally connecting two distinct American spheres of influence. For the first time in the nation’s history, imperial frontiers in the Caribbean and the Pacific were no longer separated.19 By the time Roosevelt left office in 1909, Turner’s thesis in effect had expanded to global dimensions, including places as distant as Manila, San Juan, and Panama City. Ultimately American imperialism, like the great rush for the West before it, would come to an end. While Hawaii became the fiftieth state and the federal government returned other overseas frontiers, like the Philippines, to their native inhabitants, American imperialism had proven that Americans had not given up the belief in new discoveries to be made, new lands to explore, and national boundaries to push. As President Kennedy would say on multiple occasions in the early 1960s, Americans were at their best when their ingenuity and tenacity was tested. Whether the “New Frontier” would come in the form of Charles Lindbergh’s 1927 solo flight across the Atlantic Ocean, American soldiers storming the beaches of Normandy, Douglas MacArthur

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fighting for freedom on the shores of Inchon, Kennedy’s challenging Americans to go to the Moon, or even George W. Bush vowing to fight the Global War on Terror, the idea of pursuing frontier challenges would not entirely fade from American identity.

Notes 1. “Manifest Destiny: 1790-1850 (Overview),” http://americanhistory.abcclio.com/, accessed December 27, 2013.

2. Gregory Moore, “French and Indian War:” Dictionary of American History, ed. Stanley I. Kutler, 3rd ed. (New York, 2003), 468-471.

3. Frederick Jackson Turner, “The Significance of the Frontier in American History,” in The Turner Thesis: Concerning the Role of the American Frontier in American History, ed. George Rogers Taylor (Lexington, 1956), 9; Ray A. Billington, “The Frontier Disappears,” in The American Story: From Columbus to the Atom (New York, 1956), 254.

4. Frederick Jackson Turner, “The West and American Ideals” (Commencement Address, University of Washington, June 17, 1914).

5. Billington, “The Frontier Disappears,” 258.

6. Andro Linklater, Measuring America (New York, 2002), 174; Akim Reinhardt, “Frontier Thesis: Turner’s Lasting Influence,” http:// americanhistory.abc-clio.com/, accessed December 26, 2013.

7. Turner, “The Significance of the Frontier in American History,” 27.

8. Theodore Roosevelt to Frederick Jackson Turner, letter, 26 April 1895, from the Theodore Roosevelt Collection Houghton Library, Harvard University, accessed 3 January 2014, http:// www.theodorerooseveltcenter.org/Research/Digital-Library/ Record.aspx?libID=o282383.

9. “Theodore Roosevelt,” http://americanhistory.abc-clio.com/, accessed December 23, 2013.

10. Henry Cabot Lodge, “Overseas Expansion and the National Future," http://www.america.eb.com/, accessed November 17, 2013.

11. Ostend Manifesto (Overview), http://www.britannica.com/, accessed January 5, 2014.

12. Michael Golay, The Spanish-American War (New York: 1995), 14.

13. Ryan Reed, “Hawaii,” http://americanhistory.abc-clio.com/, accessed January 5, 2014.

14. “In Support of an American Empire,” from 56th Cong., 1st Sess. (statement of Albert J. Beveridge, United States Senator from Indiana), https://www.mtholyoke.edu/.

15. Julius W. Pratt, “McKinley and Manifest Destiny,” in The American Story: From Columbus to the Atom (New York, 1956), 265.

16. See generally David McCullough, The Path Between the Seas (New York, 1977).

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17. Pratt, “McKinley and Manifest Destiny,” 263.

18. James Shenton, “Passage to India–at Long Last,” in The American Story: From Columbus to the Atom, 269.

19. Ibid., 274.

The Evolution of Greenwich Avenue in Correspondence with National Trends, 1854-Present Caroline Zhao ‘15 It is common to speak of history broadly, categorizing ideas and trends as general “American” movements. Easily forgotten, however, is that each of the small towns and rural areas (as opposed to metropolitan areas) that constitute so much of the country are also directly impacted by specific historical shifts.

Although too little attention is paid to the effects of change in less-populated areas, the fact is that public spaces everywhere, such as centers of commerce like Greenwich Avenue in Greenwich, Connecticut, are especially sensitive in reflecting larger trends. We can see this particularly by examining the development of architecture, variations in the nature of business establishments, and modifications in transportation on Greenwich Avenue.

The idea of “The Avenue,” as Greenwich locals call it, is considered to have started in 1850 when Henry M. Benedict proposed to widen the then 18foot Road to Piping Point.1 From the very beginning, this road was created to serve the needs of the public. Soon after the first steam train carried passengers through Greenwich in 1848, access to Greenwich Avenue became increasingly important in the lives of the inhabitants of what would be within another half century a railroad suburb of New York City.2 As a result, widening and improving this central artery of the town became a necessity because it was the most efficient route from Putnam Avenue to the railroad station.3 In 1854, town leaders called for the widening of Greenwich Avenue to 50 feet, and John Dayton and Daniel M. Mead constructed the first commercial building. Dayton owned a shoe store on the first floor, Mead the law offices on the second.4 This one building provided a model for future commercial development, as it combined retail and office space. Soon afterward, butcher Henry Held built the upper story of his meat market on the Avenue, using a balloon 27

frame. He was the first to implement this new technology locally, creating controversy and doubt. The balloon frame marked a significant shift in nineteenth century innovation. It was cheap, lightweight, quicker to construct, and required less specialized handcraftsmanship than the old “hand-hewn post-and-beam frame.”5 This allowed for more complex designs and the formation of “Americanized interpretations characterized by fanciful tracery, cutouts and brackets known as ‘gingerbread.’” These gingerbread cutouts led to a specific variation of the Gothic Revival and came to be known as Carpenter Gothic: “the first American style to reflect the widespread effect of mechanized building technology.”6 In fact, all Greenwich Avenue buildings of the late nineteenth century reflected either the Italianate or Gothic Revival styles, popular during the early Victorian and Industrial ages. The Picturesque, “an aesthetic point of view celebrating texture and variety in an effort to emphasize poetry over order,” manifested itself in these new styles and mirrored the spirit of experimentation in a new technological world. The Mead Building still standing at the top of Greenwich Avenue is the quintessential example of the picturesque “old English style.”

