INTRODUCTION
Digital surveillance in China
In many parts of the worlds, citizens are subjected to surveillance when they conduct internet searches, write emails, post on social media, make electronic payments, or go by facial recognition cameras (i.e. cameras that can identify a person by matching a picture or video of them against faces stored in a database). Public administrations operate background checks, collect data on citizens, and sort them into categories.1 Commercial companies rate their customers’ trustworthiness, openly or not.2 Mobile payment phone applications such as GooglePay, Apple Pay, and M-Pesa make transactions highly traceable. Surveillance studies have thus far mostly examined North American and European contexts. However, surveillance and citizens’ attitudes towards it are embedded in different historical, socio-economic, and political contexts. Therefore, researching other contexts such as the Chinese one, where surveillance has deep historical roots and draws on the most recent technological advances,3 is both important and timely.
Several factors make China a fascinating setting in which to study surveillance. The state and other governmental bodies systematically collect data on citizens in partnerships with commercial companies such as Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent, and Xiaomi (known as ‘BATX’, with the same preponderance in China as Google, Apple, Meta, and Amazon in other countries).4 Several factors explain the broad scope of data collection. First, the use of cash is fast disappearing. Nearly everything requires payment trough Alipay (Alibaba) or WeChat Pay (Tencent): people use these applications to pay for a bus ride, rent a bike, hail a taxi, split the cost of a restaurant meal, shop online, book train or show tickets, settle their taxes and utility bills, and
much more.5 Second, social media platforms are the fabric of everyday life for personal, social, and work purposes – people look up the news on Weibo and entertain themselves on TikTok; they exchange countless text, audio, and video messages on WeChat daily; and WeChat is considered in many workplaces as easier and faster to use than email – the penetration of email in business communications is 30 per cent while that of WeChat is 90 per cent.6 Third, China has the highest ratio of closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras to citizens in the world – one for every 12 people7; it is also a leader in facial recognition cameras, with companies such as Hikvision, Megvii, or Sensetime exporting their technology.8 Fourth, advances in artificial intelligence, machine learning, and information systems architecture enable more efficient centralisation and analysis of these massive datasets, paving the way for scoring algorithms. Building on this technology and modelling American credit rating companies that derive people’s trustworthiness from normative behavioural standards,9 the 2014–2020 Chinese government plan sets the implementation of a social credit system as a central objective.10 The plan proposed to establish blacklists of organisations and individual citizens who violate the law and to attribute ‘social credit’ scores to citizens, based on their financial, social, and personal behaviours.11 The building of the social credit system has progressed steadily since 2014.12 While there is to date no unique social credit system or score per citizen, the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the digital tracking and scoring of citizens.13 In sum, the scale of the data being collected from 940 million internet users,14 the fast pace of technological development, and China’s innovations in integrated social media applications, electronic commerce and payments, facial recognition, and artificial intelligence,15 truly warrant an examination of digital surveillance in this country.
Importantly, all this occurs in a context of rapid economic and social change channelled by tight political control. In ways that contrast with Western liberal democracies, the goal of the Chinese government to control citizen’s behaviour is explicit, as the Chinese studies professor Rogier Creemers explains:
The Chinese government does not see the need to control the conduct of its citizens through surreptitious or invisible means. Social control techniques prevalent in Western liberal democracies, such as gamification [the use of game-like incentives, such as points or badges, in non-game context] or nudging, are supposed to be largely unnoticeable: individuals are steered through the exploitation of inherent biases and unconscious decisionmaking strategies. The SCS [social credit system] on the other hand does not hide its paternalism under a bushel: it is part of an openly declared and widely propagated effort to instill civic virtue, and conjoined with propaganda campaigns to raise individuals’ consciousness about their actions.16
This book is based on qualitative in-depth interviews and observations conducted in China, as well as extensive documentation of the academic and the grey literature. In a country where a large proportion of the population supports some degree of surveillance,17 the book examines how the Chinese citizens participating in this research perceive digital surveillance and how they live with it. Specifically, it analyses their ‘surveillance imaginaries’, a term coined by surveillance studies pioneer David Lyon, that is their mental images of surveillance and how they respond to it.18 Moreover, it examines the emotional repercussions of such a proximity to ubiquitous and ‘in-use’ data streams in the background of their everyday life, whether they notice it acutely or not.19
This book explores key research questions at the intersection of surveillance, privacy, internet, and Chinese studies: how do Chinese citizens view digital surveillance and its daily implications, as they scan their faces to enter buildings and public areas, search on the web, make bookings, pay, or check social media? How do their national and local historical, socio-economic, and political contexts shape their surveillance imaginaries and affect towards surveillance? What do they know and notice about the social credit systems and other components of the Chinese ‘surveillance assemblage’20? To what extent do they anticipate digital surveillance and change their behaviours because of it?
While this book focuses on China, its implications are much broader. Pondering how the Chinese citizens participating in this research view digital surveillance and live with it can help to reflect on citizens’ attitudes, behaviours, and narratives regarding digital surveillance in other socio-economic, cultural, and political contexts such as the Western liberal democracies and countries of the Global South. In addition, the social credit system may well export itself outside of China: as part of the Belt and Road initiative, China’s government has proposed to establish a transnational credit system securing international trade and economic relations across 65 other countries in Asia, Africa, and Europe.21
Analytical lens and methods
A polycontextual research
My background is in sociology, social media and internet studies, and crossnational research. I chose polycontextualisation as the analytical lens underpinning this book. The central tenet of polycontextualisation is that reaching a ‘holistic and valid understanding of any phenomenon’ in a country requires accounting for multiple layers of the country’s national context.22
First, polycontextualisation can be understood as the extension of a longstanding epistemic tradition in cross-cultural and monocultural research that
of societal analysis.23 Societal analysis examines its objects in light of the unique societal effect resulting from interrelations between different systems in a country.24 The layers comprising a country’s national context may be physical (e.g. geography, climate), historical (e.g. sovereignty, traumas), cultural (e.g. beliefs and values), social (e.g. education system, family structure, religion), political (e.g. political system, legal system), and economic (e.g. economic system, industrial relations systems, technology).25 A direct implication of the polycontextual approach is the reliance on a multidisciplinary examination of a country’s national context, drawing on sociology, psychology, anthropology, history, political science, economics, industrial relations, and additional disciplines depending on the phenomenon being investigated. This book will therefore relate the analysis of interview narratives to China’s history, economic development, and socio-political environment.
Second, polycontextualisation implies supplementing conventional research methods, such as surveys or interviews, with non-linear thinking that pays attention to non-verbal cues such as verbal cues or changes in voice intonations, to what happens in the background of the research setting, and to emotions. Polycontextual research calls for ‘thinking emotionally’, meaning ‘to attempt to cognitively understand a phenomenon by focusing on reactions that are, again not narrative in nature, but emotional’.26 This book will therefore analyse not only participants’ discourse but also their non-verbal reactions and emotions, leveraging the contextual knowledge that I have accumulated during my travels in China.
