Shoardian vii 'the asian special' final version1 by Neil Smith

The Shoardian

Issue VII Winter 2013/14

Produced by MGS History Students

The Asian Special

From the Editor

The Shoardian A product of the Grammar School.

FROM THE EDITOR

Manchester

Editor: Harrison Edmonds Deputy Editors: Will Barnes, Josh Ellis & Sam Heath Staff: Mrs Eleanor Carter Mr Ashley Hern Ms Rachel Kneale Contributors

George Alldred Y12 Tom Browne Y10 David Bullen Y12 J.J. Bute Y13 John Drinkwater

Y13

Ryan Emerson Y13 Sam Harris Y10 Jamie Horton Y13 Jamil Ibrahim Y8 Abhay Kapoor Y13 Alan Petri Y12 Charlie Pozniak Y10 Matthew Prudham Y10 Alan Truman Y12 Special Thanks: Dr John Watts Sarah Wood Kenneth Edmonds 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 (edmoha-y07). Many thanks to all those who wrote articles for this edition.

ello, and welcome to the seventh issue of The Shoardian. This issue (as one can probably guess from the front cover) examines the history of Asia, from the Aryans to the fall of Constantinople, from the Hiroshima Nuclear Attack to Operation Blue Star. By basing the winter edition on a geographical area, the students who contribute are challenged by the need to write about a historical event or issue that is not on the syllabus and to push them outside their academic comfort zone. Yet with such a broad topic, with thousands of years of history and so many different cultures, there is no danger of a shortage of subjects to write on! The inspiration for this theme came from the after-school history sessions eating salt and pepper chips from the Oriental Express. I am delighted with the boys‘ contribution and am especially pleased with the contributions of the younger boys from Year 8 and 10. As the 500th Anniversary of the founding of the school is approaching, I am pleased to mention that there is an article from the Archive Room, with pictures of artefacts from the school‘s heritage. I would definitely recommend checking the room out, which students can do most lunchtimes. This issue also contains an interview with my grandfather, Ken Edmonds, who was a Signalman in Burma and Singapore at the end of World War II. As well as wishing to share some interesting tales, I hope that this will remind the boys that their grandparents, parents and relatives have their own stories to tell, and that it would be a shame not to ask them about the past. Unfortunately, this is the editorial team‘s last issue of The Shoardian. I would like to commend all those who wrote for the edition; without them, the magazine would not exist. It must be mentioned how indispensable Mr Hern is in the process of producing each issue, he is always prepared to deal with any problems that may arise, and is superb as an extra pair of eyes to spot any mistakes! I hope our readers enjoy the Asian Special and will be inspired to further explore the varied tapestry that is history . Harrison Edmonds

Front Cover: Contemporary painting of Date Masanume, one-eyed Japanese Warlord active during the Warring States Period in the 16th Century Winter 2013│ The Shoardian

Contents Winter2013 Volume VII

The Asian Special

Why The US won the Vietnam War George Alldred argues this controversial view

The Mongol Empire– the origins of globalisation? Jamie Horton explains why globalisation happened earlier than we think

The Qing Dynasty Sam Harris looks back on an illustrious imperial family

The Aryans: a fascinating history Matthew Prudham examines the controversies behind this possibly mythical race of people

What if the ‘Gang of Four’ had remained in power? Alan Truman writes about the power vacuum after Mao’s death

24 Reviews & Interviews

Interview with Dr John Watts Dr John Watts met with The Shoardian to discuss Henry VI and ‘The White Queen’

Review Section The world of historical literature is examined critically by sixth-formers and teachers

Interview with Sarah Wood Sarah Wood talks to The Shoardian about her experiences of working in French Guyana

The Asian Special II

The Fall of Constantinople Alan Petri accounts the fall of New Rome

Hiroshima: Birthplace of Nuclear Warfare Tom Browne on the first use of the atomic bomb

The Shoardian 40

The Russo-Japanese War: a reinterpretation J.J. Bute gives his interpretation of the facts

The Women of the Heian Court Sam Heath explores the opulence and culture of this period of Japanese history

Operation Blue Star Abhay Kapoor looks at the controversial storming of the Golden Temple in 1984

What was the cause of the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857? Harrison Edmonds argues an unorthodox view in his Ian Bailey Prize winning essay

Hern’s Helpline

Did the Chinese discover America? Mr Hern explains the work of Gavin Menzies

56 The Asian Special III

An Economic History of Japan John Drinkwater outlines how Japan has changed from 1500 to the present-day

Afghanistan: the Impossible Peace Charlie Pozniak examines the failings of the invasions of Afghanistan in history

Letter to the Editor

The MGS Archives Ms Kneale (The MGS Archivist) writes about the wealth of history in the school

Eyewitness

Historical Film Club

Eyewitness: Kenneth Edmonds Ken Edmonds (via his grandson) tells of his experiences in East Asia during WW2

Film Review: The Last Samurai Jamil Ibrahim reviews the Tom Cruise film about the Boshin War

How historically accurate is Gladiator? David Bullen on Ridley Scott’s epic about Maximus Decimus Meridius, who will have his vengeance, in this life or the next

Obituary

Nelson Mandela Harrison Edmonds accounts the life of South Africa’s, and one of the world’s, most influential politicians 3

Winter 2013│ The Shoardian

Why The US Won The Vietnam War

George Alldred argues that contrary to popular memory, the Vietnam War of 1961-1975 was actually a victory for the United States of America

Why The US Won The Vietnam War!

he Vietnam War was perhaps one of the most problematic and traumat i sing wars in American history. It arguably had the most profound economic, political, ideological and even psychological impacts ever seen before in a war. To worsen the blow, it was the first war to be publically televised and so journalists played a significant role in the war and in Winter 2013│ The Shoardian

US Troops next to a landing Iroquois Huey helicopter gunship

shaping public opinion. The Vietnam War has also heavily featured in literature and films after the war and has been a heavily controversial topic ever since due to different ideologies, political views and national pride. Amongst the many issues at stake, the most central one is ‗Did the United States win or lose the Vietnam War?‘ This article

aims to

challenge

the 4

Why the US Won The Vietnam War

consensus and suggest that the US did in fact win the war in Vietnam. The first reason that one would argue suggests that the Americans won the war was due to the fact that America did actually achieve its main aim; to prevent the spread of communist aggression and to prevent the unfolding of the ‗Domino Theory‘. The ‗Domino Theory‘ suggested that if one country fell into the influence of communism, then neighbouring countries would soon follow and fall under the same political regime. It is best described by President Eisenhower himself who said that, ‗You have a row of dominoes set up, you knock over the first one, and what will happen to the last one is the certainty that it will go over very quickly,‘ Therefore, as American intervention increased, government policy aimed to prevent this before it engulfed the whole of Asia and maybe even the whole world, as suggested by Richard Nixon, who argued in 1953 that, ―If Indochina falls, Thailand is put in an almost impossible position. The same is true of Malaya with its rubber and tin and Indonesia. If this whole part of South East Asia went under Communist domination or Communist influence, Japan, who trades and must trade with this area in order to exist, must inevitably, be oriented towards the Communist regime.‖ To a certain extent, American intervention did actually halt the communist expansion into South East Asia. Post 1975, only Laos and Cambodia were further influenced by communism and by the end of the Vietnam War, the ―Domino Theory‖ lost its momentum. It can be argued that the main reason for this halt in the spread of communism is due to the United States‘ stand in South Vietnam. In his article ―Despite Vietnam Loss, U.S Won the Long War in Asia,‖ Leslie David Simon from the Washington Post, states that, ―Remarkably, what was obvious to so many never happened. Today, these 5

Ho Chi Minh led the North Vietnamese for most of the war and is still revered as a triumphant figure in Vietnam

countries are capitalist, prosperous and, to some extent, democratic. Why? Because the United States, with enormous sacrifice, held the line for well over a decade in Vietnam, deflecting Soviet resources and allowing valuable time for these other countries to mature." This backs up the theory that America stopped the advance of communism but to truly prove this hypothesis, it is advantageous to look at this using a counter-factual method. What if American hadn‘t intervened in the Vietnam War? Throughout many periods in history, we see that the ―Domino Theory‖ occurred on a vast scale. A perfect example, other than the spread of communism, is the ‗Arab Spring,‘ the wave of demonstrations and protests that spread across the Middle East from 2011 onwards. Some refer to the potential spread of both Islamic theocracy and liberal democracy in the Middle East as an example of the ―Domino Theory‖ in practice. It is widely believed that due to the quick and bloodless revolution in Winter 2013│ The Shoardian

Why The US Won The Vietnam War

Tunisia replacing President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali with a new temporary government, this inspired the revolution in Egypt that overthrew President Hosni Mubarak. This subsequently led to the revolution in Libya removing President Muammas Gaddafi, and again in Yemen with President Ali Abdullah Saleh and then finally today‘s Syrian war against the Assad regime. One revolution evidently happened after another and for the same reasons. Coincidence? It seems more likely that these countries show how powerful under the ―Domino Theory‖ can be and each popular revolt against their oppressive regimes was influenced by the neighbouring nations. Without something to stop these dominoes falling, it seemed that the uprisings in the Middle East were unstoppable. The same idea is directly relevant to the 1960‘s in President LB South East Asia. Communist Russia Johnson is indirectly led to the creation of largely seen as communist China, which, in turn, led to a responsible for communist Vietnam and so on. Therefore overt US military we must conclude that if the US had not involvement in Vietnam intervened with Vietnam and without the temporary halt in communist expansion, it is, in fact, most probable that communism would have spread into easily across the whole of South East Asia due to the reasons listed by Nixon. Therefore it is safe to conclude that American intervention was essential to counter the spread of communism and provide an alternative, successful, ideological system of government other than communism in South East Asia. A second reason is due to the Paris Peace Accords in 1973. This treaty established peace between the US, the South Vietnamese and the North Vietnamese governments. War is not all about dominating the enemy and conquering all their lands. Wars are primarily about achieving desired objectives. For example, the Spanish Civil War was not fought in order to obtain land, but to put their Winter 2013│ The Shoardian

ideological beliefs into government. As the US had already achieved its objective, it is safe to assume that there was no need to lengthen their involvement in the war; therefore it is reasonable to assume that by they won. However, if we were to argue that wars are all about who killed the most. America lost some 58,000 men and over 300,000 wounded, compared the North Vietnamese losing over 1,000,000 troops along with over 600,000 wounded. Furthermore, in an article named ―Statistics on the Vietnam War,‖ Gary Roush stated that, ―The American military was not defeated in Vietnam. The American military did not lose a battle of any consequence. From a military standpoint, it was almost an unprecedented performance.‖ How could America have lost the war if it had achieved all of its objectives, took more lives and never lost a battle? A third reason to support the proposal is that the North Vietnamese actually paid the Americans in reparations after the war was concluded. In an article named ―Who won the Vietnam War?‖ Professor Michel Chossudovsky tells us that 6

Why the US Won The Vietnam War

―Vietnam never received war reparations payments from the U.S. for the massive loss of life and destruction, yet an agreement reached in Paris in 1993 required Hanoi to recognize the debts of the defunct Saigon regime of General Thieu. This agreement is in many regards tantamount to obliging Vietnam to compensate Washington for the costs of war.‖ Why would the nation that ‗lost‘ the war, receive reparations from the victor? The more likely scenario is that America effectively had won the war and so the North Vietnamese felt obliged to pay reparations. A fourth way in which America achieved its aims is that it indirectly removed a sizeable amount of money from the USSR‘s economy, debatably leading it into ruin almost 16 years later. As the article, ―Vietnam – The Soviet Union‖ states, ―The Soviets resented the enormous burden of their aid program to Vietnam and felt that much of it was wasted because of Vietnamese inefficiency.‖ It can therefore be argued that the economic burden of Vietnam, indirectly led to the downfall of the USSR. Whilst this is a radical idea, the, ―Burden of their aid programme,‖ could have led to less government spending in other areas and therefore more resentment for communism within the USSR as their standard of living decreased.

The Tet offensive on 1968 was a US military victory, but a propaganda triumph for the North Vietnamese and Viet– Cong

General Westmoreland devised the ‘body-count’ strategy that influenced US policy during the war

In conclusion, we can argue that America won the war on the positions presented above. America achieved all of its objectives by the end of the war; it had halted communist expansion, it had inflicted more casualties and had never truly lost a battle, and not only that but received reparations many years later. All these ideas alone prove that America was successful in Vietnam but not only this but America arguably helped to bring down the Russian economy as well. Therefore, not only did they then achieve their objectives, but arguably surpassed them. Without American intervention, it is safe to assume that communist expansion would have spread into the whole of Asia and maybe further, perhaps even leading to a world, similar to George Orwell‘s ‗1984‘, with the Eurasian communists on one side of the world, and the American capitalists on the other.

Want to know more? If George has sparked an interest in the Vietnam War, why not try:

‘A Rumor of War’ by Philip Caputo (London: Pimlico) ‘The Best and the Brightest’ by David Halberstam (London: Fawcett Publications) 7

Winter 2013│ The Shoardian

The Mongol Empire– The Origins of Globalisation?

THE MONGOL EMPIRE– THE ORIGINS OF GLOBALISATION? In this compelling essay, Jamie Horton explains why globalisation is a far older phenomenon than commonly thought

he Mongols swept out from the Asian steppes under the leadership of Genghis Khan in the early 13 th century, conquering all who stood in their path. Within two generations, the Mongols had created the largest land empire the world has ever seen, far surpassing the Romans both in the speed and scale of their aggrandisement. There is a traditional view of the Mongols as savage barbarians who mercilessly slaughtered countless innocents and were merely a plague on the world. The Mongols did use terror as a weapon, and there is no doubt that they committed severe atrocities, for example, Juvaini (a contemporary Persian historian) related that after the fall of Bukhara, ―no Winter 2013│ The Shoardian

The Mongols conquered most of Eurasia, reaching even Eastern Europe, invading Poland three times

male was spared who stood higher than the butt of a whip,‖ but this is not the entire story. More recently historians have begun to reexamine the Mongols in a much more positive light, recognising the effect of their rule on free trade, religious tolerance, and global connections. There is a modern paradigm of what globalisation means, but if, as the following definition would have it, globalisation is, ―the process of international integration arising from the interchange of world views, products, ideas, and other aspects of culture,‖ then arguably the Mongols laid the foundations for the interconnected world we see today. The sheer scale of the Mongol Empire meant 8

The Mongol Empireâ&#x20AC;&#x201C; The Origins of Globalisation? that different cultures were forced into contact with each other to a much greater extent than previously. The Mongols pursued a course of government that was strongly universal in outlook, and they applied their nomadic principles developed on the steppe to the management of a vast empire. Systems of knowledge were transferred from place to place in order to facilitate the workings of trade, administration and society. For example, the Mongols took Arabic and Indian mathematical ideas and put them to use throughout their empire, introducing the use of zero, negative numbers and algebra to China. Medicine was a particular area in which the Mongols brought about a far greater integration of knowledge between different cultures. Chinese and Arabian doctors were imported and exported in The Mongol order to spread their different views, and the Empire was Mongols established centres such as the House second the of Healing in Tabriz (Persia) to serve as a research centre, training facility and hospital to largest empire combine the knowledge of East and West. in history and European and Asian cultures came into contact largest overland empire much more as a result of the Mongol Empire and its trade routes, and this resulted in a ever known. hybridisation of European and Asian art styles. The links between the Order of St Francis of Assisi and the Mongols are clearly demonstrated in the artwork produced during the latter part of the 13th century at the new church ordered by the Franciscan pope at the time, Nicholas IV. The artists borrowed techniques and themes from Asian artwork that they knew of through Mongol commerce, and made many references to Mongol appearance and clothing. According to one historian, it was this mixture of Asian and European styles that later developed into Renaissance art. There was widespread religious tolerance throughout the Mongol Empire, and this allowed different religions to spread and prosper, reducing general insularity and ensuring a potent mix of ideas and outlooks permeated the Mongol court and its territory. This was implemented to gain political support and was not an ideological commitment to individual liberty however, and when the Mongols had to come down on one side or the other, as in the conflict between Buddhists and Taoists, they did not hesitate to act for their own benefit. This was true for many of the cultural policies of the Mongol Empire, which were primarily pragmatic in motive, and not restrained by deeply-held 9

existing cultural conceptions. Despite this, the Mongols saw that universal cultural exchange was beneficial to their interests, and so pursued it with a vengeance. The spread of technology is an important facet of globalisation, and it was rampant under the Mongol Empire. It must be recognised that the flow of technological ideas was mainly one way however, from East to West. The Chinese civilisations were far more advanced and Europe profited significantly at this time from the opening up of passages to the East by the Mongols. In fact, it can be argued that Europe was the greatest beneficiary of the entire Mongol phenomenon. The Mongol armies did not penetrate into Western Europe, and they did not inflict the same urban destruction that they did in the Middle East and Russia, and Europe gained a vital connection to the Far East. Francis Bacon said in 1620 that the modern world was founded upon the three technological innovations of gunpowder, the compass and printing. All of these were spread to the West during the time of the rule of the Mongol Empire. Ogodei Khan set up regional printing facilities across Northern China in 1236, using the principle of carving out each letter once and then arranging the letters into the required sequence. In this way, the Mongols took an existing Chinese technology and harnessed its power for their needs. This knowledge eventually made its way to Europe, and kick-started the information revolution in the West, when virtually all forms of learning underwent an explosion due to the everexpanding book trade. The spread of printing necessitated the use of another Chinese Winter 2013 â&#x201D;&#x201A; The Shoardian

The Mongol Empireâ&#x20AC;&#x201C; The Origins of Globalisation? technology, namely paper. This replaced parchment to a large extent, which was far more laborious to produce. Highly labour-intensive professions such as mining, metalwork and milling became more mechanised, and even areas such as cooking benefited from the introduction of a mechanised spit. Improved blast furnace technology enabled metalworkers to achieve a higher quality metal, carpenters used different tools, builders utilised new cranes and hoists. Thus it can be seen that Mongol rule permitted the global spread of new technologies that radically influenced the development of societies.

Marco Polo (if he did exist) provided Europe with a guide based on his experiences working as a civil servant in the Mongol Empire Economic integration is usually the driving factor behind greater cultural connections and the spread of technology, and the Mongol Empire was no exception. The Mongols pursued a highly deliberate, ruthlessly pragmatic policy of encouraging trade and breaking down barriers to allow commerce to flow more easily. The Mongols looked to reclaim the Silk Road from the hands of the Islamic civilisations and open it up to reach Europe again. To this end, certain cities were razed to the ground so that they would not hinder the trade route, and others were left untouched. In China, the Mongols raised the social status of merchants from just above robbers to one below government officials. The fact that merchants do not produce anything for society had meant that under Confucian rule, they were ostracised, but the Mongols reversed this policy. Infrastructure was put in place to aid merchants and promote wider trade, and Winter 2013â&#x201D;&#x201A; The Shoardian

merchants were allowed to use the postal stations (known as yams) that existed every twenty miles or so in order to rest and reprovision. The yams were crucial to both the military strength of the Mongols and to their economic aspirations. Khubilai Khan also introduced the widespread use of paper money right across his domain in order to facilitate trade by ensuring that merchants did not have to worry about carrying large amounts of gold. This policy also permitted the government to control the currency and retain all the precious metals. In his description of his travels, Marco Polo was amazed at this, and wondered at the ability of the Khan to centralise the control of all the gold and silver in the land under his command. Questions have been raised about the authenticity of Poloâ&#x20AC;&#x2DC;s account, but the fact that paper money was used is not in dispute. Loans were made available for long distance trade purposes to obviate the need for merchants to constantly possess large supplies of capital on their journeys. The extremely commercial outlook of the Mongols was evident in the actions that they took to improve economic production and techniques. Bureaus were set up to look after agriculture, cotton and many other areas. New seeds were imported from China to the Middle East and vice versa and new techniques were constantly being looked at and developed or discarded depending on their usefulness. The economic integration that the Mongols fostered with their emphasis on free trade was the most important aspect of their globalising influence, and is the main reason that their empire should be seen as the foundation for modern globalisation. It is necessary to examine the reason why the theory of the Mongol Empire being the foundation for globalisation is not widely acknowledged, and why many historians view globalisation as having started centuries later. This is mainly on account of the break-up of the Mongol Empire and the fact that after its disappearance the global connections that had developed under its auspices were largely lost. The overwhelming military prowess of the Mongols during their initial conquests was gradually lost over time, and the legitimacy of Mongol rule came to depend upon their ability to supply trade goods and economic prosperity. This was dramatically hindered by the advent of the Black Death, which, according to some 10

The Mongol Empire– The Origins of Globalisation? accounts, originated in Southern China and spread via the Mongol trade routes all across the known world. This was fatal to the entire principle of the Mongol Empire, as it cut off the separate parts of the Mongol Golden Family from each other, preventing the continuation of an interlocked system of commerce and cultural exchange. After the separation of political power into various different factions such as the Il-Khanate, the Golden Horde and the Yuan dynasty in China, the Mongol Empire had survived as a unified trading and cultural entity, but the plague led to the unravelling of the material ties that held the different Mongol branches together. In order to maintain some element of control, the different Mongol ruling elites had to find some sort of legitimacy to replace their lost military and commercial power, and to this end they gradually began to assimilate into the different cultures that they had subjugated to gain popular acceptance. This meant that the international outlook of the Mongols was lost, and the spirit of globalisation receded. It would be a mistake however, to assert that with the end of the Mongol Empire there was a complete return to the preceding state of affairs. The horizons of virtually all the major world civilisations had been broadened by the impact of the Mongol invasions and their trade policies, and the foundations for globalisation had been laid.

Genghis (or Chinggis) Khan was responsible for unifying the Mongolian tribes and forging an Empire

Kublai Khan was the founder of the Yuan Dynasty in China, becoming the first nonChinese Emperor to rule over the entire country

Overall, globalisation as meaningful concept can be traced back to the Mongol Empire and its unique effect on global integration. Despite the fact that the Mongol policy of free trade and the resulting open cultural exchange was discontinued after the decline of their empire, in the way that they broke down barriers between different civilisations and forced formerly inward-looking societies to acknowledge the existence of and interact with other major world powers, they pushed the world into taking its first few, tentative steps along the path to the interconnected global marketplace of products and ideas that exists today. Indeed, when Columbus reached America in 1492, he was actually seeking to reestablish contact with the court of the Great Khan, which Europeans believed to still exist, and he had with him a copy of Marco Polo‘s book so that he would be prepared to meet them. It is this spirit of worldwide connection which the Mongol Empire directly fostered, and so they should be remembered not only for their military skill and occasional savagery, but also for their commitment to globalisation.

