DUHS Academic Journal 2018/19

DUHS ACADEMIC JOURNAL 2018/19

Volume 1

BEST OF THE BUNCH

ESSAY-WRITING COMPETITION 2018/19

FOREWORD BY PROFESSOR JEREMY BLACK (MBE) OF EXETER UNIVERSITY

THE HAPSBURGS: DOOMED TO FAILURE?

DUHS Editor-in-Chief

Esmé Gray

Deputy Editor

Joseph Beaden

The Journal Team

Marlo Avidon Miles Callaghan Emma Chai Max Davies Lyndsey England Sarah Ibberson Sasha Putt Freddie Vint

Department of History, 43 North Bailey, Durham, DH1 3EX

The journal team would like to express thanks to Joe Mallon for his permission to use his Grandfather’s, William Costello’s, fantastic photograph of Durham on the cover of our Journal. It was recently colourised by Joe himself.

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CONTENTS EDITOR’S NOTE, Esmé Gray

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PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS, Kristina Novakovich

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FOREWORD: ANCIEN RÉGIME OR NOT? THE DURHAM DEPARTMENT, 1980-95, Professor Jeremy Black MBE viii PART I: 2000 WORDS

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WHY WAS LOVE SUCH A PROMINENT THEME IN CISTERCIAN THOUGHT? Grant Jones 11 MARXIAN DEFINITIONS OF FEUDALISM IN THE CONTEXT OF THE TRANSITION DEBATE: DIFFICULTIES RESULTING FROM THEIR IMPLICATIONS, Hugo Lunn

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HOW IMPORTANT WAS VIOLENCE IN ENDING COLONIAL RULE IN AFRICA? Tom Hennessy 22 TO WHAT EXTENT WAS THE BOXER REBELLION A NATIONALIST MOVEMENT? Yeong Qian Hui 27 WAS BIOMEDICINE IN AFRICA A COLONIAL PROJECT? Josephine Simon PART II: 4000 WORDS

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TO WHAT EXTENT CAN BENJAMIN DREW’S ‘THE REFUGEE, OR A NORTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY’ (1856) BE USED TO AID OUR UNDERSTANDING OF SLAVERY? Ines Andrade 38 WHY WAS THERE NO SUCCESSFUL DIPLOMATIC RESOLUTION TO THE HUNDRED YEARS’ WAR, C. 1337-1475? David Manchester 46 WERE THE POLITICAL AND CULTURAL MOVEMENTS OF 20TH CENTURY JAPAN DRIVEN BY CRITICISM OF THE WEST? Katsuyuki Karl Omae

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PART III: SOURCE COMMENTARIES, HISTORIOGRAPHIES, SOURCE COMMENTARIES AND BOOK REVIEWS 62 HISTORIOGRAPHY: POLITICS AND REFORM IN AMERICA, Michaela Groundwater

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REVIEWED WORK(S): WINSTON S. CHURCHILL, MY EARLY LIFE: A ROVING COMMISSION (1930), Alex Hibberts 67 SOURCE COMMENTARY: THE CASE OF DEBORAH GREENING, Leah Nutall

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PART IV: DEBATE ON THE DEMISE OF THE EMPIRE OF THE HAPSBURGS

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INTRODUCTION: WAS THE EMPIRE DOOMED? Dr Markian Prokopovych

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CATALYST OR WATERSHED? RE-VISITING THE FIRST WORLD WAR AND THE COLLAPSE OF THE HABSBURG EMPIRE, Charlotte Alt

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DIZZY WITH OPTIMISM: REVISIONIST HISTORIOGRAPHY AND THE NATIONALITY CONFLICT IN LATE AUSTRIA-HUNGARY, Viktor Koleda 83 REVISITING EMPEROR KARL’S OCTOBER MANIFESTO, Adrian Reiss

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THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK: RETHINKING NATIONALITY CONFLICT IN LATE AUSTRIA-HUNGARY, Meriel Smithson

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‘UNITY IN DISUNITY’: RETHINKING AUSTRIA-HUNGARY’S PLACE IN THE EUROPEAN RACE TO MODERNITY, Charlie Steer-Stephenson 103 PART V: SPECIAL ARTICLES

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THE DUHS ESSAY-WRITING COMPETITION, Sabrina Steuer 112 ‘THE FINGER POINTS’: A DECOLONISED APPROACH TO GENDER AND SEXUALITY IN INDIA, Ashley Castelino 113 SOUTH VIETNAMESE WOMEN: CAPITALISING ON COLONIALISM? 1920-1964, Clémentine Ducasse 119 THE ANNUAL DUHS WINTER BALL – LUMLEY CASTLE, 2018, Katie Scown

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ONE YEAR IN DURHAM – LOOKING BACK, Dr Helen Roche

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A YEAR OF RESEARCH LEAVE, Dr John-Henry Clay

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THE DUHS EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE AND JOURNAL TEAM, 2018-19

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EDITOR’S NOTE Hello, and welcome to the Durham University History Society’s 2018/19 Journal!

The publication of this journal in Autumn 2019 marks the juncture between the beginning of a new academic year at Durham, and the end of the fantastic 2018/19 year: the department retains its second place position in national league tables, has welcomed many new members of staff and the DUHS journal has been relaunched, after a hiatus spanning several years!

Personally, I like to think that the achievements and developments listed above – alongside countless others – illustrate the ambition, talent, and enthusiasm of historians at Durham, both staff and students alike. In carefully compiling and editing this journal, the editorial team and I have sought to showcase these fantastic qualities, all of which make reading History here such a privilege.

Although I hope that this journal captures the ambition, talent and enthusiasm of Durham’s history undergraduates, I also believe that it illustrates the breadth of studies undertaken here.

In-line with the theme of last year’s DUHS guest lectures – that of ‘decolonising the curriculum’ – this journal aims to survey a range of countries, cultures and events; although the intention of last year’s lecture series was to encourage the department to expand the geographical scope of its teaching, I hope that the articles that we have selected do what they can to explore those countries that are already encompassed by the curriculum. The editorial team and I have also sought to include the works of students of varying aptitudes, ages and interests, thereby showcasing the variety among DUHS members. Indeed, the curious, colourful and varied characters of the History Department dominate the foreword that Professor Jeremy Black has penned for this publication, a recollection of the time that he spent teaching in Durham between 1980 and 1995.

In part one, Josephine Simon and Tom Hennessy both survey colonial Africa: Josephine contemplates whether biomedicine in Africa constituted a ‘colonial project’, whereas Tom

considers the question: ‘how important was violence in ending colonial rule in Africa?’.

Moving on from African history, however, this section also sees Yeong Qian Hui explore the ideological motivations underpinning China’s Boxer Rebellion, Grant Jones’ delve into Cistercian theology in medieval Europe, and Hugo Lunn’s historiographical essay on different Marxist historians’ interpretations of the term ‘feudalism’, all of which promise to be fantastic reads.

In part two, we encounter three longer, four thousand-word essays, all of which present more detailed and complex arguments. Ines Andrade begins by analysing Benjamin Drew’s ‘The Refugee, or a North Side View of Slavery’, assessing the extent to which the text may aid our understanding of slavery in North America. Later, David Manchester explores the factors that led to the ultimate failure of diplomacy in the Hundred Years’ War. Katsuyuki Karl Omae concludes the chapter with his investigation of the sociopolitical landscape of twentieth-century Japan, with a particular emphasis on ‘Kokutaiism’ and the denigration of the West.

Diverging somewhat from parts one and two, part three showcases the broader range of academic skills that history undergraduates acquire throughout the course of their degrees here.

Michaela Groundwater opens the section with her historiographical essay on the Progressive Era in the USA: Michaela focuses on historians’ documentations of the experiences of both black and white women during this period, contending that the existing scholarship would benefit from incorporating more diverse perspectives. Next, Alex Hibberts reviews Winston Churchill’s autobiography: My Early Life: A Roving Commission (1930), delving into the complexities of autobiographical sources and Churchill’s tendency to mythologize his own life story.

Finally, Leah Nuttall presents her analysis of an Early Modern legal source – that of The Case of Deborah Greening – exploring the impact of the source’s provenance, style and context on its content and overall value.

The penultimate chapter of this journal, Part Four, comprises a debate that has been kindly coordinated by Dr Markian Prokopovych.

Markian introduces the premise of the debate – the question of whether the Hapsburg Empire was doomed to collapse – in his introduction.

Following this, several finalists give their interpretations of the downfall of the Hapsburg Empire, its implications and its underpinnings, presenting an in-depth discussion of the various factors, themes and arguments that dominate studies of Hapsburg history and historiography.

I would also like to thank the DUHS Executive of 2018/19, who have proven themselves to be sources both of great support and great company – I will miss you all when you graduate and wish you every success for the future!

Finally, I would like to thank the staff in the department, ranging from the administrative staff who sent out emails on my behalf, to lecturers and historians who kindly met with me to offer advice and encouragement. Particular thanks should be extended to Dr John-Henry Clay, Dr Helen Roche and Dr Markian Prokopovych – as well as Exeter University’s Professor Jeremy Black – all of whom have kindly given up their time and energy to write fantastic pieces for the journal, shedding light on new topics and fresh perspectives.

Part Five, the final section of this Journal, is also the publication’s widest-ranging. Featuring articles on everything from DUHS’ essay competition, to our Winter Ball at Lumley Castle, to guest articles written by the likes of Dr Helen Roche and Dr John-Henry Clay, there is certainly something for everyone here!

Ultimately, this past year of compiling, editing and administering the journal has not been without the occasional hiccup. The process has, nonetheless, been great fun; I hope that you get as much enjoyment from reading it as we got from making it.

Of course, resurrecting the DUHS journal has proven no mean feat, and we have the kindness, enthusiasm and support of a number of people to thank for making this possible.

First and foremost, I would like to extend a huge thanks to the editorial team, without whom none of this could have happened. Everyone’s enthusiasm, dedication and intellect have made this process an absolute joy. I am particularly indebted to my deputy editor, Joe Beaden, who kindly led meetings and coordinated edits when I was unable to. Joe’s hard work and dedication has proven invaluable, and I wish both Joe and Alex Hibberts the best of luck next year, when they will join forces to take up the position of editors-inchief.

I would also like to thank everybody who applied to be an editor in Epiphany term, regardless of whether they were successful or not. Since this is the first year in a while that the journal has been running, I was overwhelmed by the number of applications that we received – a really encouraging start to the entire process!

On a similar note, it also seems fitting to thank everybody who sent us essays in response to our two calls for papers. Regardless of whether your paper was accepted or not, it was certainly encouraging to see that so many people were keen to be involved. I hope that the enthusiasm that has been generated this year will continue well-into the future.

Enjoy!

ESMÉ GRAY, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF 2018/19

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PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS Kristina Novakovich (DUHS President) and Katie Scown (DUHS Social Secretary) at the DUHS Winter Ball (Jessica Wang, 2018)

I have been a member of the History Society throughout my three years at Durham University, and have had the wonderful opportunity to act both as conference co-ordinator in my second year and as DUHS President in this, my third and final year.

DUHS strives to offer high quality events and opportunities for our members, both social and academic, and during my time at Durham I have had the opportunity to attend three Elizabethan-themed Winter Banquets and Balls, three conferences, book fairs, a number of trips to historical sites, and a vast range of guest lectures. This year, students have engaged not only in our larger events, the abovementioned Winter Ball, excursions and lectures, but the society has also enjoyed an incredible turnout at our smaller social events.

These have included a ‘staff vs. student’ pub quiz at the DSU in Epiphany term, and a ‘decades’ themed bailey bar crawl in Michaelmas term.

This year’s series of academic talks – organised by our secretary, Sabrina – have ranged from a lecture on the ‘Monstrous’ in Japanese Art and Culture, to Aboriginal Australian knowledges and decolonisation theory, to our most recent guest lecture: a discussion of the history and significance of Brazilian Presidential elections. This series of

lectures has not only catered to the varied interests of our members, but also reflects our efforts to ‘decolonise the curriculum’ here in Durham, creating a more diverse and inclusive platform for learning and discussion. This is a theme that has also been echoed in the journal’s essay competition – the first of its kind – which created another opportunity for DUHS members to explore outside of the History Department’s current curriculum.

These are efforts that we sincerely hope will be a lasting legacy, something to be continued by the History Society in years to come.

Furthermore, the relaunch of the DUHS academic journal, compiled by Esmé Gray and her editorial team, has proven to be one of the year’s huge successes. We received an incredible amount of interest and a large volume of entries. We hope that this piece will help to open up a dialogue amongst Durham students, a discussion of how and where we can improve our curriculum, while also celebrating the excellent work that is already undertaken by undergraduates here.

KRISTINA NOVAKOVICH, DUHS PRESIDENT 2018/19

I was amazed when I first saw Durham.

Arriving for my interview for the Early Modern European job, I had expected to find a landscape full of pitheads. Instead, the vista was green. I was there under false pretences, as, aged 24 and with no doctorate yet, I did not anticipate success, and only applied in the hope of getting my expenses covered en route to reading early-eighteenth century newspapers in Newcastle Central Library.

Alphabetical order dictated that I got interviewed first and I then rushed off to Newcastle. When the result was announced at the end of the day, I was the only one of the six not present and with no forwarding details.

FOREWORD: ANCIEN RÉGIME OR NOT? THE DURHAM DEPARTMENT, 1980-95

Eventually tracked down, I was told I had the job and invited to lunch at Castle by Paul Harvey.

With great hesitation, he asked me what I would like to teach. To his clear amazement, I said I would teach what I had been hired to do, and his relief was palpable. Apparently the other five candidates, all older, doctored, and with more experience, including ‘the Internal,’ had said they were specialists on France, or Germany, etc, and would not teach anything else. I had said that, as a diplomatic historian, I knew a little bit of everything.

BY PROFESSOR JEREMY BLACK MBE (EXETER UNIVERSITY)

Here Professor Jeremy Black MBE – prominent Historian and Professor of History at the University of Exeter – reminisces on the time that he spent in Durham, first as a lecturer and then as a Professor, between 1980 and 1995.

Today, Black is a senior fellow at the ‘Center for the Study of America and the West’ at the Foreign Policy Research Institute and has authored over ninety books, enabling the British to “look at their past, as well as in representing British history to foreign audiences”.1 His research interests primarily involve post-1500 military history, yet he also retains a keen interest in eighteenthcentury British history, international relations, and the examination of historical media, with particular emphasis on atlases and newspapers. More information about Jeremy, his career, publications and research interests can be found on his website: jeremyblackhistorian.wordpress.com, or on the Exeter University website.

There were then about 60 new students a year, and you could be expected to know all your students as individuals. My early courses were a first year Europe 1560-1730 (John Rogister would not let me go any later as that was ‘his’ turf), a second year eighteenth-century Britain, and a third-year special subject on British Foreign Policy in the Age of Walpole. Teaching style was very much a matter of individual preference. Probation and training were a joke, but standards were high, much more-so than in Cambridge and Oxford (actually that is no real praise); and the staff were broader-ranging in their intellectual engagement than is sometimes the case in the modern age of specialisation. There was no careers advice for staff. The Reader in Modern History, Mervyn James, a tweed-suited Braudelian of much conceptual engagement, was amazed that I should want to complete my PhD: he was proud of not having one. Mervyn had no television and came over to watch the Charles and Diana wedding

1 ‘Cambridge University Alumni: Professor Jeremy Black MBE’ [Online]. Available at:

https://www.alumni.cam.ac.uk/travel/professorjeremy-black-mbe (Accessed 23 September 2019).

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which he found fascinating as an anthropological spectacle. Having a burst tyre while driving on the A1(M), he had told the Highway Patrol when it arrived to change his tyre and the police had duly obliged.

American history at Cambridge. The coverage of Continental European history was good and Economic History, a separate Department, added more talent; notably Frank Spooner and Richard Britnell.

The Department was very factionalised. The Medievalists appeared to see themselves as better and to look down on the Modernists, who were definitely eclectic. Several of the latter went to the Shakespeare for a liquid lunch and appeared to spend the afternoon staring in a rather raffish Lucky Jim. They did not get on with Reg Ward who had his own clique. A Northerner with the teetotal integrity of a Primitive Methodist, and Lay Preacher, told me on my appointment that Durham risked going the way of Oxbridge (which he and I had both attended) – ‘they take good people and don’t do very much with them,’ but also held up for approval the example of Sir Lewis Namier, under whom he had worked at Manchester: ‘He was the opposite of the standard academic. They are distant to students, offhand to junior colleagues, and oleaginous to those of their own rank.’ [I had no idea of what oleaginous meant.

Since my spelling was poor, dictionary elucidation took a while.] Namier was pleasant to the students, encouraging to his junior colleagues, and an absolute swine to those of his own rank.’

An interesting man Reg - very wide-ranging in his intellectual interests; a very hard worker – he told me that he could not take seriously anyone who could not write 5,000 words a day; and, as Barbara did not like him cooking at home, he kept a Baby Belling in his office and would cook implausible dishes and always invite colleagues who did not get on to share the meal before sharing the washing-up.

This system was to be buffeted by change.

Anthony Fletcher who came in to succeed Reg, made it obvious that he deplored what he found, and sought to push through a complete syllabus transformation, including lots of modish topics in social history (Anthony was very interested in sexuality), as well as compulsory dissertations. He and his Medieval counterpart, Michael Prestwich – who had succeeded Paul after a period of vacancy, did not get on at all, and this increased the fissiparous character of the Department.

Talking to students from those years with whom I have remained friends, it is clear that none of them discerned these tensions. That, I suppose, is a sign of staff professionalism, but the row between the professors led to the VC intervening.

I meanwhile went through some of the administrative load. The joys of running a Departmental Library were followed by being Dissertation Convenor, which was doubtless my reward for opposing their compulsory character: I was concerned that so much of the social history agenda was very much a matter of acquiring a specialism in a small fragment of English social history at the expense of broad and significant topics in national and international history. I taught a lot, which I enjoyed, especially the lecturing.

I also developed a teaching/research/writing synergical process that proved exciting and invigorating. It got me a chair in 1994, the first time there had been two Modern History chairs in the Department, but being promoted over the heads of many colleagues is not good news, and it was appropriate to move on. I have remained good friends with former students from Durham days and have some good memories. Ron Hutton dismissed the university in conversation as ‘a frozen rock in the North of England,’ but he was wrong, and it was so much more.

There was a good coverage of history by the standards of the period and the size of Department. For example, there were two Americanists whereas most provincial Departments had one and I had been taught no

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PART I: 2000 WORDS

(Michael Crilly, 2018)

GRANT JONES: Why was love such a prominent theme in Cistercian thought?

Pages 11-16

HUGO LUNN: Marxian definitions of feudalism in the context of the transition debate: difficulties resulting from their implications.

Pages 17-21

TOM HENNESSY: How important was violence in ending colonial rule in Africa?

Pages 22-26

YEONG QIAN HUI: To what extent was the Boxer Rebellion a nationalist movement?

Pages 27-31

JOSEPHINE SIMON: Was biomedicine in Africa a colonial project?

Pages 32-36

WHY WAS LOVE SUCH A PROMINENT THEME IN CISTERCIAN THOUGHT?

BY GRANT JONES (GREY COLLEGE, 3RD YEAR) The writings of certain twelfth-century Benedictine reformers were integral to the growth of the monastic way of life that would later emerge as the Cistercian Order, a Catholic Order dedicated to the precise observance of the Rule of St. Benedictine. Traditionally, the three most influential writers associated with the Order were, in chronological order: William of St. Thierry, Bernard of Clairvaux and Ælred of Rievaulx, all of whom contributed to a growing corpus of monastic literature that sought to promote manual labour, modesty and austerity as the central themes of monastic life. In light of this, it is perhaps unsurprising that caritas (or charity) emerges as a significant theme in the works of the abovementioned reformers.

Furthermore, many such writers also reasoned that demonstrations of Love would be crucial in facilitating an individual’s quest to imitate Christ; indeed, imitation of Jesus was the very goal of monastic life and had been a fundamental pillar of the church’s understanding of salvation since the very inception of Christianity.1 In an attempt to understand the progression of theological thinking, Jean Leclerq has suggested that Cistercian thought fits into a tri-generational model for theological evolution. This progression, Leclerq asserts, extended from the late eleventh-century and into the twelfth, beginning with St. Anselm in the eleventhcentury before progressing to the writings of the second, prominent generation of theological scholars – Bernard of Clairvaux, William of St. Thierry, Abelard and Hugh of St. Victor. Finally, the progression of Cistercian thought reached its apex with the emergence of the third and final generation of theologians in the mid-twelfth century, the most important of whom was Ælred.2 Although the term ‘Cistercian thought’ is often employed to refer to the writings of these individuals, this terminology can be as problematic as it is convenient. Indeed, of the three figures with whom this essay is concerned, only Ælred can be said to have lived in what we would deem to be the Cistercian ‘Order’.

Nonetheless, it is important to acknowledge that, in order to differentiate themselves from their contemporaries, proto-Cistercian communities had to be aware of their Benedictine roots, and use this particular understanding in order to ‘articulate and defend their particular form of life’.3 For the Cistercians then, it would appear that their efforts to establish historic and legitimate justification for the lifestyle that they promoted ultimately manifested in their continual emphasis on the importance of love and charity, both of which are deeply historic themes in Christian philosophy.

Ultimately, then, this essay explores why love was such a prominent theme in what we can term to be ‘Cistercian thought’. It will argue that the Cistercians’ emphasis on love drew heavily on both pre-existing and contemporary themes, and constituted a part of the emergence of increasingly personal experience evident within the theology of the twelfth century.

This essay explores first why the works of William of St. Thierry have been understated until recently. We will also analyse the importance of personal experience and love as recurring themes in William’s work, as well as the underlying sources and inspiration behind these themes – in particular, it is pertinent to note that there are precedents for these concepts in the writings of Anselm of Canterbury. Similarly, we will then explore the factors that have enabled the works of Bernard of Clairvaux to dominate Cistercian thought, and 1 Jaroslav Pelikan, The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine. Volume 3: The Growth of Medieval Theology (600-1300), (Chicago, 1978), p. 23.

2 Jean Leclerq, ‘The Renewal of Theology’, in Robert L. Benson, Giles Constable and Carol D. Lanham (eds.), Renaissance and Renewal in the Twelfth Century, (Toronto, 1982), p. 70.

3 Chrysogonus Waddell, ‘The Reform of the Liturgy from a Renaissance Perspective’, in Robert L. Benson, Giles Constable and Carol D. Lanham (eds.), Renaissance and Renewal in the Twelfth Century, (Toronto, 1982), p. 99.

Part I

the extent to which his writings were inspired by William’s. Finally, this essay will assess the impact of these notable theologians on the work of Ælred of Rievaulx.

Until the latter half of the twentieth century, William of St. Thierry’s theological contributions were largely overlooked; indeed, such was the scale of scholarly ignorance of his work that William’s texts were, on occasion, incorrectly attributed to Bernard of Clairvaux. Moreover, it is telling that Charles Haskins – widely considered to be the Unites States’ first medievalist scholar – failed to acknowledge William at all.

Increasingly, however, William is recognised as one of the most important monastic thinkers of the twelfth century.4 For William, the ‘study of love’ was the purpose of the monastery; in what is considered to be one of his earliest texts – aptly titled On the Nature of Dignity and Love – he described the monastery as ‘charity’s own school’.5 Nonetheless, as Patrick Ryan highlights, William’s writings suggest that he considered the most important feature of love to be the way in which it could be experienced by the individual: indeed, William firmly believed that one could experience God directly through the perspective of love.6 Ryan’s studies are significant in that he examined William's method of looking to God, reflecting on one's own humanity with love (the love of the person seeking God), and then contemplating God again with the same desire and love.7 We see this clearly in William’s Meditation Three, in which his ultimate concern is to be united with God through love: ‘[the soul] perceives that God is good, by means of love which is its proper sense … the soul’s sense is love, by love it perceives whatever it perceives’.8 Notably, this Meditation was written while William was abbot of the unreformed Benedictine abbey at St. Thierry, and before he entered the newly-founded Cistercian abbey at Signy.9 It would seem, then, that it can be problematic to associate a number of William’s tracts with ‘Cistercian thought’ specifically, as this particular school of theology was yet to emerge. These themes do, nonetheless, continue to develop in William’s work even after he entered Signy, suggesting that his earlier writings are significant precisely because they exhibit some likeness to later Cistercian writings, evidently shaping William’s outlook and underlining his sympathy for the Cistercian philosophy. Again, we see this in The Mirror of Faith, in which William explains how the “outer senses of the body” may assist one in actively perceiving God, before progressing to contemplate the greater importance of the interior senses – here, William proclaims that love is superior to reason, as the former facilitates a “purer understanding of the soul”.10 Deliberating the factors that shaped William’s focus on love and experience, Constant Mews – contemporary Professor of medieval thought – has suggested William was influenced by a wider rekindling of interest in Ovid’s writing, something that had already begun to emerge in the late eleventh century, as well as Augustinian concepts that had been neglected by Anselm of Canterbury and William of Champeaux.11 William of St. Thierry's novel approach to Ovid and Augustinian themes subsequently created what Mews terms to be an ‘original theological synthesis’, principally relating to the nature of amor: longing and desire that grows into the virtuous ideal of caritas.12 Theologians’ awareness that the concept of amor itself had divine origins was also evident in the preceding works of Baudri of Bourgeuil, a Benedictine abbot closely linked to Godfrey of Rheims, who, in all likelihood, tutored William during the early 1090s.13 The renewed interest in Ovid’s work that is so patently evident in William’s writings, then, appear to have led to a reinterpretation of amor socialis as ‘the charity practiced in conventual life’. This renewed understanding of amor socialis was also echoed in Bernard of Clairvaux’s adaption of Cicero’s De amicita, a revision that 4

Leclerq, ‘Renewal’, p. 71.

William of St. Thierry, On the Nature and Dignity of Love, 8., trans. Geoffrey Webb and Adrian Walker, (London, 1956).

6 Ibid.: ‘[…] not with the use of reason alone, since the truths of love must be a matter of experience’.

7 Patrick Ryan, ‘Sensus Amoris: The Sense of Love in Two Texts of William of St. Thierry’, Cistercian Studies Quarterly, 40 (2005), pp. 163-4.

8 William of St. Thierry, Meditation Three, cited in Ryan, ‘Sensus Amoris’, p. 166.

9 Ryan, ‘Sensus Amoris’, p. 167.

10 William of St. Thierry, Meditation Three, 26., cited in Ryan, ‘Sensus Amoris’, p. 168.

11 Constant J. Mews, ‘Bernard of Clairvaux, Peter Abelard and Heloise on the Definition of Love’, Revista Portuguesa de Filosofia, 60 (2004), pp. 640-2.

12 Ibid., p. 642.; c.f. Writings of Abelard and Heloise on amor and caritas.

13 Ibid., p. 641.

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Why was love such a prominent theme in Cistercian thought? | Grant Jones

emphasised the virtue of Christian unity as well as that of equality, the former being a new addition.14 Despite the fact that it is clear that humanism influenced the passages outlined above, however, it is pertinent to acknowledge that twelfth-century monastic theology would appear to have been impacted by Classical Latin scholars more in terms of its thought than in terms of its style – the works composed in the monasteries at this time remain firmly focused on the liturgy and interpretations of Scripture.15 A fascination with divine love, experience, and reinterpreting the works of preceding Christian writers are all themes that also emerge in the works of Anselm of Canterbury (1033/4-1109). It would appear that Anselm’s concept of faith, and the role that it played in the search for understanding and enlightenment, was also rooted in Augustinian thought: indeed, he acknowledges his indebtedness to Augustine in many of his pieces.16 Indeed, although Anselm’s revered piece, Cur Deus homo, is essentially a rational argument, it stems from a position of love; in Eadmer’s The Life of St. Anselm, the author makes clear that Anselm published the Cur Deus homo because he was fundamentally ‘moved by his love of the Christian faith’.17 Furthermore, it is not insignificant that Anselm wrote this particular tome during a period in which he was returning and readjusting to the monastic routine, a lifestyle akin to the one he led before becoming an abbot.18 The ‘back-to-basics’ lifestyle that Eadmer highlights in The Life would, indeed, appear to have been beneficial to Anselm’s work, but was not particularly unique given that it would appear to echoe the approach and reasoning encountered in many works associated with various twelfth-century Cistercian thinkers. Nonetheless, amongst the detailed and painstaking reasoning that comprises much of Cur Deus Homo, some striking observations about the power of love in God can be found. In Book Two, for instance, Anselm asserts that Christ’s life is more lovable than sins are detestable: to some extent, then, all of the reasoning that surrounds Anselm’s deliberation over God’s reasons for becoming incarnate in Christ is, at its very core, intended to highlight the potency of God’s love.19 It would, furthermore, appear that Anselm was also exceedingly capable of expressing love for God in more personal, and certainly moving and evocative terms, this is perhaps most notable in his Meditation on Human Redemption, in which Anselm meditates on the very nature of the human soul and its relationship to the human experiences of suffering and love.20 The process of centralising one’s experience of God and of love – evident in much of the works of the twelfthcentury monastic writers who are also regarded as ‘Cistercian’ – would ultimately appear to be the legacy of the ideas that Anselm brought to the fore in his writings. Leclerq reiterates this observation: contending that personal experience was fundamental to medieval monastic theology, and that, to Anselm, God “was not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be loved and prayed to” – to be directly experienced.21 The unity of reason and love was a theme also evident in Bernard’s writing. However, although Bernard’s focus on experience and introspection regarding love built on the work of William of St. Thierry and Anselm, this focus was not confined to Cistercians, or even Benedictine monasticism more generally. Richard of St. Victor, an Augustinian canon regular, further emphasised the central importance of experience to the learning process.22 Bernard of Clairvaux, however, remains the most influential of the figures associated with the Cistercian order; his theological output was in high demand among contemporaries, and its study continues in the modern period. Yet, as has already been explored, his focus on love is not a property exclusive to his writing and can be witnessed outside of the contemporary Benedictine reformers who later form the Cistercian order. Moreover, this tradition of writing about love is evident from the earliest Christian church, through Augustine, to Anselm and on to William of St. Thierry.

14

Leclerq, ‘Renewal’, p. 84.

Leclerq, ‘Renewal’, p. 85.; Waddell, ‘Reform of the Liturgy’, pp. 89, 91.

16 Pelikan, Growth of Medieval Theology, p. 259.

17 Eadmer, The Life of St Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury, 30., ed. and trans. R. W. Southern, (London, 1962).

18 Ibid.

19 Anselm of Canterbury, Cur Deus Homo, 2.14., trans. Jasper Hopkins and Herbert Richardson [Online]. Available at: http://jasper-hopkins.info/CurDeusII.pdf (Accessed 27 November 2018).

20 Anselm of Canterbury, A Meditation on Human Redemption, trans. Jasper Hopkins and Herbert Richardson [Online].

Available at: http://jasper-hopkins.info/MeditationHR.pdf (Accessed 27 November 2018).

21 Leclerq, ‘Renewal’, p. 77.

22 Pelikan, Growth of Medieval Theology, p. 304.

15

13

Part I

So why then is ‘Cistercian thought’ seemingly dominated by Bernard’s work? Constance Berman posits that Bernard’s contribution to Cistercian success stemmed directly from his writings, and not the subsequent formation of related institutions.23 Certainly, his influence and charisma would appear to have been essential to the success and spread of the Cistercian reform movement.24 Indeed, it would seem, that Bernard influenced his contemporaries considerably, many of them promoting his charismatic and compassionate virtues. Indeed, in the first book of the Vita Prima Sancti Bernardi , William of St. Thierry recalls how Bernard insisted on convalescing alongside him, discussing theology together, and later cared for William.25 In part thanks to his seemingly virtuous nature, Bernard’s writings were widely circulated during his lifetime – during the latter part of his life, he moved in some highly influential secular circles. Historiographically, we have been encouraged to consider Bernard as the most significant theorist of the love of God, primarily due to his considerable influence on both contemporary and subsequent theology.26 Bernard himself portrayed Abelard as more focused on dialectic and logic than on loving God, setting himself in stark opposition to the scholastic approach.27 In Bernard’s writing, we can see the unity of contemporary approaches to love and grace, yet interpreted within an experience-based monastic environment that placed great worth on spiritual self-examination. For instance, the concept of rising to higher knowledge through grace built on the works of scholastic theologians, perhaps most notably those of Anselm of Laon and William of Champeaux.28 However, Bernard interpreted these ideas through the lens of the ‘Rule of Benedict’. In his writings, love remains the central tenet of achieving grace, much as it does in the Cur Deus homo, yet Bernard focused more exclusively on love than Anselm. Indeed, in Sermon 50 on the Song of Songs, Bernard described love built on reason alone as “arid but enduring” and proposed that it is improved upon by a higher form of love that is “seasoned with wisdom”.29 In the same sermon, Bernard emphasises the importance of love to the ultimate purpose of monastic life: “he reaches out to the rest of God’s creation with an ordered love”, but this rhetoric becomes a prayer to Christ, whom the monastic life sought to emulate, demonstrating the integral nature of love to monasticism.30 This encouragement of love and charity is also evident in his advice to other monks. In the Apologia to Abbot William, Bernard sought to encourage caritas by admonishing certain Cistercian monks for pride, and claiming that they lose the virtue of charity when they ‘trample on others’, meaning criticising Cluniac monks.31 Bernard’s best-known works deal very explicitly with love, particularly De diligendo Deo (On Loving God) and his Sermons on the Song of Songs. De diligendo uses rhetoric to develop the argument that there are stages to amor, progressing from loving God for one’s own sake, to loving God for God’s sake, and then on to loving the self only for God’s sake.32 In this way, it emulates the abovementioned works of William of St. Thierry, which encouraged a cycle of reflecting on God from a perspective of love and desire alternately.

William, in turn, had developed this concept of love being the "foundation of understanding" from Augustine's work on the Trinity and the nature of caritas.33 The ideas evident in De Diligendo are also evident in Bernard’s letter to Ogier of Mont-Saint-Éloia: that to love for the self and others are profitable and 23

Constance Hoffman Berman, The Cistercian Evolution: The Invention of a Religious Order in Twelfth-Century Europe, (Philadelphia, 2000), p. 2.

24 Pierre-André Burton, ‘The Beginnings of Cistercian Expansion in England: The Socio-Historical Context of the Foundation of Rievaulx (1132), Cistercian Studies Quarterly, 42 (2007), p. 152.

25 William of St. Thierry, Vita Prima Sancti Bernardi, 1.XII.60., in The Cistercian World: Monastic Writings of the Twelfth Century, ed. and trans. Pauline Matarasso, (London, 1993).

26 Mews, ‘Definition of Love’, pp. 634-5.

27 Ibid.: Mews argued that these perceptions have also left a legacy of understanding Heloise as an icon of worldly “profane love”.

28 Ibid., p. 637.

29 Bernard of Clairvaux, ‘Three Sermons on the Song of Songs’, 50.4., in The Cistercian World: Monastic Writings of the Twelfth Century, ed. and trans. Pauline Matarasso, (London, 1993).

30 Bernard, ‘Sermons’, 50.8.

31 Bernard of Clairvaux, St Bernard’s Apologia to Abbot William, trans. Michael Casey, (Kalamazoo, 1970), p. 50.

32 Bernard of Clairvaux, De Diligendo Deo, 8-10. [Online]. Available at: http://www.ccel.org/ccel/bernard/loving_god.x.html (Accessed 28 November 2018).

33 Mews, ‘Definition of Love’, p. 641.

14

Why was love such a prominent theme in Cistercian thought? | Grant Jones

beneficial "for we certainly rest in those whom we love, and we prepare in ourselves a resting-place for those who love us”, but to love in God, or to love for God’s sake, “is to serve charity”.34 Regarding the Sermons on the Song of Songs, this is perhaps Bernard’s most distinctive contribution to theology. Bernard approached and developed the works of William of St. Thierry and Augustine, but from the perspective of the Song of Songs: he interpreted their writings as “the longing of one's soul for the Word of God'.35 Certainly, to write about loving God in this specifically desirous way was unprecedented, marking Bernard out from his predecessors: Pauline Matarasso has subsequently labelled the unfinished sermons Bernard’s “crowning work”, a “supreme example of monastic theology”.36 Where William of St. Thierry reinterpreted Ovid and Augustine, Bernard did likewise for the Song of Songs. In that sense, he was continuing the ongoing process of re-interpreting Classical, scriptural, and early Christian writing.

The third influential writer associated with the evolution of Cistercian thought is Ælred of Rievaulx. His principal works regarding love were Spiritual Friendship and The Mirror of Charity; like Bernard, Ælred’s thinking built on the foundations laid by his predecessors and focused primarily on the question of how love helps to bring mankind closer to God. In Spiritual Friendship, Ælred drew on the works of Cicero, much in the same manner that William drew on Ovid.37 In Book Two, he writes about how true friendship is a ‘path to the love and knowledge of God’, and in Book Three, writes that love of God is “the foundation upon which true spiritual friendship must be built”.38 Here, again, one can observe echoes of William’s interpretation of Augustine’s argument that love must provide the basis for understanding God. Ælred’s Mirror likewise echoes Bernard’s De diligendo in its description of the progression of stages of love towards God. Ælred described the progression from love of self, to love of neighbours, and then love of God: “these three loves are engendered by one another … they are all brought to perfection together”.39 Ælred may also be providing a more practical reason for the promotion of love through friendship, as a monastic community grounded in friendship would be a much more harmonious and enjoyable environment.40 In the Mirror, he advised that love would be restored “by the daily increase of charity”.41 If a love of God was the aim of monastic life, and charity the practice of the Cistercian way of life, then this can be taken to mean that abiding by the Rule would bring one closer to the real purpose of Benedictine monasticism.

We cannot say with certainty that, when William of St. Thierry and Bernard of Clairvaux were writing, there any singular school-of-thought that could be called ‘Cistercian’. The Cistercian ‘Order’ was, at this time, an amorphous, though steadily growing, network of similarly reform-minded Benedictine abbeys. Though love was the overarching theme of the proto-Cistercian texts, the focus on it was neither William nor Bernard’s innovation: William evidently built on the works ofAnselm of Canterbury, who in-turn owed some debt to Augustinian thought. William’s influence was evident in Bernard’s works, which, in turn, influenced Ælred of Rievaulx’s writing. That this thread extends backwards from Ælred to Augustine demonstrates that love and charity were not new concepts exclusive to Cistercian thinkers, rather that the Cistercian movement was informed by a network of interconnected writers, who were continually re-evaluating early Christian texts in light of the contemporsry monastic experience. Indeed, we can attribute the beginning of this process of reevaluation to Anselm of Canterbury in the late eleventh century. It is notable that the Cur Deus homo was written during a period in which Anselm had returned to a monastic routine, allowing him time to contemplate

34 Bernard of Clairvaux, ‘Nine Letters’, 90., in The Cistercian World: Monastic Writings of the Twelfth Century, ed. and trans. Pauline Matarasso, (London, 1993).

35 Mews, ‘Definition of Love’, pp. 643-5.

36 Pauline Matarasso, The Cistercian World: Monastic Writings of the Twelfth Century, ed. and trans. Pauline Matarasso, (London, 1993), p. 65.

37 Ælred of Rievaulx, Spiritual Friendship, 1.6., trans. Mark. F. Williams, (London, 1994): Ælred sets out early in Book 1 that he is building on Cicero’s treatise, On Friendship.

38 Ibid., 2.18. and 3.5.

39 Ibid., 3.2.

40 Ælred, Mirror, 3.2.: “Love is the source and origin of friendship, for although love can exist without friendship, friendship can never exist without love”.

41 Ibid., 1.5.

15

Part I

God more fully. Ultimately, this was also the goal of the Cistercian reformers: to be able to spend more time on understanding and loving God.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Ælred of Rievaulx, Elizabeth Connor (trans.), The Mirror of Charity (Kalamazoo, 1990) Ælred of Rievaulx, Mark F. Williams (trans.), Spiritual Friendship (London, 1994) Anselm of Canterbury, Jasper Hopkins and Herbert Richardson (trans.), Cur Deus Homo Book II [Online], Available at: http://jasper-hopkins.info/CurDeusII.pdf (Accessed 27 November 2018) Anselm of Canterbury, Jasper Hopkins and Herbert Richardson (trans.), A Meditation on Human Redemption [Online]. Available at: http://jasper-hopkins.info/MeditationHR.pdf (Accessed 27 November 2018) Bernard of Clairvaux, De Diligendo Deo, [Online], Available at: http://www.ccel.org/ccel/bernard/loving_god.toc.html (Accessed 15 November 2018) Bernard of Clairvaux, Michael Casey (trans.), St Bernard’s Apologia to Abbot William (Kalamazoo, 1970) Bernard of Clairvaux, ‘Three Sermons on the Song of Songs’, in Pauline Matarasso (ed. and trans.), The Cistercian World: Monastic Writings of the Twelfth Century (London, 1993) Bernard of Clairvaux, ‘Nine Letters’, in Pauline Matarasso (ed. And trans.), The Cistercian World: Monastic Writings of the Twelfth Century (London, 1993) Eadmer, R.W. Southern (ed. And trans.), The Life of St Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury (London, 1962) William of St. Thierry, On the Nature and Dignity of Love, trans. Geoffrey Webb and Adrian Walker, (London, 1956).

William of St. Thierry ‘Vita Prima Sancti Bernardi: Book 1’, in Pauline Matarasso (ed. And trans.), The Cistercian World: Monastic Writings of the Twelfth Century (London, 1993) Berman, Constance Hoffman, The Cistercian Evolution: The Invention of a Religious Order in Twelfth Century Europe (Philadelphia, 2000) Burton, Pierre-André, ‘The Beginnings of Cistercian Expansion in England: The Socio-Historical Context of the Foundation of Rievaulx (1132)’ in Cistercian Studies Quarterly, Vol. 42 (2007) Constable, Giles, ‘Renewal and Reform in Religious Life: Concepts and Realities’, in Robert L. Benson, Giles Constable and Carol D. Lanham (eds.), Renaissance and Renewal in the Twelfth Century (Toronto, 1982) Leclerq, Jean, ‘The Renewal of Theology’, in Robert L. Benson, Giles Constable and Carol D. Lanham (eds.), Renaissance and Renewal in the Twelfth Century (Toronto, 1982) Mews, Constant J., ‘Bernard of Clairvaux, Peter Abelard and Heloise on the Definition of Love’, in Revista Portuguesa de Filosofia, Vol. 60 (2004) Pelikan, Jaroslav, The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine. Volume 3: The Growth of Medieval Theology (600-1300) (Chicago, 1978) Ryan, Patrick, ‘Sensus Amoris: The Sense of Love in Two Texts of William of Saint Thierry’, Cistercian Studies Quarterly, Vol. 40 (2005) Waddell, Chrysogonus, ‘The Reform of the Liturgy from a Renaissance Perspective’, in Robert L. Benson, Giles Constable and Carol D. Lanham (eds.), Renaissance and Renewal in the Twelfth Century (Toronto, 1982)

16

MARXIAN DEFINITIONS OF FEUDALISM IN THE CONTEXT OF THE TRANSITION DEBATE: DIFFICULTIES RESULTING FROM THEIR IMPLICATIONS

BY HUGO LUNN (GREY COLLEGE, 3RD YEAR) Much has been written on the transition from feudalism to capitalism, yet it remains one of the most challenging problems of economic history. One would assume that a single group of historians who nominally belong to one intellectual tradition would, at the very least, have a compatible opinion on the matter, differing perhaps only in emphasis. Yet, as this essay makes evident, this is far from the case; indeed, the transition debate has many themes and is the subject of much deliberation. For the sake of clarity and conciseness, this essay will examine only one dimension of it, the essential question of definition and interpretation. In the words of Fernand Braudel: 'The word feudalism tries to enter this debate: it carries many problems for Marxist historians once one tries to define it’.1 I will focus on the definitions presented by Maurice Dobb, Paul Sweezy, and Perry Anderson, illustrating the problems that they encounter offering a critique of their assumptions. As the historians whose opinions I will be examining are all of the Marxian tradition, it is worth noting that they were concerned with feudalism chiefly as a mode of production, stressing the significance of socio-economic themes as opposed to socio-political, save perhaps for Anderson.2 Furthermore, I must also highlight that the main objective of this essay – though this perhaps will not be explicitly evident throughout – is to explore the grounds for yet another economy-based definition of feudalism that will allow me to discuss the transition in more detail in the future.

Maurice Dobb sees feudalism as characterised by the occurrence of non-economic coercion of the producer to fulfil demands on behalf of a non-producer.3 Here, it is necessary to note that Dobb’s definition builds on a pre-existing, even well-established, tradition that denotes the concept of feudalism as a system of ownership that is primarily based on land tenure in exchange for military service, though J.M.W. Bean argues convincingly that the formation of feudalism must have been motivated by economic motives as well as military ones.4 Combining these two non-Marxian definitions, we arrive at feudalism as a system in which power stems from ownership of land, as military might and material endowment are both means of acquiring and accumulating power. Breudel concurs, acknowledging that land in the Middle Ages may be in some circumstances considered a form of currency.5 As Paul Sweezy was quick to point out, however, Dobb's definition ties feudalism to serfdom. This poses a significant problem in the classification of late Middle Ages in particular: this being a period in which

1 Fernand Braudnel, Sian Reynolds(trans.), The identity of France (London, 1991), p. 138.

2 Rodney Hilton, Class Conflict and the Crisis of Feudalism, (London, New York, 1990), p. 13; Maurice Dobb, Studies in the Development of Capitalism, (London, 1972), p. 35: “Our definition will characterise feudalism primarily as a mode of production” 3 Ibid.

4 John Bean, The Decline of English Feudalism; 1215-1540 (Manchester, New York, 1968), p. 5.

5 Braudel, Identity of France, p. 117.

Part I

capitalism was yet to develop, yet serfdom was far from dominant.6 Indeed, even in eighteenth-century France we see aristocrats continuing to invest their surplus wealth in land and titles, perpetuating feudalism.

Meanwhile, the number of serfs totalled around 140,000 out of a population of about 26 million, comprising only 0.5 per cent of the population.7 Evidently, then, there are socio-economic climates in which the feudal system can operate in absence of serfdom: one cannot assume that the two must coexist. However, it is also true that one should not neglect evidence to the contrary. George Tylor argues that the aristocracy was involved in commerce to a more substantial degree than has been previously speculated, although he also states that the bourgeoisie invested in land and titles themselves.8 John Mackrell seems to disagree on the extent to which the aristocracy engaged in commerce, but both historians do not find a capitalist class – at least, in the Marxist sense of the term – in pre-revolutionary France.9 This undermines Marx's presentation of the French Revolution as the final triumph of one mode of production over another, as such a perspective would require the nobility and bourgeois to be both legally and economically disjunct. Braudel points out that even during the uncontested Middle Ages, there was little correlation between material position and legal status.10 While the aforesaid objections do not challenge Marx's statement that capitalism may emerge only when the abolition of serfdom has been long affected, they do go some way in proving that Dobb's definition of feudalism may be somewhat defective.11 Paul Sweezy, in his apt criticism of Dobbs, proposes the following view: feudalism is system of production in which serfdom dominates, yet production is motivated by local needs for consumption and not the demands of trade.12 Sweezy’s interpretation of feudalism is, nonetheless, also flawed: in particular, Hilton was quick to point out that the extent to which commodities were produced for sale is grossly underestimated.13 Characterising feudalism by the significance of localised production (not to mention the ambiguity of the term 'localised') would also limit the usage of the term to Western Europe, ignoring Eastern and Asian feudalism, a point that Dobb raises in his reply, accusing Sweezy of bourgeois historiographical practices.14 Indeed, in the case of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, where a drop in the price of foodstuffs in the fifthteenth-century caused rent to be abandoned in favour of socage (the practice of permitting a tenant to hold land in return for non-military labour and services), Sweezy's definition fails to describe a mode of production that is feudal in character.15 Furthermore, it is worth noting that socage, while inherently feudal, was sub-economical: it proved beneficial to the peasantry because their condition did not fluctuate in accordance with the price of wheat. The transition to socage was only in the interest of the peasantry, and so its accomplishment can only directly challenge the Marxian narrative regarding the total inability of the peasant classes to assert their interests.16 The challenge to Sweezy's theory, then, is embodied by the fact that, in the sixteenth-century, Polish, Lithuanian, and Ruthenian nobles extended serfdom into a manorial economy in order to profit from the international corn trade, bringing about production not for consumption, but for sale in a market that was far from localised. As Banaji notes, feudalism reached its most refined and

6 Paul Sweezy, 'A Critique', in Paul Sweezy, Maurice Dobb et al., The transition from Feudalism to Capitalism, (London, 1992), p. 46.

7 Estimates by John Mackrell, The attack on "feudalism" in eighteenth-century France, (London, Toronto, 1973), p.

109.

8 George Taylor, 'Noncapitalist Wealth and the Origins of the French Revolution', The American Historical Review, Vol. 72, No. 2 (January 1967), pp. 487-90.

9 Mackrell, op. cit., p. 78.

10 Braudel Identity of France, p. 138.

11 Karl Marx, Capital; A Critique of Political Economy, Vol. I, transl. Samuel Moore, Edward Aveling, ed. Frederick Engels, (London, 1970), p. 715.

12 Sweezy, op. cit., p. 35.

13 Rodney Hilton, 'Capitalism- What's in a name?' in: Sweezy, Dobb et al., op. cit., p. 146.

14 Dobb, 'A reply', Ibid., p. 59.

15 Stanisław Szczur, Historia Polski: Średniowiecze, (Kraków, 2008), p. 563.

See also: Witold Kula, Teoria ekonomiczna ustroju feudalnego. Próba modelu, (Warszawa, 1962), passim.

16 For an explanation of peasant assertiveness in 15th-century, Normandy vide see Guy Bois, The Crisis of Feudalism, Economy and Society in Eastern Normandy c. 1300-1550, (Cambridge, 2009), p. 330.

18

Marxian definitions of feudalism in the context of the transition debate | Hugo Lunn

pure form when a feudal economy was confronted with a well-established market and underwent adjustments to become commodity-producing.17 Therefore, it is not unreasonable to state that similar outcomes were produced by similar processes and to attribute the development of feudalism in the West to an impulse for the producer to earn, not simply to consume and subsist. This is significant as it constitutes one of the two paths to capitalism, as outlined by Marx, wherein he rejected having a qualitative rather than quantitative impact. The taking-over of the production process by the capitalist and the creation of purchasable labour.18 Depending on what is to be understood by the term 'producer', two options follow. If the term denotes the worker, that is the serf or peasant, Marx is correct: the peasant class did not become the bourgeoise en masse and subsequently trigger a mass transition to capitalism, but were, instead, gradually disenfranchised, emerging as the proletariat. If, however, the term 'producer' signifies a feudal overlord, and the serfs are degraded to the means of production, playing an integral role in agricultural production, then the processes outlined by Szczur, Banaji and Kula undermine Marx's assertions. Furthermore, it is econometrically demonstrable that, provided one part of a group with similar material wealth produces for consumption while the other is less myopic, throughout many generations wealth will accumulate with the more economically minded.19 Upon examining these findings, we see that they are based on the assumption that feudalism was transformed from within itself. This notion is controversial among Marxians and non-Marxians alike, yet to dwell on it here would be unproductive, as to differentiate between internal and external factors one would have first to adopt a definition of feudalism.

The Marxist structuralist Perry Anderson takes an unusual approach to the question of defining the economic aspects of feudalism: “pre-capitalist modes of production cannot be defined except via their political, legal and ideological superstructures since these are what determine the type of extra-economic coercion that specifies them”.20 He goes on to characterise feudalism by what he calls ‘parcelised sovereignty’, thus supposing that the transition from feudalism to capitalism was due to the centralisation of states, which would ultimately culminate in the emergence of absolutism. Nonetheless, to present Andersons definition as a simple duality would be to do him injustice, particularly since he acknowledges that absolutist states are simply a reorganisation of feudal society and a transitional phase before capitalism.21 Takahashi, on the other hand, sees feudalism and absolutism as almost synonymous, pointing towards the establishment of capitalism in Japan and Prussia by a state that was at once both feudal and absolute.22 Such a judgement seems valid when it is considered that the Tsar – a notoriously feudal and despotic ruler – personally commissioned the trans-Siberian railway, subsequently establishing in Russia a totem of the industrial revolution. Anderson's view, however, provides reasonable grounds for suggesting that feudalism and capitalism were both regimes of private property, a view that I cannot help but agree with. Yet, some Marxians, like Katz, reject this conclusion, going so far as to define capitalism as the regime of private property, a stark contrast to other interpretations of the feudal system’s collective nature.23 I believe that both feudalism and medieval statehood are well elucidated as consequences of privatised property (in this case, land) together [and] with the population tethered to it by legislation. Such an interpretation is, I believe, valid as it incorporates the vital notion that land has little value in itself without cultivators who create a surplus from it, as well as the abovementioned understanding of land as currency and of wealth as a means of acquiring, accumulating and

17 Jairus Banaji, 'The peasantry in the feudal mode of production: Towards an economic model', in The Journal of Peasant Studies, Vol.3, No.3 (1976), pp. 312-3.

18 Claudio Katz, From Feudalism to Capitalism; Marxian Theories of Class Struggle and Social Change, (New York; London, 1989), pp. 112-3.

19 Trout Reader, The Economics of Feudalism, (New York, London, Paris, 1971), pp. 31-4.

20 Perry Anderson, Lineages of the Absolutist State (London, 1974), p. 404.

21 Robert Resh, Althusser and the Renewal of Marxist Social Theory, (Berkeley, Los Angeles, Oxford, 1992) p. 150; John Martin, Feudalism to Capitalism: Peasant and Landlord in English Agrarian Development, (London, 1986), passim, pp. 104-5.