A polycontextual lens does not mean that this book can only shed light on the Chinese context. On the contrary, shedding light on the embeddedness of research participants’ narratives on digital surveillance in different layers of context is a call to conduct similar reflexive and polycontextual thinking on citizens’ attitudes towards digital surveillance in other country contexts.
Conducting fieldwork in China as a foreigner
The project started with a 2-year preparation phase in which I started to learn Mandarin, read on Chinese history, and approached Chinese colleagues. I was born and raised in France and have lived in Canada since 2012. The Chinese colleagues viewed my foreigner identity in contrasted ways. One of them warned me that the interviews questions, asked by a foreigner, could be seen as political and that participants might see me as a potential ‘spy’. She thought that I should frame my research as a cross-cultural comparison and reach out for formal collaborations with Chinese scholars. She also thought that participants would be on their guard, explaining: ‘people may think you are prejudiced, and you have come here to judge’. Another colleague gave me a similar piece of advice:
People won’t discuss these matters, or they won’t give genuine answers, or they will report you. You need to ask what people are proud of, what’s
interesting in WeChat, in good ways, what the Chinese system has improved compared to Canada.
By contrast, another Chinese colleague argued that people may trust a foreign interviewer more than a Chinese one. He believed that people in China were generally eager to talk with foreigners and were mostly careful because the government is nervous about foreigners. He suggested that people would likely say more to me than to a Chinese interviewer because I was unlikely to be an ‘agent provocateur’; that is, a person who tries to make people agree with dissent and then reports them:
They may think a Chinese interviewer is even more a spy than a Westerner! They may be more open to foreigners, because that is exciting. You may be the first and the last foreigner to listen to them!
I was eventually invited by three university professors to give research talks and collect data during my sabbatical leave. My institution’s review board granted ethical approval to conduct research with human subjects after requesting that I delete the participants’ names and contact details once the interviews had been conducted, as well as the emails, WeChat messages, and other traces.
I conducted 58 research interviews in 2019 in Chengdu, Shanghai, and Beijing, and kept a diary of daily observations during the time I spent at these universities as well as on the individual trip I took in the Western provinces of Shaanxi, Gansu, Qinhai, Xinjiang, and Sichuan. My hosts’ graduate students served as interpreters and reassurance for the participants that the interview was being conducted for an academic purpose. The methodological Appendix details the recruitment of the participants, the breakdown of the sample, the data collection and analysis methods, and the strengths and limitations of this research.
Epistemic positioning
As the international relations professor Zhen Wang explains in his book, Never Forget National Humiliation. Historical Memory in Chinese Politics and Foreign Relations, the disciplines of international relations and political science have developed within the framework of Euro-American intellectual traditions. This leaves everyone guessing about China’s future because of a ‘lack of understanding about the inner world of Chinese people’,27 particularly their motivations and intentions. Wang calls for the study of Chinese indigenous attitudes, resources, and motivations to help bridge the gap in understanding between the West and China. This is the path I am trying to follow: this book attempts to ‘de-Westernise’ the internet and surveillance literature by analysing research participants’ mindsets from within the Chinese
socio-political system. It focuses on participants’ surveillance imaginaries while putting my own views on surveillance at a distance. In turn, the polycontextualisation of China invites readers to a critical examination of the contexts that shape Western and other surveillance imaginaries.
Giving a non-judgemental account is a laudable objective, yet several traps lurk on this road, such as eurocentrism, cultural relativism, and ‘going native’. First, Western media and scholarly literature on surveillance in China have been criticised as painting a dark picture of China while idealising Western liberal democracies in an imperialist manner.28 Roughly put, Western media tend to present the Chinese internet as unfree and the Western internet as free, without critically examining surveillance in their own societies. In addition, Chinese scholars are increasingly challenging Western ‘techno-orientalist’ narratives that offer a negative portrait of China through scary stories and sometimes fictitious accounts of what happens there, particularly regarding the social credit system.29 They have argued that in some cases, these accounts reflect the authors’ latent racism, or their instrumentalisation of China to produce a convenient ‘other’ in domestic debates.30 Therefore, any book on surveillance in China by a Western writer risks being received as ideological by Chinese readers. To distance myself from my own French and Canadian culture and from polarised views of China versus ‘the West’, I adopted the posture of the qualitative inductive researcher and delayed reading sinologists’ research on contemporary China until after I had conducted fieldwork. In line with the polycontextual lens, I coded the interview transcripts based on what the participants had said rather than pre-established categories stemming from academic readings31 and refrained from personal evaluations. Second, cultural relativism is an insidious trap, as the Chinese government is precisely using the claim that democratic values, as currently defined by the West, are not universal, to reject evaluations of its actions under the prism of human rights. As sinologist Jean-François Billeter clearly exposed in his latest essay,32 the Xi Jinping era stepped up the discourse on the singularity and self-contained nature of the Chinese civilisation, which the government purports to defend against Western values framed as corrosive and hypocritical. This ‘great narrative’33 is inherently paradoxical: at the same time that it claims particularism, the Communist Party of China (CPC) actively promotes the universal and central contributions of the Chinese civilisation to the world and a new international order in which democracy and human rights are redefined in line with its interests.34 Importantly, while I analyse Chinese citizens’ narratives in their particular historical and socio-political context, I do not condone systematic surveillance in China or other countries and do not intend to minimise the severe impacts of digital surveillance for citizens in China, especially those who continue to uphold democratic values. The book, therefore, embeds critical scholarship from Western as well as Chinese scholars.
Third, it was also necessary to keep a critical distance to China and not ‘go native’, that is, embrace the perspectives of the participants without retaining an analytical mind. As I spent time in China and developed relationships with colleagues, I became aware of feelings of loyalty towards them that could well have created other biases and led me to censor my writing to avoid creating trouble for them, disappointing them, and having my work met with the classic riposte: ‘you don’t understand China’. To recreate some distance after I came back, I immersed myself in sinologists’ work35 and fiction by Chinese novelists in exile, kept abreast of Chinese intellectuals’ thinking, thanks to David Ownby’s ‘Reading the China Dream’ translations and analyses,36 listened to Cindy Yu’s ‘Chinese whispers’ podcasts,37 followed Jeff Ding’s ChinAI newsletter,38 and attended conference workshops on contemporary China.
