The Shoardian Issue V Winter 2012
Produced by MGS History Students
THE REVOLUTIONARY ISSUE
THE REVOLUTIONARY ISSUE
The Shoardian A product of the Manchester Grammar School.
Editor: Ed Green Deputy Editors: Huw Spencer and Hugh Williamson Staff: Mr Ashley Hern and Mr Neil Smith Contributors: Adam Rigby Ashley Hern Harrison Edmonds Chris Hobson Angus Muir Ed Green Neil Smith Dougie Loynes Rahul Ravi Jake Dyble Will Rooney, Rob Gourley Sam Brunt
The Shoardian, named in honour of the legendary history teacher Mr Shoard, is an (almost) entirely student written and student produced journal. If you would like to write for the next edition, please contact the editor (greeed-y06). Many thanks to all those who wrote articles for this edition.
FROM THE EDITOR
H
ello again, and welcome to The Shoardian. Now in its fifth edition, and following on from the totally accidental American themed magazine we had last time, the focus this term is on revolutions. Historical revolutions are an example of a strange phenomenon: events are labelled a ‘revolution’ and yet the word means different things to different people. Was the French Revolution in 1789 a true revolution when the country had returned to autocracy in just over a decade? What about social revolutions? Can the industrial revolution be called a ‘revolution’? Are there any true revolutions at all? Are there, in fact periods of time not considered to be revolutionary, which should be? Despite these semantic problems, revolutions appeal to our instincts as historians perhaps because they are indicative of such fundamental change. Why did Rome fall? How did Napoleon’s empire crumble in less than two decades? I realise that I have asked a lot of questions and yet provided no answers. For them you should find your way into the journal proper, where we have articles from a wealth of students on topics as diverse as the Japanese restoration, the Indian break for freedom and some of the Our interviewees this edition are well worth a read. Dr Suzannah Lipscomb is a senior lecturer of history at the New College of Humanities, and is an expert in Henry VIII. Dr Kate Cushing of the University of Keele got a slightly unexpected mix of questions: the Crusades and historical theory.
All that remains for me to say is welcome, and to encourage you to join the (historical) revolution.
Ed Green
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From the Editor
Interview Section II Dr Kathleen Cushing talks about Popes Gregory and Urban, as well as giving her take on post-modernism
4 The Meiji Restoration Harrison Edmonds chronicles the period of modernisation in Japan that led to her dominance in the East
8 Heroes of Indian Independence Rahul Ravi looks at the history of the Indian freedom movement, beyond its most famous exponent.
12 The Neolithic Revolution Adam Rigby looks at the period of the Neoliths and asks: was it really that different?
16 The Forgotten Revolutionary Ed Green looks beyond Garibaldi to discover the intellectual of the Italian nationalist movement in the 1840s .
36 On Revolution: A Review Jake Dyble examines the theories of the social scientist Hannah Arendt and her theories on revolution
40 The Feudal Revolution Mr Hern looks at the historiography of the ‘feudal revolution’ in the 11th century
44 The French Revolution & the Birth of Napoleon Angus Muir comments on the period after 1789 and asks whether Napoleon was inevitable
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The Peasants' Revolt Will Rooney, Rob Gourley and Sam Brunt examine the Peasants’ Revolt in 1318
The Fall of the Republic: One Man’s Revolution? Chris Hobson examines the impact of Julius Caesar on Roman politics.
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24 Interview Section Dr Suzannah Lipscomb met The Shoardian and shared her views on history and universities
28 Review Section The world of historical literature is examined critically by members of the history department and sixth formers
1848: German Change? Ed Green looks at the failed revolutions in Germany and seeks to show their importance
56 Obituary The Shoardian mourns the passing of the great Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm with an overview of his academic life
31 Comment: Star Wars and the Nazis Dougie Loynes demonstrates the similarities between the films and the facts 3
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The Meiji Restoration
Harrison Edmonds examines the events that led to the restoration of the Japanese monarchy in the late 19th century and the enormous changes that made the country a world power
THE MEIJI RESTORATION
I
n 1853 Japan was a feudal, agricultural nation that was seen by the Western powers as another Asian country ripe to be exploited. But by 1912 it had modernised and established itself as a colonial power in South- East Asia in a remarkab le ‘bl ood le ss revolution’, and had become a world power by the 1930’s.
Feudal Japan had a government system unlike any other in the world. At the top of the pyramid was the Emperor, the divine head of state of Japan who held his court in the capital Kyoto. Below the Emperor stood the Shogun, the Commander-in- Chief of Japan’s armed forces. The Japanese Lords (or Daimyo) answered to the Shogun, and ruled over their territories (or domains) with the lesser noblemen, or the Samurai class. In a Confucian twist on the feudal system, peasants were rated higher than merchants, as farmers were productive members of society, according to Confucius’ teachings. Although the Emperor appointed the Shogun Winter 2012 │ The Shoardian
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The Meiji Restoration
and was the head of state, real power lay with the Shogun and his family, as the daimyo and their armies answered to him. In the 1500s the Sengoku Jidai, or ‘Warring States Period’, began as the Asikaga Shogun lost the respect of the more powerful clans and their daimyo began fighting amongst themselves. Trade with China also brought wealth into Japan, making merchants richer, upsetting the delicate feudal system of old. The warfare ended in 1600 at the Battle of Sekigahara, where Tokugawa Ieyasu, became the leading daimyo (NB: the family name is Tokugawa, Ieyasu was his first name) and in 1603 the Emperor made him Shogun. It was his grandson, Tokugawa Iemitsu, who passed a series of laws in 1633, known as the ‘Sakoku Policy’ which created a period of isolation that would not end until 1868. This was very different to the American isolationism during the 1930s, as the Japanese forbade any foreigner to enter Japan, or any Japanese to leave, on pain of death. The only foreigners allowed in were the Dutch, who were restricted to two trading posts in Dejima and Nagasaki. The main reason for the ban on foreigners was the threat posed by Christian missionaries, whose actions in Japan were feared to upset the Buddhist social system and the power of the daimyo. This all changed in 1853, when the American Commodore Matthew Perry sailed into Edo Harbour (modern Tokyo) and threatened to bombard the city with his warships, which became known as the ‘Black Ships’, after the Japanese first refused to trade. This ostentatious show of power allowed the commodore to force the Shogun Tokugawa Ieyoshi to sign the ‘Treaty of Peace and Amity’ between Japan and the USA in 1854, which would allow Americans to trade with Japan . Later that year, Great Britain signed the Anglo-Japanese Friendship Treaty, followed by other nations such as Russia. These treaties, which favoured the foreigners to an unfair degree, were known as the unequal treaties, and the Japanese viewed themselves as little more than an occupied nation. After all, they had seen what had happened across the sea in China when British merchants and soldiers had forced the Chinese authorities to legalise opium, 5
Commodore Matthew Perry Forced Japan to trade with the US
creating a nation of addicts and bringing the economy to a halt. Naturally, the Japanese felt that the Shogun had signed away their sovereignty, after all, he had opened the ports to the Westerners; he had signed the Treaty of Peace and Amity. This anti-shogun, anti-foreigner mood across the nation led to a xenophobic movement with the tagline ‘Revere the Emperor, Expel the Barbarians’. The Satsuma and Choshu domains, whose daimyo were staunch anti-shogunate sent troops to Kyoto in June 1862 to convince the Emperor to stand against Tokugawa and in March 1863 the Emperor Komei ordered the expulsion of all ‘barbarians’. This was a profound change in Japanese politics, as the Emperor had taken an active role in government for the first time and had actually defied the shogun. The radical Choshu also pushed through a set of reforms that abolished the traditional Sankin Kotai system in October 1862. The system had been used by the Tokugawa since 1635 and required the daimyo to live periodically in Edo; the seat of the shogun’s power, and to pay for their wives and heirs to live there, under the watchful eye of the Shogun. This system had kept the daimyo subservient as their wives and children always at risk if they rebelled against him. Winter 2012 │ The Shoardian
The Meiji Restoration
become Prime Minister (with Daimyo Advisors). This was a result that pleased most of the court, who did not want to break with tradition too quickly, but was insufferable for Saigo Takamori (a Satsuma general), a man who was seen as the ‘last true samurai’. He demanded that the Tokugawa clan’s land was stripped from them and that a provisional government with representatives from different domains should be created to replace the old system.
Needless to say this weakened the shogun’s grip on Japan. The discontent over foreigners came to a head when British trader Charles Lennox Richardson was killed in the Kyushu. The local Daimyo Shimazu Tadayoshi refused to pay the reparations of 25,000 pounds to the British and instead began shelling the Royal Navy fleet positioned nearby. The Choshu began shelling foreign shipping which led to foreign warships returning fire. Lawless samurai, or ‘ronin’ also killed foreign and shogunate officials. In 1865 the confrontation between the rebel daimyo and the Dutch, French and British was resolved bloodlessly, but the outright defiance of the Satsuma and Choshu to follow the Shogun’s policy on foreign trade was the first time in 300 years that the shogunate’s orders had not been followed. As tensions rose Choshu formed an alliance with the Satsuma, who were being supplied with weapons by the British and pledged to assist the other if they were attacked. In 1866, both the emperor and shogun passed away. The new Shogun Tokugawa Yoshinobou decided to reform the Japanese government to strengthen the shogunate’s rule. With the help of the French he modernised the armies of Japan and began to import American guns. However the new fifteen year old Emperor Meiji was under the thumb of the anti-shogunate faction and ordered the Choshu and Satsuma for the ‘slaughtering’ of the ‘treacherous’ shogun. Bloodshed was only stopped when a compromise was organised by the Tosa Daimyo; Tokugawa would step down as shogun, but keep his family’s lands and
On 5th January 1868, the Emperor Meiji declared his ‘restoration’ of full power, abolishing the title of shogun and confiscating his land.
Over time, the Meiji’s reforms saw the death of the Samurai class in Japan
Tokugawa stated ‘that he would not be bound by the proclamation of the Restoration’. As he travelled to Kyoto to appeal to the emperor with his army in tow he was met by Saigo Takamori who led a combined army of Choshu and Satsuma forces. The 15,000 strong shogunate troops outnumber the Saigo 3 to 1, but were mostly made up of traditional samurai and not as well armed as the Satsuma-Choshu alliance were, who had fearsome Gatling and Armstrong guns. The Battle of Toba-Fushimi in January 1868 saw the beginning of the Boshin War, as the Satsuma-led imperials clashed with the shogun south of Kyoto. On the second day the shogun retreated to Edo, after reinforcements arrived led by a relative of the emperor and bearing his banner. Now the war was between the two most powerful men in Japan. Many clans loyal to the shogun changed sides and Edo castle finally fell to the imperials on the 3rd May 1868. Soon after the shogun was captured and exiled. This was not the end of the war, however, and the Republic of Ezo broke away from imperial rule and held the first elections in Japanese history. After a year of fighting, the Imperial Navy crushed the Republic in May 1869. The two year Boshin War had seen 5,000 casualties and Japan embrace modern military technology and tactics. The emperor then began his reforms, which included that the domains were to be ruled by governors and the land would be returned to the emperor, with the former daimyo receiving a tenth of their previous income. Military conscription came into effect, and every male over 21 had to serve four years in
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The Meiji Restoration
the military. A more controversial reform was the abolition of the old feudal classes, especially the samurai. The samurai numbered 1.9 million and soon saw their privileges taken away. Traditionally only the samurai could carry weapons, something that had distinguished them from the peasants in the past, but this right was given to every man by Meiji, leading to riots by samurai. This reached a climax in the Satsuma Rebellion of 1877 which was led by Saigo Takamori. The rebellion was put down by the new Imperial Army, which mostly consisted of the Kyoto police force, most of whom were, ironically, former samurai. In the end, Saigo Takamori committed seppuku (ritual suicide). This rebellion is remembered today as the background to the film ‘The Last Samurai’. One large difference between fact and fiction however, was that the samurai were not afraid to use modern weapons, in fact, Saigo was responsible for the introduction of artillery schools in Japan and was one of the first to use modern weapons and tactics. He also wore his French-style uniform for most of the campaign. The economic sector was improved as well. It became more privatised, and huge leaps were made in the production of heavy goods, such as crucible steel being created first in Japan in 1882, which been used by Europeans since 1740. Military shipyards like the one at Osaka began constructing steam engines, grinding gears and other goods to be used by the private sector. The technological lag between Europe and Japan began to decrease rapidly, with some methods of production in Europe only taking ten years to cross over to Japan. More foreign experts were hired in the fields of science and engineering amongst others to make Imperial Japan the primary industrial power in Southeast Asia. Although Japan already had a remarkably high literacy rate, new reforms were pushed through in 1872 and 1890 which led to schools set up based on American and European systems, and was available to all children, regardless of class or sex. By 1906, school attendance reached 95%. Subjects taught included history, science, arithmetic and geography as well Confucian teachings, above all loyalty to family and national pride. This national pride would come into effect 7
Modern invention like the steam engine pushed Japan to the stage of a world power
during the Sino-Chinese war of 1894-95 as printers created works of propaganda, where the Chinese were primitive hordes and the Japanese solemn spirited men who defeated the enemy. The most popular artwork focussed on heroic individuals and their actions, churned out almost as soon as the deed was reported. Such men were identified by name and birthplace in a print were the figures often looked nothing like them, with the artists (having no clear picture of the scene) drawing fantastical portraits that raised morale and patriotic pride. The Imperial Army was now fully modernised and organised and by Meiji’s death in 1912 it was a fierce force in Southeast Asia, conquering Korea and Taiwan in the early 20th Century. The strong economy and growing nationalism allowed Japan to easily invade Manchuria and later the rest of China. The true irony, however, is that Japan’s modernisation was caused by American and European investment. It was the Western powers that inadvertently created the Japanese Empire: the same power that bombed Pearl Harbour in 1941.