Want to know more? For more on the Mongol Empire try: ‘’The Mongols (Peoples of Europe) by David

Morgan(Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell) ‘The Mongols and Global History by Morris Rossabi (London: W. W. Norton & Company) 11

Winter 2013│ The Shoardian

The Qing Dynasty

The Qing Dynasty Sam Harris examines the Emperors of the last Chinese Imperial Dynasty

he Qing Dynasty was the last imperial Dynasty in China, and debatably the most famous. In Chinese ‗Qing‘ means pure; the image the dynasty created was that it would be incorruptible. Unlike its predecessor, the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), the dynasty was not created by a peasant revolt but was said to have started in June 1644 when a man called Dorgan, issued a decree that would result in China being inaugurated into the Qing period. The dynasty lasted nearly 300 years and during that time there were many influential emperors who made the Qing so famous. This article will discuss their influences and legacy for China. The founding father of the Qing Dynasty was Nurhaci (努爾哈赤), who was

Above: The last Chinese Emperor, Puyi was a poor monarch

Middle Left: The Qing Flag

Bottom Left: Emperor Xuanye (the Kangxi Emperor) was regarded as a successful ruler

Winter 2013│ The Shoardian

born in 1559 during the period of Ming rule. He was a soldier in his earlier year but became famous when he united different Jurchen tribes, which resulted in him consolidating the ‗Eight Banner‘ military system. After uniting a series of tribes Nurhaci believed he should launch assaults on two other dynastic powers. One was the north-eastern part of the Ming Dynasty, and the other was the Joseon Dynasty, in Korea. His conquest of the north-eastern areas of China set Nurhaci‘s descendants up perfectly for a full-scale conquest of the whole of China. His other great achievement was the creation of the original written script for Manchu, which later became the language used in the Qing Imperial court. Nurhaci had a son Hong Taiji (皇太極) who became the next dynastic leader. He was born late in1592. When his father died Hong Taiji immediately began the groundwork for the final conquest of the Ming. One of Hong Taiji‘s achievement was that he changed the name of his people from Jurchen to Manchu. He died in September 1643: like his father he died before he could see his work complete. The successor of Hong Taiji was Fulin, (福臨) his ninth son. Fulin was chosen to be his father‘s successor by a council of Manchu princes. Nobody knows why he was selected, 12

The Qing Dynasty although it is thought that he was chosen because he was young, and would be easier to manipulate, but there is no proof to back up this theory. Fulin took power at the age of five, so the council appointed two co-regents for the young emperor. One was Nurhaci‘s nephew Jirgalang and the other regent was Nurhaci‘s 14th child, Dorgan. Dorgan would later become one of the most influential members of the Qing Dynasty. During Fulin‘s reign there were many military successes and in 1644 Dorgan took the capital Beijing and the Qing were now in control of China. Dorgan also achieved military success in the conquests of Mongolia and Korea. One of the most famous laws put in place under Fulin was the ‗hair cutting command,‘ which forced subjects to shave their forehead and braid the remaining hair at the back, to show their solidarity as Manchus. After the death of Dorgan in 1650 Fulin took personal control of the government and attempted to fight corruption and contain the political influence of the Manchu nobility. During the 1650s Fulin experienced some pro-Ming resistance, but by 1661, the last enemies of the Qing were beaten. The last two adversaries were Koxinga (a Ming loyalist) and the Prince of Gui, they were both were based in the south of China. Fulin died in February 1661, aged twenty-two, of smallpox, which had killed thousands in China as the Manchus lacked immunity. Even though many of these successes during Fulin‘s reign were not due to him personally, all of the actions of Dorgan are counted as successes that occurred during Fulin‘s reign. Because of this, Fulin is often considered one of the most influential Qing emperors. The successor of Fulin was his third son Xuanye (玄燁). Xuanye became emperor at the age of seven, and for six years had four regents as well as his grandmother running affairs until Xuanye was old enough to rule. Xuanye‘s reign was long and eventful. Debatably, his greatest achievement was his suppression of the Revolt of the Three Feudatories, a revolt led by three lords of the fiefdoms in Yunnan, Guangdong and Fujian. Xuanye crushed the enemy forces and reclaimed the lands he had conquered. In 1683 Qing forces won at the Battle of Penghu, which meant that their troops could then invade Taiwan. The leader of the Kingdom of Tungning, Zheng Keshuang, accepted the Qing‘s demands. Taiwan was incorporated into the Qing Empire. Another great military success for Xuanye was the blocking of Russian forces that were attempting to expand 13

their empire on the Amur River. Xuanye‘s forces also expanded the empire in the northwest. Another important success of the period was literary, with the creation of the Kangxi dictionary. Xuanye died in December 1722. He was the longest reigning Emperor in Chinese imperial history ruling for 61 years. Xuanye‘s successor was his son called Yinzhen (胤禛). He was born in 1678, but Yinzhen‘s reign did not start until December 1722. His predecessors all spent lots of money on military projects but he wanted to make the Qing an effective government at minimal expense. Yinzhen soon realized that military force was needed to preserve the continued territorial expansion of the empire. His reign was a lot shorter than his predecessors but he did a lot to help strengthen the dynasty. An example of this is the way he cracked down on corruption and waste. He was also responsible for the reform of the financial administration, and the creation of the Grand Council, which impacted the rest of the dynasty‘s history. Yinzhen died suddenly in 1735 aged 56, after only 13 years in power. Some people say that Yinzhen died because he overworked himself. Chinese legend states that Yinzhen was assassinated, but there is no proof of this. His successor was his fourth son Hongli (弘曆). Hongli was born on the 25th of September 1711. As a child, Hongli, was adored by his grandfather (Xuanye) and his father (Yinzhen) because of his many qualities. For example, Hongli was very good at martial arts and was highly literate. Throughout his reign there was a lot of military action. First Hongli sent armies to suppress the Miao rebellion and made the Dzungar-Khanate part of the Qing Empire. The city of Ili in the northwest was also captured. These two victories resulted in the destruction of the Dzungars (a group of Mongolian tribes). The Mongols started intervening in Tibet, which meant that Hongli would have to send armies to stop the intervention and the Qing‘s goal (ironically given current Chinese policy) was to declare the Dalai Lama as ruler alongside a Chinese garrison. Two wars that weren‘t as successful were the campaigns in Burma and Vietnam, which failed because of the Qing underestimating the relative strength of both these countries, as well as their distance from China: a mistake that led to thousands of deaths. Despite these defeats Hongli was still a Winter 2013│ The Shoardian

The Qing Dynasty

brilliant military leader who expanded the Qing Empire‘s control into many other countries and nearly doubled the size of the empire. The only problem was that wars cost a lot of money, and the Chinese treasury spent money on the military far more than on anything else. Overall, in military terms, Hongli excelled, but after his reign the economy was not as strong as it had been before. Hongli gave up the throne in February 1796 because the previous year he had promised that his reign would be no longer than his grandfather‘s. Hongli died in 1799. Hongli‘s successor was his son Yongyan (顒琰). Yongyan was born on the 13th of November 1760. Yongyan had a rather short and uneventful reign but he did try to restore the power of the state by trying to stop the smuggling of opium within China. Yongyan died on the 20th of September 1820, but there was no cause of death recorded. Yongyan‘s successor was his second son Minning who was born in 1782. Minning‘s reign is well known for two reasons, both of which are bad! The First Opium War against the United Kingdom changed the balance of power between China and the western world. It all started because China wished to end the spread of opium amongst its people. As Britain traded large quantities of opium around the world, they decided to use military force to protect their trade interests. The First Opium War was brought to an end in 1842 with the treaty of Nanking, which gifted Britain five treaty ports and the secession of Hong Kong as a permanent base. The other disaster that occurred in Minning‘s reign was the Taiping rebellion, which was one of the deadliest military conflicts in history, with over 20 million people killed. The rebellion was a massive civil war in southern China led by Hong Xiuqan who made claims he had Winter 2013│ The Shoardian

received a vision telling him he was Jesus‘ younger brother. Hong‘s armies were eventually crushed by the Qing with help from Britain and France, who besieged the Taiping armies and eventually destroyed the rebellion. Mao Zedong later glorified and praised the Taiping rebels for standing up to the unethical feudal system, but the rebellion was a disaster for China. Overall, Minnig was a poor leader because of his ignorance of the changing world as he turned a blind eye to the British and their expanding empire, and his failure to grasp the consequences of industrialisation. He was reported to have said that he did not know where Britain was! Opium was a severe problem for later Qing Emperors, one they could never overcome

Minning‘s successor was his fourth son, Yizhu (奕詝).

Yizhu was born in 1831 and

had a very short and very uneventful reign, which began in 1850. Yizhu had to deal with rebellions all around the country. He also had to worry about the French and British who were looking to expand their trade even further into China. The Second Opium War (1856—1860) also occurred in China with French and British forces attacking Qing forces. The result was very similar to the first war and the Chinese ended up offering the Europeans more trade routes. Like his father, Yizhu was very ignorant about Europe and its economies and during his reign he never met any foreign dignitaries. Yizhu died in 1861 of unknown causes. Yizhu‘s

remaining

son,

Zaichun

(載淳),

became his successor. Zaichun was born in April 1856 becoming emperor at five years old in 1861 and had his regents chosen for him. These regents were his mother and his uncle. Even when Zaichun was old enough to rule, his mother was really in charge. A Chinese traditional political phrase that was used to describe Zaichun‘s mother was, ―Attending audiences behind the curtain.‖ Zaichun spent a lot of his time in power clashing with his ministers, mostly over foreign policy, and Zaichun was not liked by court. In 1874 Zaichun announced he had smallpox and his mother resumed the regency until he died in January of the following year leaving no heir. The Court had to find a successor for Zaichum and in this case his cousin Zaitian (載湉) was chosen. He became emperor at the age of four and had two regents. Two very important things happened during Zaitian‘s reign. The 14

The Qing Dynasty eventually realized how much power he possessed. He would often have men beaten over small violations of law. Puyi was forced to abdicate after the Xinhai Revolution. This saw the overthrow the Qing Dynasty and established the Republic of China. Puyi was the last emperor of China although he hadn‘t experienced any real control. In 1917 Puyi was restored to the throne by a warlord called Zhang Xun but the restoration failed due to the overwhelming opposition to Puyi and his followers. He spent eight years in Tianjin and then 13 years in Manchukuo, which included a time as a puppet ruler for Japanese forces during World War II. After the war, Puyi was sent to the Fushun War Criminals Management Centre in Liaoning for 10 years. In 1962 he married a hospital nurse. From 1964 till his death Puyi worked for the Chinese People‘s Political Consultative Conference. Puyi died in October 1967.

first was the First Sino-Japanese war, which saw Qing and Japanese forces fighting over Korea. After the Meji restoration, the newly modernized Japan felt the need to invade Korea. Korean Emperor Yi Myeong-bok requested that Zaitian send in troops to stop the Japanese. Zaitian was humiliated as the Japanese won the war. The Treaty of Shimonoseki saw the independence of Korea undermined and China also had to hand over Taiwan, the Penghu islands, and the eastern portion of the bay of Liaodong peninsula to Japan. China also had to pay reparations worth 200,000,000 Kuping taels. After the treaty Zaitian expressed his wish to resign from his position as emperor. The second important thing in Zaitian‘s reign was the Hundred Days Reform. These reforms were a series of political, economic and social changes. After the retirement of one of his regents, Zaitian drafted a series of farreaching modern ideas for China‘s government, which would help bring the country up to date with the modern world. It didn‘t really work because these ideas conflicted with the traditional beliefs of much of the population. He died in 1908 at the age of 37. Some people believed that his retired regent poisoned him, but there is no proof to back this theory up. Zaitian‘s successor was his nephew Puyi (溥儀). Puyi was born in February of the year 1906 and became Emperor aged two in December 1908. His father Prince Chun became his regent. Puyi was an ill-mannered boy who was hard to discipline because nobody had authority over him as he was the emperor. Men would bow as he walked and would avert their eyes from him. Puyi

Every Emperor in the long history of the Qing added something different, whether it was the military successes of Xuanye or the establishment of the Grand Council by Yinzhen. Even the worst Emperors like Zaitian changed the country, for better or for worse. It is only now the legacy of the Qing for modern China is being properly evaluated. The Chinese were defeated multiple times by Western empires over the opium trade in violent conflict

Want to know more? If you want more on the Qing and China, try: ‘The Opium Wars ’ by W. Travis Hanes III, Ph.D. and Frank Sanello (Naperville: Sourcebooks) ‘For All The Tea in China by Sarah Rose (London: Random House) 15

Winter 2013│ The Shoardian

The Aryans: A Fascinating History

Matthew Prudham examines what truth there may be behind the myth of the Aryans, an ancient people who some claim spread out from the Caucasus and were in the 20th century used by one of the most destructive regimes in history

The ‘Priest King’, found in the Indus Valley, believed to have been produced by the Harappan Civilisation

The Aryans: a Fascinating History

ontroversy follows the Aryans, from the question of their origins, their actions and their disappearance. Their association with ideas of Nazi racial supremacy have obscured their historical role. They are credited with events such as the ending of the Indus Civilization, but others dispute this. Their influence in changing Indian society from a tribal system to a powerful kingdom was immense, although how they achieved this is highly debatable. There are three main modern views on the ‗Aryans‘: one is that they were invaders that arrived in northern India from Central Europe around 1500BC and then went on to end the Indus River Civilization. Another theory is that these peoples were migrants from Europe, and they arrived 200 years after the Indus peoples had vacated the area because of the drying up of the Ghagga-Hakra and Sarasvati rivers. The third main theory is that they were indigenous peoples from Central Asia from the same time period as the Harappan peoples, but they had a different language to the Harappans and were not of the same ethnicity. However, there is much confusion over which hypothesis is correct, as historians have very little written or material evidence to work with beyond obscure texts. The Aryans are a group that were Winter 2013│ The Shoardian

The Aryans: A Fascinating History also the supposed ancestors of the Sassanian Empire, based in Iran during the early centuries AD. They are attributed with bringing the first version of Sanskrit to India. The precise origins of the Aryans are unclear. There are hypotheses that suggest their origins lay in Central Asia and that they came south to rule India, whilst others state that they originated from Central Europe. These two ideas are based on the striking similarities discovered in the 18th century between Sanskrit, the language of the Aryans, and many modern European and classical languages such as English and Latin in the ―Indo-European‖ language group. The hypothesis that the Aryans were native to Central Asia and lived at the same time as the Harappans was put forward by Friedrich Schlegel, a German linguist and scholar. He was enthusiastic about the importance of India in human history, and in a letter to a friend he stated, ―Everything, absolutely everything, is of Indian origin.‖ At his home in Napoleonic Paris, he believed that Europeans came not from the Holy Land of Israel but from the mountainous terrain of the Himalayas. To convince fellow scholars, who were sceptical about Schlegel‘s theory, he drew references from the Rigveda, the most important historical document of ancient India, of sacred mountains that were of great importance to ancient Hindus. He needed a name for these people, and so he named them ‗Aryans,‘ which translates in Middle Persian to mean ‗noble.‘ The second hypothesis was that the Aryans migrated from Europe to India, bringing their language and society with them to Asia. There are two versions of this hypothesis; the ‘invasion‘ theory or that it was just a gradual migration of the people. Most of the early Indologists chose the invasion theory. India was part of the British Empire until the middle of the 20th Century and it made sense to try to link the Indians into modern European culture for the early scholars, including Max Müller, a German linguist, who later dedicated his career to the study of Sanskrit. These Indologists looked to undermine the faith of followers of early Vedic culture by reporting that their sacred text, the Rigveda was simply a myth, rather than being based on real events. The 17

corruption of ancient Indian history, presenting the theoretical invasion as fact, The Aryan went further when the theory was taught in Migration-Invasion the public education system, and is still Theory taught in many schools in modern India today. There is actually more evidence that supports the migration theory than the invasion theory. Tablet records from West Asian civilizations, including the Hittite Empire (c.1650– c.1200 BC), who had an extensive empire in Ancient Anatolia, document the migration of peoples. They describe evidence of an Aryan dynasty ruling over the Hurrian-speaking kingdom of Mitanni, a state that encompassed south-east Turkey and parts of Assyria, in the 15th Century BC. More Aryan influence in this area was discovered through a documentation of Aryan proper names. Some historians credit the Aryans with the ending of the famous Indus Valley Civilization (IVC), which existed in northern India from 3300 BC—1200BC. However they may only play a small part in its ending, as their arrival in the area adjacent to the IVC at the same time as the civilisation was collapsing may only be a coincidence.

There is linguistic evidence, due to Sanskrit being the language of the Aryans, being part of the Indo-European language family. Sanskrit itself is related to the Balto-Slavonic languages such as Lithuanian and Slovakian, Winter 2013│ The Shoardian

The Aryans: A Fascinating History natural processes, such as erosion. Furthermore, it can be concluded that there is very little possibility of the Aryans being invaders, unless a major archaeological finding is uncovered. Remains of the Harappan Civilisation

so there is a possibility the Aryans came from this area of Europe. Whether the Aryans could have invaded India or simply migrated is not clear. The Indo-Aryans of Ancient India lived in the same area as the extensive Harappan civilization. However, there is very little archaeological evidence to support the fact that the Indo-Aryans of Ancient India interacted with this civilization. The Harappans themselves do not have a language that has been deciphered, with historians and linguists debating whether their script is a hieroglyphic script or not. In the absence of good quality archaeological evidence, we only have linguistic and philological evidence for the Aryan speakers.

The route taken was, once again, established by studying links between the language of the Aryans and the languages of places they crossed and travelled through. The many words in Finno-Ugrian languages loaned from the Aryans suggest these words came from the migration of the Aryans. As the homeland of Finno-Ugrian languages lay in the valleys of the middle Volga River and the central Ural Mountains, there is a strong case for the Aryans taking a northern route to travel to India. However, the Aryans were not the first to take this route of migration towards India, and the words may have been passed into Finno-Ugrian via other migrants using very similar languages to the Aryans.

One of the major scholars of Ancient Indian studies, Romila Thapar, stated that, ―We cannot describe the Aryan peoples as individuals, as we do not have any evidence of their ways of life. However, we can call them language speakers, as we have evidence of the language, Sanskrit, existing at the time of their proposed existence.‖ The German linguist, Max Müller, first proposed the idea of the Aryan invasion in the mid-19th Century. He took evidence from the Rigveda, a collection of sacred Sanskrit text, of forts and battles in the area, as well as a collection of 37 skeletons found in parts of Mojehno Daro, a major city in the Indus Civilization. Müller stated that the wounds on the skeletons resulted from conflict. Müller linked his theory of the invasion with the entrance of the Indo-European languages into the Indian subcontinent and the introduction of the caste system into Indian society. After further archaeological research on these skeletons, it was reported that the wounds on the skeletons were not caused by war, but by Winter 2013│ The Shoardian

Using comparative linguistics, historians were able to predict the route that the Aryans would have taken if they originated from Europe. The route possibly taken by the Aryans has been a controversial subject for many years. One suggestion is that the Aryans travelled over the mountains of the Caucasus, then eastwards to India. The second route proposes the Aryans journeyed through Eurasia, just north of the Caspian Sea, and then south to India. There are also various theories with part-routes taken from either of the options.

The Nazis believed that the Germanic Norse race was the only one that had truly descended from the Aryans and had remained ‘pure’

It is the origins of Sanskrit that support the most popular theory, that the Aryans migrated over the Caucasus, then eastwards over Iran towards India. Sanskrit is one of the 22 recognised languages in India today, and it is the main way historians have sought to research the Aryan Race. The Aryans had strong links with the development of Sanskrit, as they are attributed with possibly

The Aryans: A Fascinating History

The location of the Kingdom of Mitanni bringing the language from Europe to Asia by their migration, as well as contributing to the composition of the Rigveda, a collection of ancient Sanskrit hymns, which they are mentioned in. Sanskrit is part of the Iranian language group, which is in turn part of the IndoEuropean language group. All Indo-European languages can be derived from one language, called proto-Indo-European (PIE). This modern way of thinking ends the idea that Hebrew and other Semitic languages were the centre of Indo-European language, whereas they are only one group in the extensive family of Indo-European languages. Sanskrit can be derived from a common Dravidian language, the same language of the people of the Indus Valley, though this theory is not accepted in the West. If this was proved, all theories of the Aryan migration would be confounded, and Schlegel‘s theory of the Aryans being native to the Himalayas would be the only sensible conclusion. This theory is accepted in some parts of India, especially by Indian far-right nationalist parties, but with the lack of evidence we have both from the IVC and the Dravidian language in the first place, it is very unlikely to be proven. However, as we do not know the certain truth, we cannot rule out this theory yet. The Aryans used an early form of Sanskrit called Vedic Sanskrit. The Vedas (books of hymns) of Hinduism were also written in this script. Vedic Sanskrit was written in 19

Devangari script, which is still used today in modern Sanskrit, but can also be transliterated into Latin text. Vedic Sanskrit was very closely related to the oldest preserved Iranian language Avestan, a language used in Zoroastrian literature, a religion of the Aryans‘ supposed descendants in Iran, the Sassanians. Vedic Sanskrit was used until the 6th Century B.C, during the Indian Iron Age, when it gave way to Classical Sanskrit, which bridges the gap between the Sanskrit spoken by the Aryans and the Sanskrit spoken today in India. Vedic Sanskrit text is the most important source of information for historians about the Aryans, and texts in the language continue to give us information about who the Aryans really were. It is very difficult to definitively state whether the Aryans were from Central Asia or from Europe, and there is not enough archaeological evidence to confirm the linguistic hypotheses. However, we have enough evidence to confirm that the Aryans did exist, as they exerted an influence onto both the Ancient and the Modern worlds. Darius the Great of the Persian Achaemenid Empire would claim descent from the Aryans, as would his descendants. Later in Persia, a class of people called the Azatan would claim their ancestors were the Aryans. In modern Persian, the meaning of the word Aryan is, ‗noble‘, and its suggestion of a universal élite race would be manipulated by the nationalism that would hit Germany and Scandinavia in the 19th Century to devastating effects. As a result the term Aryan is no longer used in today‘s society, being replaced by Indo-European or IndoIranian. In the 21st Century, we still do not know the truth about the mythical Aryan race, and perhaps never will. The mystery continues.

Want to know more? If Matthew has made you curious about the mythical Aryans, why not try: ‘Ancient Persia’ by John Curtis (London: British Museum Paperbacks) ‘The Encyclopaedia of Ancient Civilisations’ by Arthur Cotterel (London: Penguin) Winter 2013│ The Shoardian

What if the Gang of Four had Remained in Power?

What if the Gang of Four had Remained in Power? In a piece of counter-factual history, Alan Truman explores the Gang of Four and asks what would China have been like if they had seen off their rivals in the Chinese Communist Party

he Gang of Four were a group who formed a political faction that played an important part in the Cultural Revolution in China under Mao and upon his death tried to seize power for themselves. The Gang of Four was made up of Jiang Qing (Mao‘s wife), Zhang Chunqiao, Yoa Wenyuan and Wang Honwen, who were all influential members of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and who had championed Mao‘s policies of radical equality. Their high profile comes after the death of Mao in 1976 when the future of China was being decided, as the more economically pragmatic part of the party took control in the shape of Deng Xiaoping. They replaced the Maoist policies supported by the Gang of Four. By 1978 the Gang of Four had lost their power as Hua Guofeng, CPC chairman, arrested the four members and Winter 2013│ The Shoardian

Anti– Gang of Four Propaganda: one of the banners reads ‘Down with the Gang of Four!’

eventually imprisoned all of them. Many would argue that the Gang of Four by the time of Mao‘s death had lost much of the power that they wielded in the Cultural Revolution, so that they would have been unable to take power. Nevertheless the Gang of Four represented the left-wing, pro-Maoist part of the Chinese Communist party (CCP) and this article will examine how different China would be if this faction, with their radically different ideological views had taken over. This is in comparison to the ‗right wing‘ of the party which created the China we know today with its essentially capitalist economic system. So how different would China be? One of the most important aspects in China‘s metamorphosis into an international powerhouse since 1978 was its widespread economic reforms. Under the guidance of Deng Xiaoping, China brought in an economic policy known as ‗Reform and opening up‘, as 20

What if the Gang of Four had Remained in Power? this policy introduced capitalist ideas into Communist China. At first this policy involved de-collectivisation of agriculture, allowing foreign investment into China and allowing new businesses to be set up. This created the basis for a free market to grow in China. In the 1980s and early 1990s China started to privatise many of their state owned businesses. These policies helped China grow economically at stratospheric rates: between 1978 and 2010 China‘s economy grew on average at 9.5% a year. This has raised the country to the second largest economy in the world and some believe in twenty years it will become the largest economy in the world overtaking the United States of America. What would have happened to the Chinese economy if the Gang of four had managed to There was a bitter take power? struggle to fill the The Gang of Four would have most definitely power vacuum in formed an economy which was very different China after Mao’s death to the one which Deng formed. The largest aspect of the Chinese economy which would have been different under the Gang of Four would have been the lack of capitalist practices in China with a state which is more centralised and less free. The Gang of Four, as Maoists, would have followed the view of Mao that capitalism was wrong. This view can be quite clearly seen in Mao‘s speech of 1957 at a meeting celebrating the Communist October revolution in Russia ―The socialist system will eventually replace the capitalist system; this is an objective law free of man‘s will‖. This shows the belief that it was inevitable that communism would replace capitalism and that was what he had to achieve as the leader of China. The Gang of Four supported this which shows us they would have maintained a China focused on collective ownership. This means that instead of the economic freedom provided by Deng, China would have been built upon a system of industry and agriculture being collectivised. It would be reasonable to expect that the Gang of Four would have brought in many policies similar to that which were seen under Chairman Mao in the 1950s and 60s. One area would be the re-emergence of communes in the countryside where people were pooled into areas where they would work to farm for the rest of China, not themselves. The Gang of Four would have also made industry focus on producing products China needed, instead 21

of making products for a profit. This refusal to allow personal incentive and freedom would have meant China‘s economic growth would have been weaker than it has been, hence would have created a globally weaker China with far less economic influence than it has today. There is no reason to believe that the Gang of Four would have succeeded where Mao failed. Another aspect which would have been different if the Gang of Four had seized power is the way in which China welcomed foreign countries‘ investment, especially the US. Under Deng many of the foreign companies which entered into China were either American or at least had strong ties with America (their markets were primarily in America and Western Europe). This continues today with companies such as Apple manufacturing many of their products in China. Under the Gang of Four this would never have happened, as it is most probable they would have preferred to have been more isolated from the world. Mao believed strongly that communism should be used to fight imperialism of the world and he viewed America as one of these imperial enemies. This means the Gang of Four would have refused international economic cooperation, as many of the countries who had much to gain from China opening up were the imperialist capitalist countries such as the US, Britain and Japan. As a result of this, China would be a very different country: it would be characterised as a place which neglected both foreign companies and these imperialist countries. Therefore it is likely Winter 2013│ The Shoardian

What if the Gang of Four had Remained in Power? standard of living for everyone. Mao was a strong supporter of egalitarianism (equality for all), unlike Deng who did little to create equality in China. There is much nostalgia in China today for the equality of the past, and distaste at the materialism created by the reforms of Deng. Many would argue that although these policies would have created a more equal China, it would be one which has a lower standard of living for everyone; the majority would receive what they needed instead of what they wanted, unable to improve their living standards through enhancing their income as they were able to do under Deng. Such idealistic policies may not have been tolerated for long.

that China would not be one of the centres of globalisation as it is today and therefore be very different in its makeup. This would mean the people of China being less westernised under the rule of the Gang of Four as they would be taught to dislike Western imperialism. One of the most important parts of Deng‘s reforms was the change in living standards for the people of China. As a result of Deng‘s reforms, many people started to earn more money, hence allowing their living standards to improve at a rapid rate. As people acquired this income they spent it on more luxury items and generally improved their standard of living. In contrast to Deng, the Gang of Four without allowing this widescale economic reform would have meant people would not have had their wealth increased at a rate which radically improved their lifestyles. As outlined earlier the Gang of Four would have not allowed this widespread capitalism and economic freedom, instead preferring ideas such as collectivism and state control, which would have meant people received wages and products which the central planners viewed people would need rather than what they wanted. This means that people in China would have had a lower standard in living, because of the prosperity achieved due to China‘s capitalist reforms. However the Gang of Four would argue that this would not be a bad thing because many people in modern China have a lifestyle which is too extravagant. Instead they would have argued that it was the job of the CCP to focus on the poor in Chinese society, removing inequality in China. If the Gang of Four had seized power then it is probable that China would have a less unequal society than it is today, as they focused on creating a similar

Winter 2013│ The Shoardian

The Gang on Trial, 1981

While we discuss the issue of living standards of the Chinese people, it is important to stress that life would have been very different under the Gang of Four as a result of their Maoist views on industry and agriculture. China today is characterised by incredibly large cities as people have moved and continue to move to urban areas to improve their future prospects. Instead the Gang of Four would have preferred to create a China where the emphasis was based on the agrarian peasantry. This was a key principle of Maoism: that capitalism had to be defeated using the peasantry, hence placing emphasis on the rural parts of China. This means that China would have been characterized by people living in communes in the countryside where they would be working in agriculture or industry. This was a policy that was seen in the Great Leap Forward of the late 1950s and 60s under Mao and it was a colossal failure as up to 40 million people died due to food shortages while steel produced in the industrial communes was so poor it could not be used. Nevertheless the principle of putting less emphasis on the cities was an important

What if the Gang of Four had Remained in Power?