Core arguments
While the interview questions were focused on the digital artefacts and underlying infrastructures of surveillance such as social media, cameras, electronic payments, and the social credit system, the participants kept diverging from these practical matters to bring up morality, social judgement, rules, and punishment. Their perception that China needed to make progress to revive its ancient place in the world as a central civilisation was also very vividly expressed. Moreover, participants’ words when they discussed the government and technology were strikingly affective and symbolic.
Successive rounds of data analysis and extensive further readings in the field of Chinese studies led me to identify several core narratives of their surveillance imaginaries; note that the value of narratives does not lie in representing an ‘objective’ reality but instead in capturing how people portray and account for the social world as they experience it. Three related narratives of moral shortcomings produced shame and anguish among the participants: (a) the lack of ‘moral quality’ in China which makes rules and punishment necessary, (b) the century of humiliations by foreign powers and the imperative to revive the ancient Chinese civilisation, and (c) a pejorative view of privacy as a suspicious desire to hide shameful behaviours. With the help of visual representations of the patterns in different interviews, I came to discern that participants’ positive narratives on the government as protector and on technology as a magic bullet to all of China’s problems were responding to the anguishing narratives of moral shortcomings: they were redeeming narratives. Thus, a cohesive system of narratives was formed that set the stage for digital surveillance to be cast as a viable tool to enforce rules and propel China on a trajectory of ‘moral quality’, safety, strength, and international recognition – the ‘Chinese Dream’.
Despite these rendering of these narratives, however, almost all participants engaged in mental tactics to deny or minimise their personal exposure to digital surveillance and its associated risks: they attempted to convince themselves they were not the direct targets of surveillance or to discard consequences of their exposure. Moreover, about half of the participants expressed misgivings and unpleasant emotions about surveillance, especially the idea of being singled out as a target of surveillance. A certain degree of self-censorship and orthodoxy was also manifest in the interviews. These analyses led me to formulate the core arguments of this book:
(1) A cohesive system of anguishing versus redeeming narratives (moral shortcomings in China versus government and technology offering digital protection) creates a setting where digital surveillance is cast by most participants as an indispensable solution in China.
(2) However, surveillance weighs on citizens: most participants elaborated mental tactics to dissociate themselves from surveillance and about half of them expressed misgivings and objections to surveillance.
(3) There is great tension between the discursive framing of surveillance as indispensable in China and the mental and emotional weight that participants bear as they cope with surveillance.
In other words, the participants’ imaginaries of digital surveillance are characterised by an underlying paradox: ‘surveillance is good for China; however, I don’t like it and I am trying to forget about it’. This paradox intersects but also extends and nuances the tension identified among Western citizens who support surveillance directed at others but not surveillance directed at them.39 As illustrated in Figure I.1, this tension created palpable psychological discomfort for many participants. It also implies an unstable equilibrium which could rapidly shift towards increased rejection of surveillance, as the December 2022 protests against the COVID-19 lockdowns have shown.
Structure of the book
Part I offers two introductory chapters that define privacy and surveillance, summarise existing research, and discuss the Chinese context. Chapter 1 introduces readers to conceptions of privacy in China and the West, surveillance at the interpersonal, commercial, and state levels, and how citizens in China and the West perceive privacy and surveillance. Chapter 2 traces the long history of surveillance in China and explains the state’s philosophy of ‘social governance’ and how surveillance operates through bottom-up grid management and top-down database centralisation. It then analyses how different ‘social credit’ systems in construction score citizens based on their
financial, social, and personal behaviours to reward and punish them, up to the evolutions of digital surveillance in the COVID-19 pandemic.
Part II analyses the three related narratives of moral shortcomings that produce shame and anguish among the participants. Chapter 3 explores the ‘moral quality’ narrative as a source of support for digital surveillance. Many participants emphasised the importance of rules and punishment and lamented the lack of ‘moral quality’ of their fellow citizens. Framing surveillance as rule enforcement, they implied that people should be treated as children and punishment was needed for their education and moral progress. Their main concern was not that they were being monitored or the existence of blacklists; it was the opacity and fluctuating application of rules and punishment, which undermined their control over how to stay out of trouble. Chapter 4 analyses the multifaceted narratives regarding China and the West. On the one hand, participants evoked the century of humiliations and continued fears of being attacked. On the other hand, they expressed pride in China’s achievements and hopes in a promised trajectory to restore the country. They longed for the recognition of China as a modern civilised country and viewed economic development and public safety as constituting moral progress. Chapter 5 delves into the moral roots of perceptions of privacy. The participants primarily understood privacy as the concealment of shameful information to save face and maintain respectability (yīnsī) as opposed to personal thoughts or information you do not wish to disclose in public (yǐnsī). This morally tainted view of privacy made wanting privacy suspicious. Moreover, most participants did not identify corporations or the government as threatening their privacy; instead, they were concerned about social groups whose judgement they avoided (e.g. parents and supervisors).
Part III focuses on the redeeming narratives that are meant to assuage the moral shortcomings narratives: the protective parental figure of the
FIGURE I.1 Living with digital surveillance in China: intra-individual tensions
government and the cutting-edge Chinese technology. Chapter 6 unpacks the different rationales underlying the participants’ support for the government. The first states that China is unique because of its history, culture, and size and that the one-party system is therefore the only way to counter chaos in China and avoid reliving the shame of past humiliations. The second is a view of the government as a trusted protector, almost a parent, which is needed when ‘moral quality’ is lacking. The third is that the government is democratic in the Chinese sense, that is, it originates in the people and the people have a voice. Chapter 7 discusses how participants expected technology to improve people’s ‘moral quality’ by forcing them to follow the rules and to cure China by uprooting secrecy and hidden behaviours. It illustrates the strong affective words, such as ‘love’, with which the participants talked about technology and claimed ‘technology will solve all of China’s problems’. It shows how this discourse on technology as propelling China on its quest to revive its previous glory responds to the three underlying narratives of moral shortcomings.
Viewing digital surveillance as indispensable does not mean that participants lived well with it. Part IV turns to how participants coped with their exposure to surveillance. Chapter 8 classifies the mental tactics that almost nine out of ten participants used to dissociate themselves from the risks attached to surveillance. It identifies four main self-protective rationales: (1) brushing surveillance aside with the rationale ‘there is no risk associated with surveillance’, (2) othering surveillance targets with the rationale ‘I am a small potato/a good person’, (3) wearing blinders based on the rationale that ‘so far it has not harmed me’, and (4) resorting to fatalism with the rationale ‘it does not matter because I can only accept it’. In addition to engaging in these tactics, almost half of the participants expressed misgivings and objections to surveillance. Chapter 9 analyses their apprehension, their behaviours to limit exposure, and the principled objections voiced by a small fraction of participants. It discusses how participants mostly accepted generalised surveillance applying to everyone but strongly rejected being singled out by that surveillance. Lastly, it points out a disconnect between their discourse on the value of surveillance, which reflected the cohesive system of narratives discussed in parts II and III of the book, and their emotional rejection of it (e.g. dislike, resentment, worries, frustration, fear, anger); the misgivings arose when participants pondered how they felt about surveillance more than when they thought of surveillance. Chapter 10 discusses self-censorship, orthodoxy, and the ethical challenges of interviewing in a country where many topics are considered political, such that the researcher and the participant sometimes ‘dance’ around political speak and propaganda.