22 Kohochiro Takahashi, 'A contribution to the discussion', Ibid., pp. 95-6.

23 Katz, op. cit., p. 183.

19

Part I

retaining power. Naturally, no such grand theory could be convincing without a solid foundation in the history of political and legal thought, an underdeveloped aspect of Marxian theories.24 The multitude of approaches to the question of feudalism from the Marxian side alone is staggering, sufficiently great to defy even a limited coverage. Witold Kula – the author of a monograph on Eastern European feudalism and refeudalisation, influential because it ultimately caused Marxians to scrutinise Eastern Europe in greater depth – noted that an accurate theory requires many modifiers, yet these decrease the number of societies that the theory may be meaningfully applied to.25 In other words: a universal definition must lack precision, and a precise one lack universality. The genesis of such Marxian discord lies to some extent in the writings of Marx himself; we read: “the emancipation of the oppressed class (...) implies necessarily the creation of a new society”.26 Moreover, Marx maintains that: “For the oppressed class to be able to emancipate itself it is necessary that the productive powers already acquired and the existing social relations should no longer be capable of existing side by side”.27 The first statement could be understood as supporting Dobb's definition, the second lending power to Sweezy's argument. While Bois warns of the futility of attacking the term feudalism itself, it is worth mentioning that it has dominated discourse to such a degree that its various shortcomings and incongruities cannot be overlooked.28 “The degree of embarrassment over issues into which narrow fanatics of the past and present and philosophical construers of history get themselves is their business and affects us little”; Jacob Burckhardt refers here to many of his contemporaries, historical determinists of one kind or another.29 One of them was indubitably Karl Marx, a mere 20 days older than Burckhardt himself. Marx, while a materialist, was a successor of Hegel's 'spiritual' historiosophy and the enlightenment thought of Concordet and Kant: he inherited both their notion of progress and their assumption of its benevolent character.30 'Feudalism', then, denotes an epoch within the Marxian rhetoric of progression which marks the evolution from more to less oppressive modes of production and social order. Therefore, most Marxians – indeed, all three historians examined above – appear to assume the inevitability of the transition from feudalism to a different system (whatever system that may be), although, as Hobsbawm highlights, such an assumption is not warranted.31 It was also demonstrated that the definitions of feudalism outlined above have their application limited by time and geography, and certainly cannot apply to all economic systems that are referred to as ‘feudalist’. On the basis of what has been shown, it would seem, then, that it would be beneficial to develop a theory of feudalism that, paradoxically, would not emphasise the separate nature of feudalism, but rather place it together with capitalism not as a system, but as a set of economic and social conditions within a system, the system itself being the very condition of mankind after the emergence of the concept of property and private ownership. After all, the very mechanism of the waning of feudalism appears to have ultimately resembled that of one product winning over another on a free market.32

24 Eric Hobsbawm, Karl Marx, Pre-capitalist economic formation, (London, 1964), pp. 16-17.

25 Kula, op. cit., pp. 18, 26.

26 Karl Marx, The poverty of philosophy, (New York, 1971), p. 173.

27 Ibid., pp. 173-4.

28 Kathleen Davies, Periodisation and Sovereignty; How ideas of feudalism and sovereignty govern the politics of time, (Philadelphia, 2008), p. 69; Bois, op. cit., p. 391.

29 Jacob Burchhardt, Judgements on History and Historians, (New York, London, 2007), p. 70.

30 Gerard Labuda, Rozważania nad teorią i historią kultury i cywilizacji, (Poznań, 2008), pp. 508-10.

31 Eric Hobsbawm, From Feudalism to Capitalism, in, Sweezy, Dobb et al., op. cit., pp. 160-1.

32 Rodney Hilton, The Decline of Serfdom in Medieval England, (London, 1969), p. 58-9.

20

Marxian definitions of feudalism in the context of the transition debate | Hugo Lunn

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Anderson, Perry, Lineages of the Absolutist State (London, 1974) Banaji, Jairus, 'The peasantry in the feudal mode of production: Towards an economic model', in The Journal of Peasant Studies, Vol.3, No.3 (1976) Bean, John, The Decline of English Feudalism; 1215-1540 (Manchester, New York, 1968) Bois, Guy, The Crisis of Feudalism, Economy and Society in Eastern Normandy c. 1300-1550 (Cambridge, 2009) Braudel, Fernand, Reynolds, Sian (trans.), The identity of France (London, 1991) Burchhardt, Jacob, Judgements on History and Historians (New York, London, 2007) Davies, Kathleen, Periodisation and Sovereignty; How ideas of feudalism and sovereignty govern the politics of time (Philadelphia, 2008) Dobb, Maurice, Studies in the Development of Capitalism (London, 1972) Hilton, Rodney, Class Conflict and the Crisis of Feudalism (London, New York, 1990) Hilton, Rodney, The Decline of Serfdom in Medieval England (London, 1969) Hobsbawm, Eric, Introduction to, Karl Marx, Pre capitalist economic formation (London, 1964) Katz, Claudio, From Feudalism to Capitalism; Marxian Theories of Class Struggle and Social Change, (New York; London, 1989) Kula,Witold, Teoria ekonomiczna ustroju feudalnego. Próba modelu (Warszawa,1962) Labuda, Gerard, Rozważania nad teorią i historią kultury i cywilizacji (Poznań, 2008) Mackrell, John, The attack on "feudalism" in eighteenth-century France (London, Toronto, 1973) Martin, John, Feudalism to Capitalism: Peasant and Landlord in English Agrarian Development (London, 1986) Marx, Karl, Engels, Frederick (ed.), Moore, Samuel and Aveling, Edwards (trans.), Capital; A Critique of Political Economy, Vol. I (London, 1970) Marx, Karl, The poverty of philosophy (New York, 1971) Reader, Trout, The Economics of Feudalism (New York, London, Paris, 1971) Resh, Robert, Althusser and the Renewal of Marxist Social Theory (Oxford, 1992) Sweezy, Paul, Dobb, Maurice et al., The transition from Feudalism to Capitalism (London, 1999) Szczur, Stanisław, Historia Polski: Średniowiecze, (Kraków, 2008) Taylor, George, 'Noncapitalist Wealth and the Origins of the French Revolution', in The American Historical Review, Vol. 72, No. 2 (1967)

21

HOW IMPORTANT WAS VIOLENCE IN ENDING COLONIAL RULE IN AFRICA?

BY TOM HENNESSY (COLLINGWOOD COLLEGE, 1ST YEAR) It is apparent that tangible violence did very little to directly encourage European powers to end colonial rule in Africa in the twentieth-century. Indeed, it was the only the threat of a widespread anti-colonial revolt – the likes of which even a total war campaign conducted by British and French forces could not have defeated – that would appear to have been the most impactful form of violence in the entire decolonisation process, and no such revolts ever actually materialised. The fact that large popular revolts failed to occur here at this time may be primarily attributed to the structure of colonial development programmes themselves, which were designed to prevent such occurrences. Nonetheless, these programmes proved costly, and it was eventually the spiralling costs of their strategies and pressing economic concerns that dictated that the British and French Imperial states – which encompassed the vast majority of the continent at the time – would end consensually.

This contrasts starkly with the termination of the Portuguese Empire in Africa, which was overthrown in a violent manner. Whilst it would appear that the economy was the foremost factor in determining the end of colonial rule in Africa, however, one must also acknowledge that other factors influenced the voluntary nature of the decolonisation process. Namely, European hopes to secure positive relations with new and impressionable African states, the emergence of more attractive investment opportunities elsewhere (like the markets of the European Economic Community), and international pressure from the United States and the United Nations all played a role in bringing about African decolonisation. Indeed, all of the above factors were more important than violence in ending colonial rule in Africa.

It is apparent that the biggest driver of decolonisation were the demands of colonised peoples, the majority of which appear to have stemmed from colonial development programmes themselves: these programmes aimed to justify imperialism by improving the living standards of imperial subjects, raising the expectations of African citizens, particularly concerning their material culture and standards of living. This appears to have been a particularly acute development in the French territories, primarily thanks to their employment of the rhetoric of ‘citizenship’, which made European standards of living appear more attainable and subsequently more anticipated. In reality, however, it would appear that the French rhetoric translated only into a willingness to settle strikes with pay-rises: in the instance of the Senegal General strike of 1946, for example, unionised African Labour managed to win a pay rise of 296%.1 A union negotiator made Senegalese reasoning for the increase patently clear: ‘the evolution of this country, the long contact of the African with whites has created needs in him… this requires a costly course of life and we need the money that we are asking from you’.2 Similar rhetoric – that of progress, development, and westernised material culture – was also used against other colonial regimes to great effect: at this time, we see similar strikes emerging in Mombasa and along the West African Railway, both winning substantial financial settlements. Ultimately, the willingness of colonial governments to settle labour disputes with concessions contributed to the spiralling costs of imperial rule in Africa, subsequently shaping the withdrawal of colonial powers.

Despite their detrimental impact on colonial powers, these disputes were not supressed with violence, primarily because western governments were wary of eliciting objection and violence among indigenous communities. During the West African Railway Strike of 1947, for instance, proposals to conscript workers were ultimately rejected because French officials were concerned that they would provoke their African subjects into revolt – here, then, we see the significance of the threat of violence, but not that of violence itself. Robert Delavignette, the head of political affairs in the Ministry in Paris, proclaimed that: ‘the strong

1 Frederick Cooper, Decolonisation and African Society: The Labour Question in French and British Africa (Cambridge, 2010) p. 230.

2 Ibid., p.229.

How important was violence in ending colonial rule in Africa?| Tom Hennessy

style directed at the strikers will not itself resolve the problem, if the government gives the impression and …’.Delavinette’s remarks prove exceptionally revealing, as they embody the vulnerability of the French, ultimately outlining the French government’s reasoning which would go on to shape future policies.

It is worth noting that western powers’ fears of appearing to betray their African subjects – albeit for selfinterested reasons – illustrates a marked U-turn in the attitude of western foreign policy. Indeed, indigenous Africans had long been considered inferior and unrefined, mere subjects to be coerced and dictated-to.

Europe’s increasingly conscious and wary approach towards the African continent and its inhabitants is exemplified in the British Empire’s attitude towards her own colonial possessions: we clearly see such prudence reflected in some observations made by the Secretary of State, Alfred Lyttelton, in the nineteenthcentury. Lyttelton – a high-ranking Conservative politician, well-placed to give an instructive insight into the state of the empire – proclaimed that: ‘we do not have the force to govern without the consent of the governed’.3 Moreover, the fact that this particular statement was extracted from Lyttelton’s personal diary suggests that it represents an accurate reflection of his own, informed opinion, one that is untainted by contemporaneous public rhetoric in Britain (which tended to emphasise Britain’s immense military strength and capacity for coercion). It is, then, evident that the threat of unrest and violence – and the fear that this incited in colonial governments – played a more significant role in encouraging Britain and France to concede to the socio-economic demands of their African subjects. These concessions subsequently increased the costs associated with imperial rule in Africa, which – at a time of European post-war reconstruction – proved to be both an unpopular and damaging reality for European colonial powers. It is, therefore, unsurprising that both the British and French governments made attempts to lower or limit their costs in Africa.

One way in which colonial powers sought to reduce the costs of governing their African possessions was to bestow political concessions on certain African organisations. These concessions oft entailed an increase in the autonomy of local authorities and an expansion of suffrage. The abovementioned allowances would appear to have been calculated decisions on the part of European colonial powers: European leaders were indubitably aware of the growing influence of African nationalism and the emergence of a popular political consciousness; they were subsequently wary of the unrest that these developments threatened to unleash. The concession of certain political rights, then, appeared to be an effective solution that enabled colonial governments to limit socio-political turmoil, make African organisations increasingly accountable for the shortcomings of colonial development schemes, and cost nothing to implement. Indeed, the British Special Intelligence Report for the Gold Coast, penned in 1951, explicitly outlines the careful calculations that colonial powers made when granting political concessions: the report itself repeatedly stresses that it would be unwise, even detrimental, for the British government to continue to imprison Kwame Nkrumah after his party had dominated recent legislative elections. European governors were, then, acutely aware that appearing to dismiss both their constitutional obligations and the tide of popular opinion would invigorate anti-colonial sentiments among Africans, causing ‘widespread agitation’.4 Therefore, it seems clear that a certain fear and anxiety of violence shaped the political concessions that European powers granted African colonies. One of the other, abovementioned benefits of bestowing increased political power to regional governments in African was that these organisations would then appear to be accountable for the progress of development programmes, or, as tended to be the case, the lack thereof. The Governor of Nigeria, Pleass, explicitly underlined this in his somewhat cynical conviction that: ‘inevitably the people are going to be disillusioned, but it is better that they should be disillusioned as a result of the failure of their own people than that they should be disillusioned as a result of our actions’.5 Furthermore, it should also be acknowledged that the fact that such concessions were granted may also suggest that colonial powers appeared to recognise that Africa’s path to independence was increasingly likely, even inevitable – these measures subsequently reduced the likelihood of a downfall that was violent and costly. Indeed, it is certainly telling that, in 1957 – whereupon many such policies had been implemented 3

Ronald Hyam, Britain's declining empire: the road to decolonisation, 1918-1968 (Cambridge, 2006) p. 170.

Cooper, Decolonisation and African Society, p. 266.

5 Ibid p. 394.

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throughout British and French Africa – Macmillan described African nationalism as an ideological ‘tidal wave’ that ‘cannot be driven back’, acknowledging the inexorability of African independence.6 Certainly, the fact that colonial powers realised that a revival of imperial control was increasingly unattainable by the mid twentieth century is significant, as it reduced European foreign policy in Africa down to a case of how long the British and French were prepared to hold out – a time span that would ultimately be dictated by a balance sheet.

The combination of socio-political and economic concessions that Britain and France granted their African possessions would appear to have been effective in the short term: they reduced the likelihood of violent revolution and appeared to appease African nationalists, at least temporarily. Nonetheless, another significant corollary of these concessions was a sharp decline in the power that Europe could exercise over Africa directly, proving financially costly as the metropole was increasingly unable to extract funds and resources from these territories. This is particularly significant given that it was through the lens of financial and budgetry matters that most European leaders ultimately came to regard their colonial property. Ronald Hyam reiterates this fact in his book: Britain’s Declining Empire, in which the scholar posits that Harold Macmillan presided over a voluntary decolonisation process in Africa in which violence and unrest played little to no role, but financial matters were decisive instead.7 Hyam’s argument appears valid given that it was ultimately the findings of Macmillan’s ‘profit and loss account’ of the British Empire, composed in 1957, that shaped the decision to officially decolonise the continent. The economic demands of African citizens – and the possibility of violence should the demands not be met to a sufficient standard – ultimately meant that colonial territories in African no longer constituted economic assets, and in some cases were even economic burdens.

This shaped Britain’s alacrity to decolonise certain regions. The French, too, were motivated by similar concerns, adding to the 1960 wave of independence after having ascertained that all territories except Algeria did not warrant neither the financial nor military expenses that the process demanded. For many colonies, then, acts of violence played little to no role in decolonisation compared to growing financial demands.

Nonetheless, the spectre of violence and reactive, preventative measured certainly shaped colonial policy significantly, ultimately proving costly.

The effect of outbreaks of anti-colonial violence can also be assessed in terms of economic factors and concerns. Indeed, the fact that war in Algeria did not end in an outright defeat of the French military but was, instead, a tactical retreat determined by economic factors proves the relevance of this theme to our essay. De Gaulle himself reiterated the fact that Algerian independence was shaped by fiscal concerns, stating that, although the war was intended to defend French pride and status, Algeria ultimately ‘costs us- that is the least one can say – more than it brings us’.8 This argument is also supported by the fact that similar insurrections – like the Mau Mau Uprising and the Magalsay Uprising – were defeated because the costs and resources involved in defeating these causes were deemed to be worthwhile. To some extent, then, the Algerian War and the two abovementioned uprisings appear to constitute two sides of the same coin, both sides illustrating the fact that economic resources often played a greater role in determining the fate of indigenous liberation movements than violence. Perhaps the only exception to this argument is that of the Portuguese Empire, as the independence of both Mozambique and Angola was principally achieved through the violence of ireful colonial subjects. Nonetheless, one must acknowledge that the Portuguese military was both economically and militarily weaker than its British or French equivalents: it would not be outrageous to suggest that these deficiencies contributed to their ultimate defeat, thereby suggesting that economic factors also played a role in the decolonisation of Mozambique and Angola, albeit indirectly. The economic decisions and statuses of colonial powers was, then, clearly influential in the decolonisation of Africa.

Another influential factor driving the decolonisation of Africa in the mid-twentieth century was the intensifications of European hopes to establish and maintain beneficial relationships with African states. With the collapse of colonialism on the continent appearing increasingly inevitable, many European colonial 6

Hyam, Britain's declining empire, p. 243.

Ibid p. 242.

8 Cooper, Decolonisation and African Society, p. 402.

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How important was violence in ending colonial rule in Africa?| Tom Hennessy

powers calculated that it would ultimately prove more fruitful to decolonise African territories as an act of goodwill – thereby establishing good relations with the newly-independent, malleable states that would ensue – than to let the situation escalate into one of violent conflict, which would only intensify tensions and truculence here. Indeed, the creation of organisations like the British Commonwealth and the Communauté Français, both of which operated to ensure amity between independent states and their former colonial masters, would proceed to have a tangible influence on former colonies. The inter-state relations that these communities fostered are sometimes deemed to be something of an equivalent to indirect rule, as they were primarily designed by European powers to extract economic benefits while saving on the costs of direct colonial rule. Indeed, it is certainly evident that this cost-benefit calculation remained at the forefront of European policy-makers’ minds: the British Commonwealth Development report of 1956 explicitly warns against maintaining colonial rule under ‘strained circumstances’ and advises that ‘co-operation with former colonies within an enlarged Commonwealth could offer opportunities to enhance Britain’s influence in the world’.9 The fact that this was proposed in 1956 – a time when much of Africa was painted red, and as tensions in the Cold War were escalating rapidly – suggests that the need to ease international tensions and fortify the global influence of the West was increasingly pertinent, playing a growing role in the decision to decolonise. To invoke a much-used metaphor, then, we could perceive the promise of improved foreign relations as the carrot that guided European colonial policy in Africa, whereas the spiralling costs of colonialism constituted the deterrent, the stick. In addition to the potential for establishing positive trading relations with young African states, the increasing economic integration of Europe itself also played a role in shaping the decision to decolonise Africa. The emergence of the European Coal and Steel Community, which would later evolve into the European Economic Area, certainly offered France opportunities for greater prosperity, for instance. In order to take advantage of these opportunities, however, the French domestic economy required substantial development and the investment of metropolitan funds, which necessitated cuts to colonial development plans. Pierre Mendes-France, an influential French politician of his day, even went as far as to suggest that economic reform would have to be mutually exclusive with colonialism, as the two were fundamentally incompatible: he contended that one would have to give in order to fund the other.10 The significance of this development in France in particular is twofold, as it both provided a strong economic argument in favour of decolonisation while clarifying that France would have to play a clear and prominent role in determining the future of Africa, both of which made decolonisation appear to be an increasingly appealing and rational option.

As this issue is complex and multi-faceted, one must briefly acknowledge that the influence of the United States and the United Nations played some role in encouraging Europe’s voluntary decolonisation of Africa, too. In light of the growing international tensions between the West and the Eastern Bloc, the United States was increasingly wary of the ideological threat that the USSR posed to her international reputation and those of her allies. Subsequently, the States increasingly advocated for the voluntary decolonisation of African territories, concerned that African states would end up under the influence of the Soviet Union should imperial European superpowers face a violent revolt. Indeed, the fact that this very issue became the central thesis of a 1959 report by the Africa Committee demonstrates that this was an important consideration for the British Imperial states in particular, thanks in part to the ‘special relationship’ that Britain maintained with the States.11 Although the United States and her ideological concerns evidently shaped the decolonisation of Africa, so too did the moral concerns voiced by bodies such as the UN. A growing international condemnation of colonialism put increasing pressure on colonial powers to appear to take the moral high-ground, presenting themselves as just and munificent. The impact of widespread censure also impacted the attitudes of indigenous politicians, who became noticeably more self-assured and tenacious, using international arenas like the UN in order to lobby for the resolution of the moral shortcomings of colonialism. While the growing influence of the United States and the UN evidently played a role in encouraging the voluntary decolonisation of the African continent, it is, however, somewhat challenging to establish the precise impact that this factor had. Indeed, while I consider the roles of the UN and the USA to be noteworthy, I also consider Hyam’s 9

John Hargreaves, Decolonisation in Africa (London, 1988) p. 173.

Cooper, Decolonisation and African Society, p. 402.

11 Hyam, Britain's declining empire, p. 256.

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contention that the mounting international pressure was almost the primary reason for decolonisation to be somewhat excessive. Indeed, it is ultimately impossible to measure exactly how much this factor influenced demands the decline of colonial power as ideological authority tends to take the form of intangible and undocumented pressures; it was, nonetheless, clearly more influential than violence.

Ultimately, it is quite evident that tangible violence played little direct role in ending colonial rule in Africa.

Indeed, it was only the threat of violence that had significant impact: this encouraged the consensual rule of colonial territories, which subsequently led to development initiatives that made imperialism financially untenable. Economic factors dominated the discussion. Indeed, even the outcome of violent uprisings against the British and the French were determined primarily by economic concerns: the Magalsay and the Mau Mau uprisings were crushed because victory was deemed to be worth economic expenditure, while the Algerian War was abandoned because De Gaulle ruled that it was too costly, not because the French armies had been defeated or lost control of major population centres. Other factors that contributed to decolonisation to a greater extent that actual violence was the possibility of post-imperial trading opportunities with new African states and increasing economic integration in Europe. These made decolonisation more economically attractive as, in addition to cutting a loss, a clear profit was in sight. Furthermore, international opinion was firmly against imperialism, thus positive publicity on the international stage and American pressure also aided the end of empire. It would seem, then, that economic and international political factors played greater roles in shaping the decolonisation of Africa, rather than outright violence.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Cooper, Frederick, Decolonisation and African Society: The Labour Question in French and British Africa (Cambridge, 2010) Hyam, Ronald, Britain's declining empire: the road to decolonisation, 1918-1968 (Cambridge, 2006) Hargreaves, John, Decolonisation in Africa (London, 1988)

26

TO WHAT EXTENT WAS THE BOXER REBELLION A NATIONALIST MOVEMENT?

BY YEONG QIAN HUI (VAN MILDERT COLLEGE, 2ND YEAR) The so-called Boxer Rebellion of 1899-1901 witnessed ‘the Society of the Righteous and Harmonious Fists’ (Yihe tuan) lead an uprising in the Shandong and Zhili provinces of northern China, ultimately costing the Qing state in excess of $300 million in damages. In order to examine the rebellion’s features and underlying causes, this essay utilises Jonathan Spence’s apt definition of Chinese nationalism in the late-nineteenth century: that of “a new, urgent awareness of… [China’s] relationship to foreign forces and the Manchus”, reinforcing the notion that Chinese society would only survive if its citizens rallied to resist foreign influence.1 This essay ultimately posits that the Boxer Rebellion was, to an extent, a nationalist movement as the conflict explicitly targeted both Western presence and the alien religion of Christianity, associating both with the evils of imperialism, which had been an evocative theme since the first Opium War. However, given the fact that both Chinese citizens and foreigners had long co-existed in China, it would appear that there were other factors that played a role in transforming this latent animosity into full-blown antagonism. Hence, I will, in this essay, contend that the rebellion was to a far greater extent the outcome of both the Chinese tradition of employing of religious logic to rationalise the natural disasters – many of which occurred in the late-1890s – and the culture of violence that existed in the local context of Northern China.

In order to gain a more complete and nuanced understanding of the rebellion, we will first explore its nationalistic undercurrents, as these appear to dominate interpretations of the event. The Boxer Rebellion was, to a certain degree, a nationalist movement as it was ostensibly fuelled by the desire to purge China of its “foreign devils”. Indeed, touting the slogan: “Support the Qing, destroy the foreign”, the Boxers explicitly targeted foreign economic interference, people, goods, infrastructure, and religion: demonising Christianity, missionaries and Chinese Christian converts.2 R. G. Tiedemann identifies the particularly key role that missionaries and their Christian converts played in exacerbating the Boxers’ violence: he contends that Christianity’s growing influence had political origins, deriving from the “unequal treaties” that China signed with Western powers in the nineteenth-century, which subsequently enabled missionaries to operate with the support of their respective foreign governments; significantly, this included the ability to intervene in China’s domestic political and judicial systems.3 Henrietta Harrison notes, furthermore, that it was not just the actual power of missionaries that increased, but that their visible presence also grew dramatically, particularly thanks to the construction of new churches – many of which were distinctly Western in style – and other highly conspicuous pieces of architecture and infrastructure like railroads.4 Many missionaries also practised their religious rituals in public, proselytising widely throughout Shandong.5 The Boxers attacked these manifestations of Western influence, resulting both in violent clashes with missionaries, and the growing dissemination of polemics that sought to demonise Christianity. One pamphlet circulated in the 1890s, for example, complained that, in Christianity: “Brothers, uncles, and nieces may marry inter-promiscuously” and

1

Jonathan D. Spence, The Search for Modern China, 3rd ed., (New York, 2013), p. 222.

Joseph W. Esherick, The Origins of the Boxer Uprising (Berkeley, 1987), p. 68.

3 R. G. Tiedemann, ‘The Church Militant: Armed Conflicts between Christians and Boxers in North China’, in Robert Bickers and R. G. Tiedemann (eds.), The Boxers, China, and the World (Lanham, 2007), p. 26.

4 Henrietta Harrison, The Missionary's Curse and Other Tales from a Chinese Catholic Village (Berkeley, 2013), pp.

98-9.

5 Henrietta Harrison, The Missionary's Curse and Other Tales from a Chinese Catholic Village (Berkeley, 2013), pp.

98-9.

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Part I

urged the Chinese to “unite hands and hearts to keep out [this] evil”.6 Boxer tracts also utilised puns on the Mandarin words for “Lord” and “hog”, portraying Christianity as an uncivilised and brutish religion that worshipped pigs.7 Using this combination of scare-mongering and entertainment effectively, the Boxers’ exhortations attracted many Chinese citizens who regarded Christianity as a disruptive influence in their daily lives, or else associated it with China’s struggle against Western imperialism. It would, then, appear that the Boxer Rebellion was a somewhat nationalistic movement, both motivated-by and promulgating anti-foreign sentiments that ultimately resulted in targeted attacks on ‘foreign’ and ‘corrupted’ spiritual practices and infrastructure.

Nonetheless, one must acknowledge that, according to Spence’s apt definition of Chinese nationalism, the Boxers did not constitute a strictly ‘nationalist’ movement: they targeted foreign missionaries and Christianity almost exclusively, failing to address the issue of the Manchus that Spence also draws attention to. Though the Boxers came into occasional conflict with Qing troops – criticising them for failing doing enough to extirpate foreigners – they generally regarded the Qing state as a valid representation of Chinese tradition and appear to have taken care to avoid direct attacks on Qing officials.8 Concomitantly, the Qing court’s response was to tolerate the Boxers rather than to suppress them. Indeed, it would appear that, in the mid-1900s, Empress Dowager Cixi took this one step further by explicitly expressing sympathy for the cause, ordering all provincial officials to support the Boxers and declaring war on foreigners.9 Nonetheless, it would seem that some provincial Governor-Generals failed to comply with the decree: in Shadong, Yuan Shikai actively suppressed Boxers with his New Army, indicating that, in practice, the state’s approach to the Boxers was mixed.10 Nonetheless, this example serves only to illustrate the fact that the Boxers cannot be considered to have been a wholly nationalist movement: they had no quarrel with the Qing state itself, and did not strive to achieve autonomy from it. Indeed, Paul Cohen makes the shrewd observation that it is predominantly Chinese Marxist historians who portray the Boxer Rebellion as a nationalist movement, praising its patriotic struggle against corrupting foreign influences.11 This suggests that the mislabelling of the Rebellion as a purely nationalistic event serves to benefit a particular historiographical narrative that is driven by ideological matters: this cannot be considered to be wholly reliable. Furthermore, Cohen also contends that the claims made by these Marxist thinkers ultimately paved the way for China’s more overtly aggressive nationalist movements in the early-twentieth century, subsequently having a tangible political influence that cemented this view of the Boxer Rebellion.12 To characterise the Boxer Rebellion as a nationalist movement, then, is to simplify its complex origins and differing relationships with various institutions. This is particularly significant given that a fear and hatred of foreigners would appear to have been subsumed into the broader struggle only when an external catalyst acted upon it.

The abovementioned external catalyst was, in this instance, a severe drought that affected the plains of Northern China between 1899 and 1900. This drought inflicted considerable suffering on the Chinese peoples, many of whom tried to rationalise their distress through the lens of their orthodox religious beliefs, which dictated that all occurrences were products of divine agency. Traditionally, these preordained natural disasters were blamed on the misdeeds and immorality of local officials.13 However, against the backdrop of China's mounting tensions with foreign powers in the 1890s – and a growing sense of anxiety, as traditional raininducing rituals and prayers failed to produce results – the Chinese people began to identify foreigners as the blameworthy party, their Western corruption and greed upsetting the cosmic balance; Cohen terms this

6 Pei-kai Cheng, Michael Lestz, and Jonathan D. Spence (eds.), The Search for Modern China: A Documentary Collection, 2nd ed., (New York; London, 1999), pp. 166-7.

7 Peter C. Perdue and Ellen Sebring, ‘Boxer Uprising - I: The Gathering Storm in North China (1860-1900)’, MIT Visualizing Cultures, accessed November 9, 2018. https://ocw.mit.edu/ans7870/21f/21f.027/boxer_uprising/bx_essay01.html.

8 Esherick, The Origins, pp. 253-4.

9 William T. Rowe, China's Last Empire: The Great Qing (Cambridge MA, 2009), pp. 244-5.

10 Thomas D. DuBois, Religion and the Making of Modern East Asia (Cambridge, 2011), p. 149.

11 Paul A. Cohen, China Unbound: Evolving Perspectives on the Chinese Past (London, 2003), pp. 85-6.

12 Ibid 13 Ibid., p.109.

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To what extent was the Boxer Rebellion a nationalist movement??| Yeong Qian Hui

phenomenon “scapegoatism”.14 The Boxers, perhaps unsurprisingly, took the lead in championing the attack on foreigners: a pamphlet of 1899 that was, in all likelihood, distributed to Boxer troops outlined their belief that “No rain fell, the earth became barren, [and] all because their churches only worship one God”.15 Though the Boxers’ anti-foreign sentiments advocated the elimination of foreign influences in order to placate the Heavens may seem inherently nationalistic, it would seem to have been less of a reaction to immigrants themselves, than a desperate attempt to understand and resolve devastating natural phenomena – less ideological, more practical.

Furthermore, it is pertinent to note that there are two more factors that help to demonstrate why the rebellion was not a nationalist movement but was, rather, a reaction to external catalysts; these arguments shall be duly acknowledged.

Firstly, much of the agrarian population in Shandong and Zhili found themselves unemployed after the drought of 1899-1900, subsequently learning Yihe boxing to pass the time. As the drought persisted, the number of idle farmers who joined the Boxers began to grow, alongside resentment at rising costs and unemployment levels. This would appear to have bolstered the Boxers’ numbers, contributing to the movement’s popularity and reach.

Secondly, the popularity of the practice of ‘spirit possession’ that the Boxers advocated boomed in the late nineteenth century, as Chinese citizens sought to preserve themselves and gain resistance to everything from illness and environmental disasters to bullets and conflict, indicating the sense of vulnerability that was prevalent in Chinese society. As groups of Boxers traversed the countryside, demonstrating the strength of their fighting-style and spirit-possession rituals, more and more villagers joined the movement in an attempt to safeguard their wellbeing. This reiterates our understanding of the Boxer rebellion as a reactive and practical response to a widespread sense of societal vulnerability, rather than the product of ideological, nationalistic fanaticism. Indeed, the popularity of spirit-possession indicates that self-preservation, rather than socio-cultural preservation, remained at the forefront of the Boxers’ minds.16 Cohen himself contends that the ease with which people could participate in Boxer rituals – thereby ostensibly becoming invulnerable – was a significant factor that contributed to the growth of the Boxer movement and the ability of Boxers to rally peasants to their cause.17 Additionally, many sources, including various official memorials, draw a causal link between the 1900 drought and the Boxer Rebellion. Overall, this evidence suggests the Boxer Rebellion was not a nationalist movement, but one that arose in reaction to a disruptive external catalyst and was a conduit through which the Chinese sought to cope with this disruption.

The origins of the Boxers and the tendency of the northern Chinese populace to sympathise with the Boxer Rebellion can also be situated within the local conditions of the areas where Boxer activity first began. Indeed, Joseph Esherick aptly notes the significance of the correlation between the economic and ecological fragility of a region and its Boxer activity. It is certainly worth noting that the region where the first Boxers originated – Guan Country, home to the Boxers United in Righteousness and the namesake of the Boxer movement, and the Yellow River where the practice of spirit possessions first began – were areas characterised by poverty, banditry, underdeveloped commerce and a susceptibility to natural disasters.18 Collectively, Shandong and Zhili had experienced high levels of emigration following the 1877 famine, and those who had remained suffered from the extortionate price of grain.19 Furthermore, Guan county and the rest of northwest Shandong lacked not only in socio-economic resources, but also remained a politically weak area due to the dearth of local Confucian elites, who tended to ensure peasant propriety and thereby stabilised the local political 14

Ibid., p.110.

Peter C. Perdue and Ellen Sebring, ‘Boxer Uprising - II: War and Aftermath (1900-1901)’, MIT Visualizing Cultures, accessed November 9, 2018, https://ocw.mit.edu/ans7870/21f/21f.027/boxer_uprising_02/bx2_essay02.html.

16 Cohen, China Unbound, p.95.

17 Ibid., p. 95.

18 Esherick, The Origins, pp. 137-8.

19 Henrietta Harrison, ‘Village Politics and National Politics: The Boxer Movement in Central Shanxi’, in Robert Bickers and R. G. Tiedemann (eds.) The Boxers, China, and the World (Lanham, 2007), p. 4.

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landscape. Hence, many villagers were drawn to militant sects and other unorthodox sources of leadership, or else were more likely to migrate to other areas in search of better economic opportunities.20 One must also acknowledge the fact that the population in the Yellow River floodplains tended to be poorlyeducated or else illiterate: many strongly identified with the Gods who could possess them with qualities and personalities that were prevalent in novels and popular operas.

Certainly, economic factors were also at play here as the export of machine-spun cotton decreased drastically during this time. This development proved particularly detrimental to cotton-growing regions like northwest Shandong, and issues here were only exacerbated by the fact that these regions often lacked the resources to source alternative incomes.21 The population in Shandong was subsequently both economically unstable and volatile; as the Boxers grew in strength and refined the message of their mission, these communities were increasingly drawn towards the movement. Despite the fact that the targets of their violence were foreigners, the Boxers were arguably not a nationalist movement as their restiveness stemmed from the instability of their conditions, not an innate xenophobia.

Tiedemann furthers the argument that local context was a critical factor in the emergence of the rebellion, noting that Christianity was actually somewhat popular among rural Chinese communities. Many such communities tended to perceive the Christian faith as an alternative to competitive Civil Service Examinations: for those who failed the examination or resented the influence of local officials, the missionaries – who could settle disputes on their behalf and protect them from exploitation – represented an appealing alternative source of authority.22 Furthermore, villagers caught-up in factional strife often turned to churches for assistance in escaping the false accusations levelled at them by local officials.23 Here, Thomas DuBois supports Tiedemann’s perspective, observing that missionaries had contributed much to local Chinese communities since the early-nineteenth century; they had, for instance, built hospitals and orphanages that functioned as the "Halls of Benevolence" funded by Qing elites.24 These munificence of these institutions earned the admiration of the Chinese, suggesting that missionaries – regardless of ethnicity – had a history of relatively peaceful coexistence. Once contextualised in the factionalised social landscape of rural China, it is that Christianity’s peaceful and charitable reputation would have some appeal to certain communities. As Esherick highlights, then, it is clear the Boxer Rebellion could not have merely constituted an abrupt conflict that was ignited by a Chinese hatred for Christianity, but instead represents the escalation of a localised culture of violence, a process catalysed by severe drought.

Certainly, the Boxer Rebellion both motivated-by and explicitly targetted the elements of Chinese society that were perceived to be ‘foreign’, particularly the Christian faith. Despite all appearances, however, the Rebellion was to a far greater extent a reaction-against and a means of coping with external events, such as periods of drought or famine, and the product of a local culture of economic instability and violence in northern China. Perhaps the Boxer Rebellion is often remembered as a nationalist movement because it fostered broader nationalist stirrings across China, subsequently manifesting in movements like the 1911 Xinhai Revolution, which helped bring about the end of the Qing dynasty. Nonetheless, once one begins to examine the Rebellion as a movement in and of itself, it becomes clear that the Boxer Rebellion was have only superficially xenophobic and nationalistic, stirred instead by deep-seated, interrelated and complex socio-economic factors.

20

Esherick, The Origins, p. 210.

Ibid., p. 69.

22 Tiedemann, “The Church Militant”, p. 21.

23 Ibid., pp. 22-3.

24 DuBois, Religion, p. 144.

21

30

To what extent was the Boxer Rebellion a nationalist movement??| Yeong Qian Hui

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Cheng, Pei-kai, Lestz, Michael, and Spence, Jonathan D. (eds.), The Search for Modern China: A Documentary Collection, 2nd ed., (New York; London, 1999) Cohen, Paul A., China Unbound: Evolving Perspectives on the Chinese Past (London, 2003) DuBois, Thomas D., Religion and the Making of Modern East Asia (Cambridge, 2011) Esherick, Joseph W., The Origins of the Boxer Uprising (Berkeley, 1987) Harrison, Henrietta, ‘Village Politics and National Politics: The Boxer Movement in Central Shanxi’, in Robert Bickers and R. G. Tiedemann (eds.) The Boxers, China, and the World (Lanham, 2007) Harrison, Henrietta, The Missionary's Curse and Other Tales from a Chinese Catholic Village (Berkeley, 2013) Perdue, Peter C. and Sebring, Ellen, ‘Boxer Uprising - I: The Gathering Storm in North China (1860 1900)’, MIT Visualizing Cultures, accessed November 9, 2018. https://ocw.mit.edu/ans7870/21f/21f.027/boxer_uprising/bx_essay01.html.

Perdue, Peter C. and Sebring, Ellen, ‘Boxer Uprising - II: War and Aftermath (1900-1901)’, MIT Visualizing Cultures, accessed November 9, 2018, https://ocw.mit.edu/ans7870/21f/21f.027/boxer_uprising_02/bx2_essay02.html.

Rowe, William T., China's Last Empire: The Great Qing (Cambridge MA, 2009) Spence, Jonathan D., The Search for Modern China, 3rd ed., (New York, 2013) Tiedemann, R. G., ‘The Church Militant: Armed Conflicts between Christians and Boxers in North China’, in Robert Bickers and R. G. Tiedemann (eds.), The Boxers, China, and the World (Lanham, 2007)

31

WAS BIOMEDICINE IN AFRICA A COLONIAL PROJECT?

BY JOSEPHINE SIMON (UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, 1ST YEAR) The partitioning and colonisation of Sub-Saharan Africa in the late nineteenth century heralded the first introduction of Western biomedicine to the region, often with the intention of advancing existing medical knowledge. In particular, biomedicine shaped the conduct and application of experimental research, with its results being applied to clinical practice and subsequently shaping the establishment of healthcare systems in the African colonies.

Before we explore this process and its implications in greater depth, however, we must first define the concept of biomedicine: this essay considers biomedicine to mean the application of medical knowledge to clinical practice. Clinical practice, by extension, was ultimately linked to the power that European states wielded over their colonies and their subjects; scientific knowledge, research, and practice formed a key pillar of the state and its infrastructure. The goal of advancing scientific knowledge – and subsequently strengthening the colonial state – was ultimately accomplished through the various colonial projects of medical professionals, researchers and missionaries, many of whom ultimately acted in the interests of European Empires, be it intentionally or unintentionally. To describe the application of biomedicine in Africa as a ‘colonial project’, then, seems somewhat fitting. Indeed, biomedical projects ranged from experimental medical practices and research, to widespread public health campaigns that sought to prevent the spread of epidemics. Western missionaries were also significant, with their self-run clinics and religious beliefs driving a strong advocacy for the improvement of healthcare provisions for indigenous populations. The shift in the application of medicine throughout the colonial period can be attributed to colonial states’ involvement in providing healthcare and medical facilities to African populations. Although the extent of medical care provided in colonial states differed between territories and imperial powers, biomedicine in Africa was the foundation for several colonial projects: medical practices were used to assert authority over indigenous peoples, and to shape their perceptions of the changes that colonial powers enacted.

In the late nineteenth-century, European researchers established their authority over African populations by conducting biomedical experiments on indigenous subjects, testing their medical knowledge and practices.

The colonisation of Africa, which “coincided with the emergence of medical microbiology”, facilitated the identification of different pathogens and presented new opportunities for scientific discoveries.1 Medical researchers ultimately saw Africa as a biomedical laboratory “in which scientific reputations could be made”.2 The impetus behind these experiments was not, therefore, the prospect of bettering the wellbeing of colonised populations, but the opportunity to enjoy international acclaim. This process, of gathering participants and samples to undergo investigation, occurred in many colonial states. This was perhaps most notable in Tanganyika, where the German-occupied territory underwent “large-scale sample-taking”.3 Similar investigative methods continued there even when Britain assumed control of the colony, leading to the expansion of a system of district hospitals that the Germans had established. Despite the fact that these institutions offered some degree of medical treatment, they were often overcrowded, with medical personnel deeming them to be inadequate.4 As a colonial project then, biomedicine initially aimed at the advancement of scientific knowledge through experimental research, and did not necessarily strive to provide an effective public healthcare system. Hawking, a researcher for the Medical Department of the Tanganyika territory,

1

Patrick Malloy, ‘Research Material and Necromancy: Imagining the Political-Economy of Biomedicine in Colonial Tanganyika’, in The International Journal of African Historical Studies, Vol. 47 (2014), p. 425.

2 Megan Vaughan, Curing their Ills: Colonial Power and African Illness (Cambridge, 1991), p. 37.

3 Malloy, ‘Research Material and Necromancy’, pp. 426-427.

4 Ibid., pp. 427-430.

Was Biomedicine in Africa a Colonial Project? | Josephine Simon

investigated microfilaria infections by taking large scale blood samples and conducting human experiments, “deliberately expos[ing] these research subjects to microfilaria infection”.5 Similarly, the experiments performed on African subjects in the German East African Colonies reinforces the concept of Africa as a laboratory for European biomedicine.6 The Foreign Ministry received reports of the first case of sleeping sickness in 1902, leading the German government to send an expedition to its colonies to study the epidemic. Although there were only 150 cases of sleeping sickness, a second expedition was sent to Togo in 1908 to investigate the epidemic further. Victims and suspects of the disease were relocated to the Hausberg camp, where subjects underwent painful procedures and medical isolation.7 During late nineteenthcentury colonialism, the projects initiated by authorities and medical scientists were aimed at irresponsibly applying biomedicine to clinical practice with little focus on the wellbeing of patients. Biomedicine in Africa was, therefore, an intensely colonial project: researchers asserted their authority over indigenous populations, using African subjects to further their biomedical knowledge.

In responding to epidemics with medical campaigns and the forced relocation of unaffected populations, the colonial state established control over indigenous communities by uprooting them from their original social settings. In the early colonial years, imperial powers promoted medical campaigns to prevent the spread of epidemic diseases, such as sleeping sickness, as they threatened the states’ economic and political stability.

To contain sleeping sickness “large research expedition[s]” were set up, with the intention of determining the cause and treatment of the disease.8 These campaigns experimented on patients, conforming to the “stereotype of biomedical practice as objectifying and alienating”.9 This aspect of the medical campaigns further indicates that early colonial projects aimed to acquire medical knowledge through coercive and controlling means, instead of providing actual treatment for their subjects. To prevent the spread of epidemic diseases in the early twentieth century, ‘great campaigns’ initially enforced isolation policies, establishing camps to resettle those not affected. The relocation of local communities “blurred the distinction between genuine concerns about health” and the coloniser’s effort to overpower the indigenous population by uprooting them from their traditional social settings.10 British sleeping sickness campaigns introduced in 1910 used coercion to relocate, and assert medical authority over, African communities. The evacuation campaigns coincided with extreme “brutality during colonial conquest”, indicating that biomedicine served to justify colonial states in the establishment of military authority over African populations.11 The movement of people away from epidemic areas disrupted the social structure of indigenous communities. This “manipulation of space as a means of social control” enabled colonial authorities to manipulate local societies through their superior medical knowledge.12 Medical campaigns, then, reveal the application of biomedicine to clinical practice through experiments and additionally suggest that colonial authorities employed the concept of ‘biopower’ to assert their authority over the indigenous communities by relocating them for medical purposes.

Colonial missionaries also attempted to change the minds and attitudes of indigenous populations through biomedicine and healing. The aforementioned concept of ‘biopower’, controlling people through medical knowledge and superiority, was applied to convince Africans of the benefits of colonising missions and the imperial power’s primacy. In early forms of colonialism, missionaries provided more extensive medical care to the African population than the colonial states.13 They attempted to combine aspects of Western biomedicine with spiritual healing methods, providing healthcare to Africans as an “essential aspect of the

5

Ibid., p. 431.

Wolfgang U. Eckart, ‘The Colony as a Laboratory: German Sleeping Sickness Campaigns in German East Africa and Togo, 1900-1914’, in History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences, Vol. 24 (2002), p. 69.

7 Eckart, ‘The Colony as a Laboratory’, pp. 81-83.

8 Vaughan, Curing their Ills, pp. 36-37.

9 Ibid., pp. 51-52.

10 George Oduor Ndege, Health, State, and Society in Kenya (Woodbridge, 2001), pp. 19-20.

11 Ndege, Health, State, and Society, pp. 21-24.

12 Ibid., pp. 31-33.

13 Vaughan, Curing their Ills, p. 55.

6

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Part I

civilizing mission”.14 In the late nineteenth century, missionaries set up hospitals and rural clinics across East and Central Africa, providing medical training to Africans, in order for them to assist in welfare clinics.15 In the 1920s African men ‘demanded that the colonial state provide facilities like those established by missions’, demonstrating the success and importance of welfare clinics to indigenous communities.16 Missionaries were far more involved with local African societies than the colonial states, and “any prolonged encounter with biomedicine was likely to have been an encounter with an explicitly Christian version of it”.17 Even in the 1930s, missionary doctors continued to cover vast areas to provide African communities with medical support, as colonial agents did not reach isolated rural communities.18 Additionally, missionaries combined biomedicine with religion, attempting to convince the indigenous population to adopt Christianity. The Belgian missionaries, for example, “displayed pictures of the Belgian King and Queen alongside the Bible in the hospital”, displaying to African patients Belgian political hierarchy and religion through medical practices.19 Hunt’s analysis in A Colonial Lexicon examines missionary medicine in the Belgian Congo; however, it focuses chiefly on the Yakasu British Baptist medical mission.

Although this “microhistory is intended to contribute to the historiographies of medicine, missions, and gender in the Congo”, the narrow focus on one mission raises the question as to whether it also applies to other areas of the Congo.20 Though the investigation is limited to the Yakasu British Baptist medical mission, Hunt incorporates statistical figures representing the entire colony, depicting the “network of maternities” and welfare clinics across the Belgian Congo. These figures show that the aims of colonial missionaries, to improve “maternity care efforts” in the colony, were successful, as in 1935 only one percent of births were “medically supervised”, whereas in 1958 this figure had increased to forty-three percent.21 Nonetheless, these improvements were linked to colonial missionaries’ coupling of biomedicine and religious aims, asserting their superior medical knowledge over the indigenous population, in order to legitimise the medical and religious changes introduced by colonialism.

Although biomedicine largely remained a colonial project, the interwar period brought a shift in the medical aims and approaches of colonial states. Colonial administrators’ focus altered to incorporate both the advancement of medical knowledge and the development of healthcare for the African population. After the First World War, several colonial states increased their funding for welfare clinics and the training of medical personnel.22 In Kenya, the British colonial state introduced a “deliberate policy” for the medical training of Africans, establishing an official program in 1926 after being criticised for the limited healthcare provided and the lack of interest shown by the state in the welfare of its population.23 The government funding of medical facilities and officials can therefore be seen as the colonial state’s fulfilment of its moral obligation to African populations, using biomedicine as a colonial project to benefit society. However, local society and culture were not covered in these medical programs, as colonial authorities “deliberately omitted” such studies “based on the projection of western biomedicine as science”.24 Although the colonial government funded healthcare systems and the training of medical personnel, it maintained authority over medical practices by distancing western biomedicine from African society. Power over African people was, therefore, achieved through Western medicine and the colonialists’ superior medical knowledge. Though colonial biomedical projects continued in the twentieth century, their aims shifted after the First World War to accommodate improving African populations’ healthcare systems.

14 John L Comaroff and Jean Comaroff, Of Revelation and Revolution, Volume 2: The Dialectics of Modernity on a South African Frontier (Chicago, 1997), p. 325.

15 Vaughan, Curing their Ills, p. 55.

16 Ibid., p. 69.

17 Ibid., p. 55.

18 Ibid., p. 66.

19 Nancy Rose Hunt, A Colonial Lexicon of Birth Ritual, Medicalization, and Mobility in the Congo (London, 1999), p.

320.

20 Ibid., pp. 5-6.

21 Ibid., p. 3.

22 Ibid., p. 70.

23 Ndege, Health, State, and Society, pp. 75-81.

24 Ibid., p. 82.

34

Was Biomedicine in Africa a Colonial Project? | Josephine Simon

In the Belgian Congo and South Africa, the improvement of healthcare aimed to benefit workers’ health conditions in order to maintain the quality of labour. In South Africa, the senior epidemiologist for the South African Medical Research Council suggested that the “physical work capacities” for labourers should be improved through the establishment of better healthcare and the eradication of diseases.25 Similarly, the copper mining company Union Minière du Haut-Katanga in the Congo implemented policies affecting healthcare and “initiating a pioneering maternal and infant healthcare program”. This encouraged workers and their families to move to mine compounds.26 Although the establishment of healthcare programs for African labourers led to higher birth rates among mining families, the objective of the healthcare programs for African labourers was for colonial companies to gain greater control over their workers. Biomedicine as a colonial project in Africa, therefore, allowed the colonial companies to improve working conditions and consequently receive better quality labour. In the 1920s, the colonial government in the Belgian Congo also intervened in maternal and infant healthcare, as there was a concern "about the impact of population loss, infertility, and low birth rates on growing industrial labour requirements".27 Biomedicine in the later colonial period was a colonial project, as the imperial powers and colonial companies took initiatives to improve the medical care for African workers, intending to improve the quality of labour. This was biomedicine at its most seditious, improving quality of life, but at the cost of total submission to the colonial state and its economic objectives.

Biomedicine was a prominent feature of various colonial projects in Sub-Saharan Africa, ranging from biomedical research conducted to advance scientific knowledge, to medical campaigns that allowed the imperial powers to gain control over African populations. Analysis of missionary involvement in local communities demonstrates their efforts to change minds and attitudes concerning the biomedical and religious changes introduced by colonial states. Colonial missionaries and imperial powers also expressed this through the use of biopower, as they used the superiority of Western biomedicine to control African people.

Additionally, the funding of health programs by colonial states in the twentieth century and the improvement of medical care for African workers by colonial companies show that various colonial projects involved biomedicine, and that the general aim of these projects was to assert authority over the African population through the use of medical knowledge and practise. Biomedicine in Africa was, overall, a colonial project with a complex legacy. More (seemingly) genuine attempts to improve public health in the 20th century could be spun as positive, however, biomedicine’s use as a tool of colonial subjugation cannot be overlooked.

25 Steven Feierman, ‘Struggles for control: The Social Roots of Health and Healing in Modern Africa’, in African Studies Review 28 (1985), p. 102.

26 Hunt, A Colonial Lexicon, p. 244.

27 Nancy Rose Hunt, ‘Le Bebe en Brousse: European Women, African Birth Spacing and Colonial Intervention in Breast Feeding in the Belgian Congo’, in The International Journal of African Historical Studies 21 (1988), pp. 402303.

35

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Comaroff, John L., and Comaroff, Jean, Of Revelation and Revolution, Volume 2: The Dialectics of Modernity on a South African Frontier (Chicago, 1997) Eckart, Wolfgang U., ‘The Colony as a Laboratory: German Sleeping Sickness Campaigns in German East Africa and Togo, 1900-1914’, in History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences, Vol. 24 (2002) Feierman, Steven, ‘Struggles for control: The Social Roots of Health and Healing in Modern Africa’, In African Studies Review, Vol. 28 (1985) Hunt, Nancy Rose, A Colonial Lexicon of Birth Ritual, Medicalization, and Mobility in the Congo (London, 1999) Hunt, Nancy Rose, ‘Le Bebe en Brousse: European Women, African Birth Spacing and Colonial Intervention in Breast Feeding in the Belgian Congo’, in The International Journal of African Historical Studies, Vol. 21 (1988) Malloy, Patrick, ‘Research Material and Necromancy: Imagining the Political-Economy of Biomedicine in Colonial Tanganyika’, in The International Journal of African Historical Studies, Vol. 47 (2014) Ndege, George Oduor, Health, State, and Society in Kenya (Woodbridge, 2001) Vaughan, Megan, Curing their Ills: Colonial Power and African Illness (Cambridge, 1991)

PART II: 4000 WORDS

Prebend’s Bridge at Sunset (Adrian Baev, 2018)

INES ANDRADE: To what extent can ‘The Refugee, or A North-side View of Slavery’ (1856) be used to aid our understanding of Slavery?

Pages 38-45

DAVID MANCHESTER: Why was there no successful diplomatic resolution to the Hundred Years’ War? Pages 46-53

KATSUYUKI KARL OMAE: Were the political and cultural movements of 20th century Japan driven by criticism of the West?

Pages 54-61

TO WHAT EXTENT CAN BENJAMIN DREW’S ‘THE REFUGEE, OR A NORTHSIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY’ (1856) BE USED TO AID OUR UNDERSTANDING OF SLAVERY?