Propaganda part of Maoism, hence the Gang of Four condemning the would have followed this policy. Even if they Gang of Four. had created communes on a small scale, as a Mao’s wife was result of the past failures they would have accused of being a created a China dramatically different from scheming what it is today. The commune system would pornographer! create a country with less economic freedom as people would not be able to spend money as they wished. Also, the commune system would have helped achieve a key focus for a China run by the Gang of Four which is the destruction and absence of capitalism and these communes would have been aiming to create a society where people were making products for the needs of people instead of for the pursuit of profits. Throughout this article we have repeated the theme of the Gang of Four creating a China which was a state controlled, anti-capitalist country. This would have put no focus on profits but created a China which was supposedly good for all the people specifically focussing on the peasants in the countryside. There is little doubt that if the Gang of Four achieved this goal that China would not have had the astronomical growth which they had as a result of the economic reforms of Deng (9.5% per year on average). This could have created a China that is completely different as this economic growth has created a country with increasing energy needs due to their increasingly large income which they spend on more luxury goods which demands ever more energy. This can be observed with the building of four new coal fire power stations a 23

week in 2012. As the Gang of Four would have discouraged this widespread increase in spending, and prevented the subsequent increase in living standards, this in turn would have meant a reduction in the use of natural resources across China. China‘s use of natural resources in non-renewable energy has not just affected China but the rest of the world as they continue to consume fossil fuels at a rate which not only contributes to the depletion of resources in other countries around the world, but has also contributed to global warming with some studies suggesting China is currently the leading world emitter of greenhouse gasses. This has been a clear consequence of the growth of China and it is fair to say that if the Gang of Four had been in power then this increase in the use of natural resources would have not occurred, due to their belief in a more simplistic China. On balance it is fair to say that China would be a dramatically different place if the Gang of Four had managed to take power. The decisions which were made under Deng were in conflict with those that the Gang of Four would have made. China would have been a place which was much more isolated globally, due to the views of Mao on interaction with the West. In turn this isolation and lack of focus on creating growth would have formed a country which was less economically powerful in the world, while also significantly reducing the amount of people who earned vast amounts of money. While it is true that not everything achieved by the Chinese Communist Party since 1978 has been a success, it has formed a China which is far stronger and more influential globally than if the Gang of Four had seized power.

Want to know more? For more on the Gang of Four, why not try: ‗Deng Xiaoping’ by Benjamin Yang (New York: East Gate Books) ‘Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China’ by Ezra F.Vogel (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press)

Winter 2013│ The Shoardian

Reviews & Interviews

Interview Section Dr. John Watts is a Fellow at Corpus Christi College, Oxford , specialising in the later Middle Ages, especially Henry VI. His latest project is due to be published in 2014, the New Oxford History of England volume, covering 1461-1547, called ‘Renaissance England’ What Interested You In History? I‘ve always been interested in history; I was bought history books as a child and I remember at primary school a radio programme on the murder of the Princes in the Tower and I enjoyed trying to figure out who did it. My money was on Henry VII, which is something I don‘t believe now! So it was the idea of trying to figure out why people did things was something that I was interested in. History is a good way of studying human interactions on a large scale and on a small scale and that is what has always been in history for me.‘ What name would you use to describe the period that you teach, 1000-1500? ‗That‘s a good question. You could call it the Late Middle Ages, although conventionally they are the 14 th and 15th centuries. But because there has been recently so much work on the Early Middle Ages from the fall of the Roman Empire up to Papal Reform, (the old ‗Dark Ages‘), it seems that the world of the 12 th century is not so different from the 15th century as what was once thought.‘ Would you say that the end of the Middle Ages has become far more popular with the discovery of Richard III’s remains, television shows like ‘The White Queen’ and ‘The Tudors’ and Hilary Mantel’s historical novels? ‗I would say that there has been a growing interest in the period ever since the creation of the Richard III Society in between the World Wars. The Tudors are ingrained on national memory; people may know nothing about the cavaliers or roundheads but have definitely heard of Henry VIII and Elizabeth I. I am not sure whether the current interest in the Wars of the Roses is for the right reasons; it seems focussed on the romantic personalities of the period and not on what I feel is the most relevant aspect of the period, which is the way it parallels with the Arab Spring. Authority breaks down and there is a revolution. The Wars of the Roses begin as protests against the government and become a messy sorting out of the consequences of those protests, rather like what is occurring in the Middle East at the moment. That is why the Wars of the Roses

The Wars of the Roses came about in part because of the weaknesses of Henry VI Winter 2013│ The Shoardian

Interview with Dr John Watts are important; they are of a period of serious politics which reflects the politics of our own times as well as many others.‘ The Wars of The Roses come soon after England loses the Hundred Year’s War and her territories in France. How responsible do you think Henry VI is for English failure? ‗Henry was never able to be fully recognised as the King of France because he was crowned in Paris and not Reims but the English were able to enlist the support of the Burgundians and therefore retained control over a large section of France. This is somewhat anomalous, though, in terms of French history, as the monarch was very important in medieval French internal politics. Henry VI was too weak to control all the French nobility, but if he‘d been a more effective king, he might have been able to hang on in Normandy and Guyenne, and then some of the French princes would have supported him. So if he had been stronger, France could have become rather like Germany after the Hundred Years‘ War: a collection of independent dukedoms and states.‘ So why, when Henry VI fully inherits his powers, is there such a breakdown that leads to a civil war? ‗I think it‘s because Henry fails at the job expected of him. He has a job that has a particular function as a cog in the machine of government. The King has a job to do, but he‘s bad at it. When he is a child, this is not an issue as his power can be transferred to others who are more competent, but when the child is grown-up and still inept it‘s an issue because to oppose an adult king is treason. Problems developed because Henry was so indecisive and took no action. What struck me when researching this was the effort made by the nobility to keep the show on the road and keep things running smoothly. Henry did participate in hunts during his teens and as an adult he may have been very pious, although evidence for this comes from after his reign. There is also evidence that Henry may have been seriously ill. He loses his mind completely in 1453 and a horoscope cast in 1441 is suppressed. Although astrologers do base their predictions on the stars and planets, they also base them off what they know about the person. Henry comes across as someone who was not entirely there, even at a young age. All the oddities of the administration during his reign show that regardless of whether Henry was mentally ill or not he was failing in his duty as king. Perhaps Henry‘s problem was that he was a king who had not seen how a king should act, as his father died when he was still a child. No other kings brought up by barons do a good job of it, they‘re either weak like Henry VI or Henry III or are hysterical and aggressive like Richard II. This is in my view a structural problem, as the role of the king is hard to explain. If you see a king in action, you understand what you are supposed to do, but if you are a minor and told that you must defer to your counsellors, which is what Henry VI always does, never making decisions for himself as an adult king and going along with the view of the last person he spoke to in the council. The whole management of the transition from childhood to adulthood would be even more difficult if you were king, as your mentors would also be your subjects who would ultimately have to defer to you.‘ Would you say that the policies of Henry VII come from his own personality or issues from the Wars of the Roses? ‗Henry is not a nice person. He is a stranger with his own cronies and tries to do too many things by the book. His actions do not foster any trust between him and his barons and he becomes more paranoid. However, I would say that he is largely responding to structural issues brought about by the problems of the Wars of the Roses.‘ Henry VII tries to ensure security by reducing the power of the barons in a different way to Henry IV and his son Henry V. Why is this? ‗Yes he does. By restarting the Hundred Years‘ War Henry V seeks legitimacy for his rule. Henry IV is different to the usurpers of the Wars of the Roses as there is no other viable alternative to him. No one really wants Richard II back and they are stuck with Bolingbroke. Henry VII is different because he has a tenuous link to the throne through John of Gaunt and comes to power over quite a fragmented realm with more international diplomatic and subversive possibilities. It is more difficult for Edward IV, Richard III and Henry VII to rule than their predecessors.‘ Do you think literature from the period is useful to the historian? ‗You can use it in political history to make connections between texts. Even if we restrict literature to fine writing, it can be a useful window into what type of language or imagery was used at the time. So in this sense, it is also useful for social history, as long as we remember the context of the works, who the writers are writing for, where they are writing and so on. Late medieval writers seem to be focussed on the idea of the English public and English language, which is another reason to be interested in the 15 th century, because the advent of the printing press, a common vernacular English and increased literary rates is a parallel to today‘s society with social media and the internet.‘ What advice would you give to those aspiring to study history at university? ‗Think about the past as a system, think about how people, institutions, power and wealth all fit together in the society you are studying. Think about the analogies between the past and the present, because this allows us to better understand the past and makes you think about structures in an analytical way on a big scale. History is a good discipline for expressing an understanding of structures in today‘s society.‘ 25

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Reviews & Interviews

Review Section Sixth formers and teachers review books that they have been reading recently Return of a King: The Battle for Afghanistan William Dalrymple Bloomsbury, 608pp. £25.00 Dalrymple‘s ‗The Return of a King‘ is an account of British foreign policy in India and Afghanistan in the 1830s and 40s. He writes engagingly about the personalities involved in the Governorship of India and the work of political agents in Persia, Sind and the regions of Afghanistan. The book covers the regime change imposed on Afghanistan by the British and the ultimately unsuccessful and disastrous consequences for Shah Shujah, the British forces and the region. The background to these events is the superpower rivalry of the 19th century between Russia and Britain and the start of the ‗Great Game‘ as the cold war style spying, and counter play between the two countries was called. This rivalry was to result in the tragic consequences described in this book as well as the Crimean War 20 years later and had a causal link with The First War of Indian Independence in 1857(or Indian Mutiny as it is also known). A chance meeting of Russia‘s top spy Viktevitch with a British officer, in the middle of nowhere, led to the decision to return the Sadozai ruler Shah Shujah to his throne where he was to become the last of the Durrani tribe to rule, albeit briefly, until Hamid Karzai was similarly imposed by ISAF in recent years. While Russian interest in Afghanistan was largely ephemeral at this stage, the British obsession with securing their borders and controlling larger and larger sections of the Indian sub-continent led them to believe that the ruling dynasty of Dost Mohammed should be replaced by the son of a formerly deposed ruler Shah Shujah. This heir apparent had been existing on a pension from the British in Ludhiana since escaping an uprising against his father decades before. Shah Shujah‘s lifelong ambition had been to return to his own country as King and he thought he had found friends among the British who would help him. In the British camp there were those who supported Shah Shujah‘s claims even when it was apparent to most others that he did not have the personality to rule Afghanistan but there were also British political agents who favoured his rival and saw Dost Mohammed and his son Akbar Khan as more suitable. The complicated machinery and hierarchy of British rule came into play in the disastrous chain of decisions to impose Shah Shujah as King and exercise control behind the scenes in Kabul, this in turn led to enormous monetary expense as well as unbelievable loss of life and disregard for the welfare of British (sepoy) troops. It can hardly be seen as a spoiler to tell you that the regime was seen as foreign occupation and the British forced to withdraw to the security of the Punjab leaving their ally Shah Shujah to be murdered by his own godson. The notorious retreat from Kabul of 1842 which, in a typical historical myth, was survived by only one person, a Dr Brydon, is explained and placed in context. British revenge for the hostages taken when they marched back into Afghanistan and the treatment of troops that had been abandoned the following year does not make for edifying reading. Dalrymple makes connections with the recent history of Afghanistan and finds that many of the events we regularly hear about in the news take place at the exact locations of previous struggles between Afghans and the British or the Russians who have both tried throughout history to secure this region for their own ends. The tragedy of it is that, as he writes, before super power rivalry began to see Afghanistan as important for their own ends, the region had been a beautiful and prosperous commercial crossroads between trading regions of the Indian subcontinent and eastern European lands. In Afghanistan alone there had been 43 different types of grape grown and the famous covered markets Winter 2013│ The Shoardian

Review Section

of Kabul had businesses established by Qazilbash Hindu traders and were famous for their range and quality of goods. Following the failed attempt to control the area, Dost Mohammed, the ruler ousted by the British returned and the region ceased to be a target for British expansion from India, British lands in India were consolidated and the Punjab became the famed North West Frontier. It was as if the ‗Return of the King‘ might never have occurred except for the shocking loss of life and tragic long term consequences for the Afghan people and British troops (including sepoys). Dalrymple is an award winning historian and travel writer. He was born in Scotland but travelled as a young man to India where he learned a number of languages that have allowed him to access contemporary accounts in Kabul and India not previously used. He has written several books about India including ‗White Mughals‘ for which he won the Wolfson History Prize and Scottish book of the Year in 2003, ‗The Age of Kali‘, ‗From the Holy Mountain‘, ‗City of Djinns‘, ‗In Xanadu‘ and ‗The last Mughal‘. He has made several TV documentaries and won a BAFTA for ‗Indian Journeys‘ in 2005. His writing seeks to bring understanding to the relationship between Europeans, particularly the British, and the Indian subcontinent. He is a liberal anti-interventionist in his interpretations and asks the reader to question their views on the aims and moral basis of colonialism in both the 19 th and 21st century contexts. His writing is very clearly fixed in the landscape and demonstrates a careful understanding of the clash of cultures, all this you might expect from and award winning travel writer/ historian. Equally, you may find he overplays the historical parallels a little for your own taste. Never the less the sensation of history repeating itself is hard to deny as one reads about exaggerated or doctored reports from undercover agents in the region and a divide and rule policy of the British government. Budgetary considerations win over in the end and the Afghan people are left with little but resentment of ‗feringees‘ and the seeds of future conflict. Dalrymple makes excellent use of the archives in Kabul, accounts of Mohan ‗lal and the diaries and papers of Alexander Burnes, Lady Sales‘ diaries from the British retreat and the depositions of soldiers and sepoys at their courts martial make gripping support for his thesis. Ultimately it is a very convincing read and elicits both sympathy for the Afghans and horror that we seem doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past again.. and again….This book makes a very useful and readable addition to the works available on British Empire History and is in contrast to the views out forward by historians such as Niall Ferguson who have a more positive spin on British empire rule than Dalrymple. One has to feel that Dalrymple has a better understanding of this part of the world given the time he has spent in India, even if both men hail originally from Scotland. This book would be of interest to those researching the background to the current involvement in Afghanistan as well as readers of books on the British Empire and the origins of the modern British state. Those who enjoy a good travel writer will not be disappointed either; Dalymple brings the skills of conjuring up an image of the landscape and the people of a remarkable part of the world to this Historical account and uses previously neglected sources to bring to life men like ‗fighting Bob Sale‘ and the fussy McNaughton whose uncritical support for mild mannered, status conscious Shah Shujah probably lies at the heart of the story and, you could even argue, of the modern conflicts too. Mrs. Carter

‘Return of a King’ examines the 1st Anglo-Afghan War of 1839-1842 27

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Reviews & Interviews

Book Review Byzantium: The Surprising Life of a Medieval Empire Judith Herrin Penguin UK, 416pp. £7.69 Judith Herrin‘s book is ideally suited for those who know little or nothing about the Byzantine Empire but are willing to learn. It is very well written, with the introduction containing a personal anecdote which makes the subject matter engaging for the reader. It is a testament to Herrin‘s writing style that reading about such a huge period of time and about the myriad complex issues that affected Constantinople and the Byzantines is never a chore and is extremely enjoyable. The book‘s chapters are not chronological, instead, each chapter focuses on either an individual (like Basil II), a certain event (The Siege of 1453) or theme (Iconoclasm or the Byzantine Economy). There is a general sense of a linear chronological progression in the book as a whole, from Constantine I founding his city to its takeover by the Ottomans, yet the focussed, piecemeal approach ensures that the history is not overwhelming for the reader while still providing detailed information. Through reading Byzantium: The Surprising Life of a Medieval Empire, the reader will learn about the conflicts in early Christianity between the Pope in Rome and the Patriarchs in Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem, as well as efforts to convert the Slavic and Russian peoples whom the Byzantine Empire came into contact with. One extremely interesting topic was that of Iconoclasm- where, possibly as a response to the military successes of the Muslim Arabs, a movement grew in the Byzantine clergy to destroy icons of Jesus, the Virgin and of the Saints because they were graven images and were therefore responsible for Byzantine defeats, caused by God‘s displeasure. Also of note is Herrin‘s chapter on the female Byzantine historian Anna Comnena , who a member of the imperial family and writes about the Frankish crusaders entering the city as well as the rule of her father and her despair at not becoming empress. The book will also be extremely useful for those doing history in the sixth-form, as Year 13 history includes a topic on the Crusades. This book focuses on the crusades from a Byzantine viewpoint, with the efforts of the Emperors trying to gain European support and armies as well as fight against and at times work with the Turks. The book is not only focussed on the political history of Byzantium; chapters also examine the cultural melting pot that was (and is) Constantinople/Istanbul, with Byzantine efforts to include Slavs and Russians into the empire. Also covered is the cross pollination between the Latin West, Greek near- East and Arabic Middle-East and how literary works of philosophical, religious and even reviews of novels spread around the Mediterranean. Byzantine scholars even created a new alphabet and language to make the Bible available to Slavic Kings. Herrin also mentions more light-hearted but equally as important details, such as the reintroduction of the fork to European dinner tables by a Byzantine noblewoman and the nobilities view on Western (i.e. barbaric) trousers. What is quite amazing to think (as Herrin points out) is that although Byzantium had no successor state (it was conquered by the Ottomans, becoming part of the Muslim world), its cultural influence and importance in history means that this long-dead empire has affected not only Europe and Turkey, but the entire world. My one gripe is that the disjointed nature early on in the book can make it difficult to get a detailed sense of the chronology of events and individuals, or if events affecting different aspects of Byzantine history that occur at the same time may be related. However, on the whole the book is an ideal introduction to Byzantium, with chapters that are just the right length to not become bore some and with a writing style that leads you along in an entertaining and informative way. I would recommend this book to anyone interested in history that is a bit more exotic than what is generally covered in school but I would especially urge sixth-formers studying history to pick up a copy so that they can appreciate the Crusades course a bit better.

Harrison Edmonds Winter 2013│ The Shoardian

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Underground: The Tōkyō Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche Murakami Haruki Random House, 320pp. £6.47 Imagine you are sitting in a crowded subway car. It‘s the rush hour on Monday morning. Tomorrow is a bank holiday and the subway is quieter than usual. You‘ve managed to find a seat as you commute to work in downtown Tōkyō. Gradually you realize that something is wrong: your nose is running, your vision is becoming blurred and it‘s becoming difficult to breathe. There is a strong smell in the air, like paint thinner. As you disembark at Kasumigaseki station you see a man, surrounded by station attendants, writhing on the floor and foaming at the mouth. When someone stated, not too seriously, that almost all terrorist attacks are committed by Muslims, I replied, ―What about the Tōkyō gas attack?‖, and wished I knew more about it. This book was my first port of call. I had expected Underground to be a purely factual account of the attack but it was much more. The testimonies of the witnesses of the dreadful events of 20 th March 1995, collected by renowned novelist Murakamai Haruki, are gripping and harrowing in equal measure. The stories are from a wide range of people, young office ladies, successful businessmen, a TV van chauffeur and even an Irish jockey. Some were caught up in events because they caught a later train than usual or because they decided to take a different route to work. All were plucked out of their daily lives and thrust into a national tragedy. At around 8 a.m., members of the religious cult Aum Shinrikyō (Aum for short) dropped packets of sarin wrapped in newspaper and pierced them with umbrellas; it soon became a gas, 26 times deadlier than cyanide, which spread along the cars of 5 trains on 3 lines and into nearby stations: it was a miracle than only 13 died out of more than 6,000 injured. Being able to read each victim‘s testimony, together with the brief biography before each one, gives us individual perspectives on a chaotic situation in which nobody could see the whole picture. We experience the split-second decisions and actions of ordinary people that saved lives, turning the figures and statistics into real people with real lives. The statements in Underground reveal several interesting points. One of these is the totally unexpected nature of the attack: few victims knew about sarin or its symptoms, and even fewer believed that the catastrophe could be deliberate: terrorism was something that happened in Europe or America, not Japan. Also evident is the absence of a coherent response strategy on the part of the authorities: nearby hospitals received little information on events on the subway and did not at first know how to treat sarin poisoning; ambulance services were overwhelmed; and one train carrying sarin continued running for 1 hour 40 minutes after the sarin was released. Murakami criticizes, and with good reason, the slow response of the authorities both in the subway attack and in the Kōbe earthquake just two months earlier. The viewpoint of the perpetrators, Aum, is not represented in the interviews because Murakami was not aiming for a balanced discussion of the attack but for an account of the events from the victims‘ perspective. A second part, with interviews with other Aum members, was released a year later in 1998. He does, however, provide some information about the ten men who committed the atrocities in his introduction. What is most interesting about them is their identity: they were not your typical crimimals, most of them having scientific degrees from prestigious universities and well-paid high-tech jobs. Toyoda Tōru was a case in point: he had studied Applied Physics at the University of Tōkyō and was about to begin doctoral studies when he joined Aum. This, contends Murakami in his conclusion, shows that the good-evil situation portrayed by the media was far too simplistic, and that the perpetrators, far from being inherently destructive, were normal Japanese who for some reason or other became disenchanted with the established society and resorted to a dangerous cult which set them on the path to crime. While there is no justification for the heinous attack, Murakami says that there is something wrong with Japanese society, where the need to conform is so overwhelming that those who are in any way different feel excluded from the mainstream and join cults like Aum, where they can at least feel part of a community. There can be few better ways to understand the modern Japanese psyche than by reading Underground. Murakami‘s conclusions are thoughtful, well-reasoned and always backed up by the evidence. Yet the most credit must go to the witnesses themselves, for volunteering to talk about such a difficult and painful topic that most would prefer to forget and sweep under the carpet. This book is essential reading for those who want to understand the psychology of terrorism.. Samuel Heath 29

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Reviews & Interviews

Book Review: The Tragedy of Liberation: A History of the Chinese Revolution 1945—1957 Frank Dikötter Bloomsbury, 400pp. £25.00 Dikötter, a Dutch born historian who works in Hong Kong, is part of a new wave of talented historians that work on modern China whose research is satisfying the demand amongst western readerships for books that seek to explain the rising economic and political power of China. When I was an undergraduate accessible books on Chinese history in English were surprisingly rare, with few scholars challenging the views of China formed by the western imperialist-missionary diaspora who had settled in China in increasing numbers during the 19th century. Along with contemporaries such as Rana Mitter, whose works are also essential reading, Dikötter has contributed to an exponentially increasing bibliography of well researched and lucidly written works on 20th century China that place our knowledge of the eccentric personalities that dominate Chinese history into a proper social and economic framework. The book reviewed here is the second work in a projected trilogy about Mao‘s China. The first volume on the Great Leap Forward (―Mao‘s Great Famine‖) was published in 2011 (see the review by Huw Spencer in The Shoardian Vol. 5), but despite moving backwards chronologically Dikötter develops many of the themes he explored in his earlier book. Again he breaks new ground, presenting information gleaned from party archives in China which have remained largely inaccessible to western scholars for political as well as cultural reasons. The archive work is not as prominent as it was in the earlier volume, and memoirs and official documents are give more prominence, which indicates (alongside the brief gap since the publication of Great Famine) that the book emerged from his earlier research. It will be interesting to see if he turns up new material for the volume on the Cultural Revolution. Rather than representing a time of stability and progress before the chaos unleashed by the Great Leap Forward in 1957, Dikötter argues that the period before and after the Communist seizure of power in 1949 was marked by similar levels of violence, incompetence and social disruption although the death tolls was less cataclysmic. He persuasively shows that to view the history of China since 1949 as being the rule of benevolent technocrats undermined by the capricious behaviour of Mao, is to fall into a mythical historical framework that emerged from Chinese official circles since the fall of the Gang of Four in 1978. Despite the drastic shifts in economic policy since 1949, Dikötter argues that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has only ever been concerned with gaining complete control of society, and the thorough infiltration of the state he describes is a theme that is just as relevant to contemporary China, as outlined in Richard Macgregor‘s excellent study The Party: the Secret World of China’s Communist Rulers. The foundations of CCP rule in China were laid during the war years in Yan‘an, where Mao and his followers had built their refuge after the Long March of 1934. Mao‘s attempts to consolidate his control over the party, and remove overbearing Russian influence, led to the ―Great Rectification‖ of 1942—1944 where the many idealists who had flocked to Yan‘an in search of an egalitarian utopia were systematically inculcated into the strictly hierarchical party system that valued loyalty and compliance above all else. Those who challenged the contradictions presented by the party leadership‘s relatively lavish lifestyle and refusal to allow open discussion of policy soon found themselves denounced and purged. The result was the creation of large numbers of hyper-loyalist cadres, who interpreted Mao‘s often cryptic utterances and put them into practice. The internal competition this produced between party officials drove policy implementation forward, towards radical ends. The fear that failure would result in denunciation for ‗bourgeois‘ tendencies suppressed critical thought, and incentivised the passing of falsified accounts of success back up the Party political information chain. Such a system ensured that destructive, self-defeating and contradictory policies were carried out with ruthlessness. We know about much of this already from Mao’s Great Famine, but Dikötter argues that these elements were integral to the CCP system from the start, The main threads of Communist Party rule in China were laid during the Civil War. Wanting nothing to stand between the people and the party, Mao and his colleagues set out to smash the ties that existed between country folk and their local leaders through ‗Land Reform.‘ Problems in rural China had arguably been endemic before 1949 due to the continual political tumult that had afflicted Chinese central government since the mid-19th century, Winter 2013│ The Shoardian