The conclusion highlights the contributions of this book to the understanding of digital surveillance in contemporary China. First, this book identifies the tension between participants’ narratives on surveillance as indispensable and the mental and emotional weight that living with surveillance bears on
them. Second, this book qualifies these narratives underlying digital surveillance in China as systemic, polycontextual, and deeply moral. These takeaways have important implications for Chinese studies as well as surveillance studies in other country contexts.
Notes
1 Arne Hintz, Lina Dencik, and Karin Wahl-Jorgensen, Digital Citizenship in a Datafied Society (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2018); Shoshana Zuboff, “Big Other: Surveillance Capitalism and the Prospects of an Information Civilization,” Journal of Information Technology 30, no. 1 (2015); Kirstie Ball, “Exposure: Exploring the Subject of Surveillance,” Information, Communication & Society 12, no. 5 (2009); Mikkel Flyverbom, Ronald Deibert, and Dirk Matten, “The Governance of Digital Technology, Big Data, and the Internet: New Roles and Responsibilities for Business,” Business & Society 58, no. 1 (2019).
2 Frank Pasquale, The Black Box Society (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015).
3 Min Jiang, “A Brief Prehistory of China’s Social Credit System,” Communication and the Public 5, no. 3–4 (2020).
4 Rogier Creemers, “China’s Social Credit System: An Evolving Practice of Control,” Anthropology & Archaeology Research Network Research (2018): 1–32; Genia Kostka and Lukas Antoine, “Fostering Model Citizenship,” Policy & Internet 12, no. 3 (2019); Fan Liang, Vishnupriya Das, Nadiya Kostyuk, and Muzammil M. Hussain, “Constructing a Data-Driven Society: China’s Social Credit System as a State Surveillance Infrastructure,” Policy & Internet 10, no. 4 (2018).
5 Yu-Jie Chen, Zhifei Mao, and Jack Linchuan Qiu, Super-Sticky WeChat and Chinese Society (Bingley: Emerald, 2018).
6 Ibid.
7 Iman Ghosh, “Mapping the State of Facial Recognition Around the World,” May 22, 2020, www.visualcapitalist.com/facial-recognition-world-map/
8 Jeff Ding, “ChinAI #143: 2021 AI Company Ranking,” https://chinai.substack. com/p/chinai-143-2021-ai-company-rankings.
9 Saif Shahin and Pei Zheng, “Big Data and the Illusion of Choice: Comparing the Evolution of India’s Aadhaar and China’s Social Credit System as Technosocial Discourses,” Social Science Computer Review 38, no. 1 (2020).
10 Creemers, “China’s Social Credit System.”
11 This document is translated on Rogier Creemers’ website, https://chinacopyrightandmedia.wordpress.com/2016/05/30/state-council-guiding-opinions-concern ing-establishing-and-perfecting-incentives-for-promise-keeping-and-joint-pun ishment-systems-for-trust-breaking-and-accelerating-the-construction-of-socialsincer/
12 Marcella Siqueira Cassiano, “China’s Hukou Platform: Windows into the Family,” Surveillance & Society 17, no. 1–2 (2019); Liang et al., “Constructing a Data-Driven Society.”
13 Chuncheng Liu and Ross Graham, “Making Sense of Algorithms: Relational Perception of Contact Tracing and Risk Assessment During Covid-19,” Big Data & Society 8, no. 1 (2021).
14 China Internet Network Information Center, “The 46th Statistical Report on Internet Development in China,” 2021, https://www.cnnic.com.cn.
15 Yongxi Chen and Anne S. Y. Cheung, “The Transparent Self Under Big Data Profiling: Privacy and Chinese Legislation on the Social Credit System,” Journal of Comparative Law 12, no. 2 (2017).
16 Creemers, “China’s Social Credit System,” 27.
17 Genia Kostka, “China’s Social Credit Systems and Public Opinion: Explaining High Levels of Approval,” New Media & Society 21, no. 7 (2019); Chuncheng Liu, “Who Supports Expanding Surveillance? Exploring Public Opinion of Chinese Social Credit Systems,” International Sociology 37, no. 3 (2022); Mo Chen and Jens Grossklags, “Social Control in the Digital Transformation of Society: A Case Study of the Chinese Social Credit System,” Social Sciences no. 11 (2022); Marc Oliver Rieger, Mei Wang, and Mareike Ohlberg, “What Do Young Chinese Think about Social Credit? It’s Complicated,” MERICS Report, 2020, https:// merics.org/en/report/what-do-young-chinese-think-about-social-credit-its-com plicated; Zheng Su, Xu Xu, and Xun Cao, “What Explains Popular Support for Government Monitoring in China?” Journal of Information Technology & Politics 19, no. 4 (2022).
18 David Lyon, The Culture of Surveillance: Watching as a Way of Life (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2018), 42.
19 Kirstie Ball, MariaLaura Di Domenico, and Daniel Nunan, “Big Data Surveillance and the Body-Subject,” Body & Society 22, no. 2 (2016).
20 Kevin D. Haggerty and Richard V. Ericson, “The Surveillant Assemblage,” The British Journal of Sociology 51, no. 4 (2000).
21 Liang et al., “Constructing a Data-Driven Society.”
22 Anne S. Tsui, Sushil S. Nifadkar, and Amy Y. Ou, “Cross-National, Cross-Cultural Organizational Behavior Research: Advances, Gaps, and Recommendations,” Journal of Management 33 (2007); Debra L. Shapiro, Mary Ann Von Glinow, and Zhixing Xiao, “Toward Polycontextually Sensitive Research Methods,” Management & Organization Review 3, no. 1 (2007); Ariane Ollier-Malaterre and Annie Foucreault, “Cross-National Work-Life Research: Cultural and Structural Impacts for Individuals and Organizations,” Journal of Management 43, no. 1 (2017).
23 Marc Maurice, “Convergence and/or Societal Effect for the Europe of the Future?” in Work and Employment in Europe: A New Convergence?, ed. Peter Cressey and Bryn Jones (London and New York: Routledge 1995), 137–58; Marc Maurice and François Sellier, “Societal Analysis of Industrial Relations: A Comparison Between France and West Germany,” British Journal of Industrial Relations 17, no. 3 (1979); Marc Maurice, Francois Sellier, and Jean-Jacques Silvestre, The Social Foundations of Industrial Power (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1986).