BY INES ANDRADE (VAN MILDERT COLLEGE, 2ND YEAR) Benjamin Drew’s ‘The Refugee, or A North-side View of Slavery’ remains largely unanalysed as a source of American history. Conflated with other abolitionist-produced accounts, it has been portrayed as merely presenting Northern fictional tropes. While this notion is partially true, it has been accepted uncritically.

Rather than accepting a portrayal of the work as an abolitionist distortion, we must consider how the work differs from its counterparts. This may be through its unique context—its disconnection from public pressure, or its publication in Canada—or what is written in the accounts themselves. Analysing this allows for a more genuine impression of slavery, as an institution in constant flux; defined by a fundamental insecurity that belies many of the linear narratives we have come to expect. The result is a more complex image of the slave experience, which allows for the recognition of interviewees anxieties, and their attempts to autonomously negotiate their condition. This understanding of the slave experience supports a wider understanding of slavery itself, by problematizing overgeneralisations, either along contemporary or relating historiographical lines. In doing this, we at least wipe the sheen from the static fictionalised image of the slave, whose current pervasiveness obscures those real individuals who “had a life (…) and they could never tell us what it was”.1 Finding reliable source material is a challenge that haunts the study of Southern Slavery: the Antebellum South had notoriously low levels of literacy.2 Thus, our ‘traditional’ information’ mainly comes from court or plantation records, and the personal writings of Southern white elites.3 This presents an obvious limitation.

As historians such as Richard Hofstadter criticised in the 1940s, histories based entirely from such records tend to present an idealised impression of slavery, being limited to “an extremely non-representative minority” of large planters, who would have an obvious personal interest in defending their right to own slaves.4 In essence, they become histories of the impressions of biased white outsiders, rather than genuine accounts of those who experienced slavery directly. The slave’s experience was therefore recognised as the missing piece in an incomplete picture of slavery.

During the 1970s, this absence was a great driver of New-Left history, which considered slave-accounts as essential to filling in these gaps.5 Sources such as fugitive slave narratives became a central tool in understanding ‘the institution’. As John W. Blassingame would argue: “It gives a window into the ‘inside half’ of the slave’s life that never appeared in the commentaries of ‘outsiders’6.

1

James Baldwin, Notes of a Native Son (Boston, 1983), p. 28 James M McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom: the American Civil War (New York, 2003) pp. 9-10.

3 William L. Van Deburg, ‘Slave Drivers and Slave Narratives: A New Look at the "Dehumanized Elite” in The Historian, Vol. 39, No. 4 (1977), p. 720 4 Stanley M. Elkins, Slavery: A Problem in American Institutional and Intellectual Life (Chicago, 2013) p. 17; Richard Hofstadter, “U. B. Phillips and The Plantation Legend." The Journal of Negro History 29, no. 2 (1944), pp. 114-115 5 David Doddington, Conflict, Competition and Courtship in the slave community – Master’s Thesis (Warwick, 2009), p.5 6 John W. Blassingame, The Slave Community (Oxford, 1980), p. 367 2

To what extent can Benjamin Drew’s ‘The Refugee, or a North-Side View of Slavery’ (1856) be used to aid our understanding of slavery? | Ines Andrade

However, Blassingame’s argument proved more contentious than he initially intended. Such accounts are not entirely infallible in relaying the slave’s experience. Due to aforementioned illiteracy, many surviving accounts by slaves are orally transcribed, and produced, by white abolitionists. Because abolitionists were gagged, both literally in congress and metaphorically in the South, they began to take on the rhetorical techniques of the Christian evangelical movements from which they sprung to mobilise support through written material.7 Focusing on Northern audiences, their media quite literally cried “I WILL BE HEARD”.8 We must consider these slave-accounts then, as part of this wider attempt to be ‘heard’, making them incredibly vulnerable to distortions designed to appeal to the general public. White editors often exaggerated elements of the slaves’ experience, particularly themes of Southern brutality and Northern compassion, to galvanise their audience.9 Such edification often falls into the genre of Victorian sentimentalism, rendering these texts more useful as literary, rather than historical, sources.10 The slave’s voice became codified to align with the impressions and racial prejudices of the white Northern audience.

Written by a Bostonian abolitionist, The Refugee is not entirely exempted from these critiques. As the editor’s note recognises, Drew’s interviews become “one of the most effective anti-slavery arguments”: a convincing appeal intended for an audience.11 The work in some senses is paradigmatic of pro-Northern, pro-abolitionist literature. Drew places sectional politics (for instance in the “unconstitutional fugitive-slave law” or “mob of armed Missourians” in Kansas) at the forefront of his introduction, immediately labelling his interviews as part of this public debate, rather than as objective reporting. Certainly this intention is clear in the piece, which was intended as a reaction to the image of paternalistic benevolence presented in ‘A South-Side View of Slavery”.12 This implies that Drew would be inclined to skew accounts to advance his ‘argument’.

This skewing does, to a degree, reveal itself within his interviews. While Drew’s voice does not interject explicitly, his presence is latent. Themes we associate with the abolitionist impression of slavery, for instance brutal whipping, familial separation, shortage of food and clothing, and an absence of religion among Southerners, all continually recur; we can imagine Drew encouraging his interviews towards these themes.13 The extent to which these intentions disfigure these sources is most obvious surrounding the theme of religion, which clearly shifts into the realm of the fictionalised symbolic. Interviewees continually note that masters “gave me no religious instruction” or they received such “in a hypocritical way".14 As James Olney highlights, this is often used to figuratively indicate the infernal corruption of slavery upon white Southerners.15 The South becomes ‘satanical’ compared to the virtues of a Christian North. Such symbology does a lot to problematize the information we can derive from these sources. For instance, Nancy Howard recalls that her master “hoped God would damn him” if he did not whip his slaves the next day: only to fall coincidentally ill after her self-sacrificing prayers.16 The timing and symbolic weight of this interview particularly seems “too orderly (…) too melodramatic” to be considered fully as a historical source.17 The symbolism of a corrupted South removes some of the humanity of Nancy’s account in itself, as she is reduced to a symbol of Christ-like suffering.

7

Richard Hofstadter, The American Political tradition (New York, 1948) p. 144 William Lloyd Garrison, ‘The Salutation’ in The Liberator, 1 January 1831, p.1 9 Cindy Weinstein, ‘The slave narrative and sentimental literature’ in Audrey Fisch (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to the African American Slave Narrative (Cambridge, 2007), p. 116 10 George Elliot Clarke, “This is no hearsay": Reading the Canadian Slave Narratives’ in Papers of The Bibliographical Society of Canada, vol. 43 no.1, (2005), p. 22 11 Benjamin Drew, A North-side view of Slavery: The Refugee, or the Narratives of the Fugitives in Canada related by themselves, with an account of the history and condition of the coloured population of upper Canada (Ohio, 1856) p.iii – emphasis added by author.

12 John Ernest, Liberation Historiography: African American Writers and the Challenge of History 1794-1861, (South Carolina, 2004) p. 173 13 Winfried Siemerling, ‘Slave narratives and hemispheric studies’ in John Earnest (ed.) The Oxford Handbook of the African American Slave Narrative (Oxford, 2019), p. 335 14 Drew, A North-Side View, p. 111 15 James Olney, "I Was Born": Slave Narratives, Their Status as Autobiography and as Literature." In Callaloo, No. 20 (1984), pp. 50-51 16 Drew, A North-Side View, p. 52 17 Blassingame, The Slave community, p. 373 8

39

Part II

These limitations must be considered in order to separate the slave’s true experience from their doubled northern literary ‘character’ and symbolic functions. However, the distortion of slave testimonies is not so complete as to render slavery "an unrecorded experience, except from the masters' point of view”.18 Such an immediate dismissal takes a far too pessimistic view of the limitations of such sources. Negative assumptions like these—though made in the interest of caution—can even affect the truthfulness of the history produced.

More so than the critiques of its economic theory, the fundamental thesis of Fogel and Engermen’s controversial Time on the Cross is exemplary of this. The piece infamously argues that the “conventional knowledge” that slavery was merciless controverts its reality as stable, or even benign. Fogel and Engermen systematically argued against the aforementioned themes of death and brutality that recur in abolitionistproduced works.19 Considering the authors do little to define this ‘conventional knowledge’, it does not seem implausible to argue that concept was inferred from cursory readings of slave accounts. However, by arguing against such impressions, Fogel and Engermen’s history becomes a reaction to the abolitionist cannon rather than a fully sustained investigation into reality. By rallying against such surface-level dichotomies, their work becomes equally as shallow in its lack of recognition that ‘conventional knowledge’ is not monolithic. For instance, taking the example of poor nutrition, this does seem to be a point of contention in The Refugee: interviewees repeatedly talk about this theme in almost every account. But it does not unquestioningly support “the typical belief that the slave was poorly fed”.20 While some stress that they were “without sufficient food”, others accounts conversely describe being “well supplied”.21 This reinforces Blassingame’s point that slave produced accounts do not present the “simple picture of hell on earth that most historians have led us to believe”.22 Assuming a general distortion in all slave produced accounts, and arguing against that assumption, does not constitute a proper understanding of slavery, so much as a reaction to an impression that ironically places its most questionable elements at the forefront of its argument. What this implies is that we must consider accounts beyond—and in spite of—what we know of their recurring (and distorting) archetypes, lest our histories simply become polarised reactions to assumptions. Reading a cross-section of slave produced accounts therefore allows the historian to untangle the distortions from potential truths. The Refugee’s historical validity becomes more discernible if we consider the ways it diverges from other accounts, based on the differing impetuses for its production, rather than immediately discounting it on account its distortions.

Considering this, Blassingame may argue that fugitive-narratives have more validity than The Refugee. He argues that, often being produced by non-abolitionist groups, they would have less distorting influence than abolitionist accounts.23 However, Blassingame fails to acknowledge that public pressure was central in promoting ‘abolitionist’ distortions. As previously noted, the production of these narratives was often proportional to public demand, and the fugitive-slave narratives were by no means unpopular. ‘Twelve years a Slave’, for instance, sold an overwhelming 27,000 copies within two years of its publishing.24 This lead to public lecture circuits that only emphasised the dramatic elements of the narrative. As John Collins excitedly pointed out to William-Lloyd Garrison "the public have itching ears to hear a coloured man speak, and particularly a slave”.25 Collin’s trivialising tone conveys a sense that the slave narrator themselves had become almost fictionalised. Certainly, Josiah Henson, whose narrative was published by non-abolitionist Samuel Atkins Elliot, had become so well recognised as the base for Uncle Tom, that his narrative became 18

Robert S. Starobin, ‘Privileged Bondsmen and the Process of Accommodation: The Role of Houseservants and Drivers as Seen in Their Own Letters’ in Journal of Social History, Volume 5, Issue 1 (1971), p. 4 19 Robert W. Fogel and Stanley L. Engerman, ‘The anatomy of exploitation’ in R. Whaples & D. Betts (eds.) Historical Perspectives on the American Economy: Selected Readings (Cambridge, 1995), p. 142 20 Fogel and Engermen, ‘The anatomy of exploitation’, p. 143 21 Drew, A North-Side View, p.42 and p.52 22 Blassingame, The Slave Community, p. 371 23 John W Blassingame, ‘Using the Testimony of Ex-Slaves: Approaches and Problems’ in The Journal of Southern History, Vol. 41, No. 4, (1975) pp. 475-477 24 Charles H. Nichols, ‘Who Read the Slave Narratives?’ in The Phylon Quarterly, Vol. 20, No. 2 (1959), p. 150 25 Collins to Garrison, January 18th 1842, quoted in James Matleck, ‘The Autobiographies of Frederick Douglass’, in Phylon Vol 40, No.1 (1979), p. 16

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To what extent can Benjamin Drew’s ‘The Refugee, or a North-Side View of Slavery’ (1856) be used to aid our understanding of slavery? | Ines Andrade

“a rather pathetic caricature of himself”.26 White Northern interest in slave narratives was therefore a driving cause of their distortion. Indeed, Mill may argue that the white public continually produced a “racial fantasyland”, or an essentially fictitious slave existence in their realm of their limited racial understanding.27 This implies that public distortion may have been a stronger impetus in the misrepresentation of slaveaccounts than is traditionally believed. If such a ‘fantasy land’ has its origins in public perception, then The Refugee would avoid such an obvious distortion, as it does not appear to have been widely publicised. There is little mention of it in primary sources, excluding the abolitionist ‘Refugees from Canada West’.28 This indicates that it was only known in abolitionist circles. Indeed, excluding some famous examples, Drew’s refugees did not become public figures with sensationalised accounts, and lecture circuits, which necessitated fugitive-slave authors.29 While, as evidenced, this does not exclude it from manipulation, it implies the pressure to do so would be far smaller. This distinction becomes even sharper when examining accounts closer in nature to Drew’s than the fugitive-narratives but with increased publicity, such as James Redpath’s The Roving Editor. Produced only years apart, and similarly collecting slave interviews, Redpath and Drew’s sources are analogous contextually—the only major difference is that Redpath’s work was produced as part of a publicised newspaper campaign. In fulfilling this role it becomes a sentimentalised rehash full of static characters: grieving mothers with faces “wet with heart-sad tears” and slave men with perpetually “bewildering and cunning expressions”.30 Due to a lack of such publicity, we do not find such a caricatured picture in Drew’s accounts. Isaac Riley, for instance, dismisses most of the recurring ‘characters’ the cynic may associate with northern edification, “I never saw an overseer, nor a negro-trader, nor driver” he admits, adding “such as is practised in other places”.31 Redpath’s interviews can be charged of the “overwhelming sameness” Olney levels of the fugitive-narratives: the slave is malnourished, abused and unhappy in their condition but can do nothing about it. Even if they contain elements of such a rendering, Drew’s accounts never descend to this level. Indeed, what is notable about them is their individualism.

Certainly, even if there are recurring elements in The Refugee, we must not be so distrustful as to entirely label them as literary tropes, rather than a simple commonality of experience. It seems undeniable that some level of death and brutality would underlie an institution that removed the rights of the subject to themselves and their conditions. And the differentiation within this commonality appears to reflect more than simple pure tropes. Interviewees will rarely express a loaded dichotomy, and often compare their experiences with others.

For instance, William Johnson’s account appears to present the motif of the martyr in the form of a slave “who had recently professed religion”, only to be whipped to death. But there is still a sense of relativity in the account. “I would sometimes be whipped” he commented of himself, before fate the death of his fellow.32 This recognition of varying individual treatment indicates that, less than a linearized experience, conditions appear to differ from place to place: as Henry Atkinson concluded “Sometimes I was well cared for, sometimes not, according to the man's disposition that employed me”, matching Sam Davis’ assertion that “sometimes my employers could be good, sometimes bad”.33 This indication of a slave experience being continually redefined is furthered by interviewees’ recognition of this. In Redpath’s interviews, any slave who disagrees with the conformity is presented as dissenting. Upon hearing that a slave said his condition was tolerable, one of Redpath’s nameless interviewees comments “he war a big fat liar and you ough to hab him slapped”.34 The divergence of The Refugee from this is notable.

Riley indicates that, while he recognises his treatment happened to be void of “any abuse”, this does not blind

26

Blassingame, ‘Using the Testimony of Ex-Slaves’, p. 475; Earnest, Liberation histography, p. 173 Charles W Mill, The Racial Contract (New York, 1997), p. 18 28 Siemerling, ‘Slave narratives and hemispheric studies’, p. 356 29 Laura. T Murphy, ‘The re-emergence of the slave narrative tradition’, in Sophia A. McClennen, Alexandra Moore and Schultheis Moore (eds.), The Routledge Companion to Literature and Human Rights (New York, 2018), p. 129 30 James Redpath, The Roving Editor, or, Talks with slaves in the Southern States (New York, 1859), p. 43 and p. 31 31 Drew, A North-Side View, p.298 32 Ibid, p.29 33 Ibid, p.78 and p.115 34 Redpath, The Roving Editor, p. 93 27

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him to generalising it to ‘other places’.35 As his wife commented, “I see many here who have suffered from hard treatment and who have seen it practised on others”.36 This can also be seen in accounts of the opposite nature, where violence is tangible. “Masters sometimes show respect (…) I have heard of a merciful disposition” commented Alexander Hemsley, “but I have seen a woman who was in state of pregnancy, tied up and punished with a keen raw hide”.37 Combined with the above sense of variation, this indicates a continual variation of conditions that such recognition places at the centre of the slave experience.

In addition to this, the unstable climate is marked reinforced by the insecurities of Drew’s refugees themselves. Their recognition that their treatment is in constant flux appears to be a central anxiety, and one of the main underlying motivations behind absconding from the plantation. For instance, Henry Brant explained “my mistress being old, I feared that in event of her death, I might be placed on some farm, and be cruelly used”.38 Just as the interviews previously mentioned distinguish their individual treatment from that of others, Brant indicates awareness that his treatment may always be open to sudden change. “I was young, and they had not treated me badly,” commented James Adams grimly “but I had seen older men treated worse than a horse”.39 Adams recognises that his state within slavery is precarious and dependent on his age, as much as Atkinson, Davis and Brant recognise it was dependent on the master. Certainly, even relatively rare accounts like Riley’s stress this sort of anxiety: “I looked at my boy and thought if he remained, he would have to leave us”.40 This does not appear exaggerated; the anxiety is notably latent. Indeed, this becomes apparent when considering Riley says that he ‘never saw a negro trader’, but still fears his son potentially meeting a different fate.

This is significant in improving our understanding of slavery. Firstly, and most obviously, it delineates a slave experience beyond the traditional narratives. That interviewees are even able to recognise differentiation in treatment marks them as more genuine, and with far more self-awareness, than the doubtful, homogenised accounts of Redpath. Less than a static image of the sorts of cruelties that excited northern interest, the idea of variation in treatment appears more believable. More than this, the anxieties they express in relation to this treatment may help the historian understand some of the more complex psychological underpinnings of the slave system. The accounts of Brant or Riley underscore latent concerns about such instability; sharpening Hemsley’s sense of the intrinsic “state of suspense and anxiety” for Southern slaves.41 This notion of an underlying fear indicates that we must understand slavery as a “story not simply of individual oppressors, but as a system of oppression” whereby the attitude of the master is concurrent to the underlying ‘system’.42 From this, we can perhaps begin to understand ways in which slaves navigated such variation in their condition. More than simply recognising these concerns, the slave interviewee directly acts upon them. This has already been indicated by the motivations of the fugitives mentioned to abscond their plantation. But we can also see this in other forms that have the potential to be used by slaves who did not successfully escape.

For instance, Harry Thomas noted of one of his masters “At first, Y.'s treatment was fair. I was foreman. He got rich, and grew mean, and I left him”.43 Clearly Thomas, as with others mentioned, recognised the precariousness of his position; his note that Y’s treatment was ‘fair’ is contrasted to the ‘barbarous’ treatment of previous masters. Yet Thomas articulates his autonomy by noting ‘I left him’. He indicates that leaving the plantation, even if he was caught (which in Thomas’ case, was multiple times) was a way to navigate otherwise uncontrollable changes in condition. This is similarly recognised by Dan-Josiah Lockhart, “at one time (my master) undertook to whip me, and I told him I would leave him if he did”.44 Lockhart, whose wife

35

Drew, A North-Side View, p. 298 Ibid, 299 37 Ibid, p. 39 38 Ibid, p. 345 39 Ibid, p. 19 40 Ibid, p. 298 41 Ibid, p. 39 42 Ernest, Liberation Historiography, p. 189 43 Drew, A North-Side View, p. 26 44 Ibid, p. 45 36

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To what extent can Benjamin Drew’s ‘The Refugee, or a North-Side View of Slavery’ (1856) be used to aid our understanding of slavery? | Ines Andrade

was recently sold, uses the threat of flight as a way to try and move closer to her plantation, recognising that even the threat of leaving would be enough to guarantee some self-sufficiency in his situation.

This sense does much to undermine Tilden Edelstein’s conclusion that Drew’s accounts are “possibly representative of fugitives, but certainly not of slaves”.45 Fugitives presented in newspapers are ‘repeat offenders’, often those who met the worst physical cruelty.46 This would imply a limitation to Drew’s source in only presenting a characteristic microcosm of the slave populace. But what this essay already indicates above derails this; we are not presented with an entirely narrow group. Indeed, it is perhaps worth considering that such papers would be more inclined to fictionalise fugitives than Drew. Flight from the plantation was explained away by ‘drapetomania’, a form of insanity that espoused nonconformity. This means that Southern newspaper advertisements would naturally present fugitives as separate and dissident from the ‘happy’ general slave.47 As Deburg underlines, this image was so prevalent that even anti-slavery sects were inclined to believe that the majority of slaves were unable to form resistance48. Indeed, Redpath constantly stresses slaves as dependent on Northern abolitionists, “I hope the abolitionists win de battle and bring us all out of bondage”.49 Thus, Edelstein’s separation of ‘fugitive’ and ‘slave’ experience is not entirely natural. The differentiation, self-awareness, and autonomous reactions of Drew’s interviewees implies that we must be cautious not to conflate pictures where the slave is static, and unable to recognise their oppression or in any way resist it, with historical actuality. While fugitives are a minority in the sense that not all slaves managed to escape, it does not follow that theoretically their experience of slavery would be entirely separate to those who stayed. Certainly, James. C Scott argues that away from the plantation, the slave is able to express their ‘hidden transcripts’ of experience; the thoughts and feelings related in these accounts “might have been voiced in the slave quarters”.50 Continuing from Scott’s notion, it is interviewees’ position as fugitives in Canada further allows articulation of this; as Leonard Howard claimed, “a man can get more information about slavery in Canada than he can in the South”.51 On one hand, this operates on a purely functional level: masters were unlikely to allow their slaves to be interviewed. This is perhaps another reason for the level of inaccuracy in accounts like Redpath’s, who questionably climbed over plantation fences to interview slaves, who were in turn perfectly happy to reveal life-altering information to a stranger.52 More so, while Howard’s comment is subjective, his belief in it indicates that nascent African-Canadians felt more able to express their experiences. Interviewees often impress almost a comfort within Canada that is not within their relayed experiences of the United States. The prevalence of this must have been fairly substantial for Drew to proclaim indignantly “What circumstances have led them to prefer a monarchy to a republic?”53 Again, we must be careful with this association: as Siemerling underscores, Drew is inclined to present Canada, against the atrocities of the South, as a model for America.54 However, there must have been some suggestion of this from interviewees themselves, they identify themselves as “regular Britishers” or “true British subjects”.55 This identification plays into Clarke’s analysis that fugitives “denounced slavery (through) Canadian nationalist” ideologies.56 This was made manifest in their abstract representations of potential resistance, anxiety and autonomy on the part of slaves.

Therefore, Drew’s interviewees use the platform of Canada to partially ‘rehumanise’ themselves from the more distorted elements of his accounts.

45

Tilden Edelstein, quoted in Frederick Black, ‘Bibliographical Essay: Benjamin Drew's Refugee and the Black Family’ in The Journal of Negro History, Vol. 57, No. 3 (1972), pp. 285-86 46 John Hope Franklin and Loren Schweninger, Runaway Slaves: Rebels on the Plantation (New York, 1999), pp. 216218 47 Ibid, p. 275 48 William L. Van Deburg, Slavery and Race in Popular American Culture (Madison, 1984), p. xi.

49 Redpath, The Roving Editor, p. 32 50 James. C. Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (New Haven, 1990), p. 166 51 Drew, A North-Side View, p. 340 52 Redpath, The Roving Editor, see pp.26-8.

53 Drew, A North-Side View, p. 14 54 Siemerling, ‘Slave narratives and hemispheric studies’, p. 335 55 Drew, A North-Side View, p. 39 and p. 86 56 Clarke, ‘“This is no hearsay”’, p. 28

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This reinterpretation can potentially increase our knowledge of slavery in several ways. It has been indicated that, while we must consider that Drew’s accounts have elements of the distorted or symbolic, comparing them with others reveals divergences from traditional narratives that appear to offer a greater amount of truth.

This sense is two-fold; comparing Drew’s accounts with other slave produced sources will help the historian come to a more astute understanding of slavery, which is perhaps marked by less overgeneralisation. As an example, U.B Phillips attempts to explore his picture of ‘benevolence’ by presenting the slave’s apparently familial relationship with their master. Here he deploys the letters of slaves, particularly the request of one slave to her previous master “I would like to see you and hear you pray one more time before I die”57.

Considering this was written voluntarily, it cannot be fully dismissed. However, reading Drew’s accounts complicates this picture. As shown, the master’s treatment heavily varies; “there was one man who was a kind man” recalls Atkinson “He treated me well”. But this was inevitably followed by later masters “whose treatment of me was very bad”.58 More than implying Phillips has overgeneralised, we must consider accounts like Brant’s in relation to these statements, to determine how much of her request is genuine, and how much may be underscored by such anxieties. In this, the link between the letter and the conclusion of benevolence becomes far from direct.

Secondly, the human element within some of Drew’s interviews implies the slave’s position is not entirely lost. If we can understand some of the slave’s potential concerns, then we can perhaps start to understand the full nature of their condition. As well as those physical brutalities abolitionists morbidly stressed, The Refugee implies that slavery was a condition of constant movement that promoted a psychological oppression which slaves navigated in different ways. More so than Redpath’s pseudohistorical slaves who question “do you tink, massa, dat we’ll all get out of bondage soon?”, Drew’s interviewees indicate that African-Americans were both able to recognise their own oppression and rearticulate their conditions through their own forms of movement; in the threat or realisation of absconding or (in interviewees case) by later redefining their experience through the relative stability of Canada.59 This is not a simple parade of unsubstantiated stereotypes. Rather it indicates that the understanding and anxieties of slaves were far more than motionless realisations of their physical conditions of oppression. While Drew’s source can only hint towards this, it implies the African-American voice is not entirely lost or fabricated. It may be negotiated to an extent.

Thus, The Refugee is far less polarised and distorted than is apparent from a surface analysis, and looking at it critically may help avoid the generalisations that come with this. When compared and contrasted to other historical works, we can move past Drew’s ‘argument’ to be shown what in the account indicates reliability, and what we can learn from the parts that appear reliable. It can both nuance other sources and indicate the unstable climate slaves were forced to face and their reactions to it. Using Drew’s source in conjunction with others therefore arguably sustains a history of slavery that is much more complex and, even if not fully, points towards one “written in large part from the standpoint of the slave”.60

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Baldwin, James, Notes of a Native Son (Boston, 1983) Black, Frederick, ‘Bibliographical Essay: Benjamin Drew's Refugee and the Black Family’ in The Journal of Negro History, Vol. 57, No. 3 (1972) Blassingame, John W., ‘Using the Testimony of Ex-Slaves: Approaches and Problems’ in The Journal of Southern History, Vol. 41, No. 4, (1975) Blassingame, John W., The Slave Community (Oxford, 1980) Bonnell Phillips, Ulrich, Life and Labour in the Old South (Boston, 1963) Clarke, George Elliot, ‘“This is no hearsay": Reading the Canadian Slave Narratives’ in Papers of The 57

Ulrich Bonnell Phillips, Life and Labour in the Old South (Boston, 1963), p. 213 Drew, A North-Side View, pp.78-79 59 Redpath, The Roving Editor, p. 28 60 Hofstadter, ‘U.B Phillips and the Plantation Legend’, p. 124 58

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Bibliographical Society of Canada, Vol. 43, No.1, (2005) Doddington, David, Conflict, Competition and Courtship in the slave community – Master’s Thesis (Warwick, 2009) Drew, Benjamin, A North-side view of Slavery: The Refugee, or the Narratives of the Fugitives in Canada related by themselves, with an account of the history and condition of the coloured population of upper Canada (Ohio, 1856) Elkins, Stanley M., Slavery: A Problem in American Institutional and Intellectual Life (Chicago, 2013) Ernest, John, Liberation Historiography: African American Writers and the Challenge of History 1794 1861, (South Carolina, 2004) Fogel, Robert W. and Engerman, Stanley L., ‘The anatomy of exploitation’ in R. Whaples & D. Betts (eds.)

Historical Perspectives on the American Economy: Selected Readings (Cambridge, 1995) Franklin, John Hope and Schweninger, Loren, Runaway Slaves: Rebels on the Plantation (New York, 1999) Garrison, William Lloyd, ‘The Salutation’ in The Liberator, 1 January 1831 Hofstadter, Richard, “U. B. Phillips and The Plantation Legend." In The Journal of Negro History 29, No. 2 (1944) Hofstadter, Richard, The American Political tradition (New York, 1948) Matleck, James, ‘The Autobiographies of Frederick Douglass’, in Phylon Vol 40, No.1 (1979) McPherson, James M., Battle Cry of Freedom: the American Civil War (New York, 2003) Mill, Charles W., The Racial Contract (New York, 1997) Murphy, Laura T., ‘The re-emergence of the slave narrative tradition’, in Sophia A. McClennen, Alexandra Moore and Schultheis Moore (eds.), The Routledge Companion to Literature and Human Rights (New York, 2018) Nichols, Charles H., ‘Who Read the Slave Narratives?’ in The Phylon Quarterly, Vol. 20, No. 2 (1959) Olney, James, ‘"I Was Born": Slave Narratives, Their Status as Autobiography and as Literature’, in Callaloo, No. 20 (1984) Redpath, James, The Roving Editor, or, Talks with slaves in the Southern States (New York, 1859) Scott, James C., Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (New Haven, 1990) Siemerling, Winfried, ‘Slave narratives and hemispheric studies’ in John Earnest (ed.) The Oxford Handbook of the African American Slave Narrative (Oxford, 2019) Starobin, Robert S., ‘Privileged Bondsmen and the Process of Accommodation: The Role of Houseservants and Drivers as Seen in Their Own Letters’ in Journal of Social History, Volume 5, Issue 1 (1971) Van Deburg, William L., ‘Slave Drivers and Slave Narratives: A New Look at the "Dehumanized Elite” in The Historian, Vol. 39, No. 4 (1977) Van Deburg, William L., Slavery and Race in Popular American Culture (Madison, 1984) Weinstein, Cindy, ‘The slave narrative and sentimental literature’ in Audrey Fisch (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to the African American Slave Narrative (Cambridge, 2007)

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WHY WAS THERE NO SUCCESSFUL DIPLOMATIC RESOLUTION TO THE HUNDRED YEARS’ WAR, C. 1337-1475?

BY DAVID MANCHESTER (TREVELYAN COLLEGE, 2ND YEAR) There was no shortage of diplomatic efforts to end the Hundred Years’ War. A series of Anglo-French conflicts that stretched from 1337 to 1453; the War itself primarily revolved around determining who would retain the right to rule France. In order to understand the ultimate failure of diplomatic efforts, we must first appreciate the structural failures of diplomacy and why the short-term solutions that were achieved failed to develop into long-term settlements. Practical issues played an important role in these failures, but it was the dispute over who held sovereignty over the English lands in France that ultimately prevented long-term peace.

The English insistence that they would hold land without homage, resort, or sovereignty meant that, despite coming close to a resolution, no agreement was ever reached. The English claim to the French throne was a difficult issue, but it was at its most intractable when issues surrounding sovereignty, particularly over Normandy, were involved. On its own, the claim to the crown itself proved to be a diplomatically soluble matter.

Before we address these crucial points, however, it is neccesary to acknowledge the limits of the assumption that ‘there was no diplomatic resolution’ to the conflict in question. The artificial nature of the Hundred Years’ War can disguise the long lulls in the conflict that separated the Edwardian, Caroline, and Lancastrian wars. These periods of relative peace suggest that diplomacy was, to a degree, successful in creation short periods of peace, albeit transitory ones. Without the alliance between Charles VII and the Burgundians at Arras, for instance, French victories in the last decade of the war would not have come as swiftly nor as easily. Nonetheless, we will see that there were strict limits on the success of these diplomatic efforts and that no diplomatic resolution that was entirely successful. Nonetheless, these shortcomings should not blind us to nor mitigate the successes that were achieved, and acknowledgement of this enables us to attain a more nuanced and exact understanding of the conflict.

Before examining the legal and intellectual problems that were posed by peace, we should first appreciate the practical problems that the possibility of a diplomatic resolution implied. Namely, the fact that there were limitations placed on papal arbitration, which ultimately hampered peace efforts. Indeed, England was particularly suspicious of the Avignon Papacy given its proximity to French power, and these reservations were only heightened after the Papal Schism of 1378 and the rise of conciliarism.1 Furthermore, it would seem that Pope Martin V’s foremost concern was his ability to buttress his own power against the threat of the Council of Constance, leading him to prioritise the election of his nominations for prelates over the achievement of Anglo-French peace.2 Conciliar efforts at peace were also delayed by the English, who simultaneously caused difficulty over the lands voting rights at the Church Councils, demanded their recognition as a nation, and insisted that Lancastrian France should represent the French nation.3 The combination of the split papacy and the papal conflict with the conciliar movement thus impeded the ability of Church arbitration to function effectively at several crucial junctures in the Hundred Years’ War. It is important to acknowledge, however, that papal and conciliar efforts to end the war did still manage to bring the two sides to conferences – certainly, this was no small feat. Indeed, without the actions of the Roman 1 P.N.R. Zutshi, ‘The Letters of the Avignon Popes (1305-1378): A Source for the Study of Anglo-Papal Relations and of Ecclesiastical History’, in Michael Jones and Malcolm Vale (eds.), England and Her Neighbours, 1066-1453: Essays in Honour of Pierre Chaplais (London, 1989), p. 265.

2 Margret Harvey, England, Rome and the papacy, 1417-1464: the study of a relationship (Manchester, 1993), pp. 13335.

3 Ibid., pp. 153-4,159.

Why was there no successful diplomatic resolution to the Hundred Years’ War, c.1337-1475? | David Manchester

Catholic prelate Niccolò Albergati – who adeptly moved between the two sides in the years leading up to the Congress of Arras, attempting bring them closer together – it is unlikely that both would have ever agreed to meet. Even at conferences like this, however, the form of papal arbitration that was adopted was not always conducive to peaceful results. Indeed, it would seem that the system by which the two parties communicated their positions through mediators – who would, unless it was deemed an unhelpful proposal, present their peace offers to the other side – led both parties to make their proposals more demanding in an effort to exact greater concessions.4 The physical separation of the both sides appears to have served to only exacerbate the guessing, bluffing, and fear that such negotiations inspired. It would also appear that the Cardinals, though officially arbitrators of the conferences, were primarily informed by their backgrounds in the Catholic Church’s ecclesiastical courts; this often led them to behave more as judges than arbitrators, subsequently exacerbating tensions and disunion between the two parties.5 Despite this, however, the historical scholar Jocelyne Gledhill Dickinson expresses sympathy for the papal arbitrators, particularly when they pronounced upon the deadlock that had been caused by the proposals of seven treaties by each side at Arras.6 It is, however, certainly challenging to understand how the judgement passed at Arras actually aided the peace process: the English offer in particular failed to tackle several key issues, but the declaration issued by the arbitrators – stating that the opposing French offers were superior – did not succeed in easing tensions.

Indeed, this was a poor approach as it failed to address the fundamental problems that weakened the English offer, and also reveals a lack of effort to understand and ease English concerns about their increasingly fragile position. This resulted in making the English more defensive and ultimately gave them cause to believe that Albergati was prejudiced against them. Ultimately, then, it would appear that the incident at Arras demonstrated a lack of innovation from papal and conciliar arbitrators: their reliance on a procedure that did not seem conducive to mutual compromise made their diplomatic efforts unsuccesful.

Beyond the issues with the peace talks themselves that are outlined above, it is also important to acknowledge that several other factors played a role in derailing efforts to establish peace – this was an indubitably complex and multifaceted situation. Indeed, the Black Prince’s weakened position in Gascony after his failed intervention in Castile, and the subsequent threat posed by the Castilian fleet, would appear to have contributed not insignificantly to the abandonment of the Treaty of Brétigny in the late fourteenth-century.7 The French, furthermore, used Gascony’s failure to extricate themselves from peace deals elsewhere, most of which seemed to them to be neither necessary nor beneficial. At the Congress of Arras, then, both parties were more concerned with securing Burgundian support than finding a rapprochement.8 This demonstrates the extent to which circumstances beyond relations and issues between England and France could often render the peace efforts unsuccessful.

The ineffectiveness of the negotiated truces hindered the development of long-term peace, particularly since their failure postponed the resolution of the central issues whilst simultaneously providing respite for the two kings, enabling them to relieve the financial burdens of war and replenish their resources, thereby prolonging the conflict. Even Richard II – the English king who would seem to have been the most committed to the peace efforts – was drawn into a truce that effectively postponed the difficult decision over who would be sovereign in Gascony, his hand somewhat forced by a violent Gascon revolt.9 Indeed, it would seem that many of the truces agreed over the course of the war were made over Gascony, the majority of which were clearly ineffective as they did not end the fighting in occupied regions. Both parties, furthermore, demonstrated an utter lack of ability to restrain their routier captains, many of whom were subsequently able to claim that they were taking part in local disputes and were subsequently unbound by agreed truces,

4 Karsten Plöger, England and the Avignon popes: the practice of diplomacy in late medieval Europe (London, 2005), pp. 505-506.

5 Joycelyne Gledhill Dickinson, The Congress of Arras, 1435: a study in medieval diplomacy (Oxford, 1955), p. 120.

6 Ibid., pp. 129-130.

7 G. P. Cuttino, English medieval diplomacy (Bloomington, 1985), p. 95.

8 Dickinson, The Congress of Arras, pp. 122-24, 166-69.

9 J. J. N. Palmer, ‘The Anglo-French Peace Negotiations, 1390-1396: The Alexander Prize Essay’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, Vol. 16 (1966), pp. 91-94.

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exacerbating conflict.10 Regardless of whether this was the truth or a mere pretence, mercenary captains were certainly able to live off of their own Pâtis, suggesting that conflict was profitable and therefore, to some extent, desirable for these individuals. Indeed, many of these men took their clear indifference to diplomacy one step further, actively disregarding the conservators who were supposed to facilitate their removal, indicating once again that deliberately maintaining the status quo served to benefit the routiers and ultimately rendered diplomatic efforts ineffectual.11 It would, moreover, appear that both northern and south-western France saw little of the peace offered by the Treaty of Brétigny, highlighting its ineffectiveness. Routier companies led by both the English and the Gascons ravaged the French countryside; their old employers, Edward III and the Black Prince, made little attempt to stop them or disrupt their supply from Bordeaux. The perpetuation of this violence subsequently made peace conferences and agreements appear to the French to be nothing more than a series of empty promises, undermining their faith in diplomatic efforts.12 The Bascot de Mauléon summarises the issue succinctly to Jean Froissart: ‘though the kings had made peace… [the mercenary captains] had to live somehow’.13 Furthermore, while it would seem that some attempt was made to relocate bands of routiers to Castile – where the Black Prince and Bertrand du Guesclin needed troops to aid in their intervention – the extent to which this could address the issue was limited: only so many men could realistically be diverted.14 Instead, the most effective method of solving the routier problem was to reemploy these bands in renewed warfare, prolonging military violence yet again. Charles VII’s standing army provides a fitting example: his military employed many routiers and gave the King the force with which to subdue the rest, ultimately proving more effective than diplomatic attempts to resolve the routier problem.15 Even when peace settlements had been reached, the temptation to employ militaristic strategies to solve peacetime problems remained too strong for a lasting settlement to emerge.

By now, it is certainly evident that there were several practical problems that contributed towards the ultimate failure of diplomatic efforts to end the Hundred Years’ War. In order to enrich our understanding of the situation, however, we must now address the political and legal issues that forced the warring kingdoms to resort to stopgap truces, many of which ultimately hindered attempts to communicate and reach agreements, thereby making diplomatic resolutions increasingly hopeless.

Perhaps the greatest factor shaping the perpetuation of conflict and the futility of truces was the great question of who held sovereignty in the English-occupied areas of France. Before exploring this issue further, however, one must acknowledge that, although this remained the foremost issue throughout the period, one should not assume that English and French monarchs retained the same goals throughout the war – the situation was more complex and mutable. No matter the extent to which they adjusted their ultimate aims, though, the key problem that these kings faced always came down to sovereignty disputes. Indeed, the very idea of ceding sovereignty was intolerable for both France and England; by understanding the significance of this issue to both sides, one can begin to appreciate why it ultimately prevented the emergence of a diplomatic resolution.

That the French did not want to cede sovereignty is evident, since they only contemplated doing-so when French fortunes reached their lowest ebb: the first time that we know that the French even considered ceding sovereignty to England was after their catastrophic defeat at the Battle of Poitiers in 1356. Here, King Jean II, while imprisoned in England, understandably desired his personal freedom and was keen to avert Edward III’s planned invasion of France – which, if successful, was to be the final blow to the kingdom.16

10

Kenneth Fowler, ‘Truces’, in Kenneth Fowler (ed.), The Hundred Years War (Suffolk, 1971), p. 192.

Ibid., pp. 199-200.

12 Jonathan Sumption, The Hundred Years War Vol 2: Trial by Fire (London, 2001), p. 573.

13 Jean Froissart, Chronicles: Selected, Translated and Edited by Geffrey Brereton (London, 1978), p. 282.

14 Chronique des Quatres Premiers Valois (1327-1393), ed. by S. Luce, pp. 163-164, in Christopher Allmand (ed.), Society at War: The Experience of England and France during the Hundred Years War (Woodbridge, 1998), p. 174.

15 Malcolm Vale, ‘France at the End of the Hundred Years War (c. 1420–1461)’, in Christopher Allmand (ed.), The New Cambridge Medieval History, Volume 7 (Cambridge, 1998), pp. 399-401.

16 John Le Patourel, ‘The Treaty of Brétigny, 1360’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 1 January 1960, Vol.10, p. 30.

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Why was there no successful diplomatic resolution to the Hundred Years’ War, c.1337-1475? | David Manchester

Subsequently, the monarch offered-up almost half of his kingdom in full sovereignty to Edward, a motion immortalised in the Treaty of London.17 This treaty – which was ultimately rejected by the Dauphin and the Royal Estates – proved to be a dead letter. The proceeding Treaty of Brétigny, however, offered a more realistic prospect of peace, offering the English full sovereignty of an enlarged Aquitaine region. Even this more restrained agreement, however, was only ever reached because France faced complete disaster: her King was detained in captivity, and the Dauphin was dealing with the economically ruinous effects of both Edward III’s chevauchées and the mounting cost of his father’s ransom. As such, Charles V sought to repudiate the treaty. The summoning of the Black Prince to Paris marked his reassertion of sovereignty over Gascony within a decade of the peace being signed. Jean II may well have been genuine in his endorsement of the treaty of Brétigny, but realism meant that Charles V saw little advantage in abiding by its terms. The French were also willing to cede sovereignty in the depths of the Armagnac-Burgundian civil war. Even then it was the Armagnac bid for Henry IV’s support while the Burgundians controlled Paris that was quickly repudiated.18 The Treaty of Troyes is a special case that will be examined below. It is evident that the French were largely unwilling to offer sovereignty to English kings through diplomatic negotiations. Even when military and political disasters forced them to cede sovereignty, they extricated themselves from their commitments as quickly as possible.

The response of French writers regarding the nature of sovereignty within the Kingdom of France evidences its significance. The Kingdom was an entity that not even the French King could dismember; To do-so would contravene his coronation oath and his duties to his subjects.19 This theoretical objection served an important practical purpose: the alienation of the King’s rights over the Duchy of Gascony would set a dangerous precedent for the newly powerful princely courts in Brittany and Burgundy, or any royal with a powerful appanage.20 With English support, Jean II of Brittany had already denied the Valois Kings homage in 1364.21 The sovereignty issue pitted the conception of the French Kingdom as the heir to the Carolingian mantle against the reality of the power of the Angevin King-Dukes and the potential resurrection of the ‘Angevin Empire’.22 Ceding sovereignty to the Dukes of Gascony would erode the integrity of the French Kingdom, thus undermining Valois kingship through the encouragement of princely ambitions. As such, the Valois Kings were only willing to give up sovereignty in the face of utter disaster, and, even when they did, they would try to reclaim it immediately after their recovery. The subjection of the King-Dukes would be a stark demonstration of Valois power and, conversely, giving up on the ambition to do-so would cause a severe loss of power and prestige.

The English proved equally unwilling to compromise when it came to giving homage, resort, or sovereignty to the French kings. After the Treaty of Paris, the English had observed how homage had grown from the simple pledge of fealty Henry II had made.23 In the early fourteenth-century constant appeals to the Paris Parlement – appeals that were actively encouraged by French officials – had robbed Gascon courts of their autonomy, leading to a measure of judicial anarchy.24 This anarchy was made all the more galling to the KingDukes when Gascony’s subjects flew the French flag and received protection from the French King during their appeals.25 Most English kings were unwilling to operate under either legal or feudal obligation to the French King. This subjection to Valois kingship would represent a return to the 1337 status-quo. As we have 17

Ibid., pp. 19-20.

Malcolm Vale, English Gascony, 1399-1453: a study of war, government and politics during the later stages of the Hundred Years' War (London, 1970), pp. 60-63.

19 Craig David Taylor, ‘'La querelle Anglaise': diplomatic and legal debate during the Hundred Years War, with an edition of the polemical treatise 'Pour ce que plusieurs' (1464)’, PhD, 1998, pp. 158-162.

20 Ibid., pp. 129-30.

21 Patrick Galliou and Michael Jones, The Bretons (Oxford, 1991), p. 234.

22 Malcolm Vale, The Ancient Enemy: England, France and Europe from the Angevins to the Tudors 1154-1558 (London, 2007, pp. 46-47.

23 Pierre Chaplais, ‘English Arguments Concerning the Feudal Status of Aquitaine in the Fourteenth Century’, Historical Research, May 1948, Vol.21(64), pp. 203-204.

24 Pierre Chaplais, ‘The Court of Sovereignty of Guyenne (Edward III- Henry IV) and its Antecedents’, in J.S. Hamilton and Patricia Bradley (eds.), Documenting the Past: Essays in Medieval History presented to George Peddy Cuttino (New Hampshire, 1989), pp. 137-140.

25 Anne Curry, The Hundred Years War (Hampshire,2003), pp. 34-35.

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seen above, the truces were imperfect, but the English kings were left with de-facto sovereignty over any areas in France which they controlled. The agreement of a peace treaty would have entailed a definition of rights and jurisdiction, and thus the ceding of English sovereignty. The ambiguity that a temporary truce provided, with the potential to press claims again after raising more money and men, proved in the long term more beneficial to English kings than the definitive signing of peace. As such, the English had little interest in achieving a settlement on terms which involved anything less than full sovereignty over the lands they held.

The loss of sovereignty through a peace treaty was not only an issue for the English king. The Gascons themselves feared what a French overlord might entail. Gascony was not an English territory and had become accustomed to a large measure of autonomy in its affairs. When the principality of Aquitaine was granted to the Black Prince, Edward III reserved sovereign power for himself, but otherwise it constituted a princely state governed from Bordeaux with little reference to Westminster.26 The Fouage Tax, that was ostensibly the cause of the Armagnac defection, was a local tax that had local precedent, as the principality was expected to finance its own protection independent of England.27 Gascons enjoyed relative independence and guarded their privileges. Their opposition to the alienation of the duchy to John of Gaunt was partly about the actions of his seneschal, but Gascons were also concerned about the separation of the duchy from the English regnal line which their ‘constitution’ forbade.28 Gascony could not be alienated from the English crown and had to belong to the King or his heir. The potential erasure of this privilege by the founding of a separate ducal dynasty descending from John of Gaunt that would probably be steadily absorbed into France represented an unacceptable breach of their perceived rights.29 It led many to question if it was a precursor to the invasion of their city charters that were guaranteed by the King-Duke.30 This opposition derailed Richard II’s attempts at peace. Gascons opposed his plan to solve the sovereignty issue that would involve the creation of a separate ducal dynasty which could more easily pay homage to the Valois kings.31 Gascon concerns made sovereignty an important and intractable issue. French sovereignty did not face such dogmatic opposition from the Gascon nobility and cities; they had long played the two crowns off each other to their own benefit. They worried about how alienation from the English crown would affect their privileges and the wine trade in the long term. Gascons caused the failure of the only realistic compromise on sovereignty that Richard II proposed.

The English King’s claim to the throne of France, while important, only served to inhibit any successful diplomatic resolution of the Hundred Years’ War once it had become combined with issues of sovereignty.

Previously, English kings were not inclined to renounce the title as it was a powerful tool to extract concessions out of France and it could act as a convenient casus belli for English invasion. The dream of fulfilling the claim after his success encouraged Edward III not to ratify Brétigny.32 Both Edward III in Flanders and Henry V in Brittany and Burgundy realised how powerful the title could be for tempting discontented princes towards defection. However, the claim was not essential to English diplomacy and did not hold up negotiations. Even if Edward III abandoned Brétigny because he wanted to maintain his claim, it is significant that he considered renunciation. Indeed, he was followed in doing so by Richard II and both did so despite severe crises. This was very much unlike the French who needed the motivation of crisis to even consider ceding their sovereign territory to the English. The claim was not as intractable as the sovereignty issue.

The nature of the Treaty of Troyes changed the importance of the claim. Most treaties, such as Brétigny, were a partial recognition of the status-quo and sought a legal settlement that both parties could accept. In contrast, 26

Vale, The Ancient Enemy, p. 49.

Ibid., p. 52.

28 Vale, English Gascony, pp. 40-41.

29 John Palmer, ‘The War Aims of the Protagonists and the Negotiations for Peace’, in Kenneth Fowler (ed.), The Hundred Years War (Suffolk, 1971), pp. 64-65.

30 John Palmer, England, France and Christendom:1377-99 (Chatham, 1972), pp. 156-157.

31 Palmer, ‘The War Aims of the Protagonists and the Negotiations for Peace’, p. 55.

32 Michael Jones, ‘Relations with France, 1337-1399’ in, Michael Jones and Malcolm Vale (eds.), England and Her Neighbours, 1066-1453: Essays in Honour of Pierre Chaplais (London, 1989), pp. 252-253.

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Why was there no successful diplomatic resolution to the Hundred Years’ War, c.1337-1475? | David Manchester

the Treaty of Troyes rested on the ability of the Lancastrians to subdue the Kingdom of Bourges. The treaty even forbade Henry V and the Burgundians from treating with ‘the said Dauphin’.33 Troyes was not a peace.

It was an attempt to legally entrench English war goals in France through the creation of a dual-monarchy and an alliance with the Burgundians who, after Montereau, were not inclined to support the Dauphin. It was a political settlement that required ratification through military success. The permanent defeat of the Dauphin was essential for the treaty to be a peace. Bedford never managed to secure the necessary victory. The claim to the throne became ever more entwined with the issue of sovereignty over the course of the 1420s and 1430s, only now the struggle had started to take on new guises.

The Lancastrian conquest of Normandy and the subsequent creation of the dual-monarchy gradually made the issue of Norman sovereignty a sticking point in negotiations. Edward III made no pretensions for his assuming a titular claim to the duchy, seeing it as an essential conquest, given that it posed a direct threat to the south coast of England.34 When Henry V invaded, he did not make his goals clear. The English did seem to consciously encourage Norman particularism. It would make the duchy easier to hold after a Brétignystyle settlement. Indeed, Henry V had given strong reminders of his potential hereditary right to the Duchy of Normandy.35 The Treaty of Troyes appeared to clarify the situation with Henry V holding Normandy as a quasi-appanage.36 This status meant it was still part of the French kingdom. Bedford’s support of the Cour de Conseil gave the Parlement and the University of Paris cause to worry about their supreme legal power that guaranteed the unity of the kingdom.37 Even if the work of the council in Rouen did not pose a serious threat to the sovereignty of the Paris Parlement it is revealing that Parlement was concerned. It shows that Bedford was caught in a dilemma. Normandy had become the base of Lancastrian power in France. Its importance only increased after the defeat at Orleans meant that Lancastrian power was no longer expanding. Bedford had to balance the power of Rouen to strengthen his base and the unity offered by the Parisian institutions that was essential for the dual-monarchy. The need to maintain the rhetoric of unity prevented Bedford from compromising the sovereignty of the Paris Parlement. His restriction meant that Normandy was tied to the English claim to the French crown. In contrast, a receding Lancastrian France had an interest in encouraging Norman particularism to help secure Norman loyalty against the Valois. To maintain sovereignty over his Norman possessions Henry VI now had also to maintain his claim to the French crown.

Retaining the crown was made difficult by the Lancastrian land settlement which increased the diplomatic difficulty of doing so, while simultaneously making the maintenance of sovereign power in the duchy even more important. The pays de conquête were not only redistributed to royal relations and captains, but also to English settlers who had little to go back to in England.38 This redistribution had the advantage that English settlers would live in France and there would not be a body of resented absentee landlords. It also meant that English settlers depended on their French holdings for their livelihoods. The Dauphin’s edict of Compiegne committed him to the restoration of this land to its original owners.39 If Lancastrian Kingship were compromised, the land settlement that guaranteed the property of thousands of Englishmen and represented the very foundation of Lancastrian power would collapse. Even if the use of the title was suspended temporarily, as was suggested at Arras, the English settlers in Normandy would be left at the legal mercy of the French government.40 As it became increasingly probable that Lancastrian France would rule solely Normandy the only practicable solution likely would have been that English kings would become dukes of Normandy with the land settlement maintained by claiming the sovereign authority of the Cour de Conseil in 33

The Treaty of Troyes: Clause 29, in Frederic Austin Ogg (ed.), A Source Book of Medieval History Documents Illustrative of European Life and Institutions from the German Invasions to the Renaissance (London, 1907) p. 443.

34 W. M. Ormond, ‘England, Normandy and the Beginnings of the Hundred Years War, 1259-1360’ in David Bates and Anne Curry (eds.), England and Normandy in the Middle Ages (London, 1994), p. 201.

35 C. T. Allmand, Lancastrian Normandy, 1415-1450: the history of a medieval occupation (Oxford, 1983), pp. 124126.

36 Anne Curry, ‘Lancastrian Normandy: The Jewel in the Crown?’ in David Bates and Anne Curry (eds.), England and Normandy in the Middle Ages (London, 1994), p.237.