Review Section and it is not surprising that the discontented were attracted by the promises of equality promised by the CCP. Party rule was extremely harsh, with forced conscription of men and women for soldiers and labour forces being key to success against the Nationalists. After defeating Chang Kai‘Shek, Land Reform was expanded across China, but the narrowness of Mao‘s thought became a major problem. The junker class which the Communists attacked happened not to exist. Nor was village life across China feudal. Most Chinese were small landowners, with little variation in wealth. Tenants were not much poorer than owners, since only fertile land could be let. In the rice-growing south tenants were more prosperous than owners on the hardscrabble plains of the north. As a result Land Reform led to a lot of grievances being settled, and opportunism as the property of the victims was divided amongst the persecutors. The physical violence that accompanied these changes was often carried out by the peasants themselves, under the direction of the cadres, making them complicit with the Party‘s policies. The result was a huge drop in agricultural production, famine and a mass exodus from the countryside to the cities. For Dikötter the supreme irony of CCP rule was that it came to power promising to liberate the peasantry. but ended up imposing a new form of slavery upon them. The main challenge for an essentially rural party was dealing with the crucial urban areas of China, which viewed the victory parades of 1949 with such indifference and suspicion. Stories quickly circulated of Red Army soldiers washing their rice in porcelain toilets and tying up their mules in the lobbies of 5 star hotels. Communist rule was pragmatic at first as existing administrative and economic élites were needed to keep the country going. This was temporary. After the first moves on those who were seen as loyalists to the government of Chang Kai-Shek, the old élites did not last long. Intellectuals in particular were targeted by the series of Thought Reform campaigns, leading to intellectuals writing endless articles criticising their earlier work. Many continued to believe that the CCP was the best chance that China had of becoming a dynamic power again, and valued its stated aims for equality. In reality, the Party didn‘t care what people thought, all it wanted was control. As Mao implemented the Soviet blueprint for the construction of Socialism, the resources of the urban Chinese were appropriated by the state. The High Tide policy launched in 1954, which accelerated the policy of nationalising private businesses by the creation of co-operatives actually lead to increasing unemployment and impoverishment of the urban population. The insular party system that Mao had fostered proved quite incapable of dealing effectively with a diverse and cosmopolitan China. The CCP fanned the flames of xenophobia and hatred of the west, which were accompanied by systematic attacks on Christian missionary institutions. Other traditional religions were attacked, such as Buddhist temples. Although several high profile buildings were preserved, religious groups in most of the country were targeted, often with lethal force. Dikötter is at his best when he shows what was happening in the localities rather than focusing on evidence from the main urban centres. He illustrates how Mao‘s later abominations, in this particular case the excesses of the Cultural Revolution, were implicit from 1949. The main exception to the retreat behind the ‗bamboo curtain‘ were the Russians who arrived in large numbers as advisers, but there was no integration between political comrades. Russian communities were kept completely separate as they moved into the former European colonial centres and their lavish buildings, almost seamlessly replacing the earlier foreign concessions. While Mao worshipped Stalin, his death in 1953 exacerbated the dysfunction of Sino-Soviet relations. The most striking feature of Dikötter‘s book is the endless litany of violence he chronicles. This varied from the choreographed public mass haranguing of ‘class enemies‘ to the suicides of people whose livelihoods were taken from them by the state in the name of collective endeavour. The lives of individuals were the means by which the leadership‘s policies could achieve their ends. In Manchuria, the key battleground, some 500,000 civilians had fled the Communist advance and sought shelter in the city of Changchun. Lin Biao, the general laying siege to it, called for it to be turned into ―a city of death‖. In all, 160,000 civilians died, mainly of hunger, many trapped in a killing zone outside the city walls. As with Mao’s Great Famine the millions who lost their lives become hard to deal with mentally without reducing them to mere statistics, which falls into the same mental trap of the cadres. Dikötter implies that we should see pre-1949 China as a dynamic, cosmopolitan entity. This may be going too far. While Chiang Kai-Shek‘s reputation has been rescued from infamy to some extent, the liberal China of the Guonmindang resulted from a weaker state structure and the need to fight the Japanese after 1931, which sapped GMD energies. There is nothing to suggest that an alterative to authoritarian rule would have emerged. Dikötter places Mao at the heart of everything, like a malevolent spider. In this sense his account is very traditional. Mao is a despicable figure, but the history of the CCP would be better served trying to understand individuals in a wider structural context. Dikötter‘s work lays important foundations for this process, but still falls short. Mr. Hern 31

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Interview Section II Sarah Wood is a PhD candidate and graduate teaching assistant working and studying at the University of Manchester. She worked in French Guiana in order to research her thesis on ‘development’ and culture in French Guiana 1946-1996 What was it that made you consider history at university? ‗I had always hoped to do music at university, but when I was about sixteen I began to have doubts about this. So I began to have thoughts about what it really was that I wanted to do, putting aside all thoughts of careers and jobs. I decided that I definitely wanted to study history and French at university. One of my inspirations was the Horrible Histories series of books, to the point that when I was young I had to collect every single one!‘ One of the questions peers who (foolishly) have no appreciation of history often ask how history is relevant to the modern world. Why do you think history should be studied? ‗History is everything that ever happened ever! There is so much of the past in the present in material remains and buildings that are all around us. You can read into the history of cities such as Manchester by examining the architecture and you can go to places like the Yorvik Viking Centre and experience life as it was like back in the past. Of course you‘ll never be able to experience life like they did, but you‘ll be able to stretch your imagination and stretch the boundaries of your own experience. For me it‘s the study of cultural history and societies‘ changing views and attitudes that interests me the most and is the most important for me, as it shows us how the societies of today have developed and allows us to greater understand ourselves and our own views and approaches to things.‘

French Guiana has a complex human history involving hundreds of different intermingling groups of people Winter 2013│ The Shoardian

Interview with Sarah Wood What drew you towards studying French Guiana? ‗My BA was in History and French, but I was not always combining the two very well. But in my second year I got the chance to write an extended long essay on my own interests. I started reading some French Caribbean literature. One particular novel, called Schooldays in French, was about the experiences of growing up as a Creole child in a certain way and then going to a school where there is a complete clash between how you live as a child and what is expected of you by institutions. It was a beautifully written novel and it struck me and through that I became engrossed in French Caribbean literature and then its history. French Guiana is not part of the Caribbean but French intellectuals often talk as if it was. Yet French Guiana was used by the French as a penal colony, unlike the Caribbean where there were plantations with slaves cultivating bananas and sugar canes. Of course there was slavery and plantations in French Guiana, but they did not mark its history in the same way as these penal colonies. There didn‘t seem to be much work on the subject and I felt that I could step in.‘ During your work in the field in French Guiana, you are working with first hand sources and interviewing people who speak a myriad of languages and dialects and not just French. What sort of challenges did you face? ‗One of the interesting things about oral history is that you‘re not necessarily doing it to establish the hard facts of what happened in the past, which is recorded in official archives. Oral history provides you with people‘s experience of the world. Humans do not experience life collectively, but as individuals and oral history tries to get at the difference between the official version of events and people‘s own experience of them. It‘s not about finding out which is the more accurate, it‘s the difference between the two which is what I find interesting. Yet the official archives are compiled, and there is always the chance that they are not completely impartial and they also give a particular view on the events as well. In a sense, I was limited with how I could interview, as I was unable to speak all the different variations, dialects and languages spoken by the myriad groups in French Guiana. In practice, all my interviews were held in French, but I developed a basic grasp of Creole which was invaluable because it was symbolic and allowed me to connect better with those I was interviewing and helped me get involved in the nitty gritty of daily life. The interviews depended on an informal form of social connections. For example, my first interviewee was as a teacher whom I knew and he introduced me to other teachers who introduced me to their friends and families and I was able to speak to many generations as my network of contacts branched out.‘ Do you think there is a similarity between the resurgence of Creole as a language and the resurgence of Welsh? ‗Definitely. There are also parallels with regional languages in France, with Breton, which was pushed into the background in France and is now on a resurgence. It‘s all to do with current politics and regional identity.‘ Is independence from France a popular issue in French Guiana? ‗Locals tend to make up the political leadership of French Guiana, with actual French people working in the civil service. The French is Minister of Justice is also from French Guiana, so there is a sense of cross-pollination and a strong relationship between France and French Guiana. The fact that bakeries sell you a pan-au-chocolate which will go soggy because of the humidity of the region within an hour is a clear example of the continuing French cultural presence in French Guiana. There is a resignation amongst the people that in order to maintain the standard of living the region has to remain part of France, yet there is debate and an independence movement. But they are aiming more for greater autonomy in the short-term and view independence as a long term goal. Ultimately, however, I doubt there is much momentum for the independence movement to gain any ground. The population was quite small but that has doubled recently. The disparate nature of this small population and lack of a common identity and language makes independence unlikely.‘

Do you have any advice for those hoping to study history at university? ‗Definitely read! But also talk about your ideas. A lot of university teaching is in seminars, where you develop and explore your ideas, so getting some experience of that is invaluable. Even writing for the school‘s history magazine will help you better understand your ideas! Also exploring the history of your local area can give you a valuable insight into history.’

Winter2013│ The Shoardian

The Fall of Constantinople

The fall of Constantinople Alan Petri accounts the fall of the Eastern Roman Empire’s capital in 1453 to the Ottoman Turks

ong had Constantinople‘s three walls stood high and proud over the city, from where the Byzantine emperors could safely observe the slow retreat of their imperial power. The year was 1453, and as the vast Ottoman forces of Mehmet II approached the city, Constantine XI could no longer observe. He had to fight. How had the Eastern Roman Empire, which 900 years before had dominated the Mediterranean, come to this? Since the peak of the Byzantine Empire in AD 555, its borders rapidly deteriorated as barbarians in the West and the new power of Islam in the East ravaged its borders until by 867AD just modern-day Greece, Turkey, and the edges of Italy remained under the Empire‘s rule. The Empire then flourished again under the ‗Soldier-Emperors‘, who managed to stretch the rule of the Byzantines from Syria to Bulgaria. By the tenth century, with a population of 400,000, Constantinople was the richest city of Europe, standing on the crossroads to Asia and a burgeoning centre of inter-continental trade: from Antioch came sugar, spices and cotton, and from Europe came wool, leather and silver. The military seemed capable of securing the borders, Winter 2013│ The Shoardian

Constantinople was named after the Emperor Constantine I and became the new capital of the Roman Empire in 324

despite it essentially being a part-time force, with mercenaries too expensive for even Constantinople to keep on permanent alert. The Greek Church seemed to be maintaining healthy relations with its counterpart in Rome. There was an efficient civil service, which helped administer Imperial affairs. However, the dawn of the new millennium did not mark a resurgence of Byzantine power. By 1100, the empire‘s military being neglected in favour of prosperity resulted in her forces becoming overstretched. The Seljuk Turks pressed on Byzantine borders in the East, and the diminishing relations with the Latin Church, particularly over the Byzantine Emperor‘s considerable influence over the Greek church, led to the ‗Great Schism‘ of 1054, where both churches excommunicated each other. This allowed the Catholic Normans to invade Byzantine lands in Italy. The Empire was driven out of Italy, and most of Constantinople‘s hold in Asia was seized by the Seljuk Turks. Nevertheless, Constantinople remained, through all the antagonisms of near constant war, the most powerful city in Europe and, under the mini-resurgence of the ‗Komnenian Restoration‘, most of Turkey was reclaimed. 34

The Fall of Constantinople Although the economy was no longer growing at such a phenomenal rate, the city remained vastly rich, with the jewels of Constantinople becoming the envy of Europe: for example, in the 12th century Alexios I could afford to pay 360,000 gold coins to secure an alliance with the Holy Roman Empire. The Crusades launched against the Muslim powers of the east by the kingdoms of Christendom helped to prevent any potential Eastern invasion against the Byzantines. But while most of the Empire‘s rivals seemed intent on destroying each other in the Holy Land, the friction between members of the Komnenian dynasty led to outright civil war. The 11 year old emperor was overthrown by his older cousin, who in turn was defeated by a new claimant to the throne: Isaac Angelos, who became Isaac II Angelos in 1185. Isaac‘s own elder brother then fought against him, resulting in Isaac spending eight years imprisoned until he was freed. But whilst Byzantium neglected its frontlines to fight itself, the Fourth Crusade had spurned the wishes of the pope and spotted a richer picking than Jerusalem: Constantinople itself. The Byzantines had few resources to defend their walls, their military exhausted by bitter infighting. And so it was that Constantinople was sacked on April 12th 1204. The sack of Constantinople was a blow that Byzantine power never recovered from. The Byzantines fled westward to Greece, and only recovered their city in 1261. Now wedged between the Latins (the remnants of the Fourth Crusade) and the Turks, the Empire struggled to survive. The Ottomans, a new Turkish power, gradually subjugated the Balkans to their rule as the Byzantine Empire was racked by yet another civil war, so that when it awoke it was surrounded. Its territories had been slowly picked off, resulting in it being little more than a citystate by 1451, with small possessions in southern Greece and the remnants of a great city: Constantinople. In 1451, the Ottomans had a new leader in Mehmed II, who focused on strengthening the Ottoman navy in preparation for an assault on Constantinople. His self-belief was so great that he considered himself to be the leader that Mohammad spoke of when he said that 35

Constantine XI Palaiologos was the last Byzantine Emperor

one day Constantinople would be conquered, and ‗what a wonderful leader will he be‘, referring to he who would take Constantinople for Islam. Whilst Mehmed mustered his forces, Constantine XI looked west for help. He urged Pope Nicholas V to call for Constantinople‘s protection, even offering to submit the Greek Orthodox Church as a subsidiary of the Roman Catholic Church. The Pope, however, could do little to summon up armies in the West, particularly as western Kings were engaged in their own conflicts. The Hundred Years‘ War was slowly drawing to a close, Spain was attempting to unite the Iberian Peninsula (the ‗Reconquista‘) and the Holy Roman Empire‘s various principalities were fighting amongst each other. Only the Italian city-sta tes, who had so ravaged Constantinople 200 years earlier, could send men, and Venice deliberated for so long that it was too late for them to intervene. Amongst the reinforcements from Italy, dispatched in 1453, were the 700 Genoese, led by Giovanni Giustiniani Longo, who would play no small role in keeping the peace between the Italians and the Greeks. Constantine XI‘s diplomatic initiative, which involved sending gifts through Imperial ambassadors to Mehmed II, ended in his diplomats being executed at Mehmed‘s orders. Realising that defence was now his only option, Constantine prepared Constantinople against the imminent attack by Mehmed‘s navy through the Golden Horn. The Golden Horn was the bay separating the northern Winter 2013│ The Shoardian

The Fall of Constantinople half of Constantinople (‗Galata‘) with its much larger Southern counterpart.

Mehmed, with the Byzantines‘ confidence in their fortunes evaporating as their supplies by sea were under threat. Soldiers also had to be diverted from the Theodosian walls (the walls facing outwards, to land and the main Ottoman army) to the Golden Horn walls (facing the bay and the new threat from the sea). On 28th April, an attempt by the Byzantines to relieve the sea blockade and destroy the Ottoman fleet with ‗fire ships‘ ships deliberately set on fire and pushed towards the enemy‘s fleet- failed after the Ottomans were warned of the scheme and managed to move their ships in advance.

Constantine‘s ploy was to place a chain, floating on wooden logs, at the mouth of the harbour in order to prevent any Ottoman ships entering the Horn. As Constantine erected his chain, vast Ottoman forces began to close in on the city. With about 2,000 reinforcements from Italy and Greece, Constantinople‘s forces consisted of about 7,000 men. Against them were pitted at least 65,000 Ottomans, along with 126 ships of Mehmed‘s new fleet. Some of the most advanced technology in the medieval world also lay at Mehmed‘s disposal, with the semimythical figure of ‗Orban‘ constructing larger cannons than Europe had ever experienced: his giant cannon was said to have required 400 men and 60 oxen to operate and transport it. (Orban had originally offered his services to Constantine, but the Byzantines were not able to pay his high wages or to provide the necessary equipment, so he defected to the Ottomans.) From 2nd April 1453, the Ottomans were camped outside the city and on 5th April, Sultan Mehmed arrived with the last of his soldiers. The Ottoman forces gobbled up the remaining fortresses outside of the city, such as the Princes‘ Islands just south of the city. Then, the enormous Ottoman cannon began to bombard the city itself, and the defenders rallied to their posts. The cannon itself was more than capable of inflicting massive damage, but its general inaccuracy and the time it took to reload meant that the Byzantines‘ walls were not severely affected, and those that were hit could be repaired in the break between each bombardment. Meanwhile, the chain across the Golden Horn held the Ottoman fleet (led by Suleiman Baltoghlu) at bay. On 20th April, the chain even allowed four Christian ships to slip through the entire Ottoman fleet to reach the city, to the great fury of Mehmed and embarrassment of Baltoghlu, who narrowly escaped execution.

The Hagia Sophia (Church of Holy Wisdom) was the largest cathedral in the world before becoming an Ottoman Mosque. It is currently a museum

With the Byzantine forces split between defending land or sea, the Ottomans renewed their efforts to storm the walls. Janissaries (literally ‗new soldiers‘, the elite of the Ottoman army) repeatedly attacked the outer layers of defence in the city. But they were driven off, again and again, by gun and crossbow. By the middle of May, the Ottomans were attempting to enter the city through ‗sappers‘ –they tried to dig tunnels underground so that their soldiers could enter the city and circumvent Constantinople‘s formidable walls. However, Byzantine counter -tunnels met the Ottoman workers when they were in the middle of digging and quickly killed them, before filling in the tunnel. On 23rd May, the Byzantines captured two Ottoman officers, who revealed the location of all the Ottoman tunnels, which the Byzantines proceeded to attack and fill in. Mehmed then tried to triumph through ‗diplomacy‘, or rather, offering Constantine the chance to surrender. Mehmed would allow the entire city‘s inhabitants to depart with their goods, including the Emperor himself, if the city were to surrender. On 25th May,

Mehmed then tried a different tactic; instead of trying to overcome the chain by sheer force, the Ottoman navy were to trick it. Greased logs were prepared, and placed along the chain so that the Ottoman navy could cross into the Golden Horn. This was a coup for Winter 2013│ The Shoardian

The Fall of Constantinople Constantine rejected Mehmed‘s offer, saying that all of Constantinople‘s garrison would rather perish than surrender the city. The Ottomans then prepared for the final assault. It took them four days to prepare, pray and rest. As all the Ottoman forces mobilised, the Byzantines received some final reinforcements: twelve Venetian ships sneaked through the Ottoman blockade, but brought news that there would be no further Venetian reinforcements. On the evening of the 28th May, Catholic and Orthodox walked side by side as the Byzantines and their allies prayed for the last time in the Hagia Sophia. Then, in the early hours of the 29th May, the Ottomans attacked. The great cannon bombarded the North West walls (the Blachernae walls), and Mehmed hurled wave after wave of his irregular Christian mercenaries and his Anatolians (from modern -day Eastern Turkey) against the weakened walls. The walls were breached, but the defenders managed to push them out of the city before the next wave began. To the south, where the elite Janissaries were attacking the toughest section of the walls, the commander of Genoa‘s forces Giovanni Giustiniani Longo was gravely wounded defending the city with his compatriots. The Genoese, panicking at their injured leader‘s retreat into the city, abandoned the battlements themselves as they followed him deeper into the city. Constantine and his men were forced to try and cover their retreat, as well as defend their own sections of the city (the south west in particular). Walls across the city were breached, defenders overwhelmed, and Ottoman flags were being raised above the gates. The Byzantines themselves then retreated from the walls and into the city. It is said that as he saw defeat was inevitable, Constantine XI cast off his purple regalia marking him as the heir of Constantine and Emperor of Byzantium, and joined his men in the streets, where he was slain like a common man. The Hagia Sophia was then breached, and much of the clergy and congregation enslaved. And so, on 29th May 1453, Constantinople was finally conquered, and would become Istanbul. For three days the Ottomans plundered the city, with several thousand made slaves or 37

Mehmed II ‘The Conqueror’ would live for another 28 years conquering Serbia, Bosnia and launching an invasion of Italy

killed. On the third day, Mehmed ordered his men out of the city, and now, as an emperor, he declared that the city would be rebuilt, its citizens returned, and its Orthodox Church allowed to survive. The Hagia Sophia became the greatest mosque that Europe has ever seen, and on the final destruction of the Byzantine Empire, the Ottoman Empire was born. European and Asian culture intermingled, just as Christianity and Islam would co-exist .The Asian power of the Ottomans, with its mighty forces and advanced technology, had laid low a European superpower. And so it was the Ottomans who would hold the gateway to Asia for the next half-millennium and it was this power that would threaten Europe herself when it laid siege to Vienna.

Want to know more? For more on South American history, try: ‘The Grand Turk: Sultan Mehmet II’ by John Freely (London: I.B.Tauris & Co Ltd.) ‘The Byzantines’ by Guglielmo Cavallo (Chicago: University of Chicago Press) The Fall of Constantinople

Winter 2013│ The Shoardian

Hiroshima: Birthplace of Nuclear Warfare

Hiroshima: Birthplace of Nuclear Warfare Tom Browne analyses the use of the first use of the atomic bomb in anger, on the 6th August, 1945

When US President Truman addressed the nation for the first time after the bombing at Hiroshima, he issued a threat to the Japanese, declaring that if they failed to surrender, "They may expect a rain of ruin from the air the like of which has never been seen on earth." The Japanese failed to heed Truman‘s warning, and refused to surrender.

n August 6th 1945 the world had its first experience of nuclear warfare at the expense of 70,000 deaths and 13 square kilometres of damage. The location: Hiroshima, a vibrant, industrial city on the southern coast of Japan. The damage was apocalyptic. Two thirds of all buildings within a two-mile radius of the blast point were completely demolished. The city was engulfed in a mushroom cloud, now an iconic image for nuclear warfare. Of the city's 350,000 inhabitants 70,000 were killed by the blast and its destructive consequences. The total death toll would double before the year was out, due to the fatal injuries sustained and harm caused by the radiation. The source of the destruction was an atomic bomb ironically nicknamed "Little Boy,‖ the name referring to former US President Roosevelt. The bomb was the result of $2 billion of research money injected into the Americans‘ Manhattan Project and contained destructive power equivalent to 20,000 tons of dynamite. The bomb was transported by the "Enola Gay" B-29 Superfortress aircraft, fondly named after the pilot's mother. The plane had departed from the small pacific island region of Marianas, some 1,500 miles south of Japan, at approximately 2:45 that morning. It had been specially equipped with stronger engines and bigger propellers to harbour the larger than normal weight of the bomb, 8,000 pounds, and the above average sized crew of 12.

‘Enola Gay’ was named after the mother of pilot, Colonel Paul Tibbets, who selected the bomber for the mission

On the 9th of August, the Americans moved on to their second target. Their original list of possible targets consisted, in decreasing order of preference, of Hiroshima, Kokura, Nagasaki and Niigata. These cities were chosen as they had experienced little bombing during the war so they could accurately display the unheralded destructive effects of the atomic bombs. So, as the second B-29, this one christened ―Bock's Car,‖ left the runway from Tinian, one of the Mariana islands, its orders were to proceed to the city of Kokura in the south of Japan. Its prized passenger was "Fat Man," an atomic bomb named in honour of Winston Churchill, this one a full 1,000 pounds heavier than "Little Boy". As Mission Commander Major Charles Sweeney brought the plane within sight of Ko-

These modifications would prove necessary as the plane used all of the available runway during take-off, departing from the tarmac only just before the runway was cut off by the Pacific Ocean waters. Winter 2013│ The Shoardian

Hiroshima: Birthplace of Nuclear Warfare kura, he was greeted by clouds of billowing smoke above the city. The clouds emanated from Kokura's neighbouring city of Yahata which had been fire bombed by allied troops the night before. As the commander had strict orders to drop the bomb using visual guidance rather than radar, he was forced to switch course for the secondary target: Nagasaki. To this day this unexpected turn of events is remembered by the Japanese phrase "Kokura luck" meaning the lucky avoidance of some great misfortune. The bomb was dropped at 11:02 local time. The destruction was restricted to only 2.6 square miles, roughly half that of Hiroshima, despite the increased strength of the bomb. Nagasaki‘s topography, a city surrounded by a ring of mountains kept the destructive force of the bomb contained in a smaller area than at Hiroshima. However, around 40% of Nagasaki was destroyed with 74,000 deaths and a similar number of injuries. Another of Japan's cities was razed to the ground, as within a period of three days the country had suffered devastation on an unprecedented scale. In the following days, American planes dropped nearly three million leaflets over Japan warning that atomic weapons would be used "again and again" until Japan surrendered. The message got through and on the 14th of August 1945 the Japanese declared unconditional surrender to the Allied Forces. Looking back on these events today, people still wonder whether the use of atomic weapons on the Japanese can be justified. Many would argue that the fact that Hiroshima and Nagasaki remain the only ever uses of nuclear weapons, despite subsequent violent conflicts such as the Korean and Vietnam wars as well as the Cold War, proves that there is no place for these weapons in modern warfare as they are just too destructive. Also, when the US used their atomic weapons on Japan, they were sure that Japan did not have a retort of any similar strength, as the US and Russia were the only countries in possession of nuclear weapons. It is evident that using atomic weapons on Japan was never a fair fight. In defence of the use of nuclear weapons, the Americans claimed that the bombs brought about a swift end to the war thereby saving a 39

This mushroom cloud would haunt the policy makers of the world’s superpowers for the rest of the 20th Century

greater number of Allied lives and the economic cost of continued war. The money saved was used to aid rebuilding in Europe and the Pacific. Whether this is a verifiable calculation can never truly be known, as there are not only the immediate casualties to take into consideration but also the lasting physical and mental damage caused by the radiation, as well as the effect on the environment. Anyone visiting the cities of Hiroshima or Nagasaki today, however, would find that they are both fully rejuvenated, modern cities in their own right. The ability to start from a ―blank canvas‖ as well as their substantial funding by post war American restoration committees has allowed the cities to create new identities for themselves, integrating modern buildings with reconstructed ones, such as Hiroshima Castle, helping maintain a sense of heritage among the communities. Nowadays, both communities receive economic benefits from the tourism they attract because of their history, both with frequently visited memorials and museums.