24 Birgit Pfau-Effinger, “Changing Welfare States and Labour Markets in the Context of European Gender Arrangements,” in Changing Labour Markets, Welfare Policies and Citizenship, ed. Jørgen Goul Andersen and Per H. Jensen (Bristol: Policy Press, Scholarship Online, 2012).
25 Tsui, Nifadkar, and Ou, “Cross-National, Cross-Cultural Organizational Behavior Research.”
26 Shapiro et al., “Toward Polycontextually Sensitive Research Methods,” 144.
27 Zheng Wang, Never Forget National Humiliation: Historical Memory in Chinese Politics and Foreign Relations (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012), xii.
28 Christian Fuchs, “Baidu, Weibo and Renren: The Global Political Economy of Social Media in China,” Asian Journal of Communication 26, no. 1 (2016).
29 Ibid.
30 Ibid.
31 Shapiro et al., “Toward Polycontextually Sensitive Research Methods.”
32 Jean-François Billeter, Pourquoi l’Europe. Réflexions d’un sinologue (Paris: Éditions Allia, 2020).
33 Victor Louzon, Le grand récit chinois. L’invention d’un destin mondial (Paris: Taillandier, 2023).
Another random document with no related content on Scribd:
the Greek fleet, caught unprepared, had to run for it to the inner strait, where, once round the corner of Eubœa, it would be sheltered by the mountains which form the great precipices on the Euripus north of Chalkis. Whether it went to Chalkis or not, it is, of course, impossible to say. It is probable it did not do so, for Mount Kandili131 ceases before Chalkis is reached, and the narrow part of the Strait is exposed to the east and north-east. There is no difficulty in identifying the nature of the storm. It blew on shore on the Sepiad strand, and therefore must have been one of those E.N.E. gales from the Black Sea, which are the most violent and most dangerous of the storm winds of the Ægean. They may occur at any time of year. Such a storm would blow right down the north bend of the Euripus.
The army at Thermopylæ must have known of the retirement of the fleet; but it must have known also that there was every intention of returning to the former station so soon as the weather allowed. For that reason it held its ground.
The adventures of the ten Persian ships did not end with their capture of the Athenian vessels. Three of them came to grief on the rock called Murmex, which is in the fairway just at the entrance of the channel.
THE STORM AT THE SEPIAD STRAND.
On the evening of the twelfth day of the journal the position appears to be as follows: the Greek fleet was at Artemisium; the Persian at the Sepiad strand outside the strait; the Persian scouting vessels, or, rather, the seven survivors of them, were probably engaged in erecting a pillar on the Murmex rock as a danger mark to the rest of the fleet.
H. vii. 183. 13th day.
The Sepiad shore was not sufficiently extensive for it to be possible to draw up the whole of the Persian fleet upon it. A large number of the vessels were obliged to remain at anchor, with their bows facing seawards, in eight lines. These were surprised at dawn by the storm. It arose suddenly, the sea having previously been quite calm. The wind was from the east or E.N.E., known in that region as the “Hellespontian wind,” not less
known, nor less obnoxious to sailors at the present day than it was in the days of Herodotus. The destruction wrought in the fleet was enormous. Four hundred warships and an unknown number of transports are said to have perished. The numbers are no doubt greatly exaggerated; but the loss relatively to the size of the fleet seems to have been very considerable. Such were the events of the thirteenth day at the Sepiad strand. The Greek fleet, driven from the North Euripus on that morning by the storm, took refuge in the inner channel,—“at Chalkis,”—so says Herodotus.132
14th day
15th day
16th day
The storm lasted during the fourteenth and fifteenth days, the fleets remaining at their respective stations.
The events of the sixteenth day are of special importance. They are crowded together in the narrative in a way that raises the suspicion that the chronological error in the story is to be sought in this part of it.
H. vii. 192.
The storm had come to an end on the fourth day; but on the day following its commencement the Greeks received news of the disaster at the Sepiad strand from the watchers posted on the heights of the Eubœa.
14th day
“When the Greeks heard this, after offering prayer to their preserver Poseidon, and pouring libation, they hastened straightway to Artemisium, hoping that but few ships would oppose them.” There is manifestly some mistake here. The Greek fleet could not possibly have made its way back to Artemisium in the face of the storm. It must have waited until the storm had blown itself out; that is to say, it could not have returned to its former station until the sixteenth day. The tale as it stands supplies a motive for the return of the fleet such as will fit in with the main motive of the story.
16th day
H. vii. 193.
“They came for a second time to Artemisium and took up their station there, and from that day to this have been accustomed to address Poseidon by the name of ‘saviour’ then given to him. The barbarian, when the wind dropped and the sea went down, dragged the vessels down into the water
and sailed along the coast round the cape of Magnesia, into the gulf leading to Pagasæ. There is a place in this Gulf of Magnesia where it is said that Herakles was left by Jason and his comrades when he had been sent from the Argo to fetch water, when they were sailing to Aias in Colchis after the golden fleece; for their intention was, after watering there, to put out to sea. From this circumstance the place got its name of Aphetæ. Here the fleet of Xerxes came to anchor.”
It is fairly clear from the description that Aphetæ must have been situated at the extremity of the long curved peninsula which extends west from the south end of Magnesia, enclosing the Pagasætic Gulf on the south.
The only other event which can be reasonably ascribed to this sixteenth day is the capture by the Greek fleet of fifteen Persian vessels which were belated in starting for Aphetæ. It is not difficult to demonstrate, on Herodotus’ own showing, that their capture cannot have taken place until well on in the afternoon.
The tale is as follows:
H. vii. 194.
“Fifteen of these ships (the Persian) had put out much later, and in some way or other caught sight of the Greek vessels at Artemisium. The barbarians thought they were their own ships, and sailed into the hands of their enemies.”
GREEKS RETURN TO ARTEMESIUM.
H. vii. 191, ad fin.
The storm had not ceased until that very morning. It is quite certain that the battered Persian fleet must have required some hours of preparation before it could put out from the Sepiad strand; and it did not reach Aphetæ until the early afternoon. The fifteen vessels must have come up some hours later, well on in the afternoon, since the main fleet had evidently disappeared into the Pagasætic Gulf before they entered the channel; otherwise they could not have made the mistake they did make. The story of their capture shows that on the afternoon of that day the Greek fleet was already back at Artemisium. Had it come up
H. vii. 196. from Chalkis that morning? It is not impossible that it should have done so; but it is improbable.133
“So the Persian fleet, with the exception of the fifteen vessels which, as I have said, Sandokes commanded, came to Aphetæ.”