It furnishes variety to the Avenue while evoking the classic, romantic beauty of old Europe.7 Although activity on Greenwich Avenue was slow at first, business grew quickly, and by 1857 seven businesses flourished.8 The growing popularity of a small-business center in the town demonstrated the impact that new technology and commercial expansion could have on what once had been a quaint southern New England town, one largely disconnected from New York City.

H. H. Holly's building for Isaac Mead at the top of Greenwich Avenue. Photograph.

Greenwich Historical Society. Greenwich, CT. It captures the essence of Italianate/ Gothic Revival architecture—one of the best examples of this combination on Greenwich Avenue.

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 Â

In the 1850s, however, the Avenue was still a dirt road, bordered by fields and gardens on both sides for most of its length and adorned with a row of elms planted to beautify the street—all mirroring the general desire of Greenwich residents to maintain rural tradition. While developing in decades to come as an escape for wealthy New Yorkers from urban congestion during the oppressive summer days, Greenwich resisted even while it slowly embraced the influences of industrialization and modern development.

Between 1865 and 1920, Greenwich underwent a population explosion from 7,000 to 22,000, and saw the morphing of a dozen interconnected farming communities into a single bustling town.9 As the nation was discovering its own late nineteenth-century identity on the world stage, through the settlement of the West, the addition of new states to the Union, the creation of monopolies, and the stirrings of social reform that would later constitute the Progressive Era, Greenwich also developed its modern character.10 By the 1880s, commercial buildings no longer stood alone, as a growing sense of downtown community yielded a more uniform line of edifices. Small innovations impacted downtown activity in large ways. Storefronts with roll-out awnings allowed townspeople to convene on sidewalks and spend more time in the central commercial area.11 Kerosene streetlights began giving way to electric lighting in 1890.12 Builders, influenced by the trend toward steel-framed skyscrapers in New York City, sought to make the most out of the constricting lot lines and looked to add vertical space. Examples of this effort to build upward included the Maher Building at the intersection of Greenwich Avenue and Havemeyer Place (now Starbucks) and the LaForge Building (demolished in the early 2000s), the latter especially unique because of its third-story narrowing of floor area to allow for side windows.13

Maher Building circa 1910. Photograph. 1910. Greenwich Historical Society. Greenwich, CT. This building is a great example of Georgian Revivalist architecture.

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Greenwich architecture during the 1890s often reflected Georgian Revival styles. Influenced by the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition of 1876, this fashion paralleled a post-Civil War renewed nationalism aiming to reconnect Americans with their country’s origin. The Putnam Trust Company building exemplified the Georgian Revival style as applied to bank construction. Its solid exterior matched an interior “conceived as a monumental atrium.” The “substantial steel door to the vault” was often “left in full view to inspire confidence and…security,” both in a literal and a nationalistic sense.14

LaForge Building at 51-57 Greenwich Avenue shown circa 1910. Photograph. 1910.

Greenwich Historical Society. Greenwich, CT. This building was innovative and unique in its time. It showed a new epoch of architecture in which the urban idea of building upwards was applied to suburbia.

Overhead view of the banking room of the Putnam Trust Company building at 125 Greenwich Avenue. Photograph. Circa 1925. Greenwich Historical Society. Greenwich, CT. 30

The greatest change during the late 1800s and early 1900s came when Greenwich Avenue was finally paved with bricks, 1903, and a new mode of public transportation, the streetcar line, installed.15 Such innovations did not happen without opposition, however. All over Greenwich, citizens complained about the streetcar spooking their horses, posing a physical threat, spoiling the serene atmosphere, and ruining the town’s image.16 Despite the resistance of some locals to change, Greenwich Tramway Co. in 1901 opened a trolley line from Greenwich to Port Chester.17 Within a year, this line would expand its service from Cos Cob all the way to Sound Beach and Stamford, the full trip for a fare of five cents. By 1906, double tracks and a secondary track line were created, and five years later, the streetcar reached as far as New Rochelle and Norwalk. These innovations did not detract from the informal interaction that had grown commonplace; in fact, riders oftentimes knew the motorman personally, and streetcars could be held upon request.18

Greenwich Avenue in 1906, with a tramway car in the background.

Photograph. Greenwich Historical Society. Greenwich, Connecticut.

Gradually, Greenwich Avenue became modernized further, as the two world wars, lasting international involvement, and further technological change pushed American society in new directions. The Avenue became the site of patriotic demonstrations, as shown in a photograph of a parade during World War One. Here, soldiers in uniform walk up the Avenue, flanked on both sides by women and children. The image, filled with flags flying, shows how the war brought many Americans together under a common cause.19 Another sign of this solidarity appeared in the architecture of the World War One era. Many of the edifices then built or modified on Greenwich Avenue were of no single style 31

but a mix of the new ones—Commercial, Neo-Tudor, and Art Deco—as well as the older styles. This diversity represented the mythological notion of America as a unified “melting pot,” an incorporating of different cultures and a wide range of peoples.

Connecticut Home Guard Parade on Greenwich Avenue. Photograph. 1918. PC000021.

The Greenwich Historical Society. Greenwich, CT. Accessed May 24, 2014.

Upper Greenwich Avenue during the 1940's, when it was a two-way street. Photograph.

Greenwich Historical Society. Greenwich, CT.