Want to know more? If Tom has piqued your interest in nuclear holocausts why not try: ‘Hiroshima’ by John Hersey (London: Penguin Classics) ‘Before the Fall-out: From Marie Curie to Hiroshima: The Human Chain Reaction that Led to the Atom Bomb’ by Diana Preston (London: Corgi Books)

Winter 2013│ The Shoardian

The Russo-Japanese War: a Reinterpretation

The Russo-Japanese War: a Reinterpretation J.J. Bute examines the war which signified Japan’s beginning as an imperial power

Germany and Russia to remove forces from the Liaodong Peninsula, which had been ceded to Japan following its victory over China. Two years after the Japanese removal of troops, Russia had secured a footing in Port Arthur, establishing it as the base for its Pacific Squadron. The ensuing negotiations between Russia and Japan can be characterised as two imperialist nations both looking for security. Following unsatisfactory results on the Japanese side, the decision to go to war was put into effect by the surprise attack on the Russian fleet at Port Arthur on 8th February 1904, followed by a declaration of war several hours later. Russia‘s surprise at the attack can be seen in terms of their high command‘s disbelief at the audacity of ‗lowly‘ Japan attacking mighty Russia.

he Russo-Japanese war: a war in which

imperialist, expansionist Russia was defeated by a lowly Asian nation, Japan. After the signing of the Treaty of Portsmouth (USA), popular opinion held that the Russian Goliath had been defeated by the Japanese David. It was a war in which the Japanese navy defeated a Russian fleet that had taken over 7 months to sail from the Baltic to the Straights of Tsushima, equidistant from the shores of Korea and Japan, in the matter of a few hours. It also saw a prolonged land campaign, which culminated in the largest battle seen in modern warfare up to that point at the battle of Mukden, which involved over 600,000 soldiers. It also saw the first extensive deployment of the machine gun, foreshadowing its use in the First World War, and shared the characteristics of trench warfare. The question remains how far this war can be seen as a turning point in world history, an assertion made by those such as Keith Neilson, who argues it was a moment when the steps towards the First World War were first made. Certainly, the implications of a relatively small nation such as Japan (which had only dropped the previous isolationist policies characteristic of the Edo period with the Meiji restoration in 1868) defeating one of Europe‘s major powers in Tsarist Russia, can be seen to have caused consternation amongst the imperialist nations, in particular Great Britain. Britain‘s own similar conflict in the Boer War had shown how imperial control could be challenged, and Russia‘s defeat at the hands of Japan, in a war which Russia had fought to gain greater imperial control, restated such a lesson. Yet to focus on the geopolitics is to oversimplify the causes of the war. Just as the Russians may be accused of equating their imperial security with an expansionist policy, so too can the Japanese. The Sino-Japanese war of 1894-5 saw the Japanese attempt to secure a foothold in Korea, preventing in turn the realisation of the preconception that Korea was ‗the knife pointed to Japan‘. The Russian ambition to secure Port Arthur as an allyear round, ice-free port was only realised following pressure on Japan from France, Winter 2013│ The Shoardian

Japanese troops at Cempulo, Korea, 1904

Contemporary views within Japanese political circles in regards to the decision to go to war were split. Ministers such as Hirobumi Ito felt that war with Russia would bring disaster to both countries, but the view of the Emperor was that Japan should go to war if it was deemed necessary. The military consensus was that Japan‘s military outnumbered Russia‘s Far Eastern forces. The Japanese navy was also deemed to be superior to that of the Russians, having purchased ships from Great Britain as part of the new found militarism that accompanied the Meiji Restoration. Japan had modelled its forces on what it deemed to be the best in the world, which for its military was that of Prussia, and included the incorporation of artillery. While this in itself was nothing new

The Russo-Japanese War: a Reinterpretation (artillery had been a decisive factor in the FrancoPrussian War 1870-1), this emphasizes the Japanese desire to encompass contemporary military thinking, which went hand in hand with its imperialistic ambitions. Although Japanese leaders were not necessarily optimistic with the prospect of going to war against one of Europe‘s greatest powers, they went in with the knowledge that they were in possession of a fighting force that could at least challenge Russia. Added to this was the support provided in the form of the Anglo-Japanese alliance, which would test the will of any nation siding with Russia against Japan with the prospect of also having to fight Great Britain. This was a result of the situation Britain found itself in as a result of the Boer Wars, and was specifically applied to prevent the formation of a Russian alliance with Germany or Austria-Hungary, which would drastically alter the balance of power in Europe. Furthermore, the Japanese decision to go to war was heavily supported by the knowledge that the United States would, in a situation where Japan felt it could not win, be able to mediate between Japan and Russia. Such factors gave solid insurance to Japan‘s attack on Port Arthur. The outbreak of the war received mixed opinion at the time, with British newspaper The Times declaring the surprise attack as deserving , ―A place of honour in naval annals:‖ an interesting assertion when compared to reactions to a similar ploy at Pearl Harbour in 1941! Russia‘s reaction, as already stated, was one of surprise, but only in the sense of the nature of the attack itself. War with Japan was an idea that was frequently pondered, but it was usually decided that rather than risk the prospect of Japan being joined by any other nation in response to Russian aggression, a war would have to be initiated by Japan. Placed in the times of its actual outbreak, the Russo-Japanese war does not seem to be as much as a turning point as it has been suggested. The reasons for its outbreak were mainly imperialistic on both sides, and the notion that a victory for Japan signified the waning influence of European empires may seem attractive at first, but closer inspection of the context of the war must be investigated to unravel this misleading assertion. Japan was acting in the same way as the traditional Russian imperialist vein of seeing expansion as equating security, and to this end it

proved to be the more successful. Naturally, such a decisive naval victory at the Battle of Tsushima, which saw the Japanese obliterate the Russian navy in the space of a few hours having only just arrived from its seven month odyssey, would bring to the minds of contemporaries the notion of the underdog Japan humiliating the Russian bully. But any further assertion that portrays the war as anything but a conflict over imperial expansion is limited in its weight. Japan was just another empire like those so prominent in 19th and 20th century world history, albeit one who had come relatively late to the expansionist party. It is held by some that the impact of the war was a contributing factor to the Russian Revolution of 1905. Certainly, the news coming back from the battlefield that the Russians were losing the war, in particular the fall of Port Arthur on 2nd January 1905, undermined popular support for the Tsarist regime. But the revolution was caused by more immediate factors than the Russian setbacks in Manchuria. This can be unpicked further by the fact that, although Port Arthur (the main Russian objective of the war) had been lost, this was by no means decisive for the war‘s eventual outcome. In fact, the only element that can truly be considered decisive in the war was the naval Battle of Tsushima. The end of the war on land (and by extension the war as a whole) came about due to exhaustion of both Russian and Japanese forces, and not because of any conclusive act of warfare. Although it may be possible to draw parallels with the revolution in October 1917 accompanying Russian defeats during (at that point in time) an unconcluded war, the parallel distorts when considering the limited nature of the war, taking place on neutral ground. The war with Japan was merely a backdrop to a revolution that was addressing more immediate problems.

Want to know more? If you want more on the Russo-Japanese War, why not try: ‘The Russo-Japanese War 1904-1905’ by Geoffrey Jukes (London: Osprey Publishing) ‘Cassell's History of the Russo-Japanese War’ (London: Cassel)

Winter 2013│ The Shoardian

The Women of the Heian Court

The Women of the Heian Court Sam Heath gives an insight into Japanese high culture from 794 to 1185

かゝる、世の古事ならでは、げに、何をか、紛るゝことなきつれづれを慰めまし。 “Were it not for these old romances, what would we do to beguile our idle hours?‖ - The Tale of Genji, Murasaki Shikibu

round the end of the 1st millennium AD, when most of the world‘s civilizations were at a low ebb, cla ssi cal Japan was experiencing its Golden Age. During the Winter 2013│ The Shoardian

The Heian Period was characterised by these opulent gowns (worn here by mannequins)

Heian period (literally ‗peace and tranquillity‘), under the mollifying influence of Buddhism, Japan was free from the turmoil and civil war that would become such a recurrent feature of the country‘s history in later centuries. The imperial court, adopting many customs and structural elements from that of China, reached the peak of its cultural and artistic achievements, and the arts, especially poetry, painting and music, flourished. Most importantly, the Heian court gave rise to Japan‘s greatest work of literature: The Tale of Genji, the world‘s oldest novel about the life of a fictional prince, by Murasaki Shikibu. Written between 1002 and 1022, this was a truly monumental work: its English translation by Arthur Waley has some 630,000 words, making it twice as long as Don Quixote or War and Peace, and 42

The Women of the Heian Court involves over 400 characters while containing nearly 800 embedded poems. Aside from its immense literary value, what is most remarkable about this masterpiece is that its creator, a member of the court of Emperor Ichijō, was a woman. Murasaki Shikibu, or Lady Murasaki as she is known, was not a one-off exception. The Pillow Book, a personal diary interspersed with poems and short stories by another lady-in-waiting, Sei Shōnagon, is also considered a Japanese classic and an invaluable source of information about daily life in the Heian court. Other, less well-known, female diarists and short story writers include Lady Sarashina, Izumi Shikibu and a woman known only as the Mother of Michitsuna. Male writers did of course exist, but the predominance of women in Heian literature was more extensive and noticeable than in that of any later period in Japan‘s history, and, indeed, than any other society in history. Reading the words of these women a thousand years later, we are led to question: to what can we attribute this predominance of female writers? And did Heian women enjoy prominence in other fields of society, such as politics and religion, apart from literature? Upper-class women certainly did not lack free time to dispose of. It must be remembered that we are dealing with only a tiny percentage of the population, less than 1%, who inhabited the capital Heian-kyō, modern Kyōto – practically nothing is known about the lives of the peasants, who were not considered worthy topics for writing. All the official bureaucracy and duties of government, from the highest level of the imperial household right down to provincial level, were carried out by men, leaving them little time for leisurely pursuits. Women on the other hand, excluded from the business of administration, were able to devote their days to writing literature, be it poetry, diaries, short stories or, in the case of Lady Murasaki, novels. Ivan Morris, the renowned scholar and translator of several classic texts, noted that Japanese women of later periods had similar amounts of free time but wrote nowhere near as much as Heian women. However, it seems certain that the monotonous nature of the lives they must have led must have contributed in no small part to their desire to put on paper their most intimate thoughts and 43

ideas, leading to the great literary legacy we have inherited from them. The other major factor which enabled Heian women to become more prominent in literature than those of other periods was neither the subject matter, nor the amount of time they could dispose of, but the rôle of the Chinese language and script in upper-class circles. Due to the massive cultural influence of China, whose impact on Japan and other peripheral nations had been present for several centuries, all governmental, scholarly and religious literature intended to be taken seriously was written either in pure classical Chinese or in the hybrid Sino-Japanese known as kanbun. The prestige attributed to Chinese characters, called kanji in Japan, meant that men, for whom such domains were reserved, were so constrained by the writing system that they made almost no attempt to represent the vernacular language as it was actually spoken. Women on the other hand, who in general were not taught kanji, used instead the hiragana syllabary, which accurately represented the pronunciation of Japanese words, allowing them much greater freedom of expression than men possessed. As a consequence, while men confined their attentions to official documents or struggled to express themselves in a language they had never heard spoken, the women of the Heian court were able to spend their days conveying their most intimate thoughts and ideas about the world around them so that we, reading their words centuries later, might empathize with them personally in a way that is impossible with the vast majority of ancient literature. Nevertheless, despite the clear wealth of talent possessed by Heian women, their education was never considered as seriously as that of men. As mentioned above, they were expected not to learn to read and write Chinese, which was meant to be the sole preserve of men, and any scholarly work by women was heavily disapproved of by society, due in no small part to the chauvinistic Confucian ideals imported from China. Even Murasaki Shikibu herself was denied a formal education, and instead managed to teach herself Chinese by eavesdropping on her brother Nobunori‘s lessons – she easily outshone him, leading their father to declare that he wished she were a boy! Winter 2013│ The Shoardian

The Women of the Heian Court Sei Shōnagon also educated herself in the Chinese classics and frequently used this extensive knowledge to her advantage during poetry competitions with male courtiers. For instance, she mentions in The Pillow Book that while pear blossom was considered unattractive in Japan, it was held in the highest esteem in China, and notes tellingly that the face of Yang Guifei, an imperial concubine, is compared to the flower in the famous poem Changhen Ge by Tang dynasty poet Po Chü-i. Murasaki and Sei were, however, the exception rather than the rule, as most Heian women were expected to be educated in only three disciplines: calligraphy, music and poetry. Knowledge of anything more was considered unseemly in a woman. Given their exclusion from official political life and their very limited education, life for women in the capital, Heian-kyō, must have been, by modern standards, extremely monotonous. Most of their time was spent sitting at home accompanied only by their ladies-in-waiting and amusing themselves by whatever means they could. Favourite pastimes included the popular board game go, playing musical instruments such as the kin, or seven-stringed zither, practising calligraphy, and holding poetry competitions. Communication with the outside world was conducted almost entirely through letters, usually containing a poem, and women were shielded from male visitors, even close relatives, by a bamboo screen known as a sudare. The only breaks from this tedious routine were the many festivals throughout the year, from celebrations of births and marriages to religious ceremonies, both Shintō and Buddhist. These festivals often involved trips to temples near the city, highly ritualized dances, such as the Gosechi dances at the harvest festival, and elaborate displays of pageantry for the imperial family. Such excursions provided ladies of the court not only with a distraction from their daily lives but also ample material for another pastime: writing. In terms of domestic life, women in Heian Japan fared much better than in most other contemporary societies, and the traditional a r r a n g e m en t s gave th e m , albeit Winter 2013│ The Shoardian

unintentionally, a great amount of independence. The usual practice was for a boy to be married between 12 and 14 to a girl several years older than himself – at age 12, Genji is married to Aoi, four years older than him – but a woman would not move in with her husband until much later, living in her parents‘ house until the death of her husband‘s father and his accession to head of the household. This in itself encouraged a high degree of independence on the part of the wife, which was compounded by the fact that almost all marriages in Heian-kyō were polygamous, with one ―principal‖ wife and a number of lesser wives or consorts, each of whom lived in her own apartment and spent little time with her husband. There was naturally some jealousy among women, married or unmarried, vying for the attention of a man: a notable example is the kuruma arasoi, or carriage battle, between Rokujō and Aoi in the Tale of Genji, in each woman‘s ladies-in-waiting struggle to push her carriage closest to Genji during the Festival of Red Leaves. This is understandable, particularly as marriages were arranged and the principal wife was not always the one who received the most affection from the husband, but on the whole the system worked without complaints from the women. Sei Shōnagon, seen by some as a very early feminist, never once criticizes the arrangement, and in the Tale of Genji, despite the fact that Genji‘s many wives do not always warm to one another, it is clear that any problems are purely personal and polygamy itself is not called into question (in fact, the only woman who complains about her husband‘s mistresses, the wife of Higekuro, is portrayed as dangerous, uncouth and more than a little insane). The upper-class Heian woman was also financially independent to a large extent. The law codes, established at the beginning of the period in the early 8th century, guaranteed her right to inherit and own property, with the result that many women, particularly daughters of provincial governors, ended up with large manorial estates and other assets without the need for a male guardian. The codes also protected wives from domestic violence, though they could still technically be executed for adultery (evidence for this being 44

The Women of the Heian Court put into practice is sparse). While the legal system was by no means perfect, women in the Heian Japan were still afforded a level of equality much higher than in previous or later times in the nation‘s history. One factor, however, elevated women‘s social position more than any other: the rôle of marriage politics. While the emperor still held official power, in reality control of government was fought over by a small number of extremely powerful rival families, the most important of all being the Fujiwara. Unlike in later periods when dominance was established by armed force, influence in the Heian court was gained by proximity to the imperial family, and this was achieved most easily by marriage. Women were used to establish links between major clans and secure their political positions, and the most advantageous way of doing that was by marrying a daughter into the imperial family, either as a principal wife of the emperor or as a consort. By the end of the 10th century, the Fujiwara clan had become, through marriage, so intertwined with the imperial family that its head, Fujiwara no Michinaga, was the father of four empresses, uncle of two emperors, and grandfather of another three, giving him unrivalled power at court. For the only time in Japanese history, female offspring were more valuable than male – while men were forever consigned to the same rank as their parents, a woman, even the relatively humble daughter of a provincial

governor, could aspire to become the wife of a prince, thus granting herself and her family both prestige and material wealth; it was even possible that one of her daughters might one day become empress. Nor were the women themselves mere pawns: in The Tale of Genji one may recall Lady Kokiden, the Old Emperor‘s wife and ―wicked stepmother‖ of the hero, by whose scheming at court he is exiled to Suma and, for a while at least, his threat to her faction‘s supremacy is neutralized.

Poetry and literature were very important in the Heian Period

From a modern, Western perspective, the life of a woman in the time of Genji may seem dull, cheerless, even claustrophobic. Hers was a mysterious and totally alien existence, where even close family members were seen only through a bamboo screen, where the world outside the confines of the capital was unfamiliar and rarely seen, and where she had to be ready to accept that she was sharing her husband‘s affections with a number of other women or else risk being ridiculed at court. Yet the Heian period was also a time when women possessed more independence and more influence in society than in another other period of Japanese history until the post-war twentieth century. And in spite of the clear bias against them in the education system, the ladies of Heian-kyō used their ingenuity to find a niche in which to express themselves, thus creating some of the world‘s greatest masterpieces of literature ever written by either gender.

Want to know more? If Sam has ignited a passion to learn about the Heian Period, why not try: ‗The Pillow Book’ by Sei Shōnagon (London: Penguin)

‘The World of the Shining Prince’ by Ivan Morris (London: Kodansha)

Winter 2013│ The Shoardian

Operation Blue Star

Operation Blue Star Abhay Kapoor writes on the Indian Armyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s attack on Sikh radicals in the Golden Temple in 1984 and its effects on individuals involved and Indian society Winter 2013â&#x201D;&#x201A; The Shoardian

Operation Blue Star

peration Blue Star was a military operation by the Indian Army which occurred in 1984 within India‘s northern borders. The Prime Minister of India at the time was the first female to hold that office in India‘s history, Indira Gandhi, daughter of India‘s illustrious inaugural Prime Minister, Nehru. Indira Gandhi is considered as being India‘s equivalent to Margaret Thatcher, an ‗Iron Lady‘, loved and hated by different members of the public. Both women were in fact very close friends and were both in office at the same time. Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale was a Sikh leader of a group named Damdami Taksal, which had different beliefs to traditional Sikhism. This group were believed by many to be part of the ‗Khalistan Movement‘, a group of Sikhs who were attempting to form their own country. Bhindranwale initially took refuge in the Golden Temple, one of the holiest shrines for Sikhs, after he was accused of the murder of a Nirankari (part of a Sikh reformist movement) named Gurbachan Singh in 1980 when it was alleged that two years previously Gurbachan Singh had insulted the tenth Sikh Guru, Guru Gobind Singh, in a Nirankari conference. The Sikh protestors at the time were peaceful, however the Amritsar police force had unleashed a torrent of bullets upon the protestors and Bhindranwale lost a few of his key supporters. In 1982 Bhindranwale moved into the Guru Nanak Niwas house within the Golden Temple complex and by 1983 it was being reported that his group were moving machine guns and rifles into the religious complex in order to fortify it. The police were scared of entering the building because it was now being frequently reported that these men were resisting arrest and it was becoming common for the government security personnel to find dead bodies in the side streets around the complex. It has been well noted by researchers and journalists that Indira Gandhi asked the vice-chief of the Army to prepare a plan for an assault on the complex, however he questioned the decision as he emphasised the religious implications of attacking such an important Sikh temple. It would alienate many of the Sikh community who supported and were an important part of the army. He was promptly replaced. 47

Overleaf: The aftermath of the assault

On the 3rd June 1984 a curfew was enforced upon the state of Punjab isolating it from the rest of India and the world. A censor was imposed upon all of the news and media outlets. The electricity was shut off across the whole state and there was a total blackout. All routes to enter and leave the temple were shut off for everyone. On the 4th June the army started bombing fortified positions which had been put in place by General Shabeg Singh, a former Indian army officer who was co-ordinating the Sikh defence, and then proceeded to form a ‗wall of iron‘ around the Guru Nanak Niwas building. On that night about 100 died in pitched battles, with, many hundreds or thousands more dying when 120,000 Sikhs marched to the temple in order to fight the army. It is very difficult to establish the true casualty figures given the discrepancies between official accounts and those of Sikh opponents. Firing did stop for a while in order to see if an agreement could be reached, but it was apparent that this could not occur and so hostilities begun again. The 5th and 6th June were crucial days for the struggle as it was during these two days when most of the fighting and the major incidents occurred. On the 5th, the army seized various Gurdwaras (places of Sikh worship) around the perimeter of the complex. At night the Indian Army generals decided to launch three separate attacks simultaneously which would c from weaken the defence by confusing it. It was hoped that if unit could infiltrate the temple itself then the Sikhs inside would be distracted, thus allowing the other army troops to enter. However, these units were met with heavy gunfire and were forced to retreat, including those which had actually managed to penetrate the complex. Indian Army casualties rose due to the delay in knocking down the gates at the south entrance and even crawling also became impossible due to strategically placed machine guns. Eventually a fourth assault was ordered by the commander, General Sunderji, and once again it was unsuccessful. Reinforcements were requested both in terms of troops but also in the form of tanks. The death toll was now very high and it would only become higher. It was on the 6 th June when clearance was Winter 2013│ The Shoardian

Operation Blue Star given for the tanks to fire their guns after one was hit with an RPG. The Akal Takht (the highest seat of authority for the Khalsa — the community of initiated Sikhs) was destroyed by heavy shelling. Those who tried to escape the complex were killed with a flurry of bullets from machine guns. It was only on the 8th June that the army managed to gain control over the whole complex and not until the 10th when the whole operation was officially announced to be finished. The official army report published in the aftermath of the operation suggested that casualties were: Military: 136 killed and 220 wounded Civilian: 492 killed Separatists apprehended: 433 out of 1592 It actually emerged under from Indira Ghandi‘s successor as Prime Minister, her son Rajiv Gandhi, that over 700 army personnel had been lost. The total number is unclear because there were 38 other gurdwaras around the complex where soldiers were also fighting, and these were not taken into account,. The number of civilian casualties is also dubious: unofficial reports have suggested that up to 20,000 died in the fighting. Whatever the real number, the short and long-term effects of Operation Blue Star, were devastating. The first major consequence was Indira Gandhi‘s assassination the very same year by two of her Sikh bodyguards. Beant Singh was apparently her favourite guard, while Satwant Singh was a 23-year-old who had

Winter 2013│ The Shoardian

Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale led the radical Sikh group Damdami Taksal

The Indian Army was criticised for its handling of the situation

been recently appointed. The murder of the prime minister led to further anti-Sikh riots which led to the deaths of thousands. There were also mutinies by many Sikh soldiers across the country and they also had to be crushed by the army. Sikh separatists again ended up occupying the Golden Temple again in 1986 which again led to further conflict. The long term effects of the operation was the damaging mistrust amongst some of the Sikh community towards the Indian government which was was seen when the government rebuilt the Akal Takht. It was knocked down and then rebuilt again by Sikhs. Even to this day, there is a strong sense of resentment by

Operation Blue Star Sikhs across the globe, including in the UK such as in 2012, when four Sikhs had tried to assassinate one of the generals involved in Operation Blue Star in a knife attack on Oxford Street. The massacre continues to play a role in Sikh politics and identity, with many still regarding Ghandi‘s assassins as martyrs. The mistrust and anger it provoked is still present almost thirty years on. The question that needs to be answered from a historical perspective is whether this action was warranted. The answer could be either yes or no. It can be argued that the government was definitely wrong to attack the Sikh separatists in the most important religious place of worship to Sikhs. One of the reasons so many civilians were killed was due to the attack being launched during a time when there were more Sikhs there than normal due to a religious festival, which compounded the tragedy. It led also to the destruction of the temporal seat of the Khalsa which was the most important religious centre for Sikhs, being their highest authority on earth, where the spiritual and temporal worlds united. It could have led to further problems as many Sikhs could have viewed this as an attack on their religion rather than separatism. Yet, on the other side one can argue that the attack on the Golden Temple was warranted because the serious threat to the Indian state the Sikh separatists posed by stockpiling weapons in the complex. It was also obvious that these men were prepared to use force to achieve their ends and they were using fear. Indira Ghandi had confronted the political threat of the left-wing Naxalites in Bengal

Beant Singh was one of Indira Gandhi’s Sikh bodyguards who assassinated her

The Two ‘Iron Ladies’ together, Prime Ministers Indira Gandhi and Margaret Thatcher

during the 1960s by sending in the army, and the hallmark of her premiership was a refusal to compromise on India‘s integrity as a country. This decisiveness had also served her well when she intervened in East Pakistan in 1971 against the Pakistani military, which gave her government a massive increase in popularity. Still, it could be argued that these military successes led her to be too ready to use violence in 1984. The massacre at the Golden Temple is a persistent stain on Indira Ghandi‘s record, but given the irrelevance of ‗Khalistan‘ to modern Sikh politics, and that a Sikh, Manhoman Singh, has been Prime Minister since 2004, the long-term impact has been in line with the original intention of ―Blue Star.‖

Want to know more? If Abhay‘s article has caught your interest, try: ‘Indira Gandhi: Daughter of India’ by Carol Dommermut (Washington: Lerner Publishing Group) ‘Operation Blue Star: The True Story’ by K.S. Brar (New Delhi: UBS Publisher‘s Publishers) 49

Winter 2013│ The Shoardian

What was the Primary Cause of the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857?