The composite character of the sources of the historian’s narrative is well illustrated by the next episode in the strange story. It is of the nature of a by-plot in the drama inserted with a view to illustrate not merely the services of the Athenians in saving the situation, but also the twofold character of the man who now becomes for the first time prominent in the story. In brief the tale is that the fleet, after returning to Artemisium, discovered that the disaster at the Sepiad strand had by no means been so great as had been imagined. So alarmed were the Greeks at this, that “they discussed whether they should retreat from Artemisium to Middle Greece.” The Eubœans, who thus saw themselves likely to be suddenly deserted without the possibility of providing for the safety of their children and households, implored Eurybiades to allow them time to remove them to a place of security. Finding they could make no impression upon him, they resorted to Themistocles, to whom they offered a bribe of thirty talents, if he would take measures to keep the fleet where it was. Themistocles undertook to do so, and proceeded to bribe Eurybiades with a gift of five talents, and Adeimantos, the Corinthian admiral, with three talents.
H. viii 4.
H. vii. 144.
The tale excites the strongest suspicion of having been an invention of after-time, concocted by political opponents of Themistocles. Herodotus’ whole attitude to Themistocles is suspicious. He is quite unable to suppress the greatness of the services which he rendered to the Greek cause; but he is ever ready to discount the value of those services either by tales discreditable to the personal character of the man who rendered them, or by attributing to him motives other than those which really prompted his action.
Nor do the details of the story, when taken into consideration, tend to make it appear more probable. No doubt the Peloponnesian
members of the fleet seized every possible occasion for urging such a withdrawal. It must have been known to them that the force sent to Thermopylæ did not represent any real effort on their part. It could hardly be expected that they should display any large amount of zeal in carrying out a policy of which they wholly disapproved, and in the execution of which their own authorities were so manifestly halfhearted. They knew that, if they left Artemisium, the army must leave Thermopylæ; and they were no doubt convinced that that was the very best thing which could possibly happen. But on the practical question of withdrawal, other considerations must have influenced those in command. Unless the retreat from Thermopylæ were begun many hours before the withdrawal of the fleet, the army must be caught in a trap. With a light-armed enemy in vastly superior numbers in hot pursuit, the retreat could not have been rapid, and the Persian fleet would have had ample time to land troops in such a position as would make it possible to cut the line of it.
REPORTED BRIBERY OF THEMISTOCLES.
There is no trace whatever in the Thermopylæ story of a message having been received from the fleet advising the garrison of its intended withdrawal. That may be attributed to the incompleteness of the story itself. This explanation, however, can hardly be considered satisfactory in view of the fact that, had anything of the kind occurred, such an incident would hardly have been omitted from a version the main object of which was to depict the disaster as an act of deliberate self-sacrifice on the part of Leonidas.
The decisive factor in the situation was that, bribed or not, Eurybiades and Adeimantos could not possibly leave the Thermopylæ garrison in the lurch.134 The real significance in this, as in the other similar stories in Herodotus relating to this time, is that it brings into relief the existence of a strong party within the fleet which was wholly opposed to the Northern policy. It also for the first time indicates the part which Corinth seems’ to have played in the war as the leader of this party of opposition to the Athenian policy. Thus far it is reliable. The rest of the tale is, as has been said, suspicious to the last degree,—suspicious, in what may be called its local
colouring,—suspicious, owing to the appalling recklessness of the assertions which Greek politicians did not hesitate to make respecting their political opponents.
Diod. xi. 12.
Diodorus’ version of Artemisium presents so many marked differences to that of Herodotus, that it is impossible to suppose that it is either drawn from Herodotus, or even derived from a common source. There is absolutely no hint of bribery in it, nor, indeed, is there any reference to the restiveness of the Peloponnesian contingent. What is emphasized is the fact that Themistocles’ personal influence in the fleet, and especially with Eurybiades, was very great, and that he was the de facto commander. There is no tendency to belittle the services of Athens, though her claims to merit are put upon a different basis.
It is probable, then, that the Greek fleet, after its return to Artemisium on that sixteenth day, did not face the situation with a unanimous determination to make a stubborn fight of it. It would have been surprising had unanimity prevailed, since the circumstances as they stood, and as they were intended to stand, at Thermopylæ cannot possibly have been a secret to members of the Peloponnesian contingents. Still, so long as Leonidas remained there, the strait had to be defended.
H. viii. 6.
17th day
The Persians at Aphetæ were animated by very different feelings. The Greek fleet was not to be defeated merely, but to be captured. It was determined to despatch a large squadron, two hundred in number, to circumnavigate Eubœa, and to block the South Euripus.135
H. viii. 7.
Exaggerated as are the numbers given in Herodotus, the mere fact that the Persian commanders ventured thus to divide their fleet in face of an enemy with 271 ships, together with the comparative ill-success with which the Greeks fought with that part of the fleet which remained at Aphetæ, shows that the Persians must, even after the disaster on the Sepiad strand, have had a very large number of vessels at their disposal.
H. viii. 7. ad fin.
Herodotus does not say, but he certainly implies, that this flying squadron was despatched on the very day of the arrival at Aphetæ. It is not necessary to insist that this was, under the circumstances, hardly possible. The fleet had been terribly knocked about by the storm. The storm itself had only ceased that very morning. There had been no time to refit before leaving for Aphetæ; and the fleet had only reached that anchorage early in the afternoon of that sixteenth day. These two hundred vessels, moreover, were evidently despatched by daylight.136
H. viii. 7, ad init.
It is here, no doubt, that one of those missing days has been omitted from Herodotus’ narrative of Artemisium. The despatch of the squadron round Eubœa must have taken place on the morning of the seventeenth day.
PERSIAN SQUADRON SENT ROUND
EUBŒA.
The one fear of the Persians at this time was that the Greek fleet would run away. They, consequently, adopted the stratagem of sending the squadron of two hundred vessels by the channel north of Skiathos, so as to give the impression that it was sailing to Therma or elsewhere. It was an effective manœuvre, because the island completely fills in the sea horizon of the mouth of the channel.
H. viii. 7. 18th day
On the next day137 they reviewed their fleet at Aphetæ, but otherwise lay quiet, intending to wait for news of the encircling squadron.
Of the destination of the two hundred the Greeks do not appear to have had any suspicion whatever, until Skyllias the diver, deserting the Persian fleet, made his way across the strait and gave them information. The utter confusion of this part of the Artemisium story renders it very difficult to arrive at anything resembling a certain conclusion as to what actually took place in consequence of the receipt of this news. It is hardly conceivable that those in command of the Greek fleet should have been quite unprepared for the eventuality of a squadron being sent round to intercept their retreat by Chalkis. There is no direct evidence on this point; the slight evidence which does exist is of a circumstantial character. After
H. viii. 14.
describing the disaster which overtook the two hundred vessels, Herodotus says that the news of it was brought to the fleet at Artemisium by a squadron of fifty-three Attic vessels, or, at any rate,—for his language is not quite explicit,— that the news arrived with that squadron. This is the first mention of this body of ships. It seems highly probable that it had been at Chalkis, guarding the narrow passage there, and that, on receiving news of the disaster to the Persian flying squadron, it went to join the rest of the fleet at Artemisium.