While the new architectural styles came to be accepted, the trolley was destined to go the way of the horse and buggy. Streetcar use decreased as auto32

mobiles and buses became more efficient. In 1917, town officials moved the trolley switch to Railroad Avenue because of automobile traffic; by that time, over 4,000 automobiles passed Town Hall every twelve hours.20 Soon, as well, the road was widened again in reaction to the growing activity. In 1927, the trolley lines were converted to buses, with pressure from the Chamber of Commerce to reduce traffic congestion, and just a year later, the first parking lines were painted on the Avenue.21 By the 1940s, streetcars had completely disappeared in favor of a busy two-way street.22 By then, even on a snowy winter day, the parking on the street was completely filled, as people ducked in and out of the stores.23 The proliferation of automobile traffic and the influx of corporate headquarters in 1970s Greenwich converted the town into a hub for people coming in from surrounding places for employment, business, or pleasure. Longstanding local merchants more and more gave way to chain stores. Big name brands invaded the Avenue, creating a “Mall-on-Main Street” and replacing traditional establishments like Woolworths, the telephone company, and Marks Brothers’ business supplies.24 Heightening competition and pushing up rents, various international chains like Lily Pulitzer, Ralph Lauren, and Lacoste squeezed out the local cobblers, barbers and clothiers.

Towns like Greenwich have not received as much attention from historians as the metropolitan areas, but anyone curious about its history need only track the pattern of change in public places such as the Avenue. Shifts in Greenwich architecture, commerce, and transportation corresponded with trends in America generally. The chances are that most of the “Avenues,” around the country, like that of Greenwich, reflect key pieces of the nation’s history in ways that have made them unique and at the same time “American.”

Notes 1. Greenwich Before 2000: A Chronology of the Town of Greenwich 1640-1999, ed. Susan Richardson (Greenwich, CT, 2000), 48.

2. Greenwich Historical Society, http://www.hstg.org/ greenwich_history.php (accessed May 23, 2014).

3. Greenwich: An Illustrated History: A Celebration of 350 Years, ed. Robert Atwan (Greenwich, CT, 1990), 29.

4. Richardson, Greenwich Before 2000, 48.

5. Rachel Carley, Building Greenwich: Architecture and Design, 1640 to the Present (Peacham, VT, 2005), 82.

6. Ibid., 83.

7. H. H. Holly's building for Isaac Mead at the top of Greenwich Avenue, photograph, Greenwich Historical Society, Greenwich, CT.

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8. Carley, Building Greenwich, 90.

9. Atwan, Greenwich, 48.

10. Ibid., 49.

11. Carley, Building Greenwich, 92.

12. Atwan, Greenwich, 52.

13. Maher Building circa 1910, photograph, 1910, Greenwich Historical Society, Greenwich, CT; LaForge Building at 51-57 Greenwich Avenue shown circa 1910, photograph, 1910, Greenwich Historical Society, Greenwich, CT. 14. Overhead view of the banking room of the Putnam Trust Company building at 125 Greenwich Avenue, photograph, circa 1925, Greenwich Historical Society, Greenwich, CT. 15. William J. Clark, Greenwich, Images of America (Charleston, SC, 2002), 12-13.

16. Carl White, “Trolley Service,” http://www.greenwichlibrary.org/ blog/historically_speaking/2010/10/trolley-service.html, accessed May 24, 2014.

17. Clark, Greenwich, 14.

18. Atwan, Greenwich: An Illustrated History, 52.

19. Connecticut Home Guard Parade on Greenwich Avenue, photograph, 1918, PC000021, The Greenwich Historical Society, Greenwich, CT, accessed May 24, 2014, http://cdm16714.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/ singleitem/collection/p16714coll1/id/22/rec/1.

20. Richardson, Greenwich Before 2000, 103.

21. Ibid., 117.

22. Clark, Greenwich, 34-35.

23. Upper Greenwich Avenue during the 1940's, when it was a two-way street. Photograph. Greenwich Historical Society. Greenwich, CT. 24. Atwan, Greenwich, 95.

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Michael J. Daly: The Soldier and the Man

By Keith Radler ‘15 “Never underestimate the good one person can do. It takes only one great man or woman to start a renaissance.”1 Michael Daly, a remarkable man who lived a fascinating and exemplary life of bravery, honor, and kindness, is the greatest model of his own words. A local legend in the Fairfield region, Daly was known for his heroic acts in war and for bringing home to Connecticut a Congressional Medal of Honor. Upon his death, newspapers across the state told of his heroism, his unyielding bravery, and extraordinary acts of courage. They praised Daly as one of only 474 American servicemen in World War Two to be distinguished with the highest military honor awarded by the nation.2 They told of his selflessness, how he constantly protected his men and took up all the risks and burdens that came with daring attacks in which he participated. Yet to those who knew Michael Daly there was more to him than the war and his undeniable bravery. He was a man who continued to serve his community even after his battles were won. He was a man of words, reading often and writing moving letters.

Those who truly knew him were struck most not by his awards and accolades but by his character, kindness, and humility. Daly was a true hero at home and abroad, the epitome of ideals that many strive to achieve, and an example to admire.

President Truman presenting Daly with the Congressional Medal of Honor in 1945

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Michael Joseph Daly was born in 1924 and raised in Fairfield, Connecticut, where he would one day be received as a hero and live out the majority of his days. Daly grew up in a family with strong military and patriotic values. His father, Paul, served as a colonel in both World War I and World War II and embedded in his son a profound sense of courage and sacrifice.3 Michael was the oldest son of the Daly family, and Paul had high expectations for his son’s future.

Yet Michael was something of a rebel and did not smoothly fit into the mold his father had set for him. After a number of expulsions from various schools, Michael entered the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in 1942, thanks to his family’s connections. It had always been his father’s desire for his son to attend West Point, but Michael had no interest in the school. His rebellious nature quickly brought him trouble as he refused to submit to the hazing of underclassmen that was customary at the Academy. Daly frequently entered into brawls with upperclassmen and finally decided that he had had enough. He left the school to enlist as an infantryman, believing the war to be a battleground of good against evil and a place where he could prove to his father and to himself what he was capable of.4 Daly completed basic training, and on June 6, 1944, he landed on Omaha Beach as a member of the Invasion of Normandy. He proved to be a daring soldier from the start, often volunteering for dangerous missions, including sniper assignments, as the Allied forces moved through France.5 He did not, however, volunteer for the dangerous mission he faced on April 18, 1945, but he nonetheless met the challenges of that day with steadfast bravery. A lieutenant by that time, it was his job to lead his company through Nuremberg, Germany. Suddenly, his men came under intense machine gun fire while in an exposed position.