37 Allmand, Lancastrian Normandy, pp. 129-132.

38 Ibid., pp. 55-56,271-2.

39 Vale, ‘France at the End of the Hundred Years War’, p. 398.

40 Allmand, Lancastrian Normandy, p. 276.

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Rouen. This possibility was unlikely. Charles VII would have left many of his supporters poorer and there was hardly a legal basis for such a settlement that was also unpalatable for the same reasons as the prospect of an English Gascony. English control and sovereignty in Normandy could not be compromised. Settlers in Maine rightly felt that Henry VI had ‘abandoned a large number of people, your faithful subjects’ when ceding Maine at Tours.41 As this control came to depend on a claim to the French crown, the possibility of finding a peace settlement became more unlikely. Now the claim to the throne was entangled with intractable issues similar, and in many ways worse than, those in Gascony. The Lancastrian claim to France only became unsolvable once it had become mired also in issues concerning sovereignty.

Edward IV’s abortive invasion in 1475 brings the importance of sovereignty into sharper focus. That the Hundred Years’ War seems to have continued after the English expulsion from Gascony prima facie suggests that the problem of sovereignty was not the main issue prohibiting peace. The lack of an English presence in France meant that sovereignty was no longer inseparable from the claim to the crown nor did it remain an issue in Gascony. However, Edward IV’s invasion was not a continuation of the Hundred Years’ War. The Treaty of Picquiny was superficially similar in form to the truces of the Hundred Years’ War: there were pledges of eternal friendship and a marriage alliance.42 Picquiny was different because it was reached easily and secured a far more permanent truce. In 1475 the French king could buy off the English king and captains with pensions. English kings did not have to deal with the complexities of forcing truces on routier captains or protecting their hereditary rights in a duchy. They could accept their bribe and leave. This contrast between the labyrinth of arbitration, truces and ongoing low-level conflict with the rapid departure of English forces in 1475 demonstrates how essential the issue of sovereignty was to the intractable nature of the diplomatic problems in the Hundred Years’ War. The Treaty of Picquiny looks ignominious beside great diplomatic resolutions of conflicts like the Congress of Vienna. It was not permanent and did not see a renunciation of the English claim to the French throne, but it recognised the new and more peaceful status-quo that could allow for commercial treaties and ongoing de facto peace.43 This new existence was not always a comfortable one and English kings were often tempted to invade, and sometimes did so, in the next several decades. Since England’s continental holdings had largely disintegrated there was not, particularly on the French side, the necessity of war to complete the kingdom as had been so prevalent previously. When sovereignty was no longer an issue the character of Anglo-French relations became more manageable, and, although there was no peace treaty, the continued truces offered a substitute almost as effective.

The deficiency of papal arbitration and the temptation to use ineffective truces as a means to avoid addressing intractable issues were important factors in preventing a diplomatic resolution to the Hundred Years’ War. The issue of sovereignty complicated all diplomatic efforts. There was no solution that would allow the English, French and Gascons to accept a compromise over who was the sovereign lord in Gascony. The English even gained from the ambiguity of temporary truces as they maintained control and did not have to cede any of their rights. This meant that they were not always inclined to seek permanent peace. These issues only became more difficult to solve when control of Normandy meant Lancastrian sovereignty and kingship were essential for the maintenance of the land settlement as well as the stability of the Lancastrian regime.

The issue of the claim to the throne of France was not as intractable as that of sovereignty. The ease with which Edward IV was convinced to settle with the French when sovereignty was no longer an issue best demonstrates how fundamental sovereignty was. English kings were expected to pay homage to their French counterparts, as well as to accept Parliament’s jurisdiction over their continental holdings. This issue was amplified by the short-term temptations of truces and the failings of papal arbitration and together these factors would prevent a successful diplomatic resolution to the Hundred Years’ War.

41 Letters and Papers, ed. J. Stevenson, II, ii, pp. 598-603, in in Christopher Allmand (ed.), Society at War: The Experience of England and France during the Hundred Years War (Woodbridge, 1998), p. 175.

42 Charles Derek Ross, Edward IV (London, 1974), p. 233.

43 Vale, The Ancient Enemy, p. 234.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY: Froissart, Jean, Chronicles: Selected, Translated and Edited by Geffrey Brereton (London, 1978) Chronique des Quatres Premiers Valois (1327-1393), ed. by S. Luce, pp. 163-164, in Christopher Allmand (ed.), Society at War: The Experience of England and France during the Hundred Years War (Woodbridge, 1998) The Treaty of Troyes (1420), in Frederic Austin Ogg (ed.), A Source Book of Medieval History Documents Illustrative of European Life and Institutions from the German Invasions to the Renaissance (London, 1907) Letters and Papers, ed. J. Stevenson, II, ii, pp. 598-603, in in Christopher Allmand (ed.), Society at War: The Experience of England and France during the Hundred Years War (Woodbridge, 1998) Allmand, C. T., Lancastrian Normandy, 1415-1450: the history of a medieval occupation (Oxford, 1983) Chaplais, Pierre, ‘English Arguments Concerning the Feudal Status of Aquitaine in the Fourteenth Century’, Historical Research, May 1948, Vol.21(64), pp.203-213.

Chaplais, Pierre, ‘The Court of Sovereignty of Guyenne (Edward III- Henry IV) and its Antecedents’, in J.S. Hamilton and Patricia Bradley (eds.), Documenting the Past: Essays in Medieval History presented to George Peddy Cuttino (New Hampshire, 1989), pp. 137-155.

Curry, Anne, ‘Lancastrian Normandy: The Jewel in the Crown?’ in David Bates and Anne Curry (eds.), England and Normandy in the Middle Ages (London, 1994), pp. 235-252.

Curry, Anne, The Hundred Years War (Hampshire, 2003) Cuttino, G. P., English medieval diplomacy (Bloomington, 1985) Dickinson, Joycelyne Gledhill, The Congress of Arras, 1435: a study in medieval diplomacy (Oxford, 1955) Fowler, Kenneth, ‘Truces’, in Kenneth Fowler (ed.), The Hundred Years War (Suffolk, 1971) Galliou, Patrick, and Jones, Michael, The Bretons (Oxford, 1991) Harvey, Margaret, England, Rome and the papacy, 1417-1464: the study of a relationship (Manchester, 1993) Jones, Michael, ‘Relations with France, 1337-1399’ in Michael Jones and Malcolm Vale (eds.), England and Her Neighbours, 1066-1453: Essays in Honour of Pierre Chaplais (London, 1989) Le Patourel, John, ‘The Treaty of Brétingy, 1360’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, Vol. 10, No.1 (January 1960) Ormond, W. M., ‘England, Normandy and the Beginnings of the Hundred Years War, 1259-1360’ in David Bates and Anne Curry (eds.), England and Normandy in the Middle Ages (London, 1994) Palmer, J. J. N., ‘The Anglo-French Peace Negotiations, 1390-1396: The Alexander Prize Essay’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, Vol. 16 (1966) Palmer, John, ‘The War Aims of the Protagonists and the Negotiations for Peace’, in Kenneth Fowler (ed.), The Hundred Years War (Suffolk, 1971) Palmer, John, England, France and Christendom: 1377-99 (Chatham, 1972) Plöger, Karsten, England and the Avignon popes: the practice of diplomacy in late medieval Europe (London, 2005) Ross, Charles Derek, Edward IV (London, 1974) Sumption, Jonathan, The Hundred Years War Vol 2: Trial by Fire (London, 2001) Taylor, Craig David, ‘'La querelle Anglaise': diplomatic and legal debate during the Hundred Years War, with an edition of the polemical treatise 'Pour ce que plusieurs' (1464)’, PhD, 1998.

Vale, Malcolm, ‘France at the End of the Hundred Years War (c. 1420–1461)’, in Christopher Allmand (ed.), The New Cambridge Medieval History, Volume 7 (Cambridge, 1998) Vale, Malcolm, English Gascony, 1399-1453: a study of war, government and politics during the later stages of the Hundred Years' War (London, 1970) Vale, Malcolm, The ancient enemy: England, France and Europe from the Angevins to the Tudors 1154-1558 (London, 2007) Zutshi, P.N.R., ‘The Letters of the Avignon Popes (1305-1378): A Source for the Study of Anglo-Papal Relations and of Ecclesiastical History’, in Michael Jones and Malcolm Vale (eds.), England and Her Neighbours, 1066-1453: Essays in Honour of Pierre Chaplais (London, 1989)

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WERE THE POLITICAL AND CULTURAL MOVEMENTS OF 20TH CENTURY JAPAN DRIVEN BY CRITICISM OF THE WEST?

BY KATSUYUKI KARL OMAE (THE COLLEGE OF ST. HILD AND ST. BEDE, 2ND YEAR) ‘Kokutaiism’ was arguably the predominant political and cultural movement of twentieth-century Japan—a concept that sought to critique Western civilisation with the ultimate goal of transcending it. This aim was evident in the movement’s reasons for adopting Western ‘science’, its cultural policies that acted as a paradigm for Eastern pan-Asianism, and the movement’s own relationships with Western fascism. Together, these themes demonstrate how criticism of Western civilisation—a fundamental pillar of ‘Kokutaiism’— asserted Japan’s unique superiority, and ultimate divinity. In contrast, the post-war transmutation of Kokutaiism, ‘nihonjinron’, sought instead to preserve ‘uniquely’ Japanese culture against Western influence, refusing to adopt Western science or associate with its fascist movements. This reveals a marked contrast: whereas ‘Kokutaiism’ sought to critique and ultimately transcend Western civilisation, its ‘nihonjinron’ descendant was defined by cautious isolationism. Finally, although it is acknowledged that ‘Kokutaiism’ may not have existed as an official policy in name, the idea of ‘Kokutaiism’ helps to conceptualize the ideological framework of the ‘Kokutai’, the national body encompassing the uniquely ‘Japanese’. Crucially, ‘Kokutaiism’ went beyond informing the infamous racism of the ‘Kokutai’, stressing a belief in Japan’s moral and spiritual superiority. This will clarify just how ‘Kokutaiism’, driven by its criticism of Western civilisation, ultimately sought to transcend it.

Kokutai can roughly be translated as ‘national body’ and was a term that was frequently invoked in twentiethcentury Japan, so-much-so that ‘Kokutaiism’ certainly existed, even if not as an official policy. Indeed, ‘Kokutai’ encompassed the entire national structure: the Japanese imperial institution, its people, empire, customs, culture, philosophy, and all else that was uniquely ‘Japanese’ (and, therefore, implicitly unWestern). Certainly, it is no coincidence that it was the Ministry of Education’s pamphlet ‘Kokutai no Hongi’ (‘True Principles of the National Body’), that was charged with educating the nation in the movement’s values. The pamphlet explicitly criticized Western liberalism and individualism, stressing selective absorption of Western science for the new Japan while filtering out individualist greed and other harmful ideas. With the Kokutai as its basis, only the best would be absorbed in order to create this new Japan, one that was founded on a superior and sacred imperial tradition.1 Japan’s sense of moral superiority, then, stemmed from the Kokutai itself; the imperial, patriarchal family-state was presented as one that was spiritual and harmonious—a stark contrast to the egoistic, materialistic and individualistic West. Cherry-picking examples that supported this ideology, teachers actively discouraged ‘bad Western values’ like individualism and materialism.2 Furthermore, while fascism and Nazism were also dismissed as ‘Western’ concepts, these, too, were selectively filtered, with some aspects shrewdly assimilated into Japanese society.3 Ultimately, it was shared support for the Kokutai that facilitated the alliance between the ultranationalist Right and the state. ‘Kokutai’ perfectly embodied their coveted belief in the uniqueness and superiority of Japan, proving politically expedient.4 Japanese ethnicity, blood, race, homogeneity, purity, disdain for Western materialism, cultural uniqueness, and general exceptionalism were, then, all deemed to be cause for the celebration of the

1

Kokutai no Hongi, Gauntlett, John (trans.), (Newton, 1974), pp. 176-183.

Shillony, Ben-Ami, Politics and Culture in Wartime Japan, (Oxford, 2001), p. 142.

3 Hofmann, Reto, The Fascist Effect: Japan and Italy, 1915-1952, (New York, 2015), pp. 87-88.

4 Ibid., pp. 63-65.

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Were the political and cultural movements of 20th century Japan driven by criticism of the West? | Katsuyuki Karl Omae

imperial institution, strengthening the socio-political power of the state.5 All of these aspects were included in the ‘Kokutai’, which also encompassed Japan’s wartime ideology. Its pan-Asianism and fascism both stressed the moral and spiritual superiority of the Kokutai itself. Hence, its criticism of Western civilisation was concomitant with the assertion of Japan’s spiritual superiority, and despite differences in approach, all agreed that the Kokutai was superior to, and thus would transcend, Western civilisation.

However, as noted in Kokutai no Hongi, Western science could only support the existing moral and spiritual superiority of the Kokutai; this made for an uncomfortable dynamic as ‘Kokutaiism’ was defined by its criticism of the West and censure of its moral inferiority. Hence, Western science’s reconciliation and unification with Eastern spirituality was discussed at leading newspaper Chūōkōron’s April 1942 symposium, emerging as a principal topic. Furthermore, at the Bungakkai symposium on ‘overcoming modernity’, Shimomura stressed that modern science itself was not bad.6 Even after embracing Asian-ness in 1905, the dual mission was to elevate Asia while incorporating the best features of Western society.7 Vast industrial production, advanced research, the Honshū-Kyūshū Kannon tunnel, as well as projects for bullet trains, canals, and a Berlin-Tōkyō railroad, were all examples of Japan’s scientific and spiritual dominance in East Asia.8 At the 1942 symposium on ‘overcoming modernity’, whilst many posited that modernity was something that should be overcome, others argued that it retained some value.9 Indeed, many commended the European Renaissance precisely because it epitomised society’s ability to synthesise science and spirituality; these individuals believed that Japan should emulate this, fusing East and West.10 With a few exceptions, none of the attendees of the Symposium fully rejected the concepts of science and modernity; what was objected-to was the specifically ‘Western’ nature of the modernity, characterised by flawed materialism and individualism. Driven by these criticisms, the Kokutai sought to supersede the West with its own moral and spiritual structures, absorbing western scientific ideas as a rational means to strengthen itself.

Having separated itself from any allegiance to, and successfully asserted its superiority over Western ideology, Kokutaiism would inspire others to enact policies for the victory of a uniquely ‘Japanese’ way of living. Already by 1901, the Japanese right emphasized nationalism, the imperial family, and a Greater Asian sphere, sacralising the emperor and national myths with increasing fervour and aggressiveness during the Taishō and Shōwa eras.11 In Tanizaki Jun’ichirō’s play ‘Chijin no Ai’ the protagonist ultimately rejects the Westernized ‘Modern Girl’, choosing instead a woman concerned with the traditional Japanese values of marriage and family. While at first, smitten with glamorous Western ideals, he can be seen to ultimately return to the righteous and morally superior Japanese way.12 Indeed, by the thirties novelists such as Saneatsu Mushanokoji had started to set their novels in the West in an attempt to disillusion their readers of its values.

In these novels, the protagonists would typically travel west and return with a new understanding of Japan’s spiritual superiority.13 Back in Japan, critic Kuki Shūzō’s own culturalism of ‘national aestheticism’ represented a reaction to the West. To him, the uniquely ‘Japanese’ was the totality of Japanese culture, that fused the imperial state and cultural theory into one pure and immutable community. The ‘eternal now’ of his own ‘Edo’ set itself against Western civilisation. This essentially ‘Japanese’ culture was manifested in a state which also had created a ‘Japanese’ eternalized and perfect present.14 These different efforts may not have articulated their visions as ones of ‘Kokutaiism’, but they were all driven by a criticism of Western 5 Befu, Harumi, ‘Symbols of nationalism and Nihonjinron’, in Goodman, Roger, and Kirsten Refsing (eds.), Ideology and practice in modern Japan, (London, 1992), pp. 43-44.

6 Ryōen, Minamoto, ‘The Symposium on Overcoming Modernity’, in Heisig, James, and, John Maraldo (eds.), Rude Awakenings: Zen, the Kyoto School, and the Question of Nationalism, (Honolulu, 1994), pp. 210-212.

7 Aydin, Cemil, The Politics of Anti-Westernism in Asia: Visions of World Order in Pan-Islamic and Pan-Asian Thought, (New York, 2007), pp. 90-91.

8 Shillony, Politics and Culture in Wartime Japan, pp. 139-140.

9 Ryōen, ‘The Symposium on Overcoming Modernity’, pp. 207-208.

10 Hofmann, The Fascist Effect, pp. 123-124.

11 Ryōen, ‘The Symposium on Overcoming Modernity’, pp. 200-202.

12 Silverberg, Miriam, Erotic Grotesque Nonsense: The Mass Culture of Japanese Modern Times, (University of California, 2009), pp. 55-56.

13 Wilkinson, Endymion, Japan versus the west: image and reality, (Harmondsworth, 1990), pp. 70-72.

14 Pincus, Leslie, Authenticating Culture in Imperial Japan: Kuki Shūzō and the Rise of National Aesthetics, (Berkeley, 1996), pp. 218-229, 246-247.

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civilisation to stress a uniquely ‘Japanese’ spiritual culture that superseded its Western counterpart. The advocacy of Kokutaiist values would in time become state policy. By 1939, the victory of the emperor system within modern Japanese culture was evidenced by the Japan Culture Film Almanac. This employed ahistorical national definitions such as sumo’s mythical origins, and ‘Japanese-style baseball’. Unlike the previously playful cosmopolitanism of Taishō, modernity now meant the efficiency of the Empire’s communications, arms, and fellow fascist allies. Development of industry and technology were also prominent features, but only insofar as they helped promote the purity, morality, and spirituality of the empire.

15 By 1943 even baseball was being suppressed.16 The state mobilised movies for ‘healthy pleasures’ and the war effort through legal and rhetorical encouragement. Movie magazines began to praise state-backed war movies, and a confused Japanese people found comfort in Japanese movies depicting conflict overseas. In effect, the agonies of cultural transition were eased by these depictions of a victorious imperial élan’. 17 Language itself was purged, as foreign loanwords and toponyms were replaced with Japanese neologisms. English signs were removed, Englishtitled publications renamed, and English itself discouraged by the Ministry of Education.18 Entertainment and language, product and carrier of culture, were not to continue spreading Western ideas simply because their consumers were Japanese. Policy was now able to check the expansion of western influence; the superiority of their new spiritual culture was seemingly affirmed. Similarly, foreign luxuries were categorized as Western influences: morally decadent and economically harmful. Rallying behind the slogan ‘luxury is the enemy’ people were to return to simpler, older, purer forms of life.19 In the war itself, this culture of a pure and noble Japanese spirit would overcome Western material superiority, both in fighting spirit and spiritual protection.

People celebrated the victories and Western collapse that confirmed their moral superiority and leading destiny. The press simultaneously helped vilify the Anglo-American ‘devils’ for their crimes. 20 In peace and war, the spiritual and cultural composition of Western civilisation allowed it to be surpassed by the superior Japanese Kokutai culture. Similarly, Japanese philosophy became increasingly nationalistic and authoritarian.21 This trend would peak in the Chūōkōron debates, as well as during the literary magazine Bungakkai symposium on ‘overcoming modernity’, attended by various philosophers and writers. However, not all agreed on the particulars. Some simply saw world history as shifting from the West to Asia and were criticized for being insufficiently nationalistic. Others extolled the imperial institution and Japanese cultural superiority, positing folk-spirit as a history-making world-movement centred on the Imperial line.22 Miki Kiyoshi and Rōyama Masamichi desired to create a Japan ready to embrace its historical mission, and thus criticized Western fascism, liberalism, and socialism, to adapt them to their Japanese alternative.23 Of course, not all these philosophers employed the term ‘Kokutai’. Yet, the concept of ‘Kokutaiism’ existed de facto, and all of them, including the imperial state they served, were united by a belief in the superiority of Japanese culture over Western civilisation. This led them to hope that Kokutai would supplant materialism, baseball, and the English language, to see its people living pure and noble lives in a world somehow appropriately Japanese in its modernity.

Kokutaiism’s pan-Asianism was underpinned by its criticism of Western civilisation, and its emphasis on the superiority of Eastern spiritualism. Despite an apparent decline during the 1920s, Asian and anti-Western discourse continued and was consolidated by events such as the rejection of the racial equality clause, the 1924 banning of Japanese immigration to America, and the writing of pan-Asianist texts such as those of

15

Silverberg, Erotic Grotesque Nonsense, p. 254.

Shillony, Politics and Culture in Wartime Japan, pp. 144-145.

17 Silverberg, Erotic Grotesque Nonsense, pp. 136-142.

18 Shillony, Politics and Culture in Wartime Japan, pp. 148-149.

19 Shillony, Ben-Ami, Politics and Culture in Wartime Japan, (Oxford, 2001), p. 151.

20 Ibid., pp. 134-146.

21 Feenberg, Andrew, ‘The Problem of Modernity in the Philosophy of Nishida’, in Heisig, James, and, John Maraldo (eds.), Rude Awakenings: Zen, the Kyoto School, and the Question of Nationalism, (Honolulu, 1994), p. 151.

22 Piovesana, Gino, Recent Japanese Philosophical Thought, 1862-1996: a survey, (Avon, 1997), pp. 194-196.

23 Fletcher III, William, The Search for a New Order: Intellectuals and Fascism in Prewar Japan, (Chapel Hill, 1982), pp. 84-87.

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Ōkawa Shūmei.24 Indeed, while Aydin suggests that it was weakened, this can be seen as a crucial period in preparing for salience. Growth in general anti-Western sentiment was reflected through criticism of Italian activities in Abyssinia and the weak response of the League of Nations.25 As war with the West came, journals embraced the rhetoric of the East-West dichotomy, denying any similarity with Western imperialism in favour of an image of Japan as the chosen leader of a reborn Asia.26 Essentially for the pan-Asianists of the Kokutai, the flaws of Western civilisation destined it to be vanquished by the East, which would naturally occur under the guidance of Japan, the pinnacle of Eastern civilisation. For Zen nativist thinkers, this took the form of admitting that while Western civilisation might be materially stronger, it lacked the strength of Eastern spirituality. Asians thus had to free themselves of Western imperialism whilst Japan had a duty to guide Asia using its ‘sublime Zen’.27 Following these principles, Nishitani condemned at the Chuokoron debates the Anglo-American hypocrisy of exploiting subjugated people while at the same time criticizing Nazi supremacism. He then went on to propose that it was Japan’s historical mission to elevate Asia and awaken the Asian peoples.28 Western civilisation existed only to subjugate others and so deserved his condemnation. Kokutai, in contrast, was to lead Eastern civilisation to co-prosperity and enlightenment.

Indeed, Ōkawa persistently claimed Japan’s destiny lay in supporting and leading the independence and advancement of Asian countries against the West. Furthermore, he and others who called for Asian civilisational revival and synthesis under Japanese aegis eagerly received the many internal critics of Western civilisation.29 After the Manchurian Incident and withdrawal from the League of Nations, Ōkawa received government funding for a specialist school for Asian studies, and in 1941 he quickly embraced the rhetoric of an East-West struggle epitomized by the Pacific War.30 Pan-Asianists with nationalist tendencies were driven by criticism of Western civilisation and its colonialism. These empires were to be defeated by a resurgent Asia, their colonies liberated and made peaceful under Japanese leadership. The imperialism and capitalism of Western civilisation which they criticized would be replaced by this resurgent tradition. Indeed, sinologist Takeuchi Yoshimi distinguished between imperialist aggression against other Asian nations and war with the West as self-defence.31 Against the oppression of Western civilisation, they envisioned an Eastern mode of ethics and an Eastern economic bloc which would overcome capitalism. This would produce a superior East naturally led by the zenith of its civilisation—Japan, and its Kokutai government. 32 For the participants of the Chūōkōron discussions, the war was evidently a struggle between Eastern and Western morality, to guide the East against the divisive liberalism and colonial imperialism of the West.33 Similarly, for Miki and Rōyama, Japan’s rise heralded a new East Asian order that would unify the region and ultimately overcome modernity’s ills in the form of an Asian utopia under Japanese leadership.34 Nishida himself seems to have striven for a distinctly Japanese Eastern modernity for a global modern world. To achieve this the West had to be challenged in order to unite East and West through the transcendent concept of Japanese modernity.35 For Nishitani, within the East lay the solution to the problems of modernity; there also lay the end of Japanese Westernization and Western civilisation itself.36 All of these disparate thinkers were driven

24

Aydin, The Politics of Anti-Westernism in Asia, pp. 141-160.

Hofmann, The Fascist Effect, pp. 93-96.

26 Aydin, The Politics of Anti-Westernism in Asia, pp. 175-180.

27 Sharf, Robert, ‘Whose Zen? Zen Nationalism Revisited’, in Heisig, James, and, John Maraldo (eds.), Rude Awakenings: Zen, the Kyoto School, and the Question of Nationalism, (Honolulu, 1994), pp. 49-50.

28 Maraldo, John, ‘Questioning Nationalism Now and Then: A Critical Approach to Zen and the Kyoto School’, in Heisig, James, and, John Maraldo (eds.), Rude Awakenings: Zen, the Kyoto School, and the Question of Nationalism, (Honolulu, 1994), pp. 352-353.

29 Aydin, The Politics of Anti-Westernism in Asia, pp. 114-124.

30 Ibid., pp. 166-174.

31 Horio, Tsutomu, ‘The Chūōkōron Discussions, Their Background and Meaning’, in Heisig, James, and, John Maraldo (eds.), Rude Awakenings: Zen, the Kyoto School, and the Question of Nationalism, (Honolulu, 1994), pp. 292293.

32 Hofmann, The Fascist Effect, pp. 128-129.

33 Horio, ‘The Chūōkōron Discussions’, pp. 307-314.

34 Fletcher III, The Search for a New Order, pp. 111-116.

35 Feenberg, ‘The Problem of Modernity’, pp. 151-173.

36 Van Bragt, Jan, ‘Kyoto Philosophy-Intrinsically Nationalistic?’, in Heisig, James, and, John Maraldo (eds.), Rude Awakenings: Zen, the Kyoto School, and the Question of Nationalism, (Honolulu, 1994), pp. 246-247.

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by criticism of Western civilisation and their conviction that Japan was the pinnacle of the spiritual East. This was so clear that when the emperor announced the war’s end, Ōkawa thought his entire pan-Asianist work had simply failed.37 For them, the notions that Japan could reform the ‘unhistorical’ peoples of Asia until they became spiritually Japanese, and that ‘Japanising’ Asians amounted to ‘awakening them’, likely did not seem incompatible. 38 Although they may not have framed their cause in Kokutaiist language, all thinkers were driven by a disdain for the west and its recent ravaging of the East. Ultimately their shared grievance would unite them in support of Kokutai leadership in the struggle for Asian transcendence of the West.

The fascist element of Kokutaiism also came to define itself in contrast to the West. Its persistent criticism of western fascism fostered a resolute confidence in their superiority over it. Thus, the nationalist Right embraced national particularism to restore what it saw as the Japanese spirit, convinced of a distinct Japanese solution to the ills of modernity, beyond Western liberalism, socialism, and ultimately fascism. While they did recognize universal fascistic values, they still asserted the superiority of Japan’s even greater Kokutai: fascism simply reiterated what had always been the Japanese way.39 This was also reflective of the Mussolini boom, which hailed Mussolini as a role model for Japanese youth and their new Japan, but which placed itself in context against the professional politicians and Westernized intellectuals. Further, Mussolini’s heroism, according to children’s books authors who wrote about him, would inspire youth to turn against American materialism.40 Their claim to difference was founded on national peculiarities derived from their criticism of Western civilisation, because ultimately, the flawed fascism of an equally flawed Western civilisation could never compare to the uniqueness of the Kokutai. Leading nationalist thinkers expressed scepticism about fascism and even used the label as an insult in their internecine infighting. While they recognized its possibilities for community-building, they once again stressed the uniquely organic Japanese totality of the nation united in will and blood for three thousand years, all of them agreeing that the native Japanese way was superior to fascism. Fascism was comparable but not compatible, to the uniqueness and superiority of the Japanese way and Kokutai.41 Thus, at the ‘overcoming modernity’ symposium Hayashi Fusao’s essay stressed loyalty to the emperor above all, beyond Western or Chinese notions of allegiance.42 In relation to their Axis allies, newspapers always stressed Japanese military parity with or even superiority to Germany.

Later criticism stressed German deficiencies; they had never been as gallant or steadfast as the Japanese, and as a result, their brand of Western National-Socialism failed.43 In fascist Italy, similar flaws were identified by literary critic Kobayashi Hideo. The spirit of the Renaissance found there, and the more recent instalment of fascism, paled in comparison to the pure and unbroken Japanese imperial tradition. Be they Italian, Renaissance, or fascist cultures, that of Japan, for Hideo, remained superior.44 Driven by a rejection of the perceived flaws of Western civilisation, the fascism of ‘Kokutaiism’ embraced the Kokutai precisely because of its criticism of the West. Unwilling to admit any connection to western fascism, ‘fascism’ became the shadowy partner of Kokutaiism, the public face of which continued to assert total separation from Western ideology.

After its defeat against the West, ‘Kokutaiism’ arguably transformed into ‘nihonjinron’. While it still explicitly positioned ‘Japan’ against the ‘West’, it was differentiated by the aim of preserving what was uniquely ‘Japanese’. For Nishitani in a post-war analysis, the problem of Western modernity was nihilism; as the Meiji modernisation severed Japan’s spiritual traditions, it caused a metamorphosis of violence by ‘patriots’ against this loss of cultural self.45 In a sense, the violence was no longer physical and aimed outwards, but ideological and aimed internally. For ultimately ‘nihonjinron’ still allows continuity with

37

Aydin, The Politics of Anti-Westernism in Asia, pp. 186-187.

Maraldo, ‘Questioning Nationalism Now and Then’, pp. 353-354.; Van Bragt, ‘Kyoto Philosophy-Intrinsically Nationalistic?’, pp. 238-239.

39 Hofmann, The Fascist Effect: Japan and Italy, pp. 75-83.

40 Ibid., pp. 56-58.

41 Ibid., pp. 84-88, 132-134.

42 Ryōen, ‘The Symposium on Overcoming Modernity’, pp. 214-215.

43 Shillony, Politics and Culture in Wartime Japan, pp. 152-154.

44 Hofmann, The Fascist Effect, pp. 126-127.

45 Maraldo, ‘Questioning Nationalism Now and Then’, p. 359.

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wartime nationalistic ideology, both relying on notions of the ‘ethnic essence’ of the Japanese blood, race, and language. This had implied the homogeneity of Japanese blood and the purity of its culture. Furthermore, the idea that Japanese spiritualism would triumph over Western materialism still persisted, based on the notion that Japan was the greatest nation in the world. This essentially constituted wartime nationalism stripped of its imperial and militaristic rhetoric.46 Yet, as noted it does not seek to surpass but rather to preserve the ‘Japanese’ against Western civilisation, a discourse that has been prominent on both the Left and Right. Thus, modernist critic Kuwabara Takeo was censured for his critical evaluation of haiku, and the counter-arguments from the Left extoled its uniqueness, long tradition, acceptance and popularity within Japanese culture.47 Haiku is ‘unique’: it arguably embodies Japanese ‘tradition’, and it is accepted and embraced by the ‘Japanese’ as part of their culture. Kuwabara’s criticism thus amounted to betrayal.

Similarly, the Left wished to preserve and feel pride in kabuki, even though kabuki is arguably a feudal product. They would also disparage ‘un-Japanese’ modern drama, Western-based music, art, literature, and the innovators and pioneers who brought such modern novels, Western literature and theatre to Japan, turning instead to ancient and medieval Japanese literature.48 Yet, there was no intention to replace English. Nothing like Asian writers envisioning the defeat of Western literature, or the spread of its superior spiritual culture; this is not Leftist thought in service of ‘Kokutaiism’. This is simply a desire for Japan to be ‘Japan’, and the Japanese to be ‘Japanese’, rather than Western. While critical of wartime nationalism, Takeuchi Yoshimi does this too—his call for ‘national literature’ is a reaction, wishing to preserve the Japanese against the Western. His praise of the unified ‘minzoku’ is decidedly unhistorical; an essence that exists unchanged through history, defining the Japanese as ‘Japanese’, the restoration of who is the mission of ‘national literature’. On the other hand, joining world literature brings ‘coloniality’, the loss of independence and degeneration. Thus, this resistance of outside influence requires restoring the minzoku that has driven Japan through history, and of whose spirit the people are mere expressions. It is a dichotomy of the essentially ‘Japanese’ in which his ‘cure’ for Western universalism is always ‘minzoku’.49 However, the characters which form ‘minzoku’ can mean ‘nation’ or ‘people’, and ‘tribe’ or ‘family’, and thus it can mean ‘nation’, as well as ‘people’, ‘ethnicity’, ‘race’, or all of them simultaneously. Instead, ‘kokumin’, ‘state’, and ‘nation’ or ‘people’, is what usually denotes ‘citizen’ in the political or civic sense. What Takeuchi is advocating for then is purging the foreign for what is essentially ethnocentric particularism. However, it is again a restoration of ‘Japanese’ literature in Japan, not the transcendence of Japanese literature, as part of the Kokutai’s sublime uniqueness and superiority over the Western. It is simply a reaction, a defence of the uniquely ‘Japanese’, falling back on the ethnic but lacking any transcendent vision.

Takeuchi Yoshimi or the Left would perhaps disavow this categorization, but their contributions amount to exactly that. For the corollary of this division has always been that if the uniquely ‘Japanese’ will not transcend the ‘Western’, then the ‘West’ will never transcend the uniquely ‘Japanese’. Hence the foreign, including Western civilisation, can never enter the uniquely ’Japanese’. Contrast this to ‘Kokutaiism’, ready to embrace and Japanize Asians, and ultimately even the world in the war slogan ‘hakkō ichiu’, ‘eight chords, one roof’. Thus, while Japanese identity is expressed through culture and underlying customs, where social practices are expressions of a cultural ethos, this culture is uniquely of the ‘Japanese’. And so it seems that ‘nihonjinron’ emphasizes the empathetic communication, the non-logical and non-verbal sensitivity of ‘Japanese’ social interactions, as well as ‘Japanese’ community, ‘inter-personalism’, and the close emotional bonds of ‘amae’. In contrast, Western societies are opposed due to their focus on individualism and independence.50 This unique ‘Japanese’ is ultimately grounded in being ‘Japanese’, the ‘minzoku’ of both left and right that is shut off from outside access. As Yoshino has found, there exists a vague general ‘racialism’, which explains collective identity through innate and immutable phenotypical and genotypical 46 Befu, Harumi, ‘Symbols of nationalism and Nihonjinron’, in Goodman, Roger, and Kirsten Refsing (eds.), Ideology and practice in modern Japan, (London, 1992), pp. 43-44.

47 Kuwabara, Takeo, Japan and Western Civilization: Essays on Comparative Culture, (Tokyo, 1983), pp. 47-48.

48 Ibid., pp. 50-56.

49 Calichman, Richard, Takeuchi Yoshimi: Displacing the West, (New York, 2004), pp. 56-61.

50 Yoshino, Kosaku, ‘Culturalism, Racialism, and Internationalism in the Discourse on Japanese Identity’, in Gladney, Dru (ed.), Making Majorities: Constituting the Nation in Japan, Korea, China, Malaysia, Fiji, Turkey, and the United States, (Stanford, 1998), pp. 16-17.

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characteristics. This ‘Japanese blood’ emphasizes kinship and shared lineage- echoing, if not reviving, the imperial family-state who are the exclusive owners of Japanese culture, such as uniquely untranslatable words and phrases. Hence Watanabe Shōichi wrote that the spirit of the Japanese language was as old as Japanese blood, and thus he knew of no foreigner who could write good waka poetry.51 Regardless of whether the average Japanese may in fact, be able to write good waka poetry, or how much ‘Japanese blood’ is necessary, none of the ‘un-Japanese’, including those of Western civilisation, can ever write good waka poetry. The haiku may not transcend, but it is forever beyond reach. While many agreed Japanese-Americans could become Japanese by virtue of this ‘Japanese blood’, and Koreans and Chinese could overcome genotype by combining culture and phenotype (in other words, by assimilating) Westerners could never overcome phenotype, for even if they learnt Japanese behaviour, it would still not bridge the racial-cultural gap. It is ‘our’ modes of thinking and behaving, a vague overlap of race and culture embodying ‘our’, ‘Japanese’, difference.52 Clearly then, the fundamental problem with ‘nihonjinron’ is its construction of an essential ‘Japanese’ identity in contrast to an essential ‘West’; it is a cultural discourse of difference, uniqueness, and ultimately exceptionalism. Japan is not Western, cannot become Western, and were it ever to change – that is, Westernize – it would not be ‘Japan’. Japanese speak, think, behave, and look Japanese, because they are Japanese. This is still criticism of Western civilisation of the highest order, but a defensive one. The crucial difference is that while they both criticize Western civilisation, post-war ‘nihonjinron’ merely seeks to delineate and preserve what is ‘Japanese’, whereas ‘Kokutaiism’, convinced of its moral and spiritual superiority, was driven by its criticism of Western civilisation and wish to transcend it.

This was underpinned by the virtue of its moral and spiritual superiority, and its ability to absorb Western science whilst remaining spiritually ‘untainted’. Furthermore, we must consider the superiority of ‘Japanese’ spiritual culture, which was effectively carried forth by policy as well as Japan’s position as the foremost nation in the spiritual East, leading Asia’s transcendence over an oppressive West. In contrast, its ‘nihonjinron’ descendant has been shown to simply seek to delineate ‘Japanese-ness’. Each of these different strands of ‘Kokutaiism’ clearly shows how it was driven by its criticism of Western civilisation to a vision of its ultimate transcendence over it, now abandoned by post-war ‘nihonjinron’ to simply preserve what is ‘Japanese’. The dream of the Japanese sun rising over Western civilisation has become the sun that shines most brightly in Japan.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Aydin, Cemil, The Politics of Anti-Westernism in Asia: Visions of World Order in Pan-Islamic and Pan Asian Thought, (New York, 2007) Befu, Harumi, ‘Symbols of nationalism and Nihonjinron’, in Goodman, Roger, and Kirsten Refsing (eds.)

Ideology and practice in modern Japan, (London, 1992) Calichman, Richard, Takeuchi Yoshimi: Displacing the West, (New York, 2004) Feenberg, Andrew, ‘The Problem of Modernity in the Philosophy of Nishida’, in Heisig, James, and, John Maraldo (eds.), Rude Awakenings: Zen, the Kyoto School, and the Question of Nationalism, (Honolulu, 1994) Fletcher III, William, The Search for a New Order: Intellectuals and Fascism in Prewar Japan, (Chapel Hill, 1982) Hofmann, Reto, The Fascist Effect: Japan and Italy, 1915-1952, (New York, 2015) Horio, Tsutomu, ‘The Chūōkōron Discussions, Their Background and Meaning’, in Heisig, James, and, John Maraldo (eds.), Rude Awakenings: Zen, the Kyoto School, and the Question of Nationalism, (Honolulu, 1994) Gauntlett, John (trans.), Kokutai no Hongi (Newton, 1974) Kuwabara, Takeo, Japan and Western Civilization: Essays on Comparative Culture, (Tokyo, 1983) 51 52

Ibid., pp. 18-22.

Ibid., pp. 22-27.

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Maraldo, John, ‘Questioning Nationalism Now and Then: A Critical Approach to Zen and the Kyoto School’, in Heisig, James, and, John Maraldo (eds.), Rude Awakenings: Zen, the Kyoto School, and the Question of Nationalism, (Honolulu, 1994) Pincus, Leslie, Authenticating Culture in Imperial Japan: Kuki Shūzō and the Rise of National Aesthetics, (Berkeley, 1996) Piovesana, Gino, Recent Japanese Philosophical Thought, 1862-1996: a survey, (Richmond, 1997) Ryōen, Minamoto, ‘The Symposium on Overcoming Modernity’, in Heisig, James, and, John Maraldo (eds.), Rude Awakenings: Zen, the Kyoto School, and the Question of Nationalism, (Honolulu, 1994) Silverberg, Miriam, Erotic Grotesque Nonsense: The Mass Culture of Japanese Modern Times, (Berkeley, 2009) Sharf, Robert, ‘Whose Zen? Zen Nationalism Revisited’, in Heisig, James, and, John Maraldo (eds.), Rude Awakenings: Zen, the Kyoto School, and the Question of Nationalism, (Honolulu, 1994) Shillony, Ben-Ami, Politics and Culture in Wartime Japan, (Oxford, 2001) Shizutera, Ueda, ‘Nishida, Nationalism and the War in Question’, in Heisig, James, and, John Maraldo (eds.), Rude Awakenings: Zen, the Kyoto School, and the Question of Nationalism, (Honolulu, 1994) Van Bragt, Jan, ‘Kyoto Philosophy-Intrinsically Nationalistic?’, in Heisig, James, and, John Maraldo (eds.), Rude Awakenings: Zen, the Kyoto School, and the Question of Nationalism, (Honolulu, 1994) Wilkinson, Endymion, Japan versus the west: image and reality, (Harmondsworth, 1990) Yoshino, Kosaku, ‘Culturalism, Racialism, and Internationalism in the Discourse on Japanese Identity’, in Gladney, Dru (ed.), Making Majorities: Constituting the Nation in Japan, Korea, China, Malaysia, Fiji, Turkey, and the United States, (Stanford, 1998)

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PART III: SOURCE COMMENTARIES, HISTORIOGRAPHIES, SOURCE COMMENTARIES AND BOOK REVIEWS MICHAELA GROUNDWATER: Historiography: Politics and Reform in America Pages 63-66

ALEXANDER HIBBERTS: Winston S. Churchill, My Early Life: A Roving Commission (1930) – A Review Pages 67-68

LEAH NUTALL: Source Commentary: The Case of Deborah Greening Pages 69-72

HISTORIOGRAPHY: POLITICS AND REFORM IN AMERICA BY: MICHAELA GROUNDWATER (ST. CHAD’S COLLEGE, 2ND YEAR) Initial scholarship on the Progressive Era – as evidenced by the seminal text on progressivism that is Richard Hofstadter’s The Age of Reform (1955) – has traditionally perceived the fundamental causes of reform in American to have been the politics of white men, the role of the northern states as the foremost political arena, and the drive to curb the power of expansive corporations and the corrupt political machine. Hofstadter’s intellectual history of the Progressive movement (which he defines as the period between 1900 and 1914) places ideology at the forefront of the movement, establishing that the catalysts of change were the increasing urbanisation of the agricultural communities (that were previously integral to American society), the restoration of economic individualism and political democracy, and societal reactions to an “immigrant invasion”.1 Defining “Progressivism” as the ‘broader impulse toward criticism and change that was everywhere after 1900,’ Hofstadter states that the driving force of the movement was the ideas of the middleclasses, who were particularly keen on social and economic reform.2 This ideological approach to the study of the Progressive movement diverges from previous approaches to American political history (like that of Charles Beard) and laid the groundwork for further divergence in methodological approaches.3 Building on this, this essay will consider how more recent scholarship has evolved to include some disenfranchised groups that scholarship has previously overlooked: these groups being white and black women. Indeed, the essay will concentrate primarily on the different approaches that historians have taken when examining interracial relations between women during the Progressive Era. Firstly, looking at the white woman’s perspective in Suzanne M. Marilley’s Woman Suffrage and the Origins of Liberal Feminism in the US, 1820-1920, before proceeding to consider the experience of black middle-class women through Glenda Elizabeth Gilmore’s Gender and Jim Crow: Women and the Politics of White Supremacy in North Carolina, 1896-1920, this essay will argue that the traditional definition of Progressivism as a political reform movement practiced by white, middle-class men is no longer relevant and that a more comprehensive, complex, and inclusive perspective of the movement would serve to benefit future research in this area.

Firstly, it is pertinent to note that white and black women’s activities and involvement in reform movements during the Progressive Era are oft neglected in the early scholarship of the epoch. Hofstadter, for instance, failed to address southern reform movements, even omitting women from his work altogether. Since then, other historians such as C. Vann Woodward (1960), J. Morgan Kousser (1974) and Anne Firor Scott (1975) have widened the geographical scope of Progressive-Era studies to incorporate southern history, but still fall short of considering the black experience. Instead, many such scholars argue that middle-class, white – and, in Scott’s case, female – experiences dominated this period, and subsequently warrant greater attention.4 More recent works, like Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham’s Righteous Discontent: The Women’s Movement in the Black Baptist Church, 1880-1920, Paula J. Giddings’s Ida: A Sword Among Lions, and Deborah G. White’s Too Heavy a Load: Black Women in Defence of Themselves, 1894-1994, have begun to explore the long-ignored experiences of black women during this period. This wider lens provides researchers with a more advanced awareness of the expansive extent of Progressive Era reforms, illustrating how the study of history continues to evolve into a more diverse and inclusive discipline. In particular, Gilmore’s book sheds substantial light on how historians have made strides toward this target, particularly in their consideration of the role of black women in the exclusive political circles of the Deep South.

1

Richard Hofstadter, The Age of Reform: From Bryan to F.D.R (New York, 1955), p.3, p.5, p.7, & p.8.

Ibid., p.5.

3 A. Brinkley, ‘Reviewed Work(s): The Age of Reform: From Bryan to F.D.R. by Richard Hofstadter’ in Reviews in American History, Vol 13, No.3 (1985), p.464 4 Glenda Elizabeth Gilmore, Gender and Jim Crow: Women and the Politics of White Supremacy in North Carolina, 1896-1920 (North Carolina, 1996), p.149.

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Gender and Jim Crow: Women and the Politics of White Supremacy in North Carolina, 1896-1920, Glenda Elizabeth Gilmore’s 1996 publication, argues that gender and politics were just as interrelated for women as for men in the Progressive Era. Of particular note is Gilmore’s methodology – that of studying the events of this period through the gaze of the Dudley Pettey – which introduces a new perspective to the corpus of literature on the Progressive Era: the perspective of the black female. By examining the black female gaze, historians like Gilmore are able paint a broader picture of race and gender relations in this era, a particularly significant development given that black women are traditionally seen as invisible in this period.

Gilmore’s employment of contemporaneous, written sources that were penned by a black woman not only broadens our understanding of race and gender in the period in question, but also highlights a major pitfall into which many scholars of the Progressive Era have fallen. Indeed, Gilmore’s exploration of the black female gaze accentuates the fact that the sources written by white women – many of which dominate historical studies of suffrage and similar socio-political movements – tend to overlook or minimise the significance of interracial interactions, effectively erasing this theme, and its immense implications, from the history books.5 Gilmore’s methodology and findings are, then, highly significant, as they reiterate the importance of widening the scope of historical studies to include the perspectives of marginalised and overlooked groups: without their direct insights, important factors and dynamics are easily neglected, ultimately weakening arguments and fuelling misconceptions.

Gilmore herself addresses the question of whether we should consider black women “progressives”: arguing that, by doing so, we demonstrate ‘how gender and race as tools of historical analysis can enrich traditional political history’, facilitating the emergence of a more multi-faceted and complete understanding of the past.6 Black women’s political activity during this period should definitely be considered reformist and, in that context, they should be classed as progressive. Furthermore, the central thesis of Gilmore’s book – that the disenfranchisement of black men created a space for black women to become the diplomats and ambassadors to white communities – establishes that this situation placed black women in a crucial position in the American socio-political landscape, bestowing-upon them the influence, skills and opportunity to contribute directly towards the fight for women’s suffrage.7 Nonetheless, in any analysis of American race and gender politics, one must take into account geographical factors that impacted the capacity for black women to enact change: it would appear that, in the Southern states in particular, black women faced specific obstacles posed by the near- ubiquitous ideology of white supremacy which, going forward, this essay will assess from the perspective of both Gilmore and Marilley as both pay particular attention to the matter.

Gilmore argues that ‘white supremacists responded to growing assertiveness among white women, to urban and industrial social pressures, and to spectacular African American successes’ by implementing and doubling-down on their white supremacist campaigns.8 By considering these campaigns as other historians have done – that is, from the sole perspective of the perpetrator(s) – this serves only to reiterate and reinforce their narrow stances.9 Gilmore claims that, only when black women are included in the political history of the south, it is clear that they shared a common political culture (namely the prevalence of communitarianism over individualism), although the manner in which these individuals voiced their activism varied somewhat according to both class and age.10 By imposing their agency through their involvement in street altercations, support for the Daily Record, and demand for chivalry from the streetcar operations, Gilmore infers that black women actively challenged and questioned the established social hierarchy and the prescriptive norms that this entailed, ultimately provoking white men into attempting to limit their agency (often by ignoring or ridiculing these women).11 Subsequently, it would appear that many white men, and some white women, who inhabited America’s southern states tended to deploy white supremacist tactics in an attempt to exploit 5

Ibid., p. xxii.

Ibid., p.150.

7 Ibid., p. xxi 8 Ibid., p. xx.

9 Ibid., p.92.

10 Ibid., p.93.

11 Ibid., p.108.

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Historiography: Politics and Reform in America | Michaela Groundwater

society’s fear of the black, male ‘predator’, who theoretically posed an acute threat to gracious white women.

Gilmore contends that, by grossly exaggerating the danger that black men posed – often portraying them as would-be rapists with perverted sexual interests – white supremacists reinforced the strength of their ideology in the South, making white women feel increasingly dependent on the ‘New White Man’ for protection.12 Here, Gilmore’s employment of more representative sources ultimately benefits her argument: engaging with a perspective that has been historically neglected, she is able to gain a more nuanced insight into the activities of black women during the Progressive era, many of which posed a not insubstantial threat to the white supremacist agenda. It also becomes evident that black people did not act merely as passive recipients of maltreatment, indeed, many formulated responses to white supremacist arguments. This is evinced in Gilmore’s citation of Alexander Manley’s printed editorial, which itself was a response to white supremacists’ employment of Felton’s speech in order to further their campaign of ‘guilt and degradation’.13 While Gilmore’s work engages the perspective of black women directly, Suzanne M. Marilley handles the topic of woman’s suffrage and white supremacy from a slightly different angle. Marilley contends that white, middle-class women led the charge in the struggle for suffrage, whereas black women took a backseat. That is not to say that Marilley removes them from her account altogether, but she is unmistakeably interested in the roles of white women in the reform movement of woman’s suffrage. Marilley is, furthermore, elusive in her coverage of progressivism. Indeed, instead of defining ‘progressivism’, or clearly relating it to the events in this period, she frames her argument’s periodisation in relation to three apparently chronological chapters in the struggle for women’s suffrage: ‘The Feminism of Equal Rights’ (Jacksonian era – mid-1870s), ‘The Feminism of Fear’ (mid-1870s – 1890s), and ‘The Feminism of Personal Development’ (1890s – 1906).14 Although Marilley does not explicitly state that this is the case, it would seem that the ‘Feminism of Personal Development’ stage that she identifies correlates with the period that Gilmore defines as the ‘Progressive Era’; in order to facilitate the constructive comparison of these historians, it is this section of Marilley’s work with which this essay will concern-itself with. By focusing on the alliances that white, middle-class women forged with white supremacist movements in southern states, Marilley examines the manner by which white women used their relationships with racist ideologies in order to engineer and exploit opportunities to win the vote. This is reflected in Marilley’s central thesis, that: ‘native-born, white American suffragists were limited agents of reform because they were elites, they nevertheless encouraged liberal and egalitarian change, developed shrewd strategies to achieve it, and usually made strides as they corrected their mistakes.’15 She goes on to conclude that, although white suffragists aligned themselves with white supremacy campaigns (for their own advantage), they refused to endorse the notion that race should act as a qualification for voting (after a 1905-07 campaign) or the use of violence to forcefully impose white domination.16 The perspective that Marilley explores, then, is evidently an important one, as it provides additional context to aid our understanding of intraracial, white relations in the deep south, and gives an insight into the means and motives of white suffrage movements.

Naturally, there are both strengths and weaknesses of both of the texts discussed here. Critics of Marilley have highlighted the fact that, although she engages with a substantial number of primary sources in her research, these sources are overwhelmingly written from the white perspective – given that the text repeatedly touches on race politics, Marilley would have benefited from engaging with sources of a more varied provenance, particularly those offering an African-American’s perspective.17 Secondly, Marilley’s argument would appear, at times, to be incredibly dense and difficult to follow: there appears to be a lack of structure in her writing, a shortcoming that is particularly acute in the section that relates to white supremacy, a factor that is central to the text’s core thesis. Lastly, it would appear that Marilley does not provide an adequate 12

Ibid., p.96 and p. 117.

Ibid., p. 105.

14 Suzanne M. Marilley, Woman Suffrage and the Origins of Liberal Feminism in the US, 1820-1920 (Cambridge, 1996), p.6-8.

15 Ibid., p. 2.

16 Ibid., p.171 and p. 175.

17 C. Harrison, ‘Reviewed Work(s): Woman Suffrage and the Origins of Liberal Feminism in the United States, 18201920’ in The Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Vol. 29, No.1 (1998), p.136.

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conclusion, failing to fully answer the question of what actually drove America’s socio-political elites to endorse women’s suffrage campaigns and ultimately ratify the nineteenth-amendment in August 1920. It would appear, then, that Marilley’s study – particularly the arguments that the tome propounds – would have benefitted from further clarification, engagement with a more substantial range of perspectives, and a more lucid structure. By contrast, one can claim that Gilmore’s work has indeed had a lasting influential legacy.