The escape of Skyllias is asserted to have been made during the review, and the consultation among the Greeks as to what course they must adopt in consequence of his information was held on the day of the first engagement.
138
Herodotus reports that they determined to remain where they were for that day and the greater part of the following night, and then, after midnight, to go and meet the ships coming up through the south channel. It is quite intelligible that, if the Greeks had not provided for the defence of the narrows at Chalkis, their position was such as to cause alarm, and to demand desperate measures.
But the probability is that there never was any intention on the part of the Greek commanders to leave the station at Artemisium until some blow had been inflicted on the fleet at Aphetæ.
139
The Attic vessels were probably guarding the strait, which at Chalkis was so narrow as to be easily defensible. Under no circumstances could the fleet at Aphetæ have been left free to land troops behind Thermopylæ.
140
ATTACK ON PERSIANS AT APHETÆ.
The subsequent action of the Greek commanders is in accord with such a situation and such a design. They had not hitherto ventured to attack the Persian. They were now forced to do so. Not until the fleet at Aphetæ had been rendered incapable of making a movement down the Euripus could the Greek fleet venture to meet the danger from the south. And so the first attack took place that very night. Herodotus’ account of the action is
a curious one,—that of a man who had heard talk of certain naval technicalities without understanding them. These very Greeks, who have been described as having, a few days before, fled to Chalkis in consequence of the capture of three of their vessels, and as having contemplated flight to mid Greece at the mere sight of the Persian fleet, are now represented as making a quasi-experimental attack on the foe they so much dreaded, from motives of purely professional interest. “They wished to make trial of the Persian mode of fighting, and to practise the manœuvre of cutting the line.”
141
From the point of view of military history, the account of the first engagement, as given by Diodorus, conveys a much stronger impression of accuracy than that of Herodotus. Both represent the Greeks as the attacking party; but Diodorus gives an excellent tactical motive for their taking the offensive. A council of war being held, all the commanders save Themistocles were in favour of remaining on the defensive. He, however, persuaded them to adopt his plan of the offensive by pointing out to them the advantage they would enjoy as the attacking party, in that they, with their whole force prepared for battle, would be able to choose their own time for attack, and must take unawares an enemy whose fleet was not concentrated at one anchorage.
H. xi. 12.
This account is strongly supported by the fact that there is no single harbour at that extremity of the Magnesian peninsula which could accommodate more than a fraction of the Persian fleet, so that it would necessarily be distributed over a considerable extent of coast-line.
On the general course of the engagement the two accounts are in agreement. The Greeks, as might be expected, gained at first some considerable success;—Herodotus says they took thirty ships; but, when the whole of the enemy’s fleet had collected, the combat became obstinate and indecisive, until the fall of night put an end to it.
H. viii. 12.
It was on the evening of this day that the second of those storms took place which were destined to be so fatal to the Persian fleet. The quarter from which it came is not
STORM AT THE HOLLOWS OF EUBŒA.
expressly stated by Herodotus; but his accounts of its effects on the north and south of Eubœa respectively leave no doubt that it was a gale from the south or S.S.W.142 At Aphetæ it caused considerable alarm but little damage, the only effect being that the wreckage from the battle of the afternoon was thrust in upon the Persian fleet.
In the South Euripus there was a very different tale to tell. The Persian flying squadron, which had started from Aphetæ the day before, appears to have been caught by the gale immediately after it had rounded the southern Cape of Eubœa.143 The result was a disaster hardly less great than that which had happened at the Sepiad strand. The whole two hundred were driven into those bays at the south end of the west coast of Eubœa, which the ancients knew under the name of the “Hollows.” Not a ship escaped. The destruction was complete.
144
The effect of this disaster on the general course of the war can hardly be over-estimated. It was not merely that the numerical loss was great, but the position of the fleet at Artemisium must have become exceedingly critical, had this squadron occupied the channel south of Chalkis. Under such circumstances it is probable that the decisive battle of the naval campaign would have been fought near that place.
19th day
145
It was probably early in the night of the eighteenth day that the disaster at the Hollows took place. The report of it was promptly carried to Chalkis, at which place the fiftythree Attic vessels must have ridden out the storm, since a gale from the south raises a very ugly sea in the broader parts of the Euripus. It is evident that the Greeks had established a regular signalling system on this coast; and it is probable that it was by this means that the news reached the squadron at Chalkis, which immediately started for Artemisium. Herodotus’ language leaves it a somewhat open question as to whether these ships
H. viii. 14.
brought the news to the fleet. All that is actually stated is that the news arrived at Artemisium about the same time as the fifty-three.
The Persian fleet, ignorant, no doubt, of the disaster in South Eubœa, intended to bide quiet until some report of the two hundred reached it. For the earlier part of the day it remained undisturbed. The Greeks had probably found out to their dismay on the previous evening that they were not strong enough to tackle the naval force which remained at Aphetæ with any hope of decisive success. But the arrival of the fifty-three Attic vessels, which can hardly have taken place before midday, put new heart into them; and that afternoon they attacked the Cilician contingent of the Persian fleet, inflicting considerable damage.146
H. viii. 14.
THIRD SEA-FIGHT AT ARTEMISIUM.
The Persian position, both at Thermopylæ and Artemisium, was at this moment very precarious. The army had conspicuously failed to force the pass, and the fleet had, so far, confined itself to the defensive. Doubtless, urgent messages were coming from Thermopylæ to Aphetæ, commanding that the strait should be forced at any price. The Persian commanders, therefore, afraid to defer longer the attack, took the offensive. It may well be that the disadvantages of the position at Aphetæ from a defensive point of view, which had been clearly demonstrated in the engagements of the two previous days, had something to do with determining their course of action. The battle which ensued was an obstinate one. It certainly was not favourable to the Greeks, even less favourable, perhaps, than is represented. The losses on both sides were large, those of the Persians being the greater. It seems, however, that, over and above the vessels actually destroyed, a large number were considerably damaged, and that the Athenian contingent suffered especially in this respect. The account which Herodotus gives of the events which took place after the battle leaves it uncertain whether he considered that the subsequent retirement from Artemisium was due primarily to the losses incurred in the previous engagement, or to the receipt of the
Cf. H. viii. 15, ad init.
20th day.