Daly quickly “ordered his men to take cover, dashed forward alone, and, as bullets whirred about him, shot the three-man gun [German] crew with his carbine.”6 Daringly, he then continued forward and encountered a six-man German patrol and two more machine gun crews. All by himself, he wiped out all the enemy troops he faced that day, fifteen Germans in total, using only his semiautomatic standard issue carbine rifle. Daly’s actions had been incredibly brave and extraordinarily selfless.7 He protected his men at every opportunity and took every risk upon himself. He placed their safety above his own and voluntarily exposed himself to the likelihood of sudden death. Troy Cox, an infantryman in Daly’s division, says of Daly, “He was the kind of soldier who wins wars. He began attacking machine gun nests and patrols single handed. He just wanted us to stay close behind him and give support. Many of our lives were saved because of his heroism.”8 Later that year, President Harry S. Truman in person would present Daly with the Congressional Medal of Honor for his actions at Nuremberg.

Of the millions of Americans who have served in the United States military since the Civil War, fewer than 3,500 have received this distinction, the nation's highest award for valor.9

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The Congressional Medal of Honor

Although Daly safely guided his troops to the high wall which divided the old city from the rest of Nuremberg, danger still loomed on the next day, April 19. Responding to a request for further orders, Headquarters radioed back with the command that Daly’s men scale the wall. Daly hesitated, believing that Germans were waiting for them on the other side, but then took it upon himself to go first, ordering the men to follow only if it was safe.10 He had gotten only halfway over the wall when a German sniper’s bullet sliced through his throat.

Surviving only because of a quick emergency operation, his voice would remain soft and faint for the rest of his life, a constant reminder of the ordeal he had gone through.

Soon after the war, Daly returned home to Fairfield where hundreds gathered despite a pouring rain to celebrate their new hero. Daly described the greeting his hometown gave him as “the swellest thing that ever happened to me.”11 Despite the hero’s welcome he received, Daly found it difficult to readjust to civilian life, as did so many World War II veterans who carried terrifying memories throughout the remainder of their lives. “He was,” as Fairfield resident Dierdre Pavlis later recalled, “a little lost after the war.”12 When asked to return to West Point to speak at the graduation of his former class of cadets, he declined, reluctant to take any special credit for his service or to make those who had stayed in school feel guilty for not enlisting as he had done.13 In the years that followed, he neither enjoyed talking about his experiences nor being singled

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out for praise. “He would always say, ‘the real heroes are those who didn’t come home,’ or ‘you would have done the same thing,’”Pavlis remembered.14 He did not romanticize the war and did not want to be defined by his medal. He once said in an interview about his actions, “It’s something you did at one time. There is also an embarrassment about the killing aspect. You don’t want to be known for killing.”15 Along with so many others who had experienced combat, Daly continued to struggle with coming home, but then he was saved—by a particular person and a particular mission. He met his wife Maggie, whom he married at the age of 35 in 1959. A friend of the couple said that Michael “never would have made it without Maggie.”16 The two would go on to have a daughter and a son and live out the rest of their years together. The other redemptive influence for Daly was a rediscovery of his need to put others in the community before himself just as he had done during the war. Daly had become a successful businessman but somehow felt a calling to help those in need. So, he became a member of the board at St. Vincent’s Hospital in Bridgeport upon its construction in 1966 and devoted himself to the hospital and those who worked there, often strolling through the halls and starting conversations with nurses, doctors, and patients.17 The president of the St. Vincent’s Foundation said, “Michael was a board member like no other. His loyalty had no boundaries.”18 After serving on the board for thirty years, he finally agreed to allow the newly constructed emergency wing to be named in his honor. Uncomfortable having attention drawn to himself or being made into a “hero,” Daly had previously refused to let roads and buildings be named for him but, for the hospital that was so dear to him, he made an exception. Although he would be remembered most for his actions in World War II, Daly found his work for St. Vincent’s the most rewarding and meaningful of his accomplishments. The Michael J. Daly Center for Emergency and Trauma Care still exists today.

Although Daly never returned to school after the war, he was very intelligent and kept his mind active via books and words. In one of his letters addressed to Jeff Radler, he included a poem by the Irish poet John Boyle O’Reilly.

As the poet searches for what “is the real good,” he finally hears from within his heart that “kindness is the word.”19 Daly lived a life marked by kindness and encouraged others to do the same. He brought out the best in people and showed them that one man really could make a difference in the world. When Daly died in 2008, the town of Fairfield once again honored their hero. The flag flew at half-staff, trumpets blared, and the 10th Mountain Division performed military honors—fitting gestures for a man who gave so much for his community and country.

In a letter to Kyle Radler, Daly once wrote, “What America stands for— the potential of the human spirit.”20 Michael embodied the potential of that spir-

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it. His courage guided him through his battles in Europe and inspired enormous perseverance within him. His personality consisted of caring, friendship, and, most of all, kindness. He was a man who deserved recognition yet never desired it. Michael’s actions in war were undoubtedly heroic and brave, but he expressed the same qualities at home. Not only are his military accolades inspirational but so, too, are his character, kindness, and devotion to others.