Want to know more? If Harrison has sparked your interest in the Meiji Restoration, then you might like: ‘Choshu in the Meiji Restoration (Studies of Modern Japan)’ by Albert M. Craig (London: Lexington Books) ‘Patriots and Redeemers in Japan: Motives in the Meiji Restoration’ by George Wilson (Chicago: University of Chicago Press)
Winter 2012 │ The Shoardian
The Indian Independence Movement
HEROES OF INDIAN INDEPENDENCE Rahul Ravi examines the history of the Indian Independence movement and from almost two hundred years before the birth of it’s most famous advocate. advocate
T
he earliest British colonialism in India was in the mid eighteenth century, over a hundred years before Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, the figure who is most associated with independence, was even born. He was also not the first to instigate forms of resistance against the British, but he was the first to effectively try and achieve Indian independence through nonWinter 2012 │ The Shoardian
violent means. But he was not the only person to have a significant impact. In this article, I will look at various other figures who were arguably instrumental in gaining Indian independence from British rule on the 15 August 1947. The first large scale uprising against British control was the Vellore Mutiny of 1806. This may seem of limited significance, as it was very localised to the south of India and was ultimately easily 8
The Indian Independence Movement
dealt with by the British 19th Dragoons because of a lack of organisation from the Indian forces, and their figurehead, Fateh Hyder. The fact that it was caused by a lack of British concern for the native religions, Hinduism and Islam, rather than an outright struggle for independence, also makes it important not to overplay the significance of this mutiny. However, this was a significant event because for a few hours, it posed a very real threat to British control, and the leader of the British troops himself admitted than with even a delay of five minutes, the result could have been very different. This, combined with the harsh treatment of the surviving rebels, bred not only resentment against the British, but hope for those wishing for change. The most definitive movement against British rule came in 1857. It was inspired by Mangal Pandey, an officer serving the British and the East India Company. The revolt came when the Company issued cartridges that soldiers had to bite with pig and cow fat. This was religiously offensive to both Muslim and Hindus fighting in the army, and was the last straw in a series of mistreatments and prejudices and when nothing was done after various complaints, Pandey killed the regimental officer that introduced the cartridges. In response to this, on 10 May 1857, the sepoys at Meerut broke rank and turned on their 9
It may have been crushed, but the Vellore Mutiny of 1806 was significant enough to make it onto a stamp, a sign of its importance to the Indian people
commanding officers, killing some of them. They then reached Delhi on May 11, set the company's toll house afire, and marched into the Red Fort where the Mughal Emperor, Bahadur Shah II, was asked to become their leader and reclaim his throne. The emperor was reluctant at first, but eventually agreed and was proclaimed ‘Shehenshah-eHindustan’ by the rebels. This led to further uprisings in Northern and Central provinces. Although by 1858 all the rebels had been crushed and Mangal Pandey was executed, the revolts led to great changes in the way the British ruled the country. For a start, the influential East India Company lost its governing control following the Government of India Act in 1858. Although the British had established their military dominance, a great deal of political and social reform followed. Administrative control fell directly in the hands of the British government. In a royal proclamation from Queen Victoria, it was declared that all public servants would have equal rights, land could no longer be seized from Winter 2012 │ The Shoardian
The Indian Independence Movement
hundreds of peaceful protestors.
the princes, and there would be an end to all racial and cultural discrimination. Despite these reforms, the government also increased the proportion of British soldiers and ensured British control of artillery, ensuring their military dominance. However, the role of Mangal Pandey in this process of making a significant step towards independence cannot be understated. Towards the end of the 19th Century and the start of the 20th, the formation of the Indian Congress led to a surge in Indian nationalism. This led to the rise to prominence of one of the most patriotic and nationalistic men India has ever produced. His name was Bhagat Singh, and his family had a history of opposition to British rule. He excelled both academically and in extra curricular activities, and as a child, visited the site of the Jallianwala Bagh, where the British massacred Winter 2012 │ The Shoardian
Later, seeking revenge for the death of Lala Lajpat Rai at the hands of the police, Singh was involved in the assassination of British police officer John Saunders. He eluded efforts by the police to capture him. Together with Batukeshwar Dutt, he undertook a successful effort to throw two bombs and leaflets inside the Central Legislative Assembly while shouting slogans of “Inquilab Zindabad.” (Long live the revolution!) Bhagat Singh– died for the case of Indian Independence
Subsequently they volunteered to surrender and be arrested. Held on this charge, he gained widespread national support when he underwent a 116 day fast in jail, demanding equal rights for British and Indian political prisoners. Bhagat Singh used his trial as a platform to publicise and raise awareness of his cause. He was executed at the age of 23, with two other comrades. His martyrdom brought fresh impetus to the independence movement, and inspired thousands of young men t o s u p p or t t he i m p e n di n g revolution. Another leading figurehead for the independence movement was the eventual first Prime Minister of India, Jawaharlal Nehru. Educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, he took an interest in Indian politics following this education. He was elected five times as the President of Indian National Congress and 10
The Indian Independence Movement
under his influence the Congress adopted the goal of complete independence. After centuries of struggle, India became independent in 1947 and soon after that Nehru was appointed as the first Prime Minister of the country. Nehru was one of the first nationalist leaders to be concerned with the sufferings of the people in the states ruled by Indian Princes. He suffered imprisonment in Nabha, a princely state, when he went there to see the struggle being waged by the Sikhs against the corrupt Mahants (heads of temples). The nationalist movement before this had been confined to the territories under direct British rule. Nehru helped to make the struggle of the people in the princely states a part of the nationalist movement for freedom. The All India States People's Conference was formed in 1927. Nehru, who had been supporting the cause of the people of the princely states for many years, was made President of the conference in 1935. He opened up its ranks to membership from across the political spectrum. The body would play an important role during the political integration of India, helping Indian leaders Vallabhbhai Patel and V.K. Krishna Menon (to whom Nehru had delegated the task of integrating the princely states into India) negotiate with hundreds of princes. There 11
were
many
influential
Jawaharlal Nehru– instrumental in the establishment of India
people throughout the struggle that spanned well over a century, and although Mahatma Gandhi arguably played the biggest part, he was by no means the only one. From the early struggles of Fateh Hyder and Mangal Pandey, to the nationalist activism of Bhagat Singh, and the political astuteness of Nehru, the independence of India in 1947 was a collective effort made up of hundreds of thousands of violent and non-violent activists who, after an arduous struggle, and a heavy price of human life, eventually peacefully achieved their aims.
Want to know more? For more on the Indian independence movement, try: ‘The Discovery of India’ by Jawaharlal Nehru (London: Penguin) ‘Bhagat Singh: An Immortal Revolutionary of India’ by Bhawan Singh Rana (London: Diamond Pocket Books)
Winter 2012 │ The Shoardian
The Neolithic Revolution
The Neolithic Revolution? The Neolithic age was when people settled down, and became farmers rather than huntergatherers. Or was it? Adam Rigby is your guide.
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he Neolithic era, literally ‘new stone’, is the name given to the period of around 6500-3500 cal. BC. The traditional view of this era is that it marks the development and spread of agriculture, probably originating in the Near East. The result of this ‘revolution’ was that humans stopped living as small, roaming bands of hunter gatherers who moved between a number of sites throughout the year and started to live in more settled farming communities which in time developed into the great civilisations of ‘history’. These ideas are based upon a variety of archaeological evidence from across Winter 2012 │ The Shoardian
Europe. The Neolithic saw the creation of the first settled communities and this is reflected in the archaeological record by such sites as the famous Catalhoyuk in Turkey where a large settlement has been discovered with houses packed in very close together. Not only do we have sites which suggest a sedentary lifestyle but we also have large numbers of finds which show the presence of domesticated livestock and plants. Bio-archaeology and zoo-archaeology play huge parts in creating the view of the Neolithic as the start of agriculture and the permanent rather than seasonal habitation of sites. The presence of things such as oyster shells, nuts, bones etc. When pieced 12
The Neolithic Revolution
together, many sites provide evidence of year round occupation. The discovery of domesticated crops, most importantly emmer wheat, shows that people were beginning to cultivate their own food rather than relying on foraging. The bones of domesticated animals such as cattle and sheep, as well as dogs and other such creatures also suggests that people were increasingly relying on farming for their food rather than hunting and gathering. As farming tends to require the year round presence of people to ensure its success this has been taken as hard evidence that the Neolithic marks the turning point in human history between hunter-gathering and farming and correspondingly the move from mobility and sedentism. The discovery of permanent sites of habitation has also led to the discovery of what appear to be ritual or religious sites, often taking the form of structures in which peculiar ceremonial objects have been found. Throughout Europe a number of statuettes have been found which seem to depict large female forms, these have been taken to resemble a sort of Gaea figure, or earth goddess, which would again fit nicely with the view of the Neolithic as the point at which the earth and the harvest took on vital importance. It is evidence such as this which has been used to claim that the Neolithic represents a revolution in not just lifestyle but also an intellectual revolution with religion becoming more apparent and central to people’s lives. So, you may well wonder how exactly anybody intends to argue that the presence of houses, year round habitation, the presence of religious sites and evidence of domesticated crops and animals can possibly suggest anything other than a fundamental revolution in which people stopped roaming around looking for food and started living in houses and practicing agriculture. The answer is really fairly simple. There are a 13
large number of reasons why the Are statues like traditional view of the Neolithic is flawed. this indicative of Most importantly is the persistence of the a change in living view that the Neolithic was a sudden style? change and that it took place across Europe in every culture and ethnic group which encountered the ideas of agriculture. This is clearly a ridiculous assumption as even today, and certainly within the bounds of ‘history’, one can find bands of nomadic hunter gatherers for whom agriculture played no part, or a very limited part, in their lives. The traditional view of the Neolithic also makes another key mistake; it limits the options too strictly. The theory of a Neolithic revolution claims that people were either sedentary or mobile, it does not allow for any half way stage in this process. The presence of signs of year round habitation at a site may well suggest just that, but how can we prove that the deposits which mark each season are from the same year? Or conversely how does the absence of evidence for year round habitation in the faunal record of late-Mesolithic sites prove that they weren’t inhabited all year round thus pushing the dates of this so-called ‘revolution’ back even further. What is there to suggest that certain aspects of food processing which we rely upon for Winter 2012 │ The Shoardian
The Neolithic Revolution
Mediterranean. This change in climatic conditions means that any evidence based on such bio-archaeological methods as have been described here must be treated with great care and not allowed to provide such a cornerstone of our understanding as they have been.
evidence were not carried out away from the sites we have found (thus being practically invisible on the archaeological record) or that foods such as shellfish, a form of evidence relied upon very heavily for proof of seasonal habitation due to the changes in shapes and sizes of the shells from season to season, were simply not consumed. The idea of using bio-archaeological evidence such as shells is also problematic. Such faunal evidence is used by examining the seasonal changes which take place in such foodstuffs from season to season. Mussels, for example, are far larger in spring and summer than they are in winter, therefore a rubbish dump consisting of only, or a majority of, large mussel shells is taken to suggest summer habitation (or at least consumption). The problem here is that the evidence is first taken from the way in which mussels change today, and whilst some major change in the evolution of mussels is not being suggested the fact remains that the climate of the Neolithic was vastly different to that of today. Whilst the climate was beginning to cool it was in great contrast to that of today, those of you familiar with the moors may be surprised to learn that at around this time rather than being the miserable, wet and cold places that they are today they were in fact subject to a climate which more closely resembled that of today’s Winter 2012 │ The Shoardian
Over-reliance on bio-archaeology can lead to mistakes, like in the case of mussel shells
Another source of evidence that is often used as proof of settled communities in the Neolithic is the discovery of bones belonging to domesticated animals. These bones have been used as evidence for farming and more importantly year round settlement, but again we see an unnecessary narrowing of the options. It does not necessarily follow that domesticated animals mean permanent settlement; this ignores the tendency of many nomadic peoples to drive vast herds of domesticated animals over thousands of miles to different sites of periodic or seasonal inhabitation. We then come on to this issue of houses. Whilst it is probably taking things too far to try and claim that a site of mass habitation such as Catalhoyuk was not a permanent site of habitation it is also wrong to claim that every structure from the Neolithic is also evidence of permanent habitation. In trying to understand the nature of structures to the peoples of the Neolithic we begin to intrude more heavily into the realms of anthropology and psychology as we ask ourselves what houses meant to these societies. The presence of a structure on a site can mean many things. If it appears to be a house or habitable structure then it follows that people lived there, it does not necessarily mean people lived there all year or that they lived there for the same part of every year. It is perfectly reasonable to suggest that many of the structures we find which date from the Neolithic were used by mobile groups for only part of the year, again challenging the idea of mass settlement during this era. It has also been suggested that 14
The Neolithic Revolution
have ever bothered to catch your own meals. The nature of our lives today tells us that at some point we, as people, did settle down in places and cease to exist on a hunter-gatherer basis and began to farm the land around us. It is clear that a change did take place which, whilst not necessarily irreversible, was never reversed.
structures can be used to represent ownership of an area when it is not always practical to be there constantly protecting the land which, if the case, further suggests a high level of mobility amongst the people of the Neolithic. Whilst religion also becomes more apparent in the Neolithic this tells us little. It is only the fact that a few large population centres emerge which inevitably make it easier to find religious and ceremonial sites that results in an apparent increase in religion. It is obviously much more difficult to gauge the religious beliefs and customs of people who are constantly moving than it is for people who stay in the same place, many stone circles and ritual landscapes however provide evidence for religious beliefs amongst the hunter gatherers who preceded eventual settlement, as well as anthropological studies of modern hunter gatherer and nomadic peoples. So, whilst it is clear that the traditional view of the Neolithic revolution as a period where suddenly everybody settles down and begins farming is flawed it is also the case that perhaps we are also wrong to totally rubbish the idea. As I look around me now I see that I am sat in a structure somewhat resembling a home, on a site where people have lived for a long time. Every day we eat the produce of farmers and I doubt that many of you 15
The traditional idea of a sudden change in life is wrong, it assumes far too much and fails to take into account the fact that the Neolithic was dominated by small bands of people with very different world views and priorities to each other, the A modern interpretation of idea that the revolution never took place a Neolithic is also wrong because we can see that it house: does obviously did. their existence imply the end of The most sensible approach is to say that nomadism? gradually people began to settle, different
peoples at different rates, and that some peoples either because they never came into contact with the necessary technology or because they simply didn’t want to never did settle. It is likely that whilst people gradually began to circulate through smaller areas until eventually forming sites of permanent habitation the early generations of settlers may well still have relied heavily on hunting for food and been prone to move to different sites for brief periods. Whilst it is popular, and fairly easy, to deny and challenge the traditional view of the Neolithic we cannot deny that it happened, no matter how slowly.