Her argument is both clearly-structured and well-informed: she uses her diverse sources intelligently in order to shed new light on the period, encouraging historians to radically redefine what it meant to be a “Progressive” in this era. Certainly, one could raise questions, even concerns, over the extent to which Dudley Pettey’s perspective is representative or even accurate, but Gilmore does address this in her acknowledgement of the remarkable nature of the family.18 Nonetheless, one should acknowledge various other concerns that have been raised over the extent to which the derived model is applicable to other areas of the Deep South.19 As the first study of its kind, however, this piece deserves its reputation as a seminal work in the fields of both women’s history and African American history. It certainly raises new questions about the nature of political activity among the black middle-classes post-emancipation, the behind the scene methods of black women in campaigning for the needs of their communities, woman’s suffrage and its impact on racial politics in the South.20 In conclusion, Gilmore’s and Marilley’s work were, at the time that they were penned, significant texts that went some way in remedying scholarship’s failure to properly consider the roles that women played in progressive reform movements, particularly with regards to southern political reforms. Gilmore’s book has a lasting legacy, introducing a previously unexplored perspective which has bridged the historiographical gap laid by white, male-centric works of historians like Hofstadter. By comparing Marilley’s work to Gilmore’s, this essay has demonstrated the different scholarly approaches that one may adopt when studying the role of white supremacy in the south: black women’s activism spurring on white supremacy, and white women’s collaboration with this system as a means to obtain the vote. Further research into the specific ways in which white women collaborated with white supremacy might shed more light on Marilley’s argument. With regards to Gilmore’s research, it would be interesting to go further afield and examine black women’s activities in other southern states to gain a better insight into this research’s applicability on a wider scale. Overall, however, it is evident that the development of this field to include marginalised voices is a great achievement and provides many avenues for historians to explore in the future.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Brinkley, A., ‘Reviewed Work(s): The Age of Reform: From Bryan to F.D.R. by Richard Hofstadter’ in Reviews in American History, Vol 13, No.3 (1985) Gilmore, Glenda Elizabeth, Gender and Jim Crow: Women and the Politics of White Supremacy in North Carolina, 1896-1920 (North Carolina, 1996) Harrison, C., ‘Reviewed Work(s): Woman Suffrage and the Origins of Liberal Feminism in the United States, 1820 1920’ in The Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Vol. 29, No.1 (1998), Hofstadter, Richard, The Age of Reform: From Bryan to F.D.R (New York, 1955) MacLean, N. ‘Reviewed Work(s): Gender and Jim Crow: Women and the Politics of White Supremacy in North Carolina, 1896-1920 by Glenda Gilmore’, in The American Historical Review, Vol.103, No. 1(1998) Marilley, Suzanne M., Woman Suffrage and the Origins of Liberal Feminism in the US, 1820-1920 (Cambridge, 1996)

18 N. MacLean, ‘Reviewed Work(s): Gender and Jim Crow: Women and the Politics of White Supremacy in North Carolina, 1896-1920 by Glenda Gilmore’, in The American Historical Review, Vol.103, No. 1 (1998), p.282.

19 Ibid.

20 Ibid., p.281.

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REVIEWED WORK(S): WINSTON S. CHURCHILL, MY EARLY LIFE: A ROVING COMMISSION (1930)

BY ALEXANDER HIBBERTS (ST. JOHN’S COLLEGE, 3RD YEAR) Reading through the well-worn pages of my motheaten copy of Churchill’s biography, which I had excitedly ordered from the forgotten vaults of Uppsala University library, seems to me to be a similar experience to leafing through the contents of the man’s very mind. The wit, character, energy and, above all, ambition of Churchill is immediately evident to the reader.

Churchill – whose legacy since his death in 1965 has not been without controversy – published the book in 1930 to, as he announces on the very first page, provide a ‘single complete story’ of ‘my early life and adventures’. As a man who mythologised his own life story, the task of reading this book is not an easy one: the diligent reader must make themselves constantly aware of the text’s various exaggerations and reinterpretations, fashioned to complement Churchill’s glorified perception of his own life story.

For instance, Andrew Roberts in his exceptional, new biography of Churchill (Churchill: Walking with Destiny, 2018) suggests that the story of Churchill’s encounter with ‘dull yellow glare of mortal peril’ when he, and ‘another boy little younger than myself’, decided to go boating on Lake Lausanne in Switzerland, is actually a tale of how the young Churchill nearly drowned his brother, Jack. The two boys had rowed out into the lake and had gone swimming when their boat was suddenly swept away by the wind. After much difficulty, and a confrontation with ‘…Death as near as I believe I have ever seen him’, they recaptured the boat and their lives were subsequently saved, but not without facing considerable danger.

If one reads between the well-formulated lines that recount the young Churchill’s journey from school at Harrow to Sandhurst, much of the personal anguish that Churchill experienced from parental neglect becomes evident. In particular, it would seem that Churchill’s father, Lord Randolph Churchill – a successful politician of the late Victorian era – was always a distant figure with whom Churchill longed for closer companionship with.

On one occasion, when Winston was in his school years at Harrow, his father visited in order to conduct a ‘formal visit of inspection’ of his son’s model army. Churchill describes how his father was impressed by the state of affair with which he was met, and subsequently deemed it fitting that his son should pursue a military career. For years, the young Churchill believed his father had glimpsed in him the ‘qualities of a military genius’, only to later learn that Randolph had, in reality, considered his son not to be ‘clever enough’ to become a lawyer.

This same, sad distance of affection is also alluded-to in Churchill’s recollections of his mother, Jennie Jerome, whom he nonetheless refers to as his ‘Evening Star’. Indeed, he clearly ‘loved her’, but she was always ‘at a distance’ and the infant Churchill subsequently turned to his nurse, Mrs Everest, for maternal affection.

Churchill’s autobiography is, moreover, also notable for its insightful comments – first through the lens of a witty and mischievous schoolboy, and later through the eyes of a maturing young man – on the nature and impact of the late Victorian education system. In the text he is, for instance, particularly critical of the curriculum’s fondness for Classics, challenging ‘the aptness of the Classics’ for educating the nation’s elite.

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Instead, he deemed the acquisition of Latin and Greek – both subjects with which struggled greatly – to be unnecessary burdens, particularly in comparison to schooling in a ‘sensible language, like English’.

Moreover, Churchill’s writings provide us with a taste of the political landscape in Britain and her Empire as the 20th century loomed. A staunch imperialist himself, Churchill repeatedly cites the popular contemporary belief in an ‘Imperial Federation’: the idea that Britain would lead its community of colonial possessions against any external threat. During the 1920s, the decade that preceded the publication of My Early Life, Britain’s empire had been at the very apex of its power, reinforcing the Imperialist perspective and supporting the concept of British exceptionalism.

Characteristic of Britain’s imperial confidence, and the beliefs in empire that Churchill bore in his bosom through his life, Churchill addresses the upcoming generation with a typically Churchillian statement; he proclaims that the young ‘have not an hour to lose’ to ‘take your places in life’s firing line’ and ‘raise the glorious flags’ of progress. They need ‘never to submit to failure’ and to be ‘generous and true’ in pursuing the remaking of the world. Only with hindsight can one appreciate that the decline of Britain’s imperial project – and, with it, her position as the foremost global power – was all too imminent.

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SOURCE COMMENTARY: THE CASE OF DEBORAH GREENING

BY LEAH NUTALL (ST. JOHN’S COLLEGE, 2ND YEAR) ‘The case of Deborah Greening’ was a written source produced by a notary at the Old Bailey in 1725 during her trial.1 Greening was acquitted of the crime of infanticide; the ‘killing of a new-born’ child.2 However, we cannot verify this account as she does not reappear in Old Bailey proceedings again. She does not speak during her trial, representing a wider issue regarding the representation of women within the legal framework of the eighteenth century. Criminal proceedings remained patriarchal despite increased female participation in civil litigation. Originally, the function of this document was to provide judicial legitimacy in official proceedings, yet modern interpretations have focused on social theory. Due to an inability to verify the account, the validity of Greening’s experience is dubious. Therefore, the source is most insightful when considering the theory behind violence rather than composing a ‘typical’ profile of an infanticide offender.

The usefulness of this source is demonstrated by the reduction in the amount of information regarding the crime of infanticide. As touched upon by Stretton, this can largely be attributed to the introduction of a statute in 1624.3 The statute reversed the ‘innocent until proven guilty’ basis of English law when prosecuting women’s crimes, moving instead towards women having to prove their own innocence. The changing social foundation of infanticide law saw the severity of punishments increase from previous centuries, as the crime began to be perceived as a sin that no extenuating circumstances could justify. This change manifested itself within a legal system that already presumed a guilty verdict if a birth was concealed. Consequently, this led to a decrease in alternative sources, including remission letters, that would offer further insight and validity.

Thus, an admittance of guilt would result in certain execution rather than a pardon, as in previous centuries.

However, the source can only be useful to a limited extent. The male dominated framework for the prosecution of women valued perceived societal moral integrity over the underlying motives for infanticide.

This is where the prosecution of such cases differs from traditional homicide cases. I would suggest this is because factors, including the ‘heat of the moment’, often considered in murders committed by men, were not applicable to infanticide. This lack of interest in the causes of the crime, and a preoccupation on whether a birth was concealed makes Greening’s case more useful, due to its rarity. Although, this same rarity causes considerable limitations regarding the representative nature of Deborah Greening’s case, as it cannot be verified how ‘typical’ Greening is of infanticide offenders. Despite the lack of inquiry into the fundamental motives, this case is still extremely useful for drawing wider comparisons to similar cases whilst maintaining the individuality of such a personal crime.4 A wider challenge faced by many proceedings found in the Old Bailey Online is that the voices of those accused are often lost. This is the case for Deborah Greening, as the third person pronoun used to refer to her removes her from her alleged crime. The prioritisation of the two male witness accounts evidences the male dominated legal framework in which the trial is conducted. This is further reinforced by the prosecution arising from her Master, William Shorrard, physically instigating the investigation, as demonstrated by him taking Greening to the Justice of the Peace.

The punishment for those found guilty of infanticide was the death penalty. Thus, individuals often told a fictionalised version of events to preserve their lives. This is possibly true for Deborah Greening. If she fulfilled the condition that her infant was still-born, then she would be acquitted of her crime. This further undermines the authenticity of the account recorded by the Old Bailey notary. When determining whether 1

Old Bailey Online Proceedings, February 1725, trial of Deborah Greening (t17250224-9) - Accessed 07/11/2018.

Natalie Zemon Davis, Fiction in the Archives, (Stanford, 1990), p. 84.

3 Keith Wrightson, A Social History of England 1500-1750, (Cambridge, 2017), p. 212.

4 Old Bailey Proceedings, April 1743, trial of Elizabeth Stuart (t17430413-51) – Accessed 07/11/2018.

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the suspect had acted with malicious intent, the presence of a garment to show the intention to care for the infant also seen as a justification for acquittal.5 This gives a further reason for her to have falsified her account.

The sociological theory of ‘life cycles of poverty’ offers a more sympathetic interpretation of Greenings motivations, placing individual actions and human vulnerability at the centre of analysis.6 This would suggest that, if Greening did commit infanticide, it was instead an act of compassion, sparing her child from a life of poverty and suffering. However, this is arguably too compassionate of an interpretation due to Greenings occupation as a domestic servant, suggesting instead her actions were more practically motivated. A more convincing application is suggested by Hufton, who proposes that servant girls who needed to retain their employment often committed infanticide. Servant girls would also have no means to conceal a pregnancy, unlike married women. This is an arguably realistic profile; a married woman would be able to avoid imprisonment by allowing a child to die of starvation.7 Greening’s concealment of her pregnancy, and subsequent prosecution by her master, fits Huston’s profile of a desperate servant girl trying to rid herself of an unwanted child.

Nevertheless, it must be noted that building these generalised profiles from court proceedings across Europe is problematic. Those actually convicted of infanticide are not representative of the scale of the problem.

There would have been little attention devoted to finding culprits, as married women were frequently not caught, and cases brought little to no profitability as infanticide fell under religious jurisdiction. The unrepresentative sample size is evidenced through a drain opened in Rennes after a fire in 1721. It revealed skeletons of over eighty new-born babies, despite an average of one to two cases of infanticide reaching court each year in most French regions.8 Therefore, the severity of punishment applied to infanticide during the eighteenth century likely gave suspects more reason to lie about their intentions. We must therefore not assume that the court proceedings of Greening’s case are entirely authentic, truthful, or representative.

The enlightenment opinion Hufton identifies implies infanticide to be the result of illegitimate children.9 A zeitgeist of modern historiography, this interpretation conforms with the consensus found on the Old Bailey Online.10 This is perhaps suggestive of a wider preoccupation with moral integrity during the period. The punishment of branding on the body as a record of past misdeeds further demonstrates this argument, indicating a more symbolic purpose for punishment. Deborah Greening’s case could therefore also be used to give insight into wider societal perceptions of the most abhorrent crimes of the period, and the severity of the penalties attached.

However, the biggest limitation of Greening’s case is the male dominated legal, social, and moral framework in which her trial was conducted, with the perspectives of suspects often being manipulated during transcription. The format of proceedings commonly used long sentences that had minimal punctuation and were transposed from the first to the third person. Thus, it is unsurprising that some information has been lost. The descriptive terminology within court proceedings can be equally as valuable, as Gowing notes; there was an overall increase in the slander used towards women within these documents. This is evidenced by only eight cases of the term ‘bearing bastard’ used between 1606 and 1640, increasing to fifty-nine between 1672 and 1679.11 The use of the derogatory rhetoric ‘bastard’ is described in Gowing’s argument and features heavily in Greening’s case, and could be a reflection of society’s wider perception of women. Gowing observes a more sexual dynamic to slander used against women roughly six times as frequently as men from 1600-1640.12 This male-centric legal system arguably served to deter other women from behaviour deemed 5

oldbaileyonline.org/static/crimes.jsp#killing - Accessed 07/11/2018.

Stephen King, Alannah Tomkins, The Poor in England: 1700-1850: An Economy of Makeshifts (Manchester, 2003), pp. 1-38.

7 Olwen Hufton, ‘The Poor of Eighteenth Century France 1750-1789’, (London,1974), pp. 349-351.

8 Ibid., pp. 349-351.

9 Ibid., pp. 349-351.

10 oldbaileyonline.org/static/crimes.jsp#killing - Accessed 07/11/2018.

11 Laura Gowing, Domestic Dangers: Women, Words and Sex in Early Modern London, (London,1996), pp. 45-65.

12 Ibid., p. 65.

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Source Commentary: The Case of Deborah Greening | Leah Nutall

sinful rather than authentically convey their voices in proceedings, thus decreasing the validity of the court’s account. Stretton’s quantitative data, derived from the Old Bailey session papers, debunks the ‘paternalistic chivalry’ theory surrounding the prosecution for women. He proves that a greater proportion of women received murder and death sentences rather than manslaughter for violent crimes.13 Therefore, caution must be taken when applying the theory of paternalistic chivalry, as this is often related to the sentencing of women for lesser crimes, and this leniency was not necessarily applied to violent crimes such as homicide.

There is arguably a decline in the reliability of primary sources concerning infanticide during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, as the range of sources was reduced following the introduction of the 1624 statute.

With women composing only six to seven percent of homicide cases, it is understandable that their voice in violent crime is limited.14 However, with the hardening of public opinion against infanticide, remission letters vanished. This trend can be explained by infanticide becoming a non-pardonable offence. Hence, to send a remission letter would effectively be to confess to the crime and endanger the life of the confessor. The remission letters of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries show supplicants to be repentant with children baptised as expected. Yet, specific circumstances, such as a 1393 case of a young woman strangling her child after fearing society’s retribution, and a 1474 case of a young woman causing blunt trauma to her infant, were granted a pardon.15 These cases are indicative of how societal values towards infanticide changed over the centuries. Davis’s framework of ‘worthiness’ as a classification for whether a woman is granted a pardon or convicted of infanticide is extremely useful. When applied to Greening, it allows empathy towards her situation when considering the options available to an unmarried domestic servant. Other cases from the period corroborate the experience of Greening, with Elizabeth Stuart facing a similar socioeconomic situation.16 In both circumstances, the women claim to have had still births, and deny that they had caused any harm. However, the record of Elizabeth Stuart’s trial is more detailed and contains information about witness accounts and suspect testimonies which reveal an increased participation of women in the legal process. This is evidenced by nine witnesses recorded as women. Although, their role was seemingly to reinforce gender morals, thus forcing other women to conform rather than challenging convention. Therefore, a wider range of sources would aid in corroborating accounts testified. However, the changing nature of the trials and sentencing of those suspected of infanticide, with the greater inclusion of female witnesses and removal of the prospect of a pardon, also offer insight into the societal values of the period. This is especially evident when the legal process is compared to that of previous centuries.

Wider changes to the legal process are not represented within this source, with Gaskill noting the influence of growing secularisation in criminal proceedings.17 Human actions also lowered conviction rates and Justices of the Peace were often appointed by political favour rather than local standing. This evidences an element of political manoeuvring and self-interest underpinning prosecutions rather than the upholding of the law.

This led to an increase in abuses of position and absenteeism. Greening’s case alone thus fails to evidence long-term trends. The exact impact such changes had upon conviction rates will never truly be quantifiable due to the inability to measure the number of infanticides which went unrecorded. As perpetrators often acted in secrecy and victims were hidden, the validity of Gaskill’s claims regarding the impact of the measures concerning the prosecution of infanticide are merely speculative.

To conclude, the Old Bailey case of Deborah Greening is a perfect example of why individual cases and their circumstances are essential to understanding such a personal crime. It is important to remember that a sole case does not solve wider issues when studying the crime of infanticide, as the range of alternative sources is so limited. The low prosecution rate produces an unrepresentative sample. Nonetheless, these cases provide a rare insight into the realities of lives of the poor that would otherwise be lost. Deborah Greening’s case is

13

Wrightson, A Social History, p. 211.

Voices from the Old Bailey - https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04dqlbv -Accessed 08/04/2019.

15 Zemon Davis, Fiction in the Archives, pp. 84-86.

16 Old Bailey Proceedings, April 1743, trial of Elizabeth Stuart (t17430413-51) - Accessed 07/11/2018.

17 Malcolm Gaskgill, ‘Crime and Mentalities in Early Modern England’ (Cambridge, 2000), pp. 263-264.

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extremely useful when trying to understand motive, perhaps due to the distortion of her voice, rather than the presence of one.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Gaskgill, Malcolm,‘Crime and Mentalities in Early Modern England’ (Cambridge, 2000) Gowing, Laura, Domestic Dangers: Women, Words and Sex in Early Modern London, (London,1996) Hufton, Olwen,‘The Poor of Eighteenth Century France 1750-1789’, (London,1974) King, Stephen and, Tomkins, Alannah, The Poor in England: 1700-1850: An Economy of Makeshifts (Manchester, 2003) Wrightson, Keith, A Social History of England 1500-1750, (Cambridge, 2017) Zemon Davis, Natalie, Fiction in the Archives, (Stanford, 1990)

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PART IV: DEBATE ON THE DEMISE OF THE EMPIRE OF THE HAPSBURGS

DR MARKIAN PROKOPOVYCH: Introduction: Was the Empire Doomed?

Pages 74-75

CHARLOTTE ALT: Catalyst or Watershed? Re-visiting the First World War and the collapse of the Habsburg Empire.

Pages 76-82

VIKTOR KOLEDA: Dizzy with Optimism: Revisionist historiography and the Nationality Conflict in late Austria-Hungary Pages 83-88

ADRIAN RIESS: Revisiting Emperor Karl’s October Manifesto Pages 89-95

MERIEL SMITHSON: The Empire Strikes Back: Rethinking Nationality Conflict in late Austria-Hungary Pages 96-102

CHARLIE STEER-STEPHENSON: ‘Unity in Disunity’: Rethinking Austria-Hungary’s place in the European race to modernity.

Pages 103-110

INTRODUCTION: WAS THE EMPIRE DOOMED?

BY DR. MARKIAN PROKOPOVYCH Dr Markian Prokopovych is a Historian and lecturer here in Durham. He specialises in Eastern and Central European history in the nineteenth-century, with particular emphasis on the history of urban cultures, the arts, museums, the press and migration patterns. He has authored and co-authored numerous publications and has held fellowships in Oxford, Berlin, Frankfurt an der Oder, Budapest, Florence, Vienna and Birmingham. Markian also organises the annual conferences of the Urban History Group and is currently completing two co-authored monographs on the cultural history of the Hapsburg Empire. Here, he introduces Part Four of the journal: a debate on the fate of the Habsburg Empire comprises of essays written for Markian’s third year special subject module: ‘The Habsburg Empire: from Enlightenment to Collapse, c.1740-1918’.

The centenary of the end of the First World War has just passed. One of the consequences of the war for modern European history that, in the British context, has sometimes been unjustly overlooked, was the demise of Austria-Hungary, the last reincarnation of the Habsburg Empire whose dynastic rule had marked the map of Central Europe for centuries before. Was the empire doomed to collapse? And if so, was it the war that caused it or perhaps some much more structural, endemic problems that plagued the empire for a longer period of time? Historians of modern Europe, and of Central and Eastern Europe more specifically, have intensely debated this issue ever since. These debates have extended to a wide variety of issues, including the 58-yearlong rule of Francis Joseph I, the somewhat mediocre and rigid, bewhiskered penultimate emperor of Austria Hungary; the empire’s notoriously Kafkaesque bureaucratic structures – named-so in reference to Franz Kafka, one of the most interesting representatives of literary modernism; as well as nationalism, selfdetermination, geopolitics, and the army.

Why so much interest, the reader might ask, in the empire that was, if one trusts at least some contemporary accounts, struggling to adjust to modern reality, especially in the last years of the war? The reasons are manifold. Firstly, seeing in retrospect the history of the last century in the region of Central and Eastern Europe, with its legacy of nationalism, totalitarian regimes, ethnic cleansing, genocide, and more recently the very

troubled and problematic so-called ‘transition’, comparisons are unavoidable. Some historians looked, and indeed found, the roots of the region's problems in the ways that the empire handled the nationality conflict while its famously multinational and multilingual body attempted to confront modernity in the nineteenth century.

Others, more recently, have debated such approaches by pointing out certain teleologies in these arguments. Far from being the root of the problem, the empire, they argued, might have been one of the most successful solutions to the dangers posed by nationalism – our reader might wish to keep in mind that such solutions in modern history are indeed very few and could probably be counted on the fingers of one hand.

Secondly, there is a broader issue of empires in history and the rethinking of imperial history on the global scale. How and why do empires collapse, and what are the consequences of their collapse? Do those of them that collapse earlier constitute an exception or just another proof of the rule? In our own historical moment of the early twenty-first century we no longer seem to share the last century’s belief in the nation-state as the ultimate building block of the functioning modern political world. Did, then, imperial ideologies function better to keep nationalism at bay across diverse territorial domains? Did they forge specific identities and cultural practices that assisted in keeping those domains closer together or was the multinational empire an oxymoron in the modern times? What was the role of imperial

Introduction: Was the Empire Doomed? | Dr. Markian Prokopovych

administrative structures that facilitated the circulation of people, ideas, knowledge, goods and other commodities in forging those identities?

These are the questions pertinent to the study of all empires, not just the Habsburg Empire, even if the latter would not fit the standard debate on imperialism our reader might have encountered in other contexts for the simple reason that it did not, with the possible exception of Bosnia and Hercegovina, possess colonies in the western sense of the word.

outcome of this module. Some authors included here aim at combining different approaches in search of the ‘golden middle’, whereas others argue strongly for, or against, the inevitability of some of the empire’s problems and its eventual collapse. There are suggestions to revisit the empire, its historical moment, modernity more generally and the place of empire in European history. We understand ‘debate’ as engagement with some of the most important authors in Habsburg history, from Oszkár Jászi to Judson, but also amongst ourselves. The aim is to encourage further discussion – on historical methodology as much as on the fate of empires in history, the place of the Habsburg Empire in broader European historical narratives, and the ways we might move forward in understanding the empire in more general terms. We hope the readers of this journal will find it inspiring.

Consequently, we are bound to make comparisons geographically as much as chronologically. For too long has the history of Austria-Hungary, and the Habsburg Empire more generally, been linked teleologically to the horrors of the twentieth century and the problems that were supposedly inherent to the region. Bringing the empire back to the focus of historical inquiry might remedy this fallacy. This links to one last point I would like to make, namely, the return of European history. As a consequence of a number of transnational and comparative approaches to the writing of history gaining currency, Europe has emerged as an interesting landscape ripe for historical scrutiny in the recent years. The study of the Habsburg Empire has been one of the beneficiaries of this process. The Habsburg Empire stands now much more at the centre of European history than it did just a few decades ago. As a consequence, a lot of exceptionalism that coloured much of the earlier historical writing has been revisited, revised and reconsidered.

However, the discussions about historical determinism, exceptionalism and failure are far from over. Their currency is easily demonstrated by the fact that, for example, Pieter M Judson’s last work, The Habsburg Empire: A New History (2016), has recently been translated into the eleventh foreign language. The debate on the pages of this journal is a small contribution to some of the broader issues raised by historians recently that concern the demise of the Habsburg Empire, though of course there is no pretence of comprehensiveness here. The debate builds on some of the most interesting deliberations we have had this year in Durham at the undergraduate module ‘The Habsburg Empire: From Enlightenment to Collapse’ and includes revised texts that in one way or another are an important

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CATALYST OR WATERSHED? REVISITING THE FIRST WORLD WAR AND THE COLLAPSE OF THE HABSBURG EMPIRE

BY CHARLOTTE ALT Writing about the Badeni crisis, Mark Twain stressed in ‘Stirring Times in Austria’ (1898) the confusing and uncertain nature of the situation in 1897, giving an account of political fragmentation and frequent parliamentary obstruction.1 Until the 1970s and early 1980s, accounts like these led historians to look towards long-term political, social and economic problems in explaining the collapse of the Habsburg Empire in 1918.

Since the 1980s, however, revisionist accounts of the empire’s dissolution highlighted the importance of the First World War. ‘Traditional’ historiographical arguments emphasised the war’s accelerating effect on longstanding problems, describing it as a ‘catalyst’ of dissolution. Later ‘revisionist’ arguments stressed the empire’s strength and resilience in 1914, emphasising the war as the main reason for its collapse. Arguing for the latter, Pieter M. Judson’s pioneering work The Habsburg Empire: A New History (2016) convincingly highlighted the state’s loss of legitimacy during the war.2 The question now, however, is; where does historiography turn next? Was Judson’s book the definitive answer to the empire’s dissolution? This essay suggests not. Aiming to bridge the gap between ‘traditional’ and ‘revisionist’ historiographical conception, the war can be characterised as a ‘junction.’ The hypothesis is that without war, the empire would not have dissolved, yet without continued long-term problems, the war would not have caused the empire’s collapse either. Based primarily on historiography, the following suggests that scholarship should combine long-term issues with the importance of war, characterising the war as more than a mere ‘catalyst’ but less than the alldefining cause for the empire’s collapse. The war should be seen as a ‘junction’ where long-term problems together with the forces of war led to the empire’s downfall.

For the purposes of simplicity, the ways in which historians made sense of the empire’s collapse can be divided into two broad camps, here referred to as ‘traditional’ or ‘old school’ and ‘revisionist’ or ‘new school.’

The ‘traditional’ view of the empire’s collapse was the narrative of ‘decline and fall’, the inevitability of dissolution, a position expressed by Oscar Jászi (1929), A. J. P Taylor (1941), C. A. Macartney (1968) and more recently by scholars such as Robert Kann (1974) and Solomon Wank (1997).3 Concepts of ‘decline’ highlighted in ‘old school’ historical accounts were based on the perception of an increasingly complicated political environment, persistence of the nationality problem, political parliamentary stalemate and inefficient state bureaucracy.4 Taylor characterised domestic politics as consisting of people unwilling to cooperate, which would have been ‘necessary [...] in an era of growing popular participation.’5 The empire seemed 1

Mark Twain, ‘Stirring Times in Austria’, Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 96 (March, 1898), pp. 530-2.

Pieter M. Judson, The Habsburg Empire: A New History (Harvard University Press: Cambridge, 2016).

3 Robert A. Kann, ‘Should the Habsburg Empire Have Been Saved? An Exercise in Speculative History’, Austrian History Yearbook, Vol. 42 (2011), pp. 203-210; A. J. P. Taylor, The Habsburg Monarchy 1815-1918: A History of the Austrian Empire and Austria-Hungary (Macmillan and Co., Limited: London, 1941); C. A. Macartney, The Habsburg Empire: 1790-1918 (Weidenfeld and Nicolson: London, 1968); Robert A. Kann, The History of the Habsburg Empire 1526-1918 (University of California Press: Berkley and Los Angeles, 1974); Solomon Wank, ‘Some Reflections on the Habsburg Empire and Its Legacy in the Nationalities Question’, Austrian History Yearbook, Vol. 28 (1997), pp. 131-46; Z.A.B. Zeman, The Break-up of the Habsburg Empire 1914-1918: A Study in National and Social Revolution (Oxford University Press: London, 1961), p. xii; John Deak, ‘The Great War and the Forgotten Realm: The Habsburg Monarchy and the First World War’, The Journal of Modern History, Vol. 86, No. 2 (June, 2014), p. 342.

4 Gary B. Cohen, ‘Neither Absolutism nor Anarchy: New Narratives on Society and Government in Late Imperial Austria’, Austrian History Yearbook, Vol. 29 (1998), p. 39.

5 Ibid., p. 40.

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Catalyst or Watershed? Revisiting the First World War and the collapse of the Hapsburg Empire | Charlotte Alt

increasingly brittle, weak and backward, especially in comparison to the other Great European Powers.6 Its collapse therefore resulted from a century-long ‘organic’ process of decay and decline, to use Jászi’s words.7 Conceptions of ‘decline’ can also be found in more recent works; Wank, for example, emphasised political decay, arguing that the Habsburg regime was in slow decline and long-term crisis and pessimism prevailed over more positive developments.8 As the state was already ‘rotten’ inside, the war was understood as a ‘catalyst’ of dissolution.9 Taylor therefore concluded: ‘War can only accelerate: it makes a dictatorial state more dictatorial, a democratic state more democratic, an industrial state more industrial, and – as with AustriaHungary – a rotten state more rotten.’10 Revisionist approaches have since argued against such ideas of long-term disintegration, highlighting the state’s virility before 1914 and the war’s significance for the empire’s downfall. Important revisionist works emerged since the 1980s, most recently by John Deak (2014/15), Judson (2016/17), Martyn Rady (2017) and Axel Körner (2018).11 Revising Austria-Hungary’s downfall went alongside a revision of empire, moving beyond traditional nationalist approaches that percieve the empire as a modern anachronism, to highlight the empire’s modernization process.12 By the 1990s, there was already a general scholarly consensus that earlier historical works were largely over-pessimistic, exaggerating the empire’s negative aspects, especially its supposedly oppressive nature.13 ‘New school’ accounts rather focused on the empire’s resilience and strength in 1914, highlighting that especially in the first decade of the twentieth century many commentators believed in the empire’s sturdiness.14 Henry Wickham Steed, an English journalist and historian, for example, wrote in 1908 that ‘people have often spoken of the dissolution of Austria. I do not believe in it at all’, arguing that the imperial ties ‘are too strong to let such a thing happen.’15 As early as 1998 Gary Cohen argued for the focus to be shifted from domestic conflicts towards the ‘adaptability of political culture in these final decades’, towards ‘the periphery rather than the centre [...] to show how society and government were successfully interacting.’16 Understanding the empire as stable in 1914 altered the importance scholars attributed to the war for the empire’s collapse; denying the decisive nature of long-term issues, ‘revisionists’ viewed the war as the main overarching reason for the empire’s collapse.

Traditional scholarship characterized the war as a ‘catalyst,’ accelerating long-standing problems; ‘revisionist’ works, contrastingly, defined war as the main force of dissolution. Sufficient arguments can be made for both positions,17 suggesting that it may be worthwhile to see them in relation, rather than opposition.

Wank already highlighted that revisionist works were perhaps too affirmative, arguing newest scholarship runs risks to over-emphasise the positive aspects of the empire.18 Similarly, Mark Cornwall’s recent edited 6 Ibid., p. 39; Forum, ‘An Imperial Dynamo? CEH Forum on Pieter M. Judson’s The Habsburg Empire: A New History’, Central European History, Vol. 50 (2017), p. 236.

7 Zeman, The Break-up of the Habsburg Empire 1914-1918, p. xii.

8 Wank, ‘Some Reflections on the Habsburg Empire and Its Legacy in the Nationalities Question’, pp. 132-3, 141; see also Mark Cornwall, ‘Introduction’, in Mark Cornwall (ed.), The Last Years of Austria-Hungary: A Multi-National Experiment in Early Twentieth-Century Europe (Liverpool University Press: Liverpool, 2015), p. 6.

9 Oscar Jászi, The Dissolution of the Habsburg Monarchy (Chicago, 1929), p. 9.

10 Taylor, The Habsburg Monarchy 1815-1918, p. 232.

11 Deak, ‘The Great War and the Forgotten Realm: The Habsburg Monarchy and the First World War’, pp. 336-380; John Deak, Forging a Multinational State: State Making in Imperial Austria from the Enlightenment to the First World War (Stanford University Press: Stanford, 2015); Pieter M. Judson, ‘”Where our commonality is necessary…”: Rethinking the End of the Habsburg Monarchy’, Austrian History Yearbook, Vol. 48 (2017), pp. 1-21; Judson, The Habsburg Empire; Martyn Rady, The Habsburg Empire: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press: Oxford, 2017); Axel Körner, ‘Beyond Nation States: New Perspectives on the Habsburg Empire’, European History Quarterly, Vol. 48, No. 3 (2018), pp. 516-533; Cohen, ‘Neither Absolutism nor Anarchy: New Narratives on Society and Government in Late Imperial Austria’, p. 44; Deak, ‘The Great War and the Forgotten Realm: The Habsburg Monarchy and the First World War’, p. 347.

12 Deak, ‘The Great War and the Forgotten Realm: The Habsburg Monarchy and the First World War’, p. 342.

13 Wank, ‘Some Reflections on the Habsburg Empire and Its Legacy in the Nationalities Question’, p. 132.

14 Cornwall, ‘Introduction’, p. 1.

15 Cited from Joachim Remake, ‘The Healthy Invalid: How Doomed the Habsburg Empire?’, The Journal of Modern History, Vol. 41, No. 2 (Jun., 1969), p. 141.

16 Ibid., 6.

17 Remake, ‘The Healthy Invalid: How Doomed the Habsburg Empire?’, p. 128.

18 Wank, ‘Some Reflections on the Habsburg Empire and Its Legacy in the Nationalities Question’, p. 132.

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volume highlighted the empire’s persisting challenges in the pre-war decades, while reflecting on the importance of war for the empire’s collapse.19 Combining ‘traditional’ and ‘revisionist’ positions allows a more nuanced and complex understanding, where neither the war nor long-term political problems are overemphasised, yet both are given their rightful place in the narrative of the Habsburg Empire’s disintegration.

The importance placed on the war for Austria-Hungary’s dissolution depends on the characterisation of the empire’s pre-war nature. The following analyses both ‘traditional’ and ‘revisionist’ accounts, suggesting to move beyond a concept of ‘either/or’ to understand the empire as modernising, whilst acknowledging the persistence of long-term instabilities, creating a more balanced view of the empire’s nature in 1914. Writing in 1908 Wickham Steed argued that ‘today it seems that the Austrian problem is approaching its solution.’20 In 1969, Joachim Remake similarly wrote, ‘the monarchy possessed a good deal more strength and viability than are sometimes attributed to it.’21 Modern revisionist historiography built on such statements, emphasising the monarchy’s strength. Charlie Steer-Stephenson’s contribution in this journal importantly reevaluates the empire’s ‘place in the European race to modernity,’ concluding that while the empire’s modernisation process was perhaps late and uneven, the ‘Dual Monarchy’s traditional structures were not incompatible with modern innovation and experimentation.’ The Habsburg Empire in the decades leading up to the war, in fact, modernised widely. Cohen, focusing on the expansion of civil service and political modernisation, argued the state developed ‘modern systems of local government, public health, education, and economic regulation,’ providing a ‘growing range of services’ on all levels.22 Despite the challenges of modern mass politics the municipal and state bureaucracy were able to better deal with such issues than is commonly assumed.23 Widespread political reforms aimed at adapting to modern modes of politics, such as the step-by-step increase in suffrage from the 1880s and the electoral reforms of 1907, part of a series of constitutional reforms since 1867.24 As Cohen concluded, ‘a vibrant civil society’ emerged in the empire’s last decades, highlighting the government’s adaptability to social and political changes.25 Political modernisation and reform were paired with improvement in culture and economy, also stressed by more traditional historiography. Okey reflected upon urban modernisation and the arrival of telephones, automatic dispensers and cinemas, arguing culture ‘felt the whiff of modernity.’26 The empire’s economy advanced as ‘total national incomes derived from production rose by about 86% in Austria and 92% in Hungary’ and Austria especially attempted to foster economic progress in underdeveloped areas.27 Deak therefore concluded, ‘the monarchy by 1904 had become a state built on the basis of prosperity, reform, and progress.’28 Revisionist accounts convincingly pointed to the empire’s strength before the war, arguing against perceived concepts of ‘decline’ stressed in traditional scholarship. John Boyer for example emphasised ‘the sturdiness of civic institutions’, often overlooked in an effort to prove the empire’s decline.29 Deak similarly argued that ‘imperial politics – for all their complexity – worked.’30 Scholarship since the 1980s increasingly focused on how the empire stayed together rather than fell apart. Building on already existing scholarly work, Judson emphasised the state’s ‘dynamic’ nature, highlighting its strength and describing it as actively aiming to 19

Cornwall, ‘Introduction’, p. 7.

Remake, ‘The Healthy Invalid: How Doomed the Habsburg Empire?’, p. 141.

21 Ibid., p. 127.

22 Cohen, ‘Neither Absolutism nor Anarchy: New Narratives on Society and Government in Late Imperial Austria’, pp.

38,44.

23 Ibid., p. 46.

24 John W. Boyer, ‘Power, Partisanship, and the Grid of Democratic Politics: 1907 as the Pivot Point of Modern Austrian History’, Austrian History Yearbook, Vol. 44 (2013), pp. 149,151,153,155.

25 Cohen, ‘Neither Absolutism nor Anarchy: New Narratives on Society and Government in Late Imperial Austria’, pp.

59,61.

26 Robin Okey, The Habsburg Monarchy c. 1765-1918: From Enlightenment to Eclipse (Macmillan Press LTD: Hampshire, 2001), pp. 337-8.

27 Manfried Rauchsteiner, The First World War and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914-1913 (Böhlau Verlag: Wien, 2014), p. 756; Remake, ‘The Healthy Invalid: How Doomed the Habsburg Empire?’, p. 130.

28 Deak, Forging a Multinational State, p. 243.

29 Boyer, ‘Power, Partisanship, and the Grid of Democratic Politics: 1907 as the Pivot Point of Modern Austrian History’, p. 167.

30 Deak, ‘The Great War and the Forgotten Realm: The Habsburg Monarchy and the First World War’, pp. 357-8.

20

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Catalyst or Watershed? Revisiting the First World War and the collapse of the Hapsburg Empire | Charlotte Alt

modernize its institutions.31 According to revisionist accounts, therefore, the empire as a bureaucratic entity became increasingly efficient by 1914.32 Scholars like Deak, Cohen, Boyer and Judson, highlighting the empire’s virility, strength, modernisation and democratisation, effectively undermined traditional understandings of Austria-Hungary as fraught with long-term problems.

As already pointed out by Wank, it is important not to over-emphasise the empire’s positive qualities; yet at the same time, one should not exaggerate its negative aspects, as ‘traditional’ historians have often done.

While ‘revisionists’ largely advanced and improved historical understanding of the Habsburg state’s modernization, ‘traditional’ characterisations of long-term problems should not be fully disregarded, allowing the emergence of a more nuanced understanding of the empire’s strengths and weaknesses. In 1929, Jászi explained Austria-Hungary’s collapse by a long ‘organic’ process of dissolution, which, according to Jászi, began 200 years prior, arguing that in the immediate pre-war years the empire’s centrifugal (disintegrating) forces were stronger than its centripetal (unifying) ones, concluding that only ‘a well-balanced federalism,’ could have saved the empire.33 Such characterisation is exaggerated, especially in light of the processes of modernisation and reform mentioned earlier; it is however important to recognise that longer-term problems persisted. Lothar Höbelt, echoing Macartney’s argument that after the extension of franchise Austria proved increasingly impossible to govern, highlighted that there was rarely ever a clear majority in parliament and obstruction was common.34 Höbelt argued that the electoral reform in 1907 caused further parliamentary fragmentation and despite attempted reforms, obstruction remained frequent.35 While there were ‘serious’ and ‘honourable’ attempts for political reform, these would remain ‘attempts’ only.36 By 1912, as Deak pointed out, the imperial administration had also become incredibly complicated and difficult.37 The nationality problem likewise persisted, as Okey highlighted, arguing that while there were positive developments in Moravia and Bukovina (with compromises in 1905 and 1910) these did ‘not outweigh more negative ones in Bohemia, Hungary and the south Slav world on the eve of world war.’38 In fact, Victor Koleda in his contribution to this debate interestingly proposes that the ‘Habsburg state’s failure to adequately deal’ with the ‘nationality problem’ by solely providing short-term ‘swift relief from inter-ethnic tensions’, in the end led to an exacerbation of ‘the nationalist impulse.’ What Okey therefore viewed as positive developments, namely the compromises in Moravia and Bukovina, according to Koleda might therefore have actually further accelerated the ‘nationality problem’ and its disintegrating forces.

I would argue that the empire’s positive characterisation by ‘revisionist’ historians should not be seen in opposition to works reflecting some of the empire’s problems. In fact, acknowledging long-term continuous problems alongside an understanding of modernisation and democratization allows for a more nuanced historiographical approach. Wank and John Mason argued that there can be cultural and economic success alongside political decline,39 adding more layers to the question whether the empire ‘declined’ or ‘rose’ (to use Alan Sked’s words)40 in the lead up to war. Boyer and Deak, in analysing political reform, also argued for more nuance. Deak stressed that the state began widespread bureaucratic and administrative reforms, yet financial problems became increasingly worse.41 Similarly, while Boyer argued that previous scholars may have been too pessimistic, highlighting the sturdiness of the empire’s bureaucracy and administration and 31 Forum, ‘An Imperial Dynamo? CEH Forum on Pieter M. Judson’s The Habsburg Empire: A New History’, pp. 1368,240.

32 Deak, ‘The Great War and the Forgotten Realm: The Habsburg Monarchy and the First World War’, pp. 367-8.

33 Jászi, The Dissolution of the Habsburg Monarchy, pp. 7,10-1,185,453.

34 Rauchsteiner, The First World War and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914-1913, p. 796; Lothaer Höbelt, ‘’Well-tempered Discontent’ Austrian Domestic Politics’, in Cornwall (ed.), The Last Years of Austria-Hungary, p. 48.

35 Höbelt, ‘’Well-tempered Discontent’ Austrian Domestic Politics’, pp. 55,59.

36 John W. Boyer, ‘The End of an Old Regime: Visions of Political Reform in Late Imperial Austria’, The Journal of Modern History, Vol. 58, No. 1 (Mar., 1986), p. 190.

37 Deak, Forging a Multinational State, p. 215.

38 Okey, The Habsburg Monarchy c. 1765-1918, p. 368.

39 John W. Mason, The Dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, 1867-1918 (Pearson Education Limited: Essex, 1997), p. 23; Wank, ‘Some Reflections on the Habsburg Empire and Its Legacy in the Nationalities Question’, p. 133 40 Alan Sked, The Decline and Fall of the Habsburg Empire, 1815-1918 (Routledge Taylor & Francis Group: New York, 2013), pp. 6,301-2,310 41 Wank, ‘Some Reflections on the Habsburg Empire and Its Legacy in the Nationalities Question’, pp. 217,228

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their efforts to create a stronger, more democratic connection to their citizens, he also admitted that a general ‘incongruence’ between state and citizen persisted.42 Both highlighted political progress and modernisation, yet acknowledged that problems persisted, showing the traditional view of ‘decline’ and the revisionist view of ‘success’ are not necessarily irreconcilable. Laurence Cole, in critique of Judson, argued that in an effort to provide a ‘new history’ Judson disregarded any additional aspects leading to the empire’s dissolution, his argument therefore ‘takes on a degree of circularity, whereby all processes are read as affirming the validity of “empire.”’43 Connecting traditional ideas of political difficulties to more positive revisionist understandings of the empire’s stability allows more historiographical nuance and a move away from onesided histories: put simply, it would be wrong to argue the empire was in a long-term ‘decline,’ yet it would be equally wrong to argue the empire essentially ‘rose’ and had solved all its problems by 1914.

If long-term issues were not the main reason for the empire’s collapse, yet were nonetheless ever-present, what is the war’s place in understanding the empire’s dissolution? Was it still merely a ‘catalyst’ or was it the main force of dissolution? Making the First World War alone responsible for the empire’s collapse, as some ‘revisionists’ tend to, is simplistic. Watershed events in history rarely happen because of one aspect, but due to an amalgamation of reasons; it is therefore useful to combine ‘traditional’ and ‘revisionist’ accounts to allow a more complex understanding of the empire’s collapse, whereby the war was important, yet longterm problems are likewise given their place.

Revisionist scholarship, especially advanced by Judson, highlighted the war’s importance for the empire’s dissolution, emphasising the state’s loss of legitimacy and the altered relationship between citizen and state.

Judson argued, ‘the war [...] did not accelerate an inevitable collapse. It did, however, create heretofore unimaginable new conditions in Austria-Hungary that in just a few years’ time made collapse not only possible but likely.’44 The war was harsh on Austria-Hungary and war-weariness set in quickly. Shortages in iron, cotton and wool began in 1916 and from winter 1916/17 coal became increasingly scarce as wider shortages accelerated.45 The harvest of wheat and rye in 19016 and 1917 fell to 44 and 40 percent of 1914 levels.46 The Eastern Front, as stressed by Rudolf Jerábek, especially drained resources, further exhausting the empire already struggling with years of total war.47 As starvation, rationing, and food queues increased, strikes and bread riots broke out.48 War-weariness is closely connected to what Judson characterised as the state’s loss of legitimacy. A quasimilitary dictatorship was implemented immediately after the outbreak of war, cracking down harshly on anyone perceived as a threat, disrespecting traditions of the multinational empire and civil rights and damaging its relationship with its citizen by harshly persecuting the Slavic population.49 The overarching cause for the state’s loss of legitimacy, according to Judson, was its inability to feed and provide for its citizen, harming the relationship between the state and its citizen.50 When Charles I of Austria re-established constitutional rule after Francis Joseph’s death in 1916, the corrosive effects of the military dictatorship had arguably already gone too far.51 As Judson concluded, the empire was unable to feed and care for its citizen, proving the biggest challenge to its legitimacy and ultimately causing the empire’s disintegration.52 Judson’s argument is largely convincing and has since been echoed by a number of historians. Höbelt and Cornwall, 42 Boyer, ‘Power, Partisanship, and the Grid of Democratic Politics: 1907 as the Pivot Point of Modern Austrian History’, pp. 154,167 43 Laurence Cole, ‘Visions and Revisions of Empire: Reflections on a New History of the Habsburg Empire’, Austrian History Yearbook, Vol. 49 (2018), pp. 272,277 44 Judson, The Habsburg Empire, p. 387 45 Okey, The Habsburg Monarchy c. 1765-1918, p. 385 46 Judson, The Habsburg Empire, p. 399 47 Rudolf Jerábek, ‘The Eastern Front’, in Cornwall (ed.), The Last Years of Austria-Hungary, p. 163 48 Rady, The Habsburg Empire, p. 101 49 Judson, The Habsburg Empire, p. 392; Judson, ‘“Where our commonality is necessary…”: Rethinking the End of the Habsburg Monarchy’, p. 15 50 Judson, ‘“Where our commonality is necessary…”: Rethinking the End of the Habsburg Monarchy’, pp. 5,14; Judson, The Habsburg Empire, p. 393 51 Judson, The Habsburg Empire, pp. 420-1 52 Ibid., pp. 426,430

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for example, similarly argued Austria-Hungary lost its legitimacy when it became authoritarian and failed to provide for its citizens.53 Perhaps somewhat surprisingly even Macartney, Okey and Kann years before Judson argued along similar lines, highlighting the highly oppressive military regime, the monarchy’s failure to provide for its citizens and the centrifugal forces, which became dominant during the war.54 The differences between historiographical schools might therefore sometimes be more imaginary than real. Both Deak and Höbelt, highlighted that Austria-Hungary’s legitimacy had long rested on ‘the bureaucracy’s ability to deal flexibly with the complexities of multinational, popular participation in policy making;’ the war brought this balance shattering down.55 As F.R. Bridge highlighted, by choosing the military option in 1914 Austria denied itself the possibility of any other diplomatic action. 56 While previously ‘for over a century the Monarchy had managed to survive by astute manoeuvring between friends and potential foes,’ with the outbreak of war this careful navigation was over.57 The loss of legitimacy came with an altered relationship between state and citizen, a relationship, which in previous years, due to its flexibility and adaptability, had ensured the state’s existence, but which during the war became inflexible and autocratic, alienating its population.

While revisionist scholarship convincingly argued for the war’s importance in the empire’s collapse, it is worthwhile to keep more traditional interpretation of deep-seated issues at the forefront as well. The war created new environments of action and existence where older grievances could be played out and exploited to work against the regime and accelerate its dissolution. As Remake so fittingly wrote, ‘the war did many startling and unpredictable things;’58 one of those unpredictable things was the creation of new spaces of action. As Judson himself demonstrated, the war gave many groups in society the opportunity to ‘reshape empire according to their particular visions.’59 For some people it was to reverse democratization, returning to more dictatorial forms of government, ‘for socialists the war offered the chance to achieve social and political reform in return for the cooperation of the industrial working classes’; for nationalists this proved a chance for autonomy and increased state rights.60 Here pre-war grievances and unresolved nationalist tensions came into play. Traditional scholarship by Taylor highlighted the persistent nationality issues, arguing that Czech politicians such as Tomáš Masaryk quickly saw other alternatives during the war.61 Masaryk’s memorandum ‘Independent Bohemia’ (1915) was clear in its aims for Czech independence from AustriaHungary, stating that ‘Bohemia must now take care of herself.’62 Remake and Okey likewise argued that shortages caused a wave of strikes and more frequently expressed nationalist sentiment that proved ‘fatal to the empire.’63 Judson aimed to move beyond such traditional understandings of the nationality problems, leading him, however, as Cole rightly argued, to somewhat downplay nationalist activity during the war. Cole therefore concluded, ‘the overall picture is more variegated than Judson paints and socio-political unrest in Austria-Hungary frequently threatened to get out of hand.’64 In fact, as Aviel Roshwald argued, ‘the war created tremendous pressures that served to catapult the idea of national self-determination towards sudden realization across a wide range of societies.’65 Alan Sked similarly reflected that the empire finally collapsed

53 Mark Cornwall, ‘Disintegration and Defeat: The Austro-Hungarian Revolution’, in Cornwall (ed.), The Last Years of Austria-Hungary, p. 193; Höbelt, ‘“Well-tempered Discontent” Austrian Domestic Politics’, pp. 65-6 54 Macartney, The Habsburg Empire, p. 818; Okey, The Habsburg Monarchy c. 1765-1918, p. 391; Alan Sked, ‘Historians, the Nationality Question, and the Downfall of the Habsburg Empire’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, Vol. 31 (1981), p. 185 55 Deak, ‘The Great War and the Forgotten Realm: The Habsburg Monarchy and the First World War’, pp. 378-9; Höbelt, ‘’Well-tempered Discontent’ Austrian Domestic Politics’, p. 69 56 F. R Bridge, ‘The Foreign Policy of the Monarchy’, in Cornwall (ed.), The Last Years of Austria-Hungary, pp. 34-5 57 Ibid., pp. 34-5 58 Remake, ‘The Healthy Invalid: How Doomed the Habsburg Empire?’, p.142 59 Judson, The Habsburg Empire, p.385 60 Ibid., p.385 61 Sked, The Decline and Fall of the Habsburg Empire, 1815-1918, p.239 62 Tomas G. Masaryk, ‘Independent Bohemia (1915)’, in R.W. Seton-Watson, Masaryk in England (The University Press and Macmillan Company: Cambridge, 1943), p.123 63 Remake, ‘The Healthy Invalid: How Doomed the Habsburg Empire?’, p. 142; Okey, The Habsburg Monarchy c.

1765-1918, p.388 64 Cole, ‘Visions and Revisions of Empire: Reflections on a New History of the Habsburg Empire’, pp. 275-6.

65 Aviel Roshwald, Ethnic Nationalism & the Fall of Empires: Central Europe, Russia and the Middle East, 1914-1923 (Routledge: London, 2001), p.3

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because people were demanding their rights and framing this increasingly in nationalist rhetoric.66 As traditional histories often stressed, new spaces and avenues of activity would not have been utilised had there not been some long-term issues, intensifying during the war.

Overall, it does not seem appropriate to agree with Kann’s long-outdated statement that ‘what happened within a few war years is in essence only an abstract of a long-drawn out process of decline.’ However, neither is it adequate, in view of the need for historical nuance, to agree with Judson that the war was the main and virtually only reason for the empire’s collapse.67 The war created an unusual environment and new spaces in which long-term problems, existing before the war, could intensify and lead to the empire’s dissolution; it created an environment where long-term problems like the nationality question, which without the war would probably not have been the main force for the empire’s collapse, could become an important force of disintegration. The war was more than a ‘catalyst’ of inevitable dissolution, but it was less than the main and over-arching reason for the empire’s collapse. The war was a ‘junction’ where things could have gone either way, it was a ‘junction’ where the loss of legitimacy together with long-term problems could lead to the empire’s collapse.