Appendix Michael J. Daly Medal of Honor Citation Early in the morning of 18 April 1945, he led his company through the shell-battered, sniperinfested wreckage of Nuremberg, Germany. When blistering machinegun fire caught his unit in an exposed position, he ordered his men to take cover, dashed forward alone, and, as bullets whined about him, shot the 3-man guncrew with his carbine. Continuing the advance at the head of his company, he located an enemy patrol armed with rocket launchers which threatened friendly armor. He again went forward alone, secured a vantage point and opened fire on the Germans. Immediately he became the target for concentrated machine pistol and rocket fire, which blasted the rubble about him. Calmly, he continued to shoot at the patrol until he had killed all 6 enemy infantrymen. Continuing boldly far in front of his company, he entered a park, where as his men advanced, a German machinegun opened up on them without warning.

With his carbine, he killed the gunner; and then, from a completely exposed position, he directed machinegun fire on the remainder of the crew until all were dead. In a final duel, he wiped out a third machinegun emplacement with rifle fire at a range of 10 yards. By fearlessly engaging in 4 single-handed fire fights with a desperate, powerfully armed enemy, Lt. Daly, voluntarily taking all major risks himself and protecting his men at every opportunity, killed 15 Germans, silenced 3 enemy machineguns and wiped out an entire enemy patrol. His heroism during the lone bitter struggle with fanatical enemy forces was an inspiration to the valiant Americans who took Nuremberg.

Notes 1. Michael J. Daly, “Wise Words Add Clarity to Holiday,” Connecticut Post, July 8, 2008.

2. “Congressional Medal of Honor Society,” < http://www.cmohs.org/> (Accessed May 21, 2014).

3. Interview with Deirdre Pavlis, May 17, 2014.

4. Stephen J. Ochs, A Cause Greater Than Self (College Station, TX, 2012), 85.

5. Ibid., 59.

6. “Congressional Medal of Honor Society,” < http://www.cmohs.org/> (Accessed May 21, 2014).

7. Ibid.

8. Troy D. Cox, An Infantryman’s Memories of World War II (Booneville, MS,

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2003), 146.

9. “Congressional Medal of Honor Society,” < http://www.cmohs.org/> (Accessed May 21, 2014).

10. Cox, 147.

11. Genevieve Reilly, “Fairfield Hero Buried with Honors,” Connecticut Post, July 30, 2008.

12. Interview with Jeff Radler, May 17, 2014.

13. Deirdre Pavlis, May 17, 2014.

14. Ibid.

15. Ochs, 157.

16. Ibid., 185.

17. Ibid., 190.

18. Meg Barone, “Hospital Department Named for Daly,” Connecticut Post, December 10, 2009.

19. Michael J. Daly to Jeff Radler, 5 February 1999, in Radler Family Collection of Letters, Stamford, CT. 20. Michael J. Daly to Kyle Radler 4 November 2004, ibid.

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Tianjin Eco-City: China’s Latest Effort to Tackle Pollution Katherine Du ‘17 In an effort to address its major pollution problems amid a rising need to urbanize, China has recently been exploring sustainable growth options. China’s current model of sustainable development that has attracted the most worldwide attention is the Tianjin Eco-city, a cooperative project between the Chinese and Singaporean governments started in 2007 and intended ultimately to house 350,000 residents by the year 2020.1 Designed with comprehensive green (vegetation) and blue (water) networks, Tianjin Eco-city is being built on what was once industrial dumping ground for toxic waste, as part of an effort to show that it is possible to purify polluted areas.2 The Eco-city, that is, an environmentally friendly city built to reduce pollution within by means of clean sewage and water systems, is essentially China’s latest effort to confront its massive pollution problems. While China’s Tianjin Eco-city could succeed in tackling China’s significant environmental issues of water, waste, and energy pollution on a small scale, it will still fail to reduce both China’s toxic chemical emissions and excessive coal burning, which are the major pollution issues that China has yet to resolve. Whatever its merits in and of itself, the Tianjin Eco-city can do little to remedy China’s pollution problem on a nationwide scale.

Map of the Beijing region, showing location of the Eco-City site 41

The Eco-city does hold the potential to tackle water, waste, and energy pollution, all of which are significant issues in China, on a small scale. For one thing, it features some of China’s strictest building energy-efficiency standards.3 In fact, all buildings will have to comply with the Green Building Evaluation Standards, which Singapore’s Building & Construction Authority (BCA) has designed, based on the Green Mark System and Green Star System that the People’s Republic Ministry of Housing and Urban-rural Development currently uses.

In an effort to combat water pollution, blue networks will be threaded throughout the Eco-city as well. These water bodies will be linked together for greater water circulation not only to prevent the habitat of various aquatic organisms but also to encourage people to invest in real estate along the waterfront. Furthermore, Singapore’s national water agency (PUB), has contributed greatly to the set of guidelines for the Eco-city on water conservation, safety, and quality.4 On a larger scale, PUB’s efforts have helped to reduce China’s water pollution, which is currently an extremely serious issue; 600 million Chinese citizens currently rely on water supplies contaminated by animal and human waste.5 In addition, Tianjin Eco-city will also have a pneumatic waste collection system, which PUB has helped to construct. This system will help reduce the Eco-city’s waste pollution, another serious issue China faces.6 In fact, Frost & Sullivan, a consulting firm, has estimated that China needs 10,000 wastewater treatment plants to achieve just a 50 percent treatment rate.7 Lastly, the Tianjin Eco-city will seek energy alternatives to coal, the major contributor to China’s air pollution, by implementing solar panels, wind turbines, and ground-source heat pumps instead.8 It is important that China reduce its coal usage, and thus its emissions of greenhouse gases, because China currently has the world’s highest emissions of sulfur dioxide.9

An urban planner’s conception of how the Tianjin Eco-city might look someday 42

Moreover, a quarter of the country suffers from acid rain, which not only harms wildlife, but also plays a role in causing respiratory illnesses. The Tianjin Eco-city will target the minimization of greenhouse gases resulting from vehicle pollution by promoting green transport in the forms of public transport, bicycles, and walking. Along with that, the Eco-city will separate non-motorized and motorized networks, and priority will be given to pedestrians, non-motorized transport, and public transport, thus reducing energy pollution from cars emitting noxious gases into the atmosphere. The city will also have green networks in the form of Green-relief eco-corridors at its core. The BCA helps ensure buildings are green and barrier-free, that is, architecturally designed to be readily accessed by all individuals, including those with special physical needs.