H. viii. 16.
H. viii. 18.
H. viii. 19, 20.
Diod. xi. 13.
news of the disaster at Thermopylæ. Diodorus mentions the losses, but ascribes the retreat entirely to the news from Thermopylæ. That disaster must have taken place early in the afternoon: the news of it must have reached the fleet at Artemisium, by means of the despatch-boat, very early in the evening. According to Herodotus, the retreat had been discussed before the despatch-boat arrived.147 That it had been discussed may well have been the case; but that it had been decided, and, above all, that Themistocles had consented, to retire that very night, before the receipt of the news from Thermopylæ, is doubtless untrue. Herodotus’ assertion incurs all the more suspicion from the fact that he uses it as a peg whereon to hang a tale illustrative of the disaster which is sure to befall those who refuse to obey the advice of oracles. The Eubœans, he says, had disregarded an oracle of Bakis, which had urged them to place their sheep in security, in view of the coming war, and were now, on the approaching retirement of the Greek fleet, in a position of extreme difficulty as to the best means of saving their property. Themistocles’ proposal for dealing with the situation was simple and effective. He said, “Kill the sheep: kindle fires: roast them and put them on board, since it is better that they fall into our hands than into those of the enemy. As to getting the fleet away in safety, I will look to that.” He also hinted that he had a plan, which he did not then disclose, for detaching the Ionians and Carians from the Persian fleet. So the other Greek commanders looked to the sheep and the fires, while he devised measures for retreat.
H. viii. 21.
No tale could be more peculiarly illustrative of the wide distinction which must be drawn between the facts of history as stated by Herodotus and the motives which he propounds for certain courses of action.
It is doubtless perfectly true that a council of war was held that evening, at which it was decided to retire from Artemisium; and that Themistocles concurred in that decision. But, on the question of motive, it may be taken as almost equally certain that this decision was not come to in consequence of what had happened in the engagement of that afternoon, but by reason of the news which had
come from Thermopylæ, which rendered the further presence of the fleet at Artemisium not merely unnecessary, but, from the point of view of the Greek commanders, unadvisable. In actual fact it may be regarded as exceedingly doubtful whether Xerxes could have advanced southwards without the aid of the fleet commissariat; but the idea uppermost in the minds of the Greek commanders would be the extreme danger of such a move on his part.
GREEKS RETIRE FROM ARTEMISIUM.
It is not difficult to see that the building of the fires that evening on the Artemisium shore had probably little if any connection with the provisioning of the fleet, but was part of the plan by which Themistocles proposed to secure a safe withdrawal from the position. The Persians were evidently to be deluded by the idea that the Greeks had no intention of deserting their station; and the ruse employed to attain this end would naturally suggest itself. It has been again and again employed under similar circumstances.
The retreat began early in the night, the ships taking their departure in order according to their position at the anchorage. The fact that the Corinthians led the way, and that the Athenians were last to start, may merely signify that they formed respectively the extreme left and right of the line; but, in view of the attitude of the former at this time, it may be suspected that Herodotus had special motives for mentioning the order of retirement.
H. viii. 21.
H. viii. 22.
Themistocles, with a fast sailing division, formed the rearguard. He did not, apparently, intend so much to cover the retreat, as to visit the various watering-places on the shores of the Euripus, and to affix there a quasi-manifesto to the Ionian Greeks in the Persian fleet, calling upon them to abstain, in so far as possible, from attacking their fellow-countrymen. His object was, says Herodotus, either to detach the Ionians from their allegiance to Xerxes, or to make the king suspicious of their loyalty.
The Persians did not attempt to pursue the Greek fleet. «H. viii. 23.» The latter had, indeed, got a long start before its departure was discovered. A Greek from North Eubœa brought the news to
Aphetæ; but his information was distrusted, and ships were sent across the strait to discover whether it was true or not. This must have taken place during the night, for it was at sunrise that the Persian fleet, after receiving the report of the scouting vessels, moved across the strait to Artemisium. At midday the Persians moved to Histiæa, where they appear to have spent some time in ravaging the district in its neighbourhood.
It is probable that the news of the disaster in the South Euripus deterred the Persians from any attempt at pursuit. Nothing is said as to how or when the news reached them; but it may be regarded as certain that the tidings, which had arrived at Artemisium twenty-four hours before, had in the interval made their way across the strait.
It was now possible for the Persian fleet to communicate by sea with the captors of Thermopylæ; and it may easily be imagined that no time was lost in sending supplies to the army. In connection with these communications Herodotus relates a tale to the effect that Xerxes invited the sailors to view the scene of battle, and took certain ridiculously ineffective measures to conceal from them the magnitude of the losses suffered. That the king did attempt to conceal the greatness of the price he had paid for the capture of the pass may well have been the case; but whether Greek tradition, with its marked tendency to bring into high relief the childishness and foolishness of the Oriental monarch, truly represented the measures taken to attain this end, may well be doubted.
In Herodotus’ story of the great war the tale of Artemisium is perhaps the least satisfactory of all the detailed accounts of the various acts of the drama. It is not merely complicated by a chronological error of considerable magnitude, the effect of which is to render the most important part of the story, as it stands, incredible; but it is very seriously distorted, from a historical point of view, by the addition of material of a more than doubtful character, inserted with intent to heighten the effect of the services of Athens at this critical time. But the chronological error does not destroy the historical value of his narrative, though it impairs it. Had Herodotus told his tale after his usual manner, the error might not have crept into it. But just in this part of his history he has tried to treat events in a somewhat
more business-like fashion than usual, and the attempt has not met with complete success. Nature had not made him an arithmetician; and even had it done so, his business-like method is sufficiently unbusinesslike to render his mistake obscure until the story has been analyzed.
How far he is personally responsible for the Athenian bias of his version, it is not possible to say at the present day. He was, no doubt, sufficiently philo-Athenian to wish to place the undoubtedly great services of Athens to the national cause at this time in the highest possible relief; and he was sufficiently ignorant of strategical considerations to render it probable that he could not detect in the version current at Athens those fictitious additions, whose falsity must have become apparent to any one who could appreciate the main lines of the strategy of this part of the war. Had he understood not merely that there was a connection between Thermopylæ and Artemisium, but that connection was of so intimate a nature as to render the maintenance of the pass absolutely dependent on the maintenance of the strait, he would have treated with suspicion those repeated assertions of an intention on the part of the commanders of the fleet to withdraw from their station, or would have reduced them to a position of far less prominence in the story, as being, what they no doubt were, mere indications of the spirit which animated the irresponsible mass of those who formed the crews of the Peloponnesian contingents.
HERODOTUS’ ACCOUNT OF ARTEMISIUM.
And yet, in so far as can now be judged, his tale of Artemisium,— freed from a chronological error for the correction of which the author supplies the means, and with the essentially Athenian portions of it reduced to their proper relief in the story,—is a reliable history of this important period of the Great War.
No of the day.