What was the Cause of the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857? The Editor, in danger of appearing dangerously self-indulgent, introduces his own article examining the main cause of the Sepoy Mutiny, which also happened to win the Ian Bailey History Prize

he Sepoy Mutiny of 1857, also known as the 1st War of Indian Independence, is a turning point in Anglo-Indian relations. It saw the end of the Raj of the East India Company and the beginning of an official presence of the British Government on the sub-continent. Unspeakable atrocities were committed on both sides and for many the subject is still controversial. One of the most controversial aspects of the rebellion are its actual causes. This essay will examine the proposed reasons for the rebellion, from gunpowder cartridges and cultural insensitivity to drug abuse. The main cause of the rebellion is popularly seen to be the Company‘s gradual suppression of the religions of the sepoys, the flashpoint being the introduction of the Pattern 1853 Enfield Rifle- Musket in 1856-57. A justified rumour spread round the sepoys that the Winter 2013│ The Shoardian

The Sepoy Mutiny sent shockwaves through the British public’s conciousness

cartridges, that had to be bitten open by the troopers, were made of cow and pork fat, which both Hindus and Muslims objected against. It is commonly believed that the sepoy Mangal Pandey fired the first shots of the uprising, as he encouraged his comrades to fire on their British officers, while according to some sources after smoking bhand- a form of cannabis. He shot at a sergeant major, who he then attacked with his tulwar, before turning on a lieutenant (failing to kill either). After a botched suicide attempt, he was hanged for treason. The traditional story goes that this led to a chain of mutinies among the Bengal army (based in the north), culminating in the capture of Delhi and the Mughal Emperor Bahadur Shah becoming a figurehead of the revolt. In order to understand this narrative, one must look back at the previous practices of the Company. Alarm bells first began to ring in the heads of 50

What was the Primary Cause of the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857?

the sepoys when the Company began to stop Brahmins from blessing the Regimental Colours and stop sepoys from attending public festival parades. In July 1806, there was a mutiny when uniforms were introduces without any religious symbols, but it was quickly supressed. The company also began to send sepoys on overseas service crossing the ‗black water‘ of the open sea after the 1856 General Service Enlistment Act was passed, offending orthodox Hindus. The Company‘s inclusion of Sikhs as well as ‗untouchables‘ (members of the lowest caste of Hindu society) as recruits also offended the high-caste soldiering families who traditionally made up Indian armies. The 19th century also saw an increased disdain among Britons for the odd social practices of Indians which they felt they had a duty to replace with civilised western practices. Puritanical missionaries also increased their efforts to convert the population. In one case, Company officers themselves converted a number of sepoys. The fat-smeared cartridges were therefore seen by fearful Indians as a conspiracy to ‗Christianise‘ the sepoys- the rebels captured sepoys who had not rejected the cartridges and forced them to lick up the blood of their comrades and murdered Europeans, before hanging them. The rebel‘s emphasis on the Mughal Emperor also reflects the Muslim ruling elite‘s view that the rise of the Company at the expense of the Mughals was a threat to Islam in India. For these reasons, it could be argued that the rebellion was caused by the Company disrespecting the religious practices of the troops, with the fat cartridges as and Pandey as the flashpoint. This argument falls short on a number of levels, however. It is extremely oversimplified and overplays the role of the cartridges and Pandey. The cartridges were soon replaced when the sepoys refused to use them, and the men were allowed to mix their own fat out of 51

beeswax to use. The reversal began on the 27th January 1857, with the mutiny on 10th May. The Pandey incident occurred on the 29th March and was restrained by other sepoys only one sepoy sergeant refused to arrest him. Pandey was also on drugs and did not speak in his defence for the duration of the trial, meaning that his motive for his mutiny is hard to decipher. Clearly, for all the iconic symbolism of the two events, they were dealt with quickly by the Company and were only minor additions to the growing mistrust of British officials. If the revolt was truly caused by religious unrest, it is interesting to note that the majority of rebels came from northern, recently assimilated states, whose forces made up the Bengal Army. The Madras Army remained loyal, as did many local rulers, with most states remaining neutral. If the uprising was a religious one, then it does not make sense that Hindus and Muslims from the south and east not rebel to the same extent: Bengal (not the Bengal Army), Bombay and Madras- the heartlands of company ruleremained loyal. This simple narrative makes up only part of the story and its logic does not explain why the Gurkhas, some of whom were Muslim and Hindu, as well Sikhs, many of whom would have frowned upon the consumption of animal fat in the cartridges, remained loyal to the Company, let alone the scores of Hindu and Muslim sepoys from Madras and other Company territories. It seems clear, therefore, that religious grievances were not the primary factor in the revolt. A better argument could be made that the rebellion was caused by the political, social and economic factors that affected the northern Indian states. The Company gained power throughout India, partly through the hubris of local rulers and partly by their directors‘ own deft political hands. After originally gaining a foothold by proving their worth as a navy to the Mughals after a successful skirmish with Portuguese fleets twice at Winter 2013│ The Shoardian

What was the Primary Cause of the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857?

Swally Roads the Company had extended their control over Nawabs who did not treat them favourably, meeting some in battle, such as Siraj-ud-Daula at Plassey, and others through giving them the protection of Company forces to cement their rule, in return for political control. Many Indian merchants saw the advantages in supporting the Company, with lucrative markets for textiles and spices back in the Britain as well as the Americas and Europe. The Indian merchants and farmers near the ‗factories‘ or trading posts on the coast, such as Bengal and Calcutta, became rich. Company territory also expanded from Madras and Calcutta after deposing French-supported rulers such as Tippu Sultan. The size of the Company‘s territory was achievable because the Mughals had created a developed bureaucracy, especially in Bengal with its ‗land revenue‘, as well as Indian banking which allowed the Company to finance its increased army and navy, to the point where they paid the British Government for the troops sent in the war against Tippu Sultan. In short, Indians funded the Company expansion over India, funding the Sepoy armies, which were made up of the warrior castes of Hindu society- to the point where the Company forces outnumbered the entire British Army. The mid-19th century saw a new strategy to increase Company territory, the ‗doctrine of lapse‘, where territory was annexed when the was no direct Winter 2013│ The Shoardian

The sepoys who rebelled faced a severe crackdown from the mutiny, with rebels killed by being strapped to cannons, which were then fired

male heir in the inheritance or when a province was deemed as ‗mismanaged‘, as happened to Awadh. The Bengal Army saw most of its recruits from the Rajput warrior families of Awadh- 65 to 80% of Bengal army sepoys were high-class warriors, most from the recently annexed province. The men were beginning to receive a lower pay because of the influx of Sikh and low-caste recruits, which also diluted the high-class presence. As employees of the Company, they use to receive special legal protection for their family in local courts. Now that Awadh was a Company domain, such rescinded and now the high-class sepoys found themselves in a situation where their jobs brought them less cash, less legal protection and less prestige. The disgruntled sepoys hoped that a more traditional Indian ruler would re-invoke their special status, kick the untouchables out of the army and give the warriors a higher salary. It could be argued that this was the primary reason for the rebellion, as this explains why it was chiefly the Bengal Army that revolted and not the Madras Army, and partially explains why the Sikhs, having only recently been welcomed en masse into the Company‘s forces would remain loyal. What is also important to note is that the 180,000 strong force of Company soldiers (1:1 mix of Indian and British) (known as the ‗Army of Retribution‘ as it punished the rebels, who had murdered European families) outnumbered the 60,000 rebels. All this shows, therefore, that the rebellion was mostly in the north of India and caused by political, social and economic factors that did not affect the majority of sepoys, but only those of the Bengal Army who were high-caste warriors from Awadh and that the primary cause for the rebellion was not religious discontent. There are two secondary reasons as to why the rebellion spread through the north; the first is that rulers of recently annexed states such as Jhansi, Satara 52

What was the Primary Cause of the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857?

Mangal Pandey may have been intoxicated with a potent strain of cannabis at the time of his defiance

and Nagpur wanted to regain their own power. Nana Sahib seized power in Kanpur, audaciously hoping to rebuild the Marathas Confederacy, defeated by the Company in 1818. Some rulers sided with the rebels because they feared that the Company would next take their lands. With the legitimisation of the revolt by local rulers seizing their own chances, the rebels pushed on. Dissent amongst the peasantry was also rife because of their reforms and attempts to manage land ownership and increased taxation. This gave the revolt the popular support it needed to take Delhi, and resulted in, according to John Darwin ‗an uneven and unpredictable agrarian revolt‘. This coupled with the fact that there was the risk of opportunistic Indian rulers making their moves to seize control, put the British on the back-foot for the rest of 1857. These are therefore the secondary reasons as to why the rebellion occurred and how it spread. In conclusion, it the main cause of the Sepoy Mutiny was growing discontent amongst high-caste sepoys from the Rajput communities of Awadh, who feared lower53

pay, less legal protection and less prestige now that the Company began to accept Sikhs and lower-caste members. The rebellion itself spread because of agrarian discontent and dissatisfied local rulers hoping to regain their independence. Although there were some religious grievances, these have been overplayed by popular histories as the Sepoy Mutiny was situated only in the north of India and did not spread to other Company territories and the majority of sepoys, most either Hindu or Muslim, remained loyal to the Company. The ammunition cartridges and their fatty grease were soon dealt with, and it was another five months until the mutiny was in full swing. Mangal Pandey‘s act of defiance was also rather ineffective, as it was two months after his actions and a month before he was executed on the 8th April. He was also on drugs at the time, and did not speak in his defence during the trial, which implies that he may not have had any rational motive to mutiny. Clearly, therefore, Pandey was not the flashpoint of the rebellion, and nor was the introduction of the fat-smeared cartridges. Overall, the religious grievances were only a smaller long-term cause for the Mutiny, having bubbled under the fabric of Indian society over fifty years but with the Company rescinding on policy or supressing mutineers before anything greater could develop. The main and more immediate cause were the changes felt by Awadh sepoys who saw their prestige and wealth fall with secondary causes involving political and economic discontent among the ruling elite and agrarian Indians, respectively.

Want to know more? For more on the Sepoy Mutiny, try:

‘The Corporation that Changed the World: How the East India Company Shaped the Modern Multinational’ by Nick Robins (London: Pluto Press) Winter 2013│ The Shoardian

Did the Chinese discover America first?

Hern’s Historical Helpline: Did the Chinese discover America first? Mr. Hern examines the arguments raised by Gavin Menzies’ book 1421: The Year that China Discovered America (2002) Former Naval officer Gavin Menzies caused quite a storm (excuse the pun) with the publication in 2002 of his book 1421: the Year that China Discovered America, which claimed that Chinese mariners had discovered the Americas several decades before Christopher Columbus‘s voyage in 1492. Menzies‘ hypothesis was that the technological advances and discoveries that allowed European pioneers such as Columbus and Magellan to achieve what they did were dependent on Chinese advances. The naval activities of the Ming dynasty during the early 15th century, especially that of the eunuch admiral Zheng Hi, were the real innovators of global maritime expansion, though it was western Europe which benefitted, transforming the fortunes of what, up to that point, had been a collection of poor and insignificant territories perched on the edge of Eurasia. Menzies has subsequently developed his line of argument with the books 1434: When a Magnificent Chinese Fleet Sailed to Italy and Ignited the Renaissance (2008), whose argument is neatly encapsulated in the title. His most recent work Who Discovered America? (2013) follows his earlier works to their logical conclusion by rejecting the ―land-bridge‖ theory which had suggested the original population of the Americas had crossed the Bering Straits before its submergence around 9000BC, with a proposal that the original population had arrived by boat from China. Menzies‘ work has been greeted by almost universal condemnation by professional academics, the most succinct condemnation coming from Felipe Fernandez Arnesto who described some of his claims as ―drivel.‖ Despite the excoriating reviews, Menzies books have been in high demand since their publication, and have made him a very rich man. I first came across them when a Junior School boy of Chinese descent was reading it in class as part of his research on great explorers, and who proudly defended its views. Haseeb Khan wrote an insightful article in the Shoardian Volume 2 (2011) discussing the implications for our understanding of Ming China, while acknowledging the controversy. The basic theory is quite attractive. There is some merit in the argument that our appreciation of history, in Britain particularly, has been essentially Eurocentric, reducing the complex history of humanity to a simplistic account of the West‘s rise to world domination, reflecting the narcissism of so much Western culture. As Edward Said argued so effectively in his book Orientalism (1979), so much of the West‘s knowledge of the East is predicated on a series of romanticised stereotypes and myths subconsciously generated to justify Western imperialism. For many generations of Europeans in the 19th and 20th century, whose experience of the ancient cultures of the Middle and Far East were mediated through the political tumult that these areas experienced in the face of modern developments (Western technological superiority, aggressive mercantilism, industrialisation etc.) it seemed that the European contribution to world history was fundamental. Combined with a sense of cultural and racial superiority (not unrelated to a proselytising Christianity), it is no surprise that 1492 should be such a foundational date in world history and that concerns for those people already there be secondary. Menzies therefore has benefitted from consummate timing. With China‘s re-emergence as a world economic and cultural power in the 1990s, the end of the Cold War and the relative decline of European power, the centre of historical focus has moved eastwards. Universities are increasing their number of global history specialists, with Sinology particularly benefitting. Menzies arguably represents a populist reflection of the realignment between academic tectonic plates. It is easy for historians to get dogmatic about the past as in the case of discovering America. The famous story of Leif Erikson‘s discovery of Vinland during the 11th century was treated with considerable scepticism until Viking graves and evidence for settlement were discovered at Les Anses-aux-Meadows in Newfoundland, on the east coast of Canada, in 1960. It‘s hard not to suspect that many of the brickbats for Menzies are driven by jealousy at the sums of money he has made from his books. Given his quixotic past and lack of formal Winter 2013│ The Shoardian

Hern’s Historiographical Helpline historical education, there are also elements of a closed shop behind criticisms, reflecting unhappiness at the influence of one standing outside formal academia. Interestingly, he has poured much of the money he has made back into research, which is carried out by a team of graduate researchers, which shows his commitment. Constructing apology for a historical theory is actually quite straightforward if one focuses on the big picture. The true skill of a historian is not just in the painting of broad brush strokes, but the painstaking mastery of detail. This is where Menzies work falls down. He has no "smoking gun" that proves his theory. Xenophobic Confucian officials who advised the later Ming emperors destroyed all records of these sea voyages. He relies upon three types of evidence. First, Menzies claims that Chinese maps from as early as 1428, allegedly showing parts of North and South America and some Atlantic islands, were used by European explorers (including Columbus) when they started their own voyages decades later. Second, he adduces allegedly tangible evidence of pre-Columbian contact between Asia and the Americas, such as: flora and fauna (maize, sweet potatoes, Asiatic chickens, coconuts) that must have been transported by humans; "DNA evidence" that links American Indians to the Chinese; wrecks of Chinese ships and medieval Chinese anchors found in California. Third, Menzies relies upon, and constantly reminds the reader of, his own naval expertise which gives him a mystical understanding that landlubbers lack; for example, "If I was able to state with confidence the course a Chinese fleet had taken, it was because...my own knowledge of the winds, currents, and sea conditions they faced told me the route as surely as if there had been a written record of it" (p. 83). Authors that aim to rewrite 500 years of accepted history should rely less on subjective claims and more on hard evidence. And this is where Menzies ultimately fails to persuade. First, he does not read Chinese and thus cites no primary sources--a problem even if one accepts that the records were all destroyed. Even more fatal to his argument, Menzies often fails to provide corroborating data for many of his claims. To cite just four examples, he never provides the DNA evidence supposedly linking the American Indians and Chinese; fails to document the discovery of Chinese anchors off the coast of California; appeals to unspecified "local experts," as when arguing that remains of 15th century Chinese shipwrecks have been found in New Zealand; and says that a Taiwanese museum's copy of a Chinese map allegedly showing Australia and Tasmania "unfortunately...has been lost." Questionable speculative leaps are also Menzies's stock-in-trade, as when claiming that the inscription on a stone column in the Cape Verde Islands (off Africa's western coast) is in Maylayam, a language of South India, and that this proves the Chinese were there. Why would a Chinese fleet admiral order a message inscribed in a language other than Chinese? And sometimes Menzies simply contradicts himself, as when he asserts that "sea levels in 1421 were lower than today" (p. 257) because of modern global warming, but then later claims "Greenland was circumnavigable in 1421-2, for...the climate...was far warmer than it is today" (p. 306). The relationship between academic historians and popularisers is always going to be fraught. The study of the past and the demand for an understanding of where people come from is not the preserve of those who can dedicate their lives to its study in an institution of higher education. However, history is a complex subject, whose delights are often elusive and intangible. The evidence for many of our most cherished notions can be questionable. It is crucial that when people pronounce upon the past they know what they are talking about! Even ―experts‖ who appear on the media are often commenting on matters outside their direct expertise. One needs only to allude to recent fakes concerning the origins of early Christianity to show how far credulity can be exploited. To give an example, a written Coptic papyrus fragment was discovered which seemed to suggest that Jesus had a wife, and was referred to as the ―Gospel of Jesus‘s Wife.‖ The authenticity of the text was supported by a leading Coptic scholar at Harvard in 2012, but has now been accepted as a forgery by most scholars on the base of closer analysis of the text, which shows how the forger made use of a text of ―The Gospel of Thomas,‖ one of the so-called apocryphal gospels. If expertise in a language doesn‘t prevent you being fooled, how can ignorance be a positive virtue? DNA analysis promised to solve many issues of human origins when it became a usable technology in the 1990s, but the conclusions it has supported have been constantly revised by subsequent research revealing its limitations. When it is being deployed by historians with little scientific understanding to ‗prove‘ ideas, one needs to treat the conclusions with some care. The devil really is in the detail. The last few decades have been an unprecedented level of investment in professional researchers, who put their work up for fierce scrutiny by their peers. The essential question of all academic endeavour is what ‗evidence‘ actually tells us, and not projecting our own theories onto it. While the academic community sometimes lacks effective communication and its work is often esoteric, the basic methodologies it uses are essential to prevent us confusing fantasy and fact. While Menzies is an admirable figure, one cannot escape the conclusion that he commits the greatest intellectual sin (to which we are all prone): in being open-minded to new possibilities, he only sees what he wants to. 55

Winter 2013│ The Shoardian

An Economic History of Japan

An Economic History of Japan General Douglas MacArthur is credited with ensuring Japanese prosperity following WW2

John Drinkwater examines Japanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s economy, from the 16th Century to World War 2 and beyond via the Meiji Restoration

his essay is going to cover Japanese economic development from the 16th Century to the present day. The period will be split up into five different stages: the 16th Century and Japan's first contact with Europe; the Edo period; the Meiji period and the 20th Century, which will be split into two subsections: the pre and post war period, and finally the period of deflation in the Japanese economy from the 1990s to the present day. The 16th Century in Japan was the first time the country made direct contact with Europe. Prior to this, Japan was isolated due to the government having limited control of the country. Surrounding countries such as China and Korea were attacked frequently by Japanese pirates, thus leading to the Emperor of China prohibiting any contact with Japan as punishment for the Wako pirate raids. After their arrival in east Asia, the Portuguese acted as middle men between China and Japan, thus allowing Japan to receive Chinese goods such as silk and porcelain for the first time. The British and Dutch also became involved in trade, with the Dutch East India Company setting up in Hirado and Nagasaki. Extremely efficient marketing operations were set up in each city, providing competition for the Portuguese and ending Winter 2013â&#x201D;&#x201A; The Shoardian

An Economic History of Japan

their monopoly. These trading contacts began to dwindle during the Edo period of Japanese history due to increased Christianisation of Japan. This was mainly due to Portugal smuggling priests into Japan on their merchant ships, and it was in reaction to this that trade became prohibited in 1638. The Edo period was a time when Japan chose to follow a path of isolation. This was called Sakoku, where no foreigner could enter or leave Japan on penalty of death. During the Edo period Japan saw mild and stable economic progress. The Edo period economy was mainly based on rice production , moving towards a more sophisticated currency based system in the later years of the period. The political structure was based on a feudal ruling system: the daimyo were the powerful territorial lords who ruled most of Japan and levied a 40% tax on rice production. This lead to the development of a relatively sophisticated and developed economy as the daimyo used advance contracts and a system of credit to sell rice that had not been harvested yet. Other important aspects of economic development during the Edo period included urbanisation, increased shipping of commodities, a significant expansion of domestic and, initially at least, foreign commerce, alongside a diffusion of trade and handicraft industries. The construction trades flourished, and developed alongside banking facilities and merchant associations. Increasingly, Japan‘s Han estates (military estates— similar to the knight‘s fees in medieval Europe) oversaw rising agricultural production and the spread of rural handicrafts. Although the foreigners had left, they had left behind oral knowledge and books. This store of wisdom included geography, medicine, natural sciences, astronomy, art, languages, physical sciences such as the study of electrical phenomena, and mechanical sciences as exemplified by the development of Japanese clock-watches, or Wadokei, inspired by Western techniques. During the Edo period currency was used more and more, especially in the city of Edo, where society became more overtly consumerist, with the city having an open market. Aggregate demand increased in Edo city, and thus led to improved 57

quantity and quality in people's consumption of goods. In the city of Edo The Meiji itself a waterway system was built in Restoration saw order to develop the areas surrounding Japan experience an the city and to relieve congestion from the Industrial main street. This was a key factor for the Revolution in the city‘s increasing prosperity as the regions 1860s either side of the waterway benefited, and regular passenger ships could also be introduced. The Japanese economy boomed tremendously on the comprehensive infrastructure as merchants actively engaged in trade with other cities. Under the market system, the Edo economy rapidly progressed as the Shogunate introduced protocapitalistic measures to support commercial activities. There were natural disasters and economically constrictive policies as well, but they were not enough to hinder the progress of Edo economy. Rather than being a period of stagnation, the Edo period laid the foundation for the subsequent modernisation of Japan‘s economy in the late 19th century. The Meiji period extended from September 1868 through to July 1912. Meiji means ‗Enlightened rule‘, and this period began when the Tokugawa Shogunate was overthrown with the fall of Edo in the summer of 1868. The industrial revolution occurred during the Meiji period. Japan was the first Asian industrialised nation. Under the Meiji government the Japanese economy opened up again to global influence and ended its period of isolation that had begin during the Edo period. Industrialisation first appeared in textiles, including cotton and especially silk, which had been based in rural domestic workshops. By the 1890s, Japanese textiles dominated the home Winter 2013│ The Shoardian

An Economic History of Japan

currency based on the yen. Banking, commercial and tax laws, stock exchanges and a communications network were all created. During the first twenty years of the Meiji period, the industrial economy expanded rapidly, until about 1920, helped by inputs of advanced Western technology and large private investments.

market and competed successfully with British products in China and India, as well. Japanese shipping was competing with European traders to carry these goods across Asia and even to Europe. As in the West, the textile mills employed mainly women, half of them under the age of twenty. Many were sent there to work by their fathers, turning their wages over to them. Japan largely skipped the water power stage and moved straight to steam powered mills, which were more productive, and created a demand for coal. Economic development was impressive under Meiji rule, and this was primarily due to the end of the ‗feudal‘ system. This enabled a more fluid social order to emerge in Japan, therefore people could rise up the social order easier than they in previous generations. The Meiji rulers embraced British and North American forms of free enterprise capitalism. Japan's population became more educated, and this in turn led to Japan's industrial sector growing. A system for education was adopted copying Western practices and many students were sent away to Europe and America. 3,000 Westerners were hired to teach modern science, mathematics, technology, and foreign languages. The government also built railroads, improved roads, and inaugurated a land reform program to prepare the country for further development. The government also built factories and sold them to aspiring business at low prices in order to increase economic development. Japan's growth was based on importing raw materials and exporting finished goods, a feature which was created by a lack of raw materials. One of the main economic reforms was the creation of a unified Winter 2013│ The Shoardian

The Korean War 19501953 helped fuel the Japanese economy, with Japanese firms taking a significant role in equipping Allied troops for the campaign

During the 20th Century, Japan experienced two world wars as well as the Cold War. The period from July 30th 1912 to December 25th 1926 is known as the Taisho period. This was a time of liberal reform in Japan as the emperor‘s health was weak and political power moved towards newly emerging democratic parties. Japan emerged from World War One as a global industrial nation. Japan took advantage of the major European powers, such as Germany, Britain and France, being at war by filling their production gap on the world stage. In the 1920s Japan developed a trade surplus for the first time since the Edo period of isolation. In 1904 65% of employment and 38% of GDP was based on agriculture but by the late 1920s 21% of GDP was based on agriculture and 23% was from manufacturing and mining. The Great Depression occurred 29th October 1929, carrying on until the middle of the 1940s. This affected most industrialised nations, but Japan suffered less than most, with their economy expanding at a rate of 5% of GDP per year. Industrial growth in Japan was mainly geared towards military expansion. The Pacific War with the USA began on 7th December 1941 and severely damaged Japan's economy, as most of the country‘s heavy industry was devoted to meeting military needs. Maritime trade, which had been vital to Japan‘s economic growth, was affected massively by the damage to the merchant fleet during the war. The Japanese economy suffered from inflation, material shortages and currency devaluation. Once the war was over industry in Japan's cities had collapsed, transport was nearly impossible and the destruction caused by the US bombing campaign had brought the Japanese economy to a standstill. Japan‘s economy reverted to the levels of the late 1920s. However, like what 58

An Economic History of Japan

happened in West Germany, post-war Japan entered a second period of economic growth due to the new factories investing in modern machinery and exploiting a still highly educated work force and the millions of well disciplined ex-soldiers at the countries disposal. The Japanese economy had recovered by the mid 1950s. Between 1953 and 1965, Japan's GDP expanded by more than 9% per year: manufacturing and mining grew by 13%; construction went up by 11% and infrastructure by 12%. In 1965 these sectors employed more than 41% of the labour force, whereas only 26% remained in agriculture. Japan suffered from the world oil crisis in 1973 as it relied on imported petroleum and this led to Japan experiencing its first post-war decline in industrial production, together with severe price inflation. The Japanese economy was still strong even with rising petroleum prices with GDP growth of 5% occurring into the late 1980s. Japan then saw another change in the structure of its economy with a switch from primary and secondary sectors to a tertiary, servicebased economy. The tertiary sector grew from 47% of the work force in 1970 to 59.2% in 1990. Japan's economic bubble burst in 1989, and from 1990 to the present Japan has suffered from deflation. After World War Two, Japan implemented stringent tariffs and policies to encourage people to save their income. With more money in banks, loans and credit became easier to obtain, and Japan ran large trade surpluses. The Yen appreciated against foreign currencies. This allowed local companies to invest in capital resources much more easily than their overseas competitors, which reduced the price of Japanese goods and widened the trade surplus further. With the Yen appreciating, financial assets became very lucrative. Trillions were wiped out with the combined collapse of the Tokyo stock and real estate markets. To try and combat the deflation, the Bank of Japan lowered interest rates to near zero per cent, but this failed and was seen by some Japanese politicians as a contributing factor to further deflation problems. This trend was caused by factors such as falls in asset prices after real estate prices had peaked in 1989. Banks had lent to companies that invested in real estate but 59

after these prices began to fall the loans could not be repaid, and land recouped by the banks was not worth enough to cover the unpaid loans, which in turn led to a further fall in prices. As banks became increasingly insolvent they had to reduce the amount of loans provided to the wider economy and therefore there was less money available for economic growth. Many people in Japan feared the banks may have collapsed, and lost confidence in the financial sector, especially with a near zero interest rate where their money was earning little. Many Japanese placed their money into gold and treasurers bonds in Japan and the USA. The global economic recession which started in 2007 has also harmed the Japanese economy. In 2008 Japan saw a 0.7% decrease in GDP while the real world saw a 3.1% increase. The Japanese economy is still suffering even with the government implementing aggressive infrastructure spending increases. Japan's economic history is an interesting period of varied policies, with times of economic isolation especially during the Edo period, whilst it became one of the most successful capitalist economies in the 20th century. Compared with many of its Asian neighbours, Japan was able to deal with the rise of Western powers quite effectively on the whole. However, the success of the Meji restoration created new problems too which came to a head during the 1920s and 30s illustrating how volatile economic change can be.