Despite all these environmentally friendly aspects of the Eco-city, however, it is essential to note that the city is only 30 square kilometers in size.10 So, these green implementations will only be able to reduce waste, water, and energy pollution on a relatively small scale. Indeed, questions are being raised about how eco-friendly the city realiy is. As Arish Dastur, a World Bank urban specialist, comments: “Giant blocks are about four times the size of a typical block in Manhattan and make pedestrian and bike journeys cumbersome.”11 The Chinese government has failed to address China’s most pressing pollution issue, its toxic chemical emissions and coal burning. Today, China’s manufacturing-led development and sheer scale of 9 percent-a-year economic expansion is increasing,12 and its growth has gone hand in hand with a higher demand for electric energy. So far, China is relying on coal-fired power plants to meet electricity shortages, because coal-fired power plants are cheaper and can be built at a faster rate than natural gas, nuclear, or hydroelectric plants. Coal is also the most readily available and cheap energy source. China’s dependence on coal, however, has fostered low energy efficiency and pollution. In fact, when a 30,000 megawatt shortfall in electricity in the summer of 2004 led to increased coal burning, China’s coal mines strained to meet the sudden demand, and the ensuing overuse of coal threatened global climate disaster by skyrocketing carbon dioxide emissions. The increase in the demand for electricity also increased pollution levels. For 2002-2003 alone, government statistics show that pollution levels rose by 12 percent due to augmented electricity production. At present, 70 percent of China’s energy is supplied by coal-fired power stations, making the country is the world’s largest consumer of coal and accounting for 30 percent of global coal consumption.13 China also endures acid rain as a result of water combining with the carbon-dioxide-burned coal releases into the atmosphere. Acid rain from the burning of fossil fuels has destroyed nearly a third of China’s cropland and also led to various respiratory illnesses among Chinese citizens.14 The World Bank estimates that 400,000 people in China die per year from air pollutionrelated lung and heart diseases.15

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China’s chemical emissions and coal burning harm not only China but also other countries ranging as far as the United States. According to the Journal of Geophysical Research, acid rain formed by sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides emitted by China’s coal-fired power plants falls on Seoul, Tokyo, and even Los Angeles.16 These chemical and coal pollution problems remain unsolved for a variety of reasons. Though the Chinese government has made efforts to reduce pollution, such as the establishment of the State Environmental Protection Administration which monitors pollution levels in China, governmental corruption has led such efforts to be ineffective. The Environmental Protection Bureaus depend on local government for salaries and pensions, so they cannot enforce regulations against local governments, whose priority is to maintain growth and employment within their jurisdictions. The bureaus will thus commonly impose fines on polluting enterprises but then give the money from the fines to the local administrations, which indirectly returns it to the company through the means of a tax break. Thus, one reason that the Chinese government has failed to address pollution problems is that there is no employment of environmental enforcement personnel at the local level. Another reason that pollution problems persist is that some offenders refuse to pay for polluting the environment on the belief that China’s “legacy of the old, centrally planned economy is that electricity and water are treated as free goods or goods to be provided at minimal cost.”17 Besides, alleviating pollution would be harmful to the Communist Party, which feeds on fast economic growth to placate the rich and forestall demands for political change.18 Like previous attempts to resolve chemical emissions and coal burning, China’s proposed Tianjin Eco-city also cannot resolve the worst of the pollution issues, which are nationwide in scale. Eco-cities cannot reduce coal burning throughout China because they do not directly target the high electricity demands that the coal burning serves. The Chinese government fears that spiking electricity prices will hamper China’s economic growth.19 Moreover, Tianjin Eco-city is not prepared with instruments to reduce the current levels of smog that are smothering Chinese industrial cities. On February 25, 2014, for example, Beijing’s concentration of PM 2.5 particles, or particles “small enough to penetrate deep into the lungs and enter the bloodstream,”20 reached 505 micrograms per cubic meter, a whole 480 more micrograms than the 25 per cubic meter that the World Health Organization has stated is a safe level of micrograms.21 The Tianjin Eco-city lacks equipment that will remove these perilous amounts of particles. A Massachusetts Institute of Technology study put the cost of repercussions of air pollution in China at $112 billion in 2005.22 If China does not reduce air pollution, its economy will continue to be harmed, just as it would be if China were to spike electricity prices.

While China’s planned Tianjin Eco-city offers the possibility to address water, waste, and energy pollution on a small scale, the issues of chemical emis-

44

sions and coal burning must be addressed more broadly if China’s Eco-cities are to begin to effectively solve China’s major pollution problems. While possible solutions range from designing machines to reduce chemical levels to eliminating corruption between the national and local levels of government, one fact remains clear: with 1.2 million Chinese premature deaths in 2010 from air pollution,23 Eco-cities alone will not successfully solve China’s pollution problems. If China is to continue its economic advance, it must first be willing to sacrifice some economic development in favor of investing time and money in solving its formidable environmental concerns.

Notes 1. “Tianjin Eco-city Introduction,” Tianjin Eco-city, http:// tianjinecocity.gov.sg/ ( accessed April 21, 2014).

2. Gaia Vince, “China’s Eco-Cities: Sustainable Urban Living in Tianjin,” BBC, http://www.bbc.com/ (accessed April 17, 2014).

3. Sue-Lin Wong and Clare Pennington, “Steep Challenges for a Chinese Eco-City,” The New York Times, http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/ (accessed April 16, 2014).

4. Tianjin Eco-city Introduction.”

5. “A Great Wall of Waste,” The Economist, http://www.economist.com/ (accessed April 20, 2014).