66 67

Sked, The Decline and Fall of the Habsburg Empire, 1815-1918, p.269 Judson, The Habsburg Empire, pp. 385-442-; Kann, The History of the Habsburg Empire 1526-1918, p.486

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DIZZY WITH OPTIMISM: REVISIONIST HISTORIOGRAPHY AND THE NATIONALITY CONFLICT IN LATE AUSTRIA-HUNGARY

BY VIKTOR KOLEDA

The question of nationality in late Austria-Hungary is an overdetermined topic and the answer given to it by historians is never quite the sum of its parts. The reason for that is that their arguments are often conditioned by teleological considerations that relate to the state’s ultimate collapse. Generations of historians influenced by the work of Oszkár Jászi saw the nationality question as a decisive catalyst leading to the Empire’s dissolution.1 Almost a century later, we stand at a point where the paradigm constructed by historians opposing his perspective has almost completely overtaken the field. Their work is equally tied to the Empire’s collapse, albeit with opposite connotations. Historiography of this question, in general, has assumed a strange form, with scholars frequently speaking of ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ qualities of the monarchy – not exactly a sign of great condition of the field of knowledge.2 Revisionist historians today celebrate the failures of Habsburg state-building, such as its toleration of the Hungarian “passive resistance”, as examples of the monarchy’s “liberalism”. Eager to reject Jászi’s ‘prison of nations’ paradigm, they praise the state’s attempts at cultivating and empowering national sentiments among its population. Yet they fail to acknowledge the role of these policies in the escalation of nationalist strife. Therefore, rather than preoccupying oneself with the seemingly contrafactual question of the national conflict’s inevitability, it would be more meaningful to aim to disentangle one’s understanding of the nationality conflict from the assumptions of the state’s functionality, and from the preoccupation with the inevitability of Austria-Hungary’s demise. In order to do so, we should single out the objective social forces that led to the conflict’s intensification. Analysis of this kind would reveal that the nationalities conflict was not inevitable, but was produced by the Habsburg state’s failure to adequately deal with the specificities of its historical condition.

The understanding of nationalism’s artificiality as an ideology has long become a truism and our thinking is inescapably bound to the concepts produced by Benedict Anderson and Eric Hobsbawm. As a result, we may be reluctant to connect a “non-organic” ideology of nationalism with objective historical processes, stressing instead the mechanical process of its construction. However, it cannot be denied that the “artificial” – or “invented” – phenomenon of nationalism came to flourish in the historically specific conditions presented by the advent of European modernity. Therefore, if we are to interrogate the national conflicts’ inevitability, we have to start with objective factors, such as economic and social developments that brought the nationality question to the political front line in Europe, and in the Habsburg Empire more specifically. Modernity stands at the centre of some of the most significant work on nationalism done by political scientists. For Gellner, whose theory Judson and other recent Habsburg histories still rely on, it was ‘the nature of work in industrial society’, combined with the ‘occupational mobility’, that erased the tangibility of kinship from lives of modern subjects, replacing it with the necessity to identify with and internalise ‘a High (i. e. literate, schooltransmitted) Culture’.3 When ‘all that is solid melts into air’, to use some of Marx’s most poetic characterising of modernity, local associations become dissolved.4 Their place is taken by ‘mobile, anonymous, literate, 1

Oszkár Jászi, The dissolution of the Habsburg monarchy (Chicago, 1929) For example, see Solomon Wank, ‘Some Reflections on the Habsburg Empire and Its Legacy in the Nationalities Question’, Austrian History Yearbook, 28 (1997), pp.131-146 3 Ernst Gellner, Encounters with Nationalism (Oxford, 1994), p.46 4 See Marshall Berman, All That Is Solid Melts into Air: The Experience of Modernity (Harmondsworth, 1988) 2

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identity-conferring cultures’ – in other words, in Gellner’s functionalist account, nationalism was the most direct and natural outcome of modernity.5 Another influential work that has influenced the way historians of nationalism think was Miroslav Hroch’s much criticised synthesis of Marxist and nationalist perspectives into a single model of periodisation. If anything, it stresses the role of modernity even more: for Hroch, it was the transition to industrial capitalism as a mode of production in a historical materialist sense that paved the way for the forces of nationalism. Both models, thus, stress the definitive importance of modernity for the rise of nationalism, to an extent where earlier forms of national thought are completely ignored. Gellner has criticised Hroch for this reason, while Okey applied the same criticism to Gellner, claiming that the latter’s approach produces an ‘overdeterministic view of the relationship of ideas to social processes’.6 Indeed, such determinism may limit the models’ reliability when applied to other historical cases. However, they accurately capture the overpowering importance of modernity to the rise of nationalism when it comes to nineteenth-century Central Europe, and therefore are of value to us. Let us turn to some specific examples that present nationalism as a ‘defensive construction… in the face of the vast economic and demographic transformations that ushered in the modern era’.7 Nationalism is a typically urban phenomenon, and the case of the Habsburg Empire confirms that the intensification of social processes brought by urbanisation resulted in the growth of national consciousness.

Urban northern Bohemia is an outstanding example of that: the region witnessed ‘one of the most intense and extensive cases of wholesale nationalization and national polarization of a society to be found anywhere in history’. The national question in the area has produced a parliamentary crisis, a de-facto segregation of the economies (‘with separate credit facilities, producers’ associations, insurance companies, and so on’) and education, as well as an ongoing struggle for cultural hegemony in the public sphere.8 In applying his analysis to 1840s Bohemia, Hroch identified that ‘most of the patriots originated in an urban environment’, and one of the most significant ‘integrating effects’ of the nationalist activity was ‘the expansion in manufacturing and factory production’.9 What the nationalists confronted in the countryside as late as in the 1890s was that ‘rural people appeared unwilling to commit themselves to national communities’ – untouched by modernity, peasants could not relate to the mobilising messages.10 Most of the Czech workers arriving from the countryside were at first attracted to the socialist movements – those still had a nationalist agenda, and their policy ‘stressed the need for propaganda in the mother tongue’.11 However, the last twenty years of the nineteenth-century saw about half a million Czech workers move into German-speaking areas, following which a proper nationalist movement developed. The situation deteriorated into bitter social relations, with school protection associations such as ‘Deutscher Schulverein… and its Czech equivalents’ carrying out large campaigns ‘for purposes of national contestation’.12 The sphere of education, access to which was another characteristic of modernity and one strongly stressed by Gellner, turned into a political battlefield throughout the Empire. ‘Advance of free capitalist agriculture and industry after the 1850s, continuing urbanization, and the growth of public education’ allowed mass politics to grow outside of the conventional political channels.13 Nationalism became formidable by becoming a mass political force, which in turn could only be possible under the conditions of modernity. The main channel through which the nationalist political sentiments were articulated was the civil society in all its forms, and modernity 5

Ernst Gellner, Nations and nationalism (Malden, 2006), p.86 R. Okey, The Habsburg Monarchy, c. 1765-1918: From Enlightenment to Eclipse (Basingstoke, 2001), p.284 7 Karl F. Bahm, ‘Beyond the Bourgeoisie: Rethinking Nation, Culture, and Modernity in Nineteenth-Century Central Europe’, Austrian History Yearbook, 29:1 (1998), p.20 8 Bahm, Beyond the Bourgeoisie, pp.21-22 9 Hroch, Social Preconditions, pp.59-60 10 Peter M. Judson, ‘Do Multiple Languages Mean a Multicultural Society?’ in Feichtinger and Cohen (eds.), Understanding Multiculturalism: The Habsburg Central European Experience (Oxford, 2014), p.76 11 Okey, The Habsburg Monarchy, p.288 12 Ibid., pp.288-295 13 G. B. Cohen, ‘Nationalist Politics and the Dynamics of State and Civil Society in the Habsburg Monarchy, 18671914’, Central European History, 40:2 (2007), p.249 6

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has significantly expanded the social base of its contributors. That was most evident in the Hungarian part, where institutional channels allowed for significantly less popular engagement. There, ‘[b]y 1900 nationalist political parties and their affiliated social, economic, and cultural groups had acquired strong support and influence in all parts of the monarchy’.14 The forces of modernisation created conditions in response to which nationalist politics could develop, while simultaneously creating the space in which political movements could operate. As such, the nationality problem was “inevitable” in a sense that it constituted part of the Empire’s historical condition.

For Peter Judson, the very term “nationalities conflict” is problematic – he stresses the need to adopt the expression “nationalist conflicts” instead, emphasising ‘their specifically political character and context’.15 In doing so, he employs an unreasonably narrow definition of “politics”, which stands in contrast to the cultural focus of his approach. As a result, the label of “political” is denied to any genuine nationalistic activity, separating “culture” from “politics” in a rather crude way. In their assessment of nationalism, such approaches therefore appear as fundamentally oxymoronic, preoccupied with cultural issues and at the same time excluding what the population experienced on the daily basis from their definition of ‘the political’.

Nevertheless, they bring our attention to an important issue: the role of nationalist political activism, which ‘became the dominant means through which entire populations… were mobilized into public life’.16 How did nationalism come to be the basis of political identity? In the 1860s, according to Judson, it was not clear ‘what constituted a nation… and who could speak for it’, although the experience of 1848 was probably quite suggestive.17 However, the gradual expansion of franchise produced a political environment in which power rested with those who could achieve electoral support. In a situation where territorial lines and ethnic divisions hardly corresponded at all, “nationality conflict” as we know it came to life. National community was often defined by language, especially among the ‘unhistoric nations’ – ‘Slovenes, Slovaks, or Romanians, whose claim to nationhood rested largely on their separate language and modern literature’, rather than concrete historical evidence of statehood.18 The Czechs boycotted the Vienna parliament for sixteen years after 1862, demanding “state right”, and the 1860s saw ‘the tabor movement’ in the Bohemian lands, in which the masses protested for ‘linguistic equality’.19 Language would also be the subject of the 1897 Badeni crisis, which was the culmination of German-Czech antagonism.

The Hungarians, it is often remarked, brought the liberal “nationality law” of 1868 ‘to the level of national chauvinism’ in implementation. Over the following forty years, it thrived, and Count Stephen Tisza’s 1910 statement does not stand out when we look at Hungarian public discourse of the time: “Our citizens of nonMagyar tongue must… become accustomed to the fact that they belong to the community of a nation state,… not a conglomerate of various races’.20 Thousands of Slovaks and Croats were successfully assimilated, which ‘allowed… [them] social advancements’. Serbs and Romanians, however, struggled to integrate as their national identity ‘was inseparably linked with their Christian-Orthodox confession’ – clearly, nationalism could not be reduced to linguistic differences, and involved deep cultural antagonisms. The national problems within Transleithania are evidenced by the 1868 Hungarian-Croat constitutional agreement, a ‘compromise within the Compromise’ that granted administrative autonomy to Croatia-Slavonia.21 German-speaking Austrians, who had previously only framed their nationalism in civic terms and had ‘played down the notion that the German nation might have a set of specific interests that diverged from the interests [of the Empire] as a whole’, developed an ethnicity-based form of nationalism in the 1870s in response to the developments described above.

14

Cohen, ‘Nationalist Politics,’ p.260 P. Judson, The Habsburg Empire: A New History (Cambridge, MA, 2016), p.271 16 Judson, The Habsburg Empire, p.272 17 Ibid., p.292 18 Mark Cornwall, ‘The Habsburg Monarchy’ in Baycroft and Hewitson (eds.), What is a Nation? Europe 1789-1914 (Oxford, 2006), p.176 19 Ibid., p.188 20 Gerald Stourzh, ‘The Multinational Empire Revisited: Reflections on Late Imperial Austria’, Austrian History Yearbook, 23 (1992), p.15 21 Andrea Komlosy, ‘Imperial Cohesion, Nation-Building and Regional Integration in the Habsburg Monarchy, 18041918’ in Berger and Miller (eds.), Nationalizing Empires (New York, 2015), pp.386-395 15

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Ultimately, all of these processes were reactive to the circumstances of the majority rule – masses of people were mobilised into conflicting imperial politics in a short span of time. In this political environment, the outlook of the new generations was conditioned by the circumstances of their own politicisation, which they then reproduced, as was most evident in the case of the Young Czechs, a significantly more radical generation of nationalist politicians than their predecessors. The picture that all of the above portrays when taken together is one of a radical shift in the second half of the nineteenth century. The extension of the political franchise disturbed the delicate ethnical balance and most ethnic groups had to adapt in response. The importance of the ethnic balance can be exemplified by the fact that when Bosnia-Herzegovina was joined to the empire, it was not placed into either Austria nor Hungary: instead, it was ‘run by the imperial Finance Ministry in a deliberate attempt to maintain the ethnic balance of the Dualist system’.22 The radical shift also becomes notable from the perspective of intellectual history: years between 1897 and 1910 see an explosion of ‘creative writing’ on the question of ‘autonomy for the Volksstämme’: among them were ‘Georg Jellinek's… lecture on the right of minorities of 1898, many of Karl Renner's… writings, Otto Bauer's work… of 1907, and Edmund Bernatzik's magisterial lecture-essay on ethnic registers of 1910’.23 This was a distinctively Austro-Hungarian phenomenon and there were no parallels to it on the wider European arena of the time. The “nationalization” and radicalization of politics happened swiftly, which highlights the artificiality of national conflicts. In a way, it confirms Judson’s argument – the nations were indeed mobilized for political purposes. However, does the artificiality of conflict make ethnic unification any less genuine and deserving of our attention? ‘The power of nationalist rhetoric at every level of politics was not a product of some kind of reality of conflicting nations’, wrote Judson; ‘nationalist politics functioned to constitute the very nations it claimed to represent’.24 Here, Judson goes too far in denying the validity to nationalist impulses and reducing the significance of conflict to absolute minimum. The aforementioned situations of the Serbs or the Romanians, whose nationalist movements were based on deep cultural, linguistic, and religious differences from their neighbours illustrate this most vividly. Artificial or not, real antagonisms appeared and those cannot be reduced to the rudiments of the electoral processes. In any case, the evidence above shows that conflicts arose in response to a particular political situation, rather than were predetermined in any way – and therefore, no longer seem inevitable.

Since we have established that the populations were mobilized in response to a political situation, we must address the role of the Habsburg state in these processes. The responsibility of holding the Empire together fell to the monarchy in the face of the dynasty, and the relation of their policies to the problem’s escalation must be evaluated. It was the monarchy’s task to turn the supranational identity that it promoted into a strong and appealing Staatsidee. As Peter Urbanitsch has noted, ‘any secular moral philosophy, like one centered on the nation, finally depends on success’. In our period, ‘the monarchical idea was subjected to a creeping demythologization and desacralization’, and the events described above signify the ultimate failure of the state in this regard.25 Count Gustav Kalnoky, the foreign minister at the time, attested to that in the 1880s: ‘the monarchy has developed more in the sense of a power (Macht) than in the sense of a state (Staat)’.26 To frame our discussion in Jászi’s terms, we can say that the dynasty failed to sufficiently cultivate the centripetal forces that would counterbalance and overpower the centrifugal ones. By the nineteenth century, ‘the political strength’ of the Habsburg monarchy, the dominant symbol around which imperial unity was constructed, was ‘almost entirely exhausted.27 ‘To conceptualize a supranational identity is one thing, to popularize it is another’; the Habsburgs tried, by building the Arsenal in Vienna as an ‘Austrian national monument, a Nationaldenkmal’, or erecting the monument to General Heinrich Hentzi in Buda.28 At some point in the 22

Ibid., p.218 Stourzh, ‘The Multinational Empire,’ pp.17-19 24 Judson, The Habsburg Empire, p.63 25 P. Urbanitsch, ‘Pluralist Myth and Nationalist Realities: The Dynastic Myth of the Habsburg Monarchy—a Futile Exercise in the Creation of Identity?’ Austrian History Yearbook, 35 (2004), p.140 26 Wank, ‘Some Reflections,’ p.137 27 Ibid., p.134 28 Urbanitsch, ‘Pluralist Myth,’ pp.115-117 23

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nineteenth century, as Péter Hanák described it, ‘[w]hat had been patriarchal rule hinging on the person of the Emperor or the dynasty became the paternalistic absolutism of the bureaucracy’, which decisively alienated the population from allegiance to the Empire over nationalist projects.29 Yet, at the same time, the Habsburgs opened up the spaces to promote the centrifugal forces. Historians like Judson and Cohen emphasise the role of the state in providing sufficient autonomy for national selfexpression in the form of civil society as a sign of imperial flexibility and softness. Yet, it was precisely these mechanisms praised by the revisionists that doomed the empire to inter-ethnic strife. As Solomon Wank has remarked, relying on Alexander Motyl’s theory, ‘[i]mperial decay inevitably sets in when the emperor, in order to preserve the integrity of his state… accords some or all of the peripheral territories a greater degree of autonomy vis-à-vis the center’.30 That was exactly what the Habsburg state did, and the nationalist activism ‘functioned within the context of a dynastic state system’.31 Most notably, this has been done in the AustroHungarian Compromise of 1867, by which Francis Joseph granted each half of the Empire with a constitution.

The Austrian constitution promised ‘all the races of state… equal rights’, one of which was ‘the inviolable right of maintaining and cultivating its nationality and language’. It guaranteed the equality of languages in ‘in the schools, public offices, and in public life’, and opened ‘public offices… to all citizens’.32 The Hungarian one promised less, but its very existence was a testament of the Empire’s commitment to the cause of equality between the nations as a strategy of self-preservation, which backfired. These policies promoted separation and the formulation of separate identities and as such served as a delayed time-bomb for the Habsburg state. The Moravian compromise of 1905, for example, ‘was not a compromise at all, but a separation of Czechs and Germans’.33 Numerous associations ‘organized along “national” (i. e. ethnic) lines’ flourished as a result of the granted liberties combined with the extended franchise. The ‘creation of public bodies structured along ethnic lines’, in turn, politicised the population and gave it the sense of national belonging (Volkszugerhöringkeit) and a dream of national autonomy.34 Moreover, the “delicate balance” that the Habsburgs were trying to maintain did not correspond to economic realities: agricultural Hungary, the Empire’s economic periphery, was given political power and autonomy, while economically important Bohemia was subjected to Austrian dominance. The resulting confrontations became inevitable when Habsburg policy was set in practice.

Speaking ahistorically, Austria-Hungary’s national policy was similar to that of the USSR. The monarchy actively cultivated and promoted all forms of national identification, provided spaces for them to flourish, and celebrated diversity across 24 volumes of Archduke Rudolf’s encyclopaedia. In doing so, the monarchy was manufacturing tensions that would not only tear the empire apart in the circumstances created by the First World War, but would haunt Central and Eastern Europe to this day. It gave representation to the Malorossy, encouraging the development of the Ruthenian nationalist movement, even though Galicia was clearly dominated by the Poles ‘numerically, economically and politically’.35 Not stopping at Moravian and Bukovinian compromises, the empire offered Bosnia-Herzegovina (!) its own provincial constitution in 1910.

The nationality conflict was not inevitable in a sense that it was pre-determined by the ethnicities’ coexistence in a single framework. Such answers can only be produced by those who are preoccupied with the empire’s final collapse. Nevertheless, there were objective social and economic factors that the Habsburg Empire confronted – and the way it responded to them was focused too much on pacifying the population, rather than providing a genuine solution or effectively repressing the activism. While the nationalist activists 29 P. Hanák, The Garden and the Workshop: Essays on the Cultural History of Vienna and Budapest (Princeton, 1998), p.66.

30 Wank, ‘Some Reflections,’ p. 137; Alexander Motyl, "From Imperial Decay to Imperial Collapse: The Fall of the Soviet Empire in Comparative Perspective," in Richard L. Rudolph and David F. Good (eds.), Nationalism and Empire: The Habsburg Monarchy and the Soviet Union, (New York, 1992), 15-43.

31 Cohen, ‘Nationalist Politics,’ p. 275.

32 Fundamental Law Concerning the General Rights of Citizens: The Austrian Constitution of 1867, at https://ecommons.cornell.edu/bitstream/handle/1813/1443/Austr_Const_1867.pdf.

33 Wank, ‘Some Reflections,’ p. 145.

34 Stourzh, ‘The Multinational Empire,’ p. 19.

35 Kuzmany, ‘Habsburg Austria’, p.58

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mobilised the masses, took a strong stance in the civil society, crafted an identity against their “oppressors� and neighbours, the Habsburgs tried responding to them by gradually giving concessions. Even if that provided a swift relief from the inter-ethnic tension, such policies could only exacerbate the nationalist impulses in a long-term perspective. Thus, the way the Habsburg Empire chose to deal with the forces of modernity made the nationality conflict inevitable.

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REVISITING EMPEROR KARL’S OCTOBER MANIFESTO

BY ADRIAN RIESS ‘Austria must, in accordance with the will of its people, become a federal state, in which every nationality shall form its own national territory in its own settlement zone.’

Emperor Karl, October Manifesto (1918) The Völkermanifest is a rarity in Habsburg historiography. Equally seldomly, contemporaries and historians agree to such an extent with each other. When Emperor Karl declared the federalisation of the Habsburg Empire on 16 October 1918, most contemporaries doubted the success of his endeavour, judging his attempt as belated and desperate.1 In the same manner and ever since, historians have called the Völkermanifest a last and inglorious attempt to save the monarchy.2 Very recently, Steven Beller has concluded that Karl’s efforts in October 1918 were ‘far too late’, and his actions ‘irrelevant’.3 Although he acknowledged finding a solution that would have satisfied everyone had been impossible, Manfred Rauchensteiner interpreted the Manifesto as a ‘sign of dissolution’ in his extensive World War history.4 But how could the conclusion be any different when even Karl himself admitted in his memoires, written in exile, ‘due to the rushing events, the manifest became irrelevant (gegenstandslos)’?5 Given this broad spectrum of negative assessment as well as the fact that the Habsburg Empire had vanished only a few weeks later, an estimation of the Manifesto’s timing and relevance seems to be unambiguous. However, I would like to suggest to approach the Manifesto from a different angle, arguing that everything is a matter of perspective. Rather than sharing in the swansong of the monarchy, it will ask why Karl pronounced the Manifesto at the time he did and whether it really was as ‘gegenstandslos’ as he himself had suggested.

In doing so, the essay addresses a cardinal problem. For over a century, history and historiography of the Habsburg Empire have had an everlasting end point, a black hole of attention: its collapse. A lot of research seems to have been absorbed by explaining the empire’s dissolution, and the resulting creation of nation states. Those discussions are necessary and fruitful, and they still get new impulses, as has very recently been shown by the debate over Pieter M. Judson’s recent work.6 But this perspective keeps considering the Habsburg Empire from its end point, thus always involving a teleological trap of equating autumn 1918, the disappearance of empire, with spring 1919, the emergence and legitimisation of new nation states that came as a result of the peace negotiations in Paris. In this respect, already Oszkár Jászi has interpreted Karl’s Manifesto in 1929 as the ‘last point of a logical series’ leading towards the independence of nations.7 To escape this teleology that others in this debate also pointed out, this essay considers the Manifesto as a product of its time—a time where multiple crises became visible, nothing was certain but everything seemed to be possible in the view of contemporaries. Examining the Völkermanifest from the viewpoint of the situation in autumn 1918 can give a novel view on the empire’s history.

A four-year-long latent crisis of legitimisation constituted the situation of empire and thus the framework for the genesis of the Manifesto. During the war, popular backing of the empire had vanished. The extra-legal 1

ʻ“Völkermanifest” – Kaiser Karl I. versucht sein Reich zu rettenʼ, Frankfurter Zeitung, 18.10.1918.

In his fundamental study, Helmut Rumpler, Das Völkermanifest Kaiser Karls vom 16. Oktober 1918: letzter Versuch zur Rettung des Habsburgerreiches (München, 1966).

3 Steven Beller, The Habsburg Monarchy, 1815–1918 (Cambridge, 2018), p. 270.

4 Manfried Rauchensteiner, The First World War and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy (Vienna, Cologne, Weimar, 2014), p. 987–992.

5 Karl in Erich Feigl, “Gott erhalte.” Kaiser Karl. Persönliche Aufzeichnungen und Dokumente (Vienna, 2006), pp.

186.

6 Pieter M. Judson, The Habsburg Empire: A New History (Cambridge, 2016).

7 Oszkár Jászi, The Dissolution of the Habsburg Monarchy (Chicago, 1929), p. 22.

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and de facto military dictatorship imposed to the citizens in the first two years of war led to a breakdown of imperial patriotism.8 When Emperor Karl acceded to the throne in 1916, dismissal of the high command and restructuring military leadership could not undo the damage that had already been done. However, military oppression was not the main factor for the declining popularity of the monarchy. This trend was amplified by wartime shortages. Over the whole period of war, food provisions decreased and Vienna’s daily-allotted foodstuffs, for example, were reduced by two thirds between April 1915 and November 1918.9 Food supply became the main criterion of governmental efficiency, thus challenging the justification of empire. Here, long before military and political crises gained pace in autumn 1918, the erosion of the empire became visible.10 In October 1918, the government in Vienna declared the crownlands responsible for food provisions, amplifying a trend which had already been practised in war: existing local welfare organisations that were often part of national associations organised supply and gained popular recognition. Subversively, actors on a very local level replaced imperial institutions by fulfilling the role of the state in daily life, henceforth undermining the empire’s authority.11 In the same way as this slowly vanishing trust in and popular backing of the empire’s institutions, the person of the emperor also suffered a loss in reputation. In 1916, when the ‘everlasting’ Francis Joseph, who had embodied the dynasty, died after almost seventy years of reign, the future of the empire was uncertain for many contemporaries, and the role of the young successor in the wartime unclear.12 Yet Karl soon started to initiate fundamental changes. Contrarily to his aged predecessor, he promoted a closer connection between the emperor and his people, using new technologies, for example with the propaganda film entitled ‘Our Emperor’.13 Politically, he ended both military dictatorship and censorship, freed political prisoners and reopened the Austrian Parliament. In Hungary, he aimed to bolster his legitimacy by staging an elaborate coronation ritual. He showed willingness to extend suffrage and promoted a more tolerant policy towards national minorities. In external affairs, Karl went even further by initiating several, even if unsuccessful, peace petitions. Although all those measures were aiming to achieve more political freedom, Karl failed to achieve any more room of manoeuvre.14 In fact, the liberalisation of internal politics revealed irreconcilable political breaches among the parties and even facilitated nationalist propaganda against the empire.

Externally, Karl’s attempts to extend his political influence converted into the opposite. When initiating a secret and unsuccessful peace petition via the pope, the so-called Sixtus affair compelled the empire into submission to Germany and considerably undermined Karl’s international and internal political credibility.15 Correspondingly to the growing distrust in empire and emperor, Heinz Rieder argues that Karl’s government and the nationalist politicians in the parliament had determined the content as well as the timing of the Manifesto, literally dictating Karl what to pronounce. The Emperor himself would have proposed the federalisation of the Habsburg Monarchy earlier but was preventing from doing so by the resistance of his ‘environment’ which is, in Rieder’s view, the only reason why the Manifesto was published ‘way too late’.16 As a key argument for Karl’s willingness for federalisation, Rieder cites an earlier witness of Empress Zita.

According to this source, Karl said around 1908: ‘The dualism is impossible to rescue. Trialism, however, is unfair and does not go far enough. The only solution must be a true federation where every people gets the same chance’.17 Indeed, this sounded very close to what the Manifesto proclaimed ten years later in October 8

Pieter M. Judson, Habsburg Empire, p. 387.

Ibid., p. 400.

10 Maureen Healy, Vienna and the Fall of the Habsburg Empire: Total War and Everyday Life in World War I (Cambridge, 2004), pp. 185–193.

11 Pieter M. Judson, Habsburg Empire, pp. 394–407.

12 Robert Rill, ʻCharles. Emperor of Austriaʼ, 1914-1918-online. International Encyclopedia of the First World War (2015).

13 Pieter M. Judson, Habsburg Empire, p. 418.

14 Ibid., pp. 417–422.

15 Manfried Rauchensteiner, ʻ“Ich habe erfahren, dass mein Kaiser lügt.” Die “Sixtus-Affäre” 1917/18ʼ, in Michael Gehler, Hubert Sickinger (ed.), Politische Affären und Skandale in Österreich. Von Mayerling bis Waldheim (Thaur, Wien, München, 1996), pp. 148–169, pp. 162–163.

16 Heinz Rieder, ʻEin Europa freier Völker. Kaiser Karls politische Vorstellungsweltʼ, Österreich in Geschichte und Literatur mit Geographie, 36.1 (1992), pp. 3–13, p. 9.

17 Quoted in Heinz Rieder, ʻKaiser Karls politische Vorstellungsweltʼ, p. 8.

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1918. But Rieder goes even further, declaring the young ruler was the pioneer thinker of a ‘Europe of free peoples’ when already in 1917, Karl emphasised in a private meeting: ‘Everyone is complicit in this war; everyone has to be responsible now for bringing back peace to the world. Therefore, we shall start acting in this new feeling of European responsibility sorting our own internal problems’.18 Rieder’s interpretation that pictures a monarch who would have federalised the empire and appeased the belligerent continent if just his ‘environment’ would have allowed him to do so, is just too simplistic. As Helmut Rumpler demonstrated, Karl neither had any concrete plans for the federalisation, nor did he initiate any corresponding measures. On the contrary, for most of Karl’s reign, his government was led by Ernst von Seidler (June 1917 – July 1918) who expressively supported a centralistic constitutional reform.19 Published in 1992, the 105th anniversary of Karl’s birthday, Rieder’s argument rather expressed an imperial nostalgia and further conveyed a certain Europeanised historiography representative of scholarship produced shortly after the Iron Curtain had fallen. Nonetheless, despite his idealising view on Karl, Rieder hits some key points for the discussion here: the role of Karl within the genesis of the Manifesto as well as the relationship between federalisation and peace making. Precisely, the latter processes overlapped and merged into the Völkermanifest in 1918, determining much of its ‘late’ publication.

Long before the war, federalisation had been a topic within the empire. Nationalists and monarchists alike had discussed virulently about changing the Empire’s constitution for decades. Within the government, several departments developed concepts of a possible federalisation and unofficial discussion circles also addressed constitutional questions.20 However, only after the Balkan front collapsed in mid-September 1918 and military defeat at all fronts seemed to be inevitable theoretical debates evolved into concrete plans. On 14 September, the government of the Habsburg Empire offered a proposal for peace negotiations to the allied military head quarter, referring to Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points from January 1918, a diplomatic proposal to end the war and subsequently create a new world order. At a time when the German Empire had won the war against the Russian Empire in winter 1917 and the military situation seemed even, America’s president declared that every people should have the right of self-determination in a speech in front of the senate. Referring to this in September 1918, the leaders of the empire hoped for better peace conditions. To underline their readiness for concessions, an announcement for a federalisation of the empire should have acted as an advance payment for the conclusion of a peace based on Wilsons’ Fourteen Points. But while events accelerated and the military position was weakened day by day, the Joint Council of Ministers, who was as government of the empire commissioned to finding a solution to the constitutional revision was deeply divided and far away from solving the problem. Hungarian deputies denied any change to dualism and therefore restriction of Hungary’s dominant position within the empire. The so-called South Slav Question, on the contrary, dealt with the extension of dualism into trialism if united Croatia, Serbia, and Bosnia were to become a third power in the Empire. Simultaneously, German nationalists claimed the right of selfdetermination for Germans in Austria. Given those breaches within the government, on 2 October, the session of the Joint Council was unable to achieve a result once again, thus revealing the inability to finding a common solution for a federalisation of the monarchy.21 When discussions of federalisation on the governmental level seemed to be in deadlock, external factors took over the delays and, more precisely, suspended the whole process of finding a compromise for the constitutional question. On 2 October, in the mentioned session of the Joint Council, foreign minister Stephan Burián announced a peace petition based on the Fourteen Points which should be sent directly to President Woodrow Wilson rather than to the Allies. Burián hoped to force a favourable decision within internal circles through applying some external pressure. Wilson, however, did not answer until 18 October. Between 2 and 10 October, not a single initiative to revise the constitution was placed. Thus, more than a week of

18

Ibid., p. 10.

For the argumentation see, Helmut Rumpler, Das Völkermanifest, pp. 44–46.

20 Ibid., pp. 11–19.

21 Manfried Rauchensteiner, The First World War, pp. 987–989.

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government’s actions in constitutional questions was spent paralysed in waiting and hoping.22 This resulted in a twofold governmental crisis: the executive ministers of both Cis- and Transleithania resigned on 11 October.23 Meanwhile, events accelerated and military and national dissolution proceeded. On 6 October, deputies of the Reichsrat and several regional parliaments founded the National Council of Slovenes, Croats, and Serbs in Zagreb. A few days later, on 11 October, Polish politicians followed their example. By building executive organs, the Croats even started to take over governmental tasks.24 When Karl declared that every nation should build its own National Council in his Manifesto on 16 October, he, in fact, legitimised only retrospectively actions which had already taken place.25 As governmental discussions were stuck in a limbo, President Wilson was even less likely to answer the Austrian peace proposal from 4 October, and internal political crisis aggravated, thus the emperor himself decided to act. Yet, his room for manoeuvre was put under more constraint by all these factors. Since the end of September, the chief of the Austrian government, Max Hussarek, had considered the possibility of an imperial-royal proclamation to change the constitution. From 10 October onwards, different versions were handed to the emperor. In the process, Karl changed the draft several times but finally stuck to a version which gave, above all, consideration to the German nationalist claims of a respective German Bohemian state.26 However, his say in the actual wording of the Manifesto had been little: in fact, national stakeholders in his government discussed and decided upon the precise formulations. Caught up in small details, they negotiated, for example, whether the Manifesto should codify Hungary’s integrity as ‘integrity’, as ‘stance and rights’ or as ‘unscathed rights of the Hungarian crown’.27 Taking this into account, Karl’s position was perhaps not as powerless as Rieder suggests because he had in fact been able to voice support for a pro German draft of the Manifesto. Nonetheless, the final editing was delayed by nationalists vying for more individual rights that should be implemented in the emperor’s declaration. However much the discussions of federalisation had lagged behind at different moments, the pace of those discussions was determined by Wilson and the Allies. Only when information about an allied conference allegedly deciding about the empire’s future constitution reached Vienna on 15 October, discussions were concluded and the final version of the Manifesto was finalised for the following day. The government still believed in peace conditions in accordance with the Fourteen Points. But how could those hopes develop such an impact on the contemporaries, given that Wilson’s declaration had been passed more than ten months before and under completely different circumstances?28 The case of the German Empire exemplifies how faith in the American president, and respectively hopes for a peace based on the Fourteen Points were fuelled in the last days of war. When the German Government sent diplomatic notes between 4 October and 5 November directly to president Wilson, he avoided giving a clear answer but demanded further parliamentarisation instead.29 Across all political camps, members of the German Reichstag were hoping for a peace settlement which was negotiated between the different parties in equal matters and therefore based on the Fourteen Points—expectations which were denied only in Versailles.30 In the same way, hopes were aroused in the Habsburg Monarchy, even influenced by their neighbour. On 10 October, foreign minister Burián unofficially heard that Wilson had communicated with the Germans about armistice conditions and had not denied the possibility of a ‘Wilsonian peace’. Driven by this, Burián vigorously appealed to the government to send Wilson a proof of ‘how serious’ Austria’s will to

22

Helmut Rumpler, Das Völkermanifest, p. 27.

Ibid., p. 32.

24 Jörn Leonhard, Der überforderte Frieden: Versailles und die Welt 1918–1923 (München, 2018), p. 189.

25 Pieter M. Judson, Habsburg Empire, p. 432.

26 For details, see Helmut Rumpler, Das Völkermanifest, pp. 46–50.

27 Helmut Rumpler, Das Völkermanifest, p. 55–57.

28 For the international acknowledgement of the Fourteen Points, see Erez Manela, The Wilsonian Moment (Oxford, 2009).

29 Second volume in Herbert Michaelis, Ernst Schraepler (ed.), Ursachen und Folgen. Vom deutschen Zusammenbruch 1918 und 1945 bis zur staatlichen Neuordnung Deutschland in der Gegenwart (Berlin, 1958), pp. 379–468. Eberhard Kolb, Der Frieden von Versailles (München, 2005), 25–32.

30 Ernst Fränkel, ʻDas deutsche Wilsonbildʼ, Jahrbuch für Amerikastudien, 5 (1960), pp. 66–120.

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reform actually was.31 What had been the parliamentarisation for the German Empire, became federalisation for the Habsburg Monarchy. Like their neighbours, Habsburg officials hoped to receive better peace conditions when initiating internal reforms which in all probability would fulfil the alleged dogma of national self-determination.32 Only after the Manifesto’s publication on 18 October, Wilson refused any negotiation based on his Fourteen Points. Until then, the vague formulation of these points in January 1918 as well as his ambiguous answers to the German side facilitated expectations for a Verständigungsfrieden and might explain the de facto governmental shut down in Austria on 2-10 October and therefore the delay of the Völkermanifest. Symptomatically for the impact of Wilson’s role within the genesis of the Manifesto, on the morning of 16 October, one of the last changes which were made in text, shortly before the publication, considered adapting the final phrases to give it, as the last prime minister of the Habsburg Empire Heinrich Lammasch insisted, ‘an even more peaceful character.’33 Ultimately, the attempt to make peace with the Allies based on Wilson’s Fourteen Points and the federalisation of the realm had become part of the same document. Both discussions, about the peace and the constitution’s revision, inhibited each other reciprocally, delaying the emperor’s announcement. Ironically, external and internal pressure in October 1918 had prevented further discussion as the military situation worsened dramatically and the inner dissolution anticipated the upcoming reforms. Contrary to what many historians have contended, this was not a sign of the Manifesto’s ‘delay’ or ‘failure.’34 In fact, one can argue that the latent crisis of the empire’s legitimacy had already undermined the impact of any declaration long before it was proclaimed. Furthermore, it was the allies who had the power to decide about the empire’s future and they had unanimously supported the course of breaking up the empire since April.35 Rather, the timing of the document as well as its content illustrated the dynamic of accelerating expectations and experiences characteristic of the historical moment in autumn 1918 itself.

The timing and pressure which generated the Manifesto also determined its relevance. Driven by external factors, the text of Karl’s Manifesto had left many formulations open when on 16 October, he eventually proclaimed: ‘Austria must, in accordance with the will of its people, become a federal state, in which every nationality shall form its own national territory in its own settlement zone’. One the one hand, this statement seems to be anachronistic. The text emphasised the role of the empire as a mediator and a guarantor for legality and fairness between the nationalities. In doing so, it echoed an argument which had been brought up by Czech politician František Palacký as early as 1848. Given that military dictatorship and failing wartime provisions had undermined any such claim, the same argument must have sounded almost ironic in 1918.36 On the other hand, Karl’s definition of a federal state was rather loose. The Manifesto neither clarified precisely the nationalities in question, nor did it mark-out any specific ‘settlement zones’ where federalisation would be problematic. In territories where different ethnicities lived side by side, as for example Germans and Czechs in Bohemia, this would have demanded careful negotiation. The text also contained some contradictory statements: for example, the Manifesto laid out that Hungary’s dominant position within the empire should not be put into question while, at the same time, it declared that a new state, a union of Croatia, Serbia, and Slovenia should be founded to complement the dualism. Due to its different authors and the rushed time, the Manifesto hence had not formulated a clear agenda but rather remained ambiguous and full of contradictions.

By the same token, the Manifesto was received very differently in different regions and by different groups, thus its relevance for different groups varied considerably. The greatest impact could be seen in the military.

As the institution which represented the multiethnic empire best, the k.u.k army’s disintegration was bolstered by the Manifesto’s proclamation. Desertion rates had already been on the rise, but now nationalists, who 31

Stephan Burián quoted in Helmut Rumpler, Das Völkermanifest, p. 42.

Jörn Leonhard, Die Büchse der Pandora. Geschichte des Ersten Weltkriegs (München, 2014), p. 901.

33 Heinrich Lammasch quoted in Helmut Rumpler, Das Völkermanifest, pp. 61–62.

34 See Pieter M. Judson, ‘„Where our commonality is necessary... “: rethinking the end of the Habsburg monarchy (Report)’, Austrian History Yearbook, 48 (2017), pp. 1–21.

35 Jörn Leonhard, Überforderte Friede, p. 186.

36 Ibid., pp. 192–193.

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interpreted the document as a final sign of the empire’s dissolution, called their troops back. ‘The homeland is in danger. The Hungarian soldier must return to defend the fatherland’, a member of the Hungarian Reichstag (Imperial Diet) said and reaped furious applause.37 Gathering forces appeared to be vital in the confusion of the last days of war. At the same time, the uncertainty unavoidably caused by the Manifesto did not always result in the handover of power to nationalists like in the case in many branches of the army.

Often, imperial duties transmitted to local institutions—as has been mentioned earlier. Those regional organisations could be nationalist but did not necessarily have to be. One example of where a federal unit did not form a matching national unit was Styria. Here, a group of influential citizens took over local government after the proclamation, cutting off the ties with the empire and starting to organise themselves independently.

A Graz newspaper argued: ‘Since there is no central office in Vienna, we here in the country cannot wait any longer. We must give up on powers that cannot protect us from starvation.’38 This radical act illustrated how the empire was now absent in the daily life and, subsequently, the fundamental crisis of its legitimacy.

In contrast to nationalists and local authorities who saw another chance to usurp imperial power, most citizens reacted to the emperor’s Manifesto with indifference. One day after the proclamation, a police officer in Vienna reported: ‘The streets are calm. People do not respond to the proclamation of the emperor. They rather care about daily supply of food.’39 The average citizen had been concerned about the grievances of daily life, from which the empire seemed to have withdrawn already years ago. When the monarchy showed signs of dissolution and finally vanished, many neither became aware of nor minded it. Others argued that the declaration had little weight. The largest Austrian Newspaper, the Neue Freie Presse, for example, stated the following in their morning edition of 18 October: ‘Today’s release shows the politics of Austria to be in a loose shape, so broadly outlined and so very general, that they could only echo president Wilson’s notes … Thus, the Manifesto can only be understood as a part of Emperor Karl’s peace negotiations.’40 The author understood well that the Manifesto was created and driven by external factors which were constraining its actual political adaptability. The loose formulation, in his interpretation, would prevent the reforms from being carried out successfully. His analysis would prove right. On 18 October, president Wilson answered to the note of the Austrian government, denying any negotiations based on the Fourteen Points.

Instead, he demanded a nation state for the Czechoslovaks and the Yugoslavians. In doing so, he initiated declarations of national independence in every part of the empire. On 11 November, Emperor Karl declared his withdrawal from every governmental business. One month after the Völkermanifest, the Habsburg Empire silently vanished.41 The broad panorama of interpretation and receptions as well as the genesis of the document expressed the empire’s numerous and overlapping crises: a political one when nationalists tried to take over power; a popular one when most citizens lost trust in the empire and an external one when the Allies decided about the future of the monarchy over its emperor’s head.

On 25 October 1918, Sigmund Freud wrote in a letter to a friend: ‘The times are terribly exciting. It is good that the Old is dying, however, the New has not arrived yet.’42 In this short phrase, the famous psychoanalyst caught the mood of autumn 1918 in Vienna. He described the dynamic and tension of the moment were nothing was certain, but everything seemed to be possible. It was in this very moment that the Völkermanifest of Emperor Karl was born. The document was, at the same time, the witness, product, and harbinger of crisis, amid a moment of openness and uncertainty. Its genesis showed that, at that moment of time, the nationalist breaches within the empire were irreconcilable and much of the new order seemed to be determined by 37

Quoted in Manfried Rauchensteiner, The First World War, p. 993.

Quoted in Pieter M. Judson, ‘rethinking the end of the Habsburg monarchy’, p. 18.

39 Quoted in Jörn Leonhard, Büchse der Pandora, p. 905.

40 Neue Freie Presse, 18.10.1918. Here and further translated by the author.

41 Wiener Zeitung, 11.11.1918, Extra-Ausgabe.

42 Letter of Sigmund Freud to Max Eitingon on 25 October 1918, in Freud und Eitingen, Briefwechsel, vol I, pp. 139– 140, 140.

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Wilsonian principles. Many hopes were projected onto the upcoming decisions at the Paris Peace Conference.

Many of the Manifesto’s key problems foreshadowed what was vigorously discussed there: the correspondence of territory and nationality, the emergence of new powers and the decline of old supremacies as well as the constellation of multiethnic living spaces. In fact, the Völkermanifest, which both contemporaries and historians alike judged as being ‘too late’ and ‘gegenstandslos’, anticipated many of the conflict lines which would coin the future history of Habsburg’s ‘shatterzone of empire’ for decades and until today.43 Read from this angle, the Manifesto’s historic relevance acts as an early litmus test for the fractures and logics of politics in Eastern Europe at the end of and after World War I.

43

Omer Bartov, Eric D Weitz (ed.), Shatterzone of Empires. Coexistence and Violence in the German, Habsburg, Russian, and Ottoman Borderlands (Indiana, 2013).

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THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK: RETHINKING NATIONALITY CONFLICT IN LATE AUSTRIA-HUNGARY

BY MERIEL SMITHSON ‘The Hungarian hates the Bohemian, the Bohemian hates the German, and the Italian hates them all and as horses absurdly harnessed together, they will scatter in all directions as soon as the advancing spirit of the times will weaken and break the bonds’.1 Franz Grillparzer The words of Austrian dramatist Franz Grillparzer – cited by Oszkár Jászi in his influential work The Dissolution of the Habsburg Monarchy – neatly encapsulate the largely gloomy and despairing mood amongst Austro-Hungarian elites concerning the future of the Empire in the long nineteenth century. Indeed, Count Oswald Thun-Salm, a conservative Austrian aristocrat, surmised: ‘in our country, an optimist must commit suicide’.2 Grillparzer’s phrase also characterises the ‘pessimistic, nationally primodrialist and pathologizing consensus’ that has come to dominate discussion of this period.3 Traditionally, historians studying late Austria-Hungary have emphasised the role of political nationalism in mobilising cultural and historical discourses in order to differentiate and polarise ethnic groups, which they consider forerunners of modern nations.4 Scholars like Ernest Gellner and Oszkár Jászi, with ‘ethnicist presumption’ or the retrospective validation of nation, tended to take this approach, which has since been dismissed as teleological in general terms. Yet, as Viktor Koleda’s contribution to this debate demonstrates, it has maintained its currency and appeal among Habsburg historians.5 Critics of this approach also suggest that it has been influenced by the powerful propaganda disseminated by the Allies during the war which sought to privilege the nationalist agenda and capitalise on divisions within Austria-Hungary.6 Recent studies by Gary Cohen and Pieter M. Judson purport that the emergence of ethnic groups, or ‘nations’ was not as clear, divisive or as far-reaching as previously suggested, whilst even more recent works by Deborah Coen and Alison Frank tend to consider nationalism as a background issue which operated alongside a multitude of other factors within a much wider context.7 This approach may provide direction for future studies of this question. Though firmly belonging to the revisionist school of historians, the findings of all these historians have roots in older historiography.

As Adam Kożuchowski argues, as early as in the immediate aftermath of the Great War, envisioning the Austro-Hungarian Empire as a supranational power in charge of numerous burgeoning nations did not seem absurd.8 Whilst conventional narratives stress the bitter, untenable relationship between these emerging groups and paint the differences as so irreconcilable and absolute that they contributed to the collapse of the

1

Cited in Oszkár Jászi, The Dissolution of the Habsburg Monarchy (Chicago, 1929), p. 11.

Cited in Pieter M. Judson, The Habsburg Empire: A New History (Cambridge, 2016), p. 383.

3 Jeremy King, ‘Review of Pieter M. Judson’s The Habsburg Empire: A New History’, The American Historical Review 122(4) (2017), p. 1327.

4 Pieter M. Judson, Guardians of a Nation: Activists on Language Frontiers of Imperial Austria (Cambridge, 2016) pp.

1-5.

5 King, Review of ‘The Habsburg Empire: A New History’, pp. 1326-1327.

6 Mark Cornwall, The Undermining of Austria-Hungary: The Battle for Hearts and Minds (Basingstoke, 2000) p. 144; Gary Cohen, ‘Nationalist Politics and the Dynamics of State and Civil Society in the Habsburg Monarchy 1867-1914’, Central European History 40(2) (2007), pp. 241-5.

7 Judson, The Habsburg Empire: A New History, pp. 10-16; Jeremy King, ‘The Municipal and the National in the Bohemian Lands, 1848–1914’, Austrian History Yearbook, 42, (2011), pp. 89-109; Christian Karner, ‘The “Habsburg Dilemma” Today: Competing Discourses of National Identity in Contemporary Austria’, National Identities 7(4) (2005), pp. 425-6.

8 Adam Kożuchowski, The afterlife of Austria-Hungary: the image of the Habsburg Monarchy in interwar Europe (Pittsburgh, 2013) p. 19.

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Empire, Judson proposes that these differences were actually relative, negotiable and manageable, implying that co-existence was possible.

It remains undeniable however, that the nineteenth century saw the emergence of distinct ethnic groups across Austria-Hungary who were defined by their language, culture, history, ethnicity and religion. It remains debatable to what extent these groups were fated to conflict. Many of the narratives condemning AustriaHungary as a doomed anachronism, made up of warring nations which eventually tore down the Empire were written in the last century, in the hey-day of the nation state and so reflect its conceptual dominance. Today, in the age of globalisation, where the forces of denationalisation are ‘eroding’ the previously all-powerful nation-state, there is a new opportunity to reflect upon this period and revisit the empire’s credibility in history.9 It is necessary to move away from a theoretical framework dominated by nation and toward one that considers issues of nation as part of an ‘intricate matrix’ of many other factors that operated in the empire.10 This essay will position itself within this new framework and contribute to an ongoing reassessment of the Habsburg political and cultural landscape in the long nineteenth century.11 In this vein, it is necessary to break away from the conventional binary understanding of nation and empire.

Ann Stoler and Frederick Cooper have suggested that nation-state has become ‘too centred’ in conceptions of European history and empire has not been ‘centred enough’.12 Judson proposes that we view the two as ‘mutually constitutive’ and consider how the two mobilised similar rhetoric, and depended on each other for coherence.13 In adopting this stance, this essay will propose a vision of the late Austro-Hungarian Empire as a flexible, modernising and unifying supranational power, which often celebrated diversity and took advantage of the definitional fluidity of nationhood. It will not dispense with the valuable contributions of traditional scholars Oskar Jászi, Mark Cornwall and Ernest Gellner nor with the recent findings of Nancy Wingfield and T.Mills-Kelly who provide evidence for large memberships of nationalist parties across different lands of the Habsburg Empire.14 In order to avoid criticisms launched at revisionists like Rita Krueger of skating over already well-documented arguments for divisive nationalism, this essay will recognise the emergence of what one might call ‘nations’ and their sometimes fractious relationship with one another.15 However, it will locate them within a wider, more nuanced history which will ultimately conclude that the nationality conflict in late Austria-Hungary was neither inevitable, nor did it precipitate the fall of the Empire.

As noted, the importance of ‘nation’ has been overstated in historiography and over-emphasised at the time.

This may well be partly due to the ritualistic performative function of nation favoured by nationalists. In 1897 when the conservative government in Austria tried to push through the renewal of the Austro-Hungarian compromise agreement against the will of the German liberals, the parliament descended into a chaos or ‘imperial emergency’.16 Mark Twain’s account of events showcases extreme adversarial politics and increasing polarisation of parliament over the Badeni crisis.17 The pandemonium that occurred in the house, nominally the unlawful Lex Falkenhayn, Dr. Lecher’s dramatic aphorism, ‘The Germans of Austria will neither surrender nor die’ and the frequency of charged insults like ‘Judas’ and ‘Brothel-knight’ all led some in the house to infer that these events marked a ‘revolution’.18 These ‘stirring’ events led Twain to conclude

9

Karner, ‘The “Habsburg Dilemma” Today’, pp. 425-6.

Ibid.

11 Alison Frank, Oil Empire: Visions of Prosperity in Austrian Galicia (Cambridge, 2005); Deborah Cohen, Vienna in the Age of Uncertainty: Science, Liberalism and Private Life (Chicago, 2007).

12 Frederick Cooper and Ann Stoler, Tensions of Empire: Colonial Cultures in a Bourgeois World (Berkeley, 1997) p.

22.

13 King, Review of ‘The Habsburg Empire: A New History, p. 1326.

14 Jonathan Kwan, ‘Nationalism and all that: Reassessing the Habsburg Monarchy and its legacy’, European History Quarterly 41(1) (2011), pp. 90-94.

15 Jeremy King, ‘Review of Rita Krueger’s ‘Czech, German and Noble: Status and National Identity in Habsburg Bohemia’, German History 29(2) (2010) pp. 324-325.

16 Mark Twain, ‘Stirring times in Austria’, Harper’s New Monthly Magazine for March, (96) (1898), p. 530.

17 Count Badeni had previously consented to make Czech the official language in Bohemia, which incensed Germans.

18 Twain, Stirring Times in Austria, pp. 530-557.

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that parliament and the Constitution were ‘threatened with extinction’.19 He was not far wrong: the early years of the 1900s saw what has been considered ‘serious paralysis’ in Austrian parliamentary politics.20 Notwithstanding, analysis by historians of domestic policy has hinted that the performance of nation in parliament was based on political ritual as opposed to something endemic and uncontrollable.21 Research by Catherine Albrecht too suggests that nationalist parties that publicly performed issues of construction were actually often ‘ready and willing’ to compromise behind closed doors.22 It is also important to remember that Twain was a literary writer and humourist, so some consideration must be given to the artistic quality of his report. This is not to say that political divisions in the Austrian parliament were ostensible only, they were indeed highly problematic for the empire; however, a consideration of politics on a local level reveals a flourishing democracy carried out by dual sets of local administrators, often working in harmony.23 The performance of nation was also visible on a local level: Cornwall and Judson indicate that nationalists ‘took every opportunity’ to give local events a nationalist meaning.24 Cornwall cites the celebration held by the small village of Netluk25 to commemorate getting their own water supply and notes how it was labelled by a local newspaper as ‘A Great German National Day on the Language Border’.26 Judson contends that these events were interpreted through a ‘consistently radical nationalist lens’, and that, because these local commemorations were often only reported by nationalists themselves, it is probable their legitimacy as sources is limited.27 He reveals the ‘deep anxiety’ which characterised nationalist writings and suggests that these newspaper accounts strove to make divisions seem deeper.28 The performance factor visible in local communities and in the Austrian parliament served to make nationalist tensions seem much more grave than they may have truly been.