Want to know more? If John has created an interest in economic history, why not try: â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;A History of Economic Thoughtâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; by William J. Barber (Middleton: Wesleyan University Press)

Winter 2013â&#x201D;&#x201A; The Shoardian

Afghanistan: The Impossible Peace?

Afghanistan: The Impossible Peace? Charlie Pozniak explores Afghanistan's many invasions, from Alexander the Great to today

Above: Mujahedeen in the 1980s

Middle Left: Alexander the Great attempted to invade Afghanistan

Bottom Left: Polish troops in Afghanistan in 2008 under the command of the US

Winter 2013│ The Shoardian

fghanistan has, over the course of history, been an extremely attractive target to many different invaders. Many different peoples and nations have tried to conquer this important geographical area that was a key stop on the old Silk Road, the historical trading route that brought silk and exotic spices from the Orient to the West. Why has this Middle Eastern country been such a popular invasion target, yet such a failure when it comes to installing and establishing peace? Over the years there has been an astounding number of invaders of Afghanistan: Alexander the Great and his successors established the kingdom of Bactria ; the Arabs who had been united by Islam expanded their huge empire there in the 8th century; Mahmud of Ghazni and the Ghaznavids invaded during the early 11th century; Genghis Khan‘s Mongol armies swept through the area as did his later emulator Tamerlaine. Turks, Moghuls, the British Empire, the Russian Empire (and later the USSR too) as well as the western armed forces of NATO have all invaded this geostrategic country across the centuries. Afghanistan was such an appealing location to control as historically it was the crossroads route to useful places all across Asia from Europe, and to Europe from Asia. The country was a crossing that would provide any ruler of it a vital stepping stone to the rest of the world, in particular, India. Throughout the 19 t h Century, Afghanistan was fought over, in the, ‗Great Game,‘ between the British and Russian empires, with the Russians determined to reach the Indian Ocean and the Britsh equally determined to stop them. In 1919 the country regained full independence from the British. For the rest of the century Britain continued to operate in Afghanistan, but this was not a military occupation, it was to spy on the 60

Afghanistan: The Impossible Peace?

frontier and move Ionian Greeks back to Bactria, a process continued by the new Geek ruler in the East Seleucus I in the 3rd Century BCE. Peace was never established and Alexander‘s successors failed in the post-bellum peace implementation, and many soldiers finally left. Alexander the Great‘s campaign in Afghanistan ultimately failed due to the fierce resistance that he met from the tribes, the fact that he wasn‘t able to conquer and control the majority of the country, and due to a lack of leadership by the newfound authority.

Soviet Union. The British eventually moved out in 1975, and only a few years later the Soviet Red Army in Afghanistan completely collapsed after funding was drastically reduced. NATO is currently in the country as it seen as a front line for the USA‘s, ‗War on Terror,‘ which included the overthrowing of the Taliban regime and the attempt to capture Osama Bin Laden. I will look at four contrasting invasions of Afghanistan to demonstrate why peace is arguably impossible to be established in one of the oldest sites of human settlement. One of the earliest invasions of Afghanistan was by the notorious Alexander the Great. His was the first historically documented invasion of the country in 330 BCE, as a part of his famous string of conquests. He conquered many cities including Kandahar and Herat, the largest Afghan cities after Kabul. Although it only took him six months to conquer the whole of the Persian Empire, it took him nearly three years to subdue Afghanistan. He was met with fierce resistance from the Aria, Drangiana, Arachoisa and Bactria tribes, and failed to conquer and unify these groups into a whole nation that could be easily ruled, a theme we will find is repeated. When Alexander died four years later in 326 BCE, his empire crumbled as his associates split it up for themselves. Many soldiers left Afghanistan to return to Greece, and Alexander‘s cavalry commander Perdiccas sought to guard his eastern 61

Soviet troops fighting Mujahedeen

Genghis Khan was the next great leader to attempt to invade Afghanistan, and his conquests in the Middle East have resulted in an almost universal image of him being a destructive, genocidal warlord who caused enormous damage and destruction throughout the Middle East and Iran. Mongol violence resulted in the death of three quarters of the population of the Iranian plateau, around 10-15 million people. Steven R. Ward has said, ―Some historians have estimated that Iran‘s population did not again reach its pre-Mongol levels until the mid-20th century.‖ Afghanistan was no different; G e n gh i s is viewed e x t r e m el y unfavourably because of the damage and destruction he caused. In the Mongol invasion of Khwarezmia, a large empire containing most of modern day Afghanistan, from 1219 to 1221, Genghis Khan completely destroyed the empire, brutally killing a vast number of civilians. This may seem like an overwhelming success, but the aftermath of the Khwarezmian conflict was an embarrassment for the Khan. The Shah's army may have been broken but Jalal alDin, who took power after his father's death, began assembling the remnants of the Khwarezmian army in the south, in the area of Afghanistan. Genghis despatched forces to hunt down the gathering army under Jalal al-Din, and the two sides met in the spring of 1221 at the town of Parwan. The engagement was a humiliating defeat for the Mongol forces. Genghis Khan then avenged his humiliation by killing Jalal al-Din, but did not stay in Afghanistan, instead he moved onto India, and then back to Mongolia. Without the full commitment of the Khan the turbulent tribes Winter 2013│ The Shoardian

Afghanistan: The Impossible Peace?

remained disjointed and the Mongols failed to fully control the Afghan area, never establishing a full control and peace. Thus another invasion of Afghanistan ended in failure. Jumping forward to the 20th Century, on the 27th April 1978, following episodes of civil unrest the (Communist) People‘s Democratic Party took power in Afghanistan, with the backing of the USSR. The Soviets over the next few years aided them militarily and economically and a communist way of life was gradually introduced. These new changes were not well received by a population deeply immersed in local traditions and their interpretation of Islam. The Afghan government asked for Soviet support and later full military aid against the uprisings that subsequently broke out. Brezhnev sent the 40 th Army into Afghanistan in December 1979, and this caused international outrage, which resulted in the US and other countries boycotting the 1980 Moscow Olympic Games. Russia‘s military decision prompted US funding of Mujahedeen militant groups which were violently opposed to the Afghan government. These groups, along with fighters from several Arab nations, succeeded in forcing out the Soviets. While the Soviets were able to control the main cities, they found it very difficult to manage the countryside. When Soviet military conducted wide ranging sweeps to destroy Mujahedeen forces, they found it difficult to locate any as they went into hiding amongst the local population, re-emerging when the Red Army went away. By the end of the war the Soviets were able to maintain their lines of communications by the use Winter 2013│ The Shoardian

The Second Anglo-Afghan War

of helicopters However, despite all this technology and military superiority the Afghan government could not assert its authority outside of the main urban centres. The Afghan conflict is often considered a major factor in the dissolution of the Soviet Union because it led to large protests back home in Russia, as well as being economically ruinous. The Soviets went into Afghanistan to help the Afghan government, with the aim of eventually bringing peace, but due to the fierce opposition by the Mujahedeen, this operation had by the late 1980s failed, costing the Soviets large amounts of men and valuable resources which could have been used to restructure the Soviet Economy. After the war, there was more fighting within the Mujahedeen which caused the emergence of Afghan warlords and eventually, the Taliban. Following the 11 September 2001 terrorist attack on the Twin Towers, the US, supported by NATO, invaded Afghanistan in Operation Enduring Freedom. This operation was primarily to shut down terrorist training camps, target the Taliban who permitted their operation and to capture Osama bin Laden, who was identified as the architect behind the 9/11 attack. The US military initially toppled the Taliban government that had given shelter to bin Laden fairly easily. The US faced many of the same problems in Afghanistan that had impeded earlier invaders. Geographically, the area is very mountainous and hard to navigate, with the poor infrastructure and lack of development meaning that it was a struggle to attempt to unify the separate tribes. There were problems not only in Afghanistan; in Germany and France, 80% of the public was against troops being sent to Afghanistan. Many countries became heavily involved in the campaign, but the situation did not improve. The US failed in many different ways. For example, from January – April 2008 to the same period in 2009, surfaceto-air fire by the Taliban doubled, Improvised Explosive Device (IED) deaths went up by 81%, International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) military deaths were up 55% and attacks on district centres and government 62

Afghanistan: The Impossible Peace?

headquarters increased by 90%. These statistics show that towards the tail end of NATO involvement in Afghanistan the situation was worsening and with public opinion increasingly against military involvement, the western operation increasingly resembles a failure. The US has found, like all other invaders, that the tribes and warlords in Afghanistan always fight back when attempts are made to undermine their autonomy. Fortunately for the US, on 2 May 2011, Osama bin Laden was shot and killed by the US Armed Forces, at his home in Pakistan. Though this was a success, the scope of the other failures overshadows it but, alas, these failures are not widely known to the public, and much of the information is, and will remain, classified. Statistics about Afghanistan are very telling., The country is one of the top global heroin producers with 96% of all opium in the world coming from Afghanistan. Throughout the Taliban period of rule (1994-2001), opium production was cut by 99%, with the Taliban enforcing strict punishments for those caught producing the drug. Now, the opium trade makes up 52% of the nation‘s GDP; this rise is linked with a deteriorating security system, despite the occupation by western forces. US and NATO forces are now in the process of leaving Afghanistan, and on the 18 th June 2013, ISAF and NATO forces completed the handover of security to Afghan forces, who now lead the security of all 403

districts in Afghanistan. Following this transition of power, there has been a Opium jump in attacks and civilian casualties (a Production is at 23% increase), so will there be any peace a record high in at all after the western intervention, or Afghanistan has it been in vain? The US seem to have felt like they can leave, after Osama bin Laden‘s death, and with over 2000 of their own men dead and around 35,000 civilian casualties, is their job really done? Was Afghanistan a better place before the invasion, and will the situation improve? Over the course of history, Afghanistan has been invaded countless times, and as I have tried to show in this selection of Mujahidin firing case studies, each of these invasions have demonstrated how the tribal social a US supplied FIM-92 Stinger structure that has been a key feature of Afghan society, proving unwilling to missile launcher submit to a central authority. This has caused considerable complications to the m an y a t t em p te d in va s io n s of Afghanistan. Each has proved to be a failure when it comes down to the implementation of peace, creating a unified nation, and controlling and assuaging this tempestuous area.

Want to know more? If you want to know more about Afghanistan, why not pick up: ‘Afghanistan – Graveyard of Empires – A New History of the Borderland’ by David Isby (New York: Pegasus Books)

Winter 2013│ The Shoardian

The MGS Archives

The MGS Archives Mrs Kneale writes for the Shoardian about the MGS Archives, found near the Memorial Hall, next to the Development Office

ou will have probably walked past the MGS archive room, but may not have been inside. A common misconception is that the big room with windows facing onto the corridor next to the memorial hall is a meeting room. In fact, it houses over 500 years‘ worth of history, and is open to all MGS boys who are interested. The MGS archives are a fascinating collection of documents, photographs, artefacts and rare books that have been created and collected over the course of the 500 years since the foundation of the school. Our oldest item is a deed dating Winter 2013│ The Shoardian

The Foundation Deeds to the School

from 1357 relating to property once owned by MGS on the old school site in Long Millgate, now in the city centre. Our newest addition at the time of writing (May 2013) is a programme from the school‘s production of Death on the Dial. Archives are simply the accumulation of documents and other artefacts produced over the lifetime of a person or an organisation – items that have been created as by-products of an organisation‘s function, rather than conscious history written with an eye for posterity. Simply put, they are the raw materials for the study of history – though potentially containing as much 64

The MGS Archives

bias, omission or distortion as any published history book. In general terms, to differentiate between the three – libraries contain published works that are not unique, museums retain objects of historical value, and archives focus on unique documents, photographs and audio-visual material. However, in many institutions the distinction between all three becomes blurred, with museums often having their own archives, special collections libraries holding manuscript collections and archives being given curatorship over objects. The MGS archives contain items relating to every function and facet of school life – administration, curriculum and teaching, finance, pupils, staff and co-curricular activities. We also have a number of rare antiquarian books which were once part of the main school library, and contain inscriptions from MGS boys of bygone years (graffiti seems to have been a constant in school life). Highlights from the archive relating to the early history of the school include the original foundation deeds, with Hugh Oldham‘s signature, a copy of Erasmus‘ New Testament containing the signature of benefactor Hugh Bexwyke and a handwritten book of speeches to be recited on speech day from the 17th century. Other treasures include is a postcard dating from 1906, from Keir Hardie to George Benson. Benson, later to become an MP and writer on socialism, had written to Hardie after winning 38 votes in the school‘s mock election as the socialist candidate. Hardie writes, ―Bravo! 38 votes for socialism is an excellent result, and the numbers will increase each year!‖ Standing in the same mock election was Henry Pankhurst, who stood as the Women‘s Suffrage candidate – the surname is no coincidence, he was the brother of Christabel and Sylvia and the son of Emmeline Pankhurst. The archive also holds postcards from George Bernard Shaw, H.G. Wells and Arthur 65

Conan Doyle, and a signed Dvorak musical score. An admissions register, with a list of the professions of the sons’ fathers

Alongside our treasures, sit numerous documents relating to the day-to-day life of the school. For example, the school admissions registers, which start in 1730, are an excellent resource. A boy‘s name, address, father‘s name and occupation are all recorded. We can see the range of social backgrounds from which the boys came, and their geographical location. The 19th century registers list numerous now defunct occupations, such as ―StuffDealer‖, ―Mill-furnisher‖, ―Goldheater‖, and ―Cordwainer‖ – all occupations which put MGS in the context of the Industrial Revolution in Manchester. The social mix that was apparent amongst the pupils of the school is illustrated by the column of fathers‘ occupations ―Doctor‖, ―Clergyman‖, ―Bank Manager‖, ―Lawyer‖ and even ―Astronomer‖, sitting alongside ―Warehouseman‖, ―Cotton-spinner‖, ―Bricklayer‖ and ―Tailor‖. The Winter 2013│ The Shoardian

The MGS Archives

geographical location of boys is just as broad - in the 1860s we have a record of boys from as far afield as Ireland, Gloucestershire and Devon attending the school. MGS has never been a boarding school, and such boys would most likely have stayed in private boarding houses in the city centre. Augmenting the admissions registers are the form lists, which give detailed information about each pupilâ&#x20AC;&#x2DC;s academic achievements, of lack of. Until fairly recently, after termly examinations, boys were ranked in order

Below: A postcard from Keir Hardie to George Benson, after the latter ran for the Socialist candidate in a mock election in MGS

of achievement in their class groups and the lists were published for staff, parents and boys to see. Whether this served as an incentive to do well, or whether boys were scarred for life by the knowledge that everyone knew they were bottom of their class is perhaps a question to ask an Old Mancunian! The rich co-curricular life in school is also reflected in the archive. Treks and scouting are particularly well represented, with guides to camps, receipts for food orders and even an old trekking rucksack retained the archive. Documents and artefacts relating to sport, music and drama are also featured. We hold a large photographic collection â&#x20AC;&#x201C; we have thousands of photographs ranging in topic from camps, treks and sport to class and staff photographs, and some have been digitised. In all these different areas we aim to add current material to the archive, so that what happens in school today is recorded for the future. Omissions to an archive can be as important to a historian as what has been kept. Naturally what has survived can be

Winter 2013â&#x201D;&#x201A; The Shoardian

The MGS Archives

uneven, and often very much dependent on the passions and priorities of certain individuals. So, whilst we have masses of material relating to scouting, we have very little material relating to charity work and community action. On first glance, it could suggest that MGS gave little time to charity work in the past, or it could mean that charitable endeavours were very informal and so rarely documented, or it could mean that the individuals who coordinated charitable activities threw documentation away with no thought for posterity. Until very recently there was no focused effort to retain a wide range of material, and so what survives depends on either luck, or documents retained by Old Mancunians and staff members and donated back to the school. As with many archives, the MGS archive is used frequently by genealogists tracing family trees. Around a fifth of all archive enquiries are related to family history. If your great-grandfather attended MGS, I could potentially tell you his place of residence on entry to the school, his father‘s occupation and that he was bottom in Chemistry in the summer examinations for 1917. We have a complete catalogue of class photographs, so can often give family historians a photograph of their relative. We also get enquiries from historians and archaeologists doing research and writing books. In the past year, we have had visits from two archaeologists, one studying the use of land in the Birchfields Park area - maps and plans of the school site, along with the back copies of the school magazines, were consulted. Another is studying the role of Physical Education in schools during the inter-war years and whether physical activity was encouraged in response to a government drive after WWI – governors‘ minutes, photographs, school magazines and school sports committee minutes were consulted. We also assisted with research 67

for a book by Dr. Anthony Seldon on the role that public schools played in the Great War. In the run up to the centenary of the outbreak of WWI, we have had a significant number of visitors and enquirers coming to look at the war memorial books and boards, and this is expected to continue into 2014. Left: The earliest item, a deed from 1357, during the reign of Edward III

The archive is also used frequently for internal school purposes. The next time you notice a black and white or sepia toned photograph in Ulula, MGS Life/ News, on the school website or on the display boards round school, the chances are the photograph was sourced from the school archive. The archive also assists with displays and material for Old Mancunian reunions. We would like to develop the archive as a resource for students. As an MGS student, the archive is your own collection of original historical source material – you have 656 years‘ worth of historical documents at your disposal. So whether you‘re doing a project, interested in a career in the heritage sector or you‘re just curious, do feel free to pop in and see me. As a history student it can be really helpful to hone your analytical skills by looking at original documents – their context, content and construction – and if you‘re applying for history at University, you will be ahead of the pack if you can show that you‘ve been in touch with the raw material of historical research.

Want to know more? If this piece f the MGS Archives has caught your interest, why don’t you go and see Mrs Kneale one spare lunchtime? You may even want to visit local museums in Manchester and Salford and get to see objects from the cities’ pasts.

Winter 2013│ The Shoardian

Eyewitness: Kenneth Edmonds

Eyewitness : Kenneth Edmonds

The Editor talked with his grandfather, Ken Edmonds, who was a teenager when World War 2 began. He joined the Home Guard when he was 17 and found himself in the Far East at the end of the war as a radio operator in the Royal Corps of Signals from India to Burma to Singapore. Below is his story, with some insights into what life was like in Cheadle during World War 2 and in Singapore in the aftermath of the conflict

Winter 2013â&#x201D;&#x201A; The Shoardian

Eyewitness: Kenneth Edmonds

was 15 when the war started and lived in Gorse Hill in Stretford. We were near Trafford Park, which was a big industrial sector targeted by the German bombing raids. The street next to us was hit, so we decided to move out and we came to Cheadle. We got a house just off Councillor Lane. There was little demand for houses at the time because people were afraid that their new homes would get bombed, so there were plenty of them to rent! I lived there until I was called up. Every night, the air-raid siren used to go off at 9 o‘clock each night and the planes would come over. Sometimes they were on their way over to Liverpool and you could see the fires from that city in Cheadle where the bombs were dropped and you could see the antiaircraft guns and searchlights going off. There were Air Raid Wardens who had water pumps to put out the incendiary bombs. Volunteers called Fire Watchers; staff would take turns fire-watching at their businesses every night and their job really was to put out any fires they found. The bombing just became part of your life. At first people would rush to the Anderson Air Raid Shelters in their gardens, which were dug into the ground covered in corrugated iron and earth. The trouble was that they often flooded because they were low in the ground, so most people decided to not use them and said ―Well if your names on it, you‘ll get it‖ and ―the bombs won‘t hit me.‖ That was the attitude people seemed to take. When I was 16 or 17 (1940-41) I joined the local home guard in Cheadle. We used to meet at the drill hall behind St Mary‘s Church and would go to the firing range in Gatley where we were trained on how to use the rifles, although we were never issued with guns. We met every other night for night-duty in case any German paratroopers arrived. So we were out on patrol during most of the raids. But to be honest, if the paratroopers had dropped, they would have been so well trained and 69

Left: Signalman Edmonds in his uniform

Below: Firefighters in Manchester City Centre during the Manchester Blitz, which also saw Trafford Park hit

armed that we wouldn‘t stand a chance! Mind you, we didn‘t know that at the time! We thought we would be issued with live ammunition eventually, but that never happened! Every Sunday we used to go on parade and then go the White Hart in Cheadle. Beer was rationed then but the landlord used to save some of it for us. The Army wanted a Signals Unit in the area because they wanted communications from Cheadle Village to the Mersey Bridge near Parrs Wood. They had a blockhouse on the road by the bridge (that would have most likely been blown out of the way by a German tank, looking back with hindsight!) and they asked me whether I wanted to join the Signals Unit. I agreed, and had to learn Morse code. We had no radios so instead we communicated by flags. It was a waste of time really. When I was 18 (1942), I was called up in the Army and was sent to Fullwood Barracks in Preston. My brother was in the RAF and he came with me on the train. I had six weeks of basic training and injections with big, glass needles (which made a few people faint!). During those six weeks, we were tested and given tasks like putting bicycle pumps and adjustable spanners back together in order to see what we were good at and where you would end up. As I knew Morse code and was in the Home Guard I was put in the Royal Corps of Signals.