6. “Providing Solutions for an Urbanizing China,” Business Times, http:// www.newsbank.com/ (accessed April 14, 2014).

7. “A Great Wall of Waste.”

8. Vince, “China’s Eco-Cities.”

9. “A Great Wall of Waste.”

10. “Tianjin Eco-city Introduction.”

11. Wong and Pennington, “Steep Challenges.”

12. “A Great Wall of Waste.”

13. “China’s Dependence on Coal for Energy Causing Pollution at Home and Abroad,” Resilience, http://www.resilience.org/ (accessed April 19, 2014).

14. Juli S. Kim, “China Must Do More to Address Air Pollution,” Opposing Viewpoints: China, http://find.galegroup.com/ (accessed April 19, 2014).

15. “China’s Dependence.”

16. Joseph Kahn and Jim Yardley, “As China Roars, Pollution Reaches Deadly Extremes,” The New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/ (accessed April 21, 2014).

17. “A Great Wall of Waste.”

18. Kahn and Yardley, “As China Roars.”

19. “China’s Dependence.”

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20. Jonathan Kalman, “China’s Toxic Air Pollution Resembles Nuclear Winter, Say Scientists,” The Guardian, http://www.theguardian.com/ ( accessed April 24, 2014).

21. Ibid.

22. Amitendu Palit, “Renewed Effort to Curb Pollution,” China Daily, http://www.chinadaily.com/ (accessed April 19, 2014).

23. Edward Wong, “Air Pollution Linked to 1.2 Million Premature Deaths in China,” The New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/ (accessed May 1, 2014).

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The Crowning of a New Naval Power: How the English Defeated the Spanish Armada in 1588

By Nwanacho Nwana ‘16

Queen Elizabeth I of England

In a century marked by marine warfare amongst the major European powers, England’s 1588 victory against the reigning Spanish Armada stands out in establishing the English as the dominant naval power in Europe. During this historic conflict, harsh winds and unexpected weather patterns definitely played a role in hindering the Armada’s plans. Still, despite the fact that the Spanish monarch Philip II and other Spanish soldiers blamed the unexpected defeat solely on the weather, the English were very well suited to turn back this “invincible” inva47

sion. Under the superior leadership of a sagacious and savvy queen, Elizabeth I, the English were able to properly execute their defensive plans. English military power, apart from other factors, was to the largest extent responsible for the defeat of the Spanish Armada, due to strong leadership and preparation under Elizabeth I and the brilliant execution of naval tactics significantly different from those of the Spanish.

Harsh weather conditions and turbulent winds did produce a very negative effect on the Spanish Armada. There is evidence that the Little Ice Age that occurred in the years preceding the invasion of 1588 heavily altered the atmospheric situation in Europe in ways that the Spanish navy did not see coming.

J. L. Anderson, a historian who has analyzed the effect of weather on this battle, concluded that “[t]he more southerly paths of the storms and the increased meridional component of the surface winds with which the navigator in European waters had to contend” would have constituted a disadvantage for the Spanish.1 The adverse weather also made it difficult for the Spanish to recoup after their initial clash with English forces. In the Battle of Gravelines in 1588, notoriously poor weather in the English Channel prohibited the Armada from striking back effectively against the English. Despite the severity of winds during the invasion, however, there is no conclusive evidence that the weather played a decisive, as opposed to a significant, role in the defeat of the Armada. In fact, NASAsponsored weather studies have suggested northward winds as reaching only about 8 miles per hour during the exact period of the battle.2 Although no ships of the time had the durability and strength of modern day ships, turbulent weather should not have been the main reason why the Armada would lose to a supposedly “inferior” English navy. Hence, if weather was not a main cause, then other factors must have been primarily responsible for the fateful English victory.

One of those factors was the preparation of the British forces under the leadership of Elizabeth I, which enabled the British to defend themselves successfully against a powerful invading fleet. A lack of sufficient preparation in wartime usually leads to disaster. Elizabeth I made sure that everything was ready and in place before the Spanish navy arrived on British waters. She reached out personally to all her leaders, from the most powerful commanders to the local lieutenancies. A great example of Elizabeth I’s meticulous nature in preparing her troops was her letter to the Marquis of Winchester and the Earl of Sussex, alerting the danger of the Spanish and ordering preparation of local forces: “Whereas heertofore upon the advertismentes, from time to time and from sondrie places, of the great preparations of foren forces, made with a full intention to invade our Realme and other our dominions, wee gave our direccions unto

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you for the preparinge of our Subjects within your Lievetennauncies to be in readines for the defence againste any attempte, that mighte be made againste us and our Realme, whiche our directions we finde so well performed, that we cannot but receave great contentemente therbie, bothe in respecte of your careful procedinges therein, and allso of the greate willingenes of our people in generall, to the accomplishment of that whereunto they were required.”3 The most compelling part of this letter is the warning that the Spanish Armada is actually coming and that the English homeland would have to be defended. This was important because there had been rumors of such an invasion, but no certainty. The Queen’s assurance that there would be a terrific battle prompted her people to make the serious preparations that would be required.

Elizabeth also succeeded in rallying Englishmen to the cause with emotional appeals. In her speech to the troops at Tilbury, she encouraged her people, emphasizing that the effort against the Armada had to be a collaborative one, and promised to stand with them in the war. That gave her soldiers a strong leader to look up to and the confidence that if she remained behind them, they could win.

“I know I have the body but of a weak and feeble woman,” she declared, “but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a king of England too, and think foul scorn that Parma or Spain, or any prince of Europe, should dare to invade the borders of my realm; to which rather than any dishonour shall grow by me, I myself will take up arms, I myself will be your general, judge, and rewarder of every one of your virtues in the field.”4 Elizabeth fashioned herself as an underdog in this speech not only because she was a female leader in a very patriarchal Europe but also as a psychological strategy to urge her soldiers to fight all the more valiantly. While claiming to be weak and feeble, a female in need of protection, she displayed at the same time all the qualities of the most powerful kings in Europe.