A range of recent studies on local community, the family and bourgeois society suggest that actually, nation was just one of the factors at play in late Austria-Hungary. Frank in her study of the Galician oil industry considers the ‘relatively subordinate role’ of nation whilst in Coen’s analysis of Viennese intellectual history, nationalism ‘barely makes an appearance’.29 In some areas, nation played a limited role: Judson and Marsha Rozenblit contend that the Habsburg Empire was ‘largely non-national’.30 Judson’s study of the so-called language frontiers (a term used largely by nationalists to denote ‘frontiers’ between two areas that spoke different languages) argues that, on an everyday level, many were not affected by nationalism and thus not ready to engage in nationality conflict.31 The phenomenon of bilingualism was rife: in Moravia and Bohemia families exchanged children for set periods of time as an opportunity to practise different languages.32 Intermarriage was also common across the Empire, even between Magyars and non-Magyars, which is surprising as the Hungarian government’s drive for ‘Magyarisation’ presents one of the strongest arguments for the emergence of nationality conflict.33 One must also consider what Judson was termed ‘event-driven’ or ‘situational nationalism’: the suggestion that people participated in nationalist activities when it served them, providing reasoning for high attendance at exciting public spectacles, yet much lower figures for membership of nationalist parties.34 The multi-ethnic model of nationhood was visible in daily life, and on an institutional 19

Ibid., p. 566.

Judson, Guardians of a Nation, p. 9.

21 Ibid.

22 Catherine Albrecht, ‘The Rhetoric of Economic Nationalism in the Bohemian Boycott Campaigns in the late Habsburg Monarchy’, Austrian History Yearbook, 32 (2001), p. 66.

23 Judson, Guardians of a Nation, pp. 8-9.

24 Judson, Guardians of a Nation, p. 10.

25 A small town in Northern Bohemia.

26 Mark Cornwall, ‘The Struggle on the Czech-German Language Border 1880-1940’, English Historical Review 109 (433) (1994), p. 914.

27 Judson, Guardians of a Nation, pp. 10-11.

28 Ibid.

29 Kwan, ‘Nationalism and all that’, p. 104.

30 Pieter M. Judson and Marsha Rozenblit, Constructing Nationalities in Eastern Central Europe (Oxford, 2005) p. 1.

31 Ibid.

32 Judson, Guardians of Nation, p. 3.

33 Ibid.

34 Judson, The Habsburg Empire, p. 274.

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level. For example, the Hungarian Ethnographic Society (founded in 1889) which one might suspect of furthering Hungarian nationalist ends, actually declared in its founding charter recognition to the ‘diverse and numerous’ Hungarian populations and structured the society along the lines of a multi-ethnic model of nationhood.35 Moreover, the particular character of imperial law and administrative practice meant that, locally at least, if one wanted to be civically engaged, one had to negotiate within systems that demanded parity in linguistic practice.36 Thus, the rich intermixing of different groups was not only necessitated by the framework of empire, but also willingly practiced in everyday life.

Far from being mobilised as a tool of differentiation, linguistic and ethnic diversity were often celebrated across the empire. Interculturality and heterogeneity stimulated academic and cultural production. According to Tatjana Buklijas, intercultural encounters produced scientific advancements in anthropology, ethnography and medicine, with the military frontier Militärgrenze becoming a centre for development of the latter.37 Medical scholars in Vienna, who modelled their research on German examples, challenged the work of the Militärgrenze who were often influenced by earlier Ottoman practices. This demonstrates how dynamic interactions between different places, which were often tied to different ethnic groups, propelled academic advancement. Carl Schorske notes a similar trend in the art world, observing an ‘unusually rich and cohesive transdisciplinary modernist culture’ –an influential opinion which has largely endured .38 Though Rebecca Houze touts the rise of nationalistic art, it is clear how even these strains of art were ‘inflected differently’ in each area, for example ‘Magyar’ late Gothic and early Renaissance styles in the eclectic tradition of Ringstrasse buildings.39 These differing inflections and understandings of even nationalistic art demonstrate the wide range of accepted and established artistic and architectural practices that interacted with, and were informed by one another.

Comparably, Leslie Topp’s study of asylum planning denotes a celebration of mixed heritage.40 She argues that asylums built in Littoral offered visual interpretations of Triestine identity as simultaneously Italian, German and Austrian.41 Such visible representations of heterogenous culture were also striking in the celebrations of the Hungarian millennium, notably in a museum display by János Jankó which presented twenty-four houses, some reflecting Magyar style, others of smaller nations in Hungary which ‘together formed the national unity which preserved and cultivated individual character and cultural wealth’.42 In theory too, this was the aim of the Dual Monarchy. Archduke Rudolf’s introductory words to the 1887 edition of the multivolume encyclopaedia Kronprinzenwerk43 summarise: ‘The fact that the national character of each nationality has been duly and respectfully recognised…will please the national groups who will find their spiritual centre of gravity inside the Austro-Hungarian monarchy.44 The initiative, subsidising and publication of this encyclopaedia represented a desire to find an underlying logic common to the ‘far-flung and diverse’ Habsburg territories.45 Thus, while it is evident that linguistic, cultural and historical differences, often pertaining to different ethnic or national groups, were visible across the Empire, they were not in conflict with one another but rather in ‘dynamic interaction’, which often produced unique and important

35

Tatjana Buklijas and Emese Lafferton, ‘Science, medicine and nationalism in the Habsburg Empire from the 1840s to 1918’, Studies in History and Philosophy of Biol & Biomed Sci, 38 (4) p.717.

36 Judson, The Habsburg Empire, p.272 37 Tatjana Buklijas and Emese Lafferton, ‘Science, medicine and nationalism in the Habsburg Empire from the 1840s to 1918’ Studies in History and Philosophy of Biol & Biomed Sci, 38 (4) (2007), pp. 680-1.

38 Ibid., p. 681.

39 Rebecca Houze, Hungarian Nationalism, Gottfried Semper, and the Budapest Museum of Applied Art, Studies in the Decorative Arts, 16(2) (2009), pp. 16-17.

40 Leslie Topp, ‘Psychiatric institutions, their architecture, and the politics of regional autonomy in the AustroHungarian monarchy’ Studies in History and Philosophy of Biol & Biomed Sci, 38 (4) (2007), pp. 733-741.

41 Ibid.

42 Emese Lafferton, The Magyar moustache: the faces of Hungarian State Formation, 1867-1918’ Studies in History and Philosophy of Biol & Biomed Sci, 38 (4) (2007) p. 720.

43 Archduke Rudolf, Die österreichisch-ungarische Monarchie in Wort und Bild (1887), pp. 3-4 at http://www.theeuropeanlibrary.org/tel4/record/1000126235281 (accessed February 16 2019).

44 Ibid.

45 Ibid.

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developments. In considering art, architecture and science it becomes clear that diversity was often appreciated across the Habsburg Empire.

It is important to consider the centralising role played by the monarchy itself in unifying and maintaining these different cultural and historical practices belonging to ethnic groups. Though he technically dismisses František Palacký’s proposal of federalism, Robert Seton-Watson acknowledges the existence of a kind of federalist system at work in Hungary in his 1908 report Racial Problems in Hungary; this system, he contends, can be transposed onto the framework of the whole Empire.46 According to Seton-Watson, Magyar dominance and the active policy of Magyarisation enacted across Hungary indicated national conflict between Magyars and minorities.47 However, it is imperative to be aware of Seton-Watson’s Slovak sympathies and desire to demonstrate that the current dynamic in Hungary was unsustainable. More recent studies which have reflected upon Seton-Watson’s work reveal that as Magyar dominance ultimately failed as conflicts between Magyars and non-Magyars were in fact rather uncommon.48 These studies point to the powerful role of the empire as a ‘reconciling point of unity’ for different groups.49 Being a unifying presence and respecting all cultures and groups was the traditional and re-iterated aim of the Habsburg Monarchy since the twelfth century.50 This aim became more prescient for the Empire in the nineteenth century when faced with the emergence of different national groups alongside imperial challenges: indeed Franz Joseph’s personal slogan was Viribus unitis or ‘With united forces’.51 Imperial aims in Bosnia and Herzegovina necessitated that the empire demonstrate how different cultures worked together. This would be essential if they wanted to keep up with other European powers and incorporate this new domain into their lands.52 Moreover, political issues like the Badeni crisis and the rise of ‘politics in the new key’53 meant that both governments had to face up to emerging disparity and diversity, and display a willingness to develop more ‘flexible models of power-sharing’ within the framework of Empire.54 There is evidence that contemporaries agreed. Hungarian József Eötvös for example thought that the early years of the 1900s warranted a balance between strengthening historic territories alongside processes of centralisation.55 Vienna professor Rudolf von Herrnritt proposed a similar idea at the turn of the century, calling for a wider definition of the nation as Austrian or as an even larger Habsburg patriotic community.56 Emese Lafferton also retrospectively validates this idea, noting a ‘duality’ of endeavours in Hungary: the strengthening of central powers alongside integration of national minorities into a larger idea of the nation, even if that concept was dominated by Magyars in reality.57 Across the Empire, this ‘duality of endeavours’ was visible in devolution of power agreements, such as with Croatian and Polish nobilities in 1871, the 1905 Moravian Compromise (which provided both Czech and German curiae for the Moravian Landtang), and in similar compromises with Bukovina (1910) and Galicia (1914).58 For Brigitte Mazhol, these compromises ‘paved the way for a genuine policy of nationalities’, and led to an authentic enaction of the ‘equalities of people’ stipulation in the compromises’ wording, at least temporarily.59 Even the 1868 Hungarian nationalities law recognised equality between different ‘nations’, and allowed all groups to express these 46

Robert Seton-Watson, Racial Problems in Hungary, (Toronto, 1908) pp. 405-7.

Seton-Watson, Racial Problems in Hungary, pp. 393-396.

48 Judson, The Habsburg Monarchy, p. 322.

49 Ibid.

50 Judson, The Habsburg Monarchy, p. 27.

51 Benjamin Curtis, The Habsburgs: The History of a Dynasty, (London, 2013), p. 265.

52 Judson, The Habsburg Monarchy, p. 275.

53 The increase in popularity and importance of nationalist, populist political parties.

54 Judson, The Habsburg Monarchy, p. 333.

55 Mark Cornwall, ‘The Habsburg Monarchy: ‘National Trinity’ and the elasticity of National allegiance’ in Timothy Baycroft and Mark Hewitson (eds.,) What is a Nation? (Oxford, 2006) pp. 172-3.

56 Ibid.

57 Lafferton, The Magyar moustache, p. 707.

58 Brigette Mazohl, ‘’Equality among the Nationalities’’ and the peoples of the Habsburg Empire’ in Kelly Grotke, and Markus Prutsch (eds.,) Constitutionalism, Legitimacy and Power: Nineteenth-Century Experiences, (Oxford, 2014), pp.

204-5.

59 Ibid.

47

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The Empire Strikes Back: Rethinking Nationality Conflict in late Austria-Hungary | Meriel Smithson

nationalities culturally; it also stipulated that Croatia was an equivalent political nation.60 A similar model of flexible power-sharing can be seen in the Ausgleich of the previous year which gave ‘equal right’ of Hungary and Austria to present projects to government, and to decide separately ‘on matters which concern it’.61 Political agreements like these, alongside increasingly popular public opinion in favour of a wider national identity (consider the support for a more ‘progressive’ Austrian national identity in the German-Czech language border and the leading German-Bohemian newspaper, the Reichenberger Zeitung’s declaration that it was ‘Austrian with its whole heart’) support King’s conclusion that the ‘anational state’ was becoming a ‘multinational state’.62 Evidently, these settlements were not enacted without issue, some of them even failed: the compromise with Bukovina struggled due to the hardening of Bohemian nationalist lines.63 Despite these difficulties, the ultimately flexible nature of the Empire, and its willingness to adapt, serve as proof that it was not a doomed anachronism fated to nationality conflict.

The sustained enaction of the empire’s ‘duality’ of aims corroborates Judson’s contention that ‘empire and nation could not escape each other’.64 The two increasingly depended on each other for validation, as together they forged a more moderate, supple model of imperial rule, which was essential. The two mobilised similar patriotic language and ideas– propagandists for empire often used national concepts, showing how these broad and populist discourses could become ‘vessels’ for visions which served empire too.65 These nationalist movements had to shape their demands around institutions and expectations created by empire, as that was the milieu in which they were operating.66 Moreover, one key element of nationalist strategy was to present themselves as the ‘most nationalist’ or the ‘most legitimate’ representation of empire.67 Consider again the Reichenberger Zeitung newspaper and its headline: ‘Austrian with its whole heart’.68 There is a suggestion here that the most successful nationalist group would be the one that was the also the most Habsburg. Kreuger reverses traditional claims that this kind of behaviour was reserved to populist politics, suggesting that Bohemian elites were not merely stalwarts of empire but participated in this power-sharing model, contending that they could ‘engage completely in the rhetoric of nation building while explicitly including both the Czech speaking and German speaking populations of the kingdom’.69 Tamas Hofer has deemed this malleable model of integrative power relations one which fostered a kind of ‘double membership’, by which individuals could belong to a local community, and a larger, imperial one.70 In this vein, Judson ventures a suggestion that nationalist rhetoric actually strengthened the fabric of empire.71 Ultimately, the lack of cogency about what truly constituted a nation made it difficult to delineate the differences between groups, which in turn made it easier to belong to more than one group, or to a local group and to the empire. What it meant to be a nation was never clear in late Austria-Hungary. Was it based on language, historical right, culture or ethnicity? The defining feature remained fluid, and often contradictory.

The changes in census taking, which fluctuated between demanding religion and language, only exacerbated definitional problems.72 The definition of nationhood was, at best, ‘an amalgam of civic and ethnic terms’, and this changeability meant that often, the biggest conflict was not between nations, but between clashing 60

Cornwall, ‘The Habsburg Monarchy: ‘National Trinity’, p. 182.

Ausgleich Compromise of 1867 at https://salemcc.instructure.com/courses/451/pages/the-compromise-ausgleich-of1867 (accessed 28 January 2019).

62 Cornwall, The Habsburg Monarchy: ‘National Trinity’, p. 189, Jeremy King, Budweisers into Czechs and Germans: A Local History of Bohemian Politics, 1848-1948 (Princeton, 2002) p. 115 63 Mazhol, ‘Equality among the Nationalities’, p. 182.

64 Judson, The Habsburg Empire, p. 331.

65 Judson, The Habsburg Empire, p. 332.

66 Glenda Sluga, Internationalism in the Age of Nationalism, (Pennsylvania, 2013), pp. 35-37.

67 King, ‘Review of ‘The Habsburg Empire: A New History’, p. 1327.

68 Mark Cornwall, The Habsburg Monarchy: ‘National Trinity’, p. 189.

69 Rita Krueger, ‘Czech, German and Noble: Status and National Identity in Habsburg Bohemia’, (Oxford, 2009), p.

33.

70 Tamas Hofer, ‘Construction of the ‘’folk cultural heritage’’ in Hungary and rival versions of National Identity’, Ethnologia Europaea , 21(1991), p. 254.

71 Judson, The Habsburg Empire, p. 332.

72 Lafferton, ‘The Magyar moustache’, p. 716.

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opinions on what it meant to be a nation.73 Perhaps this consistent additional and overlapping interpretation of nation actually ‘softened’ the risk of conflicts between ‘nations’.74 Without a strong or coherent assault on the framework of empire then, the so-called nationality conflict cannot be blamed for its collapse because the empire was, in fact, flexible, adaptable and constantly modernising. Despite the dominance of the concept of nation in twentieth-century historiography, the opportunity presented in the age of globalisation allows an understanding of late Austria-Hungary as an empire straddling the seemingly competing yet co-existing frameworks of nation and empire. This necessitates a rethinking of the nationalities question and a fundamental revision of our understanding of the role of the Empire in modern Europe.

73 Jozsef Eötvös, The Dominant Ideas of the Nineteenth Century and their Impact on the State, 2 vols,. Trans. and ed.

D.M. Jones (New York, 1996) ii, p. 478.

74 Ibid.

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‘UNITY IN DISUNITY’: RETHINKING AUSTRIA-HUNGARY’S PLACE IN THE EUROPEAN RACE TO MODERNITY

BY CHARLIE STEER-STEPHENSON ‘Modernisation’ typically denotes the social and economic repercussions of industrialisation and urbanisation, as well as the implications these processes had on culture.1 Much of twentieth-century discourse on the Habsburg Empire emanated a sense of ‘reaching back across an historical abyss’ to a place ‘distant and distinct from the modern world’, suggesting Austria-Hungary failed to modernise because the state constantly struggled against the forces of modernity.2 However, since the fall of the Iron Curtain, scholars have reconsidered the monarchy’s state of recovery between 1848-1918 by reanalysing short- and long-term factors contributing to the Habsburgs’ demise.3 Rather than intending to alter the empire’s historical reputation or advocate a case for its survival, revisionist scholarship aimed to ‘right the record’ of east-central European history by providing valuable insight into the strong, stable relationship between society and imperial political administration.4 Echoing other contributions in this debate that fall within the revisionist trend, such as Meriel Smithson’s rethinking of the nationalities question and Charlotte Alt’s reanalysis of the empire’s collapse, this essay will consider Austria-Hungary as a modern Great Power rather than a source of ‘backwardness’ between 1867 and 1914. Drawing on a set of examples largely from different urban contexts of the empire, it will argue that the empire was not a ‘failure’ doomed to collapse but a European power undergoing progressive historic changes.

Between the Austro-Hungarian Compromise and World War One, different regions began to modernise at different times, resulting in variable degrees of success across Habsburg territories. Since ‘modernisation’ is inextricably linked to urbanisation, a comparative study of Vienna and Budapest alongside Austria-Hungary’s more peripheral regional capitals will most proficiently represent the variety of experiences constituting modern life.5 Joining the race to modernity later and more urgently than their Western counterparts, Habsburg cities offer an interesting perspective of the social, political, economic and cultural consequences of intense modernising practices, revealing the typical problems accompanying urbanisation.6 Additionally, the ‘vigorous dialogue between modernity and memory’ within east-central Europe’s metropoles highlights the role of Habsburg culture in forging a shared urban identity across modernising spaces.7 As well as encouraging a re-evaluation of the possible harmony between nationalist and imperial cultures, the ‘happy coexistence’ of artistic Historicism and Modernism demonstrates that the Dual Monarchy’s traditional

1 Moritz Csáky, ‘Multicultural Communities: Tensions and Qualities, the Example of Central Europe’ in Eve Blau and Monika Platzer (eds.) Shaping the Great City: Modern Architecture in Central Europe, 1890-1937 (1999), p. 43.

2 William Bowman, Gary Cohen, Michael Yonan and Tara Zahra, ‘An Imperial Dynamo? CEH Forum on Pieter M. Judson’s The Habsburg Empire: A New History’, Central European History Vol. 50, No. 2 (2017), p. 237; Cohen, ‘Neither Absolutism nor Anarchy: New Narratives on Society and Government in Late Imperial Austria’, Austrian History Yearbook Vol. 29 (1998), pp. 38-40.

3 Mark Cornwall, ‘Introduction’ in Cornwall (ed.) The Last Years of Austria-Hungary: A Multi-National Experiment in Early Twentieth-Century Europe (1990; revised ed. 2002), p. 6; Alan Sked, The Decline and Fall of the Habsburg Empire 1815-1918 (1989), p. 6.

4 Cohen, ‘Neither Absolutism nor Anarchy’, p. 43.

5 Egbert Klautke, ‘Urban history and Modernity in Central Europe’, The Historical Journal Vol. 53, No. 1 (2010), pp.

177, 194-195; Blau, ‘The City as Protagonist: Architecture and the Cultures of Central Europe’ in Shaping the Great City, p. 12; Blau and Platzer, Shaping the Great City, p. 158.

6 Klautke, ‘Urban history and Modernity in Central Europe’, p. 177.

7 Blau and Platzer, Shaping the Great City, p. 130; Ernst Bruckmüller, ‘Was there a “Habsburg Society” in AustriaHungary?’, Austrian History Yearbook Vol. 37 (2006), pp. 1-2.

Part IV

structures were not incompatible with modern innovation and experimentation.8 Austria-Hungary’s multinational and multicultural state permitted ‘multiple loyalties and mosaic identities’ to flourish in an ‘acceptable and comfortable’ manner, contributing to a unified effort to improve the Habsburg Empire’s place in Europe as a whole.9 Unfavourable (and usually nationalist) post-war critiques of the Empire distorted perceptions of AustriaHungary’s modernisation. Interwar and Cold War nationalist historians tended to overemphasise the empire’s struggle against modernity, using the ‘decline and fall’ narrative to explain its collapse as the final stage of an historical process, with the war as a ‘fate of modern times’.10 Oszkár Jászi’s critique of the ‘doomed’ empire significantly influenced perceptions of its ‘deeply rooted organic crisis’.11 Subsequent investigations of pre-modern prerequisites sustaining the region’s ‘economic backwardness’ highlighted longstanding issues with its socio-economic staticity, political disunity and chaotic confrontation with nationalism, contributing to Western representations of Eastern Europe as an ‘ambiguous location, within Europe but not fully European’.12 Ivan Berend allocated the region a ‘peripheral role’ in nineteenth-century modernisation, disregarding the ‘vibrant civil society’ other late-twentieth-century scholars attributed to Austria-Hungary’s imperial regime.13 Consistently portrayed as a place of conflict, instability and strict absolutism, the Habsburg Empire became ‘increasingly foreign’ in twentieth-century mental maps of Europe.14 On the other hand, an array of scholars have since reanalysed Austria-Hungary and the narrative of a ‘prison of the peoples’, dismissing ‘backwardness’ as an ‘old-fashioned paradigm’ which promoted an imaginary East-West dichotomy by idealising the ‘Western’ route to modernity.15 Nancy Wingfield and John Deak convincingly critiqued the notion of ‘modernisation’ as an undisturbed linear progression, encouraging historians to instead judge the empire’s collapse within broader Habsburg history by identifying World War one as an intrusion upon its prior ‘liveliness and strength’.16 Furthermore, rather than being disregarded as cases of historical failure, European empires became interesting subjects for rethinking multinationalism as an alternative to nation-states, which were adulated as ‘progressive forces of history’ for too long.17 Reappraisals of Austria-Hungary’s social and economic modernisation, political thought, educational ambition, celebration of diversity and imperial unity are crucial for reviewing how complex imperial regimes maintained international stability until 1914.18 Accompanying revived interests in Habsburg culture, the

8 Pieter M. Judson, The Habsburg Empire: A New History (2016), p. 5; Blau, ‘The City as Protagonist’, p. 16; Charles Maier, ‘City, Empire, and Imperial Aftermath: Contending Context for the Urban Vision’ in Shaping the Great City, p.

25.

9 Markian Prokopovych, Habsburg Lemberg: Architecture, Public Space, and Politics in the Galician Capital, 17721914 (2009), p. 177; Jan Behrends and Martin Kohlrausch, ‘Races to Modernity: Metropolitan Aspirations in Eastern Europe, 1890-1940’ in Behrends and Kohlrausch (eds.) Races to Modernity: Metropolitan Aspirations in Eastern Europe, 1890-1940 (2014), p. 6.

10 Adam Kożuchowski, The Afterlife of Austria-Hungary: The Image of the Habsburg Monarchy in Interwar Europe (2013), pp. 15-17.

11 Oszkár Jászi, The Dissolution of the Habsburg Monarchy (1929), pp. 7, 13, 453.

12 Daniel Chirot, The Origins of Backwardness in Eastern Europe (1989), pp. 3-4, 11; Stefano Bianchini, Eastern Europe and the Challenges of Modernity, 1800-2000 (2015), pp. 25, 33-35; Ivan Berend, Decades of Crisis: Central and Eastern Europe before World War I (1998), pp. 3-4; Larry Wolff, Inventing Eastern Europe: The Map of Civilisation on the Mind of the Enlightenment (1994), pp. 9, 14.

13 Berend, History Derailed: Central and Eastern Europe in the Long Nineteenth-Century (2003), pp. 46-47; Berend, Decades of Crisis, pp. 3-4; Cohen, ‘Neither Absolutism nor Anarchy’, p. 59.

14 John Deak, ‘The Great War and the Forgotten Realm: The Habsburg Monarchy and the First World War’, The Journal of Modern History Vol. 86, No. 2 (2014), pp. 348, 354.

15 Kożuchowski, The Afterlife of Austria-Hungary, p. 20; Solomon Wank, ‘Some Reflections on the Habsburg Empire and Its Legacy in the Nationalities Question’, Austrian History Yearbook Vol. 28 (1997), p. 132.

16 Nancy Wingfield, ‘The Problem with ‘Backwardness’: Ivan T. Berend’s Central and Eastern Europe in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries’, European History Quarterly Vol. 34, No. 4 (2004), pp. 535-538, 548; Deak, ‘The Great War and the Forgotten Realm’, pp. 358-359, 379.

17 Cohen, ‘Neither Absolutism nor Anarchy’, p. 59; Jörn Leonhard, ‘Introduction: The “Longue Durée of Empire”: Toward a Comparative Semantics of a Key Concept in Modern European History’, Contributions to the History of Concepts Vol. 8, No. 1 (2013), pp. 1-3, 9, 25; Axel Körner, ‘Beyond Nation States: New Perspectives on the Habsburg Empire’, European History Quarterly Vol. 48, No. 3 (2018), p. 531.

18 Ibid.; Leonhard, ‘Introduction’, pp. 9, 25.

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empire has been re-integrated into contemporary scholarship as a distinct ‘state and society of its own terms’.19 Pieter M. Judson’s ‘new’ Habsburg Empire significantly abandoned nationalist definitions of its problematic multiculturalism and authoritarian centre-periphery relations to prove the regime’s capabilities in dealing with internal and external challenges, therefore relating Austria-Hungary’s experiences of modernisation to broader European developments.20 Despite its distinct undertaking of modernisation, Austria-Hungary must not be perceived as an ‘Eastern Other’ but a unique political structure that intermingled modernity with tradition for the sake of maintaining legitimacy while participating in the same chaotic race to modernity as the rest of Europe.

City growth and urban life were ‘at the heart of the modern experience in Europe’.21 Modernisation shaped some Western metropoles long before Habsburg territories strived towards the European standard, but this does not mean they should be ‘subsumed under the label of backwardness’.22 East-central European towns progressed at an ‘astonishing pace’ in the nineteenth century, entering the race later than Western metropoles but not lagging behind enough to miss it.23 Owing to the 1848 Basic Relief Patent which freed peasants from feudal obligations and 1622km state-run railroad network which enhanced cross-border movement, a wave of migration flooded the empire’s towns and instituted a new urban experience.24 Judson’s term ‘mid-century modern’, to describe this phenomenon in his recent book The Habsburg Empire: A New History, demonstrated how liberal reforms, initiated after 1848’s revolutions and exposing uneven levels of modernisation across Habsburg lands, persevered beyond 1867 as part on an empire-wide civilising mission.25 The Bach Era (1849-59) fashioned a centralised bureaucracy capable of dealing with industrialisation’s rapid developments by preparing for economic expansion, strengthening communication and transport links, establishing public institutions, and developing city and town planning.26 Between 1850-1890 Vienna’s innercity population rocketed from 431,000 to 810,000 (67,000 to 600,000 in the outer districts), becoming one of Europe’s largest urban centres; likewise, Budapest’s flourishing flour-milling industry and sophisticated financial sector attracted nearly one million inhabitants by 1913.27 Even Berend could not deny AustriaHungary’s responsiveness to industrialisation, which roughly corresponded with Judson’s celebration of the empire’s status in fin-de-siècle Europe.28 Additionally, Thomas Bender and Carl Schorske’s comparison of Budapest and New York validated their transformations from small cities with metropolitan ambitions to ‘administrative centres for national economic modernisation’.29 Budapest’s modernisation was particularly outstanding following the 1867 Compromise, undergoing urbanisation twice as fast as Vienna and three times faster than Paris and London; by inhabiting Europe’s first electric subway line in 1896 (London’s was still steam-engine operated) Budapest proved its drastically advanced position in the world’s urban hierarchy.30 However, Austria-Hungary’s peculiarities should not be forgotten for the sake of integrating it into European history. Comparative approaches to urban peripheries disclose the unique place (literally and figuratively) of localities within empire, particularly useful for scholars transcending Schorske’s conception of Vienna as the ‘birthplace of modernity’.31 Local and transnational histories have constructively explored individual urban 19

Kożuchowski, The Afterlife of Austria-Hungary, p. 20; Judson, The Habsburg Empire, p. 451.

Judson, The Habsburg Empire, pp. 451-452; Bowman, Cohen, Yonan and Zahra, ‘An Imperial Dynamo?’, pp. 236238.

21 Behrends and Kohlrausch, ‘Races to Modernity’, p. 1.

22 Ibid., pp. 1-2.

23 Ibid., pp. 1-5.

24 Blau, ‘The City as Protagonist’, p. 13; Chad Bryant, ‘Into an Uncertain Future: Railroads and Vormärz Liberalism in Brno, Vienna, and Prague’, Austrian History Yearbook Vol. 40 (2009), p. 187.

25 Judson, The Habsburg Empire, pp. 220-223, 240.

26 Ibid.

27 Blau, ‘The City as Protagonist’, pp. 12-13; Thomas Bender and Carl Schorske ‘Introduction: Budapest and New York Compared’ in Bender and Schorske (eds.) Budapest and New York: Studies in Metropolitan Transformation, 1870-1930 (1994), p. 4.

28 Berend, Decades of Crisis, pp. 10-13; Judson, The Habsburg Empire, p. 268.

29 Bender and Schorske, ‘Introduction’, p. 1.

30 Ibid., p. 2.

31 Klautke, ‘Urban history and Modernity in Central Europe’, p. 194; Laurence Cole, ‘Visions and Revisions of Empire: Reflections on a New History of the Habsburg Monarchy’, Austrian History Yearbook Vol. 49 (2018), pp. 264, 267.

20

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centres to convey the range of experiences constituting modernisation in Austria-Hungary. Cohen revealed Prague’s slower demographic growth, limited administrative function and second-rate cultural and economic status to distinguish it from the imperial capitals; yet, he noted the city’s renowned machine-building industry and small-scale craft market engaged 42.7% of the population by 1910, not far behind Vienna’s 46.6%.32 East-central Europe’s agrarian roots and late economic development fostered an image of its backwardness, but once industrialisation began modernisation intensified to remarkable degrees in Austria-Hungary’s developing metropoles.33 Alongside Bohemia and Moravia’s impressive coal, steel, textile, machine and brewing industries, Galicia’s oil fields offered another major manufacturing and financial opportunity, becoming the world’s third-largest oil-producing region by 1909.34 Its capital city, Lemberg, participated in the same European-wide ‘race’ to modernity as Vienna and Budapest yet failed to reach their levels of modernisation by the twentieth century because it struggled to overcome Galicia’s traditional societal, cultural and economic structures; the road to modernity was clearly not as straightforward as succumbing to industrialisation and capitalism.35 Alison Frank effectively questioned ‘what is modern?’ by discussing the variable connotations of ‘oil’ as a symbol of Galician civilisation; for scientists it meant progress, for nationalists it meant historic identity, for businessmen, profit and independence, and for workers, freedom.36 ‘Modernisation’ as a variety of interrelated and intermingling processes meant different things for different people. ‘Modernity’, then, is an ambiguously broad term signifying a range of possible outcomes to urban ambitions. Despite geographic distance and local distinctions, Austria-Hungary’s peripheries’ diverse experiences of industrialisation and urbanisation integrated them into an empire-wide venture into modernity, whether effects were as progressive as their Western parallels’ or not.

‘Modernisation’ does not denote a simple path to the seeming perfection of ‘modernity’, but rather a journey of relentless innovation and subsequent issues that continually needed dealing with. Whether AustriaHungary failed to modernise therefore remains difficult to determine. David Vyleta and Susan Zimmerman’s studies of crime and indigence in east-central Europe illuminated ‘neglected chapter[s] of the history of modernity’, situating Vienna and Budapest alongside other European capitals unable to escape the unfavourable aspects of urban life.37 Like London and Paris, Vienna’s extreme wealth and dire poverty exposed it as a ‘city of contrasts’ harbouring several identity crises and social tensions.38 Urban space consequently endorsed political conflict and accommodated chauvinist ideologies; several historians identified rising anti-Semitism as a product of emerging mass medias and increased hostility towards Jewish pre-eminence in urban culture.39 Furthermore, as Austria-Hungary was propelled into ‘an age of frightening uncertainties’, the urban psyche was forced to adapt to a constant state of instability.40 In 1913 Lord Mayor Bárczy blamed his predecessors’ ‘spontaneous urbanisation’ for allowing industrialisation and capitalism to foster Budapest’s moral and intellectual decline; similarly, popular culture in the peripheries responded to and fuelled twentieth-century conservative apprehensions against the ‘great city’ ideal.41 Kraków’s ‘gutter press’ offered newly-urbanised readers a sense of provincial community to situate the city within a European32 Gary Cohen, ‘Society and Culture in Prague, Vienna and Budapest in the Late Nineteenth Century’, East European Quarterly Vol. 20, No. 4 (1986), pp. 467, 471-473.

33 Blau, ‘The City as Protagonist’, p. 13.

34 Ibid.

35 Prokopovych, Habsburg Lemberg, pp. 3-4; Alison Fleig Frank, Oil Empire: Visions of Prosperity in Habsburg Galicia (2007), pp. 4, 7, 11.

36 Ibid., pp. 6-7, 23.

37 David Vyleta mentioned in Klautke, ‘Urban history and Modernity in Central Europe’, pp. 186-188; Susan Zimmerman, “Making a living from disgrace’: the politics of prostitution, female poverty and urban gender codes in Budapest and Vienna, 1860-1920’ in Malcolm Gee, Tim Kirk and Jill Steward (eds.) The City in Central Europe: Culture and Society from 1800 to the Present (1999), p. 175.

38 Jacques Le Rider, ‘Between Modernism and Postmodernism: The Viennese Identity Crisis’ trans. Ralph Manheim in Edward Timms and Ritchie Robertson (eds.) Vienna 1900: From Altenberg to Wittgenstein (1990), pp. 1-2; Behrends and Kohlrausch, ‘Races to Modernity’, pp. 9-11.

39 Klautke, ‘Urban history and Modernity in Central Europe’, p. 188; Bender and Schorske, ‘Introduction’, p. 27; Gábor Gyáni, Identity and the Urban Experience: Fin-de-Siècle Budapest (2004), pp. 210-211.

40 Bryant, ‘Into an Uncertain Future’, pp. 184-186, 200-201.

41 Gyáni, Identity and the Urban Experience, pp. 210-211; Nathanniel Wood, ‘Becoming a “Great City”: Metropolitan Imaginations and Apprehensions in Cracow’s Popular Press, 1900-1914’, Austrian History Yearbook Vol. 33 (2002), pp. 108-109,

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wide urban experience, yet simultaneously reflected the ‘mixture of hope and anxiety’ underpinning urban aspirations by reporting on sensationalist stories of global-urban crime.42 ‘Modernisation’ is not synonymous with ‘progress’. Re-analysing the Monarchy’s adaptability to these conditions urges a re-evaluation of its ability to overcome the challenges posed by the uncontrollable forces of modernity, neither failing nor succeeding but effectively responding to pressures to modernise until 1914.43 Nationalist historians, and to some degree even Viktor Koleda in this debate, blame the empire’s collapse on an impending crisis of Habsburg identity.44 However, while rapid political, social and economic changes emanated a sense of instability, Austria-Hungary’s cultural heterogeneity remained a secure element of its multi-ethnic, multinational and multilingual society until World War One.45 Considering the relationship between society and imperial state-building via everyday encounters with Habsburg culture, as Judson recommended, presents Austria-Hungary as a ‘viable, dynamic and creative modern state’, not lost amongst the forces of nationalism but flourishing alongside them.46 Rather than being replaced by ‘national cultural revival[s]’, the empire’s multicultural society allowed a range of identities to evolve ‘in a dialogue between similarity and difference’, especially in Habsburg cities.47 Multivalent monuments, ceremonies and exhibitions earned numerous cultural and political meanings during Austria-Hungary’s most intense modernising period (1867-1914), but the ‘integrated topography’ of the empire’s urban spaces instituted a common identity encompassing a variety of subcultures and individualised experiences.48 East-central Europe’s persistent industrial and economic development, despite the 1873-76 ‘great depression’, meant urban planners could not deny the cities’ evolutionary growth in an ‘era of urban electrification, street cars and early subway lines’; as Charles Maier stated, ‘the issue was not whether to accept modernity, but how to shape it’.49 Professional architects shaped the course to modernity around local visions, yet incorporated Habsburg cities into an imperial image of Austria-Hungary’s shared, modern, urban identity.50 The 1870s80s witnessed state efforts to integrate ethnically-diverse urban peripheries into a ‘homogenous civilisation’ via railway networks, administrative buildings and cultural institutions.51 Particularly influential were the theatres, opera houses, museums and universities designed to replicate Vienna’s Neobaroque elegance across the empire, strengthening a shared ‘visual (urban) identity’ and associating the growth of civic society with dynastic loyalty.52 For example, Budapest’s Opera House (1875-86), funded by municipal authorities and the emperor, celebrated the city’s ‘imperial capital’ status reaching the cultural standards of its Viennese counterpart.53 As the pinnacle of state-influenced modernisation, Vienna’s urban image broadcasted the empire’s modernisation to the outside world. The railway was a vital precondition for making the metropolis accessible to European visitors, but it was the inner city’s ‘self-contained arena’ that accommodated a thriving tourist culture.54 Vienna may not have reached the fame of Paris, London or Berlin (although Jill Steward persuasively noted Franz Joseph’s Riesenrad ‘became to Vienna what the Eiffel Tower was to Paris’), but it nevertheless remained an ideal setting for celebrating Habsburg culture and imperial loyalty.55 Most 42

Ibid., pp. 108-109, 121-129.

Behrends and Kohlrausch, ‘Races to Modernity’, p. 6.

44 Csáky, ‘Multicultural Communities’, pp. 44-46, 53; Berend, History Derailed, pp. 57-58.

45 Johannes Feichtinger and Cohen, ‘Introduction’ in Feichtinger and Cohen (eds.) Understanding Multiculturalism: The Habsburg Central European Experience (2014), pp. 3-5.

46 Cole, ‘Visions and Revisions of Empire, p. 263.

47 Feichtinger and Cohen, ‘Introduction’, pp. 7-8; Berend, History Derailed, pp. 57-58.

48 Prokopovych, Habsburg Lemberg, pp. 2, 11; Gyáni, Identity and the Urban Experience, p. 59; Blau, ‘The City as Protagonist’, p. 15.

49 Maier, ‘City, Empire, and Imperial Aftermath’, p. 28.

50 Blau, ‘The City as Protagonist’, p. 15.

51 Ibid. pp. 12-13.

52 Ibid.; Matthew Rampley, ‘From Potemkin Village to the Estrangement of Vision: Baroque Culture and Modernity in Austria before and after 1918’, Austrian History Yearbook Vol. 47 (2016), pp. 167-168, 174, 182.

53 Ibid., p. 174.

54 Jill Steward, ‘“Gruss aus Wien”: Urban tourism in Austria-Hungary before the First World War’ in The City in Central Europe, pp. 123-127.

55 Ibid., pp. 126-127.

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suggestively, by making Vienna’s Hofburg Palace, Gardens of Schönbrunn, Burgtheater and other historic ‘cultural monuments’ accessible via the Stadtbahn, the city’s layout reminded fin-de-siècle visitors of its central place in east-central European modernisation as well as the Habsburgs’ dominating urban presence.56 Similarly, Gábor Gyáni explored Budapest’s role ‘as stage and as scenery’ for imperial ceremonies and popular engagement with modern culture.57 For example, the diary of a lower-middle-class couple (1873-76) records their frequent encounters with café culture, determination to observe ‘new’ parts of Budapest’s cityscape, and excitement towards celebrations (illuminations, which they accessed via tram) for Emperor Francis Joseph’s Jubilee.58 The couple’s perspective was ‘nurtured by the always dynamic and increasingly metropolitan atmosphere’ of a recently-united capital city eager to prove its ‘readiness to accept novelty’ and place within Austria-Hungary.59 Nationalist perspectives of modern culture suggested the tension between Historicism and Modernism represented the fragmentation of Austria-Hungary.60 However, understanding culture as a ‘vehicle for innovation and design’ reveals that various expressions of ‘modernity’ did not threaten the empire’s legitimacy or multicultural unity.61 Whereas Schorske argued Secessionist architects stripped Vienna’s historical textures in order to prioritise forward-looking appearances over Historicist values, Matthew Rampley persuasively suggested Modernists reworked, rather than rejected, baroque styles in internationallyinspired architectural idioms.62 Otto Wagner’s fin-de-siècle functional expansionism and Adolf Loos’s twentieth-century sophisticated metropolitanism sought to improve Vienna’s city space by following Western-Modernist trends, unquestionably more forward-looking than the ‘indigenous traditions’ invoked by national architects.63 Yet, the possible coexistence of traditional culture and modern symbolism allowed both national and imperial projects to experiment with urban aesthetics and technological innovation, showing the outside world their city’s unique journey into modernity.64 Early twentieth-century culture was increasingly politically influenced and rooted in locality, but ‘internal national homogenisation’ did not endanger AustriaHungary’s multicultural stability since it contributed to an empire-wide project expressing the various constituents of its modern urban identity.65 This is apparent in architectural efforts to brand Lemberg a ‘Habsburg city’ as it became the ‘booming provincial capital’ of east-central Europe’s prime oil-producing region.66 Accompanying infrastructural and expansionist developments throughout the pre-war decades, Lemberg’s architects followed the imperial trend of restoring, rather than simply conserving, historicallysignificant and artistically-valuable sites of memory.67 For example, Julian Zachariewicz’s renovation of Lemberg’s medieval churches into ‘Western-style’ neo-Romanesque buildings promoted the city’s historic and cultural status as Galicia’s civilised capital, proving itself capable of participating in Europe’s race to modernity.68 Likewise in Kraków, ‘Young Poland’ architects searched for modernity in medieval and rural traditions; the Neo-Baroque Słowacki Theatre (1893) purposely replicated Viennese culture to reflect the metropolis’s cosmopolitan aspirations, but simultaneously promoted its ‘mythic status’ as the centre of Polish national memory.69 The ‘aesthetic affinities’ between Historicism and Modernism meant traditional architecture could be respectfully associated with cities’ imperial pasts, but also reformed with modern 56

Ibid., pp. 130-131.

Gyáni, Identity and the Urban Experience, pp. 62, 75-77.

58 Ibid., p. 69, 75-76, 97-100.

59 Ibid., p. 69.

60 Berend, History Derailed, pp. 80, 85-87; Le Rider, ‘Between Modernism and Postmodernism’, pp. 1, 9.

61 Prokopovych, Habsburg Lemberg, pp. 2-3; Blau, ‘The City as Protagonist’, p. 19; Blau and Platzer, Shaping the City, p. 87.

62 Rampley, ‘From Potemkin Village to the Estrangement of Vision’, pp. 176-177, 182; Schorkse, ‘Operatic Modernism’, The Journal of Interdisciplinary History Vol. 36, No. 4 (2006), pp. 676-681.

63 Blau and Platzer, Shaping the City, pp. 73-75, 78 64 Ibid., p. 87; Behrends and Kohlrausch, ‘Races to Modernity’, p. 4.

65 Gyáni, Identity and the Urban Experience, pp. 213-215.

66 Ihor Žuk, ‘The Architecture of L’viv’ in Shaping the Great City, p. 145; Blau and Platzer, Shaping the Great City, p.

158; Prokopovych, Habsburg Lemberg, pp. 2-3.

227-232.

67 Ibid., pp. 227-232.

68 Ibid., pp. 227-232, 242.

69 Blau and Platzer, Shaping the Great City, p. 158.

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building styles as ‘visible testament to the persistence of state patriotism and loyalty to imperial symbolism’ amidst the processes of modernisation, therefore contradicting impressions of east-central Europe’s backwardness.70 Divergent responses to modernisation do not indicate failure, but demonstrate how AustriaHungary tolerated innovation within a political framework rested upon tradition.

By portraying the city as a site of political upheaval historians exaggerated the role of nationalists in unravelling local-imperial ties, implying the state failed to withstand the inexorable advancement of modern nation-states. The rise of nationalism simply exposed the Habsburg dynasty’s fundamental role in holding Austria-Hungary’s multinational and multicultural territories together, but did not render imperial structures obsolete or hinder modernisation; urban expressions of modern life remained a ‘conglomerate of imperial and local values’.71 Solomon Wank argued Budapest’s nationally-dominated culture decentralised the Monarchy’s influence; rather, its ‘Hungarian-ness’ ‘work[ed] to build a modern state within a larger imperial framework’.72 Likewise, Prague’s flourishing nationalist culture (resulting from Bohemia’s Czech-German conflict) does not reflect antagonism against the empire but demonstrates how modern state-building and urban city-making were unavoidably interrelated.73 For example, both cities’ fin-de-siècle ethnographic and trade exhibitions induced the growth of cultural institutions and infrastructural developments while correspondingly celebrating Magyar folk-art and Czech cubism; modernising endeavours became an essential feature of nationalists’ urban-cultural dominance.74 Lud’a Klusáková measured modernisation by the development of social and cultural institutions making everyday experiences more civilised in the peripheries; whether initiated by national, municipal or imperial authorities, the effects of urbanisation integrated AustriaHungary’s inhabitants into an empire-wide modernising experience.75 The apolitical aims underpinning modernisation reiterate how local and national competitiveness enhanced Austria-Hungary’s ability to modernise as an empire.76 From imperially-commissioned functional city-planning to nationalists’ cultivation of leisurely ‘green’ spaces, to municipal authorities’ responses to public wellbeing, Habsburg cities were shaped by various groups with diverse reasons for intervening in urban life, but ultimately sharing a desire to regulate and promote Austria-Hungary’s prosperous undertaking of modernisation.77 Overall, while rapid industrialisation and urbanisation exposed the Habsburg Empire’s heterogeneous nature, the Dual Monarchy’s ability to support an inherently-diverse state while undertaking the challenges of modernity proves its resilience and productivity as a European great power until 1914.78 This essay has offered a variety of (largely urban-focused) perspectives to consider the complex, and sometimes lessprogressive, repercussions of modernisation that render the ‘success or failure’ debate unconstructive. Rather than highlighting the empire’s backwardness or inability to align dynastic ideologies with modern concerns, the variety of ‘modernising’ experiences reflect Austria-Hungary’s unique flexibility and creativity in response to its challenges, as well as resituating the region’s place within European history.79 East-central Europe may not have reached early-twentieth-century Western standards, but it strove for progress in political, social, economic and cultural developments before the interruption of World War One. Further insight into the ways ‘monarchy at war’ altered perceptions of Austria-Hungary’s durability in the modern 70

Rampley, ‘From Potemkin Village to the Estrangement of Vision’, pp. 182-183.

Prokopovych, Habsburg Lemberg, p. 134.

72 Wank, ‘Some Reflections on the Habsburg Empire’, pp. 137-141; Bender and Schorske, ‘Introduction’, pp. 4-5, 7.

73 Cohen, ‘Society and Culture in Prague, Vienna and Budapest’, pp. 480-481.

74 Gyáni, Identity and the Urban Experience, p. 210; Steward, “Gruss aus Wien’, pp. 131, 134; Blau, ‘The City as Protagonist’, p. 19.

75 Lud’a Klusáková, ‘Cultural institutions as urban innovations: The Czech lands, Poland and the eastern Baltic, 17501900’ in Malcolm Gee, Tim Kirk and Jill Steward (eds.) The City in Central Europe: Culture and Society from 1800 to the Present (1999), pp. 85, 96.

76 Maier, ‘City, Empire, and Imperial Aftermath’, p. 28.

77 Blau, ‘The City as Protagonist’, p. 17; Blau and Platzer, Shaping the City, p. 73; Zimmerman, ‘Making a living from disgrace’, pp. 190-192; Kirk, ‘Popular culture and politics in imperial Vienna’ in The City in Central Europe, pp. 161162, 165-166.

78 Csáky, ‘Multicultural Communities, p. 43; Judson, The Habsburg Empire, p. 9; Bowman, Cohen, Yonan and Zahra, ‘An Imperial Dynamo?’, pp. 245-246; Bruckmüller, ‘Was there a “Habsburg Society” in Austria-Hungary?’, pp. 14-5.

79 Wank, ‘Some Reflections on the Habsburg Empire’, pp. 137-141; Bianchini, Eastern Europe and the Challenges of Modernity, 1800-2000, pp. 37-38.

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world is necessary for understanding its collapse within broader historical processes, as well as the impact of war upon European progress between 1914-1918.80 Ultimately, Austria-Hungary’s unique journey into modernity indicates that diversity does not necessarily constitute division; regional efforts to improve urbanperipheral conditions did not threaten the empire’s complex structures but strengthened its progress as a whole.81 An urban perspective has reinforced Judson’s emphasis on the possible harmony between nationalism and imperialism since Habsburg cities remained ‘site[s] where the imperial met the local’, and where key urban elements were replicated across the empire to imitate, and celebrate, its prosperous capital.82

80

Cornwall, ‘Introduction’, pp. 7-10; Maier, ‘City, Empire, and Imperial Aftermath’, pp. 29-30.

Feichtinger and Cohen, ‘Introduction’, p. 5.

82 Maier, ‘City, Empire, and Imperial Aftermath’, pp. 29-30.

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PART V: SPECIAL ARTICLES SABRINA STEUER: The DUHS Essay-writing competition: ‘Decolonising the curriculum’ Page 112

ASHLEY CASTELINO: Winning Entry: ‘The Finger Points’: a Decolonised approach to Gender and Sexuality in India Pages 113-118

CLÉMENTINE DUCASSE: Runner-up: South Vietnamese women: Capitalising on Colonialism? 1920-1964 Pages 119-123

KATIE SCOWN: The Annual DUHS Winter Ball – Lumley Castle, 2018 Pages 124-130

DR. HELEN ROCHE: One Year in Durham – Looking Back Pages 131-132

DR. JOHN-HENRY CLAY: A Year of Research Leave Pages 133-134

The DUHS Executive Committee and Editorial Team, 2018-19 Page 135

THE DUHS ESSAY-WRITING COMPETITION: ‘DECOLONISING THE CURRICULUM’ Last year, DUHS decided to introduce its first ever essay-writing competition, a chance for students to celebrate the return of the journal while demonstrating their skill in conducting research and writing thoughtprovoking essays. In-line with the series of guest lectures that DUHS’ Programme Coordinator, Sabrina Steuer, has organised, the executive decided that the theme of the competition should be ‘Decolonising the Curriculum’. Sabrina outlines the significance of ‘Decolonising the Curriculum’ below, discussing how and why she has decided to implement this as the theme of this year’s talks: My tenure as Programme Coordinator gave me the freedom to design a dream curriculum - one that addressed overlooked histories, included a wide range of historians, and (hopefully) broadened our perceptions of what the study of History can entail. I chose the theme of ‘Decolonising the Curriculum’ for my talks this year in solidarity with the wider academic movement focused at challenging the academic status quo – one that is too often Eurocentric, masculine, and unquestioning of received traditions. This is especially pertinent in Durham, where we have no modules on Latin America or Australasia, despite a plethora of sources and wealth of academic research. I wanted to take our members ‘around the world’ with our talks, enabling them to learn about areas not covered by the current Durham curriculum. The talks ranged from the fun - with a personal favourite of mine focusing on Arctic exploration - to the enlightening, such as Professor Rigney-Irabinna’s talk on Australian pedagogy and the treatment of indigenous Australians. It has been an honour to coordinate this year’s programme, and I hope its diversity might nudge the University department towards considering evaluating its own curriculum.

Sabrina Steuer Programme Coordinator, 2018/19 Having received some really fantastic entries for the competition, the journal’s editorial team were asked to read the entries and vote on a winner and runner-up. The first prize was a £100 cash reward, and second prize a £20 Amazon voucher.

First prize was awarded to Ashley Castelino, who used the competition as an opportunity to explore contemporary Indian approaches to sexuality and the LGBTQ+ community in both the Indian Constitution, and in wider Indian society. Ashley’s article provides a fascinating insight into the long-term socio-political impact of British colonialism in India and, indeed, other parts of the former British Empire.

While Ashley’s article is, indeed, impressive, we were also struck by the quality of research undertaken by Clémentine Ducasse, an Erasmus student from France. Clémentine used this opportunity to study the cultural landscape of Vietnam in the 20th century, focusing on Vietnamese women in particular. Entertained and absorbed by the unusual subject with which Clémentine engaged, the journal team voted to award her secondplace in the competition.

We would like to offer a big congratulations to both of our winners, and thanks all of the participants. It’s been a real joy and privilege to read about cultures that we’ve never learned about before, and has provided a welcome opportunity to reflect on the importance of inclusivity and diversity in the curriculum.

WINNING ENTRY: ‘THE FINGER POINTS’: A DECOLONISED APPROACH TO GENDER AND SEXUALITY IN INDIA

BY ASHLEY CASTELINO (ST. AIDAN’S COLLEGE, 3RD YEAR) On 6th September 2018, the Supreme Court of India revoked ‘Section 377’ of the Indian constitution, thus decriminalizing homosexual relations.1 While this was a landmark moment in the history of the nation, it must not be characterized as a step closer to an idealized “west”, because Section 377 originated as a colonialera law, forced-upon India and other countries by the British Empire. This essay will demonstrate instead how pre-colonial India was more open-minded and fluid in its conceptions of gender and sexuality, and how British colonialism has actually played a significant role in exacerbating modern-day injustices. In doing so, this essay seeks to relate this discussion to the question of ‘decolonizing’ curriculums in Britain today, using it as an example of how decolonized histories can be employed to challenge implicitly held biases.