Want to know more? The Neolithic age might be best explored by digging a big hole in your garden. For those less willing to get their hands dirty, try: ‘Kos in the Neolithic and Early Bronze Age: The Halasarna Finds and the Aegean Settlement Pattern (Prehistory Monographs)’ by Mercourios Georgiadis (London: Institute for Aegean Prehistory)
Winter 2012 │ The Shoardian
The Forgotten Revolutionary
The Italian unification created many heroes: Garibaldi, Cavour, Victor Emmanuel II, but perhaps none were more important than the least famous of all. Giuseppe Mazzini was the heartbeat of the movement up until the 1840s and the first to dream of a united Italy. Ed Green examines his legacy.
THE FORGOTTEN REVOLUTIONARY
A very young Giuseppe Mazzini (1805– 1872) in a particularly pensive moment
H
istory has a way of forgetting the good men: men who have contributed so much to a cause and yet were absent at the most crucial point. So it was with Giuseppe Mazzini, the man who holds the title of the intellectual of Italian unification, and who is always placed behind Cavour and Garibaldi when the subject is discussed. Yet it is Mazzini who created the first idea of Italian nationalism, who instigated the first insurrections against the conservative monarchs and the first man to get into a position of real power. In a time of oppression, he argued for the liberty of peoples and the guarantee of individual rights. He was an advocate of democracy before democracy was fashionable. He was a true revolutionary. Historians have for a long time disparaged the influence of Giuseppe Mazzini, calling him a dreamer whose work had no chance of success in the grand scheme of things. His ideas were too complex to be understood by the masses, and his ‘Young Italy’ group failed in every uprising in which it took part. Garibaldi accomplished in a month more than he managed in a life time. How can he be compared to the men that went out and did it? The first thing to argue against that is that all revolutions need their intellectuals and those who lay the
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The Forgotten Revolutionary
groundwork for the arrival of those who will do the actual physical revolution. Try to imagine an Italy unified by the actions of Garibaldi in 1848. It would not have happened, in part because the Austrians would have crushed it, but also because the people themselves would not have been ready for such a dramatic change. Mazzini’s role was the propagator of ideas, a man whose belief in the Risorgimento and of a new unified Italy would inspire him to write hundreds of books and pamphlets extoling the virtues of his ideas. In the 1820s and 1830s it was he who first unveiled the idea of a single unified Italy, something that pulled him rapidly out of favour with the conservative elites of Europe at the time. Particularly offended were the Austrians, who saw Northern Italy as their own private fiefdom, prompting Metternich to christen him ‘the most dangerous man in Europe’. His stance on emancipation of women and helping the poor meant that he was immensely unpopular domestically as well as internationally. On the other side, he criticised the works and ideas of Karl Marx and in doing so made sure that the socialists and communists would not help him. He believed in God, but was not a Christian, which did not particularly endear him to the Church at that time, and one might argue that the Papal States were the only real option for unification in the first half of the 19th century (certainly it would not have been Piedmont, the eventual unifier in 1862). Mazzini, therefore, occupied a truly unique position where his ideas had isolated him from both the revolutionaries and the conservatives. If he were to push his agenda, he would need to find the people who saw the world his way. In 1829, he joined the Carboneri, one of Italy’s many secret societies. The 17
Carboneri based itself on the overthrow Members of Young of Italian tyrants and the establishment Italy fight for the of basic freedoms for the Italian people. cause. In the 1840s, Throughout the 1820s they had staged Mazzini was the many (unsuccessful) uprisings all over unquestioned leader Italy, but it was perhaps the ideal that of Italian appealed to Mazzini rather than the nationalism actual violence. Secret societies were illegal in Italy at the time (unsurprisingly given their penchant for starting armed incursions), and Mazzini was betrayed to the police by a friend. He served three months in prison for his involvement, and emerged just in time to witness the 1831 revolutions. Revolution is perhaps too strong a word for the events of Parma, Modena and the Papal States. The ousted monarchs complained to the Austrians, and the provisional governments that had been set up were quickly destroyed by her armies. The status quo had been restored, and the leaders paid the price for their insolence and were executed publicly. Fortunately for Mazzini, he was in Corsica at the time gathering loyal exiled Italians (if that is not in itself a tautology) to invade the mainland. Nonetheless, the revolutions proved to him that Italy could be unified, but something far more substantial would be required if it were ever to occur. Winter 2012 │ The Shoardian
The Forgotten Revolutionary
Mazzini had now been a committed nationalist for a decade, and the time had now come for him to form his own group. Giovine Italia (Young Italy) was founded in Marseilles in 1831, intended as an alternative to the Carboneri and other secret societies. The group aimed at the Mazzinian ideals of a united Italy based on freedom and liberty. The initial branch was in Genoa, but numbers rapidly blossomed and before long Mazzini found himself head of the first ‘national’ Italian party. Young Italy attracted men from all walks of life, but perhaps the most important of all was one Giuseppe Garibaldi, the man who’s actions would play a significant role in the unification of Italy in the 1860s. Garibaldi’s admiration of Mazzini knew no bounds, and he first became involved in a plot with Mazzini in 1831 in Genoa. “The frustrated Fidel Castro of the mid-nineteenth century’” (as he is christened by Eric Hobsbawm in The Age of Revolutions) was inspired by Mazzini, and remained in close contact
with him until his death.
‘Slumber not in the tents of your fathers. The world is advancing’.
Young Italy was, indisputably, a failure. It failed in every attempted revolution it planned, and in 1833 an attempted revolution in Piedmont led to Mazzini being sentenced to death (he was still in France and so was absent for the verdict). It was effectively finished in 1835, and declined rapidly after the failed Piedmontese uprising. Nevertheless, the first national group in Italy had brought the movement together for the first time, and had also brought it to the attention of the rest of the country, in particular the Austrians and the Piedmontese. Mazzini got his second chance in 1849. The revolutions of the year before had forced the pope out of Rome, and the stage was now set for him to assume office as leader of the new Roman Republic. It was a suitably romantic start to a reign that, while short, embraced all the ideas that Mazzini had spent the previous two decades explaining to the Italian people. The wealthy aristocracy had long since fled
Roman (Papal) soldiers in 1848. The capital of the Papal States was a fitting place for the establishment of Mazzini’s libertarian republic. Winter 2012 │ The Shoardian
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The Forgotten Revolutionary
London. The great idealist had one last role to play in the story however. His influence on Garibaldi had not diminished with time, and it was Mazzini who the general confided in his plans to invade Nice, his homeland. Mazzini saw the opportunity for the unification he dreamed of, and pointed Garibaldi instead towards Sicily. The landing of the thousand there in 1862 was the first step on the road to Italian unification.
the city and unemployment was high, but Mazzini as the head of a triumvirate ran the city in a fair and tolerant manner. In spite of his own religious views, Catholicism remained the official religion in Rome, and Mazzini took the (at the time radical) decision to abolish the death penalty and to reform the taxation system to be fairer to the poor. The education system became more open, and the life of the ordinary Roman citizen improved immeasurably. Sadly, Mazzini’s new republic lasted less than 100 days, and he was forced to flee the city as papal troops reestablished what became a brutal regime under Pope Pius IX. Mazzini had offered the people a model of what his Italy would look like, and the blueprint was very attractive to the majority of Romans. Still, the international climate was not quite right for unification, with Austria still looming over the northern half and the southern half so disinterested that there was to be no unity of spirit yet. At this point, exiled in London, many historians have claimed the influence of Mazzini was finished. Over the next two decades, it would be men like Cavour and Garibaldi who unified Italy, while Mazzini thought deeply in 19
By the time of his death in 1872, Giuseppe Mazzini’s legacy had long since been established. The Italy he envisaged had never arrived, and his As he got older, visit in 1870 had him claiming that the influence and while he had awoken Italy’s soul, all he significance of found in the new Kingdom was a Mazzini waned, corpse. His final act was a revolution in and he was Sicily, the place where the new Italy replaced by the was founded. He was arrested on board diplomatic Cavour before the revolution even started, and and the no-one on the island protested. It was a aggressive cruel end to what had been a life filled Garibaldi with radical, controversial and at times truly amazing life. While Cavour and Garibaldi will always steal the limelight as the unifiers of Italy, Mazzini is one man that history certainly should not forget. Without Mazzini, the unification would not have had a voice. Without a voice, there would have been no unification at all.
Want to know more? For more on Italian Unification, try ‘The Age of Capital’ by Eric Hobsbawm (London: Abacus) ‘The Struggle for Mastery in Europe 1848 -1918’ by A J P Taylor (Oxford: Oxford Paperbacks) Winter 2012 │ The Shoardian
The Roman Empire: One Man’s Revolution?
The Fall of the Republic Republic:: One Man’s Revolution? Fresh from his victory in the Ian Bailey Prize, Chris Hobson examines the impact of Julius Caesar on the Roman Republic. Was it solely his influence that transformed Rome into a dictatorship?
J
ulius Caesar’ has an indisputable place amongst the most outstanding names in all of history. It has come to embody the ideals of leadership and military genius, and is associated with the transition in Rome from republic to empire. Did the man merit the indomitable legacy of his name? I will not refute that his prowess as a military leader was great, if not supreme, but what is of more significance is whether he as an individual altered the course of history, or did he elevate his name into our collective memory by simply surfing the wave of history? Caesar established his reputation as a military commander during the Gallic wars; in doing so he brought all of Gaul, up to the Rhine, under Roman rule. He set out in 58 BC with eight legions (around 40’000 men) and despite using illegal levies to raise more Winter 2012 │ The Shoardian
The Roman Senate: bound by the rule of democracy and law until Caesar arrived
troops, he was still vastly outnumbered by his barbarian adversaries. Having crushed a mass migration of 360’000 Helvetii tribespeople from Germany, Caesar decisively routed the Belgic tribes, which had formed a confederation against him numbering about 240’000, and the Veneti, a campaign for which he constructed a navy from scratch. By the end of 56 BC he had conquered all of Gaul from the Rhine to the Pyrenees. He went on to conclusively assert Rome’s authority in the area by crushing two major rebellions: the second of these was against the formidable commander Vercingetorix, who had united many of the Gallic tribes against Roman rule. During the battle, Caesar’s twelve legions (around 60’000 men) simultaneously laid siege to a fort garrisoning 80’000 enemy troops, and vanquished an assault of 200’000 Gauls. This incredible victory enduringly 20
The Roman Empire: One Man’s Revolution? asserted Roman dominance on the provinces of Gaul. His dramatic expansion of the empire as well as his consolidation of captured territory makes Caesar’s contribution to Rome’s imperialism (and indeed the culture of north-west Europe) superior to that of any other general. Yet his gains in Gaul were to have a far greater impact on the political scene back in Rome. For Caesar used the military leverage he now possessed to do the very thing that the Roman Republican constitution was intended to prevent politicians from doing: he declared himself dictator for life. But I use the word ‘constitution’ in the loosest sense. The machinery of the Republic was based almost entirely on generally held abstract values, which emerged when the patricians expelled King Tarquin, the last of the kings, and declared Rome a free republic. The imperium of the king was distributed among a hierarchy of magistracies, with the greatest power divided equally between two consuls, who were re-elected every year. Similarly, lesser authority and administration were divided between different groups of magistrates, who were elected for a specific number of years. The top-heavy gradation of power and the enforced perpetual switching of people in each position created a fluid government: whist there was vicious competition for every position, each person’s spell in power was fleeting and no single person could hold it for long enough to become dominant. Politicians’ ambitions were also bound up in the will of the people. Interestingly, the political competition that constituted the republic was commonly known as the cursus, or chariot race. The label embodies tooth-and-nail struggle for glory and the risk of shame that motivated politicians, implying that public honour was the ultimate goal of politics. A man’s moral standing was synonymous with his public reputation (both expressed in Latin by a single word: honestas), and such vainglory was the driving force, and also the limiting force, behind a career in politics. Open court cases and elections were the concrete manifestations of this relationship. Given the value the people assigned to a Roman citizen’s inherent freedom, they would reject anyone who seemed too protective of power or was moving towards a position of tyranny. It was against the concrete 21
Caesar would use his strength as a military commander to influence the Roman political system and eventually have himself crowned dictator for life
institutions designed to balance an individual’s power and the abstract values that were utterly opposed to its acquisition, that Julius Caesar emerged as dictator for life. How did he manage this? The answer is simple: force. At the end of his ten-year command in Gaul, Caesar had amassed a battle-hardened army stronger than any that the politicians in Rome could muster. Faced with such a threat, his rival faction which by now dominated the senate ordered him to give up his legions, and he faced probable prosecution without the indemnity of a political office. The political alliance against him was in effect the checks of the Republic coming into play. The conflict between these and Caesar’s physical power resulted one of the most notorious turning points of history. By crossing the Rubicon, Caesar was defying the instructions of the senate and breaking the shackles of the republic which had endured for the last 460 years. His victory in the civil war that ensued put him in the position of a military dictator. Thus Julius Caesar brought about a political revolution, transforming the republic into a quasi-kingdom. Although there was a brief period of limbo after his murder, during which the power vacuum was filled by a second triumvirate, the path he forged to autocracy was taken up by his adopted heir Octavian, who consolidated his dictatorship into a hereditary empire. The first part of this essay has largely taken the form of a narrative because there is no other way to explain the role of a single person. But history is not just a narrative. I will now explain how Caesar’s actions were Winter 2012 │ The Shoardian
The Roman Empire: One Man’s Revolution? influence to further his position in Rome. These factors, alongside the glory and prestige that could be won by successful conquest in a province, widened the gap between the successful politicians and their competitors. We can see that more was at stake than ever before for politicians by the lengths to which they increasingly went to secure magistracies: bribery, violence and intimidation were an increasing feature of Roman political life.
but the final stage in a process which had been threatening the Republic for the past century, and as such were not of unique individual importance. In the last two centuries of the Republic the Roman Empire saw exponential growth, from an insignificant city state to the dominant power across the Mediterranean (Caesar’s contribution was just the pinnacle) – this naturally put strains on a constitution designed to govern a much smaller locality. Whilst cultural integration between the Europe-wide empire, especially the Italian provinces (given citizenship in 90 BC), and Rome may have had a psychological effect on the Romans by diluting theirs sense of group identity and consequently the values – foundation stones of the Republic – that went along with it, I shall put these to one side in favour of political and military changes caused by imperial expansion which, as you will see, more demonstrably made the advent of a Julius Caesar almost inevitable. The sudden acquisition of new territories, which by 60 BC surrounded the Mediterranean, offered rich pickings for governors appointed by the senate. Not only did an overseas province allow the governor to enrich himself, through taxation, theft and extortion, to an extent which had never been possible before, but the loyalty of a large portion of the empire to a single person could be used as political leverage. Such was the case with Pompey’s relationship with many communities in the east: gaining their support through patronage, he used his
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Caesar was eventually assassinated in the Senate by a group of his advisors, prompting the famous Shakespeare line: ‘Et tu, Brute?’