Winter 2013│ The Shoardian

Eyewitness: Kenneth Edmonds

Most of the people in the Corps had been in the Post Office and were trained in communications to be a Signalman because the Army competent communications to work. I was sent to Catterick Camp in Yorkshire, where there was a Royal Signals depot, to start my training. I wanted to be a wireless-operator but instead I was maid a teleprinter operator. A teleprinter was a typewriter that would send and receive messages electronically by wire from one machine to another, and it was mostly used by headquarters. Halfway through the course I got appendicitis so was put in the hospital at Catterick. When I came out, my course had finished and I had another interview, where they let me go on a wireless operator course. I think I did well on it because of my experience with Morse code to the point where they were going to make me an instructor at the camp! But I didn‘t fancy it one bit because I would be in charge of a squad of men and be up on parade at half-past seven in the morning, marching to the barbers once a week, with nobody liking you! When I first went to Catterick, the sergeant in charge said ―Now look at me, ‗cos I‘m Bastard Number One and if you behave yourself you‘ve got nothing to worry about. But by Christ if you don‘t I‘ll make you suffer!‖ I didn‘t want to be part of that. Instead I was posted to a unit in Norfolk, a training unit, where I was trained on

Winter 2013│ The Shoardian

The Douglas c47 Skytrain, known as the ‘Dakota ‘ to the British, was heavily used by American and Canadian forces in the Far East

how to operate in the field as part of a unit. We were sent out on jeeps with a radio and a map reference and after they had left us somewhere and we would either have to get back to the base or stay there while setting up communications with two or three other groups in the area, as you would do in battle. Naturally, they would send us somewhere where the reception was poor, like under a railway bridge. You would have to move to somewhere else where there was better reception; it was part of the training, to use your head. We were becoming more skilled and the training was showing its result. We were near Norwich, where lots of the American Flying Fortresses (B-17s) and in the weekend, we could get the train into the city, where there was a big dancehall. The first Saturday we went it was full of American pilots and air-crew in immaculate uniform, meaning that none of the girls would dance with us! They all wanted the Americans because they could give them nylon. So we gave up and went to the YMCA instead. Suddenly (possibly 1944), we were told that we would be moving one morning and to be ready with our kit at 8 o‘clock. After a while, we crossed into Scotland to board a troop ship called the Nia Hellas, a Greek cargo Ship, about 15,000 tonnes. As we went aboard, we were given a ticket saying either ‗table‘ or ‗hammock‘ and that was where you would be sleeping, the cargo was replaced with tables and above those were strung the hammocks. I started off on a table. We set sail down the Clyde into the Irish Sea where we joined a convoy heading for the Mediterranean. We sailed into a terrible storm in the Bay of Biscay. We were rolling around when we heard depth charges going off, so we though there was a submarine about! We put on our great coats in case we were sunk and found ourselves in the water, where the coats would keep us warm for a while. We arrived in Gibraltar and I‘ll never forget 70

Eyewitness: Kenneth Edmonds

when a Spitfire came roaring overhead above the convoy welcoming us as we sailed through the straights. We were hugging the African coast when it was Christmas Day, with it snowing and the sea swelling. We were given a block of chocolate each as a treat, but it was so hot below deck that it melted! We arrived in Alexandria, where we took on new supplies. While we were there, the locals came onto the boats to sell stuff. The Army was afraid that you‘d by something like fruit that would make you ill so they were kicked off. They used to fire shots over their heads to keep them away. We went through the Suez Canal, but we weren‘t told where we were going. We stopped at the other end to refuel the coal engines. As we sailed on, the weather was beautiful and we could see whales and flying fish in the oceans as we lay on the deck. Finally, we arrived in Bombay, and we realised where we had been heading. We got on a train and were sent to Poona. It was a well know base during peace-time, and people used to say ―When I was in jolly old Poona…‖ when they were joking around. We spent some time in Poona, were we didn‘t do much except play football and go into the town where there was a market. We were mixing with Indian troops and we had to be very careful around them as to not question their religions although we didn‘t mix with the West African troops that were there from the Commonwealth. We were on a train for two days, and every time it stopped at towns, we‘d get off and run to the engine, where we‘d use the hot water for our tea! At night there were cockroaches crawling along the floor, so we would try to sleep from the baggage racks that were suspended from the ceiling by chains. There would be Women‘s Voluntary Service (WVS) groups at the towns that would bring use extra food. They were probably the wives of soldiers and civil servants but the problem was that kite hawks kept on 71

The Battle of Meiktila and Mandalay from January to March 1945 was the final large-scale battle between Japanese and Allied forces in Burma, featuring infantry, tanks and aircraft

stealing the food. We arrived at a town called Comilla, where we stayed for a while before being moved to an air-strip. We were there for four days when they took us to Dakota planes flown by Americans, where we were loaded on board. There were no seats and a big piece was cut out of the plane‘s side because it was designed to drop supplies out of during flights. Nobody was nervous about the lack of safety; we just accepted it as fact. We took off, not knowing where we were going. There were miles and miles of jungle and after an hour, an American started looking through an oval window. We asked him what he was doing and he said he was looking for Zeros (Japanese fighter-planes). At this point, we said ―Oh Blimey, we won‘t see any Zeros!‖ and soon afterwards we landed at a dusty air-strip. We were loaded onto Dodge trucks and went off through the hilly bamboo jungles of Burma. I arrived at the unit I was posted too, after a month travelling from Scotland to Burma. Three of us got off the trucks. We were in a round are with slit trenches surrounding the post- there was no frontline or supply-lines; you were surrounded Winter 2013│ The Shoardian

Eyewitness: Kenneth Edmonds

these lights in front of me and woke the cook up. The light kept on moving and we pulled the wire. The sergeant-major came over and we pointed the lights out to him. He said ―You bloody fools, their fireflies!‖ Well it wasn‘t our fault; we‘d never seen fireflies before!

by possible enemies. There was a pagoda were the wireless set was set up, and the operator was very brown. He asked us what it was like in Blighty, as he had been in Burma for the last three years! I was there for a couple of days when I was put on guard by the sergeant-major at 6 o‘clock, about the time it got dark. I was on guard with this sergeant-major and another lad. I had a Bren gun and a box of ammunition and was put in a slit trench with the other lad. He tied a piece of wire to us and tied the other end to himself. Before he went further back, he said to us ―Everything in front is an enemy; you see anything, pull the wire, there‘s nothing in front except the enemy.‖ When he left I asked the lad next to me whether he knew how to use a Bren gun, because I had been trained on how to use it. He said ―No, I‘m just the cook!‖ At that point I thought we were done for if the Japanese did actually turn up. I never spent a more horrible, worrying night than that one. The crickets started chirping and we began to imagine all these sounds. After a while, I noticed Winter 2013│ The Shoardian

An Air Mail Letter sent from Ken to his sisters while advancing through Burma, dated 22nd March 1945

We got settled in, and I learnt that we were part of a bigger unit, the 36th British Division and it was our job to communicate with headquarters in think Colombo in Sri Lanka in Morse code because only that could reach those distances with the poor reception at night. Occasionally the Japanese got in to the frequency and would send jumbles of Morse to confuse us but their radios had a different tone so I learnt to ignore them. I had to make sure I had no habits like tapping so that the Japanese couldn‘t tell it was me communicating from my unit so that they didn‘t know where we were. We would mix with the Indians and Ghurkhas in the unit. Most of the Indians had university degrees so they were well educated and they would talk to us. They had their own officers, one of their ranks was Jamadar (the lowest rank of a junior commissioned officer), but they didn‘t mix with us. They called us ‗Shaib‘ as a mark of respect or possibly as something to remind them of their place. Every morning, the Dakotas would come and drop supplies like food and ammunition. The food was dehydrated meat and potatoes in tins that we wild mix with water and cook. They were dropped with white linen parachutes, which we would snatch to use as covers from the sun. The Indian troops were given sacks of rice that were dropped freely without parachutes by Dakotas flying low. Unfortunately a sack of rice once fell onto a group of Indians, killing them. Our division was under the command of the Americans, who also had Chinese as well as American troops under their command. We only met American 72

Eyewitness: Kenneth Edmonds

engineers, who would make temporary airstrips for the Dakotas, and I had to occasionally communicate with the planes that were landing. But in typical American fashion, they sometimes used the wrong frequency! After a few months, the Japanese were in retreat and were taken out of American command and put into the 14th Army under the command of General Slim (a War Hero who had fought with the Anzacs at Gallipoli). It was too hilly for armoured vehicles in the jungles, but further south near Mandalay there were good roads for the tanks. We advanced through from Mogok with its ruby mines, which had been flooded by the Japanese. We were taken to the plains in the south. We came off the hills, and I could see in front of me on the plane these temples and pagodas and it was absolutely breath-taking. We went through Mandalay, which had just been recaptured and there was a crashed

Japanese fighter-plane on the road. Fort Dufferin was where the Japanese held out until they it was captured in the Battle of Mandalay in 1945. We went further south and ended up in Meiktila, a small town that had been razed to the ground in the fighting, with only slit trenches and barbed wire left. There was still some threat from the Japanese because on the radio we were told to continue digging trenches to protect the wirelesses. I had just finished sending a message when someone came up to me and said ‗Hey Eddie, we can have a cup of cocoa; the war is over in Europe! We‘re allowed to make a fire, but we have to keep it hidden from the Japanese.‖ He brought me my cocoa, and we made lights out of cigarette tins with bulbs poked through and connected to a battery. A praying mantis landed on the bulb and I was so distracted by its eyes that when I picked

Winter 2013│ The Shoardian

Eyewitness: Kenneth Edmonds

Singaporean didn‘t bow to a Japanese sentry during the Japanese occupation they would be given a belting with the butt of a rifle. Needless to say, we were welcomed by the people of Singapore, who were very friendly towards us.

LieutenantGeneral Slim was commander of the 14th Army , pictured here at Mandalay, March 1945

my cocoa up there was a big cockroach in it! So that was my cocoa gone west! The war wasn‘t over for us, but we tuned in to the BBC Overseas Service on one of the spare sets, which was strictly forbidden and they described the scenes in London of all the cheering crowds, while we were still in the jungle. Since the war was still on in the Far East, we were sent back to India on a Canadian Dakota that had canvas seats and was very posh. We went to a transit camp were we got nice food and butter, near Bombay. We used to go in to Bombay, where the military police were told to send us back to the camp in a truck if we got too drunk! We were there for a fortnight, before we were sent to Calcutta for two days and then Chittagong (in modern Bangladesh) in a deserted camp made up of big bamboo huts called ‗bashers‘. It turned out we were getting ready to invade Singapore, but the Americans dropped the atom bombs, and the war was over. We landed in Singapore in landing craft. The Japanese were rounded up into squads of 12 and made to clean Singapore up. We had to protect them from the inhabitants, who they had treated very badly; if a Winter 2013│ The Shoardian

The Cathay Building was the only large modern structure in Singapore, constructed in 1939

We were given the job of running the communications centre, which was really like a big post office. We were sent to Fort Canning, which had 2 big buildings on it. One of them is now a first-class hotel, which we used as a Signals Office were we collected all the dispatches. Underground Fort Canning there was a secret Battle Box that even I didn‘t know about. I was in Singapore for about 18 months, and all we did was play cricket and football on the grass above this secret bunker! There was trouble in Singapore, and the British had been arming the communists in a group called Force 36 that had been a resistance group fighting the Japanese. We only learnt about them from being in the Signals Office and passing on these top secret communications and it looked like they were planning to takeover Malaya after the war. In fact, I think they were involved in the Malaya Uprising in that guerrilla war. Force 36 had been demonstrating and making itself known

Eyewitness: Kenneth Edmonds

doctor, who didn‘t realise I had damaged a ligament and some nerves in my leg. I was moved to a hospital as my condition got worse. The ward I was on had bats flying around! I had an operation that couldn‘t repair the damage and so I came home in a hospital ship.

in the area to gather support. There was no law in Singapore, and everyone would carry guns, from hotel lift-operators to nightclub patrons. It was so bad that Lord Mountbatten issued a law stating that anyone with an unauthorised weapon would face the death penalty. I was allocated a defence point in the Signals Office and would be issued with a Bren gun if there was any trouble. I remember wondering to myself what to do if they rushed at me but fortunately it never got to that stage. While I was there, nobody had fully settled down to start plotting communist revolts. It was far worse in Malaya after the war, where the British would barricade villages to stop communist rebels getting food from the locals. Once the British caught certain leaders they would cut off their heads and bring them back to the villagers to prove that they had been killed and that the communists who had intimidated them were gone. It‘s not well known that that happened, but it‘s true, although the British will deny it. They brought in National Service after the war, so more troops came over to takeover. They had a point-based demob system that looked at your age, whether you were married and how long you had been away for. I was waiting to be demobbed in 1946 so I used to play football and cricket on the green in Fort Canning. During a football match I injured my knee and went to see an India 75

Fort Canning’s Battle Box was used as the Singapore Base District Headquarters by the British

When I left Singapore, there was one skyscraper, called the Cathay Building, which had a cinema at the bottom. I went back on holiday and of course it‘s full of them. I saw a museum on the war, and went in and had a look round. I didn‘t make myself known to anybody, just looked at the exhibits. Three years later I went back and gave some photographs to the curator. I had a chat with him; he wasn‘t born when the war was on, but I told him what I‘ve told you and he took me to Fort Canning showed me the battle box, which I never saw when I was there in the Royal Corps of Signals.

Want to know more? If Ken’s story has inspired you, look no further than your relatives. Many will have interesting stories about what life was like in the 20th Century, not just in the UK but also possibly in places further afield. Some may even want to share their stories with you! All you need to do is ask...

Winter 2013│ The Shoardian

The Historical Film Club

The Historical Film Club Film Review: The Last Samurai ( 2003) Directed by Edward Zwick Produced by Edward Zwick Screenplay by Edward Logan Starring: Tom Cruise & Ken Watanabe

A great piece of historical fiction or a lazy action movie?

Many of you by now have seen or heard of the movie ‗The Last

Samurai‘. It is set during the Meiji Restoration, when Japan‘s future was at a crossroads . One path lead to modernization and the other to a desolate (feudal) future. The samurai clans are rebelling against the Emperor, who has picked the path to modernization, so the Emperor asks for help from America to put down the samurai rebellion. The movie follows an American captain‘s journey. The character is very interesting due to his psychological and alcoholic problems. He is captured by the samurai clans after his first battle and kept as an outsider and prisoner for a good portion of the film. There are also action scenes such as a ninja attack on a samurai village. These scenes can be quite violent and in a stylised way. For me my favourite scene in the movie is the last battle with all its stages. There are parts that have been subjected to artistic license, but it really does demonstrate the difference in the way of warfare between the modern forces of the Emperor and the traditional methods of the samurai. This movie isn‘t however without its inaccuracies. The character Tom Cruise plays is meant to be French. Another fact is the Emperor mainly asked France and Prussia for help. The film also doesn‘t show the samurai clans that joined the side of the Emperor. Also, the rebel leader, Saigo Takamori, is never mentioned which really would of added to the film because he is a very important figure in this period of Japanese history. He also started an artillery school and armed his men with modern weapons and armour, unlike the rebels in the film, who fight like traditional samurai. Also, some of the tactics used in the final battle are completely inaccurate because of a lack of research. In its opening passage and throughout the film, the writers get many samurai beliefs and mythology wrong, but if you were a casual viewer you wouldn‘t notice any of this. The story from this film feels like one out of a historical fiction novel. As it turns out ‗The Last Samurai‘ is one of the best historical epic of recent years. It has interesting characters, edge of your seat battles and a great historically based story. I would recommend this film to any one with an interest in Asian history. My rating of this movie would be 4.5 out of 5 because of my issues with pacing.

Jamil Ibrahim Winter 2013│ The Shoardian

The Historical Film Club

How Historically Accurate is Gladiator?

s I‘m sure most of you will agree, the movie Gladiator is a Hollywood great with some historical truth however it does also contain several elements that are not historically accurate. For the sake of the story line, the director has changed details in historical figures and the characters‘ lives. However, he was correct about certain aspects of the imperial family, the gladiators, and politics. Someone with no prior knowledge about the history of Rome may take away some valid facts about Rome during that time, but they would also gain misconceptions.

Pollice Verso inspired Ridley Scott ‘s Gladiator

have been. According to Roman senator Dio Cassius, the day that power switched from

According to the director, Ridley Scott, this

Marcus Aurelius to Commodus was, ―One of

movie is based on a painting called the ‗Pollice

the worst days for Rome.‖ The Roman people

Verso’ that had sparked his interest. This

recognised

painting was created by a French artist, Jean-

Aurelius was and they expected nothing less

Leon

from his son Commodus. "Marcus Aurelius,

Gerome.

named

Pollice

what

ruler

turned

Roman

performance of harsh duty, had no inkling

gladiatorial combat. It is a picture of two

that he was turning the empire over to

gladiators in the Coliseum. One is lying on the

someone whose reign would be devoted to

ground; the other is standing above ready to kill

selfish satisfaction and vicious tastes."

refers

devoted

Marcus

whose

which

was

great

Verso because in Latin that means, "With a thumb,"

reign

selfless

while the crowd are holding their thumbs up, cheering him on. He liked the artwork so much

Gladiator underplays how frightening and

that he wanted to create a story to go along

perilous Commodus apparently was. He tried

with it. Scott and his team did research to try

doing

and depict Roman ideals accurately in the film

rename a part of Rome after himself and he

by showing how Rome was successful and

did vindictive things such as bringing the

peaceful but built on blood and butchery. Every

games back to Rome after his father had

good story needs a hero and that is why the

officially forbid them. In the movie, the only

main character, Maximus, was created.

time Commodus is shown fighting in the ring

selfish

things like attempting

is at the end when Maximus defeats him. In Maximus is a fictional character used to drive

reality, Commodus loved fighting and killing

the film‘s plot. There was an emperor named

anything such as slaves, convicts or animals.

Maximus but he ruled 200 years after Marcus

All of his opponents were already injured or

Aurelius and Commodus. Obviously, this means

unarmed so he easily won every time.

that the feud between Maximus and Commodus

Commodus was an unsuitable contender for

was completely fabricated. On the other hand,

emperor because of all the trouble he caused

Commodus did exist; although he was not

Rome. The movie was correct when it

portrayed as brutally in the movie as he could

explained that he did not like or respect the senate. Because of this, most of the members

Winter 2013│ The Shoardian

The Historical Film Club was then up to the magistrate running the Maximus did not exist… and Romans would have called it ‘the Flavian Amphitheatre’ at the time, not ‘the Coliseum’

show, and he generally followed the crowd's wishes. As depicted in the film, the gladiator who was winning always looked to the crowd for a thumbs up or thumbs down to determine the fate of his opponent. One time, Maximus went

against

what

Commodus

wanted,

which made Commodus dislike him more but of the senate turned against him and helped

Maximus's

conspiracies

result,

people went up. The movie failed to show

Commodus was assassinated but obviously not

what would happen if the fight ended fatally.

by Maximus.

If the verdict was death, the body was

against

him.

popularity

with

the

Roman

removed by attendants through a gate for To go along with the story line, Maximus was

the dead. The winner was often given a

the ultimate gladiator and his character

reward for being victorious in the form of

portrayed the life of a gladiator very well. Scott

silver dishes and gold pieces. Gladiator does

said "Any pretence that the life of ancient man

not show what happens to the dead bodies

was not as hard, indeed brutal, as we are often

nor does it display the winner receiving any

led to believe by the many cinematographic

prizes. The rudis, a wooden sword, was given

portrayals of that period of history would be a

to the gladiators who performed well as a

delusion; life for the vast majority of people

sign that they were free and did not need to

was a continual struggle for survival, against

fight anymore. In the movie, the man who

not only natural calamity, but also the greed

purchased

and savagery of their fellows." Gladiatorial

gladiator and he was given a wooden sword

combats originated from the Etruscans. They

by Marcus Aurelius, so the film was accurate

used it as one of their religious practices. In the

here.

Maximus

was

previously

third century B.C. the Romans adopted these duels into their own culture as part of the ceremony for great leaders who died. By the first century B.C. these had developed into not only a form of entertainment pure and simple, but one so popular that it proved a profitable form of investment. The leader of the gladiatorial schools obtained his gladiators in various ways. Some of them were criminals and others were slaves who were purchased on the market or sold by masters who did not want them anymore. Maximus was in fact a slave who was bought in Morocco. The gladiators then went through some basic training skills to prepare for battle like Maximus did in the movie. The fighters would then fight against other gladiators of all different shapes and sizes to avoid boredom of the crowd. They might end in a draw, or a man who is clearly losing could appeal for mercy; it Winter 2013│ The Shoardian

The movie shows gladiators being slaughtered like extras. This however is extremely unrealistic. Like movie stars, gladiators were high-maintenance, extremely expensive and highly trained. It cost a good deal to keep them fed and exercised and comfortable. As for the crowds, they may have been bloodthirsty but they were also knowledgeable. They came to see two skilled professionals square off. Their combat was indeed, ‗Potentially mortal,‘ but that potential was realized far more seldom than Hollywood would have liked to admit. It was actually quite rare for gladiators to die, especially in big numbers. Ridley Scott did however do a wonderful job imitating what the fighting and games were like in the Coliseum. The Coliseum, also known as the Flavian Amphitheatre, took only five years to construct. This massive 56

The Historical Film Club structure was 165 feet high, 617 feet long and

have had no interest being in the meetings

could hold between 50,000 and 70,000 spectators.

with

The director admits that the Coliseum in the

in Gladiator correct when they're having a

movie is not the original. In fact, most of it was

discussion and Commodus is not really

computer generated. This great amphitheatre was

paying attention nor is he motivated to sign

built to house the games where wild beasts and

any scrolls. The citizens of Rome along with

gladiators would fight. The gladiator's manager, or

the Senate, made up of mostly aristocrats,

lanista, would equip them at his own expense.

were becoming fed up with Commodus's

Fighters were often given weapons, breastplates

attitude and actions but they could not do

and helmets to wear as they entered the Coliseum.

anything about it because of the way Rome's

It was often unknown where the beasts or

politics were set up.

them.

This

makes

the

scene

gladiators would enter because of all the tunnels, cells and service corridors that were built. Some

The Roman Army was a sophisticated and

would arrive through the side tunnels and other

multi-ethnic force and Scott portrayed this in

wild beasts and groups of gladiators could be made

the film quite well. One of the major weapons

to appear suddenly in the middle of the arena with

that they used in the movie was the catapult.

the use of ramps and elevators operated by

In Rome during this time they had two

winches and counterweights. Again this happens

different kinds of catapults. There was the

in the film which shows that Scott did his

ballista "which was in the form of an

research. The numerous amounts of entrances

oversized crossbow, worked by two vertical

gave an element of surprise to the audience.

twisted

skeins

cord

and

varying

considerably in size." Ballistae could also be Seating at the Coliseum was divided into four

put onto carts so to allow them to move

major sections. Each area displayed the social

around easier. They could launch wooden

status of its possessor. The section that you sat in

darts and round stone projectiles of all

along with the way that you dressed, indicated

different sizes. An â&#x20AC;&#x2014;onagerâ&#x20AC;&#x2DC; is the other type

what your social standing would be. The people

of catapult that the armies had which was

who attended the games thought of it as a social

primarily used to throw heavy objects over

event.

long distances. Both of these weapons were

They

would

get

wear

elegant

clothing, jewellery and their hair would be nicely

shown and used correctly in Gladiator.

done. Gladiator correctly shows how important these events were to the Roman citizens.

Overall, the director, Ridley Scott, was able to effectively capture various aspects of

We are shown some details about the politics of

Roman culture from the 2nd century AD but

Rome through Maximus's journey from general to

there were some vital parts that were

slave to gladiator to hero. A majority of the movie

missing. This movie is capable of teaching

takes place in Rome. During this time the

viewers a little bit about the imperial family,

emperors continued to

expand their territory,

the life of a gladiator, the politics in Rome

moving towards the north Danube. This makes the

during that time and other parts of Roman

setting in the beginning scene of the movie

history. However, the entire movie should

accurate. To Maximus's disadvantage he became a

not be seen as historically correct. Clearly

gladiator under Commodus; every time he entered

Maximus should not be thought of an actual,

the arena, he was performing for Commodus's

ancient hero and Commodus should have

entertainment.

been

course

Maximus

was

depicted

lot

cruel

and

disrespecting him every chance he had. Commodus

brutal. Gladiator is one of Hollywood's more

lived the "good life" as an upper class Roman who

accurate movies but there is still plenty of

attended meetings with the Senate about the

room for improvement.

state's problems. The Senate and he did not get along, so it makes sense that Commodus would 79

David Bullen Winter 2013â&#x201D;&#x201A; The Shoardian

Obituary

Nelson Mandela 18th June 1918 - 5th December 2013

Nelson Rolihahla Mandela was born on the 18th July 1918 in Mvezo, a village in the then Union of South Africa. He was of the Xhosa people and the son of a Thembu nobleman from the Madiba clan of kings. He attended Fort Hare University and the U n i v e r s i t y o f Witwaterhand, studying law. In 1940, he joined the African National Congress (ANC) and formed the ANC Youth League (ANCYL) as Mandela began to campaign against discrimination and racism, having been exposed at university to liberal and communist thought. The ANCYL rejected participation in the regressive Native Representative Council and called for a more militant stance in fighting discrimination. On the 15th July, Nelson married his first wife Evelyn Mase, a nurse, and he started a family. Nelson became the Secretary General of the ANCYL and was elected to the Transvaal Provincial Executive of the ANC and he devoted more of his time to politics, leaving Evelyn to be the breadwinner of the family. When apartheid began came into effect in 1948, Mandela became more involved with the ANC and by 1952 he was working as a lawyer, being repeatedly arrested for seditious activities. In 1961, he helped form the militant wing of the ANC, Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) or ‗Spear of the Nation‘ with the South African Communist Party, leading a sabotage campaign against the apartheid government. In 1957 he divorced Evelyn and a year later married Winnie Madikizela.

nations regarded him as a terrorist because of his willingness to use violence to achieve his aims, and the role of the MK in multiple bombings, the most notorious of which was the 1983 Church Street Bomb and the placing of landmines on rural roads in Northern Transvaal from 1985-1987, grassroots activists campaigned for his released across the globe, culminating in a twelve hour 70th birthday music concert in 1988 at Wembley Stadium involving 83 artists, (on the 11th June), which arguably changed his public image into that of a freedom-fighter in the eyes of the majority of the public. After previously refusing to renounce violent means in return for his freedom as suggested by President P.W. Botha, Mandela struck a compromise with his successor F.W. de Klerk in February 1990. De clerk's maiden speech as President saw him call for a dramatic liberalisation of South Africa, not only were Mandela and other political prisoners to be freed, but the South African Communist Party and ANC as well as hundreds of political parties were to become legal and enfranchisement of the black majority. In 1992, de Klerk a white-only referendum which saw a 68.7% ‗Yes‘ vote for continuing the negotiations to end apartheid. Although de Klerk and Mandela initially resented each other, they both realised that the only way to ensure a peaceful transition to a democratic South Africa was through compromise, and in 1993 they were both rewarded the Nobel Peace Prize for their work. After the ANC won the 1994 general election, Mandela was nominated for the Presidency and took office aged 75 on the 10th May 1994, with F.W. de Klerk as one of his Deputy Presidents. On the 14th June 1999, he stood down and retired from politics, becoming a philanthropist until 2004, when he became too ill to continue and ―retired from his retirement‖, disappearing completely from public life.

In 1962, he and nine other ANC leaders were arrested and sentenced at the Rivonia trial. After world-wide protests, Mandela was given life imprisonment instead of the death penalty on charges amounting to treason for plotting the armed overthrow of the South African government. During his imprisonment of 27 years at three separate prisons, he became a the focus of an international campaign. While most Western

He died on the 5th December 2013 from a lung infection, aged 95. Many across South Africa and the world will mourn the passing of Madiba. Harrison Edmonds 80