Probably the most brilliant move of Elizabeth I during the invasion, marking her as one of savviest leaders in European history, was her use of pirates and privateering. Some of the leaders of great battles during the invasion, such as Francis Drake and Walter Raleigh, had served as privateers under Elizabeth I, and the valuable experience they had gained by stopping Spanish ships and looting them of gold helped now when pitted against them in the war. In addition, as historian Neil Hanson has written, “Elizabeth allowed the ‘Sea Beggars,’ the exiled Dutch navy, to operate out of Dover and gave her tactical approval for attacks on Spanish shipping. The Sea Beggars were mostly former fishermen from the Dutch provinces of Friesland, Holland, and Zeeland, and had been given their sobriquet because of their lawless behavior and the shabby appearance of their ships, but they were fine seamen and brave resourceful fighters.”5 The Queen knew that people experienced in privateering could be very

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effective in the defense of the realm, if the need were to arise. In 1587, Drake and his pirates had already burned over thirty Spanish ships, delaying the invasion by close to a year. That delay in itself proved critical, allowing for more preparation on the British side.

The course of battle in the English defense against the Spanish Armada, 1588

Queen Elizabeth’s “out of the box” thinking, along with her leadership role in preparing the troops for battle, showed also in some of the various naval tactics used in marine warfare against Spain. The English navy depended on newer, better-built ships than the Spanish had, as well as the use of fire ships at Calais on July 29th, 1588. They knew that Spanish forces would hold the advantage in close combat, once they managed to board the English ships.6 So, the English did all they could to avoid that kind of fighting, evading the Armada throughout the invasion and inflicting serious damage on the Spanish ships through longrange cannon fire. This strategy forced the Armada to fight in ways less favorable to them, and they struggled to adjust. Garrett Mattingly, author of the classic book, The Armada, explained that “[t]he Spanish, in their heavier laden ships, kept wanting to draw the English in for close battle to utilize their skills in hand-tohand combat. However, the English stayed at a distance, firing cannons whenever the chance allowed.”7 Also removing the Spanish from their comfort zone was the English use of flyboats, a completely opposite ship design from that of the Armada’s ships. The lighter English flyboats proved much better suited for bad weather and for staying away from the heavier vessels of the Armada. Historian Cerena V. Mitchell, who wrote a case study on the invasion, provides a very good

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description of these boats and their effectiveness for the English: “Flyboats were those fast, shallow-draft little ships-of-war with which, in the early days of the revolt of the Netherlands, the Sea Beggars had terrorized the Channel, and with

which, ever since, the rebellious Dutch had commanded their coastal waters.”8 Artist’s conception of English fire ships being deployed against the Spanish Armada, 1588

In addition to having ships better-suited for the battle that they would face, the English launched fire ships into the Armada during the final, deciding confrontation. These were vessels filled with combustibles, deliberately set on fire and steered (or, where possible, allowed to drift) into the enemy fleet, in order to destroy as many Spanish ships as possible or make them break formation.

Queen Elizabeth’s forces had been secretly preparing these fire ships, and on August 7, 1588, the English sent them against the Spanish in the neighborhood of Calais. The strategy did not as heavily damage the Spanish ships as the English hoped, but they did succeed in disrupting the organization of the Spanish Armada. Mattingly’s literary picture of the event makes it easier to understand why the fire ships caused such an effect: “Then the lights appeared at the edge of the English fleet. Not lights, fires; two, six, eight of them moving forward rapidly and growing in brilliance until the watchers at the Spanish anchorage could see plainly eight tall ships with all sails set and lines of fire beginning to run up their rigging, driving straight towards them with wind and tide.”9 The visual impact of these fire ships caused confusion and panic among the Spanish sailors. Then, in the Battle of Gravelines, the English ships were able to destroy piecemeal most of what remained of Armada firepower partly because the Spanish ships had become scattered instead of concentrated for battle.

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In the end, the English navy had proved its superiority by defeating the Armada, not simply by benefiting from damage that bad weather had inflicted.

This hitherto unimaginable feat would not have been possible without the collaboration of Elizabeth I and her generals in making sure that all defensive plans and battle strategies were in place. Although some historians still attribute other causes for the Spanish loss, there is no doubt that this English victory was one of the best planned military events in European history, showing how supremely important a country’s preparation is in any war effort.

Notes 1. J. L. Anderson, “Climatic Change, Sea Power, and Historical Discontinuity: The Spanish Armada, and the Glorious Revolution of 1688,” Great Circle , 1 (1983): 13-23, accessed March 4, 2014, http://www.jstor.org.

2. “Winds of Change: Defeat of the Spanish Armada,” Landsat Science, accessed February 23, 2014, http://landsat/gsfc.nasa.gov/?p=7542.

3. “To the Queen of the Marquis of Winchester and the Earl of Sussex, Lieutenants of the County of Southampton,” Luminarium, accessed March 4, 2014, http://www.luminarium.org/renlit/elizinvasion.htm.

4. “Speech to troops at Tilbury,” ibid., accessed March 27, 2014, http:// www. Luminarium.org/renlit/Tilbury.htm.

5. Neil Hanson, The Confident Hope of a Miracle (New York, 2005), 142.

6. “July 29, 1588 Spanish Armada defeated,” This Day in History, History Channel, accessed March 29, 2014, http://www.history.com/this-day-inhistory/spanish-armada-defeated.

7. Garrett Mattingly, The Armada (Boston, 1959), 318.

8. Mitchell V. Cerena, “The Weathering of the Armada,” ICE Case Studies, August 2005, accessed March 29, 2014, http://www1.american.edu/ ted/ice/armada,htm.

9. Mattingly, 324.

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The Brunswick & Greenwich Academy

Magazine of History 2015

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Greenwich Academy 200 North Maple Avenue Greenwich, CT 06830 (203) 625-8900 Greenwichacademy.org

Vol. 11