The power that provincial governors could accumulate was exacerbated by the necessity for longer appointments and, increasingly, the transfer of the military power of the senate into the hands of one man. Proconsulships, as they were called, of a single year were becoming untenable due to the scale of military conquest, challenges to Roman rule and the impracticalities of magistrates commuting between Rome and the far corners of the empire every year. The growth of the empire gave magistrates the chance to spend more time with their legions away from Rome, making unprecedented amounts of money and in command of greater numbers of troops. The power that individuals, the likes of Sulla, Pompey and finally Caesar, accumulated through imperial expansion could overpower the checks and balances of the Republic. The increasing demands of a large overseas empire on Rome’s military forces, for administration and further conquests, by far outstripped her capabilities as a city state. Recruitment regulations – limiting the number of recruits available with a minimum property threshold – which had constrained the expansion of the armed forces were cast aside by Marius in 107 BC, allowing any Roman citizen to enrol. Citizenship was then extended in 90 BC to include the entire Italian peninsula. Whilst there is evidence that armies had (illegally) recruited from among the poorer classes before then, contemporary historians saw his measures as a clear break from tradition. The door was now open for the Italian poor to join the army and reap its rewards as a means of social improvement. As they depended entirely on their general to fight for their earnings in Rome, their loyalty to him even in the political arena was definite. Also, with the army now freely recruiting from all parts of 22
The Roman Empire: One Man’s Revolution? performed by Lucius Cornelius Sulla in 88. He had briefly established a military dictatorship, but used his power to rebuild the republic after it had been torn apart by civil war. Nor was Caesar the only general after him to gain enough military power to threaten the republic.
Pompey the Great: he, before Caesar, had the power to Italy, provinces conquered by Rome, an hold Rome to increasing proportion of the soldiers were not ransom accustomed to the Roman values of the supremacy of the senate and opposition to the dominance of individuals. Therefore their loyalty to their general would not have been balanced out by loyalty to the senate. These changes in the makeup of the army reinforced the bond between the general and his men whilst undermining the allegiance between the soldiers and the Republic. This trend was taken even further by the completely independent purchasing of armies that was becoming habitual amongst generals. The wealth that provincial rulers could make was channelled more than ever before into bolstering their armies; indeed the soldiers that Strabo recruited during the Social War (91–88 BC) effectively belonged to him. Nor was he by any means an exception. Troops levied personally by a general had no loyalty whatsoever to the senate, giving the general the means to march against his own government. By the time of Caesar’s conquest in Gaul, the extent to which he multiplied his command out of his own pocket was hardly to be unexpected. Again, Caesar’s actions were merely the final stage in a process that had been infecting the Republic for the decades. In fact, even Caesar’s march on Rome was not the first. The sacrilegious act of crossing the holy threshold of the city with armed force (except in a triumph) had first been 23
Moreover, even after Sulla, Caesar had not been the first general to have the power to threaten the republic. Pompey the Great found himself in such a position after his eastern command and even more so during his proconsulship against a pirate network, for which he was put in charge of 120’000 men, 500 ships and provinces around the Mediterranean. That Caesar finally took his power that step further in 49 BC cannot wholly be attributed to political and military change, for his insatiable ambition and personal disregard for Roman republican values were the unquestionable inspiration for his deeds, by his aspirations, unchecked by republican virtue during his upbringing, were given free reign by the political environment that he entered in the latter half of the first century BC. And a man of his aspirations was not a rare thing at that time, cultivated as they were by the increase of political rewards and the decline of Republican codes. Julius Caesar found himself on the crest of a wave, a social revolution brought about by imperialism that was pitching Roman society uncontrollably away from the longestablished but increasingly turbulent republic into the calmer waters of autocracy. He did not make history – history made him.
Want to know more? For more on Caesar and Rome try: ‘Rubicon’ by Tom Holland (London: Abacus) ‘Rome in the Late Republic’ by Mary Beard and Michael Crawford (London: Gerald Duckland & Co.) ‘The Roman Republic’ edited by Harriet I. Flower (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) Winter 2012 │ The Shoardian
Interview Section
Interview Section Dr Suzannah Lipscomb, author, broadcaster and Senior Lecturer and Convener for the New College of Humanities talks Henry, history and university. When did you decide you wanted to study history? I first went to study history at university because I had great teachers, I suppose. It was a subject that really infused me. I remember doing subjects like the Russian Revolution at A-Level and it was just brilliant and then when I went to university I loved the course, had a great time and brilliant tutors, but hadn't thought initially about doing it as a career. In fact I was thinking about things like international development, and I sort of pottered trying to do that for a little while after I got my degree, and I did that enough to convince myself that actually what I believed about international development was that ex-pats should have as little involvement in it as possible. So, so that was a sort of change in direction but then I was thinking about what to do, and I went to teach in a school, Hertwood House in Surrey, and after doing that for six months I applied to go back and do my Masters and then my doctorate. I'd had one session with a chap called Robin Briggs in my last year at university . We had to do a comparative history essay and mine was on religious violence and intolerance. I compared 16th century France, which had the Wars of Religion between the Protestants and the Catholics, and 19th-20th century India, with conflict between Hindus and Muslims. It was fantastic to compare the two. I went to have this tutorial with Robin Briggs who was a tutor at All Souls [a very exclusive post-graduate only Oxford College, Ed.] which has no under-graduates and I had the most amazing hour-long conversation with him; very intellectually stimulating and I came away from that thinking for the first time that if I could do a doctorate with him then maybe I'd do it, and as I say the idea went to rest for a bit but when I came back he was my doctoral supervisor. When did you decide to specifically study the Tudor period of history?
Henry VIII: one of the great characters that makes the Tudor period so enjoyable and interesting to study Winter 2012│ The Shoardian
That was also quite a late decision. I had this fantastic teacher called Susan Brigden at university who was an early modernist and that was very inspiring, but when I came to choose 24
Dr Suzannah Lipscomb
my doctoral subject I was choosing between the French and the Indian ideas and some Indian history that was very modern indeed, and in the end I chose, partly because of the person I would be working with,. You know, because you learn so much individually from the person you choose to study with and partly because really when it comes down to it I think the 16th century is the most exciting century there is because of everything that happens in it: you’ve got huge change, religious upheaval, wars, amazing characters. I couldn't really resist in the end. Do you think that is part of the reason that the Tudor period continues to be so popular for students studying history? I think with the Tudors, the characters are just so great the characters and the stories are just fantastic and I think, if I'm really honest, that it helps that we study it when we're at school, at 7 or 8 years old, and that sort of plants it the seed in your head [laughs]. You know the tabloid story of Henry VIII and his six wives, you can't make it up really and then you know about his daughter Elizabeth who never married :it's the contrast that is just so great, so I think it's just the appeal of the characters. Finding primary sources for essays and books can be quite difficult, particularly for the earlier periods of history. How do you go about doing it? The way to start is to start with your secondary sources, and you'll look at the bibliographies; look at the footnotes and follow them down and they will have used primary materials and you can either go and look at those in archives, but also quite a lot is now online. For the Tudors for example, the letters and papers, all the state papers for the reign of Henry VIII have been digitised so I can just look at them on my computer quite a lot really unless I need to look at the manuscripts which will be in the National Archives. I haven't found an excuse to go and look at the ones in Vienna yet but I'm hoping to find an excuse. So nowadays quite a lot can be done from your own room.
How do you go about getting your books published? I hear how hard it is for the literary writers to get published so it must be hard for the historical writer s as well? Yes, well actually on my first book I spoke to the publisher directly but that's quite unusual. Now I have a literary agent, and that’s the way it normally happens and you sell an idea to an agent really, and the agent sells the idea. You write a proposal and the proposal goes to the publishers, and ideally it gets interest from one publisher and then another publisher, and then you get a bidding war. Well it hasn't happened yet but that’s the sort of ambition that I have and you also have to find the sort of people that you want to publish it with depending on what piece of work it is different publishers publish different work and have different reputations etc. But the agent's the key thing. You've also got your role at the New College of the Humanities, and obviously there's a big interest in that here [at MGS] so without wishing to ask a typical question, why should MGS boys come to study history at the College? Well, I think because we are teaching a University of London degree, so it is a recognised degree, but most universities that you go to, Oxbridge aside and there's a few other exceptions, teach primarily through lectures and through seminars. Seminars are groups of about fifteen and lectures are 100200 whatever so and lectures are obviously very important and we still do lectures although we have interactive lectures, so if you have someone like me it would be 40 minutes talking plus 20 minutes of questions, but we also have this bevy of amazing professors who come and give lectures. In fact almost every day of the academic year one of our big-name professors, we've got people like Niall Ferguson, David Cannadine and Linda Collie, would be lecturing you and there would be half an hour of questions so that you can really interrogate those great minds. But above all what we do is tutorials. So at higher education what you really need is a chance to really grapple with the issues, and we do that with one-on-one tutorials so that if you came and were doing two modules in your first term then one of those would be one-to-one essay-based tutorials so every week you turn up with your essay and you talk about with your tutor. That sort of contact is pretty much unknown, in most 25
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Interview Section
universities that you would not get that degree of attention, one-to-one attention. We also have the other kind of tutorial say your second course would be two of you and then it's that contact really, it's that opportunity to learn. We do all sorts of other things as well, contextual subjects. So if you do a standard degree, it's 12 modules and then we do 4 modules in another subject, so say you really like English and you'd quite like to carry on with that or you can do politics, economics or whatever it is. We also do three compulsory modules in logic & critical thinking, applied ethics and science literacy (which is basically science for non-scientists) and then we do some things in professional skills. So the idea is, it's not a light option, you know it wouldn't suit you if you're lazy, but it's really good if you're hard working and you're pioneering and you're ambitious and actually you want something that will keep you busy. How employable are people with history degrees? Well, if you want to be a doctor or an engineer or something like that then you do need to do a degree in that subject but if you want to be pretty much anything else then a degree in history is a really good way to go. A degree in history gives you skills like the ability to synthesise large amounts of information, being able to write, speak and communicate clearly, to be able to empathise, to be able to think critically, to be analytical. These are things that you need in any job, say if you want to be a management consultant or an accountant or a lawyer or you want to make TV programmes or there's a whole range of jobs where you need those skills and employers know that. There was a report published in Harvard Business Review published in early 2011 called 'Hire for attitude, Train for Skill'. You hire the right person and you train them for the skills of the job. So in other words you hire someone who can think, so if you’ve done a history degree you’ve learnt how to think. They're not necessarily interested in people that have done business studies or media studies or any of those things that you think are vocational people are interested in people who can think basically, and that's what a history degree gives you. What advice would you give a student that wanted to take a degree in history? What should they be doing? Now? Well the obvious thing to do is to work on you’re A-Levels (or your IB Diploma ed.) and get the best grades you can. But I think read around, read broadly, particularly if you're going to be interviewed, what you want to do above all is show that you have an interest in the subject beyond the classroom, that you’ve actually read something yourself and thought about it, it shows that you're independent minded, a self-starter and that you're capable of being passionately interested in something, all those sorts of things really count. It's true that all the things that you do extra-
If you want to get into university then read, read and read some more
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Dr Suzannah Lipscomb
curricular counts as well. We [The New College of Humanities] are choosing individually, we interview everyone, and we're looking for people who will be great to have at the College as well as people who are bright and who think, or who we can train to think. You obviously put great emphasis on the role of the teacher in the subject to spark interest, do you think that's key? I think so, this is putting a lot of pressure on teachers, but I think they're your conduit, your introduction to the subject aren't they, so I think a lot of the time one's teachers start the interest in something that can go from there, and nearly everybody ends up studying something that they enjoyed at school, because they liked the teacher, so I think it's very important and I think there's a sense of responsibility in terms of passing along that interest and enhancing the next generation's lives and by introducing them to subjects as good as history
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Review Section
Review Section Sixth formers and members of the history department let forth on what they have been reading recently After Tamerlane: The Rise and Fall of Global Empires, 1400-2000
John Darwin Penguin, 592pp. £10.99 In After Tamerlane John Darwin puts forward the case for a study of imperial and world history that is not totally focused on Europe and its success in isolation. Rather he seeks to explain the external factors for European success in fulfilling the vacuum left by the death of the Turkic ruler Tamerlane in 1945 and the dissolution of his Eurasian dominion, in order to demonstrate the just how coincidental and uncertain the formation of the empire was as well as the clear signs of its decline. This provides a refreshing contrast to commonly held triumphalist, whiggish views (such as in the work of Niall Ferguson among others) espouse the inevitability of the Colonial Empire and the inexorable advancement of Europe (due to its ‘6 killer apps’ etc.). Despite his swift travel through vast swathes of history, Darwin’s references to contemporary accounts, analysis and changes in historiography make After Tamerlane far more than a dreary list of events. Through incredibly detailed and precise, Darwin demonstrates how the history of the world is actually demarcated through the passing of power from various epochs throughout time; showing that empires are not exceptions but rather the rule. In particular, his references to the ideas of Ibn Khaldun’s Mulquadimmah outline the problems and the instability intrinsic to the nomadic empires of the East, which helps to explain the problems of Tamerlane’s own descendants and the commonality of dynasties. He also displays Mr. Hern-esque levels of knowledge in his intricate yet concise descriptions of societal structures as well as their effects, analyzing common trends as well as determining the importance of the different sociological, cultural and religious ideas as factors for the continued success or failure of parallel civilizations. Furthermore, throughout After Tamerlane Darwin emphasizes the progression as well as the past and future potential of the wider Asian landmass to develop its own empires, in marked contrast to the staid imperial defense – as propounded by Jeremy Bentham and James Mill – that Europe’s Promethean touch offered the only hope for a resumption of progress. Indeed Darwin’s historical depth and breadth is most useful in his detailed expositions of causality – such as in his explanation of the incentives and the reasoning of colonial exploration and expansion among others – as he cogently summarizes contentious issues and resolves them with his longue durée approach, prioritizing older historical structures over individual events. Darwin’s excellently written book provides a wide-ranging history of the modern world and is spliced with intriguing conclusions, which may not prove authoritative but will certainly introduce and provoke further debate.
Abhishek Senapati
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Review Section
Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of American National Security Policy During the Cold War
John Lewis Gaddis Oxford University Press, 512pp. £18.99
There has perhaps never been a more important Cold War historian than John Lewis Gaddis. His masterful recent biography of George F. Kennan won him the Pulitzer Prize for Biography, and he won in 2005 the National Humanities Medal in the US. It was Gaddis more than any other man that changed the perception of the public and convinced them that the most significant cause of the Cold War was the personality and actions of Joseph Stalin. In Strategies of Containment, Gaddis examines the Cold War from a domestic standpoint, and looks at the action of successive presidents from Truman to Reagan. Beginning with the Long Telegram from Kennan that first caused the American government to consider the possibility of a hostile USSR and ending with Reagan and Gorbachev’s historic agreement, Gaddis attempts to show the changes in American security policy that occurred, and evaluates their relative successes and failures (always with a view to blaming the Russians, however). Each president (with the exception of Kennedy and Johnson who are dealt with together) is given two chapters: one to explain the genesis of his policy and the second to see how it worked in practice. The style is intensely scholarly, but one should expect that when reading the work of a scholar. Gaddis focuses in on the very specific American situation and so loses the international aspect of the Cold War. All points are backed up with lengthy yet relevant quotations, and so the reader is granted with an account of the inner working of five successive administrations, and the strange and sometimes backward thinking held within (it is no coincidence that another Gaddis book on the Cold War is entitled We Now Know). If one were to read this without any prior knowledge of the events of the Cold War then one might struggle with the knowledge that Gaddis assumes. This is not simply a history of the Cold War, and as such requires some comprehension of the events that led the world to the brink of nuclear war. The book functions as a one-sided counterbalance to the more balanced revisionist school of historians, as a useful tool for understanding the American perspective on the events as much as the information held within it is beneficial for the student. This is not a book that one would necessarily read for pleasure. Strategies of Containment is a very well written, complex reference tool, a historians book based on meticulously researched theories and well backed up points. Revolutionary history it may not be, but Gaddis builds a masterful account of the US government in the second half of the nineteenth century. In short, brilliant and very engaging but not at all lucid. But then, the best books never are. Edward Green
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Review Section
The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914
Christopher Clark Allen Lane, 736pp. ÂŁ30.00
Dr Clark is Professor of Modern History at Cambridge is a Fellow of St. Catharine's college, and received glowing praise (from Mr Harrison) for his last major work on the development of Prussia, Iron Kingdom. His latest publication, which attempts to shed new light on the causes of the First World War, has been met with equally lavish praise from all quarters (Mr Smith and Mr Harrison).
The plethora of existing major publications explaining how and why the Great Powers of Europe went to war in summer 1914 might lead one to question the need for another book to place alongside those of Fischer, Geiss, Ferguson and co. Where Dr. Clark finds a new angle however, is in his focus on the complicated domestic machinations present in each of the major protagonists, where established political leaders found themselves manipulated by military and industrial elites, and the pivotal role played by aggressive Serbian nationalism. His fundamental argument, therefore, is that the major powers unwittingly found themsleves in a position of no return after a sequence of interrelated crises which closed off their options bit by bit.
The Sleepwalkers is no easy read, and some students might feel that the depth of material and intricacies of Dr Clark's arguments are sufficiently intimidating to pass this book by. However, in spite of its length and the complexities inherent in studying the origins of the First World War, this book provides a compelling read and a clearly-written, highly convincing analysis. Neil Smith
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Comment
Comment Star Wars and the Third Reich Dougie Loynes explains where George Lucas got some of his inspiration from when he created the Star Wars Movie franchise almost four decades ago. It is historical, we promise. It is interesting the way that films reflect current debates about the past. This can be seen even in apparently superficial the Star Wars films. •
The plot of the first three Star Wars films shows how a democratic republic can rapidly descend into a dictatorship when presented with a crisis
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The idea of storm-troopers wearing a uniform and being the military arm of the Galactic Empire bears a resemblance to Hitler’s black shirts, the early SA
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The Emperor in Star Wars was once the chancellor of the Republic, just as Hitler was the final chancellor of the Weimar Republic
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Both were also granted emergency powers in a time of crisis, Hitler through the Enabling Act of 1933, and Palpatine through the Galactic Senate, and they both manipulated events to allow this to take place
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One of the planets in the Star Wars galaxy, Hoth, shares its name with a Nazi general
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The Kessel Run, used in the films by smugglers and which Han Solo’s Millennium Falcon can complete in twelve parsecs, shares its name with a decorated German general, Mortimor von Kessel
George Lucas confirmed that these similarities are deliberate, claiming that ’all democracies turn into dictatorships, but not by a coup d’etat. The people give their democracy to a dictator, whether it’s Julius Caesar or Napoleon or Adolf Hitler. Ultimately, the general population goes along with the idea.’ Star Wars was an attempt to discover ’what kinds of things could push people and institutions into this direction?’ It is said that those who do not study history are doomed to repeat it. Whether we study dictatorships in Germany or watch films with the tagline ’A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away’ is perhaps less important than the simple fact of studying them. We must endeavour not to give away our democracy to anyone, even if they have a lightsaber! 31
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Interview Section II
Interview Section II In a Shoardian double double--bill, Dr Kathleen Cushing of the University of Keele kindly volunteered to be interviewed on Gregorian reform and the First Crusades, whilst also indulging the editor’s penchant for historical theory How did you decide you wanted to become a historian? Originally I was studying modern history, and was not a medievalist. I studied modern history and languages at university with a view to doing the foreign services exam and becoming a diplomat: living in exotic places in the service of the United States. I did my junior year (the 3rd year) at Oxford and decided to try medieval history, and I’ve never looked back since. Sometimes it can be just a tutor that changes your path. It’s a tutor that I’m still in contact with. As historians we often moan about the lack of primary sources and facts. Is the problem more acute when dealing with the medieval period? Inevitably it is, and the accounts that we may have are often third or fourth hand or beyond, which presents its own problems. This is why I think historians have turned to other disciplines, using archaeology and other techniques to make up for the fact that we do not have as many primary sources. But sometimes having more doesn't necessarily produce the best history. If the Gregorian reforms hadn’t been followed by the First Crusade, do you think they would be studied as much as they are? I think they would have, but we have to take fashions in history into account. Events that were fashionable in the nineteenth century were focused on great men and political battles, and of course everyone studied the clash between Pope Gregory VII and Henry IV and the investiture contest – they weren't very interested in broader issues of church reform and moral improvement. The Crusades were about the West striking out and expanding and so on. The argument that I have made in a lot of my work is that the Crusade is not the beginning, it’s the end of the eleventh century. It creates its own set of events that follow it, but to understand why people follow the call you have to look at what happened before. Gregorian reform is a big topic: its studied in every University History Faculty in Great Britain and in much of the US and Canada as well. What do you think brings about the Winter 2012 │ The Shoardian
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Dr Kathleen Cushing
reforms? Do you think its an idea of Gregory himself ? I think its much earlier than that. ‘Reform’ happens in a lot of different places and a lot of different times in history. We could talk about the ninth century reforms or the fourth century reforms. The eleventh century reforms have a great interest because we know a lot more about them and we have these very engaging personalities and great events like the Crusades, the papal schism and a king standing in the snow begging to be forgiven for three days while the Pope decides. I think that reform in the eleventh century starts as a local initiative, people wanting better standards in religious life and then it comes from both local rulers and from local bishops as well. Why do you view Urban’s message at Clermont as reactionary? I think he made a big error, which I think he realised as well. The problem is we don’t know what he said. Far too many people see it as the reason for the Council, while for Urban, this is a very important Church council which is setting a lot of new canon laws and new prescriptions, and the Crusade is tacked on at the end of it. I think that Urban is tapping into a cultural mind-set that was established under his predecessors. We know that he originally intended to send a very small expedition to help, so what it is that creates this large expedition is problematic to understand. Do you think that by focusing on the Clermont speech we see everything Urban does in terms of his plan for a Crusade? Poor Urban doesn't live to see the great success. But I don't think that we can divorce the actions at Claremont and the First Crusade from the rest of his activities. He had a very difficult papacy: he wasn't able to be established in Rome because of an anti-pope, he’s spending most of his time in Southern Italy under the protection of the Normans; in Northern Italy with his friends; in his native France etc. so that he has quite a difficult time, and so in many ways it’s remarkable what he achieved. One of the big debates in class at the moment is how far Jerusalem was a key objective for the Crusade. What is your opinion? My sense is that, it is difficult to establish, because of the competing versions and the manuscript tradition for the dating of each account: sometimes the nearest dating is not the best text. I suspect that he probably did not say Jerusalem, and it became incorporated, and the whole idea of whatever he offered them as a spiritual reward was probably very limited, initially and then it started to grow beyond what he initially thought appropriate. So the ideas of salvation and eternal life was something that came in later? I think he probably said something like you can use this journey as a substitute for the penance that you are currently doing for the wicked deeds you have done, a lot more limited rather than a carte blanche permission to go off and kill and you’re going straight to heaven. But it became a big game of Chinese whispers which saw the promise of rewards become inflated. 33
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Interview Section II
Do you see Gregory and Urban as truly hoping for their subjects to complete their penance and be saved, or is it more a political issue? I don’t know that you can separate the two. I think that Gregory VII— I’ve read every one of his letters and spent far too much time on him— drips with sincerity and I think he really believes what he is saying. I also think that Urban believes it as well. Whether it can be said that they are not saying that ‘oh, this would be very useful with x, y and z’ is difficult to prove. I think that we want to make use of these different categories: political, religious and economic, as it’s easier for us to think of them as different explanations. To what extent was Urban’s desire for the crusade motivated by an idea of getting rid of the feuding warrior aristocracy of western Europe and exporting it somewhere else? I think if we tone it down a bit and suggest it is a sort of safety valve. I think it’s part of a longer agenda about directing the aristocracy and the military from lawless private feuding that goes on and pushing them to, ‘fight for a cause’. It’s about that re-direction rather than a ‘see you guys, good luck!’ The topic of this volume is revolutions. Do you have a historical definition of a revolution? My first book talked about the ‘Gregorian Revolution’, the eleventh century as this period of revolution, and I tried all year to persuade my students all year. I think revolution is very difficult for us to define because we are conditioned by modern revolutions. We see a violent overthrow of power, like in the French Revolution and both the Russian revolutions. Can we say something that took over a hundred years is a revolution? I would argue yes, because, there’s a great social scientist (Dr Cushing was unable to remember his name and I was unable to find him, Ed.) who talks about revolutions rarely coming out of a clear blue sky, that there’s a long run-up and then there’s a lot of rumbling. I think looking at it in those terms, there are sometimes great moments of political death and overthrow, but even the French Revolution and Russian Revolutions had a long lead-in and an awful lot of working out. Is the role of a historian to apply a general construct to a specific event? It can be useful, so long as you’re not trying to apply that onto a set of events. You’ve got to see that the set of events fit the model rather than the other-way around Are terms the main problem in history? Yes, and it’s also a problem of evidence. Evidence generally represents the elite, those who hold power or those who are able to mobilise power from below. We don't normally see the foot soldiers of the revolution do we? By focusing on great events, do you think we obscure some of the events in-between? Winter 2012 │ The Shoardian
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Dr Kathleen Cushing
I think context has to be important, but it can also mean that we make superficial judgements about the effects. But it’s about getting that context and that balance. It’s a very old expression: where do you start to write the history of the Crusades? Do you start at Piacenza, Gregory VII or Augustine of Hippo and the idea of just war? Historians cannot re-invent the wheel every time we attempt to explain something. But being aware of the context is important. How do we explain the continuing religious wars? Why do we still fight for religion? This is again about understanding the context. If you are talking about a society where identity is predicated on religion as this core idea or not. I think the majority of people that went on Crusade did not see religion as a primary motive: it was an added bonus. A lot of them had been disinherited, and had nothing better to do other than gain a military reputation, some went out of boredom, some went for the adventure and some hoped for fortune and glory. What do you think of the trends of post-modernism to move away from the meta-narrative towards specialisation? Does this help in the medieval period? Not in the sense that we are all re-writing fiction! I think that like a lot of things it can be taken to extremes, but I think that when we study the past and, in particular, the more distant past we study text. There’s a very famous book by an American medievalist , Gabrielle Spiegel, called ‘The Past as Text’ which pointed out that we don't know whether we’re reading texts the way they were intended. We don't know if anyone even read them at all: there may be some annotations in the margin. Inevitably we are story-tellers, as the more mild form of a post-modernist agenda would suggest, but I think we also should be aware of what we are doing. Is there any truth out there? Is there any real past out there? Are there historical facts? These questions are good exercises to test your intellectual muscles.
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Hannah Arendt: On Revolution
On Revolution : A Review If you were to ask a certain member of the history department (he has a beard and his name rhymes with ‘burn’), he might advise you to read Hannah Arendt. Jake Dyble, former editor of the Shoardian, takes her on.
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n Floating Bodies (Archimedes)’. ‘On Agriculture’ (Cato the Elder). ‘On the Nature of the Universe’. (Lucretius). And now, ‘On Revolution’ (Arendt). Even the title of the book, first published in 1963, is an indication that this is a work grounded in classical tradition. Arendt draws on the works of Latin and Greek thinkers throughout, beginning and ending her analysis with the words of Plato. In a way, one could admire such an approach in an Winter 2012 │ The Shoardian
age of continual re-revisionism. Rather than dismissively sweeping aside all wisdom that went before, this work is most emphatically an attempt to work with the received wisdom of the past, even when confronting a phenomenon which many would view as decidedly modern. The work is not written in Latin or Greek, though it might as well be such is Arendt’s writing style. Only the most committed student should wade through the dense and impenetrable prose all the way to page 36
Hannah Arendt: On Revolution
270, only to realise that the entire work could have been successfully condensed to a mere 27. A brief summary is thus in order. ‘On Revolution’ essentially styles itself as a comparative study in revolution, focussing on the American Revolution and the French Revolution. The main thrust of the argument is that the American Revolution was a political upheaval intent on securing freedom, the ultimate goal of the ‘revolutionary spirit’, whereas the French Revolution was intent only on securing liberty. The difference, argues Arendt, is that freedom implies a positive search for political freedom and expression, whereas liberty merely implies a desire to be liberated from an oppressive authority. Moreover, the French Revolution failed in its bid to establish freedom because its leaders became intent on alleviating the suffering of the masses through political means, a goal which Arendt views as impossible to achieve. It became a revolution of desperation, whereas the prosperity of the thirteen colonies allowed them to create a unique set of political institutions through which political freedom could be exercised by all. Such an argument dominates the first two thirds of the book. However, as an analysis of the concept of revolution, this approach is deeply flawed. First of all, Arendt is being far too general when she makes the distinction between pursuit of liberty and the pursuit of freedom. To make such a distinction is virtually impossible when it comes to the driving forces behind violent and confused mass movements, which may have arisen due to a multitude of causes and whose purpose may be viewed differently by those involved. Moreover, in many cases, liberty and freedom in the Arendtian sense are often two sides of the same coin, and it could be argued that this was the case in the French Revolution. It is also worth noting that the distinction between freedom and liberty is one assigned arbitrarily by Arendt for the purpose of her 37
The American Revolution: or was it?
argument. The two are essentially synonymous. The reason English has two words is simply that one is Latinate in origin, the other is Germanic. Second of all, the American Revolution should not be viewed as a paradigm for the study of revolutions, given that ‘The American Revolution’ is something of a misnomer. That conflict would more accurately be described as a war of independence, rather than an internal overthrow of the current system of government and the establishment of a completely new set of institutions. To be sure, Jefferson would later introduce the idea of the separation of powers to the American political landscape, resulting in the presidency (executive), congress (legislative) and the supreme court (judicial) but in the midst of the war with Britain there was no firm idea of the form an independent nation might take or even whether the thirteen colonies would form a unified nation. The issue of taxation seems to have been the driving force behind the American Revolution rather than ‘the revolutionary spirit’ of Arendt’s analysis. A particular affection for the American Revolution and America itself is evident throughout the work, and Arendt’s subscription to the most mythologised version of events in modern historiography is probably the result of her own Winter 2012 │ The Shoardian
Hannah Arendt: On Revolution
background and experiences. As the daughter of German-Jewish parents, Arendt was forced to flee the wave of Nazi anti-Semitism twice, firstly from Hanover in 1933 and then from France in 1941. In 1951 she became a naturalised American citizen. Moreover, against the background of the Cold War and the threat of the Soviet Union, the value of those liberties must have seemed all the more acute. After suffering at the hands of a totalitarian regime, an affection for the comparative freedom and tolerance of the USA is understandable, but skews Arendt’s argument none the less. Arendt’s misrepresentation of the American Revolution is in fact symptomatic of a far broader failing. Not only was this supposedly comparative study distinctly lacking in breadth, but nowhere in the work was there an attempt to confront the semantic minefield that surrounds the word ‘revolution’. Revolution is a particularly difficult concept and raises a series of questions. How great a change should a revolution herald to be classified as a revolution? Should this change be sudden or can it be gradual? Is an event a revolution even if it fails? In many ways an event being designated a revolution is a post rationalisation based not only on the event’s outcome, but also the historical perspective one chooses to adopt.
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Revolution is a morally charged term, just as ‘freedom fighter’ has better connotations than ‘rebel’. The use of the word revolution contains an inherent justification of the event, through the connotations of a return or restoration, hence its application in referral to the American Revolution, or The Glorious Revolution of 1688. ‘Revolution’ lends legitimacy to an event, and in this sense the term has a degree of subjectivity. This is to say that Arendt should have formulated a rigid and arbitrary definition and then applied it dogmatically to all armed uprisings in history, rather that any study purporting to examine revolution must avoid the other extreme of simply taking it for granted that anything history has designated as ‘A Revolution’ is worthy of inclusion.
Hannah Arendt proposes a return to whole-scale democracy , like Raphael’s School of Athens
Although Arendt’s affection for America is evident throughout, however, the later parts of the book demonstrate a dissatisfaction with the current American political system, and this is where the work becomes more incisive and interesting. Viewed as study on revolution, the book undoubtedly fails, but as a piece of political criticism it is far more relevant. Arendt argues that the USA has ultimately failed in its fostering of the revolutionary spirit, the desire for political participation. In modern mass democracies, the ordinary voter is completely estranged from the ‘public
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Hannah Arendt: On Revolution
space’. He or she can vote, of course, but this ultimately has little bearing upon the character of the democratic regime. In Arendt’s words, the relationship between voter and representative is reduced to that of ‘seller and buyer’. After all, a voter can only ever refuse or ratify a choice and even this influence is often diminished, given that politicians can easily renege on promises once in power. Moreover, when Arendt refers to ‘public space’ she means this in as much a physical sense as a metaphorical one. Power resides in the senate houses and parliament buildings of the democratic world, and thus it is only the elites who inhabit those spaces who are truly exercising political freedom. This is not is not government for the people by the people, but ‘government by an elite drawn from the people’ which has replaced the elites of birth and wealth of the ancien regimes. It is this issue, which Arendt calls the ‘most serious problem of modern politics’ which is the real focus of ‘On Revolution’; the ‘reconciliation of equality and authority’. Arendt does not merely identify the problem, but proposes a solution, and it is here that she draws on her classical influences. When discussing the Ancient Greek notion of freedom, she refers to isonomy, or ‘no-rule’ where there is no distinction between ruler and ruled. It is this concept which leads her to a far broader definition of public participation than remote participation through representatives. Instead she proposes a ‘town-hall style’ democracy, which would break up modern mass society. Instead everyone would participate on a council at grass-roots level, the bottom layer of a pyramid of councils, with authority thus equally distributed throughout the layers rather than concentrated within an oligarchy. Unlike many politicalphilosophical traditions, such as Marxism, politics is not a means to an end, such as happiness or prosperity. Instead, political participation is the end in itself which ‘endows life with splendour’. 39
Arendt’s vision is painted with broad brushstrokes. The exact remit of these councils is not defined, nor are the practicalities of implementing a fully federal system. While the solution may be vague, however, the diagnosis still is highly resonant, with voter apathy ever on the increase, and a growing notion that politicians are ‘all the same’. The idea of an elite or oligarchy sprung from the people has, if anything, found even more concrete expression, when all but two of the cabinet and most of the senior members of the opposition have studied PPE at Oxford, and the majority have moved straight from university into full time work for a political party. It also brings back into question the purpose of government, whose sole function now appears to be management of the economy. So is Arendt right in her assertion that freedom to operate in the public space is the precondition of living a fulfilling life or that a ‘town-hall style’ system would allow this to take place? Whether Arendt has the measure of the democratic decline that plagues us still or whether she is idealising from the summit of an ivory tower is beyond of the scope of this review, and even this publication. Thus there is space only for the briefest of rebuttals. I leave it to another classical author, Sallust, to succinctly express the opposing view: ‘Only a few prefer freedom– the majority seek nothing more than fair masters’.
Want to know more? For more on the theory of history and the limits of historical terms, try ‘In Defence of History’ by Richard Evans (London: Granta Books) ‘Studying History’ by Jeremy Black and Donald M. MacRaild (London: Palgrave Macmillan) Winter 2012 │ The Shoardian
The Feudal Revolution
Hern’s Historiographical Helpline: was there ever a ‘Feudal Revolution’? A letter from an adoring fan prompted Mr Hern to let forth on slow moving revolutions. We of course wait in barely barely--restrained anticipation for the next seminal documentary from Mr Snow Dear Mr. Hern, distracted as I am by making superfluous documentaries with my father, the well-known political barometer, and championing trendy political causes, I’ve always been slightly vexed about whether one can class the slow moving economic and social changes that are often described as “the feudal age” as revolutionary. Can you enlighten me? Yours, Dan Snow’ Dear Mr Snow, we are still deeply influenced by Marx’s view that revolution shifted history into three classic paradigms: from the ancient world to the feudal world and then onto the capitalist world. The second is the one which Marxists have traditionally had least scholarly impact on. While the bookshelves of the libraries in the former Eastern bloc groaned under the weight of books about slave revolts in Greece and Rome, there was far less on ‘the feudal lords, vassals, guildWinter 2012 │ The Shoardian
masters, journeymen, apprentices, serfs’ except where they could be used to elucidate the rise of capitalism. Marx was interested in the growth of towns in the 12th century and the development of guilds as a form of production, but otherwise the period was lavished in romanticism during the 19th century, and its combination of religion and chivalry was antithetical to a man interested in the nitty-gritty aspects of human affairs. In English Marxist historiography there was an attempt to plot the rise of the gentry class and its challenge to the feudal aristocracy as marking the formation of the bourgeoisie, a view most famously championed by Christopher Hill. But it has rarely been more than a footnote. We like to think we know all about the feudal system, or feudalism as it is sometimes called, as it was drummed into 40
The Feudal Revolution
the conquest of England was William’s desire to get his hands on the English system and use its strength for his own ends, not to change it. The apparent change was both cultural and political: the Normans used different words to describe older practices and completely transformed the landholding élite almost overnight. Royal power was certainly strengthened, but was not changed in any fundamental way. It represented a coup d'état rather than a revolution in the broad sense.
most of us when we started secondary education. The Middle Ages is a period often thought suitable for younger children, given the general belief (one based on ignorance I might add) that nothing very much happened and that everyone was simpleminded. We were taught that the Normans introduced feudalism to England after the conquest in 1066, and dutifully copied down a diagram similar to the one below into our books. However, there are many problems with this version of events. Firstly, AngloSaxon kings took oaths of allegiance from their subjects for the land that they held in return for a variety of obligations including military service. How could feudalism have originated with the Normans if it already existed in England when they arrived? Secondly, the idea that William introduced a new system of government or social structure to England is also patently absurd. The Anglo-Saxon monarchy was one of the most effective, centralised systems of bureaucratic administration in Western Europe. It was one of the few regions that managed to preserve such a structure with its attendant notion of public good after the collapse of the Carolingian Empire in the 9th and 10th centuries. William’s duchy in Normandy was an anarchic snake-pit of competing egos and territorial disputes which required the persistent, ruthless application of violent coercion by the duke to get any co-operation from his vassals. In its absence everything went to hell in a handcart. One of the principal reasons for
According to the theory of feudalism still found in many textbooks, the armed forces of the king would have been made up of vassals of the tenants-in-chief, who held a unit land (as a ‘fief’) conditionally from the king. However, the administrative records that survive for the armies of the Norman kings and their Angevin successors in the 12th and 13th centuries show the large-scale employment of mercenaries, paid for from tax revenues: the imposition of which eventually led to Magna Carta (David Cameron, please note). The Cartae Baronum, a record of land ownership in England compiled by Henry II in 1166 shows that tenants-in-chief – the baronage in Angevin England – often actually held land from each other rather than conforming to the pyramid structure beloved of textbooks.
The feudal system; simple, isn’t it?
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Why is this misleading concept still being passed down through the generations? One reason is its seductive simplicity. It is commonly argued that a purpose of academic history is to make the complex past comprehensible to those who have only had the briefest acquaintances with a period. For most people the medieval world is a foreign one, and some acclimatisation is advised. Another point is that historians, like scientists, need abstractions to comprehend and analyse reality. Both of these arguments are logical, but debatable and the danger is that a simplified abstraction is inwardly accepted as reality by the recipient, who fails to recognise it as a scholarly construction. Indeed, it is a construct whose meaning is multifaceted. Few scholars can agree on a precise definition of what they mean by the term Winter 2012 │ The Shoardian
The Feudal Revolution
‘feudalism.’ For the great historian Marc Bloch in his classic work Feudal Society the feudal bond was a broad cultural phenomenon that permeated all aspects of medieval life and shaped the mentalités of the period as expressed in literature and religion, just as it did law and agriculture. Others have focused more narrowly on the term as reflecting the relationships of the aristocracy, and denied its relevance in studying the rest of society. If that is the case, such a term cannot be logically used to define a whole economic system. Some try to focus their definition onto the narrow, precise sense of the land, or fief, that was held by individuals from their feudal superior as vassals in return for allegiance and service, often described as feudo-vassalic relations. As with other working definitions, there is no consensus amongst this school of thought over whether jurisdiction or military service is the key component. In response to this lack of theoretical consistency there has been a rise in ‘feudoscepticism’ where some authors have denied the very existence of ‘feudalism’ or a ‘feudal society’. Elizabeth Brown’s seminal article ‘The Tyranny of a Construct: Feudalism and Historians of Medieval Europe’ in 1974 proclaimed, “The tyrant feudalism must be declared once and for all deposed and its influence over students of the Middle Ages finally ended.” Susan Reynolds’ in Fiefs and Vassals’(1994) argued that the whole model of ‘feudalism’ and ‘feudal society’ that we use today are ideas created in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and were based on excessive weight given to a conjectural work of 12th century law from northern Italy, the Libri Feudorum (Feudal Book). This can be seen in the work of 17th century English antiquarian Henry Spelman who argued that the social and political relationships of medieval England had been uniform and systematic enough to be described adequately as regulated by a "'feudal law' [which] was an hierarchical system imposed from above as a matter of state policy." While he didn’t use the term ‘feudalism’ or ‘feudal system’ his characterisation became the standard view Winter 2012 │ The Shoardian
over the next few centuries. Reynolds argues that the Latin term ‘feudum’ covers myriad different arrangements of landholding that varied over time and in different places. It is clear from these lines of argument that we can dismiss the whole idea of western European history following a consistent, evolutionary progression from the ‘personal’ vassalage of the war bands in the early medieval period to a landed, fief-holding military aristocracy of the later Middle Ages. This is to be deconstructed as the national myths that have grown up over the last few centuries to explain the emergence of the nation state. Feudalism has nothing to do with the reality of life in the medieval world. So there was no feudal revolution then?
Religion’s influence was once more felt at the time of feudalism
Well, not quite. Historical work over the last thirty years has re-stressed the economic, political and cultural importance of the years c. 950 – c. 1250. The end of ‘ancient’ society in western Europe (a topic worthy of detailed exposition in another edition) was a far more drawn out process than is usually understood: the disappearance of the Roman emperors in the west was just one minor aspect of this. It was in the ’High Middle Ages’ that we see the creation of villages, the formation of cities, the restructuring of aristocracies, the beginnings of universities, the widespread development of writing as a tool of government and most importantly in some 42
The Feudal Revolution
ways, the re-founding of organised religion. This created the foundations for modern Europe by a profound restructuring of society. Hence the title of R. I. Moore’s excellent book The First European Revolution: c. 970 – 1215 (2000). This has moved the discussion on from increasingly moribund semantic squabbling over what the term ‘feudal’ means. It may not be a very robust label, but the traditional term was attempting to describe changes that had very important consequences. As one can see from the vigorous debates in the journal Past and Present in the mid-1990s, there is still no consensus over what these important changes actually were. Thomas Bisson argued there was a sudden, radical departure from the past in the 10th and 11th centuries, but it was a political revolution rather than a general ‘mutation’, with a new class of castellans and knights acting in innovative, unrestrained ways to exploit their lands and enrich themselves. This in turn led to a reaction during the 12th and 13th centuries where rulers started to create ‘government’ as a way of controlling these unruly groups. He argued that there were other changes happening too, but he was identifying the ‘revolutionary’ development that booted the remnants of the old Carolingian system into touch and allowed the creation of a new society. For Dominique Barthelemy, by contrast, Bisson’s changes were all part of a slow burning, gradual change over time rather than a process that can be tied to one particular moment in time. Stephen White criticised Bisson’s argument as placing too much stress on the changing language in the sources and questioned whether this really meant a social revolution was occurring. He questioned whether historians really understood what was happening or whether this was evidence of something else. Timothy Reuter also counselled that one had to be careful of the language of the sources and whether changes reflected real social transformation.. Basing arguments on contemporary anecdotal evidence missed the central point that those living through social change rarely understand what is going on. There may have been more castellans, but
Reuter challenged the notion that they didn’t really care about who they inflicted violence on. Society still had rules in the absence of kings. Wider society and culture creates expectations, as can be seen in the principle of the feud, which regulates and orders violence. Chris Wickham is the closest one gets to a Marxist historian these days and his response to these arguments was that historians shouldn’t allow their own opinions to colour the view of the past and attempt to understand some people better than others. He pointed out that the whole attempt to tie the ‘feudal revolution’ down to one particular date is misleading and there is a tendency to ignore regional variation, which is a product of an obsession of French historiography as the issue is so important for their national identity. There were major change in terms of political relationships at the top of society and at the bottom during the 10th century onwards, even earlier in some instances. There was a privatisation of power at the top during this period and more formalisation of local institutions of religion and administration in the villages. So while there was definitely radical change between 850 and 1100, the problem is that 250 years is a long time for a revolution! So what are we left with? It’s hard to quibble with the arguments that profound changes occurred between the 9th and the 13th centuries in western Europe, the legacy of which shaped our own world. It’s our capacity to explain it satisfactorily which is the problem. Language is inadequate in categorising the complexity of reality. We need a conceptual revolution to change that.
Want to know more? Should you wish to expand your historiography of the feudal period, you might like to try: ‘Feudalism: Its Rise, Progress, and Consequences. Lectures Delivered at Gresham College’ by John Abdy (London: Adamant Media Corporation) The Past and Present journal is available here:
http://www.pastandpresent.org.uk/ 43
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The French Revolution
THE FRENCH REVOLUTION: THE BIRTH OF BONAPARTE?
The French Revolution: the Birth of Napoleon? No self respecting journal dedicated to the study of revolutions could omit the revolution that gave the word its modern meaning. But after the storming of the Bastille and the terror, what did the Revolution actually mean for France? Angus Muir investigates.
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The French Revolution ouis XVI was crowned on the 11th June 1775 and his unpopular reign was summarized in the coronation itself. It was held at Rheims Cathedral and was as extravagant and luxurious as any monarchy during this time. The outrage from the public was that at the same time flour and bread prices had soared, leaving many starving. Louis’ unpopularity was evident from the start when hardly any of his guests attended the ceremony in fear of the rioting and the dangers it posed towards visitors.
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from 1786 onwards. It was August 20th 1786 when the birth of the revolution arguably began; this was when the treasury informed Louis that the monarchy was now insolvent. The King’s proposals to solve the crisis were to increase the tax upon the nobles within France and to have an eight-year loan that would erase 60% of the country’s debt. There was deep resentment that led to an uprising against the monarchy, boiling over in August 16th 1788 when creditors refused the loan payments and so the monarch was officially insolvent.
France under the reign of Louis XVI was split up into regions with his practical control diluted into thirteen sovereign courts or parlements. There were also thirty nine provinces, each controlled by a governor; although their powers were ceremonial rather than practical. By 1789 the French Empire totaled 277, 200 square miles and had over twenty eight million inhabitants, spreading from the Americas all the way to the east of the Cape.
In order to stem the growing opposition the treasury played its last card by calling together the Estates-General on May 5th 1789.
During Louis’ reign he became obsessed with maintaining the strength of the navy, as he saw his success in America aiding the colonies in their war against Britain as being solely down to the navy he possessed. By 1780 the French navy composed of eighty six frigates and seventy nine ships and was seen to be capable of competing with British navy. Louis XVI’s reign was seen as one of arrogance and indulgence rather than of security and progression. He left the Church to run the educational system and left the running of the country to the Marechaussee, the official police force. It was only 3, 000 strong, 2, 000 of which were stationed in Paris, leaving the rest of the cities and towns protected only by their own watchmen. His tyrannical reign was evident in the legal system that he created: as stated above the courts were known as the parlements and there were thirteen in France. The king could overrule any case in the courts by being present himself, this was known as the lit de justice. This meant that all magistrates’ powers in this session were removed and the king would act as the justice for the case. Louis XVI’s reign was undoubtedly crushed by the economic woes that devoured France 45
This meeting was to join representatives of the nobility, the Church and commoners together in discussing the financial crisis and to come to a compromise on the new taxes. The meeting failed when the voting system came under dispute as the representatives for the people realized that their vote was not equal to that of the clergy or the nobility. When asked to adjourn, the ‘Third Estate’ stood their ground and refused to leave, sparking demonstrations of thousands in Versailles where the meeting was being held. In order to compromise Louis authenticated the new National Assembly, which saw fair representations of the people, and on June 27th he forced the nobles and clergy to join the assembly in an official letter sent out that day. Arthur Young, sn English observer, said at the time ‘the whole business seems to be over’ but Louis was not of that opinion as he had increased the military presence in Paris to 20, 000 by July 1st. The spark that set off the revolution was Camille Desmoullins’s speech on July 12th and the storming of the Bastille on July 14th marked the end of royal authority within France and the official revolution commenced. Many people are not aware that this period was not the end of the process; in fact it was really only stage one. The next important phase was started by the French Constitution of 1791 which was formally signed by Louis on October 14th and outlined the democratic model that the people of France had created. It saw the parlements dissolved and the power of the people increased within the Winter 2012 │ The Shoardian
The French Revolution National Assembly. The legislative Assembly composed of the bourgeoisie represented by the Feuliiants and the commoners who hated the king and the Jacobins. They voted to declare war on Austria in April 1792 but were forced to regret their rash decision to impose immediate glory upon the newly formed democracy. They were forced to retreat past the French border and now the public was once again angered by the decisions that Louis and the Legislative Assembly had made. Famine was spreading again across France with wheat and bread prices rising once more. The public took matters into their own hands for the final stage of the revolution against the monarchical society that was currently suffocating their progress. The Tuileries Palace was attacked on August 10th 1792 with a stand-off between the revolutionaries and the remaining royalists. The Swiss Guard was outnumbered by 20, 000 to 1, 300 and was slaughtered without mercy by the oncoming wave of nationalists. Louis was arrested and taken by the revolutionaries but although the monarchy had fallen the political re-structure of France did not take place until six weeks later when the Convention took over from the Legislative Assembly. France’s people had regained control of their democracy but three weeks after the fall of Louis, France’s northeast border had been penetrated by invading Prussian forces. They had swept past Verdun but were stopped at Valmy on the September 20th 1792, on the same day the National Convention was formally announced. The next day the First French Republic was created, abolishing royalty for the last time in France. On the 23rd December, Louis stood trial at the National Convention and was told that he must die for the country to live. The official end of the revolution is always a murky area but the execution of Louis XVI on January 21st 1793 is often marked as the beginning of the end. Napoleon’s rise to the top of France was born from the chaos that emerged from 1793-1796, this period was defined as the ‘Reign of Terror’ as each faction within France strived to take control. The ‘Reign of Terror’ ended in Winter 2012 │ The Shoardian
Louis XVI: the revolution’s first victim
1794 and defined these three years perfectly; the two main political parties trying to take control of France created this tumultuous period. The Jacobins were left-wing revolutionaries and there were the Girondins who were the republican or right wing faction. The struggle between the two was all but ended on December 23rd 1793 when the Jacobins were defeated at Vendée, with their leader Danton guillotined on March 30th 1794. With the closure of the Party in November 11th 1794, the pendulum of power was now firmly on the Girondin’s side. Napoleon’s rise was down to his significant victories that helped put France back onto the stage of military power in Europe. His invasion of Northern Italy was the beginning of a series of offensives that took him to the top of France’s political infrastructure. His mind was that of a general, one fixated upon military success, but not one completely obscure to politics. Napoleon was so successful in his campaigns in Italy that he forced the Austrians to sign the Treaty of Campo Formio which demonstrated the fear the he had induced within France’s European neighbors. This Treaty was the end of the War of the First Coalition (the European battle between France on one side and Prussia, Great Britain and the Holy Roman Empire on the other). 46
The French Revolution Egypt allowed Napoleon to rise to the peak of political power within France, with the public clinging to any news surrounding his successes abroad. Napoleon’s ambitions seemed to be all but finished when on August 1st 1798 he lost the crucial Battle of the Nile, which saw France lose against Nelson’s fleet. His victory in Egypt was finally eclipsed due to Russia and Britain’s alliance, which saw him lose the final land battle in Trebia forcing him to return, defeated, back to France in October 9th 1799.
The Treaty was seen as a resounding success, especially for Napoleon as it forced Austria to return the Austrian Netherlands (Belgium) and islands like Corfu in the Mediterranean. Following his success he convinced the Directory (the new governmental structure in France) that confronting the British Navy was not yet feasible but that he wished to expand the empire into Egypt. The Directory was made up of five men that acted as the supreme governing body for France up until 1799 and were accompanied by the lower house called the Council of Five Hundred. Napoleon knew that success in Egypt would inevitably swing the pendulum of power away from the unpopular Directory towards him. A man who represented the true beliefs of France, a leader who could strive France to conquer Europe and regain some of its previous glory and restore national pride. On 21st July 1798 Napoleon encountered the first major battle in Egypt, called the Battle of the Pyramids against the Mamelukes, in which his mastery of tactics was first exposed to the world. His main tactic that would be his trademark for years to come was the ‘divisional square’, which is famously depicted in the Battle of Waterloo. His success in 47
A rare combination of a general and a politician : Napoleon Bonaparte
On balance what history points us towards is the sheer brilliance and flare that catapulted Napoleon to the peak of world domination. His ability to judge the mood of the majority, to play upon the emotions of the unhappy and angered, and manipulate this desperation into support is uncanny. Napoleon possessed the gift of extreme man management, which aided him in becoming the military and political genius that he was, a skill often overlooked. What, to a great extent, negotiated his swift rise was the lack of organization in the immediate aftermath of the revolution with the authority of the new leaders very much in the people’s hands. It was his tactical genius that led to his victories right at the time of France crumbling into her neighbors' hands and it is holds great weight in stating that Napoleon deserved his position due to his securing of France’s safety. What of course happens afterwards is something that the manipulated majority had no reason to assume but there is no taking away his determination, drive and sheer audacity that almost won him Europe.
Want to know more? If Napoleon and the French Revolution is your thing, then try: ‘The Age of Revolution’ by Eric Hobsbawm (London: Abacus) ‘The French Revolution’ by Christopher Hibbert (London: Penguin) Winter 2012 │ The Shoardian
The Peasants’ Revolt
The Peasants’ Revolt Three Year 11 students, Will Rooney, Rob Gourley and Sam Brunt, examine the Peasant’s Revolt of 1381. Why did Wat Tyler and co. decide to march on London? Did they have any chance of success?
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edieval England experienced few revolts but the most serious was the Peasants’ Revolt which took place in June 1381. A violent system of punishments for offenders normally discouraged peasants from causing trouble. Most areas in England also had castles in which soldiers were garrisoned, and this was normally enough to Winter 2012 │ The Shoardian
guarantee reasonable behaviour among medieval peasants. An army of peasants from Kent and Essex marched on London. They did something no-one had done before or since- they captured the Tower of London. The Archbishop of Canterbury and the King’s Treasurer were killed. The King, Richard II, was only 14 at the time but despite his youth he agreed to meet the peasants at Mile End. 48
The Peasants’ Revolt
What were the peasants angry about and why had they come to London? 1. After the Black Death, many manors were left short of workers. To encourage those who had survived to stay on their manor, many lords had given their peasants their freedom and paid them to work on their land. Now, nearly 35 years after the Black Death, peasants feared that the lords would take back these privileges and they were prepared to fight for them. 2. Many peasants had to work for free on Church land, sometimes as much as two days in the week. This meant that they could not work on their own land which made it difficult to grow enough food for their families. Peasants wanted to be free of a burden that made the Church rich but made them poor. They were supported in what they wanted by a priest, John Ball, from Kent. 3. There had been a long war with France. Wars cost money and that money usually came from the peasants through the taxes that they paid. In 1380, Ri char d II’ s gover nme nt introduced a new tax called the Poll Tax. This made everyone who was on the tax register pay 49
The peasants found support from John Ball, a Kentish priest
5p. It was the third time in four years that such a tax had been used. By 1381, the peasants had had enough. Five pence to them was a great deal of money. If they could not pay in cash, they could pay in kind, such as seeds, tools etc., anything that could be vital to survival in the coming year. In May 1381, a tax collector arrived at the Essex village of Fobbing to find out why the people there had not paid their poll tax. He was thrown out by the villagers. In June, soldiers arrived to establish law and order. They too were thrown out as the villagers of Fobbing had now organised themselves and many other local villages in Essex had joined them. After doing this, the villagers marched on London to plead with the young King to hear their complaints. Winter 2012 │ The Shoardian
The Peasants’ Revolt
One man had emerged as the leader of the peasants - Wat Tyler from Kent. As the peasants from Kent had marched to London, they had destroyed tax records and tax registers. The buildings which housed government records were burned down. They got into the city of London because the people there had opened the gates to them. By mid-June the discipline of the peasants was starting to go. Many got drunk in London and looting took place. It is known that foreigners were murdered by the peasants. Wat Tyler had
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asked for discipline amongst those who looked up to him as their leader. He did not get it.
Wat Tyler and Richard II managed to reach a compromise without immediate bloodshed
On June 14th, the King met the rebels at Mile End. At this meeting, Richard II gave the peasants all that they asked for and asked that they go home in peace. Some did. Others returned to the city and murdered the archbishop and Treasurer - their heads were cut off on Tower Hill by the Tower of London. Richard II spent the night in hiding in fear of his life. On June 15th, he met the rebels again at Smithfield outside of the city’s walls. It is said that
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The Peasants’ Revolt
The Peasants’ revolt involved more people than the peasantry. It was supported by nobles as well. Some nobles genuinely supported the cause, others agreed with the revolt out of fear. The revolt was mainly in London but there was an attempted revolt in Norfolk which failed.
this was the idea of the Lord Mayor (Sir William Walworthe) who wanted to get the rebels out of the city. Medieval London was wooden and the streets were cramped. Any attempt to put down the rebels in the city could have ended in a fire or the rebels would have found it easy to vanish into the city once they knew that soldiers were after them. At this meeting, the Lord Mayor killed Wat Tyler. We are not sure what happened at this meeting as the only people who could write about it were on the side of the king and their evidence might not be accurate. The death of Tyler and another promise by Richard to give the peasants what they asked for, was enough to send them home. 51
King Richard II presided over a major change in the Peasants’’ rights
Ultimately the revolt was successful as it voiced the people’s views to the élites. Although many peasants died, landowners now paid peasants wages and the tax poll was never raised again. Nobles now had more respect for the peasants. With more respect it meant the Middle ages were moving on, the feudal system changed slightly with more free men and slightly less peasants and in the long term the role of peasants was changed in England. The fact that peasants now held a better position in English society meant that this revolution was so significant to history.
Want to know more? For more on Wat Tyler and co. try: ‘Summer of Blood: The Peasants’ Revolt of 1381’ by Dan Jones (London: HarperPress) ‘The Peasants’ Revolt: England’s Failed Revolution of 1381 by Alastair Dunn (London: The History Press Ltd.) Winter 2012 │ The Shoardian
1848: The Year of Change
The Year it all Changed (Probably) In an attempt to be both controversial and entertaining, the editor attempts to show that the greatest revolutions of all were the ones crushed throughout Europe in 1848 and 1849
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he first thing to say about the 1848 revolutions is that they failed. Unquestionably. It is an odd way to start, I know, but I feel honour bound to mention it before I begin. In Germany and Italy they were put down brutally and some would argue permanently. The spirit of 1848 never rose again, even in the supposedly liberal creations of the Kingdoms of Italy and Germany. So how, in a thousand words, do I intend to demonstrate that the 1848 were in fact a roaring success? I do not. All I intend to do is show that the revolutions were not only necessary for the events that followed Winter 2012 │ The Shoardian
them, but also they made a positive impact on those events. Without 1848, it is my contention, the world would be a very different place. A bit of context and background is required before I delve into my argument proper. Europe was not the permanent body it is today: in the North, the German Confederation was a collection of independent states run by hereditary monarchs. This group was led by Austria, still owner of Hungary and a large part of the Balkan area. The Ottoman Empire was still out in force, no longer expansionist and slowly collapsing but a strong force in European politics. Italy was a peninsula 52
1848: The Year of Change
run by Austria. On the continent, the most pressing diplomatic issue was the restraint of France, since she had run riot in the early 1800s. Russia looked to expand into the West, while Prussia looked to expand into the East. Borders were not permanent, and short wars typified the military state of affairs at the time.
ministers. The middle class Germans were also unhappy with the bureaucracy that largely excluded them from public office. Their freedom of expression and movement was limited, which led to a growing desire for a constitutional government with a basic degree of civil rights. From this emerged a growing nationalism within the middle class; if the small states would not give the people what they wanted, then maybe by re-establishing the motherland they could gain what was currently denied them. In 1846, Baden had granted her citizens a constitution, which meant that her representative at the German Confederation was elected on a far wider franchise than any other. The people of Baden were politically awake, and her liberal members strongly supported a united Germany. In 1847, liberals from the South-West German states met at Hippenhelm to discuss an elected national parliament, a Diet, and the modernisation (read equalization) of taxes and civil liberties.
It was in this climate that the 1848 revolutions took place. Most historians agree that the revolutions had primarily socio-economic causes. In Germany, the population doubled between 1800 and 1848, with the result that many areas were unable to sustain their populations. Many left the countryside and moved to the towns, but only found mass unemployment and appalling living conditions. From the mid 1840s there was a huge rise in strikes and disease like typhoid and cholera. Towns provided a melting pot for discontent and anger, and the revolutionaries in Germany were overwhelmingly urban. Coupled with these social problems was an economic crisis that broke out in 1846-1847. Disastrous corn harvests and potato blight which meant starvation for most of the urban population. Food riots broke out, the so called ‘potato revolution’ in Berlin. They erected barricades, shops were looted and even the Crown Prince’s palace was stormed. The starvation and rise in food prices resulted in an increase in the cost of consumer goods, which crushed the economy. There was rapid unemployment, and the standard of living fell as people found higher prices and lower wages.
Berlin in 1848: a hotbed of new ideas and angry men
What we can clearly see, then, are two sets of ideas running independently of one another. The middle class sought more rights and a political voice, while the working class searched only for a way out of poverty. Still, very few saw revolution in 1848; the economy was picking up, and the monarchies looked shaken but secure. The middle class and the working class did not touch one another, both having an independent set of aims.
Workers began to demand better conditions for them and their families. Most of them wanted higher wages, shorter working hours and a better house, there was particular apathy to political issues or a change in government. There were, however, political issues that were exacerbated by the economic crisis. Most Princes were unable or unwilling to alleviate their peoples’ suffering, and this damaged their prestige. The growing middle class turned their anger on a collection of weak monarchs and their 53
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1848: The Year of Change
Some of the governments sent troops to restrain the peasantry in the countryside, the destruction of private property simply too radical. In 1848, the Austrian Emperor finally gave into pressure and agreed to establish a constitution. Although initially elected by universal suffrage, it was changed so that few liberals managed to get into government. However, faced with uprisings all across her empire, in Italy, Hungary and Bohemia, she abandoned her role as leader of Germany. Prussia, if she could take the opportunity, would become the new leader of Germany.
So why did they happen? Once more, France led the way, overthrowing their monarch in February 1848. This sparked a revolution in Austria in March, on the thirteenth, the great architect of conservatism Metternich fled, along with the army. Vienna was left in the hands of the students and the radicals. The importance of this cannot be understated: the very seat of conservative power had been conquered by a new set of ideas. The rest of the German Confederation followed suit; peasants attacked their landlords. In that festering liberal wound of Baden republicans tried to lead a workers uprising, but they found little support. The middle class in other states preferred to work with the ruling class rather than usurp them. The princes surrendered rapidly. Armed insurgencies they could cope with, but they had do defence against ideas. The meetings, demonstrations and petitions were far more effective than military uprisings in Prussia and Austria, which were crushed quickly. The pen, it would seem, truly was mightier than the sword. Once more, the differences between the working class and the middle class became clear. Uprisings in the country seemed dangerous to the new leaders in the towns. Winter 2012 │ The Shoardian
Metternich’s removal in 1848 opened the door for more liberal policies in Austria and the surrounding area
King Frederick William could not react to revolutionaries in his own lands. Having seen three hundred demonstrators killed by the army, the King had only one option if he wished to avoid civil war: give the people what they wanted. On March 22nd, he granted the people a series of reforms, including a new liberal ministry and a constitution. Prussia, it seemed, was the new leader of German nationalism. At the same time, a great meeting was taking place in Heidelberg. Representatives from six states met there and declared their intention to change the political institutions of Germany. What followed is the closest the country would get to democracy for another century. The Vorparlament (also called the Frankfurt Parliament) looked for the people to join with the new liberal Germany. It was a surprising success, and on March 31st 1848, five hundred and seventy four representatives from almost every German state met in St. Paul’s Church in Frankfurt to discuss the role of the new German parliament. It decided that it should be elected by all those in a state who were ‘independent’ (the decision was left to the states as to who that was). Between seventy five and ninety percent of each state were able to vote in the first elections. The voters chose ‘electors’ who then chose the representatives to be sent to the parliament. In all thirty nine states of the union, these elections were carried out peacefully and without objection from the 54
1848: The Year of Change
princes. Unsurprisingly, the majority of the elected candidates were middle class (over eighty percent of the representatives had university degrees). There were few working class, and even fewer members of the nobility present. It intended to establish a unified Germany under a constitutional monarch and was therefore liberal but not revolutionary. The Volparlament had proved that democracy could take hold of Germany, but it was immediately beset with problems. For a start, it could not create a constitution that suited the interests of all of its members. A ‘Provisional Central Power’ was established to rule in the meantime, but without a clearly defined remit for him or his ministers, he could do little. The ‘Fifty Articles’ were passed in December, and while they were not quite a constitution, they did guarantee equality before the law, freedom of worship and the abolishment of unwarranted arrest. Austria was recovering from her internal troubles, and the parliament had encountered a second major problem: what was Germany? Parts of Prussia were included, whilst others were not. Some parts of the current Confederation contained a large concentration of Czechs and Poles, and the Austrian Empire itself had a minority of Germans. The geographical layout of Germany would have to be changed, but the Volparlament was at a loss as to how this could be satisfactorily achieved. Suffering from a lack of popular support and above all a lack of impetus, the Volparlament collapsed in March 1849. The Prussian King had refused the title of German Emperor because it was not theirs to give. Prussia also rejected the belated constitution along with many other states. The last remnants of the 1848 revolutions had fallen, and a new age of conservatism seemed guaranteed with the re-emergence of Austria onto the German stage. So what were the 1848 revolutions? Why are they so important? If we take a short term view, they were not important at all, 55
and in fact did more to harm the movement of liberalism by their failure than by their immediate limited success. In the long term, the 1848 revolutions changed the whole situation in the German Confederation. Whilst Prussia had been unable to take advantage of the weaknesses of Austria and establish herself as the new dominant power in Central Europe, she had become the new hope of the liberals in the quest for unification. In the aftermath of the revolutions, liberals and revolutionaries flocked to Prussia, searching for another way to achieve their aims. For her part, Austria’s re-establishment of order domestically would be short lived, as the people did not settle. Her mantle had been regained in name alone, and the next two decades would see the gradual erosion of Austrian power in the region. The other major success of the 1848 revolutions was that the middle class enforced their will on the ruling one. The Prussian King remained a constitutional monarch even after the uprisings had been put down, and so the political balance had changed in the German states; a desire for liberty and unity together had been born, and arguably it would never go away. Modest success, then, is the legacy of 1848. Not complete failure, and not immediate success either. Without them, particularly in Germany, the rest of the nineteenth century might have been very different. For structuralists like myself, they are the start of a monumental European change and the true beginning of democratic institutions on the continent.
Want to know more? For more on 1848 and German unification, try: The Course of German History by AJP Taylor (London: Routledge) Aspects of European History by Stephen Lee (London: Routledge)
Winter 2012 │ The Shoardian
Obituary
Obituary Eric Hobsbawm, historian and lifelong revolutionary, died on October 1st 2012, aged 95
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ew historians have history written about them. Eric Hobsbawm ‘the last living Communist’, as he was christened at his ninetieth birthday party, undoubtedly falls into that category. He remained a loyal Marxist until the end, having first embraced the ideology as a boy in Berlin. Even when the Soviets crushed the Hungarians, even when Khrushchev opened the archives of Stalinism to the world, Hobsbawm remained something of an apologist for the tiny Georgian’s regime. At the fall of the USSR in 1991, he still had an attraction for
the country, even though it collapsed ‘so completely, that it must now be obvious that failure was built into this enterprise from the start.’ Revolutionary and hopeful to a fault, he could not abandon the revolution, or indeed those who had fought for it. Hobsbawm was also one of the few truly Marxist historians and his history of the ‘long nineteenth century’ (1789-1914) held within ‘The Age of Revolution’, ‘The Age of Capital’ and ‘The Age of Empire’ is some of the most lucid and above all brilliant historical research of the last century. With these books came a wider audience, far beyond the far-left and academia and into the popular sphere. What threatened to tarnish his reputation became a mark of respect; no-one could doubt his belief or for that matter the validity of his arguments. A defender of Marx all his life, he saw in the man a grasp of the world as an entity, perceiving at once its political, social, economic and scientific factors. His ‘short twentieth century’ (1914-1991) encapsulated largely by ‘The Age of Extremes’ gave him an opportunity to record the world as an observer, a man who had spent the Second World War as der Englander in Vienna, despite the fact that he was Jewish. Although he thought he might leave nothing behind, he felt it necessary to attempt to tell the story of a terrible century, but one that he himself had felt largely content in. By the end of the twentieth century, much of Hobsbawm’s hope that the people would rise up to overthrow capitalism had gone. The 1980s had demonstrated that even a far left Labour party could not galvanise the people and push them out onto the streets. Inequality was no longer indicative of public demonstration, although he felt that there was perhaps nothing so physically intense as going out to demonstrate with others at a time of great strife. Maybe 2008 showed him that the world was not yet ready to throw off the shackles of capitalism, nevertheless the world is indebted to Eric Hobsbawm for his ideas and for his services to history. He will be missed. Winter 2012 │ The Shoardian
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