In 1860, the British colonial government of India introduced the ‘Indian Penal Code’, containing the controversial Section 377: ‘377. Whoever voluntarily has carnal intercourse against the order of nature with any man, woman, or animal shall be punished with imprisonment for life, or with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to ten years, and shall be liable to fine’.2 This law was an evolved form of a 1534 English law against the ‘Vice of Buggery’, established during the reign of Henry VIII.3 Interpreted to mean the criminalisation of homosexuality in India, it was finally struck down by the Supreme Court in September 2018. When reporting on this landmark ruling, the BBC in one article described Section 377 as ‘a 157-year-old colonial-era law’, thus rightly acknowledging its colonial history.4 However, the same article ended abruptly with the question: ‘Where is homosexuality illegal? The 2017 report from the International, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association (ILGA) lists 72 countries and territories where same-sex relationships are still criminalised, although that includes India before its latest ruling. Most of them are in Africa, the Middle East and other parts of South Asia’.5 Though perfectly factual, this statement could be perceived as having troubling connotations. While ILGA’s important report is responsible simply for outlining the facts as they are, an article by the BBC must take into greater consideration how the presentation of these facts might be perceived differently by different people.

1 ‘SC Decriminalises Section 377: What the Court Said’, The Times of India, 6 September 2018, [Online], Available at: <https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/sc-decriminalises-section-377-what-the-courtsaid/articleshow/65698005.cms> (Accessed 25 April 2019).

2 Douglas E. Sanders, ‘377 and the Unnatural Afterlife of British Colonialism in Asia’, Asian Journal of Comparative Law, 4.1 (2009), p. 8.

3 Ibid., pp. 1-2.

4 ‘India Court Legalises Gay Sex in Landmark Ruling’, BBC, 6 September 2018, [Online], Available at: <https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-45429664> (Accessed 25 April 2019).

5 Ibid. International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association: Aengus Carroll and Lucas Ramón Mendos, State-Sponsored Homophobia 2017: A world survey of sexual orientation laws: criminalisation, protection and recognition (Geneva: ILGA, 2017).

Part V

Whatever the perspective of the author of the article, simply naming ‘Africa, the Middle East and other parts of South Asia’ without any acknowledgement of their colonial histories inevitably feeds into a problematic narrative. It is the narrative held explicitly by a few, and implicitly by even more: that people from such countries (i.e. people with darker skin) are morally “backward” and “uncivilized” – the very narrative that was used to justify colonialism in the first place.

Indeed, it is pertinent to note that more than half of the 72 countries named in the ILGA report for criminalising same-sex relationships are former British colonies, many of which have inherited versions of Section 377, some of them preserving it to the letter.6 Nor, in most cases, did these colonial territories have any choice in the matter, a 2008 Human Rights Watch report emphasising the important fact that ‘no “native” ever participated in their making. Colonizers saw indigenous cultures as sexually corrupt, and lenience towards homosexuality supposedly formed part of this perversion. Where precolonial peoples had been permissive, sodomy laws would cure them – and defend their new, white masters against ‘moral contagion’’.7 While it is unlikely that homosexuality was fully accepted throughout Indian society prior to its colonization, there is much evidence that a more open-minded attitude existed in the country prior to British intervention.

In recent years, several notable scholars and activists have combed through Indian history and mythology to enlighten us about the complex, ambivalent and rich histories of sexuality in the country. Two of the most oft-cited (though by no means unproblematic) examples are the depictions of a diverse range of nonheteronormative sexual acts in the Sanskrit Kamasutra, and in the erotic sculptures of the temples at Khajuraho, without any ‘suggestion of audacity or provocation, the leers that would suggest civic taboos being violated’.8 In their book Same-Sex Love in India: Readings from Literature and History, Ruth Vanita and Saleem Kidwai have presented a remarkable array of translated texts from ancient, medieval, and modern Indian traditions, uncovering complex discourses of sexuality defying the bounds of heteronormativity in works like the Sanskrit Mahabharata and Kamasutra, and the Bengali Birth of Bhagiratha.9 The book also includes medieval materials in the Persian-Urdu tradition, depicting a range of romantic and erotic interactions between men in ghazals (love poems) and chronicles, prior-to and despite religious injunctions to the contrary.10 Gita Thadani has explored the ways in which processes like colonialism and nationalism have similarly erased Indian histories of lesbian sexuality, using a detailed exploration of mythology, cosmology, ancient art, artefacts and Sanskrit texts to counter ‘the constructions of the lesbian as Western, and exiled from India’ and the ‘myth of an overwhelming singular heterosexual tradition as an objective historical fact’.11 In presenting these complex, diverse, co-existing histories, these works primarily demonstrate that at no point in its early history has there been a single, uniform understanding-of or reaction-to sexuality in India. And this is precisely the point. The imposition of the Indian Penal Code with Section 377 seems to be the first single, unified attempt to regulate sexuality in India on a national level. Indeed, Judith Avory Faucette has pointed out that in addition to ‘the lack of a moral or religious basis for homophobia in the British colonies, the understanding of homosexuality as an identity category based on one’s sexual acts with individuals of the same sex was foreign to the cultures where the law was introduced. For example, in many East and South Asian cultures, there is a traditional understanding of three genders, but not three sexualities’.12 This

6

Human Rights Watch: Alok Gupta, The Alien Legacy: The Origins of “Sodomy” Laws in British Colonialism (New York: Human Rights Watch, 2008), pp. 5-6.

7 Ibid., pp. 10-11.

8 Alphonso Lingis, ‘Khajuraho’, Soundings: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 62.1 (1979), p. 62. For an overview and more critical analysis of the use and appropriation of sexual representations in the Kamasutra, see Jyoti Puri, ‘Concerning Kamasutras: Challenging Narratives of History and Sexuality’, Signs, 27.3 (2002).

9 Ruth Vanita and Saleem Kidwai (eds.), Same-Sex Love in India: Readings from Literature and History (New York: Palgrave, 2000).

10 Ibid. See also Ruth Vanita (ed.), Queering India: Same-Sex Love and Eroticism in Indian Culture and Society (New York and London: Routledge, 2002).

11 Gita Thadani, Sakhiyani: Lesbian Desire in Ancient and Modern India (London: Bloomsbury, 1996, repr. 2016), pp.

119, 4.

12 Judith Avory Faucette, ‘Human Rights in Context: The Lessons of Section 377 Challenges for Western Gay Rights Legal Reformers in the Developing World’, The Journal of Gender, Race, and Justice, 13.2 (2010), p. 418.

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The DUHS essay-writing competition 2019

reasoning follows Michel Foucault’s theory that modern power operates through continual classification, acting discursively to create categories, like that of ‘homosexuality’, to increase its opportunities for differentiation, segregation and intervention.13 Despite the fact that various levels of intolerance to homosexual relations pre-existed in these countries prior to the arrival of British colonialism, in many cases the institutional categorization and suppression of homosexuality could be interpreted as a uniquely colonial product. None of this is meant to imply that the British hold full responsibility for the intolerances of the present: of course, colonialism is far from the only factor at play in all of these countries. It is clear, however, that British colonial laws have, at the very least, provided much of the language and rhetoric of modern-day discrimination in India.

The question of ‘three genders’ in Asian cultures is a different but related matter. Like the intricacies of sexuality in ancient and medieval India, the country has a long tradition of gender nonconformity, too.

Devdutt Pattanaik’s The Man Who Was a Woman, for instance, documents an extensive compilation of traditional Hindu stories that involve ‘queer manifestations of sexuality [that], though repressed socially, squeeze their way into the myths, legends, and lore of the land.’14 This includes stories of women who become men, pregnant kings, cross-dressing tricksters, castrated men and women, and a variety of identities in between.15 Janet Gyatso has similarly noted the frequent extolling of the middle-ness of the third sex (paṇḍakas) in early Buddhist traditions, while Leonard Zwilling and Michael Sweet have illustrated equivalent acceptance in Jain religious literature.16 Anand Grover, a leading advocate against Section 377, thus made a case for ‘the glorious status of transgenders in Indian history’, giving the example of Mehboob Ali, the chief executive of the last Mughal emperor, Bahadur Shah Zafar.17 These groups, however, also faced colonial discrimination under the provisions of Section 377, as well as the 1871 Criminal Tribes Act that defined them as ‘a “criminal tribe”, i.e., as outlaws by nature.’18 Nevertheless, in a 2014 census, 4.9 lakh (490,000) Indians officially identified themselves as belonging to a third gender, with transgender activists estimating the actual figures to be six or seven times higher.19 In April of the same year, the Supreme Court of India legally recognised a third gender, mandating the equal provision of fundamental rights and inclusive treatment for all those identifying as such.20 The landmark verdict explained that ‘moral failure lies in the society’s unwillingness to contain or embrace different gender identities and expressions, a mindset which we have to change.’21 With this, India joined a large number of South Asian countries by taking limited but significant steps towards granting legal rights to a third gender, with Nepal paving the way in these efforts.22 India’s ruling was particularly aimed at the ancient population known as hijras, a group that is said to encompass eunuchs, and transgender and intersex individuals. The term ‘hijra’, however, resists any narrow definition, as Serena Nanda explains in an ethnography of the community, because there exists a ‘variety of individually experienced social roles, gender identities, sexual orientations,

13 Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, vol. 1: An Introduction, trans. by Robert Hurley (New York: Pantheon Books, 1978), pp. 42-43.

14 Devdutt Pattanaik, The Man Who Was a Woman and Other Queer Tales from Hindu Lore (New York: Harrington Park Press, 2002), p. 3.

15 Ibid.

16 Janet Gyatso, ‘One Plus One Makes Three: Buddhist Gender, Monasticism, and the Law of the Non-Excluded Middle’, History of Religions, 43.2 (2003). Leonard Zwilling and Michael J. Sweet, ‘“Like a City Ablaze: The Third Sex and the Creation of Sexuality in Jain Religious Literature’, Journal of the History of Sexuality, 6.3 (1996).

17 Anand Grover, cited in Kapil Sharma, ‘Destabilizing Section 377: An Indological Approach to Gender and Sexuality’, Postcolonial Interventions, 2.1 (2017), p. 139.

18 Martha C. Nussbaum, ‘Disgust or Equality? Sexual Orientation and Indian Law’, Journal of Indian Law and Society, 6.1 (2014), p. 20.

19 Rema Nagarajan, ‘First Count of Third Gender in Census: 4.9 Lakh’, The Times of India, 30 May 2014, <https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/First-count-of-third-gender-in-census-4-9-lakh/articleshow/35741613.cms> [accessed 25 April 2019].

20 Manjeet Kumar Sahu, ‘Case Comment on National Legal Services Authority v. Union of India & Others (Air 2014 Sc 1863): A Ray of Hope for the LGBT Community’, BRICS Law Journal, 3.2 (2016).

21 Nussbaum, ‘Disgust or Equality?’, p. 24.

22 International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association: Zhan Chian, Sandra Duffy and Matilda González Gil, Trans Legal Mapping Report 2017: Recognition Before the Law (Geneva: ILGA, 2017), pp. 25-44.

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and life histories of the people who become hijras.’23 Once again, it is this variety that is truly important and must be preserved. Although hijras do play important cultural and religious roles in Indian society, a growing number even attaining important civil and administrative positions, society maintains an ambivalent attitude towards them, for, although ‘they have an auspicious presence, they also have an inauspicious potential.’24 As a result, they still face discrimination, ‘forced to live on the fringes of […] society’, with continued poor access to medical and educational resources, not to mention having to endure insult and mockery.25 The 2014 ruling, and later versions, are not without deep intrinsic problems themselves.26 Even so, the growing legal recognition of the group, as well as their very own self-recognition, is incredibly significant: The anthropological significance of the hijra role is that it is one of the very few alternative gender roles currently functioning in any society. Many of the institutionalized cross-gender and third gender roles in non-Western societies have fallen into disuse with the cultural imperialism associated with colonialism, modernization, and Westernization. Thus, the hijra role is of great interest not only in and of itself, but also for the light it sheds on broader issues related to gender.27 When presenting a historicist argument, there is a danger of ignoring current realities, which is why it must be made clear than none of this is meant to absolve India of its own sins – the responsibility for every step taken by the country since independence must be borne and addressed by its own people. And even though the Supreme Court judgements on a third gender in 2014 and on Section 377 in 2018 were significant steps in the right direction, in order to achieve anything approaching true equality, much more work needs to be done to challenge widely-held prejudices at a deeper level. However, as this essay has demonstrated, rather than simply looking to the modern west, it might be helpful for India to draw inspiration from its own precolonial past, as lawyers and activists did masterfully in the fight against Section 377. Such a historicist approach does, however, have its own problems. On the one hand, adopting historical narratives to support modern acceptance may be useful, but it also opens the floodgates to legitimizing the co-opting of history in favour of intolerance, as has been done for years. This is a particularly difficult problem when dealing with mythology, which is even more open to contrasting interpretations. Additionally, most of the historical examples we might find deal with kings and courtiers that, as Douglas Sanders points out, ‘are reasonably egalitarian in gender and role. We lack such stories for ordinary people living ordinary lives.’28 In any case, however, true equality is perhaps a state where there isn’t a need to search for such stories in the first place, as Shivananda Khan powerfully explains: ‘The finger points. Here is the evidence. Yes, there were lesbians and gay men in our past. But how much of this is valid? As contemporary self-identified lesbians or gay men (whatever those terms mean to us personally), we shouldn’t need self-validation based on a presumptive past. Our existence is our own validation, however we may label ourselves.’29 Whether or not to use these presumptive pasts is absolutely the prerogative of each individual in India. Which is why it is important for an account like this to resist narrow definitions and broad generalizations of any kind, instead merely illustrating the incredible richness and complexity of gender and sexuality.

23

Serena Nanda, Neither Man nor Woman: The Hijras of India (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing Company, 1999), p. xix.

24 Ibid., p. 6.

25 Govindasamy Agoramoorthy and Minna J. Hsu, ‘Living on the Societal Edge: India’s Transgender Realities’, Journal of Religion and Health, 54.4 (2015), p. 1451. Nanda, Neither Man nor Woman, pp. 8-9. Sapna Khatri, ‘Hijras: The 21st Century Untouchables’, Washington University Global Studies Law Review, 16.2 (2017).

26 Akanssha Agrawal, ‘India’s New Transgender Bill and its Discontents’, Oxford Human Rights Hub, 27 January 2019, < https://ohrh.law.ox.ac.uk/indias-new-transgender-bill-and-its-discontents/> [accessed 26 April 2019]. Gautam Bhatia, ‘The Rajya Sabha Must Amend the Transgender Persons Bill’, Hindustan Times, 5 January 2019, <https://www.hindustantimes.com/analysis/the-rajya-sabha-must-amend-the-transgender-persons-bill/storyWEyPFztPVABpfaQyDYBt5I.html> [accessed 26 April 2019].

27 Nanda, Neither Man nor Woman, p. xi.

28 Sanders, ‘377 and the Unnatural Afterlife of British Colonialism in Asia’, p. 48.

29 Shivananda Khan, ‘Culture, Sexualities and Identities’, Journal of Homosexuality, 40.3-4 (2001), p. 105.

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Highlighting these histories might then be of little use and little consolation to actual individuals on the ground in India. But such pasts can be put to important use on the other side of the world, in Britain. This is where the idea of ‘decolonising’ curriculums comes into play. Colonialism isn’t merely a set of historical systems and structures. The term necessarily implies the belief that certain groups of people are inherently superior to others, as exhibited by the British Empire’s regulation of gender and sexuality in its colonies. “Decolonising” a curriculum, therefore, isn’t simply about including colonial histories within it. On a deeper level, its purpose is to clearly and explicitly challenge implicitly held remnants of this colonial belief. Which is why exposing the British to narratives like this one are important. This history of colonial suppression of gender and sexuality is not aimed at shaming modern Britons for their imperial past. In fact, it’s not about Britons at all.

Rather, it’s aimed at changing British perceptions of other peoples, countering the colonial assumption that people of colour are inherently “backward” or morally inferior by throwing light on Britain’s own role in perpetuating regressive injustices. And by pointing the finger not just at colonial consequences, but also towards pre-colonial histories of diversity, we might be a step closer to recovering what has since been lost.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Agoramoorthy, Govindasamy and Minna J. Hsu, ‘Living on the Societal Edge: India’s Transgender Realities’, Journal of Religion and Health, 54.4 (2015), pp. 1451-1459.

Agrawal, Akanssha, ‘India’s New Transgender Bill and its Discontents’, Oxford Human Rights Hub, 27 January 2019, < https://ohrh.law.ox.ac.uk/indias-new-transgender-bill-and-its-discontents/> [accessed 26 April 2019].

Bhatia, Gautam, ‘The Rajya Sabha Must Amend the Transgender Persons Bill’, Hindustan Times, 5 January 2019, <https://www.hindustantimes.com/analysis/the-rajya-sabha-must-amend-the-transgenderpersons-bill/story-WEyPFztPVABpfaQyDYBt5I.html> [accessed 26 April 2019].

Faucette, Judith Avory, ‘Human Rights in Context: The Lessons of Section 377 Challenges for Western Gay Rights Legal Reformers in the Developing World’, The Journal of Gender, Race, and Justice, 13.2 (2010), pp. 413-439.

Foucault, Michel, The History of Sexuality, vol. 1: An Introduction, trans. by Robert Hurley (New York: Pantheon Books, 1978).

Gyatso, Janet, ‘One Plus One Makes Three: Buddhist Gender, Monasticism, and the Law of the NonExcluded Middle’, History of Religions, 43.2 (2003), pp. 89-115.

Human Rights Watch: Alok Gupta, The Alien Legacy: The Origins of “Sodomy” Laws in British Colonialism (New York: Human Rights Watch, 2008).

‘India Court Legalises Gay Sex in Landmark Ruling’, BBC, 6 September 2018, <https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-45429664> [accessed 25 April 2019].

International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association: Aengus Carroll and Lucas Ramón Mendos, State-Sponsored Homophobia 2017: A world survey of sexual orientation laws: criminalisation, protection and recognition (Geneva: ILGA, 2017).

International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association: Zhan Chian, Sandra Duffy and Matilda González Gil, Trans Legal Mapping Report 2017: Recognition Before the Law (Geneva: ILGA, 2017).

Khan, Shivananda, ‘Culture, Sexualities and Identities’, Journal of Homosexuality, 40.3-4 (2001), pp. 99115.

Khatri, Sapna, ‘Hijras: The 21st Century Untouchables’, Washington University Global Studies Law Review, 16.2 (2017), pp. 387-410.

Lingis, Alphonso, ‘Khajuraho’, Soundings: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 62.1 (1979), pp. 52-69.

Nagarajan, Rema, ‘First Count of Third Gender in Census: 4.9 Lakh’, The Times of India, 30 May 2014, <https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/First-count-of-third-gender-in-census-4-9lakh/articleshow/35741613.cms> [accessed 25 April 2019].

Nanda, Serena, Neither Man nor Woman: The Hijras of India (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing Company, 1999).

Nussbaum, Martha C., ‘Disgust or Equality? Sexual Orientation and Indian Law’, Journal of Indian Law and Society, 6.1 (2014), pp. 1-24.

Pattanaik, Devdutt, The Man Who Was a Woman and Other Queer Tales from Hindu Lore (New York: Harrington Park Press, 2002).

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Puri, Jyoti, ‘Concerning Kamasutras: Challenging Narratives of History and Sexuality’, Signs, 27.3 (2002), pp. 603-639.

Sahu, Manjeet Kumar, ‘Case Comment on National Legal Services Authority v. Union of India & Others (Air 2014 Sc 1863): A Ray of Hope for the LGBT Community’, BRICS Law Journal, 3.2 (2016), pp. 164-175.

Sanders, Douglas E., ‘377 and the Unnatural Afterlife of British Colonialism in Asia’, Asian Journal of Comparative Law, 4.1 (2009), pp. 1-49.

‘SC Decriminalises Section 377: What the Court Said’, The Times of India, 6 September 2018, <https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/sc-decriminalises-section-377-what-the-courtsaid/articleshow/65698005.cms> [accessed 25 April 2019].

Sharma, Kapil, ‘Destabilizing Section 377: An Indological Approach to Gender and Sexuality’, Postcolonial Interventions, 2.1 (2017), pp. 138-149.

Thadani, Gita, Sakhiyani: Lesbian Desire in Ancient and Modern India (London: Bloomsbury, 1996, repr.

2016).

Vanita, Ruth (ed.), Queering India: Same-Sex Love and Eroticism in Indian Culture and Society (New York and London: Routledge, 2002).

Vanita, Ruth and Saleem Kidwai (eds.), Same-Sex Love in India: Readings from Literature and History (New York: Palgrave, 2000).

Zwilling, Leonard and Michael J. Sweet, ‘“Like a City Ablaze: The Third Sex and the Creation of Sexuality in Jain Religious Literature’, Journal of the History of Sexuality, 6.3 (1996), pp. 359-384.

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RUNNER-UP: SOUTH VIETNAMESE WOMEN: CAPITALISING ON COLONIALISM? 1920-1964

BY CLEMÉNTINE DUCASSE (UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, 3RD YEAR) Upon studying the history of Vietnam, perhaps one of the most striking observations that one may make is that the vast majority of scholarship concerns itself almost exclusively with warfare: indeed, modern Vietnamese history is often regarded through a masculine—often Caucasian—lens, the overwhelming majority of whom were soldiers. This may be, in part, attributed to the fact that much of our recent historical evidence derives from military records, French administrative policies and veteran’s testimonies.

A direct corollary of the established historiographical emphasis on masculine and military histories is that Vietnamese women have, more often than not, been portrayed as the victims of military violence or vehicles of soldiers’ gratification. In fact, indigenous women have been almost exclusively referenced only in relation to men. Nonetheless, in more recent historical works, the role of women as active participants in conflict primarily as soldiers for the Việt Minh – has also come to the fore. Vietnamese women, then, are often portrayed as conforming to one of two prescriptive and underdeveloped personas: that of the victim or of the soldier.

Despite the fact that, in the historiography of Vietnam, women have, at best, been segregated into two, narrow typecasts (at worst, they are overlooked entirely), it is also pertinent to recognise historic socio-political attitudes towards women. In particular one should acknowledge the relationship of the Vietnamese communist regime to women: the socio-cultural emancipation of women was deemed by the regime to be a threatening prospect, and the state subsequently sought to shroud the movement in controversy and taboo.

This contrasts with the impact that French colonialism had on Vietnamese society: the colonial state ultimately sought to undermine traditional Vietnamese socio-cultural norms, enabling Vietnamese women to radically redefine their place in society and subsequently seek emancipation. Of course, this statement does not condone the many immoralities and atrocities that colonial states often entail, but one must acknowledge that the impact of French colonialism on indigenous Vietnamese women was not exclusively detrimental.

This essay, then, concerns itself with the examination of the historical shifts in the lives of Vietnamese women, primarily between 1920 and 1964, examining the impact of differing, political regimes, urbanisation and the westernising impact of the modernity movement of the 1920s to 1964.

Women in urban areas, particularly in the south, started to convert from the roles prescribed by traditional Confucian society to a more westernised lifestyle, starting with the beginning of the modernity movement in the 1920s to the withdrawal of the French in 1964.

Vietnamese women had been subject to traditional, patriarchal, Confucian values stemming from Chinese cultural influence in the country, although in the south there persisted a matriarchal influence originating from earlier Vietnamese history. The confrontation between this society and French rule challenged norms and lead to the modernity movement of 1920-1930, in which women were both actor and subject. This quest for emancipation was not limited to intellectual spheres, but spread to women living in southern urban areas, both educated and not, who reshaped their identity and sought liberation through adopting western cultural references.

Part V

Since the Chinese invasion of Vietnam, the country had been dominated for over 1000 years, with a cultural impact that lasted far longer. Vietnam adopted aspects of Chinese culture such as ideograms, the mandarin system and Confucian values. Even after chasing off the invaders, the succeeding dynasties in Vietnam kept Confucianism as a state ideology and a moral code of behaviour, which influenced all of society.1 As in China, the place of women in society was regulated by Confucianism and its rule of the Four Virtues. The first was Cong: the love for work, such as sewing, cooking and baking for the benefit of the whole family. The second, Dung: good standing, being at ease and assured but not ostentatious. The third, Ngon: speaking with reservation, answering politely. The last was Hanh: behaving with dignity. In addition, women had to obey the rule of the Three Subordinations, Tam tòng: woman must obey her father before marriage, then her husband and finally her sons after her husband’s death. These values were at the heart of family dynamics in society: domestic violence, polygamy, a stepmother’s abuse towards her daughter-in-law etc. Arranged marriages were commonplace and widows were forbidden to remarry. This resulted in women playing a passive societal role, submitting to her husband and his family. Effectively a domestic slave, she was denied fulfilment. This was more common among the aristocracy than in the peasantry where women and men worked together in the fields. Nonetheless, aristocracy and urban areas were highly influenced by these Confucian values.

It is necessary, however, to make a geographical distinction. The north, centre and south of Vietnam were highly variable in terms of moral behaviours and attitudes. The Confucian influence was weaker in the south, where some matriarchal communities endured. Southern women were formed more by the culture of the past and ethnic groups situated in the mountains in the centre-west.2 The extent of matriarchal control varied across different peoples. The Mnong and the Koho retain this power structure to present day, the Churu and Raglai less so, though still maintaining significant matriarchal elements, though these are most visible in the Rhadés. These communities were untouched by Chinese, and therefore Confucian, influence owing to their remote mountain locations. Women held positions of authority in the domestic, political and religious spheres.

The linguistic similitude between the people of the lowland and those in the mountains, combined with similar types of accommodation indicates that at one time they formed one ethnicity. Moreover, Vietnamese myths and legends feature empowered women. One of the most famous legends in Vietnam is that of the Trung Sisters.3 Everyone, from all social classes, knew this story which symbolised the attitude of Vietnamese women to invasion. The story goes that around 40 AD, they fought the Chinese invaders and captured 65 fortresses, proclaiming themselves queens of Me-Linh. Several other female characters in Vietnamese history are quite famous, such as the Queen Linh Han, who embodied the wise and benevolent queen, contrasting with her husband’s conflict with the Cham.4 This was the context into which the French arrived. Confucian values dominated the society, but in the south less influenced by china, legends and memories of ancient ethnicities were part of the female mindset. As the scholar Nguyen Thanh Trung writes “The Vietnamese people were influenced by Chinese culture, while opposing it”, which applies to women as well.5 The clash resulting from the arrival of the French and Western culture raised questions for traditional society.

Intellectuals started to rethink the Vietnamese identity, and especially the role of women. The undermining of traditional society by the French allowed the Vietnamese to redefine the place of women. Women contributed to this intellectual movement whilst also being the subjects of it. The creation of this new generation of thinkers was due primarily to the introduction of the French transcription of Vietnamese language: the quốc ngữ. The language challenged the people’s psyche. The quốc ngữ was easier to learn as it used the Latin alphabet rather than Chinese ideograms. Learning written Vietnamese took a long time; scholars could spend their lives doing so.6 This democratisation of writings and therefore of readings, gave rise to a new generation of intellectuals and the proliferation of newspapers and journals. David Marr mentions a “cultural revolution”, a transition period during the years 1925-1935. In 1936, Hoang Dao, 1

Nguyen Thanh Trung, Vision de la femme dans la littérature du Sud-Vietnam, p.30 Ibid. p, 286 3 Ibid. p, 22 4 Ibid. p, 24.

5 Ibid. p, 21.

6 Nguyen Van ky, La société vietnamienne face à la modernité, p.61.

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member of Tu Luc Van Doan (the autonomous literary group), articulated a program with six points, including the recognition of women’s role in society.7 This group represented a new generation of journalists who were willing to shirk traditional values: filial piety, the submission of women, superstition etc. This new era brought new questions: What do we want for society? How do we want it to be ruled? Hoang Dao wrote about the struggle to find a Vietnamese identity, between Chinese and French, between individualism and familial values: “Ancient culture can only be found today in old books that are worshipped (less and less though) by the still famed and powerful partisans of the Middle Way. There is nothing like preserving the positive aspect of Chinese tradition in order to complement it with the bright side of French culture.”8 Thus, the question of women is rooted in the question of Modernity, which searches for a new path between traditional and western values.

This cultural revolution led to a surge of feminist magazines such as Phu nu Thoi dam, directed by a woman, and Dan ba moi (The Modern Woman).9 This journal addressed issues relevant to women: virginity, polygamy, relationships, and women’s rights. Family, women and individual were the main themes of these magazines, aiming to guide new generations, balancing family values with the ideology of the French school.

The journal Nam Phong, financed by the French administration and sympathetic to colonisation, published an article entitled “Women’s Rights” n°159, it boldly stated “The conservatives consider that the westernisation of material life, however limited, is already a terrible thing. Women wearing trousers and their hair parted on one side are accused of striking a blow to morality; individualism is considered as the fulfilment of loathsome desires. But we, the young, must not pay heed to that bigotry and we must forge ahead unflinchingly and forcefully. Thus, we enter with courage and determination the new broad and enlightened path of Western culture.”10 In Phu Nu Tan Van (The new woman’s magazine), published in Saigon between 1929-1934, women started to talk for themselves on the issues they faced. Nguyen Thi Kiem wrote many articles about women, raising awareness of domestic abuse. Moreover, in 1931, she held a conference entitled “ Elite Female Literature”.11 The total number of female teachers and students increased during that period, as well as the number of female journalists.

Literature, and many intellectual writers of the period, depicted women in an empowered way. The historian Nguyen Thanh Trung, argues that there existed a south Vietnamese literary tradition, historically less influenced by China and more by western liberalism, which depicted strong, spontaneous and enterprising women between 1858-1945. Ho Bieu chanh, a southern writer, depicted such characters. His protagonists were women. In Ke lam nguoi chiu (One committed the misdeed and the other suffers the consequences), a woman is married to a cheating man who uses her money for a sinful life. She leaves the household for Saigon, and seeks revenge through an affair with another man.12 Ho Bieu chanh wrote many stories of this kind, always emphasising women’s problems both with tradition and modernity.

7

Ibid. p.103.

Ibid. p. 104. “La culture ancienne ne se cantonne plus que dans de vieux bouquins adorés, mais de moins en moins, par les partisans de la “ voix du milieux” fort connus et encore puissants. Rien de mieux que de préserver l’aspect positif de la culture chinoise pour y greffer le bon coté de la culture française à titre de complément. Mais ce ne sont là que des illusions.”. “Les conservateurs considèrent que l’occidentalisation sur le plan matériel, aussi minime qu’elle soit, est déjà une chose terrible. Les femmes qui portent des pantalons blancs, et ont une raie sur le côté, sont accusées d’avoir détruit la morale; l’individualisme est considéré comme la satisfaction des désirs détestables. Mais nous, les jeunes, nous ne devons pas en tenir compte, nous continuons notre route sans hésitation, sans nous laisser faiblir. Ainsi, nous nous engageons avec le courage et la détermination dans la voie nouvelle large et pleine de lumière de la culture occidentale” 9 Ibid. p.109.

10 Ibid. p.112. “Autrefois les juristes considéraient la femme comme un être faible, l’opinion convenait aussi que sans l’homme la femme ne pouvait être autonome, comme si elle était dotée d’une capacité intellectuelle moins importante et d’une attitude incompatible avec les activités sociales, alors qu’aujourd’hui sur sa lancée, elle semble accaparer même la place de l’homme, elle veut ardemment se venger de l’homme qui l’a déconsidérée jusqu’alors.”

11 Thanh Trung, Vision de la femme, p. 229 12 Ibid. p.176.

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However, it was not only the intellectuals and educated women expressed their desire for emancipation. In urban areas modern Vietnamese women appeared, visible in public. Using westernised cultural references and attitudes, she portrayed her desire to be rid of Confucian values. Tran Van Tung in his book meant to educate the French on Vietnam in 1957, wrote “In big cities, the woman has changed. She doesn’t look like her sisters of yore and of the countryside. She has undergone a physical and moral transformation. She has left her “gilded cage”. You find her in concert halls, in celebrations and ceremonies, even sometimes in literary and philosophical parlours. She has had her hair cropped and curled. She has whitened her teeth. She wears trendy designer clothes and high-heeled shoes; her handbags are imported from Europe. She walks along the streets beside man, laughing and chatting freely. She rides bikes, drives cars, steers canoes. She participates in beauty and elegance contests. She practises sports and often ends up a victor in ping-pong, tennis, swimming or running competitions. In short, she does everything the European woman does and she excels at it.”13 Focusing on her appearance, the Vietnamese woman changed, becoming more westernised. In Vietnam, it had once been popular for women to sport black teeth. They used to colour their teeth in this way in order for them to differentiate themselves from animals. They called the white teeth “dog teeth”. When women stopped doing this, they where reproached for trying “to please the white men”. One girl testified, “I am afraid of my mother who will call me prostitute”.14 Hairstyles changed too. Women curled their straight hair in the fifties like western women did. They also abandoned the Yem, the traditional top—naked in the back, which supported the breasts and enabled them to develop according to Chinese beauty standards—in favour of western bras.15 With the introduction of swimming pools, women wore swimsuits. For peasant women who did not hesitate to pull up their pants to their hips in paddy fields, and were used to a certain degree of nakedness, this was not too unusual. For women who used to be hidden in the house and in larger clothes however, this was highly daring. Clothing became tighter too. The traditional Vietnamese dress is symbolic of the evolution of the Vietnamese woman. Women used to wear the Ao Yem, but the Chinese thought this style too revealing, and so they wore wider dresses known Ao Ngu. In 1920, a Vietnamese tailor called Lemur, inspired by twenties’ French fashion, designed the ‘Ao Lemur’ with serrated sleeves. However, this was not massively successful as it was thought to be too western. Following this, in 1950-1960, Tran Kim from Thiet Lap Tailors and Dung from Dung Tailors created the Ao Dai, a tighter garment with shorter pants. A high collar was added, giving an image of aristocracy and Asian style. These clothes were meant to be worn by the upper classes because it was not suitable to work in the fields.16 It became highly popular, however, the communists banned the Ao Dai, judging it too western. The development of these garments is highly symbolic of how women, using western reference, sought to resist traditional Confucian society, whilst keeping an original Asian identity (see pictures of Southern-Vietnamese women in the appendix).

Women, through their westernised activities, reinforced their newfound agency. Girls from the aristocracy were forbidden from riding bicycles until the 1960s, but bolder women did it anyways, and even drove motorbikes. A female Philosophy student in Hué, Thai, said she preferred to ride her Velosolex and drive through the cities instead of staying home, and listening to her grandmother’s advice on how to sew and embroider. Young people were attracted to the modern lifestyle. Thai said she preferred to listen to Western genres of music over traditional Hue singing, such as Françoise Hardy or Sylvie Vartan, and with her friends

13

Tran Van Tung, Viet-Nam les hommes d’“au-delà du sud”, p, 75, trans, C. Ducasse « dans les grandes villes, la femme a changé. Elle ne ressemble plus à ses sœurs de la campagne et à ses ainées d’hier. Physiquement et moralement, elle s’est métamorphosée. Elle a quitté sa « cage d’or ». On la rencontre dans les salles de spectacles, dans les fêtes et cérémonies, parfois même dans les salons littéraires et philosophiques. Elle a coupé ses longs cheveux, les a frisés. Elle ablanchi ses dents. Elle porte des vêtements de coupe,moderne et des souliers à hauts talons ; ses sacs sont importés d’Europe. Elle se promène dans les rues à côté de l’homme en bavardant et riant librement. Elle monte à bicyclette, pilote l’automobile, manœuvre la périssoire. Elle participe à des concours de beauté et d’élégance. Elle pratique el sport, sort souvent victorieuse de « matches » de ping-pong, de tennis , de natation, ou de course de mille mètres. En un mot, elle fait tout ce que fait la femme européenne et elle y réussit fort bien.

14 Van ky, La société vietnamienne, p.235 15 Ibid. p,252 16 Ibid. p, 249.

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watched Western movies at cinemas.17 Women started to go out and dance salsa, valse, rumba and fox trot.

In the 1930s, many bars and clubs opened and dance lessons became popular.18 Sport, especially tennis, was popular among women. Mme Hoang Xuan Han was quoted in the feminist journal Ngay nayp, as a female Vietnamese pioneer.19 In 1932 the Women Tennis Cup was held in Saigon.20 Both physical and behavioural changes, then, prompted in part by the western influence, challenged traditional Vietnamese society. When the French arrived, they triggered a questioning of Confucian society and its norms. This crisis led to an intellectual movement called Modernity, which tried to find a path between Chinese and Western Influences.

This naturally called into question the place of women in society, and intellectuals advocated for their emancipation. Not only intellectuals, but also women from urban areas used elements of western culture to seek their own emancipation. Focusing on the women of south Vietnam, this image of a passive and submissive woman is altered. If colonialism did not bring emancipation to Vietnamese women, women used colonialism as a tool to liberate themselves.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Nguyen Thanh Trung, Vision de la femme dans la littérature du Sud-Vietnam de 1858-1945, (L’harmattan, 2012) Nguyen Van Ky, La société vietnamienne face à la modernité, (L’harmattan, 1995) Nguyen Huong Thi Diu, Eve of Destruction A Social History of Vietnam’s Royal City, 1957 – 1967, (Washington, 2017) Tran Van Tung, Viet-Nam les hommes d’au-delà du sud (Edition de la Baconnière, 1957)

17

Nguyen Huong Thi Diu, Eve of Destruction A Social History of Vietnam’s Royal City, p. 82.

Van ky, La société vietnamienne, p.296.

19 Ibid., p.226.

20 Thanh Trung, Vision de la femme, p. 235.

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THE ANNUAL DUHS WINTER BALL – LUMLEY CASTLE, 2018

BY KATIE SCOWN, DUHS SOCIAL SECRETARY 2018/19 The annual History Society Winter Ball is another example of the successes enjoyed by the DUHS and its members this year. With 250 guests in attendance, and an abundance of mead spilt over the course of the evening, it was certainly a night that will be fondly remembered by everyone who attended!

The Ball took place at Lumley Castle, a medieval structure seeped in County Durham’s history – certainly a fitting venue for this year’s DUHS Winter festivities. Indeed, the site is said to be one of the regions most haunted buildings, and its timeworn stone walls certainly gave our students a glimpse into Elizabethan life at the castle.

Upon arrival, guests were greeted by bagpipe players and enjoyed a champagne reception. We were then ushered into the Great Hall by the lords and ladies of the night, where we feasted on a five course Elizabethan banquet – the authenticity of the night was only added to by the fact that we were advised to eat with only our hands in true Tudor style! Furthermore, the dinner was not short of entertainment; the combination of mead, wine, and the lords and ladies singing and narrating tales of love, witchcraft and ghostly encounters made the banquet a great (and certainly memorable) experience for all. Indeed, the highlight of the entertainments was the banquets interactive elements. All guests were encouraged to link arms and sing: Heigh ho, A feasting we go, Bring on the next flowing bowl.

Bravo!

Not only was this song stuck in my head for weeks after, but it really gave guests the chance to immerse themselves in the energised and often

rowdy spirit of an Elizabethan social occasion – the Tudors knew how to celebrate in style!

Once the dinner was over, our guests moved into the depths of the dungeons for a disco. This dimlylit room and its stone walls were faintly reminiscent of a night out at Jimmy Allen’s, only this room’s past was far darker. Nonetheless, the peculiar sensation of partying in a space imbued in such a heavy historical past was soon erased by the DJ after he played Robbie William’s ‘Angels’ – a hit with everyone. Attendees danced the night away until the coaches arrived and transported them back to the present day, arriving back in Durham in the early hours of the morning.

Organising such a staple of the DUHS social calendar was not short for hiccups, but I found it to be such a rewarding experience. Watching the night unfold and to have received such amazing feedback from the attendees was a real privilege.

I would like to say a huge ‘thank-you’ to all of the exec for helping me organise the night, from Ashley (our treasurer) for helping me with all of the financial technicalities, to Kristina (our President) who sat with me for hours in order to help me count the ticket money and formulate a seating plan. Lastly, I would like to thank everybody who attended and made the evening one to remember! Planning the Ball was the highlight of my role as Social Secretary, and I can’t wait to see how next year’s exec plan the next one!

Katie Scown Social Secretary 2018/19

The Annual DUHS Winter Ball â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Lumley Castle 2018 | Katie Scown

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Part V

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The Annual DUHS Winter Ball â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Lumley Castle 2018 | Katie Scown

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Part V

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The DUHS Annual Winter Ball â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Lumley Castle 2018

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Part V

Photographs courtesy of Jessica Wang Photography (Facebook: jpwangphotography)

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ONE YEAR IN DURHAM – LOOKING BACK

BY DR. HELEN ROCHE

Two historians "re-enacting" some kind of battle at Clifford's Tower, York (Photograph courtesy of Dr. Helen Roche)

Dr Helen Roche joined the History Department as an Assistant Professor in Modern European Cultural History back in October 2018, moving from a post in Cambridge. Her research interests include Austrian and German history (particularly from the nineteenth-century onwards), National Socialism and Italian Fascism, and the significance of childhood, education and memory.

Here, she reflects on her return to Durham – a city in which she spent much of her early childhood – and on her first year of research and teaching in the department, including her upcoming book: The Third Reich’s Elite Schools: A History of the Napolas (Oxford University Press).

Joining the History Department at Durham has been a particularly interesting experience for me because my own father, Jerome Roche, taught in the Music Department in Durham for his entire career, and so my early childhood until the age of eight was spent in the city. I still have fond memories of being brought into the Music Department as a five- or six-year-old and helping the secretaries prepare mail-shots, even becoming a sort of departmental mascot at times, or being taken to the Norman Chapel in Castle, where my father habitually directed liturgical reconstructions

of Tridentine Vespers with a small group of dedicated singers. This meant that returning to Durham resembled a form of homecoming as well as a new start; my life seemed to have come full circle in a pleasantly coincidental way – even down to the fact that my office is currently situated in the overflow Music building, rather than in the History Department proper.

When I arrived in Durham last September, I was convinced that this was my dream job, and none of my experiences since then have disabused me of

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One Year in Durham – Looking Back | Dr. Helen Roche

that opinion. I feel extraordinarily fortunate to be surrounded by a group of dedicated, brilliant and above all lovely colleagues, many of whom have also become good friends, and I have been very favourably impressed by the healthy research culture in the Department – long may it continue!

(Where there are niggles, these generally seem to be caused by top-down university or even government policies, rather than departmental initiatives.) I’ve had plenty of time to work on the book which I’m currently finishing (The Third Reich’s Elite Schools: A History of the Napolas, forthcoming with Oxford University Press), and I’ve also been able to get involved with a great deal of music here, which is my main non-academic activity – including historically informed performance on the baroque violin and viola (lots of Bach Cantatas!), and singing with Castle Chapel Choir and the Cathedral Consort.

under Nazism, rather than the type of top-down political history, fixated on the rise of the Nazi Party and Hitler and his henchmen, which seems to be de rigueur when studying the Third Reich at school. Next year, I also get to offer a Conversations strand, which I’ve entitled ‘Babylon, Cabaret, Glitter and Doom?

Demythologising the Weimar Republic’, so I’m very much looking forward to getting to grips with that in Michaelmas 2019.

In general, I’ve been extremely impressed with the calibre of the students whom I’ve been lucky enough to teach this year, and their willingness to engage with the material which we’ve been discussing, including bringing along original sources to seminars. Perhaps the most fun we had last term was in the seminar on ‘Nazi Germany as seen from abroad’, where, among other things, we discussed the Looney Tunes 1942 propaganda cartoon ‘The Ducktators’ (a very significant audiovisual source!), and what it revealed about U.S. attitudes to the Nazis and the Allies. It’s certainly well worth a watch if you haven’t yet seen it...

All in all, then, it’s been a fantastic first year of teaching, and I’m definitely looking forward to the next!

One of the most exciting things about coming to Durham has been the opportunity to design and teach entire courses from scratch, something which one rarely got the chance to do at Cambridge, where I taught previously. This year, I devised a second-year course on ‘The Nazi Dictatorship: Culture and Society’, focusing on bottom-up social and cultural history and the texture of everyday life

DR. HELEN ROCHE, ASSISTANT PROFESSOR IN MODERN EUROPEAN CULTURAL HISTORY

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When staff get research leave, they take a break from teaching as well as departmental administration. But what do we actually do with our leave? Well, it depends what projects we have on the go, and what stages we’re at. In my own case, I’m not currently writing a book or planning a big collaborative project, so this academic year I’ve been focusing on writing journal articles.

A YEAR OF RESEARCH LEAVE

These articles have come directly out of my Special Subject teaching on the end of Roman Gaul, which I’ve been exploring with students since 2014. They also come from my interests in landscape history, and how people over time have perceived the natural world around them.

These days the environment, and humanity’s relationship with it, is rarely far from the headlines. We’re concerned about climate change, about over-exploitation of resources, about the destruction of ecosystems.

BY DR. JOHN-HENRY CLAY

Dr John-Henry Clay is an assistant Professor of Early Medieval History here in Durham; he specialises in Anglo-Saxon and Frankish history. Informed by his background in Archaeology, John focuses on religious and cultural identity, landscape perception, and the transition from the Roman Empire to the early medieval period in Europe. Although he’s published several pieces of non-fiction, academic work, John is also a published historical novelist, having penned The Lion and the Lamb (London, 2013) and At the Ruin of the World (London, 2015).

Here, John reflects on the past year that he has spent on research leave, discussing his time researching and writing academic journal articles on landscape history in Roman Gaul, with a particular focus on how perceptions of the natural environment changed as the Roman Empire began to fall into decline.

My current articles combine these issues, looking at how people in the past understood the natural world, in particular the non-settled, ‘wilderness’ parts of it. What I’ve found has surprised me. In our modern western culture we tend to romanticise the wilderness, viewing it as something delicate and vulnerable we must protect, or as a rugged playground for trekking or kayaking adventures.

Compared to us, ancient Romans had a raw and brutal relationship with untamed nature. In their eyes the wilderness was the antithesis of civilisation. They saw it as something to fear and avoid, and, if possible, to destroy and replace. As far as they were concerned, the only people who lived anywhere near the wilderness, whether in the vast deserts of Arabia and Africa or in the endless deciduous forests of northern Europe, were the lowest of barbarians. In fact, they were hardly even ‘people’ at all.

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So, when, in the late Roman empire, some devout Christian started to seek out the wilderness deliberately, to live in the desert or on remote islands as hermits, this was an affront to the very essence of ‘civilisation’. What sort of madman would choose to abandon the comforts of towns, country villas, baths, and theatres to live in the barbaric wilderness?

became less obvious. Eventually the western empire itself collapsed. But monasticism survived. Indeed, it thrived.

So, this year I’ve been exploring how educated Romans in the final century of the western empire, whether Christian monks or educated members of the élite, changed their perceptions of the natural world as the old classical order broke down. One thing is clear: things didn’t change overnight, and they weren’t straightforward. Even the most devout monks had a love-hate relationship with the wilderness.

On the one hand they glorified it as a solitary place to encounter God and purify one’s spirit.

On the other hand, they tried to ‘tame’ it by building monasteries and planting crops, civilising it in their own way.

Christianity might have remained a weird eastern sect, and its ‘desert tradition’ might have fizzled out. But when Christianity became an official state religion in the early fourth century, it spread rapidly — along with the new-fangled ‘monasticism’. Within a hundred years, communities of monks were popping up in almost every wild corner of the empire, from the deserts of Syria to the forests of the Jura Mountains and the islands of the Atlantic fringe.

The lesson, I think, is twofold. First, we all bear the legacy of our cultural heritage, no matter how hard we try to break away from it. Second, human perceptions of the ‘natural world’ (however we define that tricky term) have always evolved and shifted over time — and our own perceptions of nature today are no different.

At the same time, the western empire started to crumble. The old frontiers disintegrated, barbarians settled deep within the provinces of Britain, Gaul, Italy, Spain, and Africa, and the barriers between ‘us’ and ‘them’ — between ‘civilisation’ and ‘wilderness’ — suddenly

DR. JOHN-HENRY CLAY, ASSISTANT PROFESSOR IN EARLY MEDIEVAL HISTORY The Jura Mountains along the Franco-Swiss border (Photograph courtesy of Dr. John-Henry Clay, 2018)

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THE DUHS EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE AND JOURNAL TEAM, 2018-19 EXECUTIVE: KRISTINA NOVAKOVICH – DUHS President: Kristina was a member of Trevelyan College. She is due to begin an MPhil in American History at the University of Cambridge, with a focus on twentiethcentury Native American history.

ROSIE LEEMING – Vice-President: Rosie is a second-year History student, and a member of St. Chad’s College.

SABRINA STEUER – Secretary: Sabrina was a member of St. Cuthbert’s Society. She is now based in London, where she is on the Civil Service Fast Stream, specialising in Human Resources.

ASHLEY CASTELINO – Treasurer: Ashley was a member of St. Aidan’s College.

KATIE SCOWN – Social Secretary: Katie was a member of Trevelyan College. She is currently taking a gap year and, once she has completed an internship in the Civil Service, intends to study for an MA in International History.

JOE BANFIELD – Publicity Officer: Joe was a member of St. Cuthbert’s Society. He is currently developing a communications strategy at a charity based in the 800-year-old Rose Castle in Cumbria. The Rose Castle Foundation is transforming the former residence of the bishops of Carlisle into a centre for reconciling conflict.

ESMÉ GRAY – Editor-In-Chief: Esmé is going into her third year of studies and is currently a member of St. John’s College. She is very excited to continue her involvement in DUHS in the 2019/2020 academic year as the Secretary to the Society.

TANIA CHAKRABORTI – Conference Coordinator: Tania was a member of the College of St. Hild and St. Bede. She is now about to embark on an MA in Creative Writing and Publishing at City University. She is also working as a Contract Editor for Reuters in London.

JOURNAL TEAM: JOE BEADEN: Joe is a second-year student and a member of Collingwood College.

MARLO AVIDON: Marlo is a first-year student and a member of St. Cuthbert’s Society.

MILES CALLAGHAN: Miles is a second-year student and a member of Trevelyan College.

EMMA CHAI: Emma is a first-year student and a member of St. John’s College.

MAX DAVIES: Max is a first-year student and a member of St. Aidan’s College.

LYNDSEY ENGLAND: Lyndsey is a second-year student and a member of the College of St. Hild and St. Bede.

SARAH IBBERSON: Sarah is a third-year student and a member of St. Cuthbert’s Society.

SASHA PUTT: Sasha is a second-year student and a member of Grey College.

FREDDIE VINT: Freddie is a second-year student and a member of Trevelyan College.

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The History Society is a society that offers both social and academic events to its members, ranging from academic talks to themed socials and from the annual academic conference to the society’s academic journal. We have extensive links with the History Department and collaborate with them annually to produce a Freshers’ Handbook and events during Freshers’ week for new students. Our social events include an annual Elizabethan banquet and ball at Lumley Castle, bar crawls, and historical day-trips.

The main focus of our academic side is our series of guest lectures that given by historians from both Durham and other universities.

The themes of these talks vary year-on-year, but our secretary has, this year, decided to focus on the theme of ‘decolonising the curriculum’, exposing the society’s members to a range of cultures and histories that are often overlooked by the Western curriculum. Next year’s talks will revolve around the history of the North East of England, giving members an insight into the historical significance of the region where we are fortunate to study and, indeed, live.

The society’s Annual General Meeting is held every June to elect a new executive committee – all members are encouraged to attend and run for positions should they wish to. Please get in touch for more information about roles and election proceedings.

Society Aims: (i) To promote the subject of History to Durham University students. (ii) To provide a medium through which History students and those interested in History can interact and socialise. (iii) To organise trips and events to increase interest in History and to provide an enjoyable atmosphere in which those interested in the subject, at any level, can interact. (iv) To hold talks by distinguished guest speakers to raise awareness, increase knowledge and gain interest about different areas of history. (v) To produce an annual journal for the same purpose as point (vi) To supplement the academic degree programme with a more leisurely approach to History. (vii) To organize a Conference for the benefit of society members. (viii) Offer support for fresher students during the first few weeks of university.

THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE 2019/20:

THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE 2018/19:

President: Tom Henderson Secretary: Esmé Gray Treasurer: Eloise Sinclair Publicity Officer: Aisha Hussain Programme Coordinators: David Manchester & Toby Donegan-Cross Social Secretaries: Oscar Duffy & Chloe Thomas Conference Coordinator: Marlo Avidon Journal Editors: Joseph Beaden & Alex Hibberts

President: Kristina Novakovic Vice-President: Rosie Leeming Secretary: Sabrina Steuer Treasurer: Ashley Castelino Publicity Officer: Joe Banfield Social Secretary: Katie Scown Conference Coordinator: Tania Chakraborti Journal Editor: Esmé Gray

Like us on Facebook at: Durham University History Society Email us at: history.society@durham.ac.uk MEMBERSHIP We warmly welcome new members, who can sign up to the society at the freshers’ fair in October or via the Durham Students’ Union Website.

4 year student membership: £20 1 year membership: £10 Annual non-student membership: £10 THE DUHS JOURNAL The DUHS Journal is published annually at the end of every academic year. The Journal Committee considers articles written by members of the society, and encourage students to email applications to the History Society at: history.society@durham.ac.uk.

Alternatively, calls for papers are issued by the society every year, a time during which the journal specifically requests students send the society pieces to be published.

JOURNAL TEAM 2018/19: Esmé Gray (Chief Editor), Joseph Beaden (Deputy Editor), Sasha Putt, Emma Chai, Fred Vint, Miles Callaghan, Marlo Avidon, Lyndsey England, Sarah Ibberson, Max Davies.

The journal team would like to express sincere gratitude to all of the photographers who contributed photographs to the journal. In particular: Adrian Baev (who can be found at: www.baev.com), Jessica Wang and Michael Crilly. We would also like to extend a huge ‘thank you’ to Joe Mallon, who kindly allowed us to use his Grandfather’s fantastic photograph of Durham from the early 1900s – it is truly a great privilege to view Durham through the lens of the past this way, and to be able to display this piece on the front cover.

Statements in the Journal reflect the views of the authors, and not necessarily those of the editorial team or the publishers. We have made every effort to establish copyright of illustrations, but we would be pleased to correct any errors of attribution if you contact us directly